Tweeting at the Television: The Biden campaign unleashed former President Barack Obama in Philadelphia last night to give a spanking to Donald Trump. Breaking the etiquette of former-president neutrality, Obama accused Trump of being lazy, bungling the pandemic, favoring the rich, and being a serial liar.

• “He hasn’t shown any interest in doing the work or helping anybody but himself and his friends or treating the presidency like a reality show that he can use to get attention. And by the way, even then his TV ratings are down. So you know that upsets him.”

• “The only people truly better off than they were four years ago are the billionaires who got his tax cuts.” 

• “We know that he continues to do business with China because he’s got a secret Chinese bank account. How is that possible? How is that possible? A secret Chinese bank account. Listen, can you imagine if I had had a secret Chinese bank account when I was running for reelection. You think Fox News might have been a little concerned about that? They would’ve called me Beijing Barry.”

• “I mean, of the taxes Donald Trump pays, he may be sending more to foreign governments than he pays in the United States. His first year in the White House he only paid $750 in federal income tax.”

• “Well, I get that this president wants full credit for the economy he inherited and zero blame for the pandemic that he ignored. But you know what? The job doesn’t work that way. Tweeting at the television doesn’t fix things. 

• “We’re not going to have a president that goes out of his way to insult anybody who doesn’t support him or threaten them with jail. That’s not normal presidential behavior. That’s not normal presidential behavior. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a high school principal. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a coach. We wouldn’t tolerate it from a co-worker. We wouldn’t tolerate it in our family, except for maybe some crazy uncle somewhere. 

The Love Pope: In an earth-shaking announcement for Catholics and the entire world, Pope Francis gave his support for same-sex civil unions in a new documentary film, for the first time giving the church’s recognition to gay couple who want to legally tie their lives together.

  It’d hard to overstate how big this is. “What we have to create is a civil union law. That way they are legally covered,” Francis said in the documentary, ‘‘Francesco,’’ which debuted yesterday at the Rome Film Festival. He has said he believes gay people are children of God. “I stood up for that,” he said.

  Traditional Catholics are appalled. Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island told The NY Times, “The pope’s statement clearly contradicts what has been the longstanding teaching of the church about same-sex unions.” 

  Don’t be confused. Francis is still absolutely opposed to gay marriage within the Catholic Church.

Foreign Influence:  Iran and Russia have both obtained American voter registration information and used it to try to influence the election said John Ratcliffe, the director of national intelligence, and Christopher A. Wray, the FBI director in an announcement last night. The voter data is mostly public information. The announcement plays into President Trump’s claim that the vote will be “rigged.”

Separation Anxiety: The federal government has been unable to find the parents of 545 children separated from families that entered the US illegally, The NY Times reports. The US is airing radio spots and sending searchers through rural areas of  Mexico and Central America.

  The children were separated from their parents by the Trump administration starting in 2017. The Times reports according to court documents that about 60 of the children were under age 5 when they were separated. 

  The Trump administration is hiding behind a claim that many of these families think their children are better off in the US. Chase Jennings, an assistant press secretary at the Department of Homeland Security said, “The simple fact is this, after contact has been made with the parents to reunite them with their children, many parents have refused.” 

Pain Relief: Purdue Pharma, makers of the painkiller Oxycontin that became an addictive scourge in the US, has agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department for $8 billion.

  Members of the Sackler family, who own Purdue, agreed to pay $225 million in civil penalties. Prosecutors said they could still bring criminal charges against Purdue executives and individual Sacklers.

  Oxycontin became one of the favored drugs in the national opioid addiction crisis. Purdue has been accused of selling quantities of the drug far beyond necessary use.

Original Intent: Senate Democrats say they will boycott Thursday’s scheduled vote on the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Angry at the way the nomination is being rushed on the eve of the election, Senate Minority Chuck Schumer and Democrats on the Judiciary Committee said, “We will not grant this process any further legitimacy.” 

  Barrett’s appointment will solidify the “originalist” approach to the Constitution on the Supreme Court.  Neil Gorsuch is an originalist and Brett Kavanaugh calls himself a “textualist,” which is the same thing.

  Originalists believe in adhering to the Constitution as it was written and intended more than 200 years ago. 

  Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the Berkeley law school, says in The NY Times that, “Following originalism would mean that Brown v. Board of Education was wrongly decided in declaring laws requiring segregation of schools unconstitutional. In fact, under the original public meaning of the Constitution, it would be unconstitutional to elect a woman as president or vice president until the Constitution is amended. Article II refers to them with the pronoun ‘he,’ and there is no doubt that original understanding was that only men could hold these offices.”

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