1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.g3 g6 4.Bg2 Bg7 5.d3 d6 6.f4 e6 7.Nf3 Nge7 8.O-O O-O 9.Be3 Nd4 10.e5 dxe5 11.Nxe5 Rb8 12.Ne4 b6 13.c3 Ndf5 14.Bf2 Qc7 15.g4 Nd5 16.gxf5 exf5 17.Nd2 Nxf4 18.d4 Nxg2 19.Kxg2 Bb7+ 20.Nef3 g5 21.Qc2 g4 22.Qxf5 gxf3+ 23.Nxf3 Qc6 24.dxc5 Qg6+ 25.Qxg6 fxg6 26.Bd4 bxc5 27.Bxg7 Kxg7 28.b4 Rbe8 29.Rad1 Rf7 30.Rd2 Re3 31.Rdf2 g5 32.Kg3 h5 33.h3 Rxc3 34.bxc5 Bc6 0-1>

<You don't know what you don't know so let's clarify....>

It is then time for the imaginary audience to be on the receiving end of a twelve-page dissertation from him as he hastens to 'clarify' the situation. 'Cogent' and 'concise' are obviously concepts foreign to <fredthejackal>, while lying and smearing form the bedrock of his existence.

<Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) is on the way out. But he’s not going quietly.

A GOP free agent of sorts, McConnell helped convince Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) to back aid to Ukraine despite opposition from House Republicans. The effort led to another win in a long list of big legislative victories for the Kentuckian.

McConnell, who is nearing the end of his days as the Senate Republican leader, is speaking more freely, too.

He sharply criticized conservative pundit Tucker Carlson this month, saying he’d found a home in interviewing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

He’s also gone after Republicans opposed to aiding Ukraine, accusing them of being on the wrong side of history.

There’s no doubt that McConnell has lost a lot of influence in the GOP to former President Trump, who is poised for a return to the White House if he can defeat President Biden in November.

Even in McConnell’s own Senate GOP caucus, the Trump forces are growing. If Republicans win back the Senate in the fall, the number of Republicans aligned with Trump — and those who may oppose McConnell’s brand of foreign policy — seems likely to grow.

But that is tomorrow, not today.

For now, McConnell, whose favorite sayings include a version of “winners make policy, losers go home,” wants to preserve as much influence as he can.

Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist who has advised McConnell’s past campaigns, said his former boss realizes “you can’t die on every hill, because if you did, you’re dead.”

The GOP leader was notably quiet during the Republican presidential primary and avoided endorsing Trump until the nomination had all but completely been clinched.

“Is this the hill you’re going to die on when 60 percent, 70 percent, 80 percent of the Republicans in your state want Trump? Of course not. That would make you dumb,” Jennings said of that political tension.

In an interview Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” McConnell acknowledged his limited influence on his party’s rank-and-file voters.

“Even if I had chosen to get involved in the presidential election, what kind of influence would I have had?” McConnell told “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan.

McConnell’s views reflect those of other GOP senators who are skeptical of Trump but thought that there was little they could do to steer the nomination to someone else.

McConnell allies who were openly critical of Trump in the past, including Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), who repeatedly raised concerns about Trump’s polarizing impact on swing voters, and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who last year said Trump’s time had “passed him by,” finally endorsed his presidential bid earlier this year.

Those two Republicans are now fighting to be McConnell’s successor.

A number of prominent Republicans aligned with McConnell have ruled out voting for Trump, including Trump’s own former vice president, Mike Pence; former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney; and Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), the party’s 2012 nominee for president.

Pence and Cheney are out of office, and Romney will retire at the end of the year, while McConnell says he plans to stay in the Senate through the end of 2026 and plans to play an active role in pushing back against what he calls the “isolationists” in his party on major national security issues.

Jennings said such a decision makes sense politically for McConnell.

“Trump won his primary, and it wasn’t particularly close. No one really ever got that close to him or challenged him for the nomination, and it’s obvious what the Republican Party wants to do — yes, there are chunks [of the party] that don’t want to do that, but I think at some level all these guys are party leaders, and they have to be somewhat responsive to the base of the party when it comes to nominees and other issues,” he said.

GOP senators and strategists say McConnell’s best chance of ending Trump’s political career came after Jan. 6, when he was in a position to attempt to convince 17 Republican senators to convict Trump on the impeachment charge of inciting the attack on the Capitol.

If 67 senators had voted to convict Trump, he would have been barred from running again for office. A week after Jan. 6, McConnell indicated he was open to convicting Trump in an impeachment trial.

But a Republican senator close to McConnell said there was no guarantee at the time that the GOP leader could have convinced 16 other Senate Republicans to vote to convict Trump.

And the source said McConnell probably wouldn’t have been reelected GOP leader in November 2022 if he had joined the push to convict Trump and bar him from future office....>

<....Yet, McConnell hasn’t apologized for his excoriating denunciation of Trump on the Senate floor at the end of his second impeachment trial on Feb. 13, 2021, when he accused Trump of a “disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

“I stand by everything I said on Jan. 6 and Feb. 13 of ’21,” he told CBS.

A second Republican senator close to McConnell said the GOP leader had told his Senate Republican allies following Jan. 6 that Trump’s career in politics was over after stoking up thousands of his supporters to march on the Capitol.

Yet Trump managed to stage an improbable comeback by convincing more than half of all Republican voters that Biden had stolen the election, even after court after court dismissed that claim and Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, told him there was no evidence of election fraud.

McConnell finally endorsed Trump in March, even though Trump has several times publicly insulted him and his wife, former Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, drawing criticism from anti-Trump Republicans.

One group, Republican Voters Against Trump, released an ad Sunday that took shots at McConnell, Barr and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, accusing them of “partisan derangement syndrome” for backing Trump’s presidential bid despite blaming him for trying to subvert the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 election.

McConnell bristled when Brennan confronted him about endorsing Trump despite denouncing him on the Senate floor a few years ago, as other reporters have also tried to do in recent weeks.

“You need to get better research. I was asked that question three years ago, if he were the nominee would I support him, and I said ‘yeah,’ because the voters of my party across the country have made a decision. As the Republican leader of the Senate, obviously I’m going to support the nominee of our party,” he explained.

Al Cross, director emeritus of the Institute of Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky and a longtime McConnell observer, said the Senate Republican leader realized that actively opposing Trump might have even helped him in the primary, given McConnell’s affiliation with the GOP establishment.

“What he didn’t say [is] that it might actually play into Trump’s hand because McConnell has a very low approval rating among Republicans, and it would be further evidence of Trump being the anti-swamp candidate,” he said. “McConnell’s a realist.”

“To achieve his goal of getting a Republican Senate majority, they need to be able to coordinate with Trump, and if he’s adverse to Trump, that makes it more difficult,” he added.

A third GOP senator who asked for anonymity to discuss McConnell’s difficult position in relation to Trump said while McConnell and other Republican senators may disapprove of Trump’s character and tactics and view him as a weak general election candidate, they recognize that he is usually more in tune with the party’s base than they are.

“There’s no doubt about that. Trump is more in tune with, in touch with the American people than House and Senate leadership are, especially Senate Republican leadership,” said the senator.

“The House clearly because of their turmoil at least understands the frustration of the American people. I’m not sure the Senate leadership even understands the American people,” said the GOP senator.>

<[Event "66th Mass Open"] [Site "Marlborough Mass"]
[Date "1997.05.26"]
[Round "5"]
[White "Foygel, Igor"]
[Black "Curdo, John"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "A88"]
[WhiteElo "2479"]
[BlackElo "2346"]

1.c4 g6 2.Nc3 Bg7 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.g3 O-O 5.Bg2 d6 6.O-O e5 7.d4 Nbd7 8.e4 exd4 9.Nxd4 Re8 10.h3 Nc5 11.Re1 a5 12.Qc2 c6 13.Be3 Bd7 14.Rad1 Qc8 15.Kh2 Re5 16.f4 Rh5 17.f5 Ng4+ 18.Kg1 Nxe3 19.Rxe3 gxf5 20.Nxf5 Bxf5 21.exf5 Qxf5 22.Qxf5 Rxf5 23.Rxd6 Be5 24.Rd1 Re8 25.Ne4 Nxe4 26.Rxe4 Re6 27.g4 Rf4 28.Rxf4 Bxf4 29.Bf3 1/2-1/2>

Too sunny for y'all?

Yes, I could name names, but you know who they are. It's possible the Biographer's Bistro might have provided dangerous special privileges meant to be temporary in nature to certain antagonists for a specific CGs task that were not cut-off after use. Those special privileges might still be activated. Most dedicated Biographers seem quite trustworthy and leave me alone, but not all.>

If nothing happens to the invaders, my material will become genocidal stacks of missing pages in time. I'm counting on you while I continue preparing plan B and C.>

<A federal three-judge panel has thrown out Louisiana's new congressional map that created a second Black district, leaving the state's political boundaries in question with the November election less than seven months away.

The 2-1 decision after a three-day trial in Shreveport in April sided with plaintiffs who argued that the new map created by the state's Republican Legislature and signed into law by GOP Gov. Jeff Landry was based solely on race and therefore unconstitutional.

U.S. Western District Judges Robert Summerhays and David Joseph, both nominated by President Trump, sided with the plaintiffs. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Carl Stewart, nominated by President Bill Clinton, dissented.

Republican Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, who defended the map, told the USA TODAY Network on Tuesday night she is reviewing the decision with her team and Republican Secretary of State Nancy Landry "to discuss next steps."

"We will of course be seeking (U.S. Supreme Court) review," Murrill said in a text. "I've said all along the Supreme Court needs to clear this up. The jurisprudence and litigation involving redistricting has made it impossible to not have federal judges drawing maps. It's not right and they need to fix it."

The court will hold a status conference at 10:30 a.m. May 6 to discuss the remedial process. Landry, Louisiana's chief elections officer, has said she needs clarity by May 15 to conduct the Nov. 5 election.

At stake are the political careers of the incumbents and scope of representation for the state's Black population, about a third of the state. Louisiana, which has six congressional districts, has not had more than one Black representative serving at the same time since the Reconstruction era following the Civil War.

The lawsuit challenging the map attacked the new majority Black 6th Congressional District boundaries stretching from Baton Rouge to Lafayette to Alexandria to Shreveport as unconstitutional, saying they don't meet traditional redistricting principles like compactness and preserving communities of interests.

But the state contended additional factors drove the map, including the politics of protecting powerful incumbent Louisiana Republicans U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson (4th District), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (1st District) and Julia Letlow (5th District), a member of the Appropriations Committee that controls the country's pursestrings.

Doing so put Republican U.S. Rep. Graves, the current 6th District congressman, in peril by dismantling his boundaries in favor of a majority Black voter population.

Graves insisted all along the map was unconstitutional and predicted it would be overturned by the federal court.

"The court's decision speaks for itself," Graves said in a text to the USA TODAY Network. "We look forward on being able to focus on real problems facing Louisiana and our nation."

The lawsuit is just the latest litigation challenging the state's congressional boundaries.

Late last year a federal appeals court signaled it would uphold Baton Rouge Middle District Judge Shelly Dick's earlier ruling requiring Louisiana's congressional map be redrawn to include a second majority Black district out of six to comply with the Voting Rights Act.

Those rulings sprang from the efforts of civil rights and voting rights groups like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, ACLU and others who have been logging court battles for two years seeking a second Black majority district.

Attorneys for those groups, known as intervenors, joined with the state attorneys in defending the new map.

"Obviously, we are disappointed in today's ruling, but we continue to be optimistic that this will ultimately end with Louisiana having two majority Black congressional districts," said Jared Evans, an attorney with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. "The only thing that today's ruling means is that this particular version of a map can't be used.">

<Supreme Court oral arguments were made for social media. Social media was not made to make Supreme Court arguments persuasive or even understandable.

The court's latest Trump case is a perfect illustration. The justices on this court are relatively young. Their questions are clear and direct, and they all are engaged, respectful, and fair. If you listen from start to finish, you can't help but think this is the most deliberate and serious branch of the three-ring circus that is Washington, D.C.

Yet clips from any argument, taken out of context, especially for an audience untrained in law, are catnip for the kitten-focused internet. They trigger us, and become the focus of angry exchanges. We yearn to roll our eyes and ridicule, and social media provides an endless supply of eye-rolling treats. When Justice Elena Kagan asked Trump's lawyer to say whether a president ordering the military to stage a coup would qualify as an official act, Sauer responded that "it would depend on the circumstances." It would depend on the circumstances? What the freak are you talking about?!

But what was troubling about the exchange last Thursday was not the snippets. It was the whole show drawn together. The court let this case appear to be much harder than it actually is. And if we're lucky, it will recognize in time that it need not map a full range of executive insanity to decide whether Donald Trump should face trial in a D.C. district court.

Donald Trump v. United States is an easy case made difficult only because we can so easily imagine Trump behaving in ways that would actually raise difficult constitutional questions.

Lawyers and scholars of the Constitution have long struggled to understand the limits that the Constitution imposes on Congress' ability to hold the executive accountable. The great Chief Justice John Marshall, in the one decision that every high school student reads about, Marbury v. Madison (1803), signaled clearly that there would be some limit. But alas, he didn't grant us the favor of specifying precisely what that limit would be.

As Marshall wrote for a unanimous court: "[Is the act] a mere political act, belonging to the executive department alone, for the performance of which, entire confidence is placed by our Constitution in the supreme executive; and for any misconduct respecting which, the injured individual has no remedy? … By the Constitution of the United States, the president is invested with certain important political powers, in the exercise of which he is to use his own discretion, and is accountable only to his country in his political character, and to his own conscience."

More recently, a lesser lawyer (but still quite a lawyer), Richard Nixon, tried to explain the puzzle to David Frost in perhaps Nixon's most famous post-presidency interview.

Frost: So … you're saying … there are certain situations … where the president can decide that it's in the best interests of the nation … and do something illegal.

Nixon: Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.

Frost: By definition.

Nixon: Exactly. Exactly. If the president, for example, approves something because of the national security … then the president's decision in that instance is one that enables those who carry it out, to carry it out without violating a law.

Yet what makes these questions so hard is the same thing that makes Trump v. United States so easy: Marshall and Nixon are speaking about cases where the president is clearly executing core presidential powers. But left obscure in the oral argument in Trump v. United States is that Donald Trump was not executing presidential power in any legally relevant sense when he engaged in the behaviors charged in Jack Smith's indictment. None of the hard questions of presidential immunity are raised by the case. Indeed, the only hard question is why the lawyers have let it seem as if this is a difficult case.

The trigger for any question of presidential immunity is the president's performing an "official act," as the leading Supreme Court case on absolute presidential immunity, Fitzgerald v. Nixon, put it in 1982. The lawyers at the oral argument last Thursday obscured the clarity of that trigger by speaking of "official powers" and "public acts." But those are confusions of a much clearer idea: the first question that must be asked when asking whether the president is immune is whether his act was an "official act," part of, as Justice Story put it in 1833, the "duties of his office" as president of the United States.....>