What Trump has undone
President Donald Trump tells us all the time - falsely - that he's done more than any other recent president.
Clearly he's not measuring that by any major legislation he's signed, because there isn't any of that to count.
But the Washington Post last week put together a list of what Trump - in a scant 200 and some odd days - has undone. Especially things that were put into place by President Barack Obama.
And that list is daunting.
The big ones you need no reminder of - withdrawing from the Paris Climate Accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement as well as banning some migrants and refugees from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
But here are some that might have gotten buried under the headlines about Russia and Trump's questionable competency.
Under the heading of economy, he:
» Revoked a rule that expanded the number of people who could earn overtime pay.
» Reversed a rule that would mandate oil and gas companies to report payments to foreign governments. (So the Securities and Exchange Commission will no longer receive this information.)
» Ended limits on the ability of states to drug test those seeking unemployment benefits.
» Revoked an executive order that mandated compliance by contractors with laws protecting women in the workplace.
» Canceled a rule mandating that financial advisers act in the best interests of their clients.
» Repealed a bill that mandated employers to keep records of workplace injuries.
Under the justice heading, he:
» Rescinded the Obama rule to reduce mandatory sentences.
» Canceled a phase-out of private prisons.
But the big stuff falls under the heading of the environment. Here, he:
» Blocked the Clean Power Plan.
» Reversed an Obama ban on drilling for oil in the Arctic.
» Reviewed the status of national monuments added in the past two decades for possible reversal.
» Withdrew a rule regulating fracking on public land.
» Delayed and potentially rolled back automotive fuel efficiency standards.
» Repealed the Waters of the United States rule.
» Ended a rule banning dumping waste from mining into streams.
» Rejected a proposed ban on the pesticide chlorpyrifos, which sickens farm workers.
» Reversed a ban on plastic bottles at national parks.
» Repealed a ban on lead bullets, which poison wildlife.
' Ended a study on the health effects of mountaintop-removal mining.
' Rescinded a rule mandating that rising sea levels be considered when building public infrastructure in flood-prone areas.
There's more. He:
» Reversed a rule that would ban gun sales to those deemed "mentally defective" by the government.
» Repealed a rule allowing transgender individuals to serve in the military.
» Rolled back of Obama's outreach to the Cuban government.
» Rolled back school lunch standards championed by Michelle Obama.
» Withdrew federal protections for transgender students in schools.
» Canceled public reporting on visitors to the White House and other online data.
There are hundreds more things on this list.
Kudos to the Washington Post for showing us how destructive - not just divisive - this president has been in so short a time.
Roger Stone is still a 'dirty trickster'
Roger Stone, longtime confidant to Donald Trump, predicted Thursday there would be a "spasm of violence" tantamount to civil war if the president were brought under impeachment charges by Congress, according to Politico.
It was Stone, you'll recall, who communicated more than once with the hacker Guccifer 2.0 during the election when the Democratic National Committee's and John Podesta's emails were hacked.
"Try to impeach him. Just try it," Stone said. "You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you've never seen."
Stone, a former Nixon operative and self-described practitioner of the political "black arts," made the comments in the Los Angeles airport to a reporter for TMZ, a very Trump-friendly celebrity news website. Stone said he was "not advocating violence," but merely "predicting it." But he also said: "Both sides are heavily armed. ... This is not 1974. People will not stand for impeachment. ... There will be violence on both sides."
Gosh, who does that sound like? An insurrection "like you've never seen. ..." Violence "on both sides."
Then Stone did something else that sounded very Trump-like. He made it personal. But Stone added vengeance. He said that any politician who voted in favor of any such motion "would be endangering their own life."
Taken together, his comments don't sound like predictions or suggestions of support either. They sound like down-right threats.