that – Page 8 – Smoking-Jackets

Government watchdog to scrutinize security expenses of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago trips

In a letter to Rep. Elijah Cummings, top Democrat on the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, the Government Accountability Office said Monday it would begin the inquiry into Trump’s Mar-a-Lago visits “shortly,” after Cummings and Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Sheldon Whitehouse and Tom Udall requested the probe.

The scope of the inquiry will include how classified information is protected at the private club, what type of security measures are taken to screen “individuals with access to Mar-a-Lago” and what measures are in place “to ensure charges for travel-related expenses in connection with providing protection for presidential trips to Mar-a-Lago are fair and reasonable.”

The government watchdog will also look into whether Trump is keeping his promise to take any profits made at his hotels from foreign governments and transfer them to the US Treasury. Trump’s lawyer promised at a news conference in January that, in an effort to avoid conflict of interest, he wouldn’t keep such profits.

“He is going to voluntarily donate all profits from foreign government payments made to his hotels to the United States Treasury,” said Sheri Dillon, Trump’s tax attorney. “This way it is the American people who will profit.”

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.

The watchdog inquiry comes as Democrats raise questions about the costs and security questions that comes with Trump’s frequent trips to Mar-a-Lago, a private club he has owned since 1985 and a home he has visited for six weekends since becoming president in January.

Variations in each trip make it difficult to estimate how much it actually costs for Trump to spend weekends in Florida. But a 2016 GAO report about a four-day trip President Barack Obama took to Florida in 2013 found the total cost to the Secret Service and Coast Guard was $3.6 million.

Security concerns were heightened in February when Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appeared to be strategizing over how to respond to a North Korean missile test while having dinner in plain sight on Mar-a-Lago’s candlelit patio.

“We have accepted this request to review security and site-related travel expenses related to the President’s stays outside the White House at Mar-a-Lago,” Chuck Young, managing director for public affairs at GAO, told CNN Tuesday.

Young said there is no time frame yet for their review, but that they will first work to “determine the full scope of what we will cover and the methodology to be used.”

“Until that is complete, we don’t have any projected dates,” Young said. “We handled it as we do all requests, from either side of the aisle, using our standard protocols.”

The GAO inquiry comes as Democratic Sens. Udall, Whitehouse, Jack Reed and Tom Carper introduced legislation in the Senate that would require the White House to publish a list of people who visit Mar-a-Lago. Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, introduced the same legislation in the House.

The Making Access Records Available to Lead American Government Openness Act — or Mar-a-Lago Act, for short — would treat the Florida club like the White House, where a log of visitors is required.

The act would allow for very few exceptions, including visits that would spark security concerns and “purely personal” visitors.

Bill O’Reilly apologizes for racially charged joke

During an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” O’Reilly reacted to a clip of Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) delivering a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives.

“I didn’t hear a word she said,” O’Reilly said of Waters. “I was looking at the James Brown wig.”

“If we have a picture of James Brown — it’s the same wig,” he added.

The remarks were widely denounced as both racist and sexist on Twitter, where O’Reilly’s name was trending Tuesday morning and afternoon.

In a statement Tuesday afternoon, O’Reilly expressed regret for the remarks.

“As I have said many times, I respect Congresswoman Maxine Waters for being sincere in her beliefs,” he said. “I said that again today on Fox & Friends calling her ‘old school.’ Unfortunately, I also made a jest about her hair which was dumb. I apologize.”

The top rated host on cable news, O’Reilly actually drew some pushback before he even left the “Fox & Friends” set.

While one of the program’s male co-hosts, Brian Kilmeade, laughed heartily at O’Reilly’s comment, the lone female host — Ainsley Earhardt — stepped in to back Waters.

“I have to defend her on that,” Earhardt said. “You can’t go after a woman’s looks. I think she’s very attractive.”

“I didn’t say she wasn’t attractive,” O’Reilly said. “I love James Brown. But it’s the same hair!”

He later called Waters a “sincere individual” and said she should be commended for speaking her mind.

“Whatever she says she believes,” O’Reilly said. “She’s not a phony, and that’s old school.”

The congresswoman’s office declined to comment.

As clips of O’Reilly’s remarks made the rounds online, some media watchdogs noted that Waters found herself on the receiving end of another racially charged remark from a different Fox News personality years earlier.

In 2012, Fox host Eric Bolling said that Waters should “step away from the crack pipe.”

O’Reilly himself has faced charges of racism and sexism in the past. And in his bid for laughs, he has been known to crack wise about the physical appearance of some high-profile women.

At a comedy program in Long Island in 2015, O’Reilly made fun of the weight of both Rosie O’Donnell and Hillary Clinton.

In his joke about the former secretary of state, O’Reilly imagined a farcical scenario wherein the Clinton Foundation was forced to return thousands of pantsuits to the Chinese government.

“We don’t want them back,'” O’Reilly said, adopting a fake Chinese accent. “‘They don’t fit anyone here in this country.'”

CNNMoney (New York) First published March 28, 2017: 2:35 PM ET

A ‘fair chance’ airstrike killed civilians in Mosul, US official says

“We have an investigation going on, but our initial assessment … shows we did strike in that area, there were multiple strikes in that area, so is it possible that we did that? Yes, I think it is possible,” Lt. Gen. Stephen Townsend told reporters Tuesday.

Townsend, commander of Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve, said the US has sent experts to the scene of the airstrike in west Mosul to investigate allegations of civilian casualties.

He said investigators are assessing whether ISIS was fighting from the building with civilians in order to “lure” the US “deliberately, or they were just using them as human shields to try to protect their fighting position.”

“We know ISIS were fighting from that position in that building. And there were people that you really can’t account for in any other way why they would all be there unless they were forced there. So that’s my initial impression, the enemy had a hand in this, and there’s also a fair chance our strike had some role in it,” Townsend said.

On Monday, a senior Iraqi health official said 112 bodies had been pulled from the site of a March 17 US-led coalition airstrike in west Mosul.

Both the Iraqi and US defense departments have launched investigations into possible civilian deaths in airstrikes between March 17 and 23.

ISIS’ last stronghold in Iraq

US and Iraqi forces have been trying to regain control of Mosul — Iraq’s second-largest city — from ISIS since October.

ISIS had a firm grip on Mosul since 2014, but suffered a huge blow when Iraqi security forces took control of eastern Mosul in January.

But the arduous fight for western Mosul continues.

CNN’s Arwa Damon, reporting from western Mosul, said the destruction is widespread. But many families couldn’t escape because ISIS has been using civilians as human shields.

She said it’s not surprising many civilians would be packed in one place.

“In an effort to protect themselves, a lot of families would cram into homes that they believed would be the sturdiest,” Damon said. “But as the fighting pushed forward, as airstrikes were called in, there have been significant civilian casualties.”

Sean Spicer’s shameful scapegoating

One of the alleged assailants was an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala. “I think part of the reason the President has made illegal immigration and crackdown such a big deal is because of tragedies like this,” Spicer said.

If the allegations in the Rockville case are true, they represent a horrific case of sexual assault. Nothing more, nothing less. The alleged incident should not be conflated with the immigration debate and should not be manipulated for political purposes. The fact is, immigration status actually has little to do with violent crime.

Asked about the Rockville High case at a press briefing, Spicer said, “The President recognizes that education is a state-run and a local-run issue but I think it is — it is cause for concern, what happened there. And I think that the city should look at its policies and I think that this is something that authorities are going to have to look at.”

Spicer seems to suggest that the undocumented student accused of raping his classmate did not belong in school. But this is not a matter of any city “policies” that “authorities” should examine. In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that all children, including the undocumented, have a right to a public education.

State laws require young people to be in school (where, in any case, they have a much better chance of avoiding criminal activity to begin with). No one should be criticizing Montgomery County for meeting its legal obligations to students.

What is troubling is how the Trump administration leaps at this chance — and any other like it — to advance the false idea that undocumented immigrants are dangerous criminals. For his address to Congress last month, for example, President Trump invited several people whose family members had been killed by undocumented immigrants. In that speech, the President announced the creation of a new office within the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that will highlight crimes committed by undocumented immigrants. And on Thursday, the Department of Justice released the annual federal justice statistics, with a focus on immigration-related arrests.

However, research has consistently shown that that immigrants, including the undocumented, are associated with lower levels of crime than native-born Americans. Studies by the American Immigration Council, the Marshall Project, the Cato Institute and criminologists all support this conclusion.

So Americans are more likely to be the victim of a crime committed by a fellow citizen than by an undocumented immigrant. The alleged assailant in the Rockville High case is no more representative of all undocumented immigrants than the Border Patrol agent accused of sexually assaulting two sisters is representative of all border patrol agents.

One byproduct of the rhetoric surrounding the Rockville High incident is that Montgomery County Public Schools district, where the school is situated, has been besieged by threatening and xenophobic phone calls, tweets and emails. One caller threatened to burn down the school; another vowed to “shoot the illegals.”

How sad that for so many individuals, their response to reports of an unacceptable act of violence is to threaten more violence. And consider that some of these individuals who are so angry about the sexual assault allegations against an undocumented immigrant may well have supported a President with his own lengthy history of sexual assault allegations.

Yes, perhaps the Rockville High attack might not have happened if the alleged perpetrator had not been in this country without authorization. But we don’t know that — just as we don’t know yet if the allegations are in fact true. If we believe in the presumption of innocence, the cornerstone of our justice system, we should withhold judgment until the case has been tried in a court of law.

In the meantime, the focus of our concern should be our need for safer schools. Although the alleged attack by an undocumented student has generated outrage from everyone from Fox News host Bill O’Reilly to Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, it is not the first such incident.

In the last school year, there were 250 sex-related “serious incidents” in the Montgomery County Public Schools district, 64 of which resulted in calls to police. Should one victim receive more attention because her attacker happened to be undocumented? Of course not. The same holds true for other cases across the country involving students who are victims of sexual assault. Crime is crime, and all of these cases deserve a complete investigation.

The Trump administration is wrong to play the blame game with undocumented immigrants. Crime victims need support, not scapegoats.

Bodies of 2 UN experts found

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said UN peacekeepers discovered the bodies of US citizen Michael Sharp and Swedish national Zaida Catalan on Monday outside the city of Kananga.

Sharp and Catalan were members of the UN Group of Experts on Congo who were investigating large-scale human rights violations in the region.

With them were four Congolese nationals — interpreter Betu Tshintela, driver Isaac Kabuayi and two unidentified motorbike drivers, according to Human Rights Watch.

On March 13, the DRC government announced they had “fallen into the hands of unidentified negative forces,” but did not release further information, HRW said.

Sharp’s father, John Sharp, expressed his sorrow Tuesday on Facebook. “Tonight I have no words except to thank you all for your support and prayers. Maybe words will come in time,” he wrote.

The day before, he posted that he’d been told that two Caucasian bodies had been discovered in a shallow grave in the region, which were highly likely to be that of Catalan and his son.

Ben Wideman, a Mennonite pastor, paid tribute to his college friend Sharp. “Even back in college it was clear that MJ would be a person who would head out to save the world,” he wrote, using Sharp’s nickname. “May we all strive to live out our lives like MJ, working for peace wherever we are called.”

Tributes

In a statement, Guterres said, “Michael and Zaida lost their lives seeking to understand the causes of conflict and insecurity in the DRC in order to help bring peace to the country and its people.”

The UN will be launching an investigation into the cause of their deaths, the statement added, and urged the DRC government to conduct its own investigation. Efforts to find the four Congolese nationals who also went missing should continue, the statement said.

The US’ ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, released a statement offering condolences to the two UN workers’ families.

“It is always difficult to lose a brave American dedicated to service,” Haley’s statement reads. “Michael was working on the front lines of what we try to do at the United Nations every day: find problems and fix them.”

Ida Sawyer, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch said the team’s disappearance reflected a bigger picture of the violence in the Kasai region of the DRC.

“The Human Rights Council should establish a commission of inquiry into abuses in the region as soon as possible. Concerted efforts are urgently needed to address this increasingly desperate situation,” she said.

CNN’s Richard Roth and Joel Williams contributed to this report.

ICE will release DREAMer after 6 weeks

Immigration Judge John Odell granted bond for Ramirez, who has been in custody since early February, a spokesperson from Immigration and Customs Enforcement said.

Ramirez, 23, testified for about 40 minutes during an immigration bond hearing on Tuesday and is expected to post $15,000 bond sometime before his release on Wednesday, said Manny Rivera, the spokesman for his legal team.

Ramirez’ case rattled immigrant rights groups, which have been increasingly nervous about President Donald Trump’s immigration policy including its impact on DREAMers.

The Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, or DREAM Act, was first introduced in 2001 and had been reintroduced in Congress several times, but failed to pass. The bill aimed to create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented children who grew up in the United States.

DREAMers are undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children and can apply to stay in the country as long as they pass background checks. The program established by Obama’s executive order in 2012 is called the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA.

Ramirez came to the US from Mexico with his parents illegally when he was 7. He had twice been granted permission to temporarily live and work in the country under DACA, his lawyers said.

Ramirez was arrested February 10 in Washington during an ICE raid that initially targeted his father.

“Daniel has been in detention for almost two months,” said Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., a member of Ramirez’ legal team. “We are relieved that he will be released and look forward to arguing the merits of this case in federal court.”

Conflicting portrayals of the man

While his lawyers call Ramirez a “law abiding” young father, federal immigration officials have an entirely different label: “self-admitted gang member.”

The government alleges Ramirez told immigration agents he is a gang member, an affiliation that generally disqualifies undocumented immigrants from gaining DACA protection.

But Ramirez’ lawyers filed a lawsuit in federal court, saying he is not a gang member and that immigration agents never had any legal cause to take him to a holding facility where it was alleged to have made the disputed confession.

Meanwhile, advocates hope that Ramirez’ arrest does not indicate that the Department of Homeland Security is proceeding in a new direction for DREAMers.

About 750,000 people have received permission to stay under DACA.

When asked whether DREAMers should be worried, Trump previously told ABC News, “They shouldn’t be very worried. I do have a big heart.”

CNN’s Rosa Flores, Jason Hanna and Ariane de Vogue contributed to this report.

UK PM signs letter to trigger Brexit

The UK voted to withdraw from the EU in a hotly contested and controversial referendum last June, but formal “divorce” proceedings cannot begin until the Prime Minister officially informs Europe that the government is triggering Article 50.

That is expected at 1.30 p.m. Wednesday (7.30 a.m ET) in Brussels, when Tim Barrow, the UK’s permanent representative to the EU, delivers a letter to European Council President Donald Tusk. May was photographed signing the letter on Tuesday night.

On Wednesday, at the same time across the channel in London, May will stand to deliver a statement to the House of Commons, confirming that the Brexit process has begun.

Formal notification will start the clock ticking on two years of talks between the UK and the EU to conclude the terms of Britain’s exit, and establish future relations between the two parties.

If no deal is reached, the UK will effectively “fall out” of the union on March 29, 2019, two years to the day after Article 50 was triggered.

In her speech to UK Parliament, the Prime Minister will urge Britons divided by the referendum campaign to come together and ensure “we are no longer defined by the vote we cast, but by our determination to make a success of the result,” according to extracts released on Tuesday evening.

May will pledge to “represent every person in the whole United Kingdom — young and old, rich and poor, city, town, country and all the villages and hamlets in between. And yes, those EU nationals who have made this country their home.”

And she will say she is determined to create “a truly global Britain that gets out and builds relationships with old friends and new allies around the world.”

The bitterly-fought campaign revealed a deep divide across the country, with strong support for the “Remain” campaign in London, Scotland and Northern Ireland, while “Leave” triumphed in Wales and the English regions.

There are renewed fears Brexit could lead to the break-up of the UK.

Scottish lawmakers have called for a fresh independence referendum, since Scotland voted overwhelmingly in favor of remaining part of the EU. But May has indicated she will turn down the referendum request, insisting “now is not the time” for a vote.

Pessimism about the financial implications of Brexit appears to be spreading, too. Just 29% of British households believe leaving the EU will be good for the UK’s economy, according to a survey by IHS Markit — a drop of 10% since July 2016.

The EU is the UK’s biggest trading partner, and experts have warned that it may take more than two years to come up with a fresh trade deal.

European Council President Tusk is expected to issue a short statement upon receipt of May’s letter, but it is expected he will wait until Friday to make a full response.

The Presidents of the European Parliament and the European Commission, Antonio Tajani and Jean-Claude Juncker and German Chancellor Angela Merkel may address Brexit later Wednesday.

May spoke to Merkel, Tusk and Juncker by phone Tuesday, a day ahead of the official notification.

In separate calls, the four “agreed on the importance of entering into negotiations in a constructive and positive spirit, and of ensuring a smooth and orderly exit process,” a Downing Street spokesperson said.

“They agreed that a strong EU was in everyone’s interests and that the UK would remain a close and committed ally,” the spokesperson added.

CNN’s David Wilkinson contributed to this report.

Trump strips climate change rules

The order represents a clear difference between how Trump and former President Barack Obama view the role the United States plays in combating climate change, and dramatically alters the government’s approach to rising sea levels and temperatures — two impacts of climate change.

Trump said during the signing that the order will “eliminate federal overreach” and “start a new era of production and job creation.”

“My action today is latest in steps to grow American jobs,” Trump added, saying his order is “ending the theft of prosperity.”

A White House official briefed on the plan said Monday the administration believes the government can both “serve the environment and increase energy independence at the same time” by urging the EPA for focus on what the administration believes is its core mission: Clean air and clean water.

More important than regulating climate change, the official said, is protecting American jobs.

“It is an issue that deserves attention,” the official said of climate change. “But I think the President has been very clear that he is not going to pursue climate change policies that put the US economy at risk. It is very simple.”

Tuesday’s order initiates a review of the Clean Power Plan, rescinds the moratorium on coal mining on US federal lands and urges federal agencies to “identify all regulations, all rules, all policies … that serve as obstacles and impediments to American energy independence,” the official said.

Specifically, the order rescinds at least six Obama-era executive orders aimed at curbing climate change and regulating carbon emissions, including Obama’s November 2013 executive order instructing the federal government to prepare for the impact of climate change and the September 2016 presidential memorandum that outlined the “growing threat to national security” that climate change poses.

“The previous administration devalued workers by their policies,” the official said. “We are saying we can do both. We can protect the environment and provide people with work.”

The White House official went on to argue that the best way to protect the environment is to have a strong economy, noting that countries like India and China do less to protect the environment.

“To the extent that the economy is strong and growing and you have prosperity, that is the best way to protect the environment,” the official said.

The executive order also represents the greatest fears climate change advocates had when Trump was elected in November 2016.

“These actions are an assault on American values and they endanger the health, safety and prosperity of every American,” Tom Steyer, the president of NexGen Climate, said in a statement. “Trump is deliberately destroying programs that create jobs and safeguards that protect our air and water, all for the sake of allowing corporate polluters to profit at our expense.”

Andrew Steer, CEO of the World Resources Institute, said that the executive order shows Trump is “failing a test of leadership to protect Americans’ health, the environment and economy.”

Some environmental advocates have already said they plan to take legal action against the Trump administration.

But as much as Democrats and climate advocates will decry it, Trump’s executive order follows the President’s past comments about climate change. Though Trump told The New York Times during the election that he has an “open mind” about confronting climate change, he also once called it a hoax.

“The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive,” Trump tweeted in November 2012.

“I will also cancel all wasteful climate change spending from Obama/Clinton,” Trump said in October 2016.
On Tuesday, ahead of the signing, White House press secretary Sean Spicer declined to say whether Trump still believes climate change is a hoax.

“He does not believe … that there is a binary choice between job creation, economic growth and caring about the environment,” Spicer said. “That’s what we should be focusing on.”

The changes, the official said, do not mean the Trump administration will not look to protect the environment any longer, the official said, but when pressed about the human impact on climate change and Trump’s beliefs, the official was reluctant to say whether all government officials in the Trump White House believe humans cause climate change.

“I think there are plenty of rules on the books already. We will continue to enforce that provide for clean air and clean water. And that is what we are going to do,” the official said. “The President has been very clear that he wants the EPA to stick to that basic core mission that Congress set out for it.”

The changes also reflect the view of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who routinely sued the organization he now leads during his time as the Attorney General of Oklahoma. In an interview with CNBC earlier this month, Pruitt argued incorrectly that carbon dioxide isn’t the “primary contributor” to climate change, a comment that goes against most scientific research.

This executive order is also an attempt by the Trump administration to make good on its promise to bring more coal jobs back. The official said that Obama’s regulations “were not helpful” to the coal industry and these reversals are the President honoring “a pledge he made to the coal industry.”

“We are going to put our coal miners back to work,” Trump said at a March 2017 event in Kentucky. “They have not been treated well, but they’re going to be treated well now.”

He added: “The miners are coming back.”

On Tuesday at the EPA, Trump welcomed a group of miners that attended the signing and said the order was “putting an end to the war on coal.”

It is unclear whether Trump’s order will actually bring back coal jobs, in part, because of market forces like the rise of clean energy that are already putting pressure on the coal industry.

Robert Murray, the CEO of Murray Energy, told CNN in January that coal employment “can’t be brought back to where it was before the election of Barack Obama” because of market pressure.

This story has been updated.

CNN’s Jeremy Diamond contributed to this report.

‘Bones’ star breaks down series’ finale

It was around 5 a.m. on a day back in December when Emily Deschanel closed the door on a 12-year chapter in her life and finally hung up her lab coat as Dr. Temperance Brennan on Fox’s “Bones.”

The previous night was a lot more than a typical day in the lab, however.

The cast and crew of “Bones” were on location filming the climax of their series finale episode — an intense scene where Brennan and Booth (David Boreanaz) take on vengeful killer Mark Kovac (Gerard Celasco).

Boreanaz was at the helm, serving as director on the action-filled night, full of shoot outs, running, falling, and, eventually, a lot of tears.

Deschanel had planned to come back the next night for a few more scenes, but a half hour before they were set to depart set, Boreanaz told her that he could get everything he needed that evening.

“It was a little bit of a shock,” Deschanel said. “It was emotional. I burst into tears and choked up and said goodbye to people. It was really strange — and then it took two hours to drive home.”

How to say goodbye

It was a bit of a long goodbye for “Bones.”

Fox announced in February 2016 that the show was renewed for what would be a 12th and final season — “a good run,” Deschanel calls it.

The show’s final episode aired Tuesday.

Showrunners had time to plan one final arc and a proper farewell for loyal fans, who’d followed the show to 23 different time slots over the years.

Executive producer Jonathan Collier, who’s been with the show for six seasons, wanted to bring character stories full circle with something impactful. So he and fellow showrunner Michael Peterson looked to the past to find the show’s future.

In a Season 1 episode written by longtime executive producer Stephen Nathan they found their answer — a storyline that recalled Booth’s time as a sniper and a particular instance where he killed a boy’s warlord father during his son’s birthday party.

“We thought this would be a great way to show an emotional journey for Booth for the show,” Collier told CNN. “He finds healing and redemption.”

Kovac was killed in the series finale.

“[Booth] reached a place with Brennan where he’s no longer in pain,” Collier said of the finale. “Or he at least has the tools to deal with his pain.”

Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz in the series finale episode of “Bones.”

For Brennan, the episode contained another twist. Following a lab explosion in the penultimate episode, she lost the scientific, crime-solving abilities for which she’s become famous. Doing this allowed the writers to show how much she’s grown, Collier said.

Though the character identified herself purely by her abilities in the early seasons, the last 12 years have proven to Brennan that she’s so much more than that.

“She defines herself by her abilities, by this enormous ability she has and this brilliance and this capability, and what happens when you strip that away?” he said. “Maybe something even more important remains….We wanted to have that emotional wholeness at the end.”

Deschanel was fascinated by the concept and encouraged the writers to explore the idea to its deepest depths.

The finale has an especially emotional scene where Booth and Brennan share a sweet conversation in the office about how much Brennan — with her abilities or not — means to Booth.

“I thought they did a great job coming up with a story that really kind of wraps up a lot of storylines and characters,” she said. “It’s dramatic but also satisfying in many ways. I thought they did an amazing job.”

Is this REALLY the end?

The finale also set up all of the show’s favorites for the future.

Camille (Tamara Taylor) and Arastoo (Pej Vahdat) adopted three children. She took a six month leave to help her children settle in.

In her absence, Hodgins (T. J. Thyne) was appointed temporary director — or “king of the lab,” one of the show’s running jokes.

Aubrey (John Boyd) got a promotion that would keep him in D.C. instead of moving across the country. And Angela (Michaela Conlin) wrote a children’s book.

The writers solved a long-time mystery, as well — the meaning of “447,” a number that has popped up repeatedly on the series and has been the subject of fan speculation.

In the closing scene of the final episode, a scene between Brennan and Booth reveals the number is essentially a metaphor for perseverance.

“Oh, that was [decided] up until the end,” Collier said, laughing. “We were trying to figure it out. We all had different ideas for what it should be. All of us weighed in and it was going on for a long time.”

The goal was to leave viewers with a sense of peace and hopefulness, Collier said.

“The characters are okay; they’re well and good,” he said. “The big thing, too, is I really hope it’s a positive message that adversity can be overcome. Everyone has problems in their lives. These people have a problem every week, and a huge problem at the end. But they’re together and they overcome it.”

But is this really the end for “Bones?”

The cast and producers have been open about the fact that the decision to end the show was prompted by the network — but there’s no hard feelings. And no reason to close the door on a possible return of some kind in the future, said Deschanel.

“I would not rule it out,” she said.

Why the right is angry at Tomi Lahren

Lahren, a 24-year-old known for her video monologues delivered in a brash, self-aggrandizing tone, rose to quick prominence within right-wing media. She’s young, blond, opinionated and conservative, and unafraid to use sex appeal as a cudgel. “It seems feminists are all about freedom of expression so long as the females are overweight or transgender,” she says in one video.

Being a young, attractive, conservative woman also gave her cover to make the kind of startlingly cruel comments that would have sunk other careers — suggesting, for example, that Syrian refugees fleeing for their lives (and the lives of their children) were cowards who wouldn’t stay to defend their country. “Americans stand up and fight for faith, family and freedom,” reads the text overlaid on an image of herself, which she tweeted. “Syrians run away.”

But now, after a meteoric rise, Lahren has crashed to earth. She was suspended from the conservative website The Blaze, which features her videos. According to a report in the New York Post, she has been “banned permanently.” The reason: she came out on national television as pro-choice. “You know what? I’m for limited government, so stay out of my guns, and you can stay out of my body as well,” Lahren said.

Lahren, apparently, didn’t get the memo that the American right is happy with sexy women as long as those women appear sexy to appeal to men; women who have the nerve to think they have the right to their own sexual and reproductive choices, well, they are not so welcome in the GOP.

Conservative men used Lahren as the perennial example of the sexually appealing right-wing woman, as a way to imply or outright say that liberal women are ugly. That jab, of course, rests on the idea that women are only as valuable as they are hot, a standard that clearly doesn’t apply for men — Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, or most of the other Republican men populating the White House. But Lahren was happy to play along.

Where she went wrong was in thinking it was only fair that she had some say over her sexuality. As an attractive young woman, Lahren was a useful tool for the old white men who run the right-wing media when she said all the right things — when she was a vicious ideologue, cute as a college cheerleader.

That she’s not following the playbook of “sexy young thing” looking to transition to “sacrificial pro-life mother” surely enrages the men who only want to hear women talk as long as they want to have sex with them — or as long as they’re making excuses for misogyny while putting a pretty face on brutal policies.

Let’s compare: Donald Trump was pro-choice before he was anti-abortion; it’s hard to imagine this level of outrage at a right-wing man who says he thinks freedom extends to women. But men on both sides of the aisle are given more freedom to be iconoclasts. Perhaps Lahren thought her status gave her a little more freedom to speak her mind and assert her basic rights. It’s clear now that she didn’t know her role, and the same men who helped usher her to fame are now keen to shut her up.

Lahren is a successful young woman who probably realizes that the right to decide for herself when to have children will shape the course of the rest of her life — her professional future, her economic prospects, her education, her romantic life, her health. So it is for every woman, which is why legal and accessible contraception and abortion are crucial, nonnegotiable pillars of women’s freedom. Lahren notes that her support of abortion rights comes from her commitment to freedom — “I can’t sit here and be a hypocrite and say I’m for limited government but I think the government should decide what women do with their bodies,” she said.

It turns out that for all their talk about freedom and liberty, conservatives aren’t willing to fully extend those values to women. And for all their talk about free speech and all the complaints that liberal institutions shut down conservative views, they’ve been awfully quick to try and muzzle Lahren for the crime of saying she thinks a safe, legal medical procedure that has revolutionized women’s rights in America should remain legal.

Imagine the howling on the right if a liberal publication suspended a commentator for saying they morally opposed abortion — it would be used as further proof of leftist intolerance. It turns out that when it comes to free speech being used to support women’s rights, the right is pretty closed-minded.

That there’s room in the Republican Party and in conservative media for a man who has bragged about sexually assaulting women, another who was charged with domestic violence, and a whole room full of men who are happy to take away health care for pregnant women (and the list goes on), but not for a woman who says she gets to decide what happens inside her own uterus, tells you everything you need to know about conservatives and women. If only Lahren had figured out sooner that it’s not feminists who are the problem — it’s the whole conservative ideology she pushes.