Goodbye, John: Lamenting the political divisions now ruling Washington, former Vice President Joe Biden delivered a funny and touching eulogy yesterday for the late Sen. John McCain in Phoenix. He opened with, “My name is Joe Biden. I’m a Democrat. And I loved John McCain.”

He said, “Character is destiny. John had character.” Biden spoke of years of travelling with McCain, talking to him, even opposing him in the Senate on issues over which they differed. In a tip to their disagreements Biden said, “The way I thought about it, was that I always thought of John as a brother. We had a hell of a lot of family fights.”

Biden said that what set McCain apart was that he was a man of principle who believed in the power of America to do good for the world. “He could not stand the abuse of power,” Biden said. “Wherever he saw it, in whatever form, in whatever ways. He loved basic values, fairness, honesty, dignity, respect, giving hate no safe harbor, leaving no one behind and understanding Americans were part of something much bigger than ourselves.”

“I think he believed in the American people,” Biden said. “Not just all the preambles, he believed in the American people, all 325 million of us. Even though John is no longer with us, he left us clear instructions. ‘Believe always in the promise and greatness of America because nothing is inevitable here.’”

The Trumpster Fire: President trump told Bloomberg News in an interview yesterday that he thinks the Special Counsel investigation is illegal and he dropped a heavy hint that he will fire Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions after the mid-term elections.

Trump said about the Russia investigation that, “I view it as an illegal investigation” because “great scholars” have said that “there never should have been a special counsel.”

About whether he plans to fire Sessions, Trump declined to give a direct answer but said, “I do question what is Jeff doing.”

The Washington Post  reports according to its latest poll that Trump’s disapproval rating has hit 60 percent, its highest yet. A majority support the Special Counsel investigation and 49 percent believe Congress should begin impeachment proceedings.

 The Buried Lede: NBC News at first balked and then killed Ronan Farrow’s story about the sexual misconduct of movie producer Harvey Weinstein, according to a former NBC producer who worked with Farrow on what was to be a television version of the story.

Farrow then took his reporting to The New Yorker and won a Pulitzer Prize for it.

The producer, Rich McHugh, told The NY Times that NBC’s handling of the story was  “a massive breach of journalistic integrity” and that the order to kill it came from “the very highest levels of NBC.” He said NBC was “resistant” throughout eight months of reporting the story.

NBC News President Noah Oppenheim said the story lacked on-the-record, on-camera interviews. He said, “We repeatedly made clear to Ronan and Rich McHugh the standard for publication is we needed at least one credible on-the-record victim or witness of misconduct.”

There’s some suspicion that NBC was reluctant to air the Weinstein story because it was beginning to deal internally with the sexual harassment accusations that eventually took down the network’s star anchor, Matt Lauer.

Take a Knee: In a major blow to the National Football League, an arbitrator has ruled that former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick can proceed with his case claiming NFL teams have kept him off the field because of his protests during the National Anthem.

Kaepernick was once one of the best QBs in the NFL. After a season of kneeling during the anthem to protest police killings of black men, Kaepernick went free agent and hasn’t worked since. The arbitrator said Kaepernick’s lawyers have dug up enough evidence of collusion among the teams that the case may proceed to a full hearing.

Nation: Seven people died in New Mexico yesterday when a semi-trailer blew a tire and careened into an oncoming bus carrying 49 people. The front end of the bus was crushed and survivors had difficulty getting out.

The Obit Page: Paul Taylor, the dancer and choreographer who put a new and sometimes strange look on modern dance, has died at age 88. Taylor’s 1975 work “Esplanade,” set to the music of Bach, featured non-dancing pedestrian movement such as walking, running, standing, skidding, and even falling in a work that changed the nature of what is considered dance.

Freedom from Speech: After a week in which President Trump claimed that social media are putting the lid on good news about his presidency, NY Times columnist Kara Swisher killed with her opening line: “Here’s the truest conundrum of the social media age: Those who complain loudest about being silenced never ever shut up.”

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