Despite military and international backlash to Trump's Nov. 15 clemency--fallout from which cost Navy Secretary Richard Spencer his job on Sunday--Trump believes he has rectified major injustices. Two people tell The Daily Beast they've heard Trump talk about how he'd like to have the now-cleared Clint Lorance, Matthew Golsteyn, or Edward Gallagher show up at his 2020 rallies, or even have a moment on stage at his renomination convention in Charlotte next year. 

The peak of support for the impeachment and removal of then-President Bill Clinton in 1998 was 29% in CNN polling. That's the highest that number ever went, despite the fact that the House Republican majority did vote to impeach late that year!

Ditto impeachment sentiment for the two presidents between Clinton and Trump. In a 2006 CNN poll, 30% of the public wanted George W. Bush impeached and removed from office; in 2014, 33% said the same of Barack Obama. (Unlike Trump and Clinton, neither Bush nor Obama ever faced any sort of formal impeachment investigation or vote.)

What those historical numbers tell us is that for at least the last two decades, there is roughly 30% of the country that is ready to impeach a president (usually of the party to which they do not belong) at all times.

What makes the Trump number so remarkable, then, is that 20% more of the public is now convinced not only that he should be impeached but that he should be removed from office -- despite the fact that, unlike Clinton, Bush and Obama when those CNN polls were taken, Trump will face voters in a bid for a second term in less than a year's time.

Let's look a bit closer at the data, starting with all those atheists and agnostics. They accounted for 2 percent of the population each in 2007, and today report 4 percent and 5 percent respectively--basically within the margins of error. The proper academic conclusion is that these groups have stayed pretty much the same over time, and remain very small.

The "nothing in particular" category (or Nones) is a larger and more diverse group, and the statistics do show that they have increased from 12 to 17 percent, likewise stretching the margin of error. But more important is that Pew itself had earlier reported that 26 percent of Nones pray daily and an additional 22 percent pray weekly or monthly, that only 22 percent do not believe in God, and that from year to year many shift back and forth between identifying with the Christian and Nones categories. All of this makes them more religious than atheist, if not exactly orthodox.

The reported declines in Protestants and Catholic identifications are likewise more interesting when broken down. Catholic identification is reported as declining from 24 to 20 percent, again minor and barely within the reported error margin. Protestant identification, meanwhile, is described as declining from 51 to 43 percent, and down a more substantial 17 percent among Democrats, Millennials, and Northeasterners, with fewer losses among Republicans, Gen. Xers and Midwesterners. Mainline Protestant denominations accounted for most of the decline, while born-again sects actually have increased. Denominational decline is a very mixed bag.

What about more active religious affiliation? Church attendance certainly has declined since the conservative 1950s, especially among Catholics, but it's rather flattened out since then, culminating in the slight dip over the last decade reported in the current study. As Pew notes, "Self-described Christians report that they attend religious services at about the same rate today as in 2009." The study shows little decline or even a small increase among African Americans, Hispanics, Protestant evangelicals, and Republicans. Actually, only 12 percent of the oldest generation, 15 percent of the middle-aged, and 22 percent of Millennials never go to church. A more recent Pew study reported that a majority of pre-Millennials said they regularly observe religious dress or jewelry worn by fellow students in their public schools.

Gallup likewise found that those who attend church once a month or more had dropped from 58 percent in 1992 to 43 percent today, and that those never attending had gone up from 14 to 28 percent. But it also found that attendance over the last week was 36 percent today, as opposed to 40 percent in 1992, basically no change.

Former President Barack Obama privately told advisers that he would intervene and speak out to stop Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., from winning the nomination if he surged ahead, Politico's Ryan Lizza reports.

The new report details meetings and discussions that nearly all Democratic presidential candidates have had with Obama as they seek the party's nomination. Lizza describes Obama's preferred role in the primary as "providing guardrails to keep the process from getting too ugly and to unite the party when the nominee is clear."

But based on interviews with multiple Obama advisers, Sanders is a "potential exception."

While producer Michael Schur (who was also behind the American version of The Office) cast racially diverse actors -- Eleanor is portrayed as a white American, Chidi as Nigerian-born and Senegalese-raised, Tahani as a British South-Asian and Jason as a Filipino-American (the actor is actually Canadian)--the setting of The Good Place is flatly middle-American. An International House of Pancakes serves in season three as one of the dimensional gateways.

Far more nuanced are the philosophical questions that plague the four humans in The Good Place: Do I always have to tell the truth? Is it OK to ignore present action for future gain? What if I participate in evil unknowingly--if so, am I to blame for the outcome? Is it possible for an action to be both good and evil at the same time? If so, how does one decide? Should I sacrifice myself for others?

Even those only casually predisposed to reflecting on our actions might be surprised to see themselves in some of these scenes. But The Good Place presents no easy answers.

Our classes on theology in film focus on what it means to be human in relationship to the transcendent--what's called "theological anthropology." Here, the statement by Janet's character rings true: "The more human I become, the less things make sense."

Eleanor's teary words in one of a recent show rephrase the ancient philosophical question of suffering: "What's the point of love if it's just going to disappear? There has to be meaning ... Otherwise the universe is just made of pain."

As the series emphasizes, goodness is not straightforward. What is striking is that in the characters' attempts to "be good" and "do good," they are transformed. The Good Place is really about how to live "the good life." Together, the four do change and grow. They get their second--and 800th--chance. Not only that, they transform the lives of others.

The lawyers brought the issue to Trump because they were determining if they legally had to inform Congress of the complaint.

This new timeline suggests that Trump was aware that he had been accused of abusing his executive power when the White House eventually released the aid to Ukraine in September. It also paints his I'm-not-a-crook correspondence with U.N. Ambassador Gordon Sondland in a less honorable light. Sondland testified that 0n September 9, Trump told him "I want no quid pro quo." That Trump was aware that an intelligence officer had accused him of such behavior -- after spending a summer "enthusiastically" pressuring Ukraine to conduct investigations that would aid his reelection -- suggests that the conversation with Sondland, who testified that there was a quid pro quo, was meant more as a bailout plan than as an honest confession to a U.N. ambassador in over his head. And as Daily Kos points out, there's a smaller concern related to the choice of language from the president with a limited vocabulary: "Trump using such precise language without being prompted was always a question mark because he clearly doesn't bat around Latin phrases very often."