these were the main issues:

• Stopping Outsourcing
  
• Addressing the Opioid Crisis
  
• Passing Paid Family and Medical Leave
  
• Expanding Overtime
  
• Paid Sick Days
  
• Ending Employee Misclassification
  
• Saving for Retirement
  
• Making It Easier to Unionize

I really think Trump would be seriously worried about General Kelly publicly resigning over this kind of stupidity. And, if Kelly goes, well, there are lots of Generals in Trump's cabinet.

it might not be much but it at least it sends the signal that what they are doing if f-ed up and illegal.

As I noted, Zimmerman fits neatly into Fox News' modus operandi. In a front-page article in the February 15, 1999 Pacific Business News -- there is no online link; I have it in my own archives -- she had brazenly insinuated that Hawaii Democrats had committed electoral fraud on behalf of then-incumbent Gov. Ben Cayetano during his 1998 re-election campaign against then-Maui County Mayor (and future Gov.) Linda Lingle.

The story's genesis originated as a simple protest filed with the State Office of Elections by Democratic State Rep. Merwyn Jones' regarding his 21-vote margin of defeat by GOP challenger Emily Auwae in the 1998 general election. But within three months, Zimmerman had seized upon that pretext to level her specious allegations, which then snowballed into an official legislative inquiry. The state legislature then authorized a completely unnecessary statewide ballot recount to determine whether any failure of the State's optical scanner vote counting machines caused any flawed results.

Zimmerman charged in her Feb. 1999 article that "[t]he state is no stranger to voter fraud," offering as evidence previously discredited allegations by GOP state Rep. Mark Moses that "the Immigration and Naturalization Service had confirmed that almost 30% of voters in some districts in 1994 had been aliens."

Moses's assertions were completely false. In fact, then-NS Director Don Radcliffe had earlier written Duane Yoshina, then-director of the State Office of Elections, on August 15, 1996 and stated categorically that "nowhere has INS confirmed the existence of any ineligible voter in the State of Hawaii."

Zimmerman further included some unsubstantiated claims of misplaced ballot boxes, an allegation which had been leveled by KHVH-AM right-wing talk show host Rick Hamada in his "Rally for a Recount" at the Hawaii State Capitol earlier that week. Although Zimmerman claimed in her article that "over 1,000 business people" had attended this particular event, I can personally attest that the actual number that day was much closer to 100, of which more than half were GOP legislative staff.

Zimmerman also included inflammatory but otherwise unverifiable hearsay from Jane Riggs, a wealthy Kahala matron and local Republican crackpot, who baselessly accused Hawaii union leaders of filling out absentee ballots on behalf of their own members:

"Jane Riggs said that two of her friends vote in every election by absentee ballot, including the 1998 election, but they do not know for whom they actually voted. They don't know, she said, because union officials fill the absentee ballot out for them and then mail it. They said if they did not let the union vote for them, they will not work ... their union would know for whom they voted because of the number assigned to their ballots."

Lacking any evidence to support this dubious assertion, Zimmerman instead offered the "authoritative" opinion of none other than Voting Integrity Project President Deborah Phillips, a right-wing GOP operative who had worked extensively with convicted Watergate burglar Charles Colson:

"If a state reports that absentee votes account for more than 6 percent of the total votes. there has very likely been fraud involved.  Hawaii reported more than 18 percent absentee votes in the 1998 general election, or three times higher than the acceptable percentage. Once voting is taken out of the voting place, it opens up a Pandora's box of potential fraud. Unions or any organization or political party can abuse absentee voting."

Zimmerman then plunged headlong into the realm of farce with one priceless pièce de resistance:

"Jeff Grotstein disclosed to this reporter that his friend, a bookie in Chinatown, was taking bets on the gubernatorial election. The bookie said there would be a 5,000-vote difference between Cayetano and Lingle, with Cayetano as the victor. The bookie said he was told the election results were fixed and all the bookies knew the final outcome. ... The bookie would not return calls to PBN."

But when subsequently tracked down and contacted by the late investigative journalist Bob Rees of the Honolulu Weekly, Grotstein insisted that he had repeatedly implored Zimmerman not to use this information because it was entirely hearsay and further, that he had neither given to Zimmerman his bookie friend's phone number, nor had he disclosed to her the names to any of his Chinatown acquaintances.

Zimmerman then appropriately concluded her vicious litany of bull$chitt with an outrageously over-the-top and wholly unfounded warning from VIP's Phillips:

"The way things are now in Hawaii, the safety of all elections are in serious jeopardy. The problems are that serious and a challenge to the very foundation of the political process."

Such patently irresponsible nonsense, published as it was on the Pacific Business News's front page and then flogged prominently on VIP's website and the then-fledgling Fox News, served only as further pretext for Zimmerman to inflame public opinion by recklessly impugning the integrity of those individuals in charge of the electoral process.

Following the March 15, 1999 statewide recount of the 1998 vote, then-State Legislative Auditor Marion Higa and federal officials publicly announced that only seven out of 400 voting machines had malfunctioned during the election, that not a single race had been affected, and that there hadn't been the slightest credible evidence to demonstrate fraud. Higa noted in her news conference, "This election had integrity."  

Higa's audit might just as well have never even taken place, as far as Zimmerman was concerned. Even though VIP had monitored the recount and seemed to initially accept its results, Zimmerman announced only three months later, once again on the front page of the Pacific Business News (June 28, 1999), that Phillips and her organization would formally investigate the 1998 Hawaii gubernatorial election.

Zimmerman's boyfriend, then-married GOP State Sen. Sam Slom, was named chair of VIP's Hawaii advisory board. Phillips announced that "we have a team in place on the ground in Hawaii so we are ready to rock and roll with our investigation.  We have already identified the key areas we plan to look into in order to pinpoint any fraudulent activity."

Zimmerman also noted that Phillips retained the talents of I-Group, Inc., a GOP-affiliated private investigation firm employing retired FBI agents. This same firm had only recently been implicated in a 1996 Florida political scandal, when its investigators had attempted to bribe employees of an Orlando janitorial service to allow them access to the trash from U.S. Sen. Bob Graham's local district office.

Zimmerman was invited by Phillips to discuss voter fraud in Hawaii as a member of a panel at VIP's annual conference in Washington, D.C. on March 31-April 1, 2000. While there, she received that organization's "Election Integrity Award" for "excellence in the field of investigative reporting" from the conference's keynote speaker, Wall Street Journal editorialist John Fund. VIP cited her Hawaii credentials in their program, which also included an award from Small Business Hawaii, the organization synonymous with Sen. Slom.

The existing evidence did less to raise questions about voter fraud in Hawaii, than to fuel suspicion about Zimmerman's apparent collaboration with Slom, Phillips, VIP and the Hawaii Republican Party to manufacture a phony controversy out of whole cloth.

Zimmerman was on record as having taken several trips to VIP's offices in Washington, D.C. prior to the publication of her infamous February 1999 PBN voter fraud story, ostensibly to do research. On Bob Hogue's KCCN-AM radio program after Zimmerman had finally been fired in April 2000, then-Pacific Business News editor Gina Mangieri strenuously denied that her paper had financed any of Zimmerman's trips back east, or otherwise did anything to encourage her involvement with Phillips and VIP. That denial only further begged the question: Who did?

As I think I just showed, I know an awful lot about Malia Zimmerman. That woman is pure political poison, as far as I'm concerned, and is never to be trusted at all as either a reputable source of information or as a responsible mainstream journalist, because she's neither. And quite honestly, if I have my way, her next professional gig will be as a swing shift waitress at IHOP.

that from a closeted right winger rubs my rhubarb.

NEWSFLASH a guy who does his office in a Downton Abby theme eliminates the need for speculation.

Schock's lawyers filed a motion to dismiss the indictment against him that alleged prosecutorial misconduct, arguing that by quizzing witnesses on Schock's sexuality, the prosecutors could have shaped the opinions of witnesses and members of a grand jury.

how exactly "shaped opinions"?  

The new layout has no "Tools" Button at the top. The tools button let you request a time frame for a news search -- last 24 hours, last week, last month, etc. The new layout has no Tools button.

Personalizing your news is now meaningless. If I type in, say, "El Chapo" I have no way of getting the most recent articles. Now the only way to do that is to open google itself (get out of google news), and click on news, and then click on tools to put in the date.

Thank you for linking that interview with Jessica Lange. She's truly a role model for accomplishment through perseverance, having diligently worked 40 years ago to overcome her own disastrous film debut in King Kong (1976) -- a cheesy performance which would've otherwise sunk an actor of lesser character -- to since become one of the most acclaimed actresses in Hollywood today.

"Long, slow days passed. It was a Kentucky evening filled with the darting light of fireflies, and the sound of the crickets and choruses of bullfrogs. Sam walked to his bed and lay down and went to sleep, a stoic, noble sleep. A sleep that led to an unwitnessed moment, as love surrounded him and breathed the same air. The rain fell when he took his last breath, quietly, just as he would have wished. Sam was a private man. I know something of such men. You have to let them dictate how things go, even to the end. The rain fell, obscuring tears. His children, Jesse, Walker, and Hannah, said goodbye to their father. His sisters Roxanne and Sandy said goodbye to their brother.

"I was far away, standing in the rain before the sleeping lion of Lucerne, a colossal, noble, stoic lion carved from the rock of a low cliff. The rain fell, obscuring tears. I knew that I would see Sam again somewhere in the landscape of dream, but at that moment I imagined I was back in Kentucky, with the rolling fields and the creek that widens into a small river. I pictured Sam's books lining the shelves, his boots lined against the wall, beneath the window where he would watch the horses grazing by the wooden fence. I pictured myself sitting at the kitchen table, reaching for that tattooed hand.

"A long time ago, Sam sent me a letter. A long one, where he told me of a dream that he had hoped would never end. 'He dreams of horses,' I told the lion. 'Fix it for him, will you? Have Big Red waiting for him, a true champion. He won't need a saddle, he won't need anything.' I headed to the French border, a crescent moon rising in the black sky. I said goodbye to my buddy, calling to him, in the dead of night."

Don't be so gloomy. After all it's not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love - they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.

and it would all be funny except for things like this