[ Posted Friday, July 21st, 2023 – 17:49 UTC ]
We do try to resist the urge (we really do!), but this week it was impossible to focus on just about anything else in politics other than the tsunami of bad legal news for Donald Trump. Remember how Trump dominated each and every news cycle for over four years? Those days are back, sadly enough, and will likely continue (at some degree of intensity or another) for the foreseeable future. He is the quintessential car wreck towards which we all must dutifully rubberneck, so here we go....
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[ Posted Friday, July 7th, 2023 – 16:43 UTC ]
The nation celebrated its 247th birthday this year, leaving only three more to go until the second-biggest celebration of our lifetime (as we still personally remember the ushering in the bicentennial in Washington D.C.). But since it was a short week, what with Independence Day falling on a Tuesday, we are hoping this will be a short column (for once). Well, short-ish at any rate. We are cautiously optimistic.
Cautious optimism is a good place to start, actually. We stumbled across an interesting paper from two Democratic strategists (Celinda Lake and Mike Lux) which confidently states: "All the elements are in place for a big Democratic victory in 2024," and predicts that the "trifecta" of winning the House back, holding the Senate and keeping Joe Biden in the White House is well within grasp.
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[ Posted Friday, June 30th, 2023 – 17:14 UTC ]
It is "Supreme Court Decision Week" in the world of politics, and while a few earlier SCOTUS decisions of this term turned out surprisingly liberal, the court saved its most radically-restrictive rulings for the very end. Three big rulings this week will have the effect of: (1) removing race from college admissions processes and all but killing affirmative action, (2) halting President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness program before it starts, and (3) making it allowable -- as long as you cite religious reasons -- for businesses to discriminate against and refuse to serve gay people. This was a pretty grim end to the court's legal term, obviously.
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 21st, 2023 – 15:50 UTC ]
President Joe Biden's son Hunter has cut a deal to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses, while a third charge of illegally possessing a weapon (after lying about his drug use on a form) has also been filed but will be withdrawn if Hunter successfully completes two years of probation. Hunter Biden will likely avoid any prison sentence as a result of the plea deal.
Republicans reacted predictably, decrying it as a "sweetheart deal," while there were zero Democrats out there screaming about Hunter being charged as part of a "witch-hunt" or swearing up and down that it was fully legal for Hunter to do these things. That's the difference between the parties in a nutshell: Democrats support the rule of law even when one of their own is caught, while Republicans want the book thrown at all Democrats while giving a free pass to all Republicans for all crimes.
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[ Posted Tuesday, June 6th, 2023 – 15:58 UTC ]
Seventy-nine years ago today, the forces of the free world attacked the fascist Nazi regime in northern France. This year, the Ukrainian military is marking the anniversary of D-Day by starting their own counteroffensive against occupying Russian forces. Back here at home, Chris Christie will be announcing his bid to take on Donald Trump for the Republican presidential nomination. There are obvious moral parallels that can be drawn between these events, but today we're going to leave that to others (for the most part).
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[ Posted Monday, May 29th, 2023 – 15:04 UTC ]
I realize that this is Memorial Day and I should really be writing a column honoring America's soldiers, but instead I thought I'd take a look at what the most impressive soldiers in today's world are gearing up to do. I speak, of course, of the Ukrainian army in their fight against the Russian [...]
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[ Posted Friday, May 12th, 2023 – 16:51 UTC ]
Let's make sure we all get this correct. Donald Trump is now technically not a "convicted rapist." He's not a convicted anything, because the verdict handed down against him this week was in civil (not criminal) court. And the jury balked at declaring that Trump had raped E. Jean Carroll, but they did find Trump liable for sexually attacking her and defaming her publicly. To the tune of $5 million. It only took them about three hours to do so, meaning the case was pretty iron-clad to begin with. So Donald Trump is merely the first ex-president to be found liable of being a sexual predator rather than being an actual convicted rapist.
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[ Posted Friday, March 3rd, 2023 – 19:00 UTC ]
Apparently, there was a big murder trial down South that culminated this week, but we have to admit that since it wasn't an overtly political case, we just didn't pay much attention to it. Instead, as always, we had our nose to the grindstone of sifting through the week's political news so that you don't have to. In other words: Welcome to another installment of Friday Talking Points!
We're going to start this week with some good news. Not great news, mind you, but pretty good nonetheless. A spate of actual bipartisanship broke out in the Senate this week and with amazing speed (for Congress in general and for the Senate in particular) they came up with proposed legislation that might actually have a chance of passing. Well, passing the Senate at least, since nobody has any clue of what the GOP House will do these days.
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[ Posted Friday, February 24th, 2023 – 18:28 UTC ]
Trains were at the heart of the political scene this week. Internationally, President Joe Biden took a 10-hour train ride to get to Kyiv in person (which he must have thoroughly enjoyed, knowing his general love of trains). Domestically, the trainwreck in Ohio became sidetracked into a political circus.
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[ Posted Wednesday, February 8th, 2023 – 16:30 UTC ]
Last night, President Biden gave (depending on how you look at it) a rousing State Of The Union speech or perhaps the first speech of his re-election campaign. Throughout it all, by my count, he uttered the phrase "Let's finish the job" a whopping 10 times (at the very least... I know I must have missed a few...). That sounds an awful lot like a new campaign slogan to me....
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