I write this just before the start of the season finale of "House Select Committee Investigates January 6th" -- which I should mention is not actually the title of a television miniseries, as these hearings are not being presented for entertainment purposes. They are being presented for informational purposes, because every American deserves to know what happened before, during, and after that dark day in American history. They are hours-long extended public service announcements, in other words. Very sober proceedings exposing very serious crimes and misdemeanors -- including, tonight, dereliction of duty by the country's commander-in-chief.

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A bipartisan group of senators has unveiled two bills today which would improve and protect the process of presidential elections. One of these bills would update the 1887 Electoral Count Act (a law which was very vaguely written and legally confusing in parts), while the other bill addresses more peripheral subjects such as doubling the penalties for violence against poll workers. Both bills have the support of nine Republicans, so both have a very good chance of eventually being enacted.

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And so, once again, we find ourselves in a very familiar place. Senator Joe Manchin has just yanked the rug out from under the lion's share of what he was supposedly negotiating in good faith with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (and the entire rest of the Democratic Party). Manchin let it be known that two of the biggest things he himself had said he was going to strongly support (in the pared-down version of President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan) were suddenly verboten and off the table. In other words, Joe Manchin successfully wasted everyone's time -- once again -- for months on end.

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After an extended break (which was interrupted by the unplanned sixth of these live hearings), the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6th reconvened today for the seventh such hearing. Today's hearing centered around the violent rightwing militia groups that attacked the United States Capitol, and how they were encouraged to do so by Donald Trump.

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After a holiday break, the House Select Committee on January 6th will reconvene their public hearing schedule tomorrow, at 1:00 P.M. Eastern time. The only thing they've revealed (as of this writing) is that tomorrow's testimony will focus on the role played by right-wing militias such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and will also highlight Donald Trump's actions (and, more importantly, inaction) on January 6th. No witness lists have been made public yet, so we might have to wait until tomorrow to even know who will be there (although there is already plenty of in-depth media speculation about who could show up).

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President Joe Biden capped off a pretty good week with a pretty good speech today, given right before he signed an executive order to do what he could to protect women's rights. Biden did so, of course, in response to the "extreme" Supreme Court decision which overturned Roe v. Wade.

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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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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.

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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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