President Joe Biden could have avoided the political nightmare he is now caught in the middle of, if he had earlier worked with those in Congress who attempted to deal with the situation before it ever got to this point. But Biden, for some inexplicable reason, decided not to defuse the ticking time bomb and instead he counted on it not blowing up in his face. Assuming for the moment that somehow we'll all manage to safely get out of this situation in the next few weeks (which is still a rather large assumption, at this point), Biden should at least learn the lesson of his own inaction. When the dust settles on the current debt ceiling crisis (no matter how it works out), Biden should immediately move to avoid it ever happening again. Right after whatever deal is struck and passed through Congress, Biden should announce to the country that he has now determined that the debt ceiling itself is incompatible with the 14th Amendment and therefore unconstitutional and null and void. Doing so after the current crisis has been resolved would allow the issue to be litigated while there is no looming threat of default. The case could work its way through the courts all the way up to the Supreme Court with plenty of time to spare, and whichever way the courts ultimately ruled, it wouldn't cause a worldwide economic panic.

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With twelve more days left in the month of May, the debt ceiling follies continue unabated. Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy just "paused" the negotiations with President Joe Biden, which was a rather pessimistic note to close out what had otherwise been a rather optimistic week. There is speculation that both sides are using this "pause" merely as a political signal to their respective bases -- to show that they are negotiating hard and not giving away the store. If this is true, negotiations will likely resume at some point this weekend. But it's anyone's guess whether they'll agree even on a framework (much less actual legislative text) any time soon.

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May is half over. June looms.

That is where we are, as President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy try to hammer out some sort of deal which will allow the nation not to default on its debt. Nobody's really sure if June first will actually be the deadline -- the "drop-dead date" is constantly in flux as money comes into government coffers and flows back out again. If we make it to mid-June, the drop-dead date could shift as late as August or September, for instance. But we can't count on that happening -- we must act before the earliest possible date it could happen, which is the first of next month.

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President Joe Biden continues to goad House Republicans into doing exactly what he wants them to do. This is a bit of rather astonishing political jiu-jitsu which has only been possible because House Republicans refuse to publicly admit exactly what they want to slash in the federal budget. If Kevin McCarthy's House Republicans had kept their campaign promises and passed a budget as one of their first orders of business, then Biden wouldn't even have this opportunity (he'd have other opportunities, depending on what cuts Republicans were proposing, but they'd all be out in the open in that case). This week, Biden continuing to heap scorn on the Republican budget plans may serve up another victory for him, which clueless Republicans are going to try to tout as their own victory. Biden, though, has already moved on and has picked a new target. He will likely continue to do this for endless line items in the federal budget (with an emphasis on the ones that Republicans have traditionally supported).

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Let's make sure we all get this correct. Donald Trump is now technically not a "convicted rapist." He's not a convicted anything, because the verdict handed down against him this week was in civil (not criminal) court. And the jury balked at declaring that Trump had raped E. Jean Carroll, but they did find Trump liable for sexually attacking her and defaming her publicly. To the tune of $5 million. It only took them about three hours to do so, meaning the case was pretty iron-clad to begin with. So Donald Trump is merely the first ex-president to be found liable of being a sexual predator rather than being an actual convicted rapist.

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Of all the reactions to last night's CNN town hall with Donald Trump, the most interesting came from Michael Fanone, a former D.C. police officer who was attacked and almost killed by the mob of violent insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th. His take on Trump's CNN performance: "It's worse than I could have ever imagined. It's an absolute disaster. There's no way to fact-check this guy in real time. He's a volcano of bullshit."

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I realize it is the wrong season for this sports metaphor, but it now seems that the most likely outcome of the debt ceiling showdown is going to include a punt. For any long-term solution to emerge, there's going to have to first be a short-term solution that kicks the ball down the field a bit.

It is now crunch time. Tomorrow, President Biden will meet with the four congressional leaders (the leaders of both parties in both houses) for the first time in months. They are miles apart on what they want to see happen, and nobody really expects a huge breakthrough compromise to emerge from tomorrow's meeting. But the drop-dead date has been moved up to (possibly) the first of June, which only leaves a little more than three weeks to do something, or else the United States is going to default on its debt for the first time in history.

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President Joe Biden will not be attending the coronation of King Charles III tomorrow, which is entirely appropriate (although he is sending First Lady Dr. Jill Biden instead, out of respect). No U.S. president has ever attended a British coronation, and with good reason -- after all, we fought a whole war just so no American would ever have to show any sort of fealty to any King or Queen of England ever again. But even though Biden won't be there, the two men do share one notable similarity: they both waited all their lives -- decades and decades of it -- for the chance to sit at the head of their country. So it's pretty easy to see they do share how long the wait has been for both of them.

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The two sides have dug in to their respective positions on the debt ceiling crisis, and nobody at this point can predict what the eventual outcome is going to be. America is watching Washington politicians essentially play Russian roulette with our country's -- and by extension, the whole world's -- economy. While most sane people would prefer that the politicians don't kill the economy to score ideological points, that is a very real possibility at the moment. Both President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy are walking a tightrope, as the crowd breathlessly watches the high-wire act play out. But what I find myself wondering is whether McCarthy will survive the experience without plunging back to Earth -- or, more accurately, back to the back benches in the House Republican caucus.

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It is a rare day when Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nikki Haley agree on anything, but both of them are now on the same page on one particular subject -- that Senator Dianne Feinstein needs to resign her Senate seat if she can no longer do the required duties. I share this view, personally, and my opinion is perhaps more relevant than either of theirs, since I am an actual constituent of Feinstein's. California deserves to have two senators that are able to show up and cast votes and represent the most-populous state in the United States Senate. Feinstein hasn't been able to make it to Washington since February, and every week that goes by is another week of delay for many of President Biden's judicial nominees. If Feinstein weren't a crucial vote on the committee responsible for vetting such nominees, perhaps I wouldn't feel as strongly about it, but she is -- and the Republicans have blocked Chuck Schumer from replacing her on that committee. Feinstein has already announced she will not be running for re-election next year, so asking her to step down now isn't as contentious (or as insulting) as it might seem.

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