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Fox News reports. “Talk about pressuring a foreign country to interfere with and control a U.S. election, it couldn’t be clearer. And that’s not just undermining democratic institutions, that is treason," Weld said on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "It’s treason pure and simple. And the penalty for treason under the U.S. Code is death. That’s the only penalty.... The penalty under the Constitution is removal from office, and that might look like a pretty good alternative to the president if he could work out a plea deal.... The only penalty for treason is death, it’s spelled out in the statute.” While the U.S. Code does list the death penalty as a punishment for treason, Weld’s claim that it is the only penalty is false. Treason is covered by 18. U.S. Code § 2381, which says that a person guilty of treason “shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any offic...

From "California’s Luxury Dining Circuit: Delicious and Dull/The French Laundry, the Restaurant at Meadowood and SingleThread have much in common: amazing precision, sky-high prices and a sedating sort of predictability" (NYT): The macaroni and cheese in the golden egg, served as part of the tasting menu at the French Laundry, was absurdly delicious. The short noodles, cut by hand, had a tender spring. They were bound in a light, melting cloud of Parmesan. The result was simple, built on the retro American dishes that the chef, Thomas Keller, once wittily reimagined as high culture and maxed out to total extravagance.... [T]he dishes, and the ways they were delivered, reminded me of what’s possible when both the kitchen and the wait staff are operating at the highest level: sustained indulgence in an atmosphere of total comfort. The servers brought the gold-rimmed dish sets out and placed them down in unison. After lifting the egg tops and revealing the macaroni, they rained...

Getting worse? Really? Seems to me things have calmed way down. But here comes Robert Reich (in The Guardian) to rile people back up into the hysteria we're supposed to maintain even though not much has happened. He leads with Sharpiegate, though Sharpiegate is a monument to how little can be found to throw at Trump these days. What to do? We can vote him out of office in 14 months’ time. But he could end the world in seven and a half seconds. There’s also the question of whether he’ll willingly leave. Can you imagine the lengths he will go to win? Will he get Russia to do more dirty work? Instruct the justice department to arrest his opponent? Issue an executive order banning anyone not born in the US from voting? Start another war? Reich's imaginationland is pretty weird. But I guess articles like this need to be written. There's a market for it. I wonder how big, though. Personally, I've never liked Trump (other than that I enjoy his humor and jolliness), but the Tr...