Opinion

Don’t get bogged down by the marathon minute-by-minute coverage of the Senate impeachment trial stretching late into the night. Don’t get overwhelmed by all the complex procedural maneuvers aimed at securing a fair and open trial with witness testimony and new documents that Republicans want to prevent at all costs.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s expletive-laden dust-up with NPR reporter Mary Louise Kelly is on message for the Trump-led Republican Party. Complaining that Kelly’s question about Ukraine was “another example of how unhinged the media has become in its quest to hurt President Trump and this Administration,” Pompeo has rallied the Republican base by slamming a journalist doing her job.

Trump's EPA administrator wants to redraw our nation’s mercury standard to benefit coal-fired power plants that belch out nearly half the nation’s mercury emissions. But the agency’s Science Advisory Board is balking.

After the last Senate staffer turns out the lights, major questions remain to be decided outside of the Capitol about the limits of presidential power, the willingness of courts to decide political questions and the ability of Congress to exercise effective oversight and hold a president accountable.

Donald Trump is an authoritarian and an autocrat. For him and others of such ilk, violence is political currency in the form of raw power. Autocrats and authoritarians such as Trump are de facto crime bosses who just happen to be leaders of their respective countries.

President Donald Trump’s lawyers are staking out bold ground by claiming that abuse of power — which is, to many, the quintessential impeachable offense — is not actually grounds for removing a president at all.

On Sunday, the New York Times released leaked revelations from John Bolton's upcoming book about his stint as national security adviser to Donald Trump, which in a different world would have upended the president's impeachment trial in the Senate. Bolton reportedly affirms in the book that Trump personally told him military aid was being withheld from Ukraine in an effort to force the Ukrainian president to announce investigations meant to bolster Trump's conspiracy theories about Democrats. This revelation was received in the media as a big deal, because Trump's defense team has been trying, laughably, to argue that Trump withheld the aid for some purpose other than cheating in an election. Bolton's eyewitness account would seem to blow a hole through those efforts.

Many of today’s politicians appear to appeal to the basic human need for safety, presenting their versions of strong leadership as the best hope for order and safety in a fearful world of growing instability and risk. Much evidence confirms that this appeal is certainly an important factor in the political landscape.

One of the great mysteries of our time is why so many Republicans who are willing to bet their reputations on relentlessly defending Donald Trump, especially now.

On October 16, 1939, Hollywood director Frank Capra premiered Mr. Smith Goes to Washington before an audience of US senators and House members, Supreme Court justices, journalists and assorted other DC dignitaries. It was an all-star event, sponsored by the National Press Club and held at Constitution Hall. Some 4,000 were in attendance.

Back in October, in midst of the exposure of a plot by Donald Trump to cheat in the 2020 election by extorting the Ukrainian president to interfere on his behalf, acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney tried a novel strategy to defend his big orange boss: Telling the public to "get over it."

I argued last week the Senate Republicans neutered themselves when they voted down amendments creating procedures worthy of “the world’s greatest deliberative body.”