IT'S NOT INTENDED TO DISCRIMINATE ON CLASS...:

Two libertarian think tanks came out against Florida Republicans' bill curbing Amendment 4, arguing that felons should not be stopped from voting just because they can't afford to pay back court-ordered fees, fines and restitution.

In a sharply worded opinion to a federal appellate court, lawyers for the Cato Institute and R Street Institute wrote on Friday that the bill GOP lawmakers signed last year, Senate Bill 7066, "violates the bedrock guarantee of equal rights that every citizen enjoys."

And without a judge's injunction, the groups wrote, the bill is fundamentally unfair.

"Absent the district court's injunction, SB7066 will have the effect of excluding a great number of people from voting because of their poverty, while allowing similarly situated wealthy persons to vote," the groups said.

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

"He asked if I could find Ukraine on a map. I said yes, and he called out for aides to bring us a map of the world with no writing. I pointed to Ukraine. He put the map away." https://t.co/mCp8Ydnxdq

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) January 24, 2020

THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

One of the central, simple insights of the work is the way in which it innocently demonstrates how Nazism and Communism were mirrors of each other.

On one side, the Nazis would put people in camps because of their racial origin. On the other, Soviet, side people could be consigned to the camps because of a relative who had chosen to live abroad or who had the "wrong" job before the revolution. In both cases, the individual could be disappeared due to factors over which they had absolutely no control. As one of the more decent Russian characters of the novel reflects:

"To me, a distinction based on social origin seems legitimate and moral. But the Germans obviously consider a distinction based on nationality to be equally moral. One thing I am certain of: it's terrible to kill someone simply because he's a Jew.  They're people like any others -- good, bad, gifted, stupid, stolid, cheerful, kind, sensitive, greedy... Hitler says none of that matters -- all that matters is that they're Jewish. And I protest with my whole being. But then we have the same principle: what matters is whether or not you're the son of an aristocrat, the son of a merchant, the son of a kulak; and whether you're good-natured, wicked, gifted, kind, stupid, happy is neither here nor there. And we're not talking about the merchants, priests and aristocrats themselves -- but about their children and grandchildren. Does noble blood run in one's veins like Jewishness? Is one a priest or a merchant by heredity?"

Never over-laboured, the mirror keeps offering up reflections. The Germans had their crazed purges just as the Russians -- before, and after, as well as during 1937 -- had theirs. The Nazis had Rohm, the Russians had Bukharin. Stalin and Hitler are not just evil geniuses of their own creation, but clever students of each other.

A genius of Grossman's narrative is not just that he explains the uniqueness and similarity of these evils, but that he causes the reader to get meshed up in this for themselves. As the chapters switch from one camp to another or one command control to another, it takes time -- often not until the give-away of a surname -- to work out which totalitarianism we are in. It is not always at first clear whether we are in the Gulag or Auschwitz, the Reich Chancellery or the Kremlin.

They are so close, that at one breath-holding point Grossman has the two dictators communing. Immediately after the German defeat in the city that has taken his name, Stalin has a moment of "superstitious anxiety" which makes him put down his pencil at his desk. "At that moment he could feel very clearly that Hitler -- conscious of Stalin's thoughts -- was thinking about him."

SUPER ON BRAND:

One of the many despicable attributes of the Trump administration is its habit of using press credentials to punish critics and reward allies--even when the allies are racist conspiracy theorists.

TruNews, a paranoid Christian-right website run by pastor, "citizen reporter," and former salesman Rick Wiles, never seems to have trouble getting White House credentials, or the president's ear, despite Wiles's solid record of antisemitism, racism, and homophobia.

According to Right Wing Watch's Kyle Mantyla:

This is the same Wiles who, last November, dedicated an entire program to declaring that the effort to impeach Trump was a "Jew coup" that will eventually lead to a "purge" in which millions of Christians are killed.

In that very same program, while speaking of the Biblical destruction of Sodom, Wiles asserted that "if God sent angels to this country, homosexuals would attempt to rape them."

And lest we're tempted to believe that that program was an anomaly, Wiles also claimed that Jeffrey Epstein's death was part of what he called, a "kosher cover-up"; that fellow pseudo-journalist Ben Shapiro has "the spirit of anti-Christ"; that Mark Zuckerberg is of "the synagogue of Satan"; and that abortion in America is the fault of "powerful, rich Jews."

"HE DID WHAT!?!":

But as the impeachment managers make their case against the president, even Trump's staunchest defenders have acknowledged the effectiveness of Democrats' strategy.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida told Politico this week the impeachment managers presented their case to the public as if it were "cable news," and he praised their use of multimedia.

Meanwhile, the defense team's case looked like "an eighth-grade book report," Gaetz said. "Actually, no, I take that back," he said, adding that an eighth-grader would know how to use PowerPoint and iPads.

Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana told reporters during the first day of the prosecution's opening arguments that the evidence itself was news to many senators.

"Nine out of 10 senators will tell you they haven't read a full transcript of the proceedings in the House," Kennedy said. "And the 10th senator who says he has is lying."

Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, one of Trump's biggest defenders, praised lead House impeachment manager Adam Schiff after the first day of opening arguments.

"Good job," Graham told Schiff. "You're very well-spoken."

THE BLUE MODEL:

Job growth in California accelerates, even as it slows nationally https://t.co/cKtUdFEsqr

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) January 24, 2020

WHEN FOX THINKS YOU'VE LOST IT:

THE PRO-APARTHEID PRESIDENT:

Under the terms of the soon-to-be released Trump administration peace plan, Israel would retain overall security control of the entire West Bank even if a Palestinian state is established in parts of it, Israeli TV reports said Friday night.

VS THE MURDEROUS MULLAH IN DC:

Tens of thousands of Iraqis marched Friday at the urging of popular Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, decrying U.S. influence in the country and demanding that Washington withdraw its troops.

Around Baghdad's Hurriyah Square, the streets were a sea of black, white and red, as protesters clutched Iraqi flags and wore shrouds around their shoulders to evoke the country's dead. Iraq's government is under growing pressure to expel foreign troops after a U.S. drone strike killed a renowned Iranian general on Iraqi soil, inflaming regional tensions and leaving Baghdad's politicians fuming.

At the march Friday, loudspeakers denounced U.S. troops as occupiers. Posters depicted President Trump hanging from a noose.

LITTLE FINGER'S LONG MARCH THROUGH THE INSTITUTIONS:

What the pair [Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes] have done with Unmaking the Presidency: Donald Trump's War on the World's Most Powerful Office is striking. Rarely is anything this sobering this hard to put down. The book is part detailed and comprehensive history of the office of the presidency ("President Grover Cleveland answered the White House telephone each time it rang"), part heartfelt elegy for a functioning political system. Mainly, the question being put to the reader is not, "Is Donald Trump wholly unsuited to be president?" (the authors make no secret they take this as understood), but rather, "In what ways is Trump's behaviour in office different from his predecessors and how might his behaviour alter the office after he's gone?"

While acknowledging that Trump possesses nothing approaching a coherent theory of governance, the authors examine Trump's words and actions not just as personal foibles, a term or two on the nation's timeline, but as proposed changes to how the presidency should function in the future. What, the reader is forced to consider, would it mean for America if Trump's view of the office as inesperable from his person--and personal interests--became a generally acceptable position for future candidates to embrace?

Other presidents have lied, but what will an America in which Trump's proposal that presidents should feel free to lie constantly, blatantly, and often pointlessly, without the slightest hint of embarrassment, let alone fear of political consequences, look like?

Not all of the Trumpian "proposals" explored in the book are shifts that necessarily empower the office of the president but the mixedness of this blessing cannot be overstated. For the moment, America, in fact the entire world, likely benefits from the resourcefulness of those unelected bureaucrats and cabinet officials who take papers that should never be signed off the president's desk and who slow walk or flat out ignore orders from the president to "Let's f-king kill him" ("him" being Bashar al-Assad, the president of Syria). But what needs to be considered now is how well will this new norm age?

Unelected bureaucrats and cabinet officials are, it is now well-documented, currently serving not as assistants to the president, but as handlers of him. They are--or at least the best of them are--running the country as well as they are able while doing what they can to prevent the "toddler-in-chief" president from getting up to too much mischief.

Ultimately, this transference of responsibility, this subtle and currently accepted as benign negation of the president's autonomy, may prove to be as dangerous to the office as an institution as anything unimpeachable presidents freely abusing their power might manage.

Key to this view of the Trump presidency is the argument that individual presidents can and have dramatically altered the office, often without acknowledging what they were up to, or even necessarily realizing it. Hennessey and Wittes make their argument in meticulous, lawyerly detail, providing a history of how U.S. presidents have changed, or failed to change, the nature of the presidency. It is an institution that is far more reliant on good faith and convention; on the simple belief, for example, that the oath of office has not only meaning, but power. Hennessey and Wittes show us that soft underbelly.

FINALLY, A NEW SEASON OF tHE wIRE:

A recording reviewed by ABC News appears to capture President Donald Trump telling associates he wanted the then-U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch fired while speaking at a small gathering that included Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman -- two former business associates of Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani who have since been indicted in New York.

The recording appears to contradict statements by President Trump and support the narrative that has been offered by Parnas during broadcast interviews in recent days. Sources familiar with the recording said the recording was made during an intimate April 30, 2018, dinner at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Trump has said repeatedly he does not know Parnas, a Soviet-born American who has emerged as a wild card in Trump's impeachment trial, especially in the days since Trump was impeached.

ISN'T THAT PART OF THE JOB DESCRIPTION:

The captain of a privately-run ICE detention center in Nevada has been fired after VICE News exposed his ties to white nationalism earlier this month. [...]

After serving in the Marines, Frey spent the last decade moving around the country working for facilities run by CoreCivic, formerly CCA, in Georgia, California, Indiana, and most recently, Nevada. And as he rose through the ranks in corrections and detention centers, he would routinely turn to the neo-Nazi forum Iron March to spew racist vitriol and white supremacy.

THAT WAS EASY:

Scotland is shaping up as an exemplary host for this year's UN climate conference, with data showing it is likely to meet its national target of 100 per cent renewable electricity in good time for the crucial November meeting.

Scotland, whose southern city of Glasgow was named last September as the host for the 26th Conference of Parties (COP26), has a goal to source the equivalent of 100% of its electricity demand from renewable energy sources by the end of this year.

And it is shaping up to do just that. Having closed its last coal-fired power plant in 2016, the UK country's only remaining fossil fuel source is a gas-fired power station at Peterhead in Aberdeenshire.

WHICH SIDE WERE YOU ON, DAD?:

The final 8 and a half minutes of @RepAdamSchiff close from tonight. Gripping. Dramatic. Historic. #rightmatters https://t.co/LSQLNeJSW4

— David Shuster (@DavidShuster) January 24, 2020

ALL OF WHICH NATURALLY MAKES THE rIGHT HATE HIM:

His position meant that Vindman interacted with most of the government officials who made and implemented U.S. policy toward Ukraine. He also listened in on the infamous July 25 phone call in which Trump asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for help in digging up (or making up) dirt on the family of his political opponent, former vice president Joe Biden.

In his written, published testimony, Vindman confirmed the basic facts of an attempt by Trump and his close associates to use public office for private gain. In his statement, Vindman never went beyond the facts; he added no opinion or political commentary. He explained why the president's actions seemed wrong to him and why he expressed his misgivings about this scheme through the proper chain of command, as every soldier is trained to do.

Yet, even before Vindman appeared before the committees, Trump-friendly commentators were assailing his character and loyalty. Former congressman Sean Duffy asserted, "It seems very clear that he is incredibly concerned about Ukrainian defense. I don't know that he's concerned about American policy. . . . We all have an affinity to our homeland where we came from. . . . He has an affinity for the Ukraine." University of California at Berkeley law professor John Yoo implied that the lieutenant colonel might be guilty of espionage for talking to Ukrainian officials, a normal part of his job.

Others suggested that Vindman might have dual loyalties because -- what a scandal! -- he spoke Ukrainian. Trump himself described the decorated Army officer as a "Never Trumper" -- without any evidence to support his accusation.

Such smear tactics are revolting and un-American. Vindman has served our country with honor and distinction, both on and off the battlefield. He was awarded a Purple Heart after being wounded in Iraq and has earned many more medals during his more than 20 years of service in the Army. I served with him in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, where he was everything you would want in a military attaché: smart, knowledgeable about the country, fluent in Russian and absolutely dedicated to the mission of advancing U.S. national interests.

And he is a patriot -- as you would expect from someone with his outstanding résumé. I witnessed his love of country during embassy ceremonies to honor our fallen soldiers on Veterans Day. The idea that Vindman might have dual loyalties with another nation is preposterous. Vindman was born in the totalitarian Soviet Union, not "the Ukraine." His family, which is Jewish, fled religious persecution. He is not Soviet or Ukrainian or Ukrainian American: He is simply an American.

...AND CHEAPER...:

The low prices are due to the mild winter Sweden has had, combined with a long period of a lot of precipitation and relatively windy weather, according to Tomas Jonson, CEO of comparison site Elskling.

"This means that reservoirs are filled to a high level, which provides good conditions for hydro power which represents 40 percent of the country's electricity production," he explained.

Meanwhile, the higher than usual temperatures for the season have helped reduce electricity use, which in turn lowers prices.

"Besides that, we have had record wind power. Swedish wind power has been built up at quite a fast pace and represents almost 15 percent of electricity production," said Jonson.

Make your money go further in Sweden: Top tips for saving in 2020

Simply put, the supply of electricity is greater than the demand, which pushes down prices.