Because he’s got nothing better to think about. (Pence does all that thinking stuff.)

On the morning after Donald Trump’s inauguration, acting National Park Service director Michael T. Reynolds received an extraordinary summons: The new president wanted to talk to him.

In a Saturday phone call, Trump personally ordered Reynolds to produce additional photographs of the previous day’s crowds on the National Mall, according to three individuals who have knowledge of the conversation. The president believed that they might prove that the media had lied in reporting that attendance had been no better than average.

Trump also expressed anger over a retweet sent from the agency’s account, in which side-by-side photographs showed far fewer people at his swearing-in than had shown up to see Barack Obama’s inaugural in 2009.

According to one account, Reynolds had been contacted by the White House and given a phone number to call. When he dialed it, he was told to hold for the president.

[…] Word rapidly spread through the agency and Washington. The individuals who informed The Washington Post about the call declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the conversation.

Whoa!

On January 11, Joseph Schwab of Solano County is due in court over a misdemeanor DUI charge from 2015. But Schwab’s case is different from most. After an initial breathalyzer test showed he had 0.00% blood alcohol content, Schwab was sent to the county jail where a blood test revealed that the only drug present in his system was caffeine.

Schwab was pulled over by a California department of alcoholic beverage control agent on August 5, 2015, for allegedly erratic driving. Nearly 18 months later, the only evidence the district attorney has provided is the toxicology report showing Schwab was under the influence of nothing but caffeine.

After the test came up negative for opioids, cocaine, benzodiazepines, cannabis, and other drugs, it was sent to a second lab in Pennsylvania, which verified the original findings.

Schwab’s defense attorney, Stacey Barrett, filed a motion to have the case dismissed because the charges were not filed until the following June–almost ten months after he was arrested. The motion was denied, and Barrett and Schwab are preparing to take the case to trial later this month.

Solano County chief deputy district attorney Sharon Henry, whose office is investigating the case, says the DUI charge “is not based upon the presence of caffeine in his system.” If the charge is for another substance, the prosecution would have to provide its evidence to Schwab and his attorney, which Barrett says they have not.

According to the California vehicle code, any substance other than alcohol that could impair a driver “to an appreciable degree” could be considered a drug, but Barrett says she has never heard of anyone being charged with a DUI for having caffeine in their system.

Defense attorney Mark Sherman commented, “If prosecutors were to push for the charge to stand, they would have to demonstrate that caffeine was solely responsible for Schwab’s conduct behind the wheel, which may be difficult.”

Even if the charges are dropped, the situation has taken its toll on Schwab, who feels his reputation has been damaged by his arrest and the charges against him. He is prepared to take the case before a jury to clear his good name.
“No one believed me that I only had caffeine in my system until I showed them the lab results,” Schwab said. “I want the charges to be dismissed and my name to be cleared.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) questioned Donald Trump’s HUD nominee Ben Carson on the third day of confirmation hearings and drew attention to a likely conflict of interest affecting them both. Warren began by reminding Carson of the billions of dollars for housing development he would oversee as head of Department of Housing and Urban Development. The… Continue reading “Elizabeth Warren stumps HUD nominee Ben Carson with one simple ethics question” →

WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition staff has issued a blanket edict requiring politically appointed ambassadors to leave their overseas posts by Inauguration Day, according to several American diplomats familiar with the plan, breaking with decades of precedent by declining to provide even the briefest of grace periods.

The mandate — issued “without exceptions,” according to a terse State Department cable sent on Dec. 23, diplomats who saw it said — threatens to leave the United States without Senate-confirmed envoys for months in critical nations like Germany, Canada and Britain. In the past, administrations of both parties have often granted extensions on a case-by-case basis to allow a handful of ambassadors, particularly those with school-age children, to remain in place for weeks or months.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, has taken a hard line against leaving any of President Obama’s political appointees in place as he prepares to take office on Jan. 20 with a mission of dismantling many of his predecessor’s signature foreign and domestic policy achievements. “Political” ambassadors, many of them major donors who are nominated by virtue of close ties with the president, almost always leave at the end of his term; ambassadors who are career diplomats often remain in their posts.