Might Trump have weighty new venture?
Donald Trump may want to give some thought to creating a new faux school - the Donald Trump School of Weight and Fitness.
Maybe that's how he can rebuild his kingdom when he's forced to pick up the shambles of his uncharitable foundation now could lose whatever tax-exempt status it may or may not have had as newspapers and the New York attorney general continue to pick apart its poor management.
After all, with the discredited and now defunct Trump University experience, the Donald may have some new insights about how to run a weight and fitness school. Perhaps he knows now to actually hire some experts, not just sales people.
Heaven knows he's been successful with what MSNBC pundits have called "the course on speed lying" that Trump has given to his campaign surrogates. These are the same surrogates who last week were instructed to insist, no matter what, that Trump won the first debate last Monday with Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, according to multiple campaign sources who spoke to multiple reporters.
Those surrogates stuck to their guns all week, citing online polls in which internet users are allowed to vote over and over and over.
In real polls (and in real minds), Clinton crushed Trump in the 90-minute, one-on-one debate.
Judge Roy Moore is judge no more
The Alabama Court of the Judiciary on Friday rightly suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore for the rest of his term in office, which ends in 2019. By that time, he'll be beyond the age limit of 70 for Alabama judges - unless voters raise the limit in November.
The court found Moore violated the canons of judicial ethics by telling probate judges to deny marriage licenses to gay couples for months after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that everyone has a fundamental right to marry in all 50 states.
It is the second time in 13 years that Moore has been sanctioned as a result of ethics complaints filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, and this punishment effectively removes the 69-year-old Moore from office without the nine-member Alabama Court of the Judiciary officially ousting him.
SPLC President Richard Cohen praised the court's action.
"He disgraced his office and undermined the integrity of the judiciary by putting his personal religious beliefs above his sworn duty to uphold the U.S. Constitution," Cohen said. "Moore was elected to be a judge, not a preacher. It's something that he never seemed to understand. The people of Alabama who cherish the rule of law are not going to miss the Ayatollah of Alabama."
The same panel removed the outspoken Republican in 2003 because he refused to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building. Voters later re-elected him as chief justice after he lost a race for governor.
This time, Moore testified that his personal beliefs had nothing to do with it, and that his January order merely provided judges with a status report on a technical aspect of the law. But the administrative order he sent to the state's 68 probate judges, maintained that the Alabama Supreme Court's gay marriage ban remained in "full force and effect" despite the ruling from the nation's highest court.
Early voting and election year jitters?
Though there has been plenty of conversation this presidential campaign season about people sitting out the election because voters don't like the candidates, that doesn't seem to be what the nation's early voting and early voting application numbers are showing us.
Preliminary data compiled by The Associated Press suggest that advance voting could reach 40 percent of all votes cast nationally - up from 35 percent in 2012.
The AP surmised this may indicate a higher overall turnout in an election that has generated enormous public interest despite - or because of - the unpopularity of the candidates.
But we also wonder if it might reflect voters' concerns of long lines or polling place disruptions due to Donald Trump's inciting calls for poll watchers in what he claims might be a "rigged" election.
Of course, this also is the guy who refuses to comprehend that he lost the first debate and now falsely claims to have won it.