By Jon Bauer
Herald staff
We learned this week of the job we really wished we had gone to school for: dealing illicit drugs to cephalopods. That and other revelations in the week that wasn’t:
Get those RSVPs in: An attorney for Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when both were students at a prep school in Maryland, said Ford could appear at a Senate hearing next week but not Monday as committee leaders had suggested.
Republican Judiciary Committee members are keen to wrap up the confirmation process soon as committee chairman Chuck Grassley’s parents are out of town and Chuck has this sweet party planned for Friday night.
And Iceland, we assume, will pay? Spain’s foreign minister revealed a discussion he had with President Trump during a visit in June in which Trump recommended that Spain build a wall across the length of Africa’s Sahara Desert to combat the flow of refugees into Spain. A few complications: Spain holds no territory in the Sahara; the desert runs 3,000 miles east to west; and it’s on a separate continent.
We know what you’re thinking, Mr. President, but China’s already got one.
It’s just a ‘nother brick in the wall: Meanwhile, President Trump blasted a spending plan pushed by Senate Republicans, demanding to know, “where is the money for Border Security and the WALL.”
Just thinking out of the box here, Mr. President, but get China to import theirs and slap a tariff on every brick. The wall pays for itself.
Eight Arms to Hold You: Researchers studying neuroscience have released a study that shows that the drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy, affects octopi in a way similar to how it affects humans, making them more social, even inducing hugging and “cuddly behavior.”
Never mind what inspired scientists to dose an octopus with the “love drug;” don’t they know how dangerous this is, to create something that’s four times as “handsy” as your average male prep school student from Maryland?
Not again: A recent poll by Hill.TV and the Harris X polling firm shows that if the candidates in the 2016 presidential election were on the ballot today, Hillary Clinton would again win the popular vote, this time with 41 percent to Donald Trump’s 36 percent.
The remaining 23 percent beat the pollsters senseless with their own clipboards.
Check the Keebler cookie package? President Trump continued his attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, criticizing Sessions on a lack of movement on immigration and border issues and Sessions’ earlier decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. “I don’t have an attorney general. It’s very sad,” Trump said in an interview with Hill. TV.
Leaping into action, the Justice Department has begun a search for Sessions, placing his photo on milk cartons that ask, “Have you seen me?”
Hand me my glasses: While U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell remains favored to win re-election as the junior senator from Washington this fall, she is facing a recognizable opponent in Susan Hutchison, a former Seattle TV news anchor. Cantwell is running for re-election in a reliably blue state where a Republican hasn’t won a Senate seat since Slade Gorton’s 1994 re-election.
Hutchison, we’re assuming, is running as a Republican, judging by the very small R that appears after her name on her campaign signs, which either indicates her political party or that “Hutchison” is a registered trademark.
Jon Bauer: jbauer@heraldnet.com.
Correction: An earlier version of this column ommitted Slade Gorton’s re-election to the Senate in 1994.
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