Today is Gun control Rally day across America. More than 800 rallies are planned. The sponsor is March for Your Lives, formed in the wake of the shootings in Parkland, FL. Photos are here. The NY Times reports (no link due to autoplay video)

On Saturday, the White House said in a statement, “We applaud the many courageous young Americans exercising their First Amendment rights today.”

Huge rallies are good catalysts for change. Those who participate feel the strength that comes with numbers. They believe change is possible and they are right. But they must convince Congress to act, and to do that, they have to stay dedicated and register to vote, and then follow-through by actually voting, particularly in the mid-term elections this year. [More...]

The New York Times has obtained new surveillance camera videos of Stephen Paddock's last days at the Mandalay Bay before carrying out the Las Vegas shootings.

The videos add nothing to deciphering Paddock's motives. He acts normal, his interactions with staff are normal, even when he's alone in the elevator the cameras don't capture anything odd.

The Times labels the videos:

"unnerving because it ends in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.

That may be, but they are not the deadliest mass killings in modern American history. More than 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks. As for domestic killings, more than 168 people died in the OKC bombing and more than 500 were injured.

Congress could disregard the Second Amendment entirely and outlaw the possession and purchase of all guns and rifles and we'd be no safer. Bombs can kill more people than guns. [More...]

Jefferson Sessions has issued a memo to U.S. Attorneys on when to charge the death penalty in drug cases. He actually is undercutting Trump's argument for more death-eligible drug crimes because it shows how many are already on the books (thanks in large part to Joe Biden, who sheperded the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act through the Senate, that among other horrible things, expanded death-penalty eligible crimes.)

Biden’s bill put over 100,000 new cops on the street and spent $9.7 billion on the construction of new prisons. The wide-ranging bill implemented a host of liberal policies, including an assault weapon ban and the Violence Against Women Act. But it also expanded the number of crimes that qualify as death penalty cases, encouraged states to keep inmates locked in jail*, criminalized gang membership, eliminated Pell Grants for inmates, and put in place mandatory drug testing for people on supervised release. States had to implement policies that greatly reduced opportunities for parole in order to qualify for the new prison funding.

...During the 1980s he was a staunch advocate for ramping up the war on drugs. Biden devised the national “drug czar” position and worked alongside Republicans during the Ronald Reagan years to craft oppressive anti-drug laws, including co-sponsoring the law that instituted far longer prison terms for possession of crack cocaine than of powder cocaine. In The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander called Biden “one of the Senate’s most strident drug warriors.”

[More...]

No surprise here. John Dowd has resigned as Trump's main lawyer. Who needs to look at Joe di Genova every day, let alone listen to his thoughts? If he had to bring on one of the DiGenovas, it should have been his wife, Victoria Toensing. She's the better lawyer of the pair, he's just a loud-mouth like Trump. (I spent months if not years arguing against them on Geraldo Live during the Clinton impeachment years.)

Interestingly, or not, Victoria's son Brady Toensing, also a lawyer who works with the family firm, was Vice-Chair of the local Republican party in Burlington, VT and chaired Trump's 2016 Vermont campaign. He is also the lawyer who filed the complaint to have Jane Sanders, wife of Bernie, investigated. Brady was hoping to be nominated by Trump to be U.S. Attorney. But Trump glossed over him and picked a female who has a reputation as being a crusader on opioids. Brady still is still a member of DiGeneva and Toensing. [More...]

Gloria Allred wins a round in the Summer Zervos lawsuit. The Judge cited the Paula Jones case as one authority for the proposition that a lawsuit can proceed against a sitting President.

The decision by Justice Jennifer Schecter of State Supreme Court in Manhattan paved the way for lawyers to seek depositions from several women who accused Mr. Trump of sexual harassment before he was elected and to subpoena Trump campaign records related to his female accusers.

Justice Schecter rejected Mr. Trump’s argument that a state court has no jurisdiction over a sitting president. She cited a United States Supreme Court ruling that allowed Paula Jones to bring a sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton.

“No one is above the law,” Justice Schecter wrote. “It is settled that the president of the United States has no immunity and is ‘subject to the laws’ for purely private acts.”

It was after that ruling that Clinton and Jones settled with no admission of wrongdoing or apology. Will Trump do the same? Would Gloria and her clients accept a settlement with no admission of wrongdoing? My view: Of course. Money usually triumphs over principle.

A video has been revealed of Cambridge Analyitca officials. You can watch it here. In it they talk to an undercover reporter "how Cambridge Analytica secretly campaigns in elections across the world. Bosses were filmed talking about using bribes, ex-spies, fake IDs and sex workers."

Channel 4 news also recorded CA CEO Alexander Nix saying CA ran the Trump digital campaign , ran the TV campaign, that he personally met Donald Trump many times. Nix says on the tape CA did all the research, got all the data, did all the analytics, all the targeting. He says their data informed all of Trump's strategy.

Here's a video presentation by Nix in his Online Marketing Rockstars Keynote in Germany on the work CA did for Trump's Campaign and the strategies the company used.[More...]

I have a brief due today. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

The FTC has opened an investigation into Cambridge Analytica.

At issue for the company -- and at the heart of the FTC probe -- is a settlement they reached with the agency in November 2011, ending an investigation that Facebook deceived users about the privacy protections they are afforded on the site.

...Among other requirements, the resulting consent decree mandated that Facebook must notify users and obtain their permission before data about them is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established. It also subjected Facebook to 20 years of privacy checkups to ensure its compliance. [More...]

Donald Trump wants more mandatory minimums and other increased penalties for drug crimes.

He also wants to decrease pain-pill prescriptions by one-third over the next three years and limit Medicaid's reimbursement for them.

The Trump administration said it will seek stiffer penalties against drug dealers — including the death penalty where appropriate under current law — and it wants the number of prescriptions for powerful painkillers to be cut by one-third nationwide as part of a broad effort to combat the opioid crisis.

...It also wants to tighten the number of opioid prescriptions that can be reimbursed by Medicaid as a way to curb overprescribing.

Donald Trump is not our doctor. [More...]

It's pretty cruel to fire a career FBI agent two days before his official retirement so he'd be at risk of losing his retirement, but that's Donald Trump. Jefferson Sessions did the dirty work.

The Associated Press reports McCabe kept memos of his interactions with Trump and with James Comey. The New York Times reports:

Mr. McCabe’s memos were left at the F.B.I., which means that Mr. Mueller’s investigators have access to them as they work to corroborate Mr. Comey’s account.

McCabe reportedly met with Trump three times. [More...]

Vanessa Trump, wife of Donald Jr. and mother of their five young children, has filed for divorce. Her lawyer is a New York criminal defense attorney named David Feurelson.

Ivana Trump had a very prominent criminal defense attorney, Michael Kennedy (R.I.P.) as her divorce attorney.

The split has been a long-time coming, according to the media. Vanessa allegedly doesn't like that Don. Jr. is always traveling or the constant attention due to the Trump name or his tweeting.

One article said they had hoped to stay married through Donald's occupancy of the oval office, but their differences were too great.

They obviously have a pre-nup, and apparently have worked out child custody as Vanessa filed the petition as "an uncontested proceeding" which means neither party has to appear.

Donald Trump apparently thinks he can remake his battered image through hiring television pundits for important policy positions in his administration.

Meanwhile, Stormy Daniels says she can "describe his junk perfectly."

What a farce.

What's not a farce: Robert Mueller is subpoenaing Trump Org.'s Russia records.