Robert Farley

While it has quieted down a bit, much of the rampant idiocy among influencers regarding Mitch McConnell's health continues on social media. The above is a good illustration of how Kentucky Republicans are reacting to this, which is to say with undiluted glee.

Federal prosecutors moved on Friday to drop charges against David Hearn, a former Olympic canoeist accused of vandalizing the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, acknowledging that a contractor hired by the Trump administration had “botched” its renovation.

One thing that I've learned about the LGM comments section is that people like to talk about the drugs they used to take. I offer this without comment. Go to town, folks.

Vincent Pastore, a character actor who specialized in playing Italian American tough guys, most notably the foot soldier turned F.B.I. informant Salvatore Bonpensiero, known to his friends as Big Pussy, on the classic HBO series “The Sopranos,” has died at his home in the Bronx. He was 80.

In other news… many of you know that we have been struggling a bit with our tech support for the last month. Those struggles have not ended (although the site remains broadly functional) but we hope to have them fully addressed within the next couple of weeks.

President Donald Trump continues to insist damage to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was the result of vandalism, despite a Department of Justice motion filed on July 31 that placed the blame squarely on a contractor’s “botched” installation of the pool coating “and not vandalism as initially represented” by the Department of Interior.

The Trump administration's ban targeted troops with gender dysphoria, a medical condition defined by at least six months of significant distress or impairment because of gender incongruence. Such troops would break under the stress of combat, the Trump administration contended.

Reports indicate that American short-range ballistic missile inventories have been nearly exhausted and Tomahawk stockpiles badly depleted during the war with Iran. Patriot interceptors alone can take more than two years to build. CSIS projects that missile stockpiles will not recover in most categories until 2029 or 2030 — a timeline that outlasts not only this conflict but this administration.

The economics of munitions stockpiles have always been fraught, and the increasing sophistication of missiles has made calculations even more difficult.

On Wednesday, Nate Morris jumped through one of the last hoops to become the next U.S. Ambassador to Colombia.