By The Times Editorial Board:

The administration of Donald Trump — who had a child out of wedlock after cheating on his first wife, and is in a legal battle with a porn star who says she had sex with him not long after his third wife gave birth — is promoting abstinence with a zeal perhaps never before seen from the federal government.

Noted by Daniella Diaz @ CNN Updated 7:15 AM ET, Tue May 1, 2018

[....] "This is my last term. If I hadn't admitted that to myself before this summer, a stage 4 cancer diagnosis acts as ungentle persuasion," he wrote in his book, "The Restless Wave," according to the excerpt published on Apple News on Monday. "I'm freer than colleagues who will face the voters again. I can speak my mind without fearing the consequences much. And I can vote my conscience without worry."

Referring to President Donald Trump, McCain wrote, "He has declined to distinguish the actions of our government from the crimes of despotic ones. The appearance of toughness, or a reality show facsimile of toughness, seems to matter more than any of our values."

McCain said he wants to see the nation's politics "return to the purposes and practices that distinguish our history" and says, "you're damn right, I'm a champion of compromise."

"I would like to see us recover our sense that we are more alike than different," he wrote. "We are citizens of a republic made of shared ideals forged in a new world to replace the tribal enmities that tormented the old one. Even in times of political turmoil such as these, we share that awesome heritage and the responsibility to embrace it." [....]

Israeli agency told to find incriminating material on Obama diplomats who negotiated deal with Tehran

By Mark Townsend & Julian Borger in Washington for TheGuardian.com, May 5

Aides to Donald Trump, the US president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a “dirty ops” campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observercan reveal.

People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal [....]

By Jess Bidgood @ NYTimes.com, May 4

FAIR HAVEN, Vt. — When people who knew Jack Sawyer saw something, they said something.

A mother told the police that Mr. Sawyer, who had seemed troubled in the past, had just bought a gun. A friend of the young man also contacted the police: He was talking admiringly of the school massacre in Parkland, Fla., the friend warned, and hinting at sinister plans of his own.

The police soon detained Mr. Sawyer, 18, a former student at Fair Haven Union High School. They said they had found a journal in his car that laid out disturbing plans for a shooting at the high school. “I’m aiming to kill as many as I can,” the journal read. The school resource officer, the journal went on, might have to be shot “point blank” in the head.

Mr. Sawyer was charged with aggravated assault, two counts of attempted aggravated murder and one count of attempted first-degree murder — all felonies — and held without bail [....] last month, a ruling by the Vermont Supreme Court cast doubt on the viability of the charges against Mr. Sawyer. The most serious charges were soon dropped, leaving only misdemeanors, and he was released on bail last week.

Residents were outraged — fearful for their safety and angry at a legal system that seemed not to take into account the realities of school shootings [....]

By Reed Abelson @ NYTimes.com, May 4

Was always one of the main flaws about individual "Obamacare": when you have a major (as in expensive) health problem, you end up having to come up with approx. $6K out of pocket per year before full coverage kicks in:

[....] She thought of her insurance policy, which carries a deductible of $2,600. She knew she would also have to spend as much as $5,700 on medical bills that would not be covered by an individual policy she bought under the Affordable Care Act. “I went back and forth for a couple of weeks,” Ms. Leonard recalled [....]

The article, however, is mostly about how many employer-provided plans have now caught a similar "bug", surprise, surprise.

This Woman Got A Cockroach Stuck In Her Ear And OMG Nope

Sleep tight...

By Katie Bo Williams @ TheHill.com, May 4

A federal judge in Virginia on Friday expressed deep skepticism that charges against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort are genuinely related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion with Russia, according to multiple reports.

During a morning hearing, U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis III at times lost his temper as he repeatedly pressed a lawyer from Mueller’s team on whether the indictment against Manafort was intended solely as leverage against President Trump, according to CNN.

“You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort’s bank fraud,” Ellis, who was appointed by former President Reagan, told prosecutor Michael Dreeben. “You really care about getting information Mr. Manafort can give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump and lead to his prosecution or impeachment. That's what you're really interested in.” [....]

The United States is on track to be a majority-minority nation by 2044. But census data show most of our neighbors are the same race.

Analysis by Aaron Williams & Armand Emamdjoumi @ WashingtonPost.com, May 2

Since 1990, more than 90 percent of U.S. metro areas saw a decline in racial stratification, signaling a trend toward a more integrated America. Yet, while areas like Houston and Atlanta have undergone rapid demographic changes, cities like Detroit and Chicago still have large areas dominated by a single racial group.

Some 50 years ago, policies like the Fair Housing Act and Voting Rights Act were enacted to increase integration, promote equity, combat discrimination and dismantle the lingering legacy of Jim Crow laws. But a Post analysis shows that some cities remain deeply segregated — even as the country itself becomes more diverse.

To explore these national changes, The Post analyzed census data from 1990, 2000, 2010 and the latest estimates from the 2016 five-year American Community Survey. Using this data, we generated detailed maps of the United States using six race categories: black, white, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, Native American and multirace/other for the available years.

followed by interactive maps with analytic comments

By Haley Britsky @ Axios., 1 hr. ago  and lots of other places

With Hannity show video where he said it. I saw this break a couple hours ago on Twitter and have been listening to CNN and MSNBC back and forth since. They are all freaking out that this is major malpractice, really stoopid of Guiliani, opens trouble for Trump. I'm not so sure. We'll see. Developing...

By  Alexei Oreskovic & Rachel Sandler @ BusinessInsider.com, May 2

• Cambridge Analytica, the data firm at the center of Facebook's data privacy scandal, is shutting down.
• The firm has been losing clients and facing mounting legal fees, according to the Wall Street Journal.
• In addition to the Facebook controversy, the firm's CEO Alexander Nix was suspended in March after an undercover video appeared to show him offering to bribe and entrap politicians.
• The power players behind Cambridge Analytica have already set up a new company — learn more about it here.

Cambridge Analytica, the data firm used by the 2016 Trump campaign at the center of a scandal involving the misuse of Facebook customer data, is shutting down its operations and declaring bankruptcy, the firm announced on Wednesday. [.....]

By Julia Manchester @ TheHill.com, May 2

Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R) on Tuesday announced his support for Puerto Rican statehood, saying the U.S. should listen to the territory's voters. The Associated Press reported that Scott said the U.S. should “respect the will of the people of Puerto Rico," referring to a referendum held there on statehood last year. 

Over half a million of the island's voters said they supported statehood. 

The Florida governor is challenging Sen. Bill Nelson (D) for his Senate seat in November.  Scott campaigned on Tuesday in Kissimmee, Fla., which is the epicenter of the state's Puerto Rican population [....]