Today a jury in Delaware returned guilty verdicts on federal felony gun charges against the sitting United States president's son. This is unprecedented in American history. No close relative of any previous sitting president has ever been charged with criminal behavior, so Hunter Biden will go down in the history books as the first.

What I find remarkable in all of this was President Joe Biden's reaction, and how things would be vastly different under Donald Trump. Biden reacted with a heartfelt and saddened statement, and immediately made a trip to Delaware to be with his son. He did not whine about the verdict, he did not immediately issue a pardon to his son, he did not attack or threaten any of the people who brought about this verdict, and he did not fire anyone anywhere as a result of it.

Continue Reading »

As I write this, the jury is now officially out on Hunter Biden. The jurors in the case against the president's son have heard all the evidence and have now retired to begin their deliberations. Although not as historical as Donald Trump being tried and found guilty of felonies, this is at least a historical footnote: the first member of an American president's close family to go on trial while his dad is still in office.

After following the trial fairly closely (even while on vacation), I have to say things don't look especially good for Hunter. All the prosecution had to prove was that Hunter was using illegal drugs when he tried to buy a gun, lied about this use on the federal forms, and then possessed the gun while he was still using illegal drugs. That is not very complex a case to make, which is why the trial didn't take all that long.

Hunter's defense is that the prosecution cannot prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Hunter was using drugs during the extremely short period when he bought and owned the handgun. This period was less than two weeks long, and Biden's lawyers argued that Hunter had recently gone through rehab and could conceivably still have been clean during this whole period, despite his own admission that he was addicted to crack cocaine both before and after this period.

Continue Reading »

Because it is Friday, we are re-running a Friday Talking Points column from four years ago. In June of 2020, the boundless optimism that the COVID-19 pandemic was receding and soon to be over was dealt a huge blow, as the second big wave proved to be even larger than the first. This wouldn't even be the worst wave of the pandemic, which was a long way in the future. But this was the first time Americans realized that this wasn't going to be some relatively-quick disruption of life and that we should instead buckle down for the long haul.

President Trump, at this point in time, had already proven how disastrous his attempts to lead the nation through the crisis truly were. Because to Trump, of course, none of it was about millions dying, the entire pandemic was, instead, a personal affront to him.

People have forgotten what 2020 was really like. Here's a reminder for everyone.

[Program Note: New columns will begin again on Monday! Thanks for your patience....]

Originally published June 26, 2020

America, led by President Donald Trump and (mostly) Republican governors across the country, launched a grand experiment a few months back. Rather than following guidelines and milestones recommended by top epidemiologists, each state would reopen its economy as it saw fit. If your governor felt comfortable enough with the state of things, then the doors would be thrown open. This all started just before Memorial Day weekend, when Trump decided he was bored with the pandemic. And now it's becoming pretty obvious that this experiment has failed, and failed badly. And tens of thousands of Americans are paying a very steep price for this exercise in unfounded optimism.

Continue Reading »

Considering where we are today, it's kind of laughable to run that headline. Four years ago what constituted a "very bad week" for Trump would barely even move the needle today (especially after he was found guilty of 34 felonies, just last week).

But we run this column from June of 2020 just to remind everyone that "Supreme Court decision season" has already begun and there are a few of these that will directly impact Trump. And the Supreme Court has not always ruled in Trump's favor, as well. So who knows? Maybe they'll surprise us all... it's worth hoping for, at the very least.

Originally published June 18, 2020

To President Donald Trump, today's Supreme Court ruling was not actually about the hundreds of thousands of young people whose legal residence in this country hung on this court case. Instead, it was about one thing and one thing alone, which is pretty much the same thing that everything is about for Donald Trump: himself. After learning of the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision denying Trump the ability to strip legal protection from the "dreamers," Trump petulantly took to Twitter to ask: "Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn't like me?" Once again, Trump reduced an issue of monumental importance to the level of schoolyard gossip (about him, of course). Maybe if the Supremes really really liked Trump, things would be different? Because that's obviously what it's all about, not all that legal mumbo-jumbo or hundreds of thousands of young people's lives.

Donald Trump is having a very bad week, obviously. He lost two major Supreme Court cases, which gave joy and delight to millions of affected people. He had to move the date of his first rally in months because of a holiday neither Trump nor anyone around him had ever heard of (which celebrates another monumental issue, the end of slavery in this country). John Bolton, whose politics could accurately be described as "to the right of Attila the Hun," is about to start selling his tell-all book to the public, which (as with every single one of all the other tell-all books about Trump) paints the president as a petulant, ill-informed man-baby who is unaware that Finland isn't part of Russia or that the United Kingdom is a nuclear power. Trump staged an executive order signing, which was supposed to somehow show leadership on police reform, but what he signed was so weak that Congress barely even noticed Trump's effort as they moved towards putting together their own bill. Also, Trump is apparently now obsessed with finding and bringing charges against whatever White House aide leaked the fact that he hid in a bunker during a protest outside his front door, because he knows full well how weak it made him look. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to be on the brink of a second wave of infections, this time centered mostly in the red states. And for the 13th straight week, more than a million Americans filed for unemployment. No wonder Joe Biden is dominating in each and every poll taken, both nationally and in the battleground states.

Continue Reading »

Continuing our journey into the past, we take another look back four years ago, to June of 2020. I'm not going to do these strictly in order, because this one seemed like a really good balance for the negativity (no matter how well-founded and later-proven) of yesterday's article.

Today, here's a column celebrating the concept of mail-in voting. I haven't taken a close look at individual state laws yet, but I do wonder how many of the states that significantly expanded mail-in voting for the 2020 election have kept the lenient rules, and which ones have just gone back to the way they used to do things before the pandemic forced changes. But here, at least, was a look at a few states that did it right last time around.

Originally published June 30, 2020

Every so often I like to tempt fate by writing an article which could easily (and monumentally) be proven wrong within mere hours. Today is one of those days, because I feel pretty confident in predicting that Colorado and Utah will essentially show the rest of the country how a mail-in election should be done. I seriously doubt we'll see scenes of frustrated voters not being able to cast their ballots in a timely way, because with universal mail-in voting, that's not really a problem. No long lines, no machines that don't work right, no poll workers who don't know how to operate the machines, no voter-suppression efforts (both overt and covert) at all. And while Colorado is at the end of a long journey from being a purple state to a very blue one, Utah is still about as staunchly Republican as it gets -- proving that mail-in voting is not a partisan issue at all. Or it shouldn't be, at the very least.

Continue Reading »

For the rest of the week, I am going to be running columns from four years ago -- from June of 2020. I figured it'd be a good thing to take a look back and remember where we all were then.

But I have to admit, when I found this first one, I had to feel more than a little prophetic (especially the penultimate paragraph). Pretty much everything I warned about in this column actually did come to pass, and parts of it were even worse than my fervid imagination could come up with.

This was written after Pennsylvania had held their primary and everyone was still waiting to hear the results of it, due to an extra-large quantity of mail-in votes.

Originally published June 8, 2020

I know we all have plenty to worry about these days, so I apologize in advance for adding another possible item to the list. But we could be heading for a very worrisome situation indeed, because contrary to how Americans have experienced past presidential elections (well... other than in the year 2000...), we may not actually know who won on the night of the election. There are a combination of factors which have set up this rather unique situation, and it may not even come to pass if a few of these variables change by November. But the possibility now exists that we won't know for days -- or even weeks -- who won the Electoral College and thus the presidency. Which, obviously, could lead to chaos, especially considering what Donald Trump will be saying and tweeting in the meantime.

Continue Reading »

According to Donald Trump and all his echo-chamber sycophants, President Joe Biden exerts an amazing amount of control over the entire country's judicial system. He has "weaponized" the Department of Justice, he has been waging "lawfare" against Trump, and his control reaches all the way down to state and local prosecutors as well. Biden pulls the puppet strings, according to them, and the entire judicial system dances to his tune. He uses this evil influence to "persecute" Trump (and, by extension, all his fellow Republicans). Trump swears retribution if he is re-elected (meaning that the entire scenario is probably just projection of his own desires).

Of course, this fantasy does not bear any actual resemblance to reality. If it did, one might wonder why both a Democratic member of the Senate and Joe Biden's own son are sitting in federal courtrooms today, defending themselves against criminal charges. Those facts don't really fit in with the whole "Biden as puppetmaster" theme, do they?

Continue Reading »

Over the years, this column has expanded from its humble beginnings as merely offering wordsmithing advice each week for Democratic politicians to consider (on how to frame issues so they would resonate more effectively with the public). This week, however, we will have a tighter focus, as most of the column will center around one very powerful talking point indeed. Because yesterday everything quite obviously turned into a "one-issue week."

For a while, Donald Trump was known as "President Trump." Then he became (depending on your editorial whim) the "former president" or "ex-president." But the only valid title he really could claim after leaving office (former titles being no more than diplomatic politeness, really) was what one judge called him while turning down one of his numerous appeals: "Citizen Trump." Or, as the judge and the prosecution referred to him throughout his first criminal trial in New York City, merely: "Mister Trump."

But now he's got a brand-new honorific (using that word as ironically as we can, since "dishonorific" doesn't seem to be an actual word). From this point hence, he shall be known as: "Convicted Felon Donald Trump." We should point out that we added capitals there to make it a proper title, since he likes capitalizing things so much. What we really want to do is put it in bold text, however: "Convicted Felon Donald Trump." Or perhaps increase the font size, for further emphasis. However, we have to admit, using his own preferred all-caps "shouting" ("CONVICTED FELON Donald Trump") would be a stylistic bridge too far, even for us....

Continue Reading »

Well that certainly didn't take long! After less than 10 hours of deliberating, the jury in Donald Trump's first criminal trial returned their verdict. It was a sweeping one: guilty on all 34 charges. Donald Trump will henceforth be known as: "convicted felon Donald Trump."

The speed of the jury's deliberations was astonishing. Ten hours is barely enough time to get organized and take care of all the procedural requirements, for a case with 34 charges. In the midst of their deliberations, the jury requested that the judge read back about half of his jury instructions to them and also that they hear read in court some testimony from two of the witnesses: David Pecker and Michael Cohen. This was done this morning. The judge read the jury instructions again, then clerks took the place of lawyers and the witness and read back three selections of testimony from Pecker and one from Cohen. The jury then disappeared back into their room to consider it all. All the court-watchers thought the judge was going to let the jury off for the day at 4:30, but right before then the jury reported that they had reached verdicts and just needed another half-hour to fill out all the official verdict paperwork.

But it seems there wasn't any real point of contention between one faction of jurors and another -- they were likely just being overcautious and dotting every legal "I" and crossing every "T." For them to return a verdict this quickly, they must have all been pretty much in agreement all along. So a little after 5:00, the verdicts were read: "Guilty... guilty... guilty..." for all 34 counts. Trump was not a happy camper, obviously. Sentencing has been tentatively scheduled for July 11th.

Continue Reading »

I realize that there is big legal news breaking today on two fronts -- to wit: the jury in the first criminal case against Donald Trump beginning their deliberations, and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's "What are you going to do about it, huh?" letter to Democrats in Congress (where he refused to recuse himself from any cases dealing with the January 6th insurrection or election cases concerning Donald Trump) -- but I am not going to comment on either of them (yet). Instead, I think an extreme anti-democratic idea in Texas needs highlighting, mostly for the brazen and shameless nature of it.

Last weekend, the Texas Republican Party met and approved their party platform for the year. It was chock-full of all the expected culture-war firebreathing, but there was one provision in it which is just breathtaking in its disregard for the majority of votes winning elections. Texas has long been wistfully viewed by Democrats as an enticing candidate for flipping red to blue, but this has so far not come to pass in any meaningful way whatsoever. Democrats get close to unseating people such as Senator Ted Cruz, but always seem to fall just short of doing so in statewide races. This appears to be worrying the Republicans, as evidenced by what they are now proposing.

Continue Reading »