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Steve Helber, Associated Press file

Three weeks into the new presidential administration, many of us are overwhelmed by the constant barrage of bizarre and, frankly, incomprehensible scandals and controversies that have emanated from the White House.

I am nottalking about the ban on visitors from seven Islamic countries, the building of a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, or the appointment of executive branch agency heads who are devoted to abolishing them.

No, I am talking about the far more troubling string of statements issued by the president of the United States, whether in the form of middle-of-the-night tweets or in televised interviews and other public settings, in which easily proven facts are simply misrepresentedor contradicted by absolute and unambiguous untruths, a.k.a. lies: that there were 1.3 million people on the National Mall for the inauguration, that it was the most widely viewed inauguration in U.S. history, and that 3 million illegal immigrants unlawfully cast their vote on Nov.8, apparently all of them voting for Hillary Clinton, that busloads of Massachusetts residents rolled into New Hampshire to cast illegal votes, or that the American crime rate is the highest its been in 45 years.

This is not funny stuff. It is deadly serious. What these statements, and others like them (both during the campaign and since Jan. 20) demonstrate is that the president of the United States is not sane. Read that again, slowly: The president of the United States is not sane.

Now, this may strike many of you as an outlandish, partisan attack on a man with whose policies or positions I disagree. Its not. I disagree with the policies and positions of Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, Mike Pence and many other prominent conservative Republicans. But I would not assert that any one of those men nor George W. Bush, Stephen Bannon or Karl Rove is not sane. They all are completely sane they accept that certain facts are facts, and that merely because you want something to be true does not make it so.

So, how do I reach my conclusion that the president of the United States is not sane? I have no psychological training or expertise of any kind. I am applying my own lay understanding of what it means to be sane.

Im not saying Trump is incapable of forming an opinion distinguishing right from wrong. Hes not insane.But hes also not what I understand and define to be sane: accepting that certain manifestations of reality are irrefutable (e.g., that the sun rises in the morning and sets at night; that gravity causes object to fall to Earth, not rise into space; that 5 is larger than 3, etc.). Someone who does not actually accept such basic, fundamental and irrefutable facts, is, in my estimation, not sane.

Of course, when DonaldTrump asserts, as fact, certain matters that are irrefutably incorrect, it is possible that he does so as a calculated and knowing untruth for whatever political or other purpose such lies are promulgated. Thats not uncommon among politicians, at all levels of government. But I honestly believe that is not what is happening. I maintain that Trump is not lying, because he does not know or even believe the things he says are untrue. No, he truly believes they are true. And that the actual, subjective disconnect from reality is what I define as not sane.

Once again, this is not a laughing matter. It is not satire. It is not political criticism or commentary. It is deadlyserious stuff: The president of the United States is not sane.

I am far from alone in questioning the presidents emotional stability.

In a letter to the editor of The New York Times published recently, Dr. Lance Dodes, a retired assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Dr. Joseph Schachter, a former chairman of the Committee on Research Proposals, International Psychoanalytic Association, stated explicitly that the president is suffering from grave emotional instability. An additional 33 mental health professionalsco-signed the letter.

Sen. Al Franken said on CNN recently that Republican colleagues of his in the Senate have confidentially stated that they question the Presidents mental health.

I dont know what we, the American people, are to do about this, but the first step to solving a problem is to acknowledge its existence and to fully understand its nature.

So what, exactly, are we talking about here? Again, I have no training in psychology, so I must rely on reputable sources such as Drs. Dodes and Schachter to support my thesis. Unfortunately, many psychiatrists feel constrained, by the Goldwater rule, from offering opinions concerning the possible mental conditions of public figures. Some professionals, who are not subject to that rule, have opined that Trump suffers from a particular psychological condition, known as narcissistic personality disorder.

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), which is published by the American Psychiatric Association, is frequently used by professionals to diagnose mental conditions.

DSM-5 criteria for narcissistic personality disorder include these features:

And here is how the Mayo Clinics website describes the condition (see if it strikes you as accurately describing Trumps behavior):

If you have narcissistic personality disorder, you may come across as conceited, boastful or pretentious. You often monopolize conversations. You may belittle or look down on people you perceive as inferior. You may feel a sense of entitlement and when you dont receive special treatment, you may become impatient or angry. You may insist on having the best of everything for instance, the best car, athletic club or medical care.

At the same time, you have trouble handling anything that may be perceived as criticism. You may have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation. To feel better, you may react with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make yourself appear superior. Or you may feel depressed and moody because you fall short of perfection.

I am aware that certain critics claimed that President Barack Obama was a textbook example of narcissistic personality disorder. And scholars at the Pew Research Center even ranked each of the presidents concerning their level of narcissism. So, assigning serious and debilitating psychological conditions to presidents is nothing new.

However, as far as I am aware, no prior person who occupied our nations highest office has ever consistently and repeatedly made statements that are so unmistakably counterfactual, and, when challenged to authenticate or substantiate such statements, simply abided by his prior assertion without producing any proof.

I may be wrong, and I am certainly open to arguments refuting my thesis. But if I am correct, then it is vital that we, collectively, begin discussing, seriously and thoughtfully, where we go from here.

Dan Recht is a criminal defense and constitutional law attorney. He is a former chair of the ACLU of Colorado and former president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar.

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Is Donald Trump sane? The evidence suggests he's not - The Denver Post

Bed space was so hard to come by inside immigrant detention facilities across the country last fall that federal officials scrambled to rent out extra room in county prisons and jails. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Department of Homeland Securitys immigration-enforcement arm, had thousands more immigrants in custody than it had the capacity to detain. As a result, hundreds of Haitian immigrants wound up wherever there was open jail space, often in remote regions like the Yakima County jail in eastern-Washington state and far from where they were first apprehended at the southern border.

The federal immigrant detention network was bursting at the seams even before President Donald Trump entered office. Those problems will likely exacerbate after the president vastly expanded the pool of immigrants up for deportation. The Obama administration put in place a solution that is already proving beneficial to Trump: a blueprint on how to outsource immigration enforcement to local cops, leveraging their resources and infrastructure to execute Trumps proposal to detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants who have criminal records.

'Before, Putin Was Unpredictable; Now It's Trump'

In January, Trump signed an executive order on immigration enforcement that included measures to ramp up a program known as 287(g), which deputizes local law enforcement officers to double as federal immigration agents. Once trained, local officers are authorized to interview, arrest, and detain any person who may be in violation of immigration laws. Thirty-eight law enforcement agencies are currently collaborating with ICE, according to the governments latest figures. But a report released by the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in December found that the overwhelming majority of the 2,556 counties surveyed didnt need formal programs: They were already offering assistance to ICE.

An early example is the Milwaukee Sheriffs Department, led by Trump surrogate David Clarke, which teamed up with ICE for a 2-day raid in Wisconsin that ended on the same day that the president signed his executive order enlisting help from local law enforcement. The sheriffs department has not formally entered agreements to join the 287(g) program. Still, local law enforcement played an active role in arresting 16 undocumented immigrants, all of whom authorities said had previous criminal convictions ranging from assault to drug possession.

Trump celebrated this mutual alliance with local law enforcement earlier this month by inviting sheriffs from across the country to the White House. The local leaders emerged from the meetings emboldened by the enthusiastic backing they received from the president. Some floated ways to target elected officials in so-called sanctuary cities that refused to cooperate with the feds. (A crack down on these jurisdictions was also included in Trumps executive order.) As far as Im concerned, if you want to straighten out these people who are refusing to allow the federal government to enforce the law, then if theyre harboring illegal immigrants, you give them an arrest warrant, said Sheriff Thomas Hodgson of Bristol County, Massachusetts.

Trump claimed credit for keeping his campaign promise to crackdown on illegal immigration after federal officials confirmed that more than 600 undocumented immigrants had been arrested across the country. Department of Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly described the operations as routine in a statement Monday. But immigrant rights groups fear this is just the beginning. And while President Obama earned a reputation as the deporter in chief for removing more undocumented immigrants than his predecessors, advocates say Trump has set the tone for what they expect to be an era of unprecedented enforcement. The level of anxiety and fear has increased tremendously, Cristina Jimnez, the executive director of the advocacy group United We Dream, told reporters Monday. What is clear under Trumps executive order is that everyone is a criminal.

Trump made countless more undocumented immigrants vulnerable to deportation by casting virtually any run-in with local police as grounds for removal. Enforcement of the order, however, will likely lead to haphazard results, says Lena Graber, co-author of the ILRC report, because of how much the directives leave up to interpretation. Its good for intimidating peoplebad for creating consistency or any predictability about what the government will do, Graber said.

Uncertainty around how the new enforcement measures will be carried out on the local level is already rattling immigrant communities. ICE agents sparked panic in San Francisco last month after they mistakenly stormed a building with a preschool on site while on the hunt for an undocumented immigrant whom they say is a convicted sex offender. Former Mission District Supervisor David Campos called the incident unusual.

The aggressive enforcement measures stand to test resources that are already maxed out to the limit, with immigrant detainee totals estimated to top 47,000 by mid-2017, The Wall Street Journal reportsfar above levels funded through Congress. ICE has already secured new detention space at three new facilities within the last several months by contracting out private, for-profit prison companies to begin housing new immigrants. A facility in Georgia is set to hold 780 immigrant detainees, while another private prison based in Ohio will have the capacity to hold 2,000 early this year. A final location is planned in Cibola, New Mexico, where a private-run detention center will hold up to 1,116 immigrants, said ICE spokeswoman Jennifer Elzea.

The federal government has long relied on partnerships with local jails to cut down on transportation costs and shore up detention space in remote regions. Its an economic boom for cash-strapped municipalities that are paid out at a daily rate to house immigrants for indefinite periodsHodgson boasts that his local immigrant detention operations generate millions of dollars in revenue each year. In regions that have large vacancies in their jails or detention centers, like the Baltimore suburb of Anne Arundel County, lucrative deals are becoming hard to pass up.

The county had been approached numerous times about housing individuals that ICE has detained, said Owen McEvoy, a spokesman for the Anne Arundel County executive. Plans to lease out detention space there have been met with resistance from local leaders who voiced unease with the prospect of potentially profiting off detaining undocumented immigrants. It matches a growing trend in regions across the country wanting to send a more welcoming message to its local undocumented immigrant communities.

One major difficulty in these agreements is finding locations able to hold immigrants in the civil detention system, not punitive, meaning they are afforded greater freedoms than inmates held in prisons on criminal convictions. However, activists charge that this line is often blurred.

Fainot Pierre, a Haitian-American student and U.S. Army veteran, has been actively seeking assistance for Haitian immigrants after finding that more than 130 of them were being held in the Otero County Prison Facility in New Mexico. The Department of Homeland Security had suspended deportations of Haitian immigrants in the wake of a series of natural disasters that struck the country. But last September, the administration said it would resume removals on a more regular basis.

Pierre scrambled to find them legal help and access to translation services, but instead he witnessed what happens to many immigrants shuttled through state or locally-operated facilitiesnearly all were deported within weeks of their arrival.

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Donald Trump's Plan to Outsource Immigration Enforcement to Local Cops - The Atlantic

The optimism in Russia since Trump's victory has at times seemed tangible. So how extraordinary, then, that Trump's remarkable 75-minute press conference has been barely mentioned on Russian television.

Further to this, a Kremlin spokesman said Friday that Russia had "more important things" to do that watch the Trump event on Thursday.

Ever since he won the Republican nomination, many suspected Trump to be Putin's preferred occupant of the White House.

This is hardly surprising: during the Obama years, relations between Moscow and Washington went from bad to worse for a number of reasons -- from Russia's annexation of Crimea and military activity in eastern Ukraine to its backing of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, to its reported interference in the US election.

Under President Barack Obama, the US strongly condemned each of these acts, and in the case of Crimea placed sanctions on Russian individuals and businesses, the desired effect being to hurt the Russian economy.

A Hillary Clinton presidency would have been at best an extension of Obama's policy; at worst, she could have been even more of an anti-Russia hawk than Obama.

In Trump, the Moscow establishment saw a man who might be open to a thaw in the relationship between the two powers.

But in the last few days, a sense of disillusionment has descended upon Moscow and the sense of Russian optimism following Trump's victory has somewhat dissipated.

Only recently, the early days of the Trump administration were being covered in great detail on Russian television. Indeed, not long after his inauguration, the Russian news agency Interfax released a report saying that for the first time since 2011, Putin was not the most mentioned man in Russian media: that honor went to Trump.

More vocal criticism of the new US President is also appearing in Russian newspapers and from some Russian politicians.

It's hard not to feel as though the man Putin might be hoping to call a friend has fallen from grace in the eyes of the Russian people.

For their part, the Russians are claiming that they never harbored "excessive illusions," over how ties would develop.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian media in a conference call on Friday morning: "Regarding the illusions and disillusions, I would like to remind that you over the period of the last few months, we kept saying that we've never worn rose-colored glasses or cherished excessive illusions. So we have nothing to be disappointed about."

There might be something to this. While many in Russia welcomed Trump's victory, this optimism was largely due to things that Trump said about Putin before taking office. It is certainly true that Trump has been louder in his praise (not to mention softer in his criticism) of Putin than vice versa.

The confusion of the last week and the mixed messages from Washington may have been enough for experienced heads in Moscow to stop holding out hope of Trump following through with any kind of thaw.

Some will calculate that the last few days may have made Russia too poisonous politically for any US president.

Some in Moscow clearly believe that Trump is being forced to act against his better instincts.

If information is being leaked with the intention of undermining any olive branches being offered to the Kremlin, it's clear that earlier Russian optimism was misplaced. Couple this with Defense Secretary James Mattis saying that the US was not "in a position right now" to work with Russia on any military matters, and the situation looks bleak from the Kremlin's point of view.

Now might be a politically sensible time for Russia to move away from the idea of a closer relationship between the two capitals. Russia is not used to this level of chaos in Washington. Putin may not have liked Obama, but at least he knew where he stood.

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Is Russia's obsession with Donald Trump waning? - CNN

New York Times

Donald Trump Will Leave You Numb New York Times Almost any five minutes of Donald Trump's mesmerizing, terrifying news conference on Thursday would have been enough to do another politician in. Almost every day of his administration so far contains sufficient grandiosity and delusion to be the end ... Watch Donald Trump get caught lying to your face on TVBGR all 128 news articles »

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Donald Trump Will Leave You Numb - New York Times

Armchair diagnosing Donald Trump with mental illness does a terrible disservice to psychology Quartz Yet there has been an unrestrained rush to offer armchair diagnoses of US president Donald Trump. Critics of the president and opposition politicians are openly discussing whether the president is mentally well, and there are dozens of articles on ... and more »

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Armchair diagnosing Donald Trump with mental illness does a terrible disservice to psychology - Quartz