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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The best commentary on the Omarosa-versus-Trump saga I've yet heard came from Republican pundit Ana Navarro. Forgive me for paraphrasing (I'm doing this from memory), but last Sunday she pointed out: "Omarosa is entirely the creation of Donald Trump. Trump deserves Omarosa." That pretty much sums it up. A reality-show president is being attacked by a former (three-time!) contestant on his reality show, with all the drama and faux outrage of a scripted encounter on that reality show. The question for most viewers isn't (as the media anguishes over): "Which one do you believe?" but rather: "Whose presentation is more entertaining?" As Navarro pointed out, Trump does indeed deserve Omarosa. Especially seeing as he was the one that hired her -- for the fourth time -- to be an aide in his White House.

Which brings me to a seemingly-unrelated story, that of Michael Avenatti considering a run for the Democratic nomination for president. Avenatti travelled to Iowa recently, and gave a speech to present his case for why he should be the one to take on Donald Trump in 2020. His rationale can be summed up as: "I can beat Trump like a drum -- far better than any other possible Democratic candidate." You've got to admit, that's a fairly convincing argument for him to be making.

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This weekend, decent people -- and by that, I mean people who are not white supremacists -- took back the streets, in both Washington D.C. and Charlottesville, Virginia. One year after the tragic deaths in Charlottesville (one at the hands of the white-supremacists, two from a police helicopter crash), the neo-Nazis were shamed and shouted down successfully. Thus proving the old adage: "the answer for free speech you don't agree with is more free speech." This time, the voice of decency was louder, which is entirely as it should be.

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President Donald Trump, when speaking of his idea to create a "Space Force" branch of the U.S. military, invariably sounds like an adolescent boy raving about his favorite science-fiction film. Perhaps this is why he sent Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of Defense James Mattis out this week to announce that the Pentagon will (reluctantly) be going along with Trump's idiocy. Trump even unveiled six prototype logos for the new Space Force, all of which look like they were designed by someone who had just woken up from a coma entered into at some time in the early 1960s.

Smarter minds (which used to include Mattis himself) have repeatedly pointed out that (1) we already have military units dedicated to defending space, and (2) making such units their own branch of the military would do nothing more than introduce a massive and expensive bureaucracy on top of what already exists. Not since Ronald Reagan's "Strategic Defense Initiative" was ridiculed as "Star Wars" has any idea been so thoroughly laughed at in Washington, in fact. But (hopefully) this cockamamie idea will explode on the launch pad, since Congress is the one who would have to actually authorize the creation of a new branch of the military. It's just one more reason to get out in November and vote for Democrats, in other words.

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Representative Devin Nunes, at a rally for a Republican House leader, let slip the real reason Republicans want to hang onto control of the House -- because if the Democrats win, his committee (and others like it) will no longer be under GOP control. Which would mean investigative and governmental oversight committees would return to doing the job they are supposed to be doing -- investigating possible wrongdoing and overseeing the Trump administration to discover exactly what they're up to (and how much of it is actually illegal).

Nunes is right, and he's right to be worried about such a prospect. Because there are two practical things that would happen if Democrats do take back control of the House in November. The House would pass bills that Democrats want to see enacted into law, and they would begin investigating Trump in earnest.

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