The White Right: Washington is braced for violence today as white nationalists plan to demonstrate on the one-year anniversary of the Charlottesville, Va. rally and riot. Counter demonstrators are likely to ratchet up the heat.

In Charlottesville, traffic is limited and police are patrolling in riot gear.  Last night hundreds of protesters dressed in black marched through the streets around the University of Virginia, screaming at police and calling for an end to white supremacy.

It’s a potential test for the President, who refuses to condemn white nationalists. Last year he said only that there were bad people and good people on both sides. Yesterday he tweeted a mushy denunciation saying, “I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!”

Twitter Tirade: Trump is on a golfing vacation at his New Jersey resort, but his mind doesn’t appear to be on his game. With the Russia investigation hanging over him, yesterday he was Twitter ranting about how the Justice Department and FBI are failing to crush his perceived enemies. Among his familiar targets were the fired FBI agent Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and of course, Hillary Clinton.

Trump behaves as if the entire Special Counsel investigation is about whether he colluded with the Russians and it isn’t. It includes that, but the big picture is that it’s about Russian influence. Trump claims that what really happened was a conspiracy between the FBI and Clinton to win the 2016 election.

He tweeted, “Will the FBI ever recover it’s once stellar reputation, so badly damaged by Comey, McCabe, Peter S and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, and other top officials now dismissed or fired? So many of the great men and women of the FBI have been hurt by these clowns and losers!”

He also trashed Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions. “Our A.G. is scared stiff and Missing in Action. It is all starting to be revealed – not pretty. IG Report soon? Witch Hunt!”

What are Melania and Baron doing all day at a New Jersey club while Trump is golfing and tweeting?

Quitters Never Win: Western NY Rep. Christopher Collins has given up his campaign for re-election in the wake of his indictment on charges of insider trading. Collins was worried that his presence on the ballot could endanger his solidly-Republican seat, but he’s still on the ballot and getting off isn’t easy.

A federal indictment accuses him of using his position on the board of an Australian bio-tech company to tip off his son and others about bad news that was about to crash the value of their stock. He said it was “in the best interests” of his district, “the Republican Party and President Trump’s agenda” to quit.

The Collins affair points out the unsavory practice of congressional members investing in stocks and sitting on the corporate boards of industries they regulate. The NY Times reports that a third of the members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, of which Collins was a member, also bought and sold biotech, pharmaceutical, and medical device stocks.

Air Gap: The hijacking of an empty airliner from Seattle’s SeaTac airport by a baggage handler exposed a gaping hole in airline security. While airline security was looking for anyone with more than three ounces of liquid in a bottle, a man identified as Richard Russell was able to take a whole 79-seat propeller plane.

Airliners don’t have door locks or ignition keys. The 29-year-old Russell had security clearance to gain access to the plane. He used a towing tractor to pull the plane onto the tarmac then took off.

What followed was what some people on the ground thought was an air show, with Russell performing loops and rolls. He was tailed by two F-15 fighter jets who were prepared to shoot him down if he presented a danger to buildings or people in the ground.

The Obit Page: VS Naipaul, the Nobel winning author who wrote unsparingly about colonialism and liberation movements, died at home in London at age 85. Born in Trinidad of Indian ancestry, he was educated at Oxford University on a scholarship, and lived the rest of his life in England. His breakout novel, “A House for Mr. Biswas,” was published in 1961. Naipaul forged a literary career in which he was compared to Conrad, Dickens, and Tolstoy.

He wrote about India that, “No other country was more fitted to welcome a conqueror; no other conqueror was more welcome than the British”  He said, “While dominating India they expressed their contempt for it, and projected England; and Indians were forced into a nationalism which in the beginning was like a mimicry of the British.”

Naipaul lived life as a displaced person. The product of colonialism, he didn’t belong in his native Trinidad or adopted England. His 2001 Nobel Prize citation described him as “a literary circumnavigator, only ever really at home in himself, in his inimitable voice.”

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