NBC’s Mistake, Charlie the Groper

From Los Angeles —

Unforced Errors: NBC News made an egregious error yesterday, reporting that federal investigators had tapped the phone lines of President Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen. The network later issued a correction, saying that the feds only had possession of Cohen’s phone logs — the record of calls, but not their content.

It was a big mistake for NBC and the news business on a day when it was revealed that Trump had lied about his knowledge of the nondisclosure payment to the porn actress Stormy Daniels.

In another development, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani may have dug Cohen’s legal hole even deeper yesterday, speaking again to Fox News about the payment to Daniels. “Imagine if that came out on Oct. 15, 2016, in the middle of the, you know, last debate with Hillary Clinton,” Giuliani said. “Cohen didn’t even ask. Cohen made it go away. He did his job.”

Connecting the payment to the campaign could make it look like an unreported and therefore illegal campaign contribution.

The other thing is, it’s amazing how comfortable Giuliani is with this kind of transaction. This is who these guys are.

Groped: CBS News managers were warned over a period of 30 years about former anchor Charlie Rose’s creepy sexual advances, according to The Washington Post. The paper also says 27 more women have told them about incidents with Rose.

The paper reports that, “Concerns about Rose’s behavior were flagged to managers at the network as early as 1986 and as recently as April 2017, when Rose was co-anchor of ‘CBS This Morning,’ according to multiple people with firsthand knowledge of the conversations.”

The stories are familiar, demonstrating behavior that goes back as far as 1976. Women describe being groped and kissed against their will. Some said that during work sessions at Rose’s home he would come naked out of the shower.

Rose responded to the Post with a one-sentence email,  “Your story is unfair and inaccurate.”

Exeunt: The Motion Picture Academy, the people who hand out the Oscars, have kicked out comedian Bill Cosby and movie director Roman Polanski. Cosby was just convicted of sexual assault  and Polanski pleaded guilty to having sex with a minor in 1977.

The Academy, whose board includes such luminaries as Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg, set new standards of member conduct last fall after they threw out the sexual miscreant Harvey Weinberg.

Polanski, who fled the country to escape prison, was actually awarded an Oscar back in 2002 and received a standing ovation.

Blackboard Jungle: Striking Arizona teachers agreed to return to work yesterday after the legislature passed a pay raise of 20 percent by the year 2020. It was less than the teachers wanted in a state where they are among the lowest paid in the country, but still a big improvement.

Adventures in Paradise: Hawaii’s Mt. Kilauea erupted yesterday, spewing lava and prompting evacuations in a residential neighborhood. A lava fountain was reported to be shooting 150 feet  and a split in a road in Leilani Estates on the big island of Hawaii was oozing lava.

World: More than 125 people are reported to have died in India in a violent dust storm that brought high winds and lightning strikes. Whole villages were reported to have been devastated as walls and buildings collapsed, livestock were killed, and electricity knocked out. Ore violent weather is in the forecast.

It’s a Miracle!: Speaker Paul Ryan reinstated the Rev. Patrick Conroy as chaplain of the House of Representatives yesterday after the chaplain sent him a letter rescinding his forced resignation and daring the speaker to fire him.

  Ryan, who’s Catholic, said in a statement, “It is my job as speaker to do what is best for this body, and I know that this body is not well served by a protracted fight over such an important post.”

  That’s nice but having a House priest makes you wonder whether God listens to prayer.

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It's Been Said

"Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it will be fixed, it will be fine, you won't have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you Christians. I'm a Christian. I love you, get out, you gotta get out and vote. In four years, you don't have to vote again, we'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote."

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