Forty-seven Republicans in the United States Senate caused an uproar this week when they sent an "open letter" to the people running Iran's government. This action was roundly condemned, both here and abroad, for being (at the very least) undiplomatic in the extreme. The Iranian foreign minister dismissed it as a cheap attempt at propaganda, which is to date possibly the most poignant description of the letter. After a few days, even some Republican senators who signed the letter were beginning to admit that it probably hadn't been a good idea.

Democrats were livid, and they had every right to be. This letter steps so far over the bounds of acceptable behavior in American politics as to be breathtaking. "Imagine," Democrats cried, "what Republicans would have said about us if we had pulled such a stunt and sent a letter to Saddam Hussein, just before George W. Bush invaded Iraq!" This is an excellent and valid point -- the words "traitor" and "treason" would likely have been prominently used, should such a thing have happened.

Some pundits on the Democratic side even suggested that the 47 senators be tried for violating the Logan Act, which seems to forbid unofficial attempts to influence foreign governments and official American foreign policy. The pertinent text of the Logan Act states:

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Marijuana legal reform has made great strides over the past few years. Four states are now allowing their citizens to freely use recreational marijuana. Washington D.C. -- the seat of the federal government itself -- has joined Alaska, Colorado, Oregon, and Washington state in fully legalizing marijuana. Almost half the states (23 of them) have legalized medical use of marijuana, and an additional dozen have allowed for heavily-restricted medical use of some form of the plant or another. That adds up to over seventy percent of America. Yet the federal laws have not budged an inch, and remain Draconian in their condemnation of any use of marijuana.

Change will come to federal law. That is almost assured, at this point. More and more states will likely jump on the bandwagon of recreational legalization in the 2016 elections and beyond. Sooner or later, the federal position will have to change. Three senators have just introduced legislation to do precisely that, although the chances for this particular bill being enacted are a long way from being assured. Whether it succeeds or not, though, change will indeed come at some point, and when it does it may look a lot like this bill.

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I guess the easiest way to begin this column is with the most probable presidential headline for next year: "Clinton Versus Bush." Which is really somewhat of a cheap trick, since (to be fair) the 1990s were two Bushes and one Clinton ago, really. Still, if this is the way the next election pans out, it will indeed have somewhat of a time-machine flavor to it. It's technically not "back to the future," but instead the flip side: "forward to the past."

I say this all as a preamble to the media frenzy surrounding Hillary Clinton's press conference today, where she finally addressed questions about her email use. For the older political spectators among us, it had a familiar feel to it. Younger viewers might not have had the same experience, since it has indeed been 15 years since a Clinton occupied the White House. Many now voting came of age after the Bill Clinton era, so they may not have personal memories of the times.

Here's a quick quiz, to see which group you fall into. Do you remember who Ken Starr was? How about Vince Foster? If you see the word "Whitewater," would you wonder why it is capitalized? If you heard someone use the initials "V.R.W.C." in relation to Hillary Clinton, would you wonder what was being talked about? Know who Richard Mellon Scaife was? While everyone likely knows who Monica Lewinsky was, how about Linda Tripp? Gennifer Flowers?

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Hillary Clinton, by some accounts, wanted the luxury of waiting as long as possible before officially becoming a 2016 candidate for president. There were good reasons for her to wait, the most prominent being that she could pick and choose which day-to-day political issues to address, and which she could safely ignore for the time being. So the extent of her campaigning, so far, has largely been an occasional Twitter message. It seems, however, that this luxury is about to come to an end. Hillary's soon going to have to give the public more than 140 characters, whether she officially tosses her hat in the ring or not.

Since the beginning of the year, Hillary has tweeted a grand total of 14 times (or, roughly, twice a week). Most of these were pretty innocuous. Only a handful could even be labelled political in nature, in fact. Two of these stand out, one of which worked perfectly for her, and one which did not. The first was a snarky takedown of the anti-vaccine crowd, and it worked exactly as designed. It thrust Hillary into the debate raging over the Disneyland measles outbreak, staked out a clear pro-vaccine position, and gave the media precisely what they wanted. The second one, however, is turning out to be woefully inadequate. Hillary is now rumored to be about to speak publicly about the whole email fracas, to make up for all the questions those 140 characters didn't answer.

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The February jobs report is out, and -- once again -- Obamacare has failed to kill all those jobs Republicans warned us about. But we'll get to all of that later, in the talking points, so you'll just have to wait for that.

Before we do get to how good the job market has become, let's take a quick spin around the rest of the week's political news. There were three major stories vying for media attention this week, so let's take a look at them first.

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When you face someone across a battlefield, it's easy to see that they are your enemy. However, when you fight next to someone on the same side of a battlefield, it doesn't necessarily mean you are friends. But it does qualify for the term "ally." The most prominent example of this might be the United States and the Soviet Union in World War II. Both were allied against the Nazis and the Axis, but the two countries weren't all that friendly with each other either before or after the war.

Benjamin Netanyahu just gave a controversial speech to Congress this week. Now, America is unquestionably friends with Israel, that's pretty much a given. But what I find interesting is that even though most of the American people are currently unaware of it, we are also de facto allied with Iran right now, in the fight against the Islamic State.

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The radical Republicans just suffered yet another big defeat. President Obama today signed into law the "clean" budget for the Department of Homeland Security he had been demanding all along. For the last three months, we've all been watching the Kabuki drama play out, but the ultimate outcome was never really much in doubt. Like a badly-written detective drama where the audience spots the killer in the opening act, almost everyone knew the Tea Partiers were going to lose this battle. What is mystifying is that the battlelines were drawn by the very people who were going to lose. Perhaps mystifying is the wrong word to use. True believers are always mystifying to those who don't profess the same faith. Because this increasingly looks, from the outside, like nothing more than pure religious faith, after all. If I were to label this religious belief system, I would have to call it "All-Or-Nothingism." I would define it as: "An overpowering faith that refusing to compromise and refusing to accept partial or incremental victory will win over all your opponents in the end and give you 100 percent of what you seek."

I call it religious faith because absolutely no concrete evidence exists to prove that this tactic is ever going to work. At least not in the halls of Congress. How else to explain over 50 votes to repeal Obamacare, when President Obama is obviously never going to sign his primary legislative victory away? That takes some strong and unfounded faith, doesn't it? At its heart is the utter certainty that others will also "see the light" and join in your righteous efforts -- again, with nothing but faith to go on.

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Obama consolidates his gains

After an impressive showing in January, President Barack Obama's job approval ratings in February continued to climb, but at a slower rate. Obama seems to have topped off for now, in other words. Overall, the month averaged better than January, but Obama's numbers softened noticeably at the end of the month, and could turn flat or even slightly downward in March.

Let's take a look at the updated chart:

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

February, 2015

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This will be a rather busy week in the political world. We've got the Prime Minister of Israel giving a controversial speech before Congress tomorrow, and then at the end of the week we'll have another round of government shutdown follies, courtesy of the House Republicans. Between these two events, the Supreme Court is going to be busy with a few questions in the political arena. The most prominent of these cases is King v. Burwell, which puts Obamacare back on the docket.

The first time the high court heard a major Obamacare case was in National Federation of Independent Business v. Sebelius, back in 2012. At the time, the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare's official name) was upheld by a vote of 5 to 4. This time around will likely be a close decision as well, but neither side should really be counting their chickens in advance of the expected ruling (the court will hear the oral arguments Wednesday, but a decision isn't expected until June, at the latest).

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[OK, another item on my ever-longer "upgrades needed for the CW.com site" list is to create a page where these sorts of things are easily available, complete with controls so you can listen without having to download big audio files. But until we get to that point....]

Yesterday, I was interviewed on a morning talk show in Atlanta, Georgia (WAOK 1380 AM). Since I'm a West Coast type of guy, I'll ask you to please bear in mind that this interview took place between 5:30 AM and 6:00 AM, my time. In other words, my brain was (barely) working, and awfully slowly. But it was a fun interview to do, complete with a break in the middle for a call-in guest who propounded the notion that Barack Obama was a warlock.

In any case, my apologies for the do-it-yourself nature of listening to the interview, but here are the two mp3 files (Part 1 and Part 2) which contain the interview. Scroll about halfway through the first file to hear when my interview starts, and then it continues throughout the whole second file (they're both about 10 minutes long).

Enjoy, and somebody please bring Chris some more caffeine (heh)....

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant