Heard in Public: In newly-presented testimony, the top diplomat to Ukraine told Congressional investigators yesterday that President Trump was more concerned about Ukraine investigating Joe Biden and his son than he was for the security of Ukraine itself.

  Ambassador William Taylor said that information came to him from an aide who overheard a telephone conversation between Trump and the ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland. As Taylor related the story, after the call in a restaurant the aide asked Sondland what the president thought about Ukraine and Sondland “responded that President Trump cares more about the investigations of Biden, which Giuliani was pressing for.”

 You do have to wonder why this was not mentioned before. And it’s a problem that Taylor’s story is what the lawyers call “hearsay,” not first-hand knowledge. The Republicans will crush it until there’s better verification. The aide in question testifies behind closed doors tomorrow.

  Taylor and another witness, veteran diplomat George Kent, drew a picture of Ukraine policy twisted by President Trump’s personal desire to damage the Bidens using the power of a foreign country. Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff asked, “If this is not impeachable conduct, what is?”

  Republicans threw up a flak wall of conspiracy theories and Fox News talking points in defense of the President, one of which is the unsupported accusation that it was the Ukrainians who interfered with the 2016 US election.  Ranking member Devin Nunes said, “The Democrats downplay, ignore, outright deny the many accusations that the Ukrainians did meddle in the election.” He said, “If there actually were indications of Ukraine election meddling, and if foreign election meddling is a dire threat, then President Trump would have a perfectly good reason for wanting to find out what happened.”

  US intelligence agencies have always accused Russia, not Ukraine, of the election meddling.

  Kent said in his opening statement he concluded that efforts by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani to have Ukraine open investigations into Trump’s political rivals “were now infecting US engagement with Ukraine.” 

  Kent did say it looked bad that Hunter Biden was on the board of a Ukrainian energy company that had been under a corruption investigation.

  President Trump, who said he didn’t watch the hearings, spent much of the day re-tweeting the posts of other Republican politicians attacking the proceedings. He tweeted at least 30 times.

To the Supremes: The federal appeals court in Washington refused to hear President Trump’s appeal of the ruling that his accounting firm must hand over  eight years of his financial records to a House committee. The subpoena for records had been given to his accounting firm. The case is yet another involving separation of constitutional powers likely headed to the Supreme Court.

Just Super: Drug-resistant “super bugs,” germs that sicken about 3 million people every year in the United States and kill about 35,000, are a larger threat than previously understood, according to a report released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

  The new study says that, on average, someone in the United States gets an antibiotic-resistant infection every 11 seconds, and every 15 minutes, someone dies. More pathogens are fending off drugs designed to kill them and no new classes of antibiotics have been introduced in more than 30 years.

The Gathering Crowd: Former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, little known outside of New England, if that, announced that he told the Democratic party that he will run for president. Three months before the Iowa Caucuses, the first votes in the primaries, Patrick is diving in when the weaker candidates are getting out.

Cold Snap: The way-too-early cold front will begin to ease its grip on the country today, but it’s still nasty out there. This morning, Bismarck, ND, 23; Green Bay, Wisc., 23; Buffalo, NY, 28; Staatsburg, NY 18; Mount Holly, NJ, 19; Burlington, VT., 19; Windsor, Conn., 15; Boston, 24.

Snowflakes in November: The editors of the student newspaper at Northwestern University caused a journalistic uproar, first for doing their job, and then by apologizing for it.

  The paper covered student protests that accompanied the campus appearance of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, but protesters objected to being identified. In particular one student demanded that the paper take down a picture of her that had been posted online.  Ying Dai, 23, who was depicted sprawled on the floor, called it “trauma porn.” She said, “We weren’t there to get in the newspaper. We weren’t there to get national attention. People still hold dear that their journalistic duty is the most important thing, and that’s not the case.”

  She was there to get attention, and attention is what she got in a public place — fair game for news coverage.

  But the editors of the Daily Northwestern published an apology in which they actually said they were sorry for covering the activity of “marginalized groups” and using the university directory to identify students … the definition of a public record.

 The editors said in their apology, “Some protesters found photos posted to reporters’ Twitter accounts retraumatizing and invasive.” They were also the act of a free press covering a public protest on a university campus that should treasure knowledge and information above all. Especially at the newspaper.

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