[ Posted Tuesday, March 22nd, 2022 – 15:40 UTC ]
I have been watching the Senate confirmation hearings on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, both today and yesterday, and as usual I am struck by the Kabuki nature of any and all of these hearings. The outcome is a foregone conclusion -- Jackson is going to be confirmed to the high court -- and it is likely that no senator is going to thoughtfully change his or her vote because of anything said in the hearing room. All Democrats seem to be on board with confirming her, almost all Republicans are going to vote against her, and the only real question is whether one or possibly two Republicans will give President Joe Biden a thin veneer of "bipartisanship" to her nomination. Which is ultimately meaningless, since it doesn't matter how many senators wind up voting for any justice's confirmation, as long as it is a majority of them.
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[ Posted Friday, February 18th, 2022 – 17:17 UTC ]
The world pauses and holds its collective breath as we all wonder the same thing: What is Vladimir Putin up to? Will he invade Ukraine? Is this all some sort of bluff or feint? Or is he deadly serious about reconstituting the Soviet Union's sphere of influence (of satellite states subservient to Moscow)? Is he just waiting for the Olympics to end as some sort of favor to China? Or will the troops eventually go home and the whole crisis blows over?
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 16th, 2022 – 16:34 UTC ]
I've said it before and (sadly) I expect I will say it again, but it continually amazes me that the Republican Party could sink even lower than it already has. It used to be (according to them) the party of morals, of law and order, and of personal responsibility. It is none of those things any more. The last to go was the "law and order" stance, but now they are openly taking political stances that are absolutely astonishing for their support of lawlessness. Such as standing up for the right of airplane passengers to be as disruptive as they please while breaking the rules all who fly must follow. That's not hyperbole or any type of overstatement, that is exactly what just happened.
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[ Posted Friday, February 11th, 2022 – 16:41 UTC ]
Did what happened at the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021 constitute "legitimate political discourse" or not? That was the question that has divided the Republican Party all week, and may serve to be the one memorable phrase that sums up the difference between those in the GOP who have completely surrendered all their morals and thought processes and attachment to reality to Donald Trump -- and those who have not. Because that's what it all boils down to, really.
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[ Posted Friday, February 4th, 2022 – 17:38 UTC ]
President Joe Biden had a pretty good week, as political weeks go in Washington. First and foremost, the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 pandemic is fading fast -- the numbers are now down below half of the peak they hit roughly two weeks ago. That's good news for everybody, not just President Biden.
Then it was announced that the United States military had taken out the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. Questions still remain about the mechanics of this daring raid in Syria, but nobody is questioning the fact that the targeted terrorist leader is now dead.
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[ Posted Monday, January 31st, 2022 – 15:55 UTC ]
In his dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell wrote of how truth could be manipulated to control a population. He wrote his novel in the late 1940s, immediately after the horrors of World War II. American schoolchildren are often assigned this book to read, since it is such a literary masterpiece of speculative fiction. Or, at least, they used to regularly be assigned the book. Who knows how many will get to read it in the future?
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[ Posted Friday, January 28th, 2022 – 17:33 UTC ]
We have always been a total sucker for "First Pets," we fully admit. Especially First Cats. So we simply must begin this weekly roundup by extending our warmest welcome to newly-announced First Cat Willow Biden. From the New York Times announcement:
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[ Posted Wednesday, January 26th, 2022 – 15:46 UTC ]
Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has unofficially announced his impending retirement from the highest court in the land. He deserves thanks from all Democrats for doing so. By making this announcement now, Breyer has shown he has learned the lesson of Ruth Bader Ginsberg's death. And since it was such an important and painful lesson, it's gratifying to see Breyer now put the interests of the court itself above his own. For that, he deserves gratitude.
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[ Posted Friday, January 21st, 2022 – 17:37 UTC ]
It was an eventful week in Washington, with a holiday and an anniversary thrown in for good measure, so we're going to try to be a little more succinct in this week's rundown. Well... try to, at any rate.
The week began with Martin Luther King Junior Day, saw a historic (but failed) vote in the Senate on voting rights, contained a marathon of a presidential press conference, and marked the first year President Joe Biden has spent in office. Plus a whole lot of other notable developments along the way.
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[ Posted Monday, January 17th, 2022 – 17:29 UTC ]
Today, on the federal holiday celebrating the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, his son Martin Luther King III travelled to Arizona to express his displeasure with Senator Kyrsten Sinema after she crushed the hopes of all those wishing to see modern voting rights legislation pass into law. "History will remember Sen. Sinema, I believe unkindly, for her position on the filibuster," said King's eldest son and namesake, and he pointed out in an interview: "Our daughter has less rights around voting than she had when she was born. I can’t imagine what my mother and father would say about that. I'm sure they’re turning over and over in their graves about this."
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