Some people were expecting some explosive news this week from Tucker Carlson's show on Fox News. He had, after all, been handed what could have been something extremely volatile -- access to all 40,000-plus hours of video footage from the January 6th insurrection attempt at the United States Capitol. Carlson himself predicted his revelations from this extraordinary access would land with a bang. But what he just unveiled wasn't just "not a bang," it barely even qualifies as a whimper. It fizzled. It was a dud. A gigantic nothingburger.

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Apparently, there was a big murder trial down South that culminated this week, but we have to admit that since it wasn't an overtly political case, we just didn't pay much attention to it. Instead, as always, we had our nose to the grindstone of sifting through the week's political news so that you don't have to. In other words: Welcome to another installment of Friday Talking Points!

We're going to start this week with some good news. Not great news, mind you, but pretty good nonetheless. A spate of actual bipartisanship broke out in the Senate this week and with amazing speed (for Congress in general and for the Senate in particular) they came up with proposed legislation that might actually have a chance of passing. Well, passing the Senate at least, since nobody has any clue of what the GOP House will do these days.

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Today, I'm going to do something I rarely do in this column: praise Marco Rubio. Because Rubio has been the driving force behind trying to change a system that virtually everyone hates, but that which will also probably continue for quite some time to come. And time is the heart of the issue, because I am speaking of the biannual change to and from daylight saving time.

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Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly announced today that they would be slashing their prices for insulin by 70 percent. Think about that for a moment -- a corporation was pricing a product so high that it can cut the price by 70 percent and still make money off of it. That should be seen as nothing short of obscene to the average person. But what is interesting about this announcement is that it seems a combination of public shame and some competition in the marketplace has brought about this change. And that's worth celebrating a little bit, even if the case isn't exactly cut-and-dried.

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Trains were at the heart of the political scene this week. Internationally, President Joe Biden took a 10-hour train ride to get to Kyiv in person (which he must have thoroughly enjoyed, knowing his general love of trains). Domestically, the trainwreck in Ohio became sidetracked into a political circus.

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Changes to Senate rules and traditions tend to happen somewhat incrementally. Democrats are currently considering taking another step towards making the Senate actually functional once again, and it is a step that definitely needs taking. Because it is time to kill the "blue slip" on judicial nominations, once and for good.

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We have to begin today with a look at the woes of the Republican Party. Because, when you think about it, why not?

The most amusing news (speaking from across the political aisle) all has to do with the Republican Party trying to come to grips with another presidential nominating process with Donald Trump as the 800-pound elephant in the room. Most of the party establishment would dearly love to see literally anyone else win the nomination than Trump, but they also fear the prospect of Trump going rogue if he doesn't win and launching his own third-party bid.

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I'm going to end this column today with an excerpt from the archives, but I have to explain why I'm re-running it first. Because recently I have been sent into howls of laughter at the new Republican complaint: "How could you possibly accuse us of attacking Social Security and Medicare?!? What an absurd notion!" Not just peals of laughter, but also a Shakespearean-class eyeroll as well: The party doth protest too much, methinks.

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Senator Dianne Feinstein announced today that she would not be seeking re-election next year. California is going to get an open Senate race for her seat instead. This announcement was anticipated, although nobody really knew what Feinstein was going to decide. But, speaking as a Californian, I am glad she chose to step down gracefully. Indeed, I urged her to do so six years ago.

Senator Feinstein has carved out an impressive legacy for herself, after serving in the Senate since 1992. She broke a lot of glass ceilings and just last year became the longest-serving woman in Senate history. When she first arrived in the Senate, there were two women senators. Now there are 25. She has a lot of accomplishments to show for her time in office as well, although I certainly didn't agree with many of them at the time. Feinstein is a much more centrist (or even right-leaning) Democrat than I would have preferred to have represent me, but I did appreciate at least some of her brave stands.

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President Joe Biden achieved -- in public and on national television -- a seemingly-impossible feat this week, as he vocally unified all of Congress in support of the long-held Democratic goal of protecting Social Security and Medicare from having their budget slashed by Republicans. That was pretty astonishing to see, you have to admit, since Republicans have been attacking Social Security since before Joe Biden was born (which is really saying something, considering he's about as far from a spring chicken as you can get). But suddenly they decided en masse to take exception with this fact, and loudly protested when Biden pointed out what they've essentially been saying for decades and decades. So Biden welcomed them into the fold of politicians who do fight to preserve the safety net, gleefully proclaiming he had achieved "unanimity." This was a warning to the Republicans that the subject of cuts to Social Security and Medicare were now officially off the table. Rarely has so major a bit of political bargaining worked so effectively during a State Of The Union speech. Which is why it was all so astonishing to watch.

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