Liar, Liar: Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort lied to federal investigators even after he had agreed to cooperate and tell the truth in the Special Counsel investigation into Russian election interference, a federal judge has determined.

  The judge voided Manafort’s plea deal, which could mean he’ll spend serious time in prison.

  Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington agreed that Manafort lied about his contacts with the Russian Konstantin Kilimnik, who has ties to Russian intelligence. Investigators suspect Kilimnik may have been involved with the Russian effort to sway the US election. 

  Berman also found that Manafort lied about a payment that was routed through a pro-Trump political action committee to cover his legal bills, and about matters related to another so-far secret investigation by the Justice Department.

War Lord: President Trump already says he will veto a bill passed by the House that would end US involvement in the Saudi Arabian war in Yemen. The measure that passed 248-to-177 condemns US support of a war that has resulted in widespread starvation and death among Yemeni civilians.

  The US provides logistical and targeting support as well as air-to-air re-fueling for Saudi fighter jets. The House vote is an exercise of the 1973 War Powers Act which allows Congress to force the removal of US forces from conflict if there’s no declaration of war.

  The Senate might also pass the bill, which amounts to a rebuke of President Trump for his support of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Wall Complex: The President is declaring victory in the border wall battle even though Congress is offering only a fraction of the money he wants for it.

 He told a law enforcement group on Wednesday, “It’s going to be a great, powerful wall. … The wall is very, very on its way.”

 Actually, the first sections of new barriers … not wall … are about to be started in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas with money appropriated last year.

  Nonetheless Trump promised about his so-far imaginary wall that, “You are going to have to be in extremely good shape to get over this one. They would be able to climb Mount Everest a lot easier, I think.”

Major Tom:After lasting almost 14 years beyond its expected life exploring Mars, NASA’s opportunity Rover has been declared officially dead.

  The little rover that could finally stopped responding to radio commands. “It is therefore that I am standing here with a sense of deep appreciation and gratitude that I declare the Opportunity mission as complete,” Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate administrator for science, said at a news conference.

  Opportunity was designed to travel only half a mile on Mars and last for just 90 days. It continued for more than 5,000. The first thing it did was discover that there had once been water on Mars. The golf-cart sized machine kept going, and going, and going. It travelled more than 25 miles.

Amortization Schedule:With the Republican tax cuts giving it a push, the national debt has topped $22 trillion for the first time in history. With lost income and increases in military spending, the debt jumped by $1 trillion in the last 11 months alone.

  While the current regime is responsible, during the Obama administration the debt rocketed by more than $9 trillion, more than the total debt accrued previously in American history.

Inside Information:  A former Air Force counter-intelligence specialist who defected to Iran has been charged with giving Iran information about a highly classified US military program and helping Iranian hackers target her former colleagues.

  Monica Elfriede Witt, 39, became so disillusioned with the United States that she defected and betrayed her country. Witt is living in Iran, beyond the reach of US authorities.

The Obit Page:Lyndon LaRouche, the paranoid, conspiracy-theorist political cult leader who ran for president eight times, has died at age 96.

  LaRouche started out as a radical leftist, a Marxist, and migrated to the right wing, if it’s even possible to describe what he believed in terms of liberal and conservative. He became an anti-Semite who railed against rock music and claimed climate change is a fraud.  He said environmentalists are trying to wipe out the human race. He claimed Jews had founded the Ku Klux Klan.

  Basically, LaRouche was crazy, but he had legions of loyal followers passing out his literature on street corners.

  He rocked the political world in 1986 when two of his followers, Mark Fairchild and Janice Hart, unexpectedly won the Democratic nomination for lieutenant governor and secretary of state in Illinois.Voters thought they were Democrats.

  They were defeated in the general election.

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