Feds in the Bathroom, Still No Endorsement

News from the Bathroom: The Obama administration is entering the national bathroom debate today, issuing all public school systems a letter saying all students must be allowed to use the bathroom for the gender with which they identify. It’s an expansion no the White House fight against North Carolina’s “bathroom law” that restricts users of public bathrooms to facilities labeled for their birth gender.

The directive does not have the force of law, but school districts that refuse to comply can lose federal funding.

The Elephants in the Room: Donald Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan met for 45 minutes in Washington yesterday and Trump departed without getting Ryan’s endorsement for president. Ryan later described Trump as “warm and genuine.” He said in a news conference, “It was important that we discussed our differences that we have. But it was also important that we discuss the core principles that tie us together.”

Rarely has there ever been a situation at the level in which the presumptive presidential nominee and the party leadership have such differences over what they stand for. But Ryan said, “I do believe that we are now planting the seeds to get ourselves unified.”

The twittering Trump later posted, “Great day in D.C. with ‪@SpeakerRyan and Republican leadership. Things working out really well!”

Chemical Dependence: The former director of Russia’s secret athletic doping program has admitted that many of Russia’s elite athletes in the Sochi winter games had been prepared on a cocktail of performance-enhancing drugs. Grigory Rodchenkov said that dozens of Russian athletes, including 15 medal winners, were juiced.

Rodchenkov actually ran the drug-testing lab for the games. He was supposed to keep things honest, but his side job was making sure Russians won.

Russian security agents and anti-doping lab workers spent their nights during the games switching out tainted urine with clean pee that had been collected months earlier. Russia won the most medals and no athletes have been caught.

Viral Video: Police officers are so afraid of being caught on video that they are pulling back from their jobs, causing a rise in murders across the country, FBI Director James Comey told reporters yesterday. Comey, who admitted having no statistical proof, called it the “viral video effect.”

He said, “There’s a perception that police are less likely to do the marginal additional policing that suppresses crime — the getting out of your car at 2 in the morning and saying to a group of guys, ‘Hey, what are you doing here?’”

Of course, videos allow citizens to ask the cops, “Hey, why did you shoot that guy?”

The Obit Page: Mark Lane, once one of the most prominent Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorists who rose to fame with a book that said Lee Harvey Oswald could not have killed President Kennedy alone, has died at age 89. Lane’s 1966 book, “Rush to Judgment,” in which he pointed out troubling inconsistencies in the official version of the assassination, was a bestseller for two years. It was Lane who named the green slope off Dealey Plaza the “grassy knoll,” from which, he argued, shots had been fired at the president.

>John Bradshaw, a popular self-help evangelist of the 1990s who spoke about dysfunctional families and the damaged “inner child” has died at age 82. Bradshaw was the son of an alcoholic, and an alcoholic himself.

Misfire: George Zimmerman, the wannabe security guard, is trying to auction the gun he used to kill Trayvon Martin. He’s offering a Kel-Tec PF-9 at a an opening price of $5,000. Zimmerman thinks it’s a collector’s item, although some gun experts would disagree. It wasn’t used by John Dillinger or Bonnie and Clyde. It’s a cheap throwdown that sells for $356 new and was used to kill an unarmed teenager.

The website Gunbroker.Com rejected the initial listing saying, “We want no part in the listing on our web site or in any of the publicity it is receiving.” Wow, a gun seller with ethical standards.

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Sunday, May 5, 2024

Page Two

The Most Corrupt Justice

Monday, October 2, 2023

Democracy and Video in the Dark

Sunday, February 26, 2023

Page Two: Do the Right Thing

Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Page Two: Sound Recall

Monday, September 13, 2021

Page Two: Cuomo Must Go

Friday, August 13, 2021

Trump and the Truth

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

The “Great” President

Monday, March 30, 2020

The Wright Stuff

Saturday, February 29, 2020

It's Been Said

"In my mind, I’ve never crossed the line with anyone, but I didn’t realize the extent to which the line has been redrawn. There are generational and cultural shifts that I just didn’t fully appreciate, and I should have, no excuses."

-Andrew Cuomo, resigning as governor of New York after accusations of sexual harassment

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