Americans love nothing more than a tantalizing fall-from-grace story. Yet, they seem curiously unmoved by the unfolding tragedy of Paul Manafort. Perhaps because he, like so many of the other young Republican zealots trained in the House of Reagan, was from the beginning a man unadorned by any detectable sheen of grace.

Manafort is what might rather antiseptically be called “a fixer.” Someone you call when you’re in political trouble. Someone who’ll only answer the phone if you’re in deep trouble and you’ve got deep pockets. As far as anyone can tell, this career as an influence peddler was what Manafort intended for himself when he set off for Georgetown University in 1967. When other students were mobilizing against the war, Manafort was already plotting ways to capitalize on global slaughter. Any war, anywhere. More

I’m almost tempted to feel sorry for the campus-town Democrats I know, some of whom still have Obama bumper stickers on the back of their Volvo and Priuses.  Every day brings a new horrible outrage from the noxious orange-tinted beast who drags his knuckles though the White House, sending liberals into new fits of rage and despair.  They live on the fumes of hope that their great bete noir, Donald Trump, will be removed from office prior to the next election. More

So we’ve finally seen some of the social media ads which we are told skewed the entire election in 2016 and constituted a key part of the internet assault on America launched by Vladimir Putin’s “troll army.” Scary stuff blazoned across front pages and screen scrolls everywhere. But before going on, perhaps we should find out what makes a social media account part of Putin’s invasion force?

Well, according to Twitter, it is ANY account created in Russia. Or any account where the user has a Russian email address. Or if their name contains Cyrillic characters. Or if they ever tweet in Russian.  Or if they have ever logged in from any Russian IP address — even a single time. Twitter says: “We considered an account to be Russian-linked if it had even one of the relevant criteria.” More