Goodnight Swamp

Notes at midnight...

When news and visible human drama explodes on a certain subject, with something even more dramatic than the last thing happens twenty minutes later, it feeds the addiction some of us remember from Watergate.  (The difference from Vietnam is: in Watergate, we were only the audience.)

So when the news stops or slows, or when your questions raised in highly dramatic fashion earlier aren't answered, aren't even remembered, it gets frustrating on many levels.

Thursday was packed with news or what appeared to be news.  But it was also very frustrating for what seemed like a day of not very good reporting, and officials--especially members of Congress--unable to clearly communicate much of anything.

The big news was the apparent admission by Homegrown Hitler himself that yeah he fired Comey over the Russia investigation.  Yeah, he mostly did suggest it, but to make an ironclad case for that really did involve some creative editing, and (involving the hapless White House press briefers) skipping over words that were meant to say something else.

And what happened to yesterday's big question about the acting FBI director Andrew McCabe?  Did he in fact volunteer to the White House chief of staff that a news story saying the FBI was investigating R campaign ties to Russia was "BS."
If true, this seems improper discussion of an ongoing investigation.

Did McCabe actually say this?  He appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday, and made headlines for contradicting some White House assertions and insisting that the FBI was pursuing the Russia investigation very seriously.  But did anyone ask him about this purported interchange with the White House?  I looked in vain for any mention of it in any story.  Even Rachel Maddow, who made such an issue of it on Wednesday, had nothing to say about it Thursday.

Our apprentice dictator said in an interview on Thursday that former FBI director Comey told him in two phone calls and in person at dinner that he was not being investigated.  If that's true, these were also improper conversations about an ongoing investigation.  It's hard to believe it is true, but I wonder if anybody will bother asking Comey about it, if they ever get the chance.

Well, nothing to do now but try to sleep it off.