Twinning in Idaho  🌻🌻🌻

Guns, Guns, Guns:  Over the weekend, a bipartisan group of Senators led by Connecticut Democrat Chris Murphy, Texas Republican John Cornyn, Arizona Democrat Kyrsten Sinema and North Carolina Republican Thom Tillis hammered out a framework for some gun legislation that has the support of ten Republicans, a group which, in addition to Cornyn and Tillis, includes Maine’s Susan Collins, Louisiana’s Bill Cassidy, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham, Pennsylvania’s Pat Toomey, Missouri’s Roy Blunt, North Carolina’s Richard Burr, Ohio’s Rob Portman and Utah’s Mitt Romney. Worth noting, none of these “brave” Republicans are up for reelection this year and four of them, Portman, Toomey, Blunt and Burr are all retiring. The ever charming Mitch McConnell who Cornyn hopes to succeed when old Mitch goes the way of the Edsel, says that the proposal sounds nice but he remains noncommittal as to whether or not he’ll support it.  Democrats including Delaware’s Chris Coons, New Mexico’s Martin Heinrich, Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, New Jerseys’ Cory Booker, Arizona’s Mark Kelly, and Michigan’s Debbie Stabenow as well as Maine’s Independent Senator Angus King have also indicated that they’re on board, as is Senate Leader Chuck Schumer and President Biden.  It’s expected that the rest of the Democratic contingent will sign on as well meaning that at this point the framework has the support of the sixty Senators needed for passage.  Worth noting that Mark Kelly, the husband of former Congresswoman/gun victim Gabby Giffords is up for reelection this year in gun friendly Arizona.  As to the framework, thought it’s far from perfect, most significantly it doesn’t ban assault rifles or raise the age requirement from 18 to 21 (or as I’d prefer to 99), but it does add extra scrutiny for gun buyers under the age of 21, provide grants to states to implement so-called red flag laws and provides new spending on mental health treatment and school security.  In addition it would close what’s known as the “boyfriend loophole” by broadening firearms restrictions on those who have abused their romantic partners. That “fix” had been left out of the recent renewal of the Violence Against Women Act because apparently pro-gun activists found the idea of extending protections to unmarried people untenable. Expect to hear critics from both sides of the aisle complain, with those on the right saying that none of this will work because the real problem is too many doors, not enough religion in school, abortion and race and those on the left saying that by failing to outlaw assault weapons and at the very least raising the age for their purchase it’s not going far enough. Those on the left aren’t wrong, it isn’t enough but it’s something and movement in the correct direction.  In any case, it’s not a done deal yet and won’t be until after the legislation is actually written, passed by both houses of Congress and then signed by President Biden.    

January 6th: The January 6^th Committee returns this morning with another hearing scheduled to start at 10 AM Eastern time.  Today’s focus will be on how the Former Guy’s baseless “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him led to the storming of the Capitol, and that attack’s objective, the stopping of the certification of Biden’s electoral college win. The FG who expressed his opinion about last Thursday’s hearing, including his observation that his daughter Ivanka didn’t know what she was talking about when she said that she believed former Attorney General Barr’s conclusion that the “big lie” was bull sh-t because she had “long since checked out” is likely to grow increasingly apopolectic during today’s hearing given the line up which includes his former campaign manager Bill Stepien; former election analyst for Fox NewsChris Stirewalt; Republican election lawyer Benjamin Ginsburg; former US attorney “BJay” Pak; and a former city commissioner of Philadelphia Al Schmidt.  Chris Stirewalt was the widely respected election analyst at Fox who lost his job for making the decision to project Biden the winner in Arizona, that projection complicated the FG’s plans to “prematurely” declare his victory. Stepien, who is not considered a friendly witness and who is currently running the campaign for Harriet Hageman, the Republican running against committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, is expected to testify about how the FG used the “big lie” to fraudulently fundraise. BJay Pak was the FG appointed US Attorney from the Northern District of Georgia who resigned rather than help him transform his Georiga loss into a win.  Al Schmidt was the only Republican overseeing the election in Philadelphia and Ben Ginsburg was largely responsible for helping George W Bush win the “chad” challenged Florida election and thus the presidency over Al Gore in 2000. Although they didn’t air the first one, Fox News will be broadcasting today’s hearing.  By the way, Thursday’s night’s hearing was watched by 20 million viewers, which is a lot, though by going without commercials for its contra-programming Fox did its best to make sure that none of it’s viewers channel surfed over to the hearing during breaks.

Politics Unusual:  Speaking of counter programming, the Republican party line, and it’s a good one is that the Democrats are wasting time addressing the coup because the real issue is inflation.  To be clear they’re  not wrong about inflation being a concerning problem, who doesn’t agree that high gas prices suck, but preserving Democracy is kind of important too. High gas prices could be the least of former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows’ problems.  A few days ago his former top aide, Cassidy Hutchinson replaced her FG friendly lawyer with a new team, a likely indication of her willingness to cooperate fully with the Committee’s probe.  Then there’s Rudy Giuliani, he is in some more hot water as the Washington DC bar has brought ethics charges against him.  Son Andrew is also facing some pushback.  His bizarre run for the NYS Republican Gubernatorial nod doesn’t seem to be going anywhere and because he refuses to indicate whether or not he’s been vaccinated, to participate he will be required to zoom into a an upcoming debate taking place at a vax mandatory CBS studio.  On the Democracy front, 31 members of the Patriot Front, a white supremecist, anti Gay, Jew hating group including it’s leader, packed into a U-haul and showed up Coeur D'Alene, Idaho over the weekend.  They were all in identical bizzarre, threatening twinning attire wearing face coverings and carrying shields and their plan was to raise havoc at a gay pride event. The Patriot Front used to call itself the Unite the Right group.  If that sounds familiar, it’s because those were the “nice guys on both sides” carrying tiki torches who were responsible for the Charlottesville, Virginia rally where Heather Heyer was killed. 

And:  Move over Margie Q and Lauren Boebert, former VP candidate/anti vaxxer Sarah Palin who can see Russia from her balcony has moved one step further to securing the House seat left open by the death of Alaska Congressman Dan Young.  She came out on top in a multi party 48 candidate special election that also included a candidate named Santa Claus and will now face the three other leading canddates including independent Al Gross, who ran for the Senate in 2020, in a runoff.