2.12 Stephen Miller on “Face the Nation”: “To say we’re in control would be a substantial understatement.”
2.10 Jim Vanderhei and Sara Fischer in Axios: “Our brains have been literally swamped and reprogrammed. On average, we check our phones 50 times each day — with some studies suggesting it could three times that amount. We spend around 6 hours per day consuming digital media. As a result, the human attention span has fallen from 12 seconds to eight seconds since 2000, while the goldfish attention span is nine seconds.”
2.10 Kathleen Parker in the Washington Post: “Good news: In two years, we’ll have a new president. Bad news: If we make it that long. My “good” prediction is based on the Law of the Pendulum. Enough Americans, including most independent voters, will be so ready to shed Donald Trump and his little shop of horrors that the 2018 midterm elections are all but certain to be a landslide — no, make that a mudslide — sweep of the House and Senate. If Republicans took both houses in a groundswell of the people’s rejection of Obamacare, Democrats will take them back in a tsunami of protest. Once ensconced, it would take a Democratic majority approximately 30 seconds to begin impeachment proceedings selecting from an accumulating pile of lies, overreach and just plain sloppiness. That is, assuming Trump hasn’t already been shown the exit.”
2.9 Chris Cilizza in the Post: “Confrontation is what energizes the bases of the two parties. And energizing those bases is what politicians spend most of their time focusing on these days. Unfortunately, the byproduct of all that confrontation is an increasing cynicism and disgust among the large swaths of people who aren’t part of either base. The election of President Trump seems to have proven that those people don’t matter all that much, that the way to win is to relentlessly vilify the other side so that your people are mad enough at the other side to turn out to vote. Rubio is positioning himself as the counterweight to that strategy, betting big on the idea that the Trump era won’t last forever. It’s a noble effort although one with a very uncertain future.
2.9 Federal appeals court eviscerates Trump’s travel order, calling it poorly drafted, overly broad and overreaching. Will he come back to court, or issue tighter, more defensible entrance restrictions for entrance by migrants?
2.9 The Atlantic: “Yesterday, the president of the United States lashed out at Nordstrom on Twitter for dropping his daughter’s clothing line, then moved on to continuing his attacks on the federal judges reviewing his travel ban. Then, this morning, Trump scolded Senator John McCain for describing the recent U.S. raid in Yemen as a “failure.” It all sounds petty, but there are greater implications: Trump’s highly personal and politicized attack on the judiciary is unprecedented even by Andrew Jackson, whose infamous clash with the Supreme Court had constitutional grounds. The attack on McCain frames public review of military action as disloyalty. And Kellyanne Conway took the Nordstrom affair a step further by telling TV viewers to “go buy Ivanka’s stuff”—almost certainly a violation of ethics laws, and a worrying enlistment of White House staff in Trump’s ever-growing web of conflicts of interest.”
2.9 Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch told Senator Blumenthal that Trump‘s criticism of the judiciary was “disheartening” and “demoralizing”
2.9 Washington Post: “[Spicer] took an extraordinary position Wednesday, saying anyone who questioned the success of the raid in Yemen that led to the death of a Navy SEAL was doing a disservice to the SEAL’s memory. The target was McCain. Then NBC News tracked down McCain (R-Ariz.) to get his response to Spicer. And it was something. “Many years ago when I was imprisoned in North Vietnam, there was an attempt to rescue the POWs,” McCain began, mentioning details of his biography that everyone knows but McCain included for emphasis. He continued: “Unfortunately, the prison had been evacuated. But the brave men who took on that mission and risked their lives in an effort to rescue us prisoners of war were genuine American heroes. Because the mission failed did not in any way diminish their courage and willingness to help their fellow Americans who were held captive. Mr. Spicer should know that story.”
2.9 Snow Day! 10-12 inches.
2.8 Ted Cruz on Fox News: “The Democrats are the party of the Ku Klux Klan. You look at the most racist — you look at the Dixiecrats, they were Democrats who imposed segregation, imposed Jim Crow laws, who founded the Klan. The Klan was founded by a great many Democrats.”
2.8 Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank described President Trump as “an asset.” On Wednesday, one of the company’s most highly paid ambassadors, Steph Curry said “I agree with that description, if you remove the ‘et.’ ”
2.8 Mitch McConnell‘s fateful words: “Senator Warren was giving a lengthy speech. She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”
2.6 An attorney for first lady Melania Trump argued in a lawsuit filed Monday that an article falsely alleging that she once worked for an escort service hurt her chance to establish “multimillion dollar business relationships” during the years in which she would be “one of the most photographed women in the world.” The suit — filed Monday in New York Supreme Court, a state trial court, in Manhattan — against Mail Media, the owner of the Daily Mail, said the article published by the Daily Mail and its online division last August caused Trump’s brand, Melania, to lose “significant value” as well as “major business opportunities that were otherwise available to her.” The suit said the article had damaged her “unique, once in a lifetime opportunity” to “launch a broad-based commercial brand.”
2.6 Scott Pelley on CBS News: “Today President Trump told a U.S. military audience there gave been terrorist attacks that no one knows about because the media choose not to report them. It has been a busy day for presidential statements divorced from reality. Mr. Trump said this morning that any polls, that show disapproval of his immigration ban are fake. He singled out a federal judge for ridicule after the judge suspended his ban and Mr. Trump said that the ruling now means that anyone can enter the country. The President’s fictitious claims whether imaginary or fabricated are now worrying even his backers, particularly after he insisted that millions of people voted illegally giving Hillary Clinton her popular vote victory. There’s not one state election official—Democrat or Republican—who supports that claim.”
2.6 Sen. Mitch McCOnnell: “I don’t think there’s any equivalency between the way that the Russians conduct themselves and the way the United States does,” he said, adding: “I’m not going to critique the president’s every utterance, but I do think America is exceptional. America is different. We don’t operate in any way the Russians do. I think there’s a clear distinction here that all Americans understand, and no, I would not have characterized it that way.” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) weighed in on Twitter: “When has a Democratic political activists been poisoned by the GOP, or vice versa? We are not the same as #Putin.” Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) “Let’s be clear: Has the U.S. ever made any mistakes? Of course,” Sasse said. “Is the U.S. at all like Putin’s regime? Not at all. The U.S. affirms freedom of speech. Putin is no friend of freedom of speech. Putin an enemy of freedom of religion. The U.S. celebrates freedom of religion. Putin is an enemy of the free press. The U.S. celebrates free press. Putin is an enemy of political dissent. The U.S. celebrates political dissent and the right for people to argue free from violence about places where our ideas are in conflict.
2.5 Before the Super Bowl, Bill O’Reilly interviews President Trump. “I do respect him [Putin]. Well, I respect a lot of people, but that doesn’t mean I’ll get along with them,” Trump told O’Reilly. O’Reilly pressed on, declaring to the president that “Putin is a killer.” Unfazed, Trump didn’t back away, but rather compared Putin’s reputation for extrajudicial killings with the United States’. “There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers,” Trump said. “Well, you think our country is so innocent?”
2.5 Behind 28-3, Patriots rally and defeat Falcons 34-28 in first overtime Super Bowl. Tom Brady performed in 
spectacular fashion. Julius Edeman made an astonishing catch. Lady Gaga excelled at halftime.
2.5 Bernie Sanders on CNN: “This guy is a fraud. This guy ran for president of the United States saying, ‘I, Donald Trump, I’m going to take on Wall Street. These guys are getting away with murder.’ Then suddenly he appoints all these billionaires, his major financial adviser comes from Goldman Sachs, and now he’s going to dismantle legislation that protects consumers.”
2.5 In an interview with President Trump on Fox News, Bill O’Reilly said “[Putin}’s a killer,” O’Reilly. “There are a lot of killers. You think our country’s so innocent?” Trump replied. Said Gen. Barry McCaffrey: “One could argue that’s the most anti-american statement ever made by the president of the United States, to confuse American values with Putin, who is running a criminal oligarchy, who kills people abroad and at home, who imprisons journalists and takes away business property, who shares it with his former K.G.B. Agents, who invades and seizes crimea in eastern Ukraine.”
2.5 Donald Trump on Twitter:
Just cannot believe a judge would put our country in such peril. If something happens blame him and court system. People pouring in. Bad!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 5, 2017
2.4 Melissa McCarthy plays Sean Spicer on SNL
2.4 President Trump’s personal physician recently revealed that the president takes finasteride, a drug used to combat male-pattern baldness. . . .The constellation of potential [side effects] , sometimes referred to as post-finasteride syndrome, may include sexual, physical and psychological changes. Of these, the sexual side effects are perhaps the most extensively reported. In fact, in 2012, the Food and Drug Administration required the manufacturer to warn that the medication may be associated with “libido disorders, ejaculation disorders, and orgasm disorders that continued after discontinuation of the drug.”
2.3 Kellyanne Conway on Chris Matthews: During a Thursday interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, the counselor to the president defended President Trump’s travel ban related to seven majority-Muslim countries. At one point, Conway made a reference to two Iraqi refugees whom she described as the masterminds behind “the Bowling Green massacre.”
“Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered,” Conway said.
2.2 Paul Krugman in the Times: “Never mind the utter falsity of the claim that bad people are “pouring in,” or for that matter of the whole premise behind the ban. What we see here is the most powerful man in the world blatantly telegraphing his intention to use national misfortune to grab even more power. And the question becomes, who will stop him?. . . In the end, I fear, it’s going to rest on the people — on whether enough Americans are willing to take a public stand. We can’t handle another post-9/11-style suspension of doubt about the man in charge; if that happens, America as we know it will soon be gone.”
2.2 President Trump opened his first appearance at the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington with a prayer for the television ratings of the man who succeeded him as host of “The Apprentice.” “They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place. And we know how that turned out. The ratings went down the tubes,” Trump joked, prompting laughter from the audience. “I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can, for those ratings.”
2.2 Kellyanne Conway on MSNBC: “I bet it’s brand-new information to people that President Obama had a six-month ban on the Iraqi refugee program after two Iraqis came here to this country, were radicalized, and were the masterminds behind the Bowling Green Massacre. Most people don’t know that because it didn’t get covered.”
2.2 The Atlantic: “At the National Prayer Brakfast, in a speech emphasizing the importance of religious liberty, Trump took time to discuss a personal favorite topic: The Apprentice. As he has noted before, the reality TV show, for which he still serves as an executive producer, has seen its ratings decline under its current host (and the former governor of California), Arnold Schwarzenegger, and new name, The New Celebrity Apprentice. Discussing his relationship with Mark Burnett, the creator of The Apprentice and a keynote speaker at the event, Trump emphasized his own success with the show, adding, “They hired a big, big movie star, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to take my place, and we know how that turned out. The ratings went right down the tubes. It’s been a total disaster, and Mark [Burnett] will never bet against Trump again. And I want to just pray for Arnold, if we can, for those ratings.”
2.1 Finished Prussian Blue, by Philip Kerr. Pretty good! Joan Acocella in The New Yorker on the Gunther novels: “Those other novels, by those cleaner-minded people, are about the banality of evil, and good for them. We need to know about that. But Kerr’s books are about the banality of goodness. And if it can be highlighted by disgustingness, then bring on the disgustingness. After all, a banal goodness is all we really require. We’re not all Mother Cabrini or even Ralph Nader. What we need is just the ordinary recoil, the ordinary knowledge that at a certain point people can’t go on looking at their fingernails when there are thieves in the store.”
2.1 Jeremi Suri in The Atlantic: “The latest drafts of executive orders, several of which the president will reportedly sign Friday at the Pentagon, are bold and breathtaking in their reach. They are strategic and transformative. They are also poised to destroy the foundations for the last 70 years of American-led peace and prosperity. The orders question the very ideas of cooperation and democracy, embodying an aggressive commitment to “America First” above all else. So much for the “defense of the free world,” and the “march of freedom”—obvious soft-headed “loser” ideas for the new team of White House cynics. Trump is launching a direct attack on the liberal international order that really made America great after the depths of the Great Depression. It is a system of multilateral trade and alliances that we built to serve our interests and attract others to our way of life. Through the European Recovery Program (the Marshall Plan), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (now the World Trade Organization), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank, among other institutions, the United States led a postwar capitalist system that raised global standards of living, defeated Soviet communism, and converted China to a market economy. Through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in Europe and a web of alliances in Asia and the Middle East, the United States contained aggressive states, nurtured stable allies, and promoted democratic reforms when possible. American power is unmatched around the world because it can work through consensual relations with partners in every region. None of our rivals have as many friends, and none of our rivals can count on as much support abroad.”
2.1 David Rothkopf in the Post: “Bannon is the precisely wrong person for this wrong role. His national security experience consists of a graduate degree and seven years in the Navy. More troubling, Bannon’s role as chairman of Breitbart.com, with its racist, misogynist and Islamophobic perspectives, and his avowed desire to blow up our system of government, suggests this is someone who not only has no business being a permanent member of the most powerful consultative body in the world — he has no business being in a position of responsibility in any government.”
1.29 Taraji P. Henson at the SAG Awards