Ben Howe's short film "The Sociopath" is as much about the failures of the Republican Party and the conservative movement (whatever that means anymore) as it is about the terrifying prospect of Donald Trump becoming president.

On the eve of an election that has left Americans deeply divided, wondering how we managed to nominate two of the most loathed candidates in our nation's history, Howe, senior contributing editor at RedState, takes us back to the 2008 Wall Street bailouts and the genesis of the tea party movement. A review of the last eight years puts into context how a movement with the potential to be a real agent for change evolved into an angry nationalist populist movement that propelled Trump to the top of the GOP ticket, enabling him to become the unlikely conduit for the frustration that had been bubbling up in the populace for nearly a decade.

The name of the film, "The Sociopath," gives the impression that the viewer is about to watch 50-minute documentary about Trump's foibles and failures, but don't let the name (or the length of the film) deter you. While a fair amount of time is given to Trump's unfitness to be president—the compilation of his nuclear proliferation comments near the end should terrify anyone—those segments are woven throughout the compelling story of the last eight years of the conservative movement.

The narrative of the video makes it clear that Trump has been a destructive force, not only for the Republican Party, but for the conservative movement in general, in no small part because he has agitated—and in turn been buoyed—by the worst elements of the fringe right. This first became evident in 2012, when Trump flirted with a presidential run.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/2016/11/06/ben-howes-the-sociopath-explains-what-just-happened-to-your-country/1/

Donald J. Trump is not sleeping much these days.

Aboard his gold-plated jumbo jet, the Republican nominee does not like to rest or be alone with his thoughts, insisting that aides stay up and keep talking to him. He prefers the soothing, whispery voice of his son-in-law.

He requires constant assurance that his candidacy is on track. “Look at that crowd!” he exclaimed a few days ago as he flew across Florida, turning to his young press secretary as a TV tuned to Fox News showed images of what he claimed were thousands of people waiting for him on the ground below.

And he is struggling to suppress his bottomless need for attention. As he stood next to the breakfast buffet at his golf club in Doral, Fla., eyeing a tray of pork sausages, he sought to convey restraint when approached by a reporter for The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/07/us/politics/donald-trump-presidential-race.html

The Observer view on the high court ruling on Brexit and parliament

It has become painfully clear since June’s vote to leave the European Union that Theresa May’s government and its supporters have little or no idea where the country is heading. Lacking a plan or a shared philosophy, they are united by an arbitrary and destructive rush to the exit. Their hysterical reaction to last week’s unanimous high court ruling that Britain cannot quit the EU without parliament’s consent also reveals extraordinary ignorance about where we, as a country, have come from. It is dismaying that those who campaigned so passionately to reclaim British sovereignty appear not to have the first idea about their country’s long-established constitutional arrangements.

It is a fundamental principle of British democracy that parliament is sovereign. Not the government. Not the executive or a self-selecting clique within it. Certainly not this prime minister, who lacks a personal mandate. Sovereign power resides with our elected, representative parliament. This state of affairs did not come about by chance. A power struggle between the crown and its subjects raged almost unceasingly in the centuries following Magna Carta. The proposition that the monarch cannot rule without parliament’s consent lay at the heart of England’s serial 17th-century civil wars. The question was settled by the parliamentarians’ victory at the battle of Worcester in 1651. Parliament’s ascendancy was legally established in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, which spawned the landmark Bill of Rights.

It is also a long-established fact of British constitutional life that the country’s senior judges do not make domestic law. Their independent role is to interpret laws agreed by parliament, say what they mean and how and if they may be legally implemented. When Britain joined what was then the EEC, the European Communities Act, passed by parliament in 1972, incorporated many European laws into domestic law. Thus it is both illogical and ignorant to castigate the high court for doing its job and stating the constitutionally obvious: that having passed the act, only parliament can override it by consenting to activate article 50 of the Lisbon treaty.

Yet castigating the judges and by extension, anybody who has the effrontery to agree with them, is exactly what the hard Tory Brexiters and their accomplices in the lie factories of Fleet Street have resorted to with a venom, vindictiveness and vituperation remarkable even by their standards. The will of the people has been thwarted by an “activist” judiciary. These bewigged, closet Remainers, members of the fabled “well-heeled liberal metropolitan elite”, are “enemies of the people”, they shriek. Some of these sleaze-peddlers even dipped into homophobia, highlighting the sexual orientation of one of the judges. Inexcusable.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/06/high-court-ruling-brexit-not-sabotaging-parliamentary-democracy-best-deal-britain