‘You did it’: Ed Orgeron calls LSU team ‘players-driven program’ during White House visit

LSU quarterback Joe Burrow presented President Donald Trump with a No. 45 LSU jersey and thanked him for hosting the 2019 National Championship team.

LSU quarterback Joe Burrow presented President Donald Trump with a No. 45 LSU jersey and thanked him for hosting the 2019 National Championship team.

‘Only Gritty is above the law’ becomes Philadelphia rallying cry for Trump impeachment

Flyers mascot Gritty has become a symbol for the Philadelphia left.

President Donald Trump will most likely be impeached by the United States House of Representatives today, following an investigation that found he pressured the Ukrainian government to investigate the son of one of his political rivals, Joe Biden.

From there the impeachment case will go to the Senate, where the Republican majority will most likely vote to acquit. On and on we go.

HOWEVER, there have still been rallies around the country in support of impeachment, including one this week in Philadelphia. There, we saw signs for what has become a rallying cry for the Philadelphia left: “Only Gritty is above the law.”

Gritty, the Flyers mascots, has become an instant folk hero in the city of Philadelphia, and somehow also become a symbol of the anti-fascist movement? (Read the Daily Beast story, because I can’t summarize how this all happened.)

This isn’t exactly a new thing. “Only Gritty is above the law” has been a rallying cry for a while now, with t-shirts being printed already, and the sign showing up at more than a few protests over the last few months.

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Duke women’s, Stanford men’s teams celebrate championships at White House

The Stanford men’s and Duke women’s golf teams celebrated their 2019 national championships at the White House with President Trump.

Before the Stanford men’s and Duke women’s golf teams break for the holidays, they traveled to the nation’s capital to celebrate their respective 2019 national championships.

The Blue Devils and the Cardinal were honored at the White House on Friday along with several other NCAA Championship teams from last year.

Duke won its seventh national title at the Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Arkansas, in May after defeating Wake Forest, 3-2, in match play. Stanford won its ninth title in program history with a 3-2 win in match play over Texas at Blessings.

According to the school, Duke has visited the White House three times, having also received invitations in 2005 and 2007 from President George W. Bush for having won the 2005, 2006 and 2007 NCAA titles under coach Dan Brooks.

Ahead of the White House ceremony on Friday, the teams posted photos from around Washington D.C. and 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. on their respective Twitter accounts.

Here are a few of the best photos:

The LSU football team is getting credit for helping the Louisiana governor win reelection

Yeah, that checks out

President Donald Trump recently spent time campaigning in Louisiana — when he wasn’t paying a $2 million fine for misusing his charitable foundation for his own benefit, or live tweeting his own impeachment hearings — to try to bolster the chance of the Republican candidate for governor there.

That candidate, Eddie Risponse, lost to incumbent John Bel Edwards on Saturday night. And as pundits everywhere reacted to the results, attempting to decipher what it all means for Trump’s influence in the Republican Party moving forward, this spectacular tweet entered the world and I wanted to give it human form and embrace it in the longest of bear hugs.

I’m not gloating over a Democratic win here. We can set aside my own political feelings for a moment. What I love most is that we still, in 2019, know so little about the forces moving our electorate that we’re liable to just give a recent football game the credit — AND THAT MIGHT BE ABSOLUTELY TRUE.

I have no doubt that the people of Louisiana may feel better about, well, everything in the wake of LSU finally beating Alabama at football again. That win has nothing to do with the governor — and everything to do with Coach O and his speeches — but sports is a thing we can all easily grasp and come together around. Public policy? Not so much.

That’s not great for the strength of our democracy, when you think about it, but it’s also not by any means a new phenomenon. Elections have long swung on popularity and general prosperity — whether or not those things were germane in any way.

Of course, former Alabama running back Mark Ingram has already blamed the Crimson Tide’s loss on Trump … so if that logic follows (it doesn’t, but go with me) then it was Trump, in the end, that doomed Republicans in Louisiana — via football, not all the the other stuff being debated on the Sunday morning shows as I type.

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