News from the note…

A round up of the day’s news that might be of interest to you.

This is an OPEN THREAD,  folks. Chat about any of the stories listed, share links to stories that caught your eye today, and generally have a good time discussing whatever you want.

Flake: Firing Sessions would be the ‘first domino to fall’

Sen. Jeff Flake on Sunday warned that firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions would be a “big mistake” for President Donald Trump, downplaying the GOP lawmakers predicting his exit later this year as “isolated voices.”

In an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” the Arizona Republican said the concern is that Sessions’ termination “would be the first domino to fall” in the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

“Then what happens with [Deputy Attorney General] Rod Rosenstein?” Flake said. “What happens with [special counsel] Bob Mueller?”

Politico

Lewandowski: I warned everybody that Cohen was going to become a problem

Former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski on Sunday took aim at President Trump‘s former longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, for pleading guilty to federal charges and implicating the president in a crime.

Lewandowski during an appearance on “Fox News Sunday” downplayed Trump’s relationship to Cohen and the charges to which he pleaded guilty last Tuesday.

“What Cohen has now pled guilty to has nothing to do with the Trump campaign or the Trump Organization,” Lewandowski said.

He went on to slam the president’s former “fixer,” saying that he had denied Cohen a role in Trump’s campaign.  

The Hill

No, impeachment will not crash the stock market

The longest bull market run in American history could get killed off by a financial collapse in Turkey, a policy mistake by the Federal Reserve or a plain old economic recession.

It will probably not be slain by an impeachment of President Donald Trump.

That’s the consensus view of Wall Street traders and money managers, who say that while an ugly impeachment fight might cause temporary volatility, markets could easily survive an impeachment and even the unlikely event that Trump is removed from office in a Senate trial.

In fact, Wall Street pros often talk about a potential relief rally if Trump departs the White House early.

Politico

Letter: Vatican knew about disgraced archbishop’s behavior

The Vatican’s retired ambassador to the United States accused senior Vatican officials of knowing as early as 2000 that the disgraced former archbishop of Washington, Theodore McCarrick, regularly invited seminarians into his bed but was made a cardinal regardless.

The letter, an extraordinary allegation from a one-time Holy See diplomat, also accuses Pope Francis of knowing about McCarrick’s behavior in 2013 but rehabilitating him — a claim of cover-up against the pontiff himself.

AP

Trump anxiety spreads through South Korea

South Koreans are growing more anxious about President Donald Trump’s commitment to the North Korean nuclear deal, fearing he could simply walk away, having already declared victory back home.

The president has earned the respect of many people here for his unconventional diplomacy in meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, even among those who otherwise deride Trump as a “merchant” who lacks the “class” of his predecessor. But behind the surprising goodwill and relentlessly upbeat pronouncements from Seoul officials, there are creeping doubts, according to interviews this summer with current and former government advisers, a leading politician, foreign policy specialists, journalists and North Korean defectors.

Among the concerns are frustration that Trump has failed to secure a formal end to the Korean War while negotiating on nuclear disarmament; worries that the president is simply seeking a “trophy” for meeting with Kim and won’t be as engaged in the hard work to come; doubts about the “hubris” of the White House’s all-or-nothing approach to negotiating with Pyongyang, as opposed to the incremental process favored by many South Koreans; and dismay over why Trump would launch a trade war with China at a time when he needs Beijing’s help in keeping pressure on North Korea.

Politico

Sunday Bonus Notes From The “Honoring John McCain” File

John McCain spent his life serving the dignity of his fellow man

McCain was a romantic about his causes and a cynic about the world. He had the capacity to be both things and to live with the contradiction. He had seen human beings at their best and worst — often in the same experience. He understood the world as it is with all its corruption and cruelty. But he thought it a moral failure to accept injustice as the inescapable tragedy of our fallen nature.

When he said to the Myanmar political prisoner, or the harassed Belarusan dissident, or the Ukrainian captive, “I know a little of what you’ve suffered,” it needed no elaboration. He was in league with them — united by suffering, endurance and the knowledge that the most marvelous of human achievements is to not lose hope when experience has taught you hope is for fools.

Washington Post

John McCain: ‘Vladimir Putin Is an Evil Man’

Why had I been given the dossier? That’s the first accusatory question in every budding conspiracy theory about my minor role in the controversy. The answer is too obvious for the paranoid to credit. I am known internationally to be a persistent critic of Vladimir Putin’s regime, and I have been for a long while. Wood and Steele likely assumed that my animosity to Putin ensured that I would take their concerns seriously. They assumed correctly.

Many Americans and Europeans believe that Putin changed around 2007, when he went from being a modernizing Russian leader the West could work with to a risk-taking autocrat and Russian nationalist, who resented the West, and especially the U.S. I think that’s a fallacy. At the risk of sounding self-congratulatory, I’ve been a realist about Russia and its corrupt strongman for nearly two decades. Putin and I have history, you could say, each of us having regularly made known our low opinion of the other.

Wall Street Journal
Adapted from Sen. McCain’s memoir, “The Restless Wave: Good Times, Just Causes, Great Fights and Other Appreciations” 

What happens next to John McCain’s Senate seat

Sen. John McCain held his seat in the Senate for nearly 32 years. After McCain’s death Saturday, it will fall to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey to name his successor.

State law gives Ducey, a Republican, the power to fill the Senate vacancy for the next two years, until a special election is held in 2020 to select a person to complete the final two years of McCain’s term. The seat will then be up again for a full six-year term in the 2022 election. Arizona law also stipulates that the appointee must be from McCain’s party.

Ducey has avoided any discussion in recent months about which Republican he might appoint to fill McCain’s seat, citing respect for the senator and his family.

Politico

If you read nothing else about John McCain, read this from The Weekly Standard… Reagan, McCain, and Sam McGee