Are we alone? That question has been around since humankind began, but in the past decade or so we're finally getting closer to finding out what (if anything) the American government knows about this question that it isn't telling us. Do aliens exist? Is there proof? The House of Representatives held a public hearing on this question today, where some rather extraordinary claims were made.

Here's how HuffPost reported on the most stunning of the testimony:

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I begin today by apologizing for getting ahead of the calendar, as the official "Silly Season" hasn't quite kicked off in Washington yet. Congress has yet to scarper off on their annual five- or six-week vacation (with full pay, courtesy of American taxpayers), so we have yet to hit the real dog days of summer in D.C.

Speaking of dog days (and silliness), I had to grin at a big important political story today in Politico, because of its opening paragraph:

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One month from now, the first Republican presidential debate will take place. What will happen there is anyone's guess at the moment, but what is already assuredly true is that every candidate not named "Donald Trump" has to see the first debate (and the ones that will follow) as absolutely critical for their chances of success. Bottling lighting at a debate is likely going to be the only way any of them can stand out in any way, and the only chance any of them (excepting perhaps Ron DeSantis) will have of creating a surge of support in the polls.

It is still early, in terms of public polling, since many people are just not paying that much attention to presidential politics at all and likely won't at least until the debate cycle begins. But what's notable in the polling conducted so far is how static the race has been, up to this point. There are four clear groups within the Republican field. The first one is named "Donald Trump," and the second one is named "Ron DeSantis." Trump has consistently been out front by a country mile since polling began. He has hovered between roughly 45 percent and 55 percent for the entire time. Meanwhile, DeSantis has formed his own tier with a solid grip on second place, with his polling fluctuating between roughly 20 percent and 30 percent.

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We do try to resist the urge (we really do!), but this week it was impossible to focus on just about anything else in politics other than the tsunami of bad legal news for Donald Trump. Remember how Trump dominated each and every news cycle for over four years? Those days are back, sadly enough, and will likely continue (at some degree of intensity or another) for the foreseeable future. He is the quintessential car wreck towards which we all must dutifully rubberneck, so here we go....

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Almost 2,000 years ago, the Roman poet Juvenal asked the question: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" which is usually translated into English as: "Who will watch the watchmen?" When you give a group of people supreme power over others, how do you keep that power in check? It seems a fitting title today, as the Senate Judiciary Committee just passed (on a party-line vote) a bill which would require the Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of ethics.

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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is about to play some hardball in the Senate, in an effort to break the logjam on promotions in the military which has been thrown up by one recalcitrant senator, Tommy Tuberville. The Alabama Republican has thrown what can only be described as a hissy fit over the fact that the military respects the rights of the women who serve this country. Tuberville is the lone senator objecting to each and every Pentagon promotion that must be Senate-approved (as all the higher ranks are) until he can somehow force the military to deny women their reproductive rights. This has not just annoyed the military and Democratic senators, it is also not exactly supported by Tuberville's own party (who used to champion themselves as being "strong on the military"). And it has already affected the military readiness of this country, which is a dangerous thing. Schumer and other Democrats (including President Biden) have been denouncing Tuberville's military promotions boycott, but now Schumer appears ready to try a new tactic: give Tuberville an up-or-down floor vote on the issue to shut him up.

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Donald Trump might need a bigger henhouse soon, as more and more of his legal chickens keep coming home to roost. After a very long two years of a whole lot of nothing happening (at least publicly), all of a sudden there is so much prosecutorial news it's hard to even keep track of it all. So I thought it'd be worth doing a rundown of all Trump's legal woes, as things stand right now (barring any further breaking news today).

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Well, OK, I know I promised, but I was forced to renege. There will be no new column today, but there will indeed be a new one tomorrow, never fear. What with seeing houseguests off today there was just no time to focus on sitting down and writing a column, sorry. So almost at random, I went looking for another article to run again and came across this one. It's just fun, just "summertime vacation photos" really, which is precisely the sort of mood I am currently in. So here are my photos of the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. My favorite has got to be the one of Clarence Page showing me a Grateful Dead medallion on the back of his phone... which Jerry Garcia had given him, after an interview. In any case, enjoy, sorry for yet another re-run column, and see you all back here tomorrow.

Originally published August 2, 2016

Due to technical reasons (and not having a full-time staff to do this stuff the way big media organizations do), I wasn't able to post photos with all the stories from the Democratic National Convention. Instead, I'm just going to present them all together in this "album." A lot of these were mentioned in my previous coverage, but some of them are just random convention shots.

Without further ado, here's my look at the Democratic National Convention, starting (of course) with a stop to get a cheesesteak.

Sorry Pat's, but Geno's had a parking space right in front of it, which made up our minds for us (the two most famous cheesesteak joints in Philly are right across the street from each other).

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In case you're just tuning in, there will be no Friday Talking Points column today, as I am still on vacation. What I've been doing all week is taking a trip in the Wayback Machine to the summer of 2015, eight years ago, which was the precise point when political pundits who could read the tea leaves correctly realized that Donald Trump's candidacy was no joke -- he was quite likely to become the Republican presidential nominee. This wasn't a big crowd, because most pundits did continue to treat Trump like a punchline -- some right up to the point where he actually began winning primary races. In any case, I'd like to end the week with a "what might have been" column. What would have happened if Joe Biden had run in 2016? We'll never know, but all I know is that when I attended the 2016 Democratic National Convention, I heard over and over again (from many people from all over the country) some serious regret that Biden hadn't run. Would Biden have been able to triangulate successfully and pull off the win by balancing somewhere between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders? Or would he have been a spoiler and thrown the race to Bernie? Again: we will never know. If Biden had run and won the nomination, perhaps he even would have beaten Trump the first time around, which would put us all in a very different world today. Like I said, it's all just a subject for idle speculation, but that's about all I can manage on a summer vacation Friday, so it'll have to do. (And rest assured, everyone: regular new columns will begin again on Monday.)

Originally published August 24, 2015

Vice President Joe Biden certainly has got the media talking. All it really took was one leak to Maureen Dowd and a meeting with Senator Elizabeth Warren, and the recurring story in the media is now: "Biden's son Beau made a deathbed plea to his father to run for president again, and he's now seriously considering it." That's a compelling political narrative, to be sure. The Wall Street Journal is even reporting that Biden's now leaning towards running. Now, I have no inside sources of my own, so I have no idea what's really going on in Biden's head, but no matter how likely it turns out to be, a Biden candidacy bears political examination beyond the simple question of: "Will he or won't he run?"

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In reaching back for repeat columns this week, I started exactly eight years ago, in July of 2015. I've decided to widen the window a bit and move into August as well. This article was written one day before the first-ever Republican presidential debate of the 2016 cycle, when nobody had yet seen either how Donald Trump was going to perform in a debate setting or how any of the other candidates were going to try to deal with his presence. Most of it still rings true today, even after we've all seen Trump debate his way through two separate presidential campaigns. The conundrum facing Republican opponents of Trump hasn't really changed at all, even now that Trump's debating style has become so well-known. So while we won't be getting the first Republican presidential debate of the 2024 cycle until next month, I thought it was a good reminder for how we were all talking about Trump debating right before the first time it ever happened.

Originally published August 5, 2015

I have to begin by immediately offering my apologies to Rodgers and Hammerstein for that title, but the lyrics from The Sound Of Music's "Maria" have indeed been running through my head -- as I contemplate what all the other Republican candidates are going to do in the debate tomorrow night to differentiate themselves from their party's frontrunner, Donald Trump. Especially the ever-so descriptive line: "A flibbertigibbet... A will o' the wisp... A clown."

How do you solve a problem like The Donald, when he's standing center stage and everyone's eyes are on him? How do you deal with whatever Trump says from the podium? How do you stand out from the pack and make an impression on all the voters watching?

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