House Democrats are soon going to face a stark choice. Either they wait for the court system to slowly grind its way up to the Supreme Court, and then hope that John Roberts values his legacy enough to rule in their favor; or they can just move past judicial delays altogether and draft articles of impeachment sooner rather than later. So far it seems they're more inclined to pursue the latter strategy, but it is still too early in the process to state that definitively. A court ruling limiting Trump's excessive executive privilege claims would be a valuable thing in its own right, but the question is going to be: is it worth the inevitable wait?

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This has been an extraordinary week, in a presidency chock-full of extraordinary weeks. Call it extra-extraordinary, we suppose. The country went from hearing vague things about Trump stonewalling a congressional committee to full-on impeachment in a matter of hours, it seemed. Or days, at the longest. We went from zero to impeachment in record time, giving Trump a new superlative to brag about: fastest scandal ever.

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One of Donald Trump's presidential heroes is Andrew Jackson. Jackson rose to the presidency in 1828 after his first attempt failed. The centerpiece of his second campaign was to shine a bright light on the "Corrupt Bargain" in the House of Representatives, which named John Quincy Adams president in 1824 even though he had fewer Electoral College votes than Jackson (it was a four-candidate race and none of them got an outright Electoral College majority, which threw the election's decision into the House). I was reminded today of a central quote from Jackson's second campaign where he spoke about what had happened in the 1824 election, because it seems downright appropriate when discussing our current president: "There was cheating, and corruption, and bribery too." At this point, that seems to accurately sum up Trump's 2020 campaign as well.

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Up until today, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi has been the person riding the brakes on the growing calls to impeach President Donald Trump. This is no longer true. Pelosi has now begun the process of Congress attempting to remove a sitting president from office. By waiting this long, though, Pelosi is now absolutely immune from any accusation that she's in any sort of rush to judgment.

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We have to begin today with an apology. Five years ago, without knowing any better, we erroneously reported in this space that there would not be another Friday the 13th which coincided with a full moon until 2049. So it was much to our surprise that we heard that this week we all were going to see another one, only five short years after we feverishly coined the word "selenofriggatriskaidekaphobia" to describe those with the very specific neurotic fear (-phobia) of both full moons (seleno-) and Fridays (-frigga-) the 13th (-triskaideka-).

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Finally, everyone on one stage! That was my reaction before the third 2020 Democratic presidential debate even began, because for the first time it's a one-night affair. Unfortunately, at least 11 candidates have already qualified for the next debate, with a few other candidates hovering on the brink of qualification, so it's looking like we're going to have to wait for the fifth debate to see all the frontrunners on the same stage together again.

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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell appears worried. He's concerned that not only may the Democrats take control of the chamber away from him next year, but that they could then move to abolish the legislative filibuster altogether. The idea does seem to be gaining some momentum among Democrats, although not everyone's convinced it would be a good idea as of yet. But should the Democrats, if they get the chance, 'drop the third nuke' and get rid of the filibuster for once and for all, or should they retain this undemocratic Senate tradition, perhaps with some reforms?

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Will anything actually change this time around? Will these mass shootings finally spur the politicians to act, when all the others didn't? While it's easy to be pessimistic, since it is rare indeed that anything happens after such tragedies, perhaps this time is different. We couldn't say why this time seems to have had more of an impact than the other 250 times it has happened this year, but so far it has. Perhaps it was the fact that there were multiple mass shootings in a single day or perhaps it was the high body count or perhaps it was the El Paso gunman's obvious racist motivation, but for whatever reason this time could be different.

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A real Twitter war has now erupted. This is not a mere "tweetstorm," where people snipe at each other through Twitter messages, this is a dispute between Twitter itself and what looks to be the entire Republican Party election machine. How it all ends nobody knows, but it was almost inevitable that Twitter would eventually get sucked in to the partisan divide in one way or another. In this growing conflict, Twitter fired the first shot, by locking up Mitch McConnell's election site for posting a threatening video (the video was of protesters outside Mitch's house threatening him, so it wasn't like the campaign was threatening anyone else, in all fairness). The Republicans have returned fire by announcing they are pulling all election Twitter ad spending. So far, neither side has blinked.

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Well, the second round of the Democratic debates is over, which means we are now smack in the middle of the debate about the debates. This is a window where we don't yet have an accurate picture of whether this week's debates will change anything in the polling (likely outcome: not very much), so instead of hard data all we have to argue about is sheer speculation and opinion. And, from what's being said, some are wringing their hands with worry.

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