Evidence of Obstruction:With Secretary of State Mike Pompeo pushing back against House subpoenas in the Ukraine and impeachment inquiries, the inspector general of State has requested to give an “urgent” briefing to members and staff of several House committees. He said he wants “to discuss and provide staff with copies of documents” related to the State Department and Ukraine.

  A congressional aide described the request as highly unusual and cryptically worded.

  Pompeo has described the demand from three House committees for five diplomats to give depositions as “an act of intimidation” and said it did not allow enough time for the State Department to properly respond.The chairmen of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight Committees accuse Pompeo of “intimidating department witnesses in order to protect himself and the president.”

  The committee chairs wrote that, “Any effort to intimidate witnesses or prevent them from talking with Congress — including State Department employees — is illegal and will constitute evidence of obstruction of the impeachment inquiry.”

 President Trump is mounting his defense on Twitter, where he’s demanding to know the identity of the whistleblower, who so far is anonymous. Trump wrote, “why aren’t we entitled to interview & learn everything about the Whistleblower, and also the person who gave all of the false information to him.”

  The President didn’t say what false information he’s talking about. The whistleblower’s information about the President’s telephone conversation with the president of Ukraine was confirmed in the abridged transcript released by the White House.

  The President tweeted, “As I learn more and more each day, I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!”

  Contributor Will Wilkinson, writes for The NY Timesthat the House is now obliged to impeach the President.“If the House does its job,” he says, “it will fall to Senate Republicans to reveal, in their decision to convict (or not), their preferred flavor of republic: constitutional or banana.”

Buckshot Policy:Outraged about illegal immigration back in March, President Trump shocked his staff ordering the complete shutdown of the US/Mexico border within the next 24 hours, according to a story by Michael Shear and Julie Hirschfeld Davis. The staff convinced Trump that such a move would cause chaos on both sides of the border.

  Shear and Davis write that the President’s frustration with illegal immigration had him lurching from one solution to the next. “Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators.” They report that, “He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed off when his staff told him that was illegal. But later in a meeting, aides recalled, he suggested that they shoot migrants in the legs to slow them down.” 

Murder by Cop:A former Dallas police officer who shot and killed her unarmed upstairs neighbor in his own apartment was convicted of murder. Amber Guyger, 31, who is white, said that after a double shift she accidentally went to the wrong floor of their apartment complex and entered the apartment of 26-year-old Botham Jean, who was black, where she shot him thinking he was an intruder.

  The prosecution said Guyger ignored obvious physical differences in the apartment and fired before Jean appeared to pose a treat. She faces up to 99 years in prison.

  The sentencing phase has already begun in which prosecutors revealed racist text messages Guyger had written to fellow officers.

Heat: An unusual fall heat wave is moving into the East today. High temperatures for the day: New York, 86; Washington, DC, 96; Wilmington, 92; Cincinnati, 95; Windsor, Conn., 86. 

The Bulletin Board: North Korea may have fired a ballistic missile from a submarine, a move that came just hours after Pyongyang said it would resume nuclear talks with the US. —A federal judge ruled against plaintiffs who claimed that Harvard had discriminated against Asians in favor of black and Hispanic applicants. The judge said the university met the strict constitutional standard for considering race in its admissions. — Bernie Sanders raked in the most cash among Democratic candidates for president in the most recent quarter, $25.3 million.

Royally Pissed:Meghan Markle, is suing the publisher of the Mail on Sunday after the tabloid newspaper printed a “private letter” from the Duchess of Sussex to her estranged father.

  Prince Harry said the paper edited the letter and omitted words to make his wife look bad. He wrote in a statement, “The contents of a private letter were published unlawfully in an intentionally destructive manner to manipulate you, the reader, and further the divisive agenda of the media group in question” 

  Harry is worried that the tabloids are repeating the treatment of his mother, Princess Diana, who was hounded to her death in a car accident. “My deepest fear is history repeating itself,” Harry wrote. “I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditised to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”

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