Trump being austerity-minded, was concerned about the costs of the therapies. And, the transgender costs could hold up US taxpayer money for The Wall that Mexico isn't going to pay for.

 It is estimated that between $2.4 million and $8.4 million has been so spent on transgender treatments, about the amount being spent on the treatment of erectile dysfunction. And, for another contrast,  $23 million was spent for acne agents in 2016. Not that there is anything wrong with these expenditures, either.

With regards to the Whitewater investigation under Kenneth Starr, I'd offer that the special prosecutor's docket was clearly kept open by partisan judges despite the fact that Robert Fiske, the first Whitewater prosecutor, had concluded that no wrongdoing on the part of Bill and Hillary Clinton had occurred. Thus, Whitewater became classically synonymous with a prosecutorial fishing expedition, having evolved from its initial investigation of a botched land deal by into a minute examination of Bill Clinton's extracurricular sex life.

Susan McDougal's attorney at the time, Mark Garagos, claimed that Starr's office -- specifically deputy counsel W. Hickman Ewing, Jr. -- attempted to suborn his client's perjury by strongly suggesting that she could make things easier on herself if she'd confess to having had a sexual affair with Clinton. Mrs. McDougal refused, and to this very day has always adamantly denied that they had an affair.

In the wake of Mr. Starr's recent abrupt dismissal as president of Baylor University, I find his past obsession with Clinton's sex life to be profoundly ironic if not pathologically partisan in its motivations. Starr apparently couldn't be bothered to investigate serious allegations at Baylor that several members of the Bears football team had sexually assaulted co-eds, which was the reason why he was ultimately shown the door in Waco.

Ironically even the guy who wrote the articles of impeachment Bob Inglis said it was a mistake to impeach Bill and they should have done a censure. Oh, well, too late smart I guess on their part.

I actually think the collusion is going to be what takes Trump down and the money laundering is going to be icing on the cake.

With Trump, I think Mueller's going to find a lot of "there" there, and the House and Senate investigations will, too, but Republicans are going resist to the death having to admit it's there, much less do anything about it.

Det. Payne's suspension from duty is due in large part to all the adverse national publicity his illegal arrest of Nurse Wubbels has garnered for the Salt Lake City Police Dept., which is particularly embarrassing since Payne was apparently attempting to enforce a long-expired law. The video of their confrontation has since gone viral, and has also prompted the assistant police chief to apologize to both University of Utah Hospital and Ms. Wubbels on behalf of the department.

The Salt Lake Tribune also reported that Nurse Wubbels' patient is William Gray, a 43-year-old reserve police officer from Idaho who was working his other job as a semi-truck driver, when a pickup truck  whose driver was fleeing the Utah Highway Patrol crashed head-on into him on a highway near Logan, UT, causing both vehicles to explode and leaving him critically injured. The 26-year-old male driver of the pickup truck died at the scene. The Tribune cited police reports saying Payne was trying to take the blood in order to clear Gray of any wrongdoing in the wreck.

Alex Wubbels is also a former Alpine skier and two-time Olympian (1998 & 2002) who competed under her maiden name, Alex Schaffer.

Cops can't come in the Emergency entrance any more.

"Law enforcement who come to the hospital for any reason involving patients will be required to check in to the front desk of the hospital," said chief nursing officer Margaret Pearce of the University of Utah Hospital. "There, a hospital house supervisor will meet the officers to work through each request."

Singling out Harvey as some kind of climate-driven anomaly would be a big mistake. Yet the climate influence is still something we need to consider, said Kerry Emanuel, a hurricane theorist at MIT.

"My feeling is, when there's a hurricane, there's an occasion to talk about the subject," he said. "But attributing a particular event to anything, whether it's climate change or anything else, is a badly posed question, really."

My in-laws, who are from Corpus Christi, TX, are thankfully in San Diego right now visiting on of their sons, and were monitoring the hurricane closely. While the area was sideswiped by Harvey, it seems to have been spared the worst. We've now heard from everyone in my wife's family, and they're all safe and sound.

Persky was the captain of the Stanford men's lacrosse team.

in my opinion, persky is the equivalent of a racist southern judge from 1960s alabama who gives obscenely light sentances to KKK "good ol' boys" who brutaly beat african-americans that show up at the polling place to vote.

But that said, he's also on probation for three years, and even a small violation on his part will send him to prison for up to 14 years.

where did you read that the judge sentenced him to 14 years but stayed 13.5 years?

as i understand it, if he violates his probation, he goes back to the county jail (where they hold drunk drivers and shoplifters) for his final three months.

Just my impression as someone who's lived here now for 30 years, but I think the nascent appeal of Catholicism in the islands came about as a result of the exceptional ministries of the Jesuits and the Sisters of St. Francis, as both orders tend to emphasize teaching and service to the community. The Catholic education system is big out here.

St. Damien (aka Father Damien) was a Jesuit priest, and his ministry to the lepers of Kalaupapa is world renowned. St. Marianne Cope (aka Mother Marianne) was a Franciscan nun and nurse who came to Honolulu in 1881 to advise the Kingdom's Ministry of Health. She took over Damien's ministry on Molokai when he became ill himself, and she also founded what's today known in Hawaii as the St. Francis Healthcare Systems.

Having gone to Catholic schools myself, I've met a number of priests, brothers and nuns who are educators, and I have an awful lot of respect for them.