What exactly is happening here?

Yesterday Chief Justice Roberts joined the liberals on the Court and ordered the Alabama courts to re-open the case of Vernon Madison.  Madison was sentenced to death for killing a police officer and has spent the last thirty-three years in solitary confinement.  A series of strokes has left him unable to remember the crime or much about his life; theoretically Alabama could still have its revenge but it won't be Roberts's doing.  This is a minor case but potentially a disturbing development.  When Eisenhower appointed Earl Warren, who had cheerfully consigned California's ethnic Japanese population to concentration camps, he didn't anticipate Brown v. Board of Education or other judicial acts of atonement.  If Roberts has developed what is quaintly known as a conscience, who knows what he might be capable of?  And some day, he may be called upon to preside over an impeachment trial -- not, let us hope, in the gold-trimmed toga custom-made for Rehnquist.

That event became a little less theoretical yesterday when the House Oversight Committee decided it was time for some actual oversight and presented Trump fixer Michael Cohen in a televised hearing.  On his way to the jailhouse for three years, disbarred and with nothing left to lose, Cohen called the former client for whom he once vowed to "take a bullet" a liar, a racist and a crook, and presented documentary evidence which the Special Counsel has already examined.  The antics of the Republicans and the majestic closing sermon of the chairman, Elijah Cummings, are described elsewhere, but I was more interested in Cohen's political prediction:  "I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power."  This has been suggested by others, but it's probably safe to say that Cohen knows Trump a lot better than, say, Bill Maher, and we should maybe take him seriously.  The imminence of impeachment convinced Nixon it was time to go, and resignation might be the best outcome with this crook, too.  As Rick Blaine observed, "A bribe has worked before."  He really covets that Nobel.

Oh, says Fox and its outliers (out liars?), but America and the world are doing so well because of Trump.  Andy Varipapa couldn't put enough spin on the truncated Hanoi Hootenanny to make it look like a victory for anyone but Kim Jong-un.  The main event, denuclearization of the Korean peninsula in return for removing all sanctions, was always a non-starter, but Kim sweet-talked Trump into increasing his prestige by flying halfway around the world to eat dinner and pose for smiley pictures.  He also induced him to crap all over the family of Otto Warmbier, the college student who was murdered in North Korea after his conviction for swiping a poster out of a hotel.  Something bad happened to him that got him sent home in 2017 comatose from a head injury, but damned if anyone knows what.  Kim assured Trump that he has no idea what occurred in one of his "very very rough" prisons, and that's good enough for Trump, who believes all dictators.  To make him feel at home, Putin's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov dropped in (the first official visitor to the Oval Office after the Singularity).  Hanoi is a marvelous place for coincidences.  And since this one ended inconclusively, Donnie and Jong-un get to have another "summit," in a spot convenient for Kim and his armored train, of course.

And if you can handle another coincidence,  Jared Kushner chose this very week to drop in on his good buddy Prince Mohammad Bin Salman, and bring him a set of gold-plated bone saws.  I kid!  It was a Blu-Ray of Hostel, the prince's favorite comedy.  The director's cut version.

Bad news for another Trump buddy, Benjamin Netanyahu.  The attorney general of Israel is about to indict him on three counts of fraud and bribe-taking, but not until after the April 9 elections.  I wouldn't be surprised to hear that this is the work of George Soros and/or Hillary Clinton.  Expect a tweet of total support for Bibi before the week is out.  He's a "fantastic" leader who know how to build walls and name streets for "your favorite President, me!"  Unless he's convicted, and then he's "Little Bibi the Loser."

One nuclear power shot down the military aircraft of another nuclear power this week over some disputed territory (Kashmir), but there were just too many shiny distractions for any of the "news" packagers to mention it between pill commercials.  Ask your cable provider to include the BBC News channel -- you won't regret it even though they give the weather in Celsius.  Well, you may regret it during the World Cup.