As we write this, everyone inside the Beltway is getting ready for the upcoming White House Correspondents' Dinner, which President Joe Biden has said he will be attending (after a hiatus of presidents attending due to COVID and, earlier, due to Donald Trump having incredibly thin skin). But, as usual, our invitation seems to have been lost in the mail or something. Ahem.

We are excited with a sort of "something good is about to happen" feeling, however, because the House Select January 6th Committee has finally announced a preliminary schedule for public hearings. Here's the story (as it stands so far):

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If Republicans do take control of both chambers of Congress, the margin of control in each will be the most important variable. In the Senate, the margin will likely be fairly close, but nobody really knows what it might be like in the House. If Republicans have a blowout House election season and pick up dozens and dozens of seats, this will almost certainly make Kevin McCarthy's job a lot easier; but if the margin is tight (maybe not quite as tight as the one Nancy Pelosi has been dealing with, but perhaps within 10 or 15 votes) then any faction bigger than the margin will be able to dictate its own terms -- as the Tea Partiers proved, the last time this happened.

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Utah Democrats have just announced they're going to try an experiment. Instead of running a Democratic candidate in the upcoming Senate race, they are instead throwing their weight behind an Independent candidate, Evan McMullin. By doing so, they hope to boost his chances over the incumbent Republican Mike Lee. This is an experiment, so there's no guarantee it'll work -- but it undoubtedly will give McMullin a much better chance at beating Lee, so it will be very interesting to see play out.

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Happy Earth Day, everyone!

It's been a rather bizarre week, which is even more odd since Congress is still off lollygagging, rather than doing the people's business as they are handsomely paid to do. Perhaps all these vacations have a cost? That's what we were thinking, at any rate, when we heard the news today that the House Select Committee on January 6th has punted the ball yet again, and will not even be scheduling public hearings until June, rather than next month. Seriously, guys? You're going to break the biggest political scandal story of the year right at the start of summer?!?

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Donald Trump has taught the Republican Party many things that have directly conflicted with long-standing party orthodoxy, so it shouldn't really come as that big a surprise that Republicans are now embracing using the power of government to punish corporate behavior they don't approve of. This is the party formerly known as the champion of the free market, mind you. The party that fought hard for corporations to be considered citizens with full constitutional rights, including the right of "free speech." All of those ideals have been conveniently tossed on the ideological scrap heap, though, as Republicans now fully embrace using the full power of government to punish corporations for speaking out on politics.

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The only sin a Republican can commit these days that merits any sort of consequences from members of their own party seems to be to badmouth or otherwise cast aspersions on either (1) Donald Trump, or (2) any Republican politician in good standing with Donald Trump. This is the new GOP Rubicon, it seems. Falling afoul of this standard means shunning and perhaps excommunication from the Republican ranks, but anything short of it (and it's getting more and more obvious that they really do mean anything) might lead to a strong talking-to, at worst.

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When Donald Trump was president, he came up with a rather fantastical reading of the United States Constitution. Perhaps "reading" is too strong a word, since it has always been plainly obvious that he's never bothered to read the document at all, in whole or in part. But someone planted and germinated an idea in him and his articulation of it was: "I can do anything I want as president." Sometimes he'd attempt to point to "Article II" of the Constitution (which, for the record, most definitely does not say the president can do anything he or she wants to do). For Trump, the non-existence of the "anything I want" power within the Constitution didn't matter one whit, since he had already convinced the only person that ever mattered to him (himself) that it just had to be true, so he took it as his personal North Star. Which is why this week's developments in uncovering his culpability for the events of January 6th should really come as no surprise. The only question that remains is whether he'll be allowed to get away with his blatant disregard for what the Constitution actually does say, or whether there will be any consequences at all for such behavior.

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Lo, how far the moralistic mavens of the Republican Party have fallen! They keep attempting to take the moral high road so they can piously point out all the failings of their political opponents in this realm... but they keep being undermined by fellow Republicans who have embraced the new amoralism Donald Trump ushered in to the GOP.

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I have been watching the Senate confirmation hearings on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, both today and yesterday, and as usual I am struck by the Kabuki nature of any and all of these hearings. The outcome is a foregone conclusion -- Jackson is going to be confirmed to the high court -- and it is likely that no senator is going to thoughtfully change his or her vote because of anything said in the hearing room. All Democrats seem to be on board with confirming her, almost all Republicans are going to vote against her, and the only real question is whether one or possibly two Republicans will give President Joe Biden a thin veneer of "bipartisanship" to her nomination. Which is ultimately meaningless, since it doesn't matter how many senators wind up voting for any justice's confirmation, as long as it is a majority of them.

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The world pauses and holds its collective breath as we all wonder the same thing: What is Vladimir Putin up to? Will he invade Ukraine? Is this all some sort of bluff or feint? Or is he deadly serious about reconstituting the Soviet Union's sphere of influence (of satellite states subservient to Moscow)? Is he just waiting for the Olympics to end as some sort of favor to China? Or will the troops eventually go home and the whole crisis blows over?

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