Game of Chicken: An empty chair, a ceramic chicken, and threats from the House. Another day in Congress.

  Attorney Gen. William Barr refused to show for a hearing yesterday before the House Judiciary Committee about the Special Counsel report because he didn’t want to be questioned by staff lawyers. Who knows better to be  afraid of lawyers than a lawyer?

   Tennessee Democrat Steve Cohen brought a ceramic chicken to the dais and munched on some of the colonel’s fried.  “Chicken Barr should have shown up today and answered questions,” he told reporters.

  The Republicans say that what the Democrats really want to do is hold a hearing that looks like a presidential impeachment without really trying to impeach president Trump.

  The House may try to force Barr with a subpoena, but they are considering a charge of contempt of Congress for his refusal to hand over the full unredacted Mueller Report.

  Speaker Nancy Pelosi went one step further, accusing Barr of committing perjury before Congress in previous testimony. Barr has said he didn’t know about any discontent on the Mueller staff about his summary of the Special Counsel report when he had already received a letter of protest.

   “The attorney general of the United States of America was not telling the truth to the Congress of the United States,” Pelosi told reporters. “That’s a crime.”

The Wire:  Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh resigned yesterday amidst a scandal about selling her children’s’ books to organizations with which she was conducting official business. 

  She’s the target of at least seven investigations, including one by the Justice Department. The FBI  and IRS raided her home and office.

  Pugh said in a letter read aloud by her lawyer, “I am sorry for the harm that I have caused to the image of the city of Baltimore and the credibility of the office of the mayor.”

 The Baltimore Sun found out that Pugh has received about $800,000 in recent years from the sale of her Healthy Holly books about a young black girl who promotes the benefits of nutrition and exercise. 

  The University of Maryland Medical System paid half a million dollars for books while Pugh was a member of the board. Kaiser Permanente paid over $100,000 for 20,000 copies of the book during a period when the company was seeking to provide healthcare coverage to city employees.  They won a $48 million contract.

  And good luck finding a copy of a Healthy Holly book. You won’t find it at Barnes and Noble.

The Social Network:After years of excusing itself as just a platform for other peoples’ voices, Facebook evicted seven users who have been considered voices of hatred and idiocy.

  Among them are conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, right wing antagonist Milo Yiannopoulos, and the anti-Semitic black nationalist Rev. Louis Farrakhan. Jones, for instance, has claimed that the Sandy Hook school massacre was a hoax and neither children nor teachers were actually killed.

  “We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology,” a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement. “The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today.”

 Facebook has banned users and even censored some language, but this move is an admission that the social network is not just a neutral technology tool, but an arbiter of editorial content. This will get them out of trouble in some areas while inviting the public to demand more responsibility.

Gone Bust:For the second time in recent weeks, President Trump’s pick to serve on the board of the Federal Reserve has been cashiered. 

  Stephen Moore, who in recent years has been a conservative commentator on CNNdefending Trump no matter what, couldn’t stand up to scrutiny for confirmation. He’s been withdrawn.

  Moore is considered to be unqualified for the complications of monetary policy, but what tripped him up was his social record. He has written articles insulting to women that he said were supposed to be funny, and his ex-wife had to sue him for unpaid alimony and support.

The Obit Page: Peter Mayhew, the actor who played Chewbacca, the towering Wookie in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, died at home in Texas of a heart attack. He was 74.

  Mayhew was seven foot, two inches tall. Perfect for the part. You never saw him behind a face of fur. He once said, “After a while, the character sort of took over.”

The Roundup: A federal jury found the top executives of Insys Therapeutics guilty of racketeering in a rare criminal prosecution of corporate officers for contributing to the nation’s opioid epidemic. The jury delivered guilty verdicts for the company’s founder, the onetime billionaire John Kapoor, and four former executives, finding they had conspired to pump up sales of its potent fentanyl painkiller to people who didn’t need it. — As many as a million people have been evacuated in advance of a cyclone lashing the coast of India and heading north into Bangladesh. It’s the equivalent of a Category 5 hurricane. — The Trump administration has finalized its rule allowing doctors, nurses and other health workers to refuse to provide procedures such as abortions and sterilizations that violate their personal or religious beliefs.Trump announced the policy yesterday at an event for National Prayer Day in an appeal to the religious right.

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