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.

In Jackson's case, she will be replacing a retiring liberal justice, so there will be no change whatsoever in the ideological makeup of the court, which will remain at 6-3 in the conservatives' favor. If Jackson had been nominated due to the sudden death of a conservative justice, the hearing would doubtlessly have been more contentious, but the outcome would likely have been exactly the same: all Democrats voting for her, which would be enough for the lifetime appointment to the high court.

Everyone in the room already knows all of this, of course. But they also know they're all on television, so they all work hard to please their base (the ones with the stamina to sit through congressional hearings) and possibly create a single soundbite that they can use in their political campaigns. Pretty standard stuff, in other words.

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At some point, the House January 6th Select Committee is going to start going public with what they have uncovered. This will begin with open hearings on national television, featuring witnesses chosen to relate a storyline the committee's members already largely know. Soon after, an "interim report" will be released, and then the committee's final report is planned "before the midterm election." The question of when all this will begin to happen, however, is not yet clear.

It took half a year for the committee to even be formed -- a delay that seemed incomprehensible. First Republicans were given the choice of signing on to a bipartisan effort to investigate the worst attack on the U.S. Capitol since 1814, but not enough Senate Republicans went along with this reasonable and bipartisan idea for the bill to pass. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi then created the Select Committee in her own chamber, and Republicans still tried to play games by putting mudslinging firebrand conspiracy-theorists on the committee (some of whom may actual bear some culpability for what happened that dark day). Pelosi refused to seat them, and instead seated the only two remaining Republicans who still take their oath to the Constitution seriously. Since then, these two have all but been driven from the Republican Party's graces.

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Something rather astonishing happened on Capitol Hill this week. The Senate passed a bill by unanimous consent, acting with such blinding speed that some senators weren't even aware of what was happening. Contrast this to the Senate's usual modus operandi, which is for things to move so slowly that a glacier would be seen as zipping along by comparison. Arcane parliamentary procedures are routinely used to gum up the legislative works, which often leads to nothing at all happening -- after spending enormous amounts of time and energy in the attempt.

This Tuesday, however, Senator Marco Rubio offered up a bill just after everyone got back from lunch, and the bill speedily passed when no senator objected to moving it along by unanimous consent. To say this was surprising is an understatement. Especially because the bill is not some arcane piece of legislation that only affects a select few, but instead will permanently shift America's time to Daylight Saving Time while jettisoning standard time altogether. In the near future, we'd all spring forward an hour (as we just did last weekend) one last time and then never change our clocks again. That affects virtually everyone, obviously.

Politico summed up just how stunning this was: "The quick and consequential move happened so fast that several senators said afterward they were unaware of what had just happened." The Washington Post added a few amusing quotes:

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First of all, a Happy Saint Patrick's Day to everyone!

Today I am running an old column again, because I have more important things to do (ahem) than write a new one. The following column was the last of the travelogue I wrote when visiting the Emerald Isle on Paddy's Day back in 2015. It's my favorite of the three, mostly because of the Led Zeppelin references.

The first two of these are worth a read, if you're interested in this sort of thing. The first column ("It's A Long, Long Way To Tipperary") details Paddy's Day in Dublin as well as some of the other more interesting things we saw (a 90-percent eclipse of the sun, Dublin mummies, a royal reburial in England, etc.). It also has a rather amusing/embarrassing photo of me (again, for those who are interested in such things) in full Paddy's Day regalia, as well as a gaffe from Joe Biden. The second of these ("Northern Ireland, Where Even The Carrots Are Orange") has a short history of the division of Ireland (and carrots) as well as a few other tourist stops. But the one below was the culmination of the trip, complete with a visit to the Bushmills distillery, which was conveniently right down the road (earlier we had visited the Jameson's distillery in Dublin, I should point out).

In any case, as I said I have some celebrating to begin, so please enjoy the following trip not only through the past but through the wild coast of Northern Ireland. And, of course..

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig!
Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Originally published March 26, 2015

Wind-swept but safe, back on the bus, we trundled off to lunch at the Bushmills distillery. Yes, in one trip I managed to see both major Irish distilleries: Bushmills and Jameson. And I don't even drink much whiskey (except maybe a snort or two on Paddy's Day each year)! And a note to grammarians: it's only "whisky" in Scotland -- in both America and Ireland, it's "whiskey." I have no idea why, but there it is. File it under the same heading (I suppose) as why the word "Scotch" only applies to whisky and broth, and everything else is "Scottish."

But back to Ireland. Whiskey -- like parades, colors, religion, and everything else on the island (carrots included) -- is political in nature here. For instance: I've never seen Bushmills served in the Republic of Ireland. Never. And I've personally been in many a pub, throughout the years. If you order whiskey at the bar in the Republic, it had better be Jameson. I assume the same is true in Northern Ireland, for Bushmills, as well. Yes, even after a long day when you retire to the pub, politics is never all that far away from Irish life. In other words: keep in mind which side of the border you're on when you order that shot at the bar!

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In Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare gave us a brilliant construct: "Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has had greatness thrust upon him, and he has more than risen to the occasion.

Today Zelenskyy addressed the United States Congress, but his real plea was to President Joe Biden. Zelenskyy urged Biden to accept the mantle of "leader of the world" -- and to use that position to achieve peace -- at the very end of his speech. Zelenskyy did so in English (unlike the rest of his speech) so his words could not be misconstrued. Ever since the invasion of his country began almost three weeks ago, Zelenskyy has shown the world what true leadership looks like. Refusing to evacuate from his capital, he has urged on his own citizens and the rest of the world to do everything possible to repeal the Russian invaders.

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I mean that headline both ways. This is indeed an article about time. And it's about time for the subject to be addressed, too. Today, in a surprise victory, Senator Marco Rubio actually passed a bill by unanimous consent in the United States Senate that would enshrine, once and for all, Daylight Saving Time (or "D.S.T.") as the year-round standard for time in all of America. No more springing forward or falling back ever again, in other words. In March of 2023, the country would spring forward one last time and then that would be the time we'd all live with forevermore, even in winter. He titled it the Sunshine Protection Act (Rubio is from Florida, after all).

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Earmarks are back! After 11 years in the political wilderness, the budgetary tactic has returned to Capitol Hill. This means that individual members of Congress were once again able to reserve chunks of money in the massive omnibus budget bill that passed last week. The practice was largely seen as completely out of control back in 2010 and became a rallying cry for the Tea Party movement and Republicans in general, which led to a complete ban on the practice in Congress. That ban has now been lifted, and this is the first budget that includes earmarks to pass in over a decade.

Is this development a good thing or a bad thing? Well, probably a little of both. The process has been reformed somewhat, but these reforms aren't all that stringent and could use some strengthening. The budget bill that just passed reportedly had over 4,000 earmarks included within it. If applied equally, this would work out to around eight earmarks per member of Congress, but that's not the way it worked out. Some Republicans refused to request earmarks, holding to their original stance that the practice was nothing short of organized corruption. And party and committee leaders got the biggest bites of the apple, it seems -- Chuck Schumer's name is attached to over 140 earmarks alone.

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Let's start with some good news this week, because we could all use some, right? Two years ago today Tom Hanks announced to the world he had contracted COVID-19, on the same day that the virus people were then largely calling "the novel coronavirus" was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. This was when it all hit home for many -- that this could quite possibly be a very big deal indeed, even though the president of the United States was desperately trying to get the American public to believe otherwise. Salon provides a good rundown of what we all went through next:

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In politics, as in much of life, timing is key. Sometimes there are windows of opportunity that can be missed. Such seems to be the case with the so-called "People's Convoy," a group of American truckers who launched a copycat imitation of the Canadian truckers' protest, in the hopes of bringing media attention to their cause (or just themselves, perhaps). But their time -- if it ever even existed -- seems to have passed long before the big-rigs arrived near Washington D.C.

I've long been interested in the phenomenon of political protest, especially the mechanics and tactics used to gain public support and sympathy for a grand cause, no matter what issue the protest centers around. As the truckers in Canada proved, using 18-wheelers as actual protest vehicles can be a powerful display (whether popular or not). But the American imitation protest seems to be doing no more than spinning their wheels and driving in circles. Literally.

The truckers might have made a bigger impact if they had stuck to the original plan, which was to arrive in D.C. on the night of the State Of The Union speech. That would have given the television cameras something to focus on: "...outside the Capitol, however, a rather large and noisy protest was taking place." Except that that didn't happen -- and what did happen wasn't until the speech was long over anyway.

Unlike the Canadian truckers, the American protest was a rather Seinfeldian protest to begin with, since it is essentially a protest about nothing. Canadian truckers were expressing their anger at vaccine and mask mandates. The American truckers, however, faced no such mandates at all. There is no rule stating you must be vaccinated to drive a truck here, and the last statewide mask mandate just ended in Hawai'i. So what was the protest even supposed to be about?

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I must admit that while I am usually open to considering nuanced diplomatic (or military) reasons why something which seems obvious simply cannot be done, for the life of me I cannot comprehend why the MiGs Poland is offering aren't already being flown by Ukrainian pilots over the skies of Kyiv. Because in this case any diplomatic or military concerns are contradicted by what Poland and the rest of NATO are already openly doing, as well as what the United States secretary of State publicly stated last weekend.

The idea was a fairly simple one to comprehend. It isn't a small idea and it is complex, but it was still pretty easy to understand. Poland has aging MiG-29 fighter jets in its air force, leftovers from the Soviet era. Ukrainian military pilots already know how to fly them, so there would be no learning curve for them. Poland wants to donate these planes to Ukraine. To fill the void in their air fleet, Poland is asking for American-made F-16s (not new ones, they'll take older used ones, even) to replace them. Poland gets an upgrade to their air force, Ukraine gets fighter jets it desperately needs, and the U.S. and the rest of NATO shift some planes around so that the Polish forces aren't temporarily depleted in a crucially-important time and place. How the permanent replacement planes would ultimately be paid for and where they'd come from seem to be rather minor details in the grand scheme of things. After all, Ukraine needs these planes now.

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