House Republicans moved a big step closer to one of their goals today, as they voted on articles of impeachment for Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Two articles of impeachment passed the relevant House committee on a party-line vote, and the full House could vote on the matter within days. This will fulfill a longstanding desire of the House Republicans to impeach somebody (anybody!) in Joe Biden's administration, and can be seen as a trial run for their real goal of impeaching Biden himself. This is all a purely political exercise, but that's certainly not going to stop them. The Republicans simply have no grounds for impeaching either one, but why let a little thing called the U.S. Constitution get in the way of their fun?

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President Joe Biden got some excellent news today: the "vibecession" seems to be over. For those unfamiliar with this neologism, the term was coined by an educator a while back to explain the disconnect between the economic reality (measured by all the economic indicators) and how people actually felt about the economy. The economy has been doing amazingly well in recovering from the COVID pandemic slump, while at the same time public perception has remained a lot gloomier.

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Breaking news from Washington: budgetary disaster has been averted, once again! The government will not partially shut down tomorrow at midnight, as Congress just successfully passed a continuing resolution through both houses which will keep funding the government until at least the first of March. And they even accomplished this feat one day early!

You'll have to forgive me if I'm not impressed. In the first place, they got it done a day early for an entirely self-serving reason: so they wouldn't be trapped in Washington by a giant snowstorm (scheduled to hit tomorrow). It's an open secret that Congress can indeed get things done very quickly when they really want to. However, they only ever really want to when their own free time is at risk, which is rather pathetic when you think about it.

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It is shocking (it always is), but here we are on the brink of the 2024 presidential election cycle's official start. The Iowa caucuses will be held Monday. Most of us, thankfully, will have a few more months to go before being faced with the prospect of going to the polls for our state's primary, when (hopefully) the weather will be a lot better than it is predicted to be in the Hawkeye State three days from now. They may be heading to their polls in the midst of a blizzard, with the temperature forecast to be: "Oh CRAP it is cold!" with windchill factors being as low as: "I can't feel my toes... or my face... just leave me here in this snowbank for the wolves to find...."

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Donald Trump has long believed that because he was president, he was constitutionally allowed to do anything he pleased, without any possibility of ever having to answer for any of it in any way. He explicitly stated this belief while he was president and he has claimed the same sweeping immunity ever since he left office as well. He truly believes that somewhere in the Constitution is a clause that essentially bestows the divine right of kings upon the U.S. president. A president's actions can never be challenged in court because of this supposed loophole, in other words (according to Trump).

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It seems fitting that we take today to remind everyone of the events which transpired at the United States Capitol three years ago last Saturday. Joe Biden reminded everyone, in his first campaign speech of the year. Some in the media are even starting to call the 2024 presidential election "the January 6th election." That may or may not turn out to be the case (some other issue could easily be the main motivator for voters by November, in other words), but with Donald Trump out there still refusing to admit he's a loser and with a frighteningly-high percentage of Republican voters buying into his dark fantasy, it behooves us all to go back to what was said about the events of that day. By Republicans.

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Happy new year, everyone! It is indeed a brand new year, and an election year to boot. The presidential election isn't some faraway thing anymore, as the Republican Iowa caucuses are now less than two weeks away. Then it'll be on to New Hampshire and South Carolina and eventually Super Tuesday, which is quite likely the point where Donald Trump will have functionally wrapped up the GOP nomination.

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This year, the Supreme Court is going to be a critical factor in the presidential election, no matter what it does. In the words of the rock band Rush, this could even come down to "if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice." But we're getting ahead of ourselves a bit. Let's take the two issues that will almost certainly wind up before the high court and see what the possibilities are and how the timing of it all could affect the race for the presidency.

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Welcome back to the second of our year-end awards columns! And if you missed it last Friday, go check out [Part 1] as well.

As always, we must begin with a warning for all readers. It's long. Really, really long. Horrendously long. Insanely long. It takes a lot of stamina to read all the way to the end. You have been duly warned! But because it is so long, we certainly don't want to add any more here at the start, so let's just dive in, shall we?

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Welcome to the first installment of our year-end awards!

As always, we must begin with a stern warning: this is an incredibly long article. So long you likely won't make it to the end, at least not in one sitting. It is -- as always -- a marathon, not a sprint.

We have tried to credit readers' nominations where we could, but writing the whole column is such a frenzied activity that we may have omitted the citations here and there -- for which we apologize. Reader suggestions make our job putting together this list a whole lot easier, and we are indeed grateful for the people who do take the time to do so (and you still have a chance to make nominations for next week's awards, we would point out).

OK, since it is so long, let's not make it any longer and get right to it. Here are our winners for the awards categories first created on the McLaughlin Group television show, for the year that was.

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