In his dystopian masterpiece Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell wrote of how truth could be manipulated to control a population. He wrote his novel in the late 1940s, immediately after the horrors of World War II. American schoolchildren are often assigned this book to read, since it is such a literary masterpiece of speculative fiction. Or, at least, they used to regularly be assigned the book. Who knows how many will get to read it in the future?

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We have always been a total sucker for "First Pets," we fully admit. Especially First Cats. So we simply must begin this weekly roundup by extending our warmest welcome to newly-announced First Cat Willow Biden. From the New York Times announcement:

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Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer has unofficially announced his impending retirement from the highest court in the land. He deserves thanks from all Democrats for doing so. By making this announcement now, Breyer has shown he has learned the lesson of Ruth Bader Ginsberg's death. And since it was such an important and painful lesson, it's gratifying to see Breyer now put the interests of the court itself above his own. For that, he deserves gratitude.

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It was an eventful week in Washington, with a holiday and an anniversary thrown in for good measure, so we're going to try to be a little more succinct in this week's rundown. Well... try to, at any rate.

The week began with Martin Luther King Junior Day, saw a historic (but failed) vote in the Senate on voting rights, contained a marathon of a presidential press conference, and marked the first year President Joe Biden has spent in office. Plus a whole lot of other notable developments along the way.

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Today, on the federal holiday celebrating the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, his son Martin Luther King III travelled to Arizona to express his displeasure with Senator Kyrsten Sinema after she crushed the hopes of all those wishing to see modern voting rights legislation pass into law. "History will remember Sen. Sinema, I believe unkindly, for her position on the filibuster," said King's eldest son and namesake, and he pointed out in an interview: "Our daughter has less rights around voting than she had when she was born. I can’t imagine what my mother and father would say about that. I'm sure they’re turning over and over in their graves about this."

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We're not quite sure exactly what to call what we witnessed this week in Washington. We know it's not "regicide," since we don't have kings here. So what, exactly? Execucide? Presidenticide? Legicide? Particide? Whatever neologism you prefer, however (and feel free to suggest your own in the comments...), what we saw this week was the strangulation of Joe Biden's presidency and the Democratic Party's political agenda. It happened mostly in public, as two supposedly-Democratic senators killed all hope of anything important getting done for the entire rest of the year (if not for the rest of Biden's term). This will likely doom Democrats' chances in the midterms and will likely also cement the legacy (whether justified or not) of Biden's term in office as a president who was weak, ineffective, and a massive disappointment to most of the Democratic Party.

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For the first time, the Justice Department has brought charges of sedition against those who allegedly plotted to stop the constitutional process of Congress counting the Electoral College votes to officially determine who will be the next president. Eleven members of the Oath Keepers were charged with seditious conspiracy today, which seems entirely fitting for what took place at the United States Capitol on January 6th last year. In fact, many have been wondering what took the Department of Justice so long to bring such charges.

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An interesting idea is being floated these days about one particular clause in a constitutional amendment. What it boils down to is the question of whether Democrats (or anyone else) should make a concerted effort to bar from ever seeking office those Republicans who in some way participated in the January 6th insurrection attempt. On the face of it, this seems a rational thing to contemplate -- no one who has tried to overthrow the government should be allowed to participate in that government in the future. The Constitution should not become a suicide pact, in other words. But actually applying it in this particular case will almost certainly set us all on an even slipperier slope than we're already on, in terms of partisan warfare in Congress.

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This makes twice since the dawn of the new year that Biden has made very effective use of the presidential bully pulpit, in fact. His speech on last year's insurrection was downright astonishing, and today's was even better.

I don't have the time right now to give my full reactions to the speech, but if you haven't seen it, take a half an hour and watch it -- and I bet you'll be glad you did, too.

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A new year has dawned and Congress is finally getting back to work. In the Senate, this means (as it has for the entire past year) trying to figure out what Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin will accept. So far, the answers seem to be the usual "not much of anything," but perhaps they'll surprise us and actually get something done in the next few weeks.

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