Mens rea is a Latin phrase meaning “guilty mind.”  It’s the part of an offense that means the person knew for a fact that he was committing a crime.  (If I am light on here, you lawyers jump in and explain more.)

When Rudy Giuliani said that Trump did not commit a crime when he paid off the adult film stars, he’s lying.  So then Giuliani tried to say that Trump did not realize that paying off the women with campaign funds was a campaign violation.

Oops.

… Trump gave sworn statements years ago that indicate he has an extensive knowledge of campaign finance laws, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday, a key factor in whether or not prosecutors could successfully pursue a case against him over certain payments during the 2016 election.

This is a big damn deal.

It has not been a good week for Giuliani.  He is dancing on the head of a pin today.

“I was wrong if I said it,” Giuliani told CNN’s Dana Bash. “I haven’t seen the quote, but I probably meant to say there was never a deal, much less a signed one.”

All Paul Ryan had to do was be just a little bit better than John Boehner.  Just a little bit. That’s all he had to do not go down as the worst Speaker of the House ever.

Nope. Couldn’t do it.

He leaves behind a mess. A damn mess, I tell you.

On the Truth-O-Meter, he scores in the negative numbers, which is hard to do when Trump’s around seeking that title for himself.

Vanity Fair says, “Ryan Laments Not Screwing Over More Poor People On His Way Out the Door.”

John Nichols reports, “Paul Ryan sends a shiver down Scrooge’s spine.”

Ezra Klein saddles Paul Ryan with giving us massive debt with his tax cuts for the rich.

Vox’s Ezra Klein says that retiring House Speaker Paul Ryan’s legacy can be summed up in one number: $343 billion. “That’s the increase between the deficit for fiscal year 2015 and fiscal year 2018— that is, the difference between the fiscal year before Ryan became speaker of the House and the fiscal year in which he retired.”

Richard North Patterson, in the Boston Globe, offers an explanation.

Ryan’s big ideas ossified in college — that heady time of imbalance between intellectual self-confidence and one’s actual experience of life. Most of us recover; Ryan did not. Thus his distressingly attenuated enthusiasm for the novels of Ayn Rand.

My friend Thelma sums it all up, “that boy is meaner than ten acres of snakes.”

All he had to do was be just a little bit better than John Boehner. That’s not a high bar.

Y’all, Thelma came back from lunch today and cheerfully told us that Trump had banned bump stocks.

“However,” she cautioned, “I wouldn’t get too excited.  I think he believes that bump stocks are what’s causing the stock market to crash”.

Probably.

Y’all, if it wasn’t raining right now at the beauty salon, my hair would catch on fire.  By gawd, this already has steam coming out my ears.

All of the ethics complaints filed against Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation proceedings were dismissed on Tuesday after a panel of federal judges concluded that Kavanaugh is no longer covered by the judiciary’s disciplinary process.

All 83 complaints were dismissed because the ethics code that applies to the judiciary does not apply to Supreme Court justices.

The Washington Post is almost as mad as I am.

Okay, so figure this out. The Supreme Court, who insure the rule of law and that no man is above the rule of law, is … you guessed it, above the rule of law.

I guess it kinda like the Pope. You become infallible when you become Pope.  And, we know how well that worked out.

Guys, this will only be of interest to Texans.  It’s the six Texas political players who lost power this year.  You’ll be glad to know that only two of the six are Democrats and they both fully deserve it.

I agree with the list but I would have added the Castro Brothers.  The clunking sound they made by sitting out this election is still ringing in the ears of many Texas Democrats.  And one thing about Texas Democrats – we dance with those who brung us.

… is Texas State Senator Dr. Charles Schwertner, a heavy duty defender of family values.

The University of Texas at Austin has released some redacted text messages that Schwertner sent to a UT grad student that are at best described as “lewd.”

In September, the Austin American-Statesman broke the news that Schwertner was being investigated by the University of Texas, after a student complained he sent lewd text messages including apparent photos of his genitals.

After the September release of the information that he was under investigation, Schweriner denied sending the texts but, you know, he sent them.   He was reelected in November because stuff like this only counts if a Democrat does it.