President Joe Biden gave a speech this week on where the country stands with respect to the COVID-19 pandemic. This was a timely thing to do, since with the Delta mutation so ascendant, we've now entered a fourth wave which has already grown bigger than the first two waves (but, thankfully, not yet bigger than the third). Right now, 100,000 people are getting sick each day -- which is up from just 12,000-per-day a few short weeks ago. The good news is that fewer people are dying than when the third wave surpassed the 100,000-infections-per-day mark, because now over 70 percent of all American adults have gotten at least their first vaccine shot. But what's changing now is that vaccinated Americans have pretty much lost all tolerance for the unvaccinated among us. When the graph lines were all heading downwards and restrictions easing, it wasn't that big a deal. With them skyrocketing back up again, it is. And businesses and governments and the vaccinated population are at the end of their rope when it comes to making allowances for the anti-vaxxers.

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President Joe Biden is now getting very close to securing the second leg of his three-legged economic legislative stool. To put it another way: this week we all finally got to experience the almost-mythological "Infrastructure Week" which we had been promised for lo, these many years. Bipartisanship struggled back to life, fulfilling not just a campaign promise from Biden but also his deep-seated desire to return Washington to some sort of pre-Trump normality.

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It is a rare day when I devote a whole column to praising any Republican politician, but Representative Liz Cheney certainly deserves some thanks and appreciation today. She has accepted the role of de facto Republican lead on the House January 6th Select Committee, much to the consternation of most of the other members of her caucus (including everyone in GOP leadership). Cheney and Adam Kinzinger were the only two Republicans willing to honor their oath of office to the United States Constitution by accepting a seat on the committee and bringing a serious demeanor to the investigation into what went so horribly wrong.

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Today the House's new January 6th Select Committee convened for the first time and held its first hearing. Today's initial hearing was all about setting the stage for what is to come, explaining why such an investigation is necessary, and countering all the Republican gaslighting that has been attempted of late by instead reminding the country of exactly what did happen that day. It was brutal -- the videos played (once again) showed an out-of-control mob hellbent on harming sworn police officers while storming the seat of democracy, in an effort to overturn an election result they didn't like. Just like we all saw with our own eyes on that dark day.

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The ball is now in Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's court. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy finally named his five picks for the 1/6 Select Committee investigation, but the way the bill creating the committee was written gives Pelosi full veto power over any or all of these suggestions. At a minimum, she should reject at least one of the names put forth by McCarthy. [Editorial Note: This entire article should be read "as of this writing," as Pelosi could act at any time.]

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There were two interesting developments in the congressional sausage-making process this week, both of which Democrats should immediately adopt as their main messages for the next week or so.

The first was that Senators Bernie Sanders and Mark Warner announced they had come to a compromise on the reconciliation bill which will fund the lion's share of President Joe Biden's economic agenda. They settled on a total figure of $3.5 trillion in new spending, which is far less than Bernie's original goal of $6 trillion (just for this bill alone), but also far more than the opening bid of the fiscally-conservative Democrats, which was in the $1.5 to $2 trillion range. It also will mean that Biden got the exact total he asked for in his "three-legged stool" of economic legislation. His first big legislative achievement (the American Rescue Plan) spent $1.9 trillion, and the bipartisan infrastructure deal represents $0.6 trillion more, which will mean a grand total of $6 trillion for all three -- which is exactly what Biden asked for in the first place.

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House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has never been seen by anyone as any sort of profile in courage. The most common view of him, in fact, is that he's as spineless as a jellyfish. He has gotten to his position of power within the Republican Party largely by trying to be everyone's best buddy, but that's not exactly a core leadership quality, to put it mildly. And now he's in a pickle, because everyone is waiting to see what he's going to do about the House 1/6 Select Committee. My personal guess is that he'll figure out what the path of least resistance is and then embrace it. He's certainly done so before, so it's about all I expect from him.

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Happy Independence Day! No, that heartfelt wish is actually not premature, as we pointed out years ago. The second of July is indeed the day American declared her independence from Britain. All the histories, all the traditions, all the celebrations get it wrong each and every year. No, really!

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Call it true irony. The man who had a book ghost-written for him called "The Art Of The Deal" could never actually manage to strike any kind of deal. So the man who replaced him ran on his own dealmaking skills, in a time where pretty much everyone in Washington considered the idea too old-fashioned to ever work. But President Joe Biden just got his first big deal, this week. A bipartisan infrastructure plan is now going to move forward in the United States Senate and has what can only be called a better-than-average chance of passing.

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President Joe Biden had a pretty good week all around. He began the week in Europe, where he met with the leaders of NATO, the European Union, the G7, a few royals (just to mix things up), and Vladimir Putin. That's a pretty packed schedule, but Biden seemed to manage just fine. The Europeans were both visibly thrilled and massively relieved to be visited by a United States president who was, once again, a sane adult (and not a petulant little child-man). They heaped praise upon Biden -- mostly just for being "President Not-Trump." You may laugh, but please recall President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize solely for being "President Not-Dubya," years earlier. But more seriously, Europe announced some deals with Biden (including, notably, a truce being called on the subsidy war over Boeing and Airbus airplanes). Not only were personal relationships either reaffirmed or begun, tangible diplomatic progress was made. Europe stood as one with the United States over the contentious issues of Russia and China, which only strengthened Biden's position for his meeting with Putin. The Putin summit didn't produce a whole lot in the way of tangible deliverables, but then again it didn't produce an American president willing to believe Russia's ex-K.G.B. leader over his own intelligence services either, so it has to be chalked up as a major improvement. Throughout it all, Biden stuck to one very simple slogan that summed up what his trip was supposed to be showcasing to the world: "America is back."

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