So the first night of the Democratic National Convention has come and gone. It was a night featuring two memorable swansong speeches. The first came from Hillary Clinton, who in an alternate universe would be finishing up her second term as president right about now. The second came from Joe Biden, who is currently finishing up his first (and only) term as president right now. It was a night for passing torches, in other words.

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Two more states -- Missouri and Arizona -- have now certified the signatures required to place abortion rights on their ballots in November. This brings the total for this election cycle up to eight states, although the possibility of the ballot measures having a meaningful impact on the other races on the ballot realistically only exists in three of them. So far, abortion rights have an unbroken 7-0 record of winning, even in some very red states, so it will be interesting to see if that continues or not. But beyond electoral geekiness, if any of them win it will be a victory for women's rights and freedom over government interference in the most personal of medical decisions.

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Democrats, rather astonishingly, seem to have JD Vance on the ropes already. He's been getting horrible coverage for over a week now, mostly about his rather unique ideas on how childless Americans should be treated as second-class citizens. What seems to be in order right now is a knockout punch. And I've got a doozy of an idea to suggest.

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President Joe Biden wrote a piece for the Washington Post today where he lays out three reforms he now supports: a strong code of ethics for the Supreme Court, term limits for Supreme Court justices, and a constitutional amendment that clearly states that presidents are not above the law. All are good ideas and having the president get behind them is even better. But forgive me if there's also the feeling that Biden's move comes way too late to change anything any time soon. It feels like nothing more than political posturing, at this point.

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After a two-week detour through the landscape of Democratic angst, Donald Trump has once again reclaimed the center stage of the political world. President Joe Biden will be interviewed on NBC tonight, but this will likely become no more than a footnote in a dramatic week for Trump and the Republican Party.

Part of this shift in focus was planned, as the Republican National Convention gets underway in Milwaukee today, but the most dramatic event was not. Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt in a small town in Pennsylvania over the weekend, as his ear was apparently grazed by a bullet fired at him from a roof overlooking his rally. One spectator was killed and two seriously injured in the attack. This is likely to generate some sympathy for Trump, although assassination attempts are rare enough that it's impossible to say what the political effect will be. One thing that's certain is that it will become a central focus at the convention.

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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

-- Preamble to the Declaration of Independence

That line will be widely quoted across this land today, in parks and bandstands, on radio and in newsprint, from California to the New York islands, in countless big-city parades and from a myriad of small-town gazebos.

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The Democratic Party is now in a full-blown crisis of confidence. Part of this is media-fed, since writing "Democrats In Disarray" columns comes so naturally to most pundits, but it really goes a lot deeper than that. There are real worries out there that President Joe Biden is not going to be up to the task of defeating Donald Trump. There were worries about that before the debate, actually, since his poll numbers have been so anemic for so long. But after America saw Biden stumble through a 90-minute debate with Trump, these worries have gotten a whole lot more acute and immediate.

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President Joe Biden now has absolutely nothing to fear from picking up the phone and ordering SEAL Team Six to assassinate Donald Trump. Or perhaps (and more to the point) ordering them to take out two or three Supreme Court justices. These would all be "official acts" of a sitting United States president (the commander in chief giving an order to the military), and therefore Biden would be completely immune from any fear of prosecution afterwards. That is what the Supreme Court just ruled, today.

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Maybe it's just us, but this week seemed like a waiting game. Perhaps the midweek holiday had something to do with it, but everything in the political world right now seems to be on hold in anticipation of next Thursday's first presidential debate. The debate is going to be incredibly early in the campaign schedule, but nobody really knows what this will mean until after the dust settles. Who will benefit the most from the earliness of it all? Well, that all depends on how they do, of course.

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The biggest political news of the week by far was Hunter Biden being convicted in record time on all three felony gun charges lodged against him. The jury spent only about three hours before returning these verdicts, which completely undercut the narrative Donald Trump has been spouting about how the justice system is "two-tiered" -- by which he means: "weaponized against Republicans while Democrats get a free pass." Kind of hard to make that argument when the president's own son just got convicted of felonies and is facing up to ten years in prison.

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