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Insurrection Chronicles:  Well the January 6^th Committee has finally gone all in, subpoenaing five  sitting members of Congress, including GQP Leader Kevin McCarthy, Ranking Judiciary Committee member Jim “Gym” Jordan of Ohio,  Pennsylvania’s Scott Perry, Alabama’s Mo Brooks, and Arizona’s Andy Biggs.  It’s highly unusual for a member of Congress to be subpoenaed for anything that doesn’t involve an ethics inquiry but then again there’s nothing usual about the events surrounding January 6 and each of these subpoenaed conspiracists have been and mostly still are unapologetically supportive of the Former Guy’s coup. It’s not clear if any of these charmers will honor their subpoenas, they’ve already refused invitations to sit down with the Committee, but since their failure to show up will complicate their plans to investigate everything from Hunter Biden’s laptop to Joe Biden’s pooping schedule should they win back the House during the midterms, who knows?  Worth noting, Mo Brooks who wore protective armor during his crowd rousing speech on insurrection day has a bone to pick with the Former Guy for un-endorsing his run for the Senate so maybe he’ll be the first to cave, or not.  In other news, some more of those emails that he’s been working so hard to squelch reveal that John Eastman, the highly inventive member of the Former Guy’s kraken legal squad who argued that VP Pence could toss out electoral college certifications from swing states that went Biden’s way, pressed a Pennsylvania lawmaker to eliminate some of Joe Biden’s votes by applying a mathematical equation concocted to disproportionately declare mail-in ballots cast for Biden invalid in order to flip the state back to the Former Guy. If that concept sounds familiar, it’s because it’s not all that different than the one the FG was promoting when he told Georgia’s Brad Raffensperger to find another 11,780 votes. And because there always are tapes, another one released by the authors of the newest, too late to matter tell all book This Will Not Pass, reveals Senator Lindsey Graham so upset, well upset for a nanosecond, about the events of January 6^th that he called Joe Biden “the best person” to lead the US, while adding “I mean, how mad can you get at Joe Biden?”  As to the Former Guy, it turns out that Attorney General Garland hasn’t totally been ignoring his misdeeds, well at least hasn’t been ignoring all of them.  Yesterday, it was revealed that the Department of Justice has a Grand Jury looking into those boxes of top secret files that were carried off to Mar a Lago along with the FG’s entourage of family members and other misfit toys.  

Handmaids Tale:  On the topic of purloined information, it’s now widely believed that the source of the Supreme Court leaked draft opinion wasn’t a freaked out court liberal but someone associated with Justice Alito, possibly part of an effort to keep Justice Handmaid Amy and/or Justice “I like Beer” Kavanaugh from being peeled off of his kill Roe and send reproductive freedom back to dark ages team. Also, it’s no surprise that the Senate couldn’t pass legislation enacting the principals of Roe into law, but still it’s especially disconcerting that the so-called pro-choice Republican Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski voted against protecting reproductive rights.  Sadly, Joe Manchin voted alongside the Republicans too, but he’s always been against reproductive choice so his vote, though depressing, was expected.  

Midterm Madness:  Things in the Pennsylvania Senate race, where NJ resident/recipient of the coveted FG endorsement Mehmet Oz is competing neck and neck against Connecticut resident David McCormick, the husband of one time FG advisor Dina Powell who also has the support of Hope Hicks, Stephen Miller, and Kellyanne Conway, among other former FG loyalists, continues to get weirder.  A third candidate, Kathy Barnette, an African American right wing pundit who is on record expressing her hate for all things Muslim and all things LGTBQ is surging in the polls freaking out Republican leadership who fear that should she win next week’s primary their hopes of holding on to the Pennsylvania Senate seat will end up in the toilet, perhaps alongside the FG’s shredded documents. It’s not just the Senate primary that is proving problematic.  The Republican’s leading candidate in a crowded gubernatorial race is State Senator Doug Mastriano, a prominent pusher of election fraud myths, who belittled efforts to contain coronavirus and spread conspiracy theories about the COVID vaccine. Mainstream Republicans, to the extent such a category exists anymore, fear that a primary victory by Mastriano will make presumptive Democratic candidate/current Attorney General/fellow University of Rochester alum Josh Shapiro’s victory that much more likely and could also help the Democrats win the much coveted Senate seat. As to the Senate race, it’s looking more and more likely that populist Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman, the very tall guy somewhat eccentric guy who almost always wears shorts will win the Democratic primary over the more staid, middle of the road Congressman Conor Lamb.  

🌻🌻🌻 Rand Paul is holding up the quick passage of the $40 billion Ukraine “lend lease” legislation because he is who he is and that’s what the Senator who John McCain once said works for Vladimir Putin does.  The legislation will still pass but it will take a few more days due to Paul’s intransigence.  As expected, Putin’s goal of preventing more countries from joining NATO isn’t playing out as planned.  Finland, previously studiously neutral, will be applying to join ASAP.  Needless to say, Vlad, who is either really ill or faking it, isn’t happy given that rather long border that they share and is threatening to do something nasty about it but probably won’t because he’s a bit stretched at the moment dealing with those rather difficult Ukrainians.   

👶 👶 👶:  This morning big whiner Elon Must tweeted that his deal to acquire Twitter is “temporarily on hold pending details supporting calculation that spam/fake accounts do indeed represent less than 5% of users." Maybe that’s the reason, or maybe it’s just because he’s looking to negotiate his inflated acquisition price down or just wants a way out.  Also, you may have heard that infant formula is hard to find these days.  Lots of finger pointing but as explained simply by MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle, a business reporter back before she took over Brian Williams late night spot, the infant formula business in the US is an oligopoly 90% controlled by three companies who’ve lobbied successfully to create barriers to prevent the entry of foreign competitors. Abbott one of the dominant US producers had to temporarily halt production over some major quality control problems and that, rather than some nefarious Biden plan to kill off infants, is the reason we’re short formula right now.  Hopefully, the current plan to allow foreign products into the country combined with Abbott getting its production back online will help alleviate the price gauging and the shortage but probably not soon enough for those who need it most.