It’s a chilly morning, here in the CatBox with a warm evening forecast. I slept well, but still feel tired. OGIM!
Puzzle Master:
Today’s took me 3:41 (average 5:05). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Short Takes:
From Huffington Post: Attorney General William Barr threatened to bail on a scheduled Thursday hearing of the House Judiciary Committee to review special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia report if the panel moves forward with its proposed questioning format, two senior Democratic committee aides confirmed to HuffPost.
The Justice Department allegedly took issue with the panel’s plan to allow committee counsels for each political party to ask Barr follow-up questions for 30 minutes each following the traditional round of questioning by its members.
Barrf has it bass ackwards. Congress, not Barrf, determines the rules for Congressional committees. RESIST!!
From Alternet: With the release of the Mueller report, it is quite clear that Donald Trump has obstructed justice and lied to the American people, and, while there are no definitive links between Russia and his campaign, it is pretty clear that Russia helped him and his campaign, and that the Republican Party does not care.
The pursuit of power at any cost has consumed the Republican Party. It seems as if power is all it cares about. It does not care if you receive medical care, it does not care if you receive an education (it would prefer you don’t). What it does care about is making sure that taxes on the rich and on large corporations stay low, not because it believes the wealth will trickle down, but because it will allow its benefactors to increase the wealth they already have. Which is why Donald Trump will likely not face justice until he is out of office. Mitch McConnell would never let a Republican President be convicted by the Senate, even if there was no doubt about his guilt.
Mitch McConnell is the real cancer on our country. He has done more than anyone to make the U.S. Senate the most nonfunctioning governmental body we have seen in our history. This has been evident since 2010, when he uttered the words, “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” He then went on to obstruct everything that President Obama tried to do, including judicial appointments—capped off with preventing Merrick Garland from receiving even so much as a hearing toward his confirmation to a seat on the Supreme Court.
Fuhrer Drumpfenfarten is just a figurehead. When he’s gone the Republicans, who are even more evil will smile sweetly and say, “Who, us? Oh No! It was all Trump!” RESIST!!
From Vox: 1) What is Ramadan actually about?
Ramadan is the most sacred month of the year for Muslims — the Prophet Mohammed reportedly said, “When the month of Ramadan starts, the gates of heaven are opened and the gates of hell are closed and the devils are chained.”
Muslims believe it was during this month that God revealed the first verses of the Quran, Islam’s sacred text, to Mohammed, on a night known as “The Night of Power” (or Laylat al-Qadr in Arabic).
During the entire month of Ramadan, Muslims fast every day from dawn to sunset. It is meant to be a time of spiritual discipline — of deep contemplation of one’s relationship with God, extra prayer, increased charity and generosity, and intense study of the Quran.
But if that makes it sound super serious and boring, it’s really not. It’s a time of celebration and joy, to be spent with loved ones. At the end of Ramadan there’s a big three-day celebration called Eid al-Fitr, or the Festival of the Breaking of the Fast. It’s kind of like the Muslim version of Christmas, in the sense that it’s a religious holiday where everyone comes together for big meals with family and friends, exchanges presents, and generally has a lovely time.
Despite the hardship of fasting for a whole month, most Muslims (myself included) actually look forward to Ramadan and are a little sad when it’s over. There’s just something really special about knowing that tens of millions of your fellow Muslims around the world are experiencing the same hunger pangs, dry mouth, and dizzy spells that you are, and that we’re all in it together.
This is the first of nine questions about Ramadan. Click through for the other eight. I particularly liked #9. RESIST!!
Cartoon:
The manifesto contained common far-right catchphrases, including descriptions of an “international Jewry” which is responsible for countless age-old blood libels, including the murder of Christ and alleged control over the media and the economy. This is similar to a trope in the antisemitic book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
The State Department not only barred reporters from nonreligious outlets from covering a briefing call about international religious freedom with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Monday but also refused to release a list of people who participated in the event or even a transcript of what Pompeo said, 
