Paul Manafort, now an eight-time convicted felon, could be considering cutting a deal with Bob Mueller to avoid his second (and more serious) federal trial. The Wall Street Journal (not exactly a left-wing news source) is reporting that Manafort's team already explored the possibility of such a plea deal during the four-day period when the jury in his first trial was still deliberating. The plea talks broke down and no deal emerged, but the fact that such a discussion took place at all shows that Manafort's legal team knows full well the serious jeopardy their client is in. Today it was also reported that Manafort's second trial will be delayed for one week, at the request of the defense. Could the extra week be to work out a plea deal before the second trial even begins? Speculation is running rampant on that very question.

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Today's question is a purely academic one, for the time being. What constitutes an impeachable offense for a United States president? What rises to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors" and what falls short? The quick (but unsatisfying) answer to that is that anything that a majority of House members find impeachable is impeachable. This still leaves a lot of undefined territory, obviously, but it is indeed the only concrete standard that really exists.

The reason I'm pondering the subject today is because I heard an interesting statement on Meet The Press yesterday. Representative Jerrold Nadler, who is the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee (meaning: if the Democrats took back the House, he would likely become the committee's chairman), was asked by Chuck Todd about statements he had made during the impeachment of Bill Clinton (taken from the transcript).

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We have to admit, we were torn when selecting this week's headline. The other candidate under consideration was: "Making Flippy Floppy," which of course was a Talking Heads song from the 1980s which contained the immortal line: "Our president's crazy / Did you hear what he said?" What with today's news of the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization flipping after being granted immunity, this did seem like the obvious choice, since it followed the news of Michael Cohen and David Pecker of the National Enquirer also flipping on Trump. Oh, and the news of those 30 hours of testimony already given by White House Counsel Don McGahn, as well. But in the end, we weighted the uncontained glee which liberals everywhere greeted the news of the sixteen guilty verdicts/pleas this week more heavily, and had to go with acknowledging these guilty pleasures. Because no guilty verdicts/pleas have caused this much pleasure on the left since Scooter Libby's fall from grace.

Within minutes of each other, two legal bombshells exploded in federal courts this Tuesday. Paul Manafort's jury returned and announced they had found him guilty on eight felony counts, and it was later revealed that they had voted 11-1 on the other 10 counts. Only one holdout refused to admit the solidity of the evidentiary trail on these counts, meaning Bob Mueller's team is quite likely to get a conviction on all of them if they retry Manafort (and do a better job of jury selection next time). But they may not even bother to, since Manafort's second federal trial is already teed up and ready to go. This will be a much more substantial case, legally. Manafort is already facing a possible 80 years in federal prison for the eight crimes he's been convicted of, so if Mueller wins more convictions against Manafort in the second trial he probably won't even need to bother retrying the 10 counts the jury hung on. One way or another, Paul Manafort is going to be spending many, many years behind federal bars -- unless, of course, Donald Trump pardons him.

Meanwhile, up in New York, Michael Cohen surprised everyone by appearing in front of a federal judge and pleading guilty to eight federal felonies of his own. Yep, Trump's fixer has officially flipped. His allocution was an even bigger bombshell for Trump, since Cohen flat-out accused the president of directing him to commit criminal acts. He didn't name Trump, but when an anonymous individual is described in court as: "who at that point had become the President of the United States," it's pretty obvious who is being talked about.

This is the most pleasing guilt of all, because now Trump can correctly be described as an "unindicted co-conspirator" -- a phrase not heard in relation to a president since Tricky Dick stalked the halls of the White House late at night, talking to the paintings. So rather than "Donald Trump" or "President Trump," every Democrat should immediately start using "Unindicted Co-Conspirator Trump" instead. It just has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

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What with all the guilty pleas and verdicts for felony corruption in the news, it's hard for any other story to break through -- even one about a senator valiantly trying to end some of the most egregious forms of corruption in the nation's capital. Which is a shame, because Senator Elizabeth Warren's new bill deserves more attention than it has been getting -- maybe now more than ever.

Warren introduced the "Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act" this week, which contains a six-part effort to reform the way Washington currently works. She focused most of her attention on lobbyists and the pay-to-play atmosphere surrounding them. She also takes a big swipe at Donald Trump, because another thing the legislation would do would be to require any candidate for Congress or the White House to publicly release at least eight years of tax returns in order to be an eligible candidate for office. HuffPost had a pretty good rundown of what the bill aims to accomplish:

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Listening to the ever-more-frantic attempts by Trump supporters to explain away all the rampant lawbreaking committed by his inner circle is certainly amusing, that much is for sure. I even heard the laughable: "Paul Manafort's going to walk away on 10 out of 18 charges!" Well, um, yeah... if he's lucky, in about 10-15 years he will be walking away; but that's hardly a stunning legal victory to brag about. Bob Mueller can always (if he chooses) retry Manafort on the 10 charges, but he may not even have to since Manafort still faces his second trial in a few weeks, on multiple other felony charges. But according to Sean Hannity, this is somehow all Hillary Clinton's fault -- can't forget to wow the audience with the oldies, right?

If I seem a bit dismissive, well, that's because I am more than a bit dismissive of such ludicrous attempts to spin yesterday's double-whammy as some sort of victory for the president. It was perhaps Donald Trump's worst day in office, and that's pretty tough to spin. He has even sounded subdued (a new emotion, for him, one assumes) in answering reporters' questions, in his West Virginia rally, and in his weak Twitter attack on Michael Cohen this morning. Trump's still going through the motions, but you can see how hard all the guilty verdicts and pleas have hit him. Give Team Trump a few days, and they'll come up with some sort of talking point or another, but so far they've been pretty flatfooted in their response.

Spinning it for the other side is easier than shooting fish in a barrel, of course. Yesterday was the day when America could start speaking of its second president in history to be "an unindicted co-conspirator." That's it, plain and simple. The link to Nixon is there, the link to serious legal charges is there, the threat of impeachment is even there -- it's really got it all. President Donald J. "Unindicted Co-Conspirator" Trump.

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I have to admit, before we get started here, that there were several possibilities for today's title for me to consider. I could have done an homage to Watergate-era "Doonesbury," and gone with: "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!" To be really pedantic would have been to list all sixteen counts of guilty which appeared in courtrooms today, but: "Guilty. Guilty. Guilty... (etc.)... Guilty." would have been rather annoying to read -- I couldn't even manage to type it out in full in this sentence. So in the end I went with just two Guiltys -- one for Paul Manafort's eight guilty verdicts, and one for Michael Cohen's eight guilty pleas, which he voluntarily gave in consideration of a plea deal. Guilty. Guilty. Insert your own "gavel hitting the bench" sounds, if you will....

Enough tomfoolery, though. These, after all, are serious subjects. Two men intimately connected to President Donald Trump were both found guilty in two different federal courtrooms on the same day. That's gotta hurt, and as one commenter to a newspaper article on the guilty findings put it: "The National Weather Service has put out a warning for severe tweetstorms, expected before 4:00 A.M., Eastern time." After all, when the so-called "witchhunt" seems to be snaring an increasing amount of actual witches, what will Trump do?

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Over two decades after California legalized medical marijuana (becoming the first of many states to do so), Congress has still refused to act in any way to admit the fact that the times they are a-changin' on marijuana law. Six years after Colorado and Washington became the first two states to outright legalize recreational use for adults, Congress still refuses to act. In the meantime, marijuana has grown into a multibillion-dollar industry, and as with every other multibillion-dollar industry (especially agricultural ones -- remember all those "Got Milk?" ads?), it has begun spending money on lobbying politicians. So far it's a relative drop in the bucket -- total marijuana lobbying this year is only a relatively paltry million dollars -- but one story today may eventually have a ripple effect that (hopefully) will end with Congress admitting the new reality of the existence of the state-legal marijuana industry. In a way, it's a sad commentary on our political system, where as we all know money talks quite loudly. But that's a discussion for another day, really. The system is what it is, and if in some way it spurs the otherwise-somnolent legislators into doing the right thing for once, then that at least will be a desirable outcome.

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This week in politics can be summed up in a very short tweet: "OMG -- Omarosa!"

Omarosa was wholly created, as a media personality, by Donald Trump. He absolutely loved her backstabbing and underhanded play on his reality show, The Apprentice. He loved her act so much that he brought it with him to the White House. Now that she's turned against him, however, he isn't loving her act quite so much anymore. Sad!

And (Lordy) she has tapes!

In a week where Trump's former campaign manager's first federal trial was sent to the jury, in a week where Trump is publicly revealing his enemies list, in a week where over 350 newspapers took the president to task for calling them "the enemy of the people," all people could talk about was Omarosa and her tapes. The most jarring response came from Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who notably could not guarantee that a tape didn't exist of Donald Trump using the "N-word." This was just after Trump called Omarosa a "dog" on Twitter. That's the state of our politics today, folks.

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I am not an "enemy of the people." I am not an enemy of The People. Parse it or capitalize it however you like, I am still not an enemy of the people.

Today, over 350 newspaper editorial boards have published similar sentiments. While I've never been a part of the mainstream media, I had to join in this collective effort to push back against President Donald Trump's dangerous and Stalinesque rhetoric, because it is important to take a stand against such demonization. Call me small potatoes if you must, but these small potatoes are still not an enemy of the people.

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Randy "Iron 'Stache" Bryce won his primary last night in Wisconsin, meaning he is now the Democratic nominee who will attempt to flip Paul Ryan's House district in November. It'll be a tough race, but an interesting one to watch no matter the outcome. Partly this is due to Bryce's charisma and personality, and partly it is because of the issues he chose to run on. Because he just may become the prime example of how blue-collar working-class Democrats can win elections in today's political climate.

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