When Donald Trump was president, he came up with a rather fantastical reading of the United States Constitution. Perhaps "reading" is too strong a word, since it has always been plainly obvious that he's never bothered to read the document at all, in whole or in part. But someone planted and germinated an idea in him and his articulation of it was: "I can do anything I want as president." Sometimes he'd attempt to point to "Article II" of the Constitution (which, for the record, most definitely does not say the president can do anything he or she wants to do). For Trump, the non-existence of the "anything I want" power within the Constitution didn't matter one whit, since he had already convinced the only person that ever mattered to him (himself) that it just had to be true, so he took it as his personal North Star. Which is why this week's developments in uncovering his culpability for the events of January 6th should really come as no surprise. The only question that remains is whether he'll be allowed to get away with his blatant disregard for what the Constitution actually does say, or whether there will be any consequences at all for such behavior.

Conservatives have long believed the president should be allowed to "do anything he wants," period. They have a fancy name for this: the "unitary executive." They argue that the Founding Fathers must surely have really meant for the executive to have kinglike powers and essentially be answerable to no one ("checks and balances" be damned!). But dressing it up in a fancy term doesn't make it any more real (it's always surprised me that they didn't go whole-hog and argue for a "plenipotentiary president," which at least has alliteration going for it, but I digress...).

The president, as the current nominee to the Supreme Court once wrote in an opinion, is not a king. He just isn't. Or, at least, he shouldn't be. The lofty ideal is supposed to be: "In America, no one is above the law." But is that really true, or just something we piously tell schoolchildren? Again, this remains to be seen.

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That headline isn't a judgment in any way, nor is it a metaphor or pun or even a boast. It's the literal truth -- California's state government has too big a budget surplus. They've got too much money, and the only question is what to do with it. This may sound strange, since governments normally don't fret about having too much in their coffers, but there is a 1970s-era state law that says that they're going to have to send some of it back to the taxpayers. So that's what the politicians in Sacramento are now arguing about -- how to rebate this money and to whom.

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Lo, how far the moralistic mavens of the Republican Party have fallen! They keep attempting to take the moral high road so they can piously point out all the failings of their political opponents in this realm... but they keep being undermined by fellow Republicans who have embraced the new amoralism Donald Trump ushered in to the GOP.

During the week's big television event -- the Supreme Court confirmation hearings -- Republicans repeatedly clutched their pearls over supposedly light sentences for child pornography crimes which were handed down by Ketanji Brown Jackson during her tenure as a federal judge. Meanwhile, yet another prominent GOP Senate candidate was accused by his spouse of abuse (which also reportedly included physically abusing his children, leaving one son with a "swollen face, bleeding gums, and loose tooth"). This brings the total up to (by our count) three Republican candidates for the United States Senate who have been accused of physically abusing their partners. One has withdrawn from the race, but the other two -- Herschel Walker in Georgia and newly-accused Eric Greitens of Missouri -- are still running. Greitens (in case you've forgotten) previously had to resign the governor's office when it was alleged he tried to blackmail the hairdresser he was having an affair with, using a nude video he shot of her while sexually assaulting her. Two of these three candidates have been endorsed by Trump. The moralists in the GOP have not denounced anyone concerned, of course.

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Iowa's prominence among the states that hold early voting in the Democratic presidential primaries seems to now be in some jeopardy. Party officials are openly discussing whether to revamp the process of selecting which states get to hold the earliest votes, which continues a reform effort that has been ongoing for quite a while now. Once the primary system replaced the "smoke-filled back rooms" in the party's selection of a nominee in the 1970s, there have been efforts to tinker with who goes first. Iowa and New Hampshire fended off most of these reform efforts and held their position as, respectively, the first caucus state and the first primary state to vote in the nation. More recently, the party acknowledged the dearth of minorities in these two states by adding South Carolina (with a high percentage of Black voters) and Nevada (with many Latino voters) to balance things out a bit.

But now the party appears to be rethinking whether Iowa should even have a place at the early-voting table at all. Here's how the Washington Post reported this development:

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The Russian army has proven to be a lot less impressive than many (including myself, I must in all honesty admit) had previously thought. Ditto the Russian air force. A war of choice waged by an invader with what appeared to be overwhelming military superiority has just not played out as Vladimir Putin expected. They are bogged down, perhaps for good. Their advance has been halted almost everywhere in Ukraine. Today brought the news that Ukrainian forces are actually recapturing territory and pushing the Russians back. This is an astonishing turn of events. Could the war actually be at a turning point? It is likely too early to make such a declaration, but even the fact that there now exists the possibility of that being true gives both the Ukrainians and the rest of the free world hope.

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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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