I fear we are becoming insensitive to shock in the Trump era. And the very concept of “government ethics” seems to be an oxymoron in this era. Here are two shocking reports by Teresa Hanafin, who writes the Fast Forward commentary of the Boston Globe:

Trump holds another campaign rally tonight, this time in Toledo. Earlier in the day, he’s scheduled to announce some proposed National Environmental Policy Act regulations, and that’s never a good thing.

Trump is dramatically reducing the authority of the act, signed by Richard Nixon in 1970. The idea was that the federal government would protect the environment from excess by assessing the impacts of major projects — and include the public in the deliberations. Trump’s instinct is to protect private companies from any restrictions, nature be damned.

His action will make it easier to for companies to build pipelines, clear-cut forests, dig mines, drill for…

Today in the Washington Post,  Eric Holder criticized Bill Barr for his aggressive, partisan support of Trump.

Holder was Obama’s Attorney General. Barr is Trump’s Roy Cohn.

Barr has professed his belief that the president’s powers have no limits; Congress must bow to the president.

He has joined the “culture wars” by attacking “liberals,” which is an opinion, not an expression of the law.

Republican moderates, a nearly extinct breed of person, once hoped that Barr would be a stabilizing force in this administration.

They were wrong.

Whatever and whoever Trump touches dies or loses their reputation.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Today is a day when we pause and give thanks to whatever deity we worship (or not) for the blessings we enjoy: our freedom, our family, our friends, and our good fortune to live in a democracy where we are all responsible for making it better for our brothers and sisters.

I want to share with you a profound speech delivered by our good friend Rev. Dr. Charles Foster Johnson about religious liberty and the public schools and the future of our democracy.

Charlie Johnson is the founder and leader of Pastors for Texas Children. PTC has led the fight against vouchers in Texas and has helped like-minded religious leaders in other states form their own organizations to support religious liberty and public schools. I never expected, at this late chapter in my life, to discover that I have a dear friend who is a Baptist minister in…

Paul Waldman of the Washington Post went down memory lane with prominent Republicans who called out Trump as a phony before he was elected.

This letter appeared in the New York Times on

To the Editor:

A plea from 33 writers: Please use language that will clarify the issues at hand.

Please stop using the Latin phrase “quid pro quo” regarding the impeachment inquiry. Most people don’t understand what it means, and in any case it doesn’t refer only to a crime. Asking for a favor is not a criminal act; we frequently demand things from foreign countries before giving them aid, like asking them to improve their human rights record.

That is not a crime; the crime is President Trump’s demand for something that will benefit him personally. But using this neutral phrase — which means simply “this for that” — as synonymous with criminality is confusing to the public. It makes the case more complicated, more open to question and more difficult to plead.

Please use words that refer only to criminal…

Ron Chernow, author of Hamilton, wrote in the Washington Post that Trump is the populist demagogue that Alexander Hamilton feared and warned about in The Federalist Papers.

He wrote:

There seems little doubt, given his writings on the presidency, that Hamilton would have been aghast at Trump’s behavior and appalled by his invitation to foreign actors to meddle in our elections. As a result, he would most certainly have endorsed the current impeachment inquiry. It’s not an exaggeration to say that Trump embodies Hamilton’s worst fears about the kind of person who might someday head the government.

Among our founders, Hamilton’s views count heavily because he was the foremost proponent of a robust presidency, yet he also harbored an abiding fear that a brazen demagogue could seize the office. That worry helps to explain why he analyzed impeachment in such detail: He viewed it as a crucial instrument to…

Teresa Hanafin writes the daily Fast Forward for the Boston Globe.

As he did with the Vietnam War, Trump has decided to sit out the House impeachment inquiry, using what constitutional experts say are bone spurs spurious arguments to claim that Democratic House leaders are conducting an illegitimate inquiry.

He not only is refusing to cooperate with the investigation, he also has declared war on Congress’s very right to investigate the executive branch. It’s a remarkable moment.

The result is that Trump is blocking all employees of the executive branch from testifying before Congress, will withhold every document Congress requests, and will ignore every subpoena that congressional committees issue. We’ll see today what the Dems do next.

Just remember this: Under the Constitution, the House is empowered to impeach, and can conduct an inquiry and hearings any way it wants. The president doesn’t get to tell the House what to…