The debate over transgender athletes has now moved from the campaign trail to the Republican Congress, as the House of Representatives just passed a sweeping ban on transgender girls and women in sports, after Republicans spent an enormous amount of time and money running on the issue in last year's election. But one very important point in this debate is simply not being heard by most people -- the actual scope of the situation. Here is how the Washington Post started its article today on the bill moving through the House:

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Will TikTok be banned before Donald Trump even takes office? That is the question the Supreme Court will hear tomorrow. As things stand, a law will start to shut down TikTok in this country on the 19th, unless the company divests itself from ownership and control by the Chinese government. Which isn't very likely to happen in the next ten days. But the politics of the situation have been rather convoluted, so it's hard to predict what will happen or what the fallout will be in Washington.

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Welcome back to the second of our year-end awards columns! And if you missed it last Friday, go check out [Part 1] as well.

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It must be a slow news month. That's the obvious explanation. But then "obvious explanations" aren't exactly newsworthy, or maybe just not entertaining enough, perhaps. It's much more fun to present all kinds of wild theories, isn't it? Which, again, is the obvious explanation for why the mainstream media keeps (pun definitely intended) droning on and on.

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Well, that was quick. As many have amusingly pointed out, the nomination of Matt Gaetz to be Donald Trump's attorney general didn't even last a full Scaramucci. Eight days, from beginning to end, was all it took. It's more than he deserved, really.

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Do Democrats still have a "big tent" party, or have they now morphed to being a "small tent" party by insisting on too many must-pass litmus tests? That is a question Democrats should really be asking themselves now, after suffering a humiliating election defeat. That's the traditional way to put it, but at the risk of using an offensive term, what they really need to decide is whether they're going to allow what might be called "Cafeteria Democrats" to exist peacefully within their party or not.

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The circus has come to town, and performing in the center ring this week was the teeny-tiny clown car which disgorged a continuing parade of clowns, each more outlandish than the last.

Or, to put things another way: get ready for lots more circus/clown metaphors in the very near future. It's really the only possible way to describe Donald Trump selecting his cabinet. But we'll get to the individual clowns in a moment, because first we've got to take a broader view of what Trump's up to here.

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The Washington Post secured its entry into the annals of American political history by taking down a United States president. Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein famously uncovered the entire Watergate scandal, which caused Richard Nixon to resign in disgrace. Award-winning books and movies about the brave reporters followed, portraying them as giants in the world of journalism.

Ah... those were the days, eh?

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In the political debate over abortion, people like Donald Trump (and plenty of others) like to use a dodge, when talking about what they support. They say they are in favor of three exceptions to abortion bans: rape, incest, and "the life of the mother." But what does that last one mean, on a practical basis? It means needless suffering, pain, risk, and in some cases the actual death of the mother -- all because doctors are scared of being thrown in jail for providing necessary medical services on a timely basis. This is beyond tragic and completely unnecessary, and yet it is no mere hypothetical -- it is happening right here in the United States of America in the twenty-first century.

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It took a pandemic for many people to even notice how essential some jobs are. Who among us ever gave a single thought for the workers who produce toilet paper before this year? And yet suddenly they were at the forefront of the fight against the coronavirus (mostly due to rampant panic-buying for no particular reason). The only times I've ever stood in a long line at 6:00 A.M. previously, it was to buy concert tickets when they went on sale. Doing so to get the limited number of toilet paper packages the grocery store released each day was indeed a novel experience, that's for sure.

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