Let's begin with a big "Happy Independence Day, everyone!"

This July Fourth it is tempting for progressives and all others who care about basic human rights to want to declare independence from the Supreme Court. Packed with radicals, it has begun what could be a terrifying reign over American life for decades to come. Who knows what laws they will target next? The basic understanding that whichever candidate gets the most votes wins an election, perhaps? The possibilities are frightening.

But there is a way to completely defang the Supreme Court, and one that would be far easier to accomplish than, say, increasing the membership of the court. "Court-packing" has all kinds of historical baggage, and to flip the court Democrats would have to appoint four more justices -- which would seem like too radical a step for many. But there's another way Congress could completely strip the court of the power of interfering with basic human rights, and it is built right in to the Constitution itself.

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[Program Note: We are pleased to announce that after a rather extended hiatus (due to several outrages being exposed to the American people in Washington), this column is returning today to its standard format.]

The two biggest political topics of the past week were the continuing outrages piling up from both the Supreme Court and the House Select Committee on January 6th.

On Tuesday, a young aide who worked for Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, appeared in a surprise House committee hearing. The previous week, the committee had let it be known that there would be no hearings over the two-week Independence Day break. But a day beforehand, a new hearing was announced without fanfare and without any details.

The witness who appeared, Cassidy Hutchinson, had apparently been getting threatening messages from those still surrounding Donald Trump. They read like mob bosses leaning on a witness who might spill the beans:

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This month has been a monumental one in politics, containing several far-reaching Supreme Court decisions and the January 6th committee hearings. While it is too soon to tell, all of this may have shifted things in Democrats' favor heading into the midterm congressional elections. Democratic voters are a lot more engaged and motivated to vote, while Republicans are losing ground. Whether this proves to be enough to counteract the expected "red wave" in November is still a very open question, but it is clear that the shift has so far favored the Democrats.

Overturning Roe v. Wade has been the biggest driver of this shift. What was once unimaginable or unthinkable is now hard, cold reality. And people are angry. Democrats have already capitalized on this in two ways -- Democratic candidates are now making their support for women's rights a central issue to their campaigns, and in states where it is possible, ballot measures are being prepared to allow the people to directly vote on the issue. These measures have a good chance of passing, at least in some states, because the polling shows people are much more pro-choice than anti-abortion. Importantly, this could boost turnout, in much the same way that Republicans so effectively used gay marriage bans in the 1990s and 2000s. If people are motivated to vote on an abortion referendum, then they'll likely also vote for the Democrats on the ballot.

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There is a nationwide audience for the revelations that keeping coming forth from the House Select Committee on January 6th, but the most important audience these hearings really have is Attorney General Merrick Garland (and all the people in the Department of Justice who have also been investigating the insurrection attempt). What will Garland do when the hearings conclude and (a few months later) when the committee's final report is publicly issued?

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Donald Trump, when he was president, was mocked in many ways. The most amusing of all, though, was the giant balloon someone created of Trump caricatured as a baby, in diapers, clutching a cell phone in one of his tiny hands.

Today's hearing in front of the House Select Committee on January 6th proved beyond a shadow of a doubt what most observant people had already realized: Donald Trump was indeed nothing but a big baby. He is a man-child whose mental age seems stuck somewhere between two years old and perhaps five. He throws tantrums. He throws his own food. He cares about nothing but satisfying his own warped urges. His biggest concern on January 6th was that the crowd size of his rally looked impressive on television. He continually harps on this, speaking just this week about his crowd that day as (of course) the biggest, hugest crowd ever to assemble. It's all about Donald Trump's ego, and it always has been.

This was revealed at today's hearing, in great detail.

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Rarely do I sit down and write a column just to proclaim my abject ignorance about a political subject, but today seems an appropriate day to do so -- to make a larger point about pundits everywhere: nobody knows this right now. Nobody. Don't believe them if they tell you they do, because we are truly in uncharted territory.

The Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade was always going to have an impact on the upcoming election. I've been saying that pretty much ever since they heard the case, months ago. It became patently obvious when the draft decision was leaked. But still it seemed to catch some by surprise. The real unanswerable questions here are: How much impact will it have on the election? And which party will benefit?

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[Program Note: Today, I simply couldn't bring myself to review the past week as usual here, so instead of the normal Friday Talking Points column all I have to offer is a rant. Hopefully by next week -- especially since there will be no House Select Committee hearings to watch -- this column will return to its normal format, but today I just couldn't. I had a few things to get off my chest, instead.]

Barack Obama created many memorable soundbites and campaign slogans, but one of the best-remembered is (as he phrased it in a tweet): "There are no red states or blue states, just the United States." This call for unity in politics was generally well-received, since it spoke to (as another former president once put it) "the better angels of our nature."

But what is becoming more and more obvious is how wrong Obama got this. His words sound blissfully naive, at this point. Because we are devolving further into the Divided States of America, seemingly with every passing day. Today's Supreme Court decision which overturned Roe v. Wade is merely another milestone on this grim journey.

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Today saw the final June hearing of the House Select Committee on January 6th. Next week, Congress scarpers off on one of their many two-week holiday breaks, ostensibly for the July 4th holiday, so we won't be getting another of these hearings until the week of July 11th, at the earliest. But the committee does indeed plan to hold more public hearings, although they continue to hold their cards very close to the vest on exactly how many such hearings will take place, as well as the subject of any of the upcoming hearings. Perhaps this is done to build tension and interest among the public, or perhaps it is just because they are now reportedly being flooded with new information and new testimony, all offered up since the beginning of the public hearings earlier this month.

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Donald Trump's Big Lie wasn't just a political ploy. Parts of it were criminal, because people (including Trump himself) didn't just theorize or promote the falsehood that the election had been somehow "stolen" from Trump, they acted on it. And -- the violence of January 6th aside -- some of those actions were indeed criminal. The most obvious was the fact that in seven states groups of Republicans took it upon themselves to proclaim themselves the rightful slate of electors to the Electoral College, and they tried to foist this fraudulent proclamation upon the rest of the country. That is election fraud, and every single participant in this scheme should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law -- if only to deter others from doing anything like it in the future.

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Today was the fourth in the series of June hearings televised by the House Select Committee, and it turned out to be one of the most effective yet. The emotional tension in the room started somber but built into outrage and fear at the end. The subject at hand today was Donald Trump and his henchmen attempting to interfere in the election process at the state level, the illegal scheme to create out of whole cloth fake slates of electors, and the impact all of this had upon the people who stood firmly for the United States Constitution and the rule of law.

While the first three witnesses -- all Republican state officials at the time -- outlined exactly what the president and his "legal team" were trying to strongarm them into doing, the final witness stood in for the thousands of elections officials across the country that in one way or another have had their lives impacted for the worse as a direct result of Trump's Big Lie. She (and the others) gave powerful testimony as to the personal toll it has taken upon her and her entire family.

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