For once, big things are actually happening in Congress. No, really!

As we write this, the House has passed the final budget bill for this fiscal year (by a vote of 286-134) and sent it over to the Senate. The Senate may pass it tonight, if senators like Rand Paul can restrain their natural urge to be total [insert favorite plural derogatory expletive here]. If they do throw a monkey wrench into the works, we could have a very short-lived partial government shutdown, but if it gets resolved before the weekend is over then it won't do much damage at all. Either way, the bill's got the votes to pass the Senate, so it's now only a matter of time until President Joe Biden can sign it and the budget that was supposed to be in place on the first of October last year will finally be finished.

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Congress is -- finally -- about to finish the most basic of their constitutional duties: funding the federal government by passing a budget for the current fiscal year. This comes almost six months from when they were supposed to have achieved this feat (the federal fiscal year starts at the beginning of October). And what is happening on Capitol Hill right now should be familiar to anyone who knows how the process has worked in recent years -- a huge bill that wraps multiple individual spending bills together is released at the last possible minute, with no time for any floor debate or even for many people to dig through the enormous length of the bill, and with a deadline in sight tomorrow night at midnight that may or may not be met (although any partial government shutdown will likely be brief and happen over the weekend when its impacts would be minimal, at least). This is all pretty much par for the budgetary course, these days. Six months late is an outlier -- usually the budget is wrapped up (at the latest) by December or January -- but budgets nowadays are never passed on time.

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But instead I am going to write a different very lazy column on a subject that has always peeved me no end: the insanely-generous vacation schedules for members of Congress. Here is the quote that set me off today, from a blurb of an article about the ongoing discussions in Congress to prevent a government shutdown this Friday night:

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This week President Joe Biden and Donald Trump both secured their respective parties' 2024 presidential nominations. Most Americans, if the pollsters can be believed (and they do all seem to be telling the same story), are not exactly thrilled with this rematch and would have preferred different choices. But we are where we are, so that's not going to happen for another four years.

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There is an effort underway to reform the federal judiciary in one particular aspect -- but it will not completely end the practice which spurred the reform, and already Republicans in Congress are pushing back by declaring that new laws must be passed instead of just a new rule from the judiciary. This isn't too surprising, since conservatives have had much better luck using the tactic to achieve the outcomes they desire in federal courts.

The practice is known as: "forum-shopping," or even more colloquially: "judge-shopping." If an organization wants to attack a law or policy in an attempt to get it declared unconstitutional and overturned, they seek out a plaintiff who happens to live in a judicial division that all but guarantees they'll get a very friendly federal judge to hear their case. This can lead to injunctions being handed down that affect not only the people in that district, but in the entire state or even the entire country. Rather than taking their chances with some random judge, one is pre-selected before filing the suit -- a judge who can be counted on to rule for their side.

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President Joe Biden's White House released their budget proposal document today, which only serves as a nagging reminder that Congress still hasn't finished last year's budget process and still needs to pass roughly 70 percent of the current year's budget -- a task they were supposed to accomplish last September. They've let it slip so long that the process is now lapping itself, in other words. Biden's new proposal is for the budget that is theoretically supposed to be in place by this October (but will almost certainly be delayed at least until after the election).

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President Joe Biden gave his third "State Of The Union" speech last night to a joint session of Congress, and he more than exceeded expectations, in multiple ways. Ol' Joe had a very good night, to put it another way.

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As he delivers his "State Of The Union" speech tonight, President Joe Biden is going to be judged a whole lot more on the style of his delivery than on the substance of what he says. That's what the pundits are going to be looking for and it'll likely be the storyline afterwards. The average citizen watching is probably going to be more interested in both what is said and how it is said, but the "how" part of that is going to get a lot more headlines the next day. This could either turn into an opportunity for Biden or it could be a giant risk, but it will be at the center of the coverage, that much seems certain.

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I sit writing this while proudly wearing my "I Voted!" sticker, after doing my civic duty by participating in my state's primary election. Today is the traditional day marking the end of the "early-voting" phase, when the primary season is flung wide open to any state willing to move to the front of the line. California did so a while back, joining over a dozen other "Super Tuesday" states. But while I am more immersed in the political world than most, I find it hard to get even a little excited today. After all, everybody knows what's going to happen and both horseraces were really over before they even began.

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During her campaign for president, Nikki Haley has been trying to have it both ways on the issue of abortion by tailoring the way she speaks about it to try to be everything to everybody. She speaks of bringing everyone together to achieve some sort of "consensus" -- which seems downright impossible given the positions staked out by both sides of the debate. And, true to form, ever since the Alabama supreme court tossed in vitro fertilization into the political arena, Haley has likewise been trying to have it both ways on the legal questions that have arisen. Except that on this issue, Haley has a more personal stake, having had her own children using I.V.F. So when she was interviewed on Meet The Press this weekend, host Kristen Welker tried to pin Haley down on her position. What she got from Haley was complete incoherence. Haley contradicted herself repeatedly, coming down on every possible side of the issue at once. To say she was talking out of both sides of her mouth is actually an understatement.

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