Happy Hour Roundup

* Spencer Hsu reports that President Trump has lost yet again in a court case seeking to keep his tax returns secret:

A federal judge in Washington dismissed President Trump’s lawsuit seeking to block the House Ways and Means Committee from using a recently enacted New York law to request his state tax returns, saying that for now the case belongs before a judge in New York.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols injected new urgency into Trump’s effort to shield his state tax records from Congress.

The House panel, chaired by Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-Mass.), has not requested Trump’s state returns. Trump’s attorneys filed the lawsuit in July preemptively, arguing that without an emergency court order blocking a congressional request, his New York returns might be disclosed before the president’s opposition could be heard in court.

Trump has lost every single ruling in these multiple cases, and his only hope is that the Supreme Court will save him in the end.

* Ben Protess, Andrew E. Kramer, Michael Rothfeld, and William K. Rashbaum report that Rudy’s goons are talking:

Not long before the Ukrainian president was inaugurated in May, an associate of Rudolph W. Giuliani’s journeyed to Kiev to deliver a warning to the country’s new leadership, a lawyer for the associate said.

The associate, Lev Parnas, told a representative of the incoming government that it had to announce an investigation into Mr. Trump’s political rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., and his son, or else Vice President Mike Pence would not attend the swearing-in of the new president, and the United States would freeze aid, the lawyer said.

The claim by Mr. Parnas, who is preparing to share his account with impeachment investigators, challenges the narrative of events from Mr. Trump and Ukrainian officials that is at the core of the congressional inquiry. It also directly links Mr. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, to threats of repercussions made to the Ukrainians, something he has strenuously denied.

Parnas is, to put it mildly, not a particularly credible source unless he has some further evidence. But it does show that he’s not going to keep his mouth shut to protect his pal Rudy, let alone Trump.

* Margaret Sullivan tells the press how they can cover impeachment without screwing it up.

* James Downie unpacks the rhetorical shell game Republicans are playing on impeachment.

* Kurt Bardella explains how the rules on impeachment that Trump is so angry about were written by Republicans.

* Perry Bacon Jr. explains how Democrats could have a more thoughtful discussion about electability.

* David Leopold explains the stakes in the fight over DACA before the Supreme Court.

* Julian Zelizer looks at how Republicans are going to try to turn the impeachment hearings into a circus, and urges Democrats to find a strategy to counter them.

* Anita Kumar catalogues the millions of dollars Republicans are spending at Trump properties.

* Sean Illing explains how the post-modernists predicted Trump.

* At the American Prospect, I examined how conspiracy thinking has infected the GOP from top to bottom.

* And Katie Shepherd reports on how Donald Trump Jr. went to UCLA to give a speech about how liberals are a bunch of free speech-haters who shout down conservatives, and promptly got shouted down by a bunch of right-wing nutballs.