[Written before Trump's evening remarks]

As I write this, America is in an extended intermission between Act 1 and Act 2 of today's political drama. Donald Trump has surrendered himself to the New York authorities, been arraigned, been charged with 34 felonies, and been released. He is currently en route to Florida, where he will later give a speech and/or press conference from his own golf resort.

The television networks heavily covered the morning's events and I expect they will break into regular programming once again for Trump's comments. Indictment or not, this is the type of breathless news coverage Trump has been missing, so I expect he'll be back to his old self for his remarks, revelling in the nationwide attention.

I have not read the legal filings yet, so I am going to refrain from commenting on the relative weakness or strength of the actual charges. There'll be plenty of time to do so later. Instead I merely offer up a few observations from watching the day's events unfold.

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Some news was made over the weekend, as another Republican unofficially threw his hat into the presidential primary ring. This, depending on how you count them, brings the list of serious declared candidates to either three or four. Or you could count the number of people who are definitely running (whether they have announced or not), which would make Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson either the sixth or the seventh candidate in the race. Hutchinson made his pre-announcement announcement this weekend on a Sunday morning television show, which came as a surprise to many -- myself included (mostly because I don't think he has even a prayer of winning the nomination). Many others, hearing the news, reacted with: "Asa who?"

Hutchinson is apparently running just in case the Republican Party suddenly emerges from its current Trumpian haze, rededicates itself to its historical ideological roots, and decides that sunny optimism is what it truly wants in a candidate. Which, quite obviously, is why I am of the opinion that he doesn't have a prayer of winning over today's Republican base voters. Hutchinson will attempt to occupy the "Aw-shucks down-home sunny Reaganism lane" in the primary horserace. He is the darkest of horses -- the longest of longshots -- because this lane likely does not even exist anymore.

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Donald Trump's typographical mistakes were already legendary. But up until now, none have truly been as historic as the one he posted immediately after a New York grand jury indicted a former United States president for the first time in American history [bizarre capitalization in original, of course]: "These Thugs and Radical Left Monsters have just INDICATED the 45th President of the United States of America...." Um, well, yes... the grand jury just indicated that Donald Trump was worthy of indictment.

Buffoonery aside, this is indeed a historic moment. Because the New York grand jury went first, the relative merits of the Stormy Daniels case will be endlessly dissected and discussed in the coming days, but as of this writing nobody outside of the grand jury or the prosecutor's office is fully aware of either: (1) the exact charges against Trump (said to be on the order of 30 separate charges, but no details have been released yet), or: (2) the evidence which convinced both the prosecutor and the grand jury that Donald Trump had not just broken the law but that this could be proved beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. Nobody knows -- and we won't even begin to know until next Tuesday at the earliest. That's when rumor has it that Trump will surrender himself in New York City to get his mug shot and fingerprints taken and to face arraignment for the charges. At that point the charges will become publicly known, but the full weight of the evidence against Trump will not be revealed to the public before the case actually comes to court. This is an important fact to keep in mind -- whether you think Trump is guilty as sin or pure as the driven snow. Nobody really knows at this point, beyond pure bias and speculation.

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Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, facing the same intransigence within his caucus that has been present since the rise of the Tea Party, issued a laughably empty threat today. The headline in the Washington Post read: "House GOP Eyes Bill To Cut Spending, Raise Debt Ceiling Amid Stalemate." In poker terms, this is nothing short of a monstrous bluff. It is so far removed from the reality of the situation that the only real response from President Joe Biden and the Democrats should be: "Go right ahead -- please don't let us stop you!"

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It hasn't happened quite yet, but I predict there's about to be a geographic shift in the political media's attention. Their focus for the next few weeks might head south in a rather literal fashion, down the coast from New York City to Fulton County, Georgia. Which could wind up being a good thing, in the end.

I can make this prediction because I've been closely watching both grand juries which are reportedly poised to indict Donald Trump. There are also two big federal cases waiting in the wings as well, but the state-level investigations seem to be getting closer to an actual indictment than the federal ones (although the federal ones also seem to be entering their final phases, to be fair).

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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy just made his opening bid in the high-stakes poker game he wants to play with President Joe Biden over raising the debt ceiling. Biden's position from the start has been that America can't afford playing games with the full faith and credit of the United States on the table, and he has called on McCarthy to play exactly the same game of poker that gets played every year, but with only the usual stakes -- which, at worse, might lead to a temporary government shutdown. Biden wants a clean bill to raise the debt ceiling from Congress and then he will be open to holding negotiations for the annual federal budget (which is an entirely separate matter).

McCarthy's bid came in the form of a letter sent to Biden, in which he mightily attempts to put his own political spin on the situation. You could even call it gaslighting, since it ignores a few salient facts and pushes forth an alternate version of reality. McCarthy's hand is weak, though, and it doesn't look like it's going to get much stronger any time soon. The House Republicans can apparently only agree on very vague statements along the lines of: "Gosh, it'd be nice to save some money," without any specifics about much of anything. What will change this (if and when it happens) is when the House Republicans start publicly releasing their own budget plans, complete with actual line items and actual budget numbers. Which, from all reports, is not likely to happen before May (at the earliest).

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Although the American news media hasn't paid it a whole lot of attention, Israel now seems to be teetering on the brink of an existential crisis over what form of government it is going to have -- one geared towards democracy and checks and balances, or one headed in a much more authoritarian direction. While international news is routinely given short shrift in America (unless our own troops are somehow involved), what seems striking to me are the parallels between what Benjamin Netanyahu is currently attempting to do and what a second Donald Trump presidential term might look like here.

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On one of the last days of the year 1170, an English king seems to have begun a long tradition of what might now be known as "mobspeak." Like unto a mobster capo who is cautious about saying or ordering his minions to do specific things which he might later be found guilty of, King Henry II -- speaking about a man who was a powerful rival at the time, Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Becket -- uttered the ultimate in "deniability" to his knights. The wording is in doubt, since this all happened a very long time ago, but the most common phrasing known today is: "Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?" We personally prefer the version that calls him a "meddlesome priest" instead, just for the Scooby Doo vibe, but the only account written by a contemporary of Henry worded it (in Latin): "What miserable drones and traitors have I nurtured and promoted in my household who let their lord be treated with such shameful contempt by a low-born cleric!" This version, we feel -- with only slight modernizations of the language -- could easily have been uttered by Donald Trump. It includes shaming his own followers ("miserable drones and traitors") for being insufficiently loyal and fervent in his defense, a personal playground insult to the object of his wrath ("low-born cleric"), as well as overdramatizing his own victimhood ("treated with such shameful contempt"). The whole statement is downright Trumpian, when you think of it.

What happened next, back in the 12th century, was that four of Henry's knights hied thither to Canterbury Cathedral and duly hacked the archbishop to death. Becket later achieved sainthood as a martyr to Christianity. But Henry was able to stay king and while he didn't have the four knights (who fled to Scotland) arrested, he did later ignore them when they begged him for help. Sound familiar?

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The House of Representatives tried to override President Joe Biden's first veto today, but the effort failed in a 219-200 vote -- far short of the two-thirds necessary to override (290 votes in a full House). This was the first-ever veto from Biden, on a bill Republicans had convinced a few Democrats to cross the aisle for. The bill itself would have changed a rule from the Labor Department to remove the freedom of conscience in the investment world. To put it another way, Republicans wanted a Big Government solution to a problem that essentially only exists within their own minds. Most Democrats were right to oppose imposing ideological limitations on what pension fund managers can and cannot do, and President Biden was right to veto it.

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There's a recurring theme in both American fiction and actual American history, of playing to the crowd in legal situations. And, at times, it can actually work wonders. Trying a criminal case "in the court of public opinion" can make its own mark on history -- no matter the outcome of the actual court case. Think: the Scopes Monkey Trial. Or John Brown. In both cases, the public eventually wound up on the side that actually lost the case in court (Scopes lost, and John Brown's body wound up "a-mouldering in the grave" after he was executed).

Unsurprisingly, this theme has been reflected many times in popular culture. Three movies sprang immediately to my mind, when considering the subject. The first is graphically violent and brutally portrays how even a pair of vicious serial killers can use the media's appetite for this theme to great effect: Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. The second is a lot more lighthearted and uses musical numbers to create its own condemnation (or celebration?) of the power of the media to warp a court case beyond all recognition: Chicago. And the third one is my personal favorite of the three, because it is either a total spoof or an absolute farce (take your pick), which as a bonus also features a cameo from Patty Hearst: Serial Mom, from director John Waters.

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