I've resisted writing about it until now (mostly because everyone else was doing such a swell job of it) but it now seems almost obligatory to chime in on Liz Cheney's next move. What everyone's been talking about, of course, was her concession speech after spectacularly losing the Wyoming Republican primary to keep her House seat. In it, Cheney promised she wasn't done on the national stage yet, which most people interpreted as at least dipping a toe in the waters of a presidential run. Which brings us to the question of what purpose she would hope to accomplish by such a run.

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After hearing the bombshell news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation just executed a search warrant at Donald Trump's residence in Florida, my immediate reaction was to wonder whether this will be the trigger that prompts Trump to immediately declare his candidacy for the 2024 presidential race. Will Trump jump in the race now? It seems likelier than not, and certainly likelier than it did a day ago.

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Kansas is not generally known for its earthquakes, but what happened there Tuesday night has had that effect on politics -- because it truly has shaken things to their core. For the first time since Roe v. Wade was overturned, people actually got to vote on the issue of abortion and women's rights. And the results were nothing short of astounding.

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Initially, tonight's hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6th was supposed to be the final hearing. That was before all the rest of the hearings caused so many other witnesses and tangential stories to come out of the woodwork. Nevertheless, it was indeed (as I wrote yesterday) the "season finale" of the summer miniseries of televised hearings. The committee is now promising to reconvene and hold more public hearings in September, to cover all the new information. The committee will stay busy during the August congressional break, digging into all the new evidence and witnesses who have come forward, and then they'll report back afterwards to the public. So there's all that to look forward to....

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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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There is no right to privacy specifically enumerated in the United States Constitution or any of its amendments. According to the current Supreme Court, this means that it does not legitimately exist as a foundational right of American citizens. Democrats, for over half a century, have been complacent in relying on previous Supreme Court rulings which did spell out what the implied right to privacy encompassed: the right to marry someone of a different race, the right to purchase and use contraceptives, the right to an abortion, and the right of gay couples to marry (among others). All of those spring from the same right to privacy, but one of them obviously does not exist anymore at the national level.

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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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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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