House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said late Tuesday the U.S. House is holding off on a vote to move forward with opening an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Read the rest

• Trump lawyer’s bank records examined • Witnesses questioned on work for Ukraine mayor • Feds probing efforts to oust U.S. ambassador

Donald Trump's longtime personal attorney Rudy Giuliani is the subject of a federal criminal investigation. Read the rest

The Donald Trump impeachment inquiry is picking up speed. Read the rest

Elizabeth Warren overtook Joe Biden in one nationwide poll and the billionaires are already taking his pulse. Michael Bloomberg (~$50bn net worth) today makes clear his intentions if Biden slips away and the left-leaning Warren seems likely to prevail: Bloomberg keeps talking to allies about running for president.

Mike Bloomberg has indicated to associates in recent weeks that Joe Biden’s recent struggles are making him rethink his decision to stay out of the 2020 Democratic primary, according to people familiar with the discussions

“Bloomberg is in if Biden is out,” says one source. Biden has not indicated any desire to drop out any time soon.

Bloomberg could be in for a showdown with Elizabeth Warren, whether he runs or not, as he has been one of her biggest critics on the Democratic side.

Pete Buttigieg has done better than expected in recent polls and is, if anything, even more Billionaire-friendly than Biden. And there's that old sawhorse about liberals favoring the farthest-right over even the nearest-left. But Bloomberg doesn't have political affiliations, only vehicles. He served three terms as New York's mayor as a Republican and finally as an Independent. His interest in the Democratic primary is simple: he thinks it'd be a cheap ticket to the White House if Biden were gone. Read the rest

The White House Counsel's "crazy, ranty" legal nastygram to House Leader Nancy Pelosi over impeachment was, Noah Shachtman writes, crafted by Trump himself.

Asawin Suebsaeng and Sam Stein, at the Daily Beast:

Trump had also privately consulted on the letter with Rudy Giuliani, his notably pugnacious personal lawyer who is at the center of the Ukraine and Biden-related scandal engulfing the administration. Trump talked to Giuliani about how he and the White House should proceed in fighting back and challenging the legitimacy of the impeachment probe, one of the sources noted. Reached for comment on Thursday evening, the former New York mayor and Trump confidant repeatedly declined to confirm or deny this.

Jorge Luis Escandón Hernández was elected mayor of Las Margaritas, Chiapas after he promised to repair city's rural roads, in a chaotic campaign that included accusations of a "brawl" with his opponent's supporters. Read the rest

This morning I posted that Facebook and Twitter have taken the position that they will accept political ads that contain lies because they don't feel it's in their best interest to fact check claims made in the ads.

Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren put Facebook to the test by running an ad on Facebook falsely claiming that Facebook and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg have publicly announced their endorsement of Trump for president. Facebook said it will let the ad run. “If Senator Warren wants to say things she knows to be untrue, we believe Facebook should not be in the position of censoring that speech,” Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone told CNN.

"Either Facebook doesn't touch the ad and the ad is therefore noteworthy, or they touch the ad and it's noteworthy," Dave Karpf, an associate professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, told CNN. "It's a smart tactical move."

From CNN:

Warren has become one of Facebook's key antagonists after first calling for it and other Silicon Valley giants — such as Amazon, Google and Apple — to be broken up. But her rift with Facebook deepened after leaked audio published by The Verge revealed Zuckerberg fretting about the potential consequences of a Warren presidency.

"If she gets elected president, then I would bet that we will have a legal challenge, and I would bet that we will win the legal challenge," Zuckerberg is heard saying at a companywide meeting. "And does that still suck for us?

I'm old enough to have watched Schoolhouse Rock educational cartoons when they premiered on television. Read the rest

Four or more top U.S. national security officials were so upset by Donald Trump’s attempts to pressure Ukraine for Joe Biden dirt that they spoke to a White House lawyer with their concerns “both before and immediately after President Trump’s July 25 call with that country’s president,” the Washington Post reports tonight citing “U.S. officials and other people familiar with the matter.” Read the rest

Democratic House committee leaders have issued a subpoena to Donald Trump's Energy Secretary Perry for "key documents" as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump. Read the rest

A judge today approved a $1 million bond in property and business for two associates of President Trump’s personal attorney Rudolph Giuliani, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, along with mandatory home confinement and GPS monitoring. Read the rest

An app used by Hong Kong protestors to track security forces there disappeared Wednesday from Apple's app store. Apple says it's being used by criminals to attack police, but given that it very publicly reviewed and approved the app just days ago, the true reason seems obvious: the Chinese government ordered it gone to stymie ongoing pro-democracy demonstrations in the autonomous city-state.

The U.S. tech giant had come under fire from China over the app, with the Chinese Communist Party’s official newspaper calling the app “poisonous” and decrying what it said was Apple’s complicity in helping the Hong Kong protesters.

Apple rejected the crowdsourcing app, HKmap.live, earlier this month but then reversed course last week.

Apple said in a statement that it had began an immediate investigation after “many concerned customers in Hong Kong” contacted the company about the app and Apple found it had endangered law enforcement and residents.

Apple joins a growing list of prominent American companies, including Activision-Blizzard and the NBA, to kowtow to the Chinese government. This year, reports Nikkei, China overtook the U.S. as the world's largest market for consumer goods. Read the rest

Natalie Martinez offers some good advice, which will not be taken, to Fox News: "Maybe read the screen name aloud before you broadcast it to the world."

i'd like to thank the Miami-Dade Public School system for endowing me with the skills necessary to discern this cryptic message

— Natalie Martinez (@natijomartinez) October 9, 2019

Read the rest

As I have stated strongly before, and just to reiterate, if Turkey does anything that I, in my great and unmatched wisdom, consider to be off limits, I will totally destroy and obliterate the Economy of Turkey (I’ve done before!). They must, with Europe and others, watch over...

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 7, 2019

I am unsure which Marvel Universe we are living in. Read the rest