Douglas' Squirrel
Curious and quite playful, this Douglas's squirrel in Washington's Cascade Mountains near Lake Wenatchee spent about 10 minutes playing "peekaboo" with me on this tree before I headed down the trail on a sunny spring afternoon.
See more at: richleighton.com
SEN. @ChrisCoons: “Anybody else brave enough to say the Constitution prevents President Trump from seeking a 3rd term?”
TRUMP JUDGE NOMINEES: 🦗 🦗
Yikes.
JUST IN: A Trump judicial nominee was asked point blank: is Trump eligible to run for a third term?
Their answer: “I would have to review the actual wording…”
Sen. Chris Coons then asked every nominee in the room to confirm the Constitution bars a third term.
Silence.
Every single one of them refused to say it.
Trump is appointing judges who won’t affirm the 22nd Amendment to his face.
Never stop connecting the dots.
🔥 @megynkelly: “That’s f*cking bullsh*t. Trump’s intelligence community assesses Iran was not anywhere near getting a nuclear bomb right before we launched this war. It’s f*cking propaganda. People don’t believe it. That’s why approvals for this war are in the basement.”
I listened to the NYT interview of Tucker Carlson, and here is what I learned:
• He’s a demagogue. He doesn’t actually answer questions. He demagogues and deflects and gaslights and uses whataboutisms. Even when caught lying about his own words.
* He is very similar to JD Vance, in that he is a chameleon who changes his stripes and opinions to match what he wants to be at a given point of time. He has few true beliefs or center.
* He is a racist, misogynist and anti-Semite. The interviewer missed an opportunity to press him on his so-called differences between the races and genders. That is the true north of who this man is.
* These are two hours of my life I will not get back and hopefully I just saved you the time. You will learn little other than he has become skilled at interviews after decades of practice.
He is a dangerous man!
Pope Leo's pick to be bishop of West Virginia is a formerly undocumented immigrant who was smuggled into the U.S. in a car trunk.
Bishop Evelio Menjivar-Ayala has called for Catholics to speak out against President Trump’s treatment of immigrants. wapo.st/3PgW94e
61 days into Trump's illegal war in Iran & gas prices are at a 4 year high, averaging around $4.30 per gallon.
Trump broke his promise to keep us out of war and bring prices down. But we can help do both now by ENDING this war which is making us less safe and worse off.
washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/…
The Girl From Yerevan
Ani is seven years old. She lives in Yerevan, Armenia. She has never owned a television. She speaks no English. Last Tuesday, while eating bread with her grandmother, she said something to the effect that the American president had very small hands.
She said it quietly. To no one in particular.
It traveled, as these things apparently do, across the Caucasus, over the Black Sea, through the Balkans, across the Atlantic, and directly into the most sophisticated early-warning ego-protection system ever constructed by human vanity.
By Thursday morning, the President of the United States had posted seventeen times.
He called Armenia a “TOTAL DISASTER COUNTRY (Fake News!!)”. He misspelled Yerevan twice, differently each time. He suggested, without evidence, that Ani’s grandmother had been paid by George Soros. He demanded an apology. He said his hands were, in fact, larger than those of any president in history, including Lincoln, “who was tall but had WEAK, SKINNY fingers.”
He tagged a senator from Ohio who had nothing to do with any of this. He called the senator a coward. He called NATO “deeply unfair” which confused everyone, including Armenia. He said he had always loved Armenian people, “maybe more than anyone.” He announced a new tariff on pomegranates.
Ani, by this point, had gone to school.
She had a spelling test. She got seven out of ten. She was pleased.
In Washington, the tirade continued into the afternoon. Aides described the mood as “energized.” Pomegranate futures collapsed. Three ambassadors requested clarification. None received it.
Ani walked home. She fed the cat. She did not check Twitter, because she is seven and lives in Armenia.
The ego, undefeated, moved on to its next threat: a cartoonist in Bruges who had drawn the hands slightly too small.
Satire. Ani is fictional. The ego is not.
Stay connected,
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@PerfectOurUnion Thank you for the gift article. The opinions were interesting to read, and I agree with many of them. I am a lifelong Democrat who voted for Trump this last election because I couldn’t stand Kamala and all the racialism and trans nonsense being forced on everyone.
The discolored area on the back of Trump's right hand seems to be getting larger and approaching his fingers. This photo was taken today as he spoke to reporters in Florida. (Roberto Schmidt/Getty)
Can we just take a second to really take this in? How on earth has it come to this? Where a man can performatively ‘admit’ to sex with a child on an international platform but then couch it as some form of reflection or responsible accountability exercise - whilst deliberately leaning on our terrible, useless, outdated sexual offences act and age of consent?
This man was 30 years old, and at the height of his fame - when he made an active choice to have sex with a child. I would use much stronger language here but he’s deliberately leaning on our consent laws, that a 16 year old child can technically consent to sex - meaning that he could technically have ‘consensual sex’ with a school age child.
His admission and his disgusting performative ‘progressive’ ‘reflection’ that he is ‘exploitative’ makes my effin skin crawl. If this is not a predator in full swing, I do not know what is.
This man is admitting to sex with children and no one is going to do a thing about it. Absolutely atrocious. Our laws need urgently updating to ensure no adult can ever have technically consensual sex with a child. No adult should ever want that; and no child should ever be exposed to it.
End.
@GentryFoundling@DrJessTaylor@CrayonMurders Also, #KidsCANTConsent, so NO YOU DIDN’T.
I know, at 14 I “consented” & “fully wanted” what the kid predator who groomed me, manipulated & lied to me, intoxicated & love bombed me said was dating, romance, & love.
I was a child and I was raped. He was a child rapist.