President Donald Trump and his "first buddy" Elon Musk have moved swiftly to precipitate more than one constitutional crisis during the first few weeks of the new administration. The two are running roughshod over the basic separation of powers in American government, aided and abetted by the Republicans in control of Congress. Which leads to a serious question -- how long will it be before they just wash their hands of all pretense of power and formally hand it all directly to Trump?

Read Complete Article »

Today I read the first of what will likely be a number of Democratic post-election analyses, in an effort to identify what went wrong for the party in 2024 and what should be done to fix it going forward. And I've certainly thought about the subject myself in the past few months, so I thought I'd offer up a rather different take.

Read Complete Article »

We begin today with an apology and a solicitation for donations. Our apology is for perhaps not doing as thorough a job of reviewing the past week as we normally do, because last night instead of doing our homework we instead watched the FireAid benefit concert for the victims of the recent Los Angeles fires. If you missed it, at least check out the fireaidla.org site, where you can donate to the cause if you wish. It was quite a show, and well worth watching (note: this review contains only a partial list of the performers...):

Read Complete Article »

If President Donald Trump's agenda gets stalled in any way, it's going to happen because of dissent within his own Republican ranks. And one week in to Trump's second term, cracks are already appearing in the MAGA facade. How deep or wide those cracks may become is still an open question, but it certainly is interesting to see them appear so quickly.

Read Complete Article »

And so we come to the final Friday Talking Points of President Joe Biden's term in office.

It is perhaps appropriate that the funeral of Jimmy Carter happened in the midst of Biden winding down his final weeks. Because Joe Biden -- another one-term Democratic president like Jimmy -- will likely become more appreciated as time goes by, just as Carter was.

Joe Biden had a pretty spectacular first two years in office, in terms of getting legislation passed. Granted, he had a Democratic Congress to work with and the continuing crisis of a pandemic to spur the politicians to actually act. He used both to get a sweeping agenda passed which will have an impact for years to come. But he had to grapple with two corporate-friendly Democrats in the Senate who held him back from achieving an even-more-historic agenda. If the full "Build Back Better" plan had made it past Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, then Americans would doubtlessly feel a lot differently (and better) about government's role in their economic lives.

Read Complete Article »

Watching President Joe Biden's farewell address from the Oval Office last night was rather bittersweet. For me at least, it all had a flavor of "what might have been." But in the end, Biden's promised bridge to a new generation of leadership really led nowhere.

While campaigning early in 2020, Biden appeared on a stage with three other prominent Democrats, who were at the time "expected to be considered for the vice presidential nomination" -- Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Gretchen Whitmer. Biden said during this campaign event: "Look, I view myself as a bridge, not as anything else. There's an entire generation of leaders you saw stand behind me. They are the future of this country." While Biden never actually did explicitly promise to serve only a single term as president, many read his comments to mean exactly that -- Biden would defeat Donald Trump, run a bridging presidency, and then step aside and make way for a younger generation of Democrats to carry the torch forward.

Read Complete Article »

In an extraordinary confluence of events, America mourned one former president as his body lay in state in the United States Capitol, while another former (and soon-to-be-again) president was sentenced after being found guilty of 34 felonies by a jury. Jimmy Carter had become almost the personification of decency in his post-presidential life, while Donald Trump has always been the personification of something a lot more tawdry.

Read Complete Article »

Donald Trump's "Day One" in office is now less than two weeks away. He promised American voters a lot of action on his first day, but in the past few weeks he seems inordinately focused on some rather odd (one might say: "downright bizarre") goals. He has become a big fan of expanding America in what can only be called imperialistic fashion -- adding Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal to the American map. Today he floated a new idea, this one not a land-grab but instead of a sort of water-grab: he wants to rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America," for no particular reason (other than to annoy Mexico, one assumes).

Read Complete Article »

Today was a pretty boring day in Washington -- which is as it should be. Congress met and certified the Electoral College votes in the ceremonial finish to last year's presidential election. There were no riots, no protests, and no insurrection attempt by a brigade of sore losers. The Capitol remained peaceful throughout. In fact, the whole thing was so boring that it's really not even worth writing a whole column about it.

Instead, let's focus on what the new Congress has on its plate. With two weeks to go before Donald Trump is sworn into office again, Republicans are already eager to get his second term rolling. The Senate will begin hearings on Trump's cabinet appointees, most of which will be pretty dull and perfunctory -- but a handful of them could get quite lively indeed. Especially considering the fact that Democrats will get to question each of them publicly about anything under the sun. They'll do so to score political points, but also in an effort to convince a few worried Republicans of the candidates' unfitness for office. Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, so it will take four of them rejecting any nominee to tank their chances. But most of them will wind up sailing through the process, even if one or two do get derailed.

Read Complete Article »

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.

Read Complete Article »