This is a guy that needs to be primaried next election.

By Garry Wills @ The New York Review of Books for the April 20 issue, free online

Every few years, it seems, conservative religious groups, quiescent or unnoticed, come blazing back onto the national scene, and the secular press reacts like the bad guy in the 1971 western Big Jake who says to John Wayne, “I thought you were dead.” Wayne drily answers, “Not hardly.” Now, in The Evangelicals: The Struggle to Shape America, Frances FitzGerald answers the recurrent question, “Where did these people [mainly right-wing zealots] come from?” She says there is no mystery involved. They were always here. We were just not looking at them. What repeatedly makes us look again is what she is here to tell us.

“Evangelicals” is an elastic term, and FitzGerald intermittently shrinks or stretches it. But she does direct us to the right starting point, to the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Great Awakenings, major religious events in our early history when the word “evangelicalism” came into wide American use. Evangelical religion is revival religion, that of emotional contagion. It can best be characterized, for taxonomic purposes, by three things: crowds, drama, and cycles [....]

Thirty-six hours after the pre-dawn cruise-missile strike against Syria’s al-Shayrat airfield, neoconservative hawks, many of whom beat the drums for war in Iraq 14 years ago, are feeling the warm spring breezes of renewal and rejuvenation. 

By Michael Crowley @ Politico.com, April 7

Obama administration officials applauded American action against Assad's regime, even as they continue to doubt the man who approved it.

[....] One longtime proponent of military action against Assad is former Secretary of State John Kerry, who was “absolutely supportive” of Trump’s strike and “gratified to see that it happened quickly,” according to a person close to the former diplomat.

Kerry is watching to see whether more strikes might be coming, this person said, who added that Kerry “believes if executed correctly and clearly, [military action] can help reenergize the diplomatic channel” to produce a peace deal [....]

By Shaun Walker in Moscow for TheGuardian.com, April 6

Thousands of people gathered outside the Kremlin walls on Thursday in solidarity with the victims of Monday’s bomb blast in St Petersburg.

The rallies came as the police announced they had made eight new arrests in connection with the attack that killed 13 people and injured more than 50.

State television said more than 50,000 people had flocked to Manezh Square, though the real number appeared smaller and many people said they had been asked or told by their workplaces or universities to attend.

Nonetheless, there was genuine emotion as the names and biographies of the victims of Monday’s attack were read from a big stage. Those present brought red carnations and some let off black balloons.

In St Petersburg, investigators said they had arrested three men who were natives of the former Soviet republics of central Asia, as was the bomber, Akbarzhon Jalilov, 22, who was born in Kyrgyzstan but had a Russian passport. [....

By Bonnie Malkin @ TheGuardian.com, April 8

Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs executive who is shaping economic policy in the White House, told lawmakers in a private meeting this week that he supported a policy of separating deposit-taking from riskier investment banking.

Well this is a surprise.

This is the reason I believe Gorsuch should be denied a vote now.  Does anyone believe that an Obama appointment would have gone through if the FBI had announced that his administration was under investigation for colluding with Russia to help his campaign?  

The Merrick Garland issue is also worth going to the mat over.  Gorsuch's evasions are not that different from our own nominees, but then there is his plagiarism, and his general oiliness.  

But the ultimate issue for me is that the person who appointed him is UNDER INVESTIGATION BY THE FBI!  Can you imagine McConnell dealing with that for a Dem President? 

Twitter has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security, asking the court to prevent the agency from unmasking the user behind an account critical of the Trump administration.

By Hayley Tsukayama @ The Washington Post, 1 hour ago

....According to Twitter's court filings, Homeland Security is “unlawfully abusing a limited-purpose investigatory tool” to find out who is behind the @ALT_USCIS account. Its Twitter feed has publicly criticized the administration's immigration policies, particularly the actions of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) division of Homeland Security.....

Tweets from the @ALT_USCIS account, which is still active, indicate that it is run by someone who claims to be a government employee working at the USCIS. According to the department's policy on personal social media use, employees cannot post anything that could "cause damage to the department's reputation or bring it into disrepute."  The account's description, however, stresses that its views are “Not the views of DHS or USCIS.” As of the time of the court filing, the account had been active for two months and amassed more than 32,000 followers.....

Being labeled as "crazy" by Matt Taibbi, Louise Mensch still seems to have some interesting sourced columns at Patribotics - including a list of reports at the bottom of this post on the Alfa Bank (&Sberbank) connection.

Among her "crazy" contentions was that there are moles in the FBI's NY division - uh, isn't that how Giuliani was getting his tips.

Anyway, you decide - Crazy or  Vlad  Valid?