Lawfare: “According to countless media accounts and President Trump’s own lawyers, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is writing some kind of report on allegations of presidential obstruction of justice. Exactly what sort of report this may be is unclear. But to the extent that Mueller is contemplating a referral to Congress of possible impeachment material, he has two historical models of such documents to draw on. One, the so-called Starr Report, is famous and publicly available. The other is a document most people have never heard of: the “Road Map” that Watergate Special Prosecutor Leon Jaworski sent to Congress in 1974 and that informed its impeachment proceedings, which were already underway.”

“The Road Map was very different from the Starr Report. Where Starr wrote a lengthy narrative, the Road Map was reportedly spare. Where Starr evaluated the legal relevance of the evidence he referred, the Road Map apparently contained no analysis and drew no conclusions. And where the Starr Report was in bookstores worldwide and today is just a Google search away, the Road Map is largely forgotten.”

“There’s a reason for that: The Road Map remains under seal at the National Archives. Kenneth Starr couldn’t read it. You can’t read it. And, remarkably for a document that may be the best model available for his current project, Mueller can’t read it either.”

Associated Press: “The White House seethes with intrigue and backstabbing as aides hunt for the anonymous Deep (state) Throat among them. A president feels besieged by tormentors — Bob Woodward is driving him crazy — so he tends his version of an enemies list, wondering aloud if he should rid himself of his attorney general or the special prosecutor or both.”

“For months, the Trump administration and its scandals have carried whiffs of Watergate and drawn comparisons to the characters and crimes of the Nixon era. But this week, history did not just repeat itself, it climbed out of the dustbin and returned in the flesh.”

Leonard Steinhorn: “Fifty years ago today, one of the fiercest battles of the 1960s took place not in the jungles of Vietnam, but on the streets of Chicago.”

“On Day 3 of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, police clashed violently with antiwar demonstrators before a rapt television audience of 90 million Americans. The Battle of Michigan Avenue, as the episode came to be known, in many ways prefigured the culture wars that dominate American politics today.”

“We are in a sad place in our country’s history.”

— Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN), quoted by Politico.

Ainsley Earhardt proudly recalled on Fox & Friends that the U.S. defeated “communist Japan” in World War II while trying to defend America’s greatness.

Said Earhardt: “We defeated communist Japan… We’re the most generous country in all of the world. Yes, we have our faults, but because of this country, this world is definitely a better place. We are great.”

DailyKos has compiled a fantastic spreadsheet of presidential election results by media market over the last 10 elections.

“What’s very interesting about these presidential/media market numbers is that, unlike congressional districts or legislative districts, media market boundaries don’t change every decade… Media market boundaries follow county lines and stay stationary, so you can track those numbers longitudinally and watch how different parts of the country evolve politically, at a more detailed level than states but at a less granular level than individual counties.”

Frank Rich: “The mood in America is arguably as dark as it has ever been in the modern era. The birthrate is at a record low, and the suicide rate is at a 30-year high; mass shootings and opioid overdoses are ubiquitous. In the aftermath of 9/11, the initial shock and horror soon gave way to a semblance of national unity in support of a president whose electoral legitimacy had been bitterly contested only a year earlier. Today’s America is instead marked by fear and despair more akin to what followed the crash of 1929, when unprecedented millions of Americans lost their jobs and homes after the implosion of businesses ranging in scale from big banks to family farms.”

“It’s not hard to pinpoint the dawn of this deep gloom: It arrived in September 2008, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers kicked off the Great Recession that proved to be a more lasting existential threat to America than the terrorist attack of seven Septembers earlier. The shadow it would cast is so dark that a decade later, even our current run of ostensible prosperity and peace does not mitigate the one conviction that still unites all Americans: Everything in the country is broken.”

“This has never happened before. We’ve had great presidents; we’ve had terrible presidents, Republicans and Democrats; but we’ve never had anything like this — where we have a president who is incapable of telling the truth.”

— Former White House press secretary Joe Lockhart, in an interview on CNN.

Robert Kuttner: “Even states that are heavily Republican have plenty of Democratic voters, not to mention independents and swing voters. So there is no such thing as a ‘red’ state. It’s better and more accurate (and conducive to better understanding) to use terms like ‘Republican-leaning or ‘heavily Democratic.'”

“The current color-coding only dates to the 2000 election. Before 2000, networks did use color-coded maps, but varied them and were more likely to use red for Democrat, blue for Republican. In 2000, Tim Russert began coding Democrats as blue, supposedly to avoid any taint that Democrats were Reds.”

“Whatever the origin of the practice, it’s dumb, sloppy shorthand, with real negative effects. If the mainstream press wants to avoid being a target for Donald Trump’s ‘enemy of the people’ slurs, it can start by cleaning up its own act.”