Representative Liz Cheney did not come from the planet Krypton, but not unlike Superman (at least, the Superman from the 1950s television version) Cheney is in the midst of a "battle for truth, justice, and the American way." This may sound rather odd to hear, coming from me (as well as both dated and cliché). But while I disagree with Cheney on just about every ideological item on either one of our lists, I have to applaud what she is doing now -- standing up to the idiocy which has taken hold of her own political party, reminding them that they used to stand for things like personal responsibility and the U.S. Constitution, and calling a Big Lie an actual Big Lie. In today's Republican Party, that is both admirable and (sadly) almost extinct.

Liz Cheney knows the emperor is wearing no clothes. And she is loudly telling the rest of her party this fact. So, in response, the party is going to unceremoniously chuck her out of their caucus's third-highest leadership position in the House Of Representatives. For refusing to publicly and knowingly lie to the voters.

Read Complete Article »

President Joe Biden has achieved one rather monumental task since he took office, at least to me: in his first 99 days as president, Biden has successfully made the presidency boring again. This sounds like a joke, but it isn't. The previous president was the one to make the presidency itself a joke, in fact -- Biden is just returning us all to the normal state of things. And the public -- even a lot of Republicans -- are relieved at this development. Joe Biden is not an egomaniac nor is he a megalomaniac. The difference is striking. Biden does not crave seeing his face on the news each night, so he has no need to deliberately cause a mini-crisis just to get everyone to pay attention to him during that day's news cycle. Biden also does not communicate like a petulant pre-teen on social media. He's downright boring, and that's an enormous relief to us all.

Read Complete Article »

President Joe Biden just had a pretty good week. And next week's going to be even better for him. Especially considering how far we've come since this time exactly one year ago.

In the past week alone, Biden and his administration chalked up the following achievements or milestones:

Biden has already reached his (doubled!) goal of 200 million vaccine shots into people's arms in his first 100 days in office -- a week early.

Over 41 percent of the American population has been vaccinated at least once, including over 51 percent of all those currently eligible (age 16 and up).

The average number of new infections has actually started to come down once again, and is once again lower than the peak of the second wave. It is still too high, but at least it is heading in the right direction once again. The average deaths per day seems to have plateaued at just below 750 -- again, too high, but a lot better than the peak of almost 3,500 deaths per day.

Read Complete Article »

Some Republicans have apparently decided that political dog whistles are just no longer even necessary. After the bombast of Donald Trump, they're now quite comfortable just openly saying exactly what they mean -- no matter how racist it might be.

We refer to the formation of a new congressional caucus: the "America First Caucus." Normally, this wouldn't be all that big a deal -- just some group of extra-Trumpy GOP members getting together to figure out what their Dear Leader would want them to do in Congress. But their founding document was leaked, and it goes a wee bit further in laying out the founding principles of the new caucus. Here are their first few paragraphs on immigration, for instance:

Read Complete Article »

Nothing illuminates the difference between the current United States president and the former one as much as how they respond to a misstatement. President Joe Biden, speaking recently about his dreams for American infrastructure improvements, said the following:

Read Complete Article »

Without having read much of what anyone else though about President Joe Biden's first formal press conference today, I'm going to just write my reactions down cold. This is always an amusing test for me, just to see if anyone else picked up on the same things I did.

Heading in, I had fairly low expectations for Biden. I'm not sure why this is, perhaps some of the angsty stories I've read in the political media over the past few weeks have rubbed off. Biden annoyed the press corps by waiting longer to hold his first press conference than any other modern president, so for the past few weeks they've been doing some endless navel-gazing about it all.

Read Complete Article »

Donald Trump's second impeachment trial came to an end today. This was fully expected, however the beginning of the day contained some serious uncertainties about how long the trial would go on for. Once that was settled, however, things moved towards the inevitable conclusion.

Read Complete Article »

On this date in history, ten-score-and-twelve years ago, Abraham Lincoln was born. Also on this date, 22 years ago, the Senate voted to acquit Bill Clinton of the charges made against him in only the second impeachment trial in American history. Today, this year, saw the fourth day of Donald Trump's second impeachment trial in the Senate. Today was the day the legal team for Donald Trump got to present their defense.

Read Complete Article »

On the third day of Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, the prosecution rested. Having made a very strong and climactic case yesterday, today the House managers finished up their presentation and ended with their closing argument, part of which was a pre-buttal to the expected arguments from the defense.

Read Complete Article »

The second day of Donald Trump's second impeachment trial was dedicated to the opening of the prosecution's case against him. The House managers have a full 16 hours to present their case, but it remains to be seen how much of that they'll actually use. When I began writing this (during their dinner break), they had already been at it for five and a half hours, and they didn't adjourn for the day -- but then later they only used a limited amount of time afterwards (the total came in under the full eight hours allotted for the day, in other words).

Read Complete Article »