expanded its blast radius over the weekend to a premium outlet mall in texas where that state s republican leaders are today striking a pose of complete impotence in the face of both deadly forces, the 199th shooting took place in allen, texas, a suburb of dallas, texas, eight people were murdered including a 5-year-old boy. six others were injured. unimaginable. unthinkable carnage unfolded as a man armed with an ar-15 style rifle opened fire. here s how one eyewitness who rushed to the mall when his son said shots had been fired outside the store where he works described the scene. the first girl i walked up to was crouched down covering her head in the bushes so i felt for a pulse, pulled her head to the side and she had no face. and so when i rolled the mother over, he came out and asked him are you okay, he said, my mom is hurt. my mom is hurt so whether than traumatize him anymore, i sat him down, he was covered from head to toe like somebody poured blood on him. th
issue decision after decision that runs so flagrantly against public opinion. and so you sort of have to ask yourself what motivates that, how could they possibly wake up every day and sort of get so excited about taking on 80% of the country on issues from guns to abortion to voting rights. and what they ve done is to a person they ve convinced themselves that they are the persecuted minorities in this country and that they are the aggrieved party. maureen s column didn t even get into brett kavanaugh who famously tried to say that christine blasey ford s allegations were somehow revenge for the clintons. but there is this sense of grievance among all the conservative justices that i think motivates them to continue to plow forward and just tune out all these calls for ethics reform no matter how loud they grow. and so in one sense dick durbin is correct, that john roberts does have the power in his hands in dick durbin s words to do something about this. but john roberts doesn t have
ar-15 style rifle. there are a lot of things we agree on, gun safety legislation isn t one of them, claire. you know, it s interesting, one of my grandchildren had his first communion over the weekend, and i listened to the homily at that service, and i was reminded about what a peaceful man jesus was, and i listened to that elected representative, and they always want to say, oh, well, let s not make it political after there s a slaughter of innocents but i will tell you this, i believe very firmly that jesus would be shocked at what our country is allowing to happen. there is no way that he would
him of rape. 5:00 p.m. yesterday was the deadline for trump s lawyers by judge lewis kaplan to notify that court if the ex-president wanted to testify. as expected trump s team let that deadline come and go. it was a move that our friend and former u.s. attorney joyce vance points out robs trump of the usual attack he uses against his enemies. judge kaplan i think did the smart thing here. he calls trump s bluff. he says okay, your client says he s going to testify. he says he has to leave europe early and fly home. i m going to bend over backwards and give him every opportunity. what the judge does here is he forecloses trump s opportunity to tell everybody what a terrible biased judge he had and how they prejudiced him and didn t let him testify. he has had every opportunity here. which brings us to today s news, where closing arguments in the trial just finished off in the last hour. e. jean carroll s lawyer roberta kaplan reiterated to the jury
they always have open-ended questions. several of them are probably saying why didn t he show up and testify if he s so confident he didn t do anything wrong. the other thing is this. they may be asking themselves about the dna. they may be asking themselves about the dress. they don t know all of the legal maneuvering and machinations that went on prior to this trial starting. so there may be some unanswered questions that may not help e. jean carroll. but this is the american judiciary. this is our judicial system. this is what e. jean carroll wanted and deserved, and she got. and donald trump had the opportunity to defend himself in this judicial system and he chose not to do so. and that might come back to bite him in that place. and because we re not him we et al. those words. trump is no longer in the white house for now. what a scary thought. and for the first time we can look at the carnage of having a president who so openly embraced misogyny. misogyny like racism thrives wh