[Program Note: This article was originally supposed to run on Tuesday. Given the late-breaking news about James Comey, however, I had to pre-empt it. So while I think I've cleaned up all the "last night" phrases to read "Monday night," if I've missed a few, this is the reason why and I apologize in advance.]

The medieval idea of a court jester has always been an intriguing one -- the motley fool sitting at the foot of the throne with near-absolute impunity for any improper thing he might say. Now, I have no real idea how historically valid the stereotype is, or how prevalent the phenomenon ever actually was. Ye kings of olde never seemed restrained enough in the use of absolute power to put up with a jester constantly cracking wise (for the lords and ladies of the court to titter at), but then my knowledge of this period is sketchy at best. I am no medieval historian, so who's to know how valid or widespread the concept ever actually was?

There must be something to the myths, though, even if only in a Jungian-archetypical kind of way. Because they certainly still remain with us. In today's world, of course, they are not dressed in motley (well, some less so than others...); and instead of a perch near the throne, they crack wise on television shows to an audience of millions. They are our late-night comedians. Two of them were in the news earlier this week, but before I get to Monday night's performances by Jimmy Kimmel and Seth Meyers, I'd like to confess my own evolution in favor of our modern court jesters.

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Donald Trump hasn't even been in office for four whole months, and already he's being compared to Richard Nixon. That is both stunning as well as somewhat expected, really. Just on personality alone, Trump seems the most Nixonian figure to occupy the Oval Office since Tricky Dick himself roamed the hallways. Sooner or later, Trump's penchant for vengeance against his perceived enemies was going to cause some problems. It's now obvious that "sooner" won out over "later."

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I had an article all ready to go today, and then I took a quick peek at the news. Which caused me to go back and start all over again. Because James Comey, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has just been fired. Obviously, I'm not going to have any in-depth analysis, since this happened less than an hour ago (as I write this).

My snap judgment is my reaction to the stated reason from the Trump White House for Comey's firing: Comey improperly influenced the presidential election by his actions 11 days before people voted. His letter to Congress announcing he was reopening the investigation into Clinton's emails is now, for some unfathomable reason, a firing offense.

My reaction: BWAH HAH hah hah hah hah! Ha! Snicker, snicker....

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Today, arguments were heard by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals over President Donald Trump's revised travel ban on a handful of Muslim countries. Next week, the Ninth Circuit will chime in as well. But we're fast approaching the point where the entire argument becomes irrelevant, to both sides.

Lost in all of the politics surrounding the Muslim travel ban court cases is the fact that this ban was only supposed to be temporary. Even when Donald Trump announced a "complete ban on Muslims" back on the campaign trail, it was pitched as a stop-gap measure which would quickly be lifted after "extreme vetting" was put into place. If you carefully read Trump's statements on the issue (which the Fourth Circuit is currently doing), he almost always presents the travel ban itself as merely a means to an end. This end, specifically, was supposed to arrive 90 days after the travel ban order was signed.

Trump's first executive order on the issue was signed on January 27th. That, if I've counted correctly, was 101 days ago. Eleven days longer than the initial ban was supposed to last, in other words.

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The Republican healthcare reform bill is now officially out of Paul Ryan's hands, at least for the time being. Which means it's time for us to rebrand it here. Up to this point, we've been calling it Ryancare (Ryancare 2.0, for the latest go-round). Democrats have already been calling it Trumpcare, for obvious political reasons. But we have to say, we favor a suggestion we first read in someone's online comment to a healthcare reform article (which we read so long ago that we only remember the idea, and not the originator, sorry). It was probably in the Washington Post, but we couldn't swear to it. Wherever we read it, we got a good laugh out of it and have decided to adopt it as our own.

Instead of using his last name (which he loves), why not use a diminutive version of his first name (which he apparently hates) instead? Add in his last name's initial, and it becomes: "DonTcare." Personally, we feel this perfectly captures the entire Democratic argument, using only eight letters: Donald T's "don't care what's in it, don't care how many of my voters it will screw, as long as Congress passes some bill or another so I can brag about it!" health care plan. DonTcare. Rolls off the tongue, don't it? Well, typing it does take some getting used to -- but without that second capitalization, it'd be a lot harder to read. Trump DonTcare. And while we certainly can't claim credit for coining the term, we do encourage others to use it freely -- it even saves characters in tweets!

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In all the news articles triggered by the House passing the Republican "American Health Care Act" (A.H.C.A.), one quote prominently stood out. From an article written by David Weigel in the Washington Post came this extraordinary quote:

"Congress and the White House have focused their public efforts on platitudes and news conferences, while the substance and the details have remained behind closed doors," Rep. Paul D. Ryan (Wis.), then the ranking Republican on the House Budget Committee, wrote in a July 2009 op-ed for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. "Those members of Congress who voted for this bill already in their committees did so without knowing what the legislation costs."

Back then, Democrats were in the early part of the process of passing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare"), and Republicans were in a snit because they thought the process was moving too fast.

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Congressional Republicans have now positioned themselves firmly between a rock and a hard place on healthcare reform. This would be highly amusing if it weren't for the seriousness of the subject matter, which could accurately be described as a life-or-death subject for millions. Republicans now have the choice of voting for a bill which is massively unpopular with the public (increasingly so, as a matter of fact), or admitting to their own voting base that they've been flat-out lying about the evils of Obamacare for the past eight years. That's a tough choice, because no matter what route they take, it is bound to cause anger among the voters -- at this point, it's just a question of which particular voters (and how many of them) will be massively disappointed.

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I haven't done one of these three-dot columns in a while (as always, in homage to the late, great columnist Herb Caen), but the flood of news tidbits flowing from the White House is relentless, so I thought it was time to catch up on some of the fresh idiocy coming from the Oval Office.

Donald Trump, so far, is having a very bad week. And it's only Tuesday! Trump has already had numerous bad weeks during his presidency, which is remarkable since there really haven't been all that many weeks of it to date. But he seems determined to set even new lows this week, so let's take a quick look at what he's been up to.

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Barack Obama caused somewhat of a tizzy last week, when it was announced he would be giving a speech to some bastions of Wall Street, for a cool $400,000 speaking fee. Some were simply aghast at the idea, for a couple of different reasons. But there's one way Obama could make most of the criticism disappear (at least that portion coming from the left), and that is by making one simple promise. If Obama pledged to immediately release the transcript of his speech right after he gave it, he could defuse a lot of the angst the idea is causing among progressives. The speech reportedly won't be given until September, so Obama isn't facing an immediate deadline; but the faster he swears he'll release the text of his speech, the better for him politically.

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Tomorrow, in case you hadn't heard, will be Donald Trump's 100th day as president. Grading his performance has been a weeklong event in the media. Rather than our normal Friday format, what follows is our honest evaluation of Trump's first 100 days, which might be summed up as: "Coulda been better, coulda been a lot worse."

The most heartening conclusion for liberals, after 99 days, is that Trump's incompetence is his saving grace. Imagine how much worse things could have been right now if Trump really did have his act together, in other words.

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