In politics, as in much of life, timing is key. Sometimes there are windows of opportunity that can be missed. Such seems to be the case with the so-called "People's Convoy," a group of American truckers who launched a copycat imitation of the Canadian truckers' protest, in the hopes of bringing media attention to their cause (or just themselves, perhaps). But their time -- if it ever even existed -- seems to have passed long before the big-rigs arrived near Washington D.C.

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This week, President Joe Biden gave his first State Of The Union speech to the United States Congress, to the American people, and to the rest of world. This speech had to be hastily rewritten at the last minute, obviously, due to intervening events. Russia's Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine at the end of last week, which was obviously a lot more important than any political points or laundry lists of proposed legislation. So the speech got a quick makeover.

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I've said it before and (sadly) I expect I will say it again, but it continually amazes me that the Republican Party could sink even lower than it already has. It used to be (according to them) the party of morals, of law and order, and of personal responsibility. It is none of those things any more. The last to go was the "law and order" stance, but now they are openly taking political stances that are absolutely astonishing for their support of lawlessness. Such as standing up for the right of airplane passengers to be as disruptive as they please while breaking the rules all who fly must follow. That's not hyperbole or any type of overstatement, that is exactly what just happened.

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Did what happened at the United States Capitol on January 6th, 2021 constitute "legitimate political discourse" or not? That was the question that has divided the Republican Party all week, and may serve to be the one memorable phrase that sums up the difference between those in the GOP who have completely surrendered all their morals and thought processes and attachment to reality to Donald Trump -- and those who have not. Because that's what it all boils down to, really.

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President Joe Biden had a pretty good week, as political weeks go in Washington. First and foremost, the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 pandemic is fading fast -- the numbers are now down below half of the peak they hit roughly two weeks ago. That's good news for everybody, not just President Biden.

Then it was announced that the United States military had taken out the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi. Questions still remain about the mechanics of this daring raid in Syria, but nobody is questioning the fact that the targeted terrorist leader is now dead.

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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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Attorney General Merrick Garland gave a speech today to his fellow employees at the Department of Justice. The occasion was to mark tomorrow's anniversary of the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol and on American democracy. In essence, it was a progress report from the attorney general, and a defense of his own department's actions since. The speech broke no real news, but then it wasn't really designed to. Whether it will change any minds is doubtful, although it might at least give Garland the benefit of the doubt for another few months.

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Welcome to the first installment of our year-end awards!

We do have to warn readers, right up front, that this is an insanely long article. If you're one of those "tl;dr" types of people, we would strongly advise you to go find a short listicle somewhere else, to read instead. Because this will be a marathon, not a sprint (as always).

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President Joe Biden is now getting very close to securing the second leg of his three-legged economic legislative stool. To put it another way: this week we all finally got to experience the almost-mythological "Infrastructure Week" which we had been promised for lo, these many years. Bipartisanship struggled back to life, fulfilling not just a campaign promise from Biden but also his deep-seated desire to return Washington to some sort of pre-Trump normality.

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