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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I mean that headline both ways. This is indeed an article about time. And it's about time for the subject to be addressed, too. Today, in a surprise victory, Senator Marco Rubio actually passed a bill by unanimous consent in the United States Senate that would enshrine, once and for all, Daylight Saving Time (or "D.S.T.") as the year-round standard for time in all of America. No more springing forward or falling back ever again, in other words. In March of 2023, the country would spring forward one last time and then that would be the time we'd all live with forevermore, even in winter. He titled it the Sunshine Protection Act (Rubio is from Florida, after all).

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Earmarks are back! After 11 years in the political wilderness, the budgetary tactic has returned to Capitol Hill. This means that individual members of Congress were once again able to reserve chunks of money in the massive omnibus budget bill that passed last week. The practice was largely seen as completely out of control back in 2010 and became a rallying cry for the Tea Party movement and Republicans in general, which led to a complete ban on the practice in Congress. That ban has now been lifted, and this is the first budget that includes earmarks to pass in over a decade.

Is this development a good thing or a bad thing? Well, probably a little of both. The process has been reformed somewhat, but these reforms aren't all that stringent and could use some strengthening. The budget bill that just passed reportedly had over 4,000 earmarks included within it. If applied equally, this would work out to around eight earmarks per member of Congress, but that's not the way it worked out. Some Republicans refused to request earmarks, holding to their original stance that the practice was nothing short of organized corruption. And party and committee leaders got the biggest bites of the apple, it seems -- Chuck Schumer's name is attached to over 140 earmarks alone.

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Let's start with some good news this week, because we could all use some, right? Two years ago today Tom Hanks announced to the world he had contracted COVID-19, on the same day that the virus people were then largely calling "the novel coronavirus" was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. This was when it all hit home for many -- that this could quite possibly be a very big deal indeed, even though the president of the United States was desperately trying to get the American public to believe otherwise. Salon provides a good rundown of what we all went through next:

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