https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTvEfW2eUCM

https://apnews.com/fabcdf12d10f41eaaeddcccf339d08df

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House opened a second day of Trump impeachment hearings Friday with a key witness: Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who was targeted by the president’s allies in a “smear” campaign now central to the inquiry.

The public session was gaveled open before the House Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the Democratic chairman of the panel, praised Yovanovitch, saying she was “too tough on corruption for some, and her principled stance made her enemies.”

It became clear, he said, “President Trump wanted her gone.”

The top Republican on the panel, Rep. Devin Nunes of California, bemoaned the hearings as a “day-long TV spectacle.”

Nunes complained that Democrats are relying on hearsay testimony from witnesses who only know of Trump’s actions second-hand. He also pressed to hear from the still anonymous government whistleblower who first alerted officials about President Donald Trump’s phone call with Ukraine that is in question. “These hearings should not be occurring at all,” he said.

Just as the hearing was opening, the White House released its rough transcript of an earlier call Trump had with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy that was largely congratulatory.

Nunes read that transcript aloud. In it, Trump mentioned his experience with the Miss Universe pageant in Ukraine and invited Zelenskiy to the White House. He closed with, “See you very soon.”

Yovanovitch, a career diplomat, who has served both Republican and Democratic presidents, was expected to relay her striking story of being told to “watch my back” and then being suddenly recalled by President Donald Trump in a swiftly developing series of events that sounded alarms about a White House shadow foreign policy.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-taxes/trumps-accounting-firm-must-hand-over-8-years-of-tax-returns-court-rules-idUSKBN1XE1O8?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Reuters%2FPoliticsNews+%28Reuters+Politics+News%29

NEW YORK (Reuters) - President Donald Trump’s longtime accounting firm must hand over eight years of his tax returns to New York prosecutors, a U.S. appeals court ruled Monday, the latest setback for Trump in his tenacious efforts to keep his finances secret.

The ruling by a unanimous three-judge panel of the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals backed the ability of prosecutors to enforce a subpoena for the returns against accounting firm Mazars LLP. Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Trump, said the Republican president will appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, whose 5-4 conservative majority includes two justices appointed by Trump.

The office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, a Democrat, is seeking the returns as part of a criminal investigation into Trump and his family real estate business. The scope of that probe is not publicly known.

The 2nd Circuit did not decide whether Trump is immune from being charged with a state crime while in office, as the president has argued. However, it found that even if he is, the immunity could not stop Vance from getting the returns from a third party, or from prosecuting him once he leaves office.

It would “exact a heavy toll on our criminal justice system to prohibit a state from even investigating potential crimes committed by him for potential later prosecution,” 2nd Circuit Chief Judge Robert Katzmann wrote in the ruling.

Vance’s office has agreed not to enforce the subpoena while Trump petitions the Supreme Court. Under the agreement, Trump has 10 calendar days to file the petition.

LIVE: House Impeachment Inquiry Hearing (C-SPAN)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdXAhuHhqUY

https://apnews.com/468e0bcb51e74822a1f8cc11627a1c0d
WASHINGTON (AP) — The closed doors of the Trump impeachment investigation are swinging wide open.

When the gavel strikes at the start of the House hearing on Wednesday, America and the rest of the world will have the chance to see and hear for themselves for the first time about President Donald Trump’s actions toward Ukraine and consider whether they are, in fact, impeachable offenses.

It’s a remarkable moment, even for a White House full of them.

All on TV, committee leaders will set the stage, then comes the main feature: Two seasoned diplomats, William Taylor, the graying former infantry officer now charge d’affaires in Ukraine, and George Kent, the deputy assistant secretary in Washington, telling the striking, if sometimes complicated story of a president allegedly using foreign policy for personal and political gain ahead of the 2020 election.

So far, the narrative is splitting Americans, mostly along the same lines as Trump’s unusual presidency. The Constitution sets a dramatic, but vague, bar for impeachment, and there’s no consensus yet that Trump’s actions at the heart of the inquiry meet the threshold of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

Whether Wednesday’s proceedings begin to end a presidency or help secure Trump’s position, it’s certain that his chaotic term has finally arrived at a place he cannot control and a force, the constitutional system of checks and balances, that he cannot ignore.

The country has been here just three times before, and never against the backdrop of social media and real-time commentary, including from the Republican president himself.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7693147/Pope-Francis-considers-introducing-new-ecological-sin-bid-battle-climate-change.html

At a 3-week bishop assembly. Glorious and esteemed globalist leader of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis says that he will introduce new 'ecological sins' in their teachings to enlighten the ignorant masses of the inconceivable consequences of climate change.

Pope Francis unabashedly declares that 'it is a duty' for the church to protect 'our common home'. The Pope also hinted at signing these new "sins" into laws. Huemanity Saved!!!

He also said some stuff about the Holocaust, Hitler and the Jews and Gypsies.

Massive backlash and outrage ensued.

God damn. Breaking Bad is not supposed to be a documentary, guys.

1/2
>The arrests called to mind the wildly popular television series "Breaking Bad."

>It sounds like something from the award-winning former A.M.C. series "Breaking Bad": The authorities charged two chemistry professors in Arkansas on Friday in connection with the production of methamphetamine.

>The instructors, Terry D. Bateman, 45, and Bradley A. Rowland, 40, were charged with manufacturing methamphetamine and using drug paraphernalia, the Clark County Sheriff's Department said. Meth is a highly addictive drug that can be manufactured illegally with chemicals, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

>Mr. Bateman and Mr. Rowland are associate professors of chemistry at Henderson State University, a liberal arts school of about 3,500 students in Arkadelphia, about 70 miles southwest of Little Rock.

>The professors went on administrative leave as of Oct. 11, Tina V. Hall, a university associate vice president of marketing and communications, said on Sunday.

>Ms. Hall said that the school's Reynolds Science Center had been closed on Oct. 8 because of "a report of an undetermined chemical odor." Testing revealed an elevated presence of benzyl chloride in a lab, she said.

>Benzyl chloride is used to produce certain dyes and pharmaceutical products, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency. Short-term effects from inhaling it include irritation of the skin, eyes and upper respiratory tract.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/17/us/arkansas-chemistry-professor-meth.html

pic screencapped from the post's front page
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/prince-andrews-epstein-interview-roundly-panned-nuclear-explosion-level-bad/2019/11/17/62b28a02-094b-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html
>Prince Andrew’s Epstein interview roundly panned: ‘nuclear explosion level bad’
LONDON — The BBC’s extraordinary interview with Prince Andrew does not appear to be the public relations boost he may have hoped for.
It was always going to be a massive gamble, the queen's second son putting himself forward for nearly an hour of forensic questioning about his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who committed suicide in August.
But if Andrew was hoping to draw a line under a scandal that has dogged him for years, he came up short.
An example of some of the exchanges:
Andrew: “Do I regret the fact that he [Epstein] has quite obviously conducted himself in a manner unbecoming? Yes.”
Maitlis: “Unbecoming? He was a sex offender.”
Andrew: “Yeah, I’m sorry, I’m being polite.”
The interview was undoubtedly a coup for the BBC, who were in talks with the palace for nearly a year to secure it, and for the journalist Emily Maitlis, whose interrogation has won widespread acclaim.
But royal watchers described the interview as ill-judged and excruciating.
“I expected a train wreck,” tweeted Charlie Proctor, editor of the Royal Central website. “That was a plane crashing into an oil tanker, causing a tsunami, triggering a nuclear explosion level bad.”
Dickie Arbiter, the queen's former press secretary, said that if Andrew thought he’d “drawn a line in the sand” over the saga, he was “in cuckoo land.”

Senate to launch investigation into criminal abuse of surveillance and unwarranted spying on political enemies by the Obama administration
https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/470566-gop-eager-for-report-on-alleged-fbi-surveillance-abuse

Republicans are eagerly awaiting the Justice Department’s report on alleged surveillance abuse of the Trump campaign during the 2016 election.

The findings of the Justice Department watchdog’s investigation — the release of which has been teased for months — is on the verge of being released, according to Attorney General William Barr and GOP senators tracking the issue.

Republicans, including some of Trump’s biggest allies, believe the findings will address their long-held suspicions of wrongdoing within the Obama administration, and help fuel follow-up investigations on Capitol Hill.

Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Jonson (R-Wis.) said he and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the chairman of the Finance Committee and a member of the Judiciary Committee, are anticipating the report as they look for an opening to dig into Obama-era scandals.

“I would really like to see the inspector general’s report on the FISA applications. ...I’m going to have far better opportunities to interview witnesses once I have the information that those investigators have found out,” Johnson told WSAU, a Wisconsin radio station, on Thursday.

Johnson added that he and Grassley are “waiting anxiously to go over the hundreds of pages in that … because that will inform what our next step is going to be as well.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) has predicted that DOJ IG Michael Horowitz’s findings will be “stunning,” “damning” and show a “system being off the rails.”