Tread softly

 I never remember my dreams, although I'm pretty sure they happen.  Against the odds, I'm not completely psychotic.  But sometimes I can reconstruct them based on what I wake up thinking about.  Today it was, "John Fetterman is not going to enjoy that little desk they give you on the Senate floor.  Even Barack Obama complained that it was too small for work, and he's only 6 feet 2."  As with a lot of the Constitution, America has outgrown some features of its Capitol.

Somewhat confusingly, my next thought concerned the excellent 1986 movie The Big Easy.  Dennis Quaid plays a slightly corrupt police detective in New Orleans, where such things are decidedly relative.  He has incriminated himself on a videotape which is mysteriously erased when a powerful electromagnet is placed next to it in the police property room.  Did I mention Lt. Remy McSwain is related to half the force?  Anyway, I was wondering...assuming it actually exists, what if such a thing happened to Hunter Biden's laptop, the Holy Grail of the Reichwing?  I suppose they'd just hold thousands of hours of hearings into Who Erased H.B.'s L.  It's all they have.  

Two awful things happened in Colorado Springs:  Lauren Boebert was re-elected and Anderson Lee Aldrich celebrated (allegedly) by shooting up Club Q, which had just held its weekly drag show.  Aldrich wore body armor and employed "a long gun in the style of an AR-15" to kill five people and injure more than twenty others.  Needless to say Boebert has already tweeted, "This lawless violence needs to end and quickly."  By Tuesday she'll be squawking about "groomers" again.  Aldrich was arrested last year for threatening to blow up his mother's house; his grandfather, California Assemblyman Randy Voepel, compared the Trump putsch to Lexington and Concord, adding, "Tyranny will follow in the aftermath of the Biden swear-in."    

Another thing happened in Washington:  The President's granddaughter Naomi Biden got married on the White House grounds and the press was not invited.  We'll find out in a few weeks if that's an impeachable offense.  CNN society reporter Kate Bennett suggested that the union of two young people on Saturday was designed to distract from the bride's grandpa turning 80 a day later.  Didn't work, did it?  (Thrift!  Thrift, Kate -- they served the leftover wedding cake with candles on top.)  Biden also "pardoned" a turkey and greeted the White House Christmas tree, so he's really bad at distracting attention from stuff.

Alex Jones can't have his Twitter account back because Elon Musk has "no mercy" for people who capitalize on murdered children.  Donald Trump, Kanye West -- no problem.  Espionage and bigotry are just character quirks.  Yes, Ye, as I suppose I must call him, was also reinstated in time to announce his run for the presidency in 2024.  For those who find Trump wobbly on antisemitism (looking at you, Nick Fuentes).  I wonder if Jones can get back on Twitter by entering the New Hampshire primary.

Speaking of which, Trump went to Las Vegas to scold the Republican Jewish Coalition for showing insufficient love to Israel.  Like they don't get enough abuse from the seventy-five percent of American Jews who think they're meshugah.

Kevin McCarthy has already promised that when he's King of the Forest Speaker of the House, he will kick people he doesn't like (Ilhan Omar, Eric Swalwell and Adam Schiff for starters) off their committees.  Twitter had to explain how it works:  "The Speaker does not have the power to remove a member from a standing committee...Only a majority vote by the entire House" can do that.  Yes, Twitter has lost half its workforce and the rest still understand procedure better than this dolt.

While Sam Alito continues to pursue the Dobbs leaker, the Senate Judiciary Committee may look into the report that he leaked the Hobby Lobby decision (fundamentalists don't have to cover the costs of contraception for employees) in 2014.  It might also like to consider the number of Court nominees who perjured themselves when they swore, all wide-eyed, that they considered Roe to be "settled law."  There's a mephitic smell coming from this Court, and John Roberts needs to remember that the history books will attach his name to it.

Naomi Biden and Peter Neal.  All the best.