While I listen to and read all the pundits' reactions to the hearings the House select committee is televising, what amazes me is how few of them seem to realize what the actual point of these hearings and of the investigation itself truly is (or should be, at any rate). Many see it and interpret it all through a political lens: "What do the Democrats want to accomplish by all of this? Will it all help or hurt Democrats or Republicans in the midterms? Are the hearings changing anyone's mind?" But these questions all really miss the focal point of it all. Because the end goal is not actually a political one. The end goal should be to prevent it from ever happening again, period.

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Early this morning (very early, for those of us on the West Coast!), the second June hearing of the House January 6th committee was supposed to get underway. This didn't happen on time, due to a last-minute changeup in the program. One of the two in-person witnesses for the first hour, Bill Stepien, cancelled his appearance at the last minute. Stepien was Donald Trump's campaign manager for the last three or four months of the 2020 presidential campaign, and was thus in a unique position to provide an eyewitness account of what went both before and after the election.

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Last night's hearing was meant to be an overview of the upcoming miniseries season. The next seven hearings were outlined, which will expose what Representative Liz Cheney called Donald Trump's "seven-point plan" to overturn a free and fair election. Next week, we will get at least two and possibly three more hearings (the official January 6th Committee website only lists the first two (as of this writing), on Monday and Wednesday mornings, but it is being widely reported there will be a third next Thursday at 1:00 P.M. Eastern time). That's a fairly fast pace, and it looks like the next two weeks will be chock full of hearings. I am assuming that at the end there will be a final hearing in primetime which will wrap up the entire storyline and present the full case to the American people about what went on, who was responsible, and what we should do now to ensure that it never happens again.

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I am reminded, listening to all the hype and buzz building about tonight's House January 6th Select Committee's nationally-televised primetime hearing, of the lyrics of Emerson, Lake, and Palmer's "Karn Evil 9" ("Come inside the show's about to start / Guaranteed to blow your head apart"). But maybe that's just me.

For once, though (progressive rock references aside), the show that we'll all see tonight may actually live up to its billing. Because for once, Democrats are approaching it with professional help in presenting their findings as a narrative. This is more important than you might think.

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Republicans have come up with all sorts of attempts to deflect the public's attention from the enormous number and easy availability of guns in this country, some of them far wackier than others. But the more-reasonable response they've largely gathered behind is to say that all mass shootings happen because of "crazy people," and therefore we should put lots of effort into weeding those crazy people out before they can cause atrocities. That's what they say they're for, at any rate. As a way of deflecting attention, it's a lot better than what the fringe of the GOP is saying, after all.

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After a break for the holiday week, primary season will resume tomorrow. But rather than diving into the details of any of the seven states which will vote tomorrow (California, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota), I'm more interested in seeing what happens later in the week, when Alaska holds a special election primary this Saturday. Because Alaska will be test-driving a new hybrid system which incorporates two ballot reforms at once: the "jungle" primary and ranked-choice voting.

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Last night, President Joe Biden gave only the second evening address (not counting speeches to joint sessions of Congress) of his presidency. The last time he did so was over a year ago. The subject of his speech this time was a grim one: the recent massacres of innocents in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. And all of the others which didn't receive quite as prominent media coverage, as well. He urged Congress to act, in the strongest possible terms. He pointed out that Republicans are the ones obstructing any progress whatsoever, and pleaded for some bipartisanship in the Senate.

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Next Thursday, if all goes according to schedule, the nation will finally start to see what the House Select Committee on January 6th has uncovered during its lengthy investigation of the worst attack on the United States Capitol since 1814. This won't be a one-time show either -- there will be at least eight installments of this miniseries in June, with some of them appearing in primetime.

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Last week, America experienced a racist extremist shooting up a grocery store, in an effort to kill as many Black people as he could. This week, America had to once again watch as innocent schoolchildren age 10 or under were massacred for no reason whatsoever. This is who we are, and it is shameful.

It is not, however, who we want to be. The public wants more and tighter gun safety laws, by an overwhelming margin. But even in the wake of the horrors of yet another slaughter of innocents, most people who follow politics don't expect much of anything to change. No new laws will pass the Senate, or if something does manage to be worked out, it will be weak and watered-down and likely ineffective at stopping such outrages from regularly happening.

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Here we are again. That, as you'll see below, is how I started an article written five years ago, after the Las Vegas slaughter. Because I find I cannot write yet another one of these articles, when nothing has changed and nothing is likely to change any time soon.

Politico just put out some new poll numbers, from an insta-poll taken after the Uvalde, Texas school massacre. They show pretty much where the American public has stood for quite some time now: gun control measures are either popular or overwhelmingly popular. By the numbers:

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