Senators to Barr: "The shocking action taken by you or your senior staff to seek special protections for Mr. Stone make a mockery of your responsibilities to seek equal justice under the law."

But Barr has done this more than once: he has a habit of subjecting political cases to special review of the prosecutors' actions, looking for excuses to intervene.

Prosecutors in the US have been known to break the law so as to make trials unfair. It might be a wise policy to give every trial a special review to see if prosecutors violated the defendant's rights — if that were done fairly.

However, special preference for cronies of the conman is not justice. The prosecutors in the Stone case resigned in protest.

Bizarrely, Barr claims that the conman is undermining his authority by tweeting about this. I cannot believe that Barr really wishes to be independent of the conman, or that he is so.

The US government subsidizes some cattle ranching businesses by charging a pittance for letting their cattle graze on public land.

This subsidy to beef promotes eating too much beef, which is bad for individual health and for the survival of a livable climate. It should end.

The UK's policy of budget cuts for everything except enriching the rich has undermined efforts to deradicalize terrorists.

The use of untrustworthy computers and software in elections — in other words, any computers and software — turns any mishap, even an accidental one, into a source of distrust. People worry that the system was "hacked" (that is, cracked).

There is a danger that Russian crackers will break the security and alter the results. But I am more worried about that the voting machine companies or election authorities will alter the results. They can do this without cracking the security — they simply step around it.

*Bloomberg and [the conman] are two sides of the same sinister coin.*