No, AAA isn’t branching out into porn or online dating. We’re doing a little current events twofer, specifically regarding American Media CEO David Pecker and US Representative Duncan Hunter, both of whom were in the news the week of August 19th (though where they found the oxygen for that is beyond me, as the Trump Show rolled on through its worst week ever). Pardon the pun, but there’s not enough meat here for two full articles, so we’ll just target the highlights.
Have you ever had a bad day? I mean, a really, really, REALLY bad day? Well, unless it involved bodily harm, it can’t have been much worse than Tuesday, August 21st, 2018 was for Donald J. Trump, when two of his closest associates were found guilty of fraud and criminal conduct. Paul Manafort, one of Trump’s Campaign Managers in 2016, was convicted of eight counts of bank fraud and tax evasion by an Alexandria, Virginia jury; and in New York, Michael Cohen, his long-time lawyer and fixer, pled guilty to eight similar charges, as well as campaign finance violations, implicating the President in the process.
On Monday evening, 9 July 2018, the Reality TV President presented the “big reveal” of his second pick for the United States Supreme Court. Judge Brett Kavanaugh, 53, currently sitting on the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, has an Ivy League education, a broad range of experience, and almost 300 opinions amassed during his time on the Federal bench.
On Wednesday 27 June 2018, Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement. The move, while not unlikely coming from the 82-year-old jurist, was unexpected, and set the capital buzzing, with Democrats and Republicans quickly forming ranks and preparing for the grueling political battle ahead.
A few months ago I joked with a friend that the myriad bizarre stories coming out of the Trump administration had begun to read like something out of Chaucer – call them the “Trumperbury Tales” – stories which were individual, varied and specific, but tangentially related by a common venue, in the Oval Office. But the recent spate of presidential pardon-related stories seems to put us on a level playing field with the great medieval poet, in a direct comparison with Chaucer’s “The Pardoner’s Tale.”
On Monday June 4th, 2018, a much-anticipated ruling came down from the US Supreme Court. By a 7-2 majority, the justices upheld the right of a Colorado baker to refuse services to a gay couple, based in his religious beliefs. The case centered on a 2012 incident when David Mullins and Charlie Craig approached Jack Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, and asked him to bake a cake for their wedding.
