Early this morning (very early, for those of us on the West Coast!), the second June hearing of the House January 6th committee was supposed to get underway. This didn't happen on time, due to a last-minute changeup in the program. One of the two in-person witnesses for the first hour, Bill Stepien, cancelled his appearance at the last minute. Stepien was Donald Trump's campaign manager for the last three or four months of the 2020 presidential campaign, and was thus in a unique position to provide an eyewitness account of what went both before and after the election.

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Republicans have come up with all sorts of attempts to deflect the public's attention from the enormous number and easy availability of guns in this country, some of them far wackier than others. But the more-reasonable response they've largely gathered behind is to say that all mass shootings happen because of "crazy people," and therefore we should put lots of effort into weeding those crazy people out before they can cause atrocities. That's what they say they're for, at any rate. As a way of deflecting attention, it's a lot better than what the fringe of the GOP is saying, after all.

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After a break for the holiday week, primary season will resume tomorrow. But rather than diving into the details of any of the seven states which will vote tomorrow (California, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota), I'm more interested in seeing what happens later in the week, when Alaska holds a special election primary this Saturday. Because Alaska will be test-driving a new hybrid system which incorporates two ballot reforms at once: the "jungle" primary and ranked-choice voting.

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Last night, President Joe Biden gave only the second evening address (not counting speeches to joint sessions of Congress) of his presidency. The last time he did so was over a year ago. The subject of his speech this time was a grim one: the recent massacres of innocents in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas. And all of the others which didn't receive quite as prominent media coverage, as well. He urged Congress to act, in the strongest possible terms. He pointed out that Republicans are the ones obstructing any progress whatsoever, and pleaded for some bipartisanship in the Senate.

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Last week, America experienced a racist extremist shooting up a grocery store, in an effort to kill as many Black people as he could. This week, America had to once again watch as innocent schoolchildren age 10 or under were massacred for no reason whatsoever. This is who we are, and it is shameful.

It is not, however, who we want to be. The public wants more and tighter gun safety laws, by an overwhelming margin. But even in the wake of the horrors of yet another slaughter of innocents, most people who follow politics don't expect much of anything to change. No new laws will pass the Senate, or if something does manage to be worked out, it will be weak and watered-down and likely ineffective at stopping such outrages from regularly happening.

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Here we are again. That, as you'll see below, is how I started an article written five years ago, after the Las Vegas slaughter. Because I find I cannot write yet another one of these articles, when nothing has changed and nothing is likely to change any time soon.

Politico just put out some new poll numbers, from an insta-poll taken after the Uvalde, Texas school massacre. They show pretty much where the American public has stood for quite some time now: gun control measures are either popular or overwhelmingly popular. By the numbers:

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There's an old adage that says success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan. Last night's election results in Georgia, however, did indeed have a single clear father, and his name is Donald Trump. Not that he'll admit this fact, even with the proof of a paternity test. But perhaps I'm stretching the metaphor a bit too far, so let's begin again, shall we?

After Georgia's primary, many are today proclaiming that Trump is now a paper tiger within the Republican Party and that it is safe for candidates to buck both him and his toxic Big Lie that the last election was somehow stolen from him (spoiler alert: it wasn't). This may be overstating the case, but it is undeniable that Trumpism suffered a big and humiliating body blow last night.

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As we continue to wend our way through primary season, we now turn to the two states with the most interesting races to be decided tomorrow: Texas and Georgia. Georgia is more interesting on the Republican side, while there's one Texas race that Democrats will be closely watching.

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We were reminded of the whole Wonderful Wizard of Oz metaphor early this week, when we saw Mehmet "Dr." Oz at a last-minute Pennsylvania campaign rally, holding up his smartphone to the crowd, as the disembodied voice of the great MAGA Dear Leader bellowed forth bombast and nonsense to the crowd. All it needed was some smoke and fireballs at the sides of the stage, really. It seemed to us (but then we do have a rather warped sense of humor...) that Oz was begging the crowd to please pay lots of attention to the man behind the curtain.

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The progressive wing of the Democratic Party had a pretty good night in last night's primaries. It wasn't a complete sweep, but there was a lot more positive news than negative, for once. The big-money establishment Democrats were soundly defeated in a number of races, some of them in very blue House districts -- meaning the progressive is almost certain to win in November. Not every race is going to be a cakewalk, but at this point the Democrats' chances look pretty good.

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