Opinion

During the Trump years, it always felt as if the news cycle was running at 110 miles an hour and we were just hanging on for dear life. And it was true. There was always something terrible going on. Most people looked forward to the day that everything would slow down to a normal pace and we'd all be able to spend more time thinking about something other than the latest lunacy coming from the White House.

That time is now. The chaos has more or less, sort of, come to pass. The daily outrage meter has been turned down to eleven and it feels as if the whole government is operational instead of just the oval office and whichever corrupt Trump minion happens to be in the headlines. But there is still a whole lot going on, from foreign policy settling down into something vaguely recognizable as sane American participation in world affairs, to the Justice Department coming to terms with the wholesale corruption of the institution over the past four years to the gripping saga of the Democratic agenda wending its way through Congress. On Thursday, we even saw the Supreme Court once again uphold the Affordable Care Act, eliciting a huge sigh of relief from the 30 million people who had been waiting with bated breath to find out if they were going to have health insurance when they woke up this morning.The federal government is busy and for the most part, it's doing what Americans employ it to do. It's not always pretty but it seems to be cranking up and becoming at least somewhat functional.

The Democratic leaders of the House Oversight Committee, at least, get it: Any effort to hold Donald Trump accountable for his many crimes and attacks on our democratic system will reap political rewards. Their ongoing investigation into Trump's attempted coup after the 2020 election, which culminated in Trump supporters storming the Capitol on January 6, is paying off dividends by getting new information to the public and keeping Trump's seditious, authoritarian behavior in the public view.

This article was originally published at Salon

There were so many terrible abuses of power that Donald Trump and the GOP succeeded at during the previous administration — from refusing to cooperate with investigations of wrong-doing to reappropriating funds to Trump's racist border wall — that we sometimes forget where they failed. The failures were often by sheer luck — or incompetence —and sometimes they were because someone in Trump's orbit chickened out and just wouldn't go that far.

This article was originally published at The Signorile Report

Last month, seemingly spurred on by this column from a controversial former science reporter for The New York Times, it became suddenly fashionable in some journalistic circles to scold the mainstream press for dismissing or ignoring something called the "lab leak theory" regarding the origins of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

This article was originally published at Salon

Texas is showing us all how the corruption that has overwhelmed the GOP has reached a crisis point, and it's killing people.

President Dwight Eisenhower said, "If a political party does not have its foundation in the determination to advance a cause that is right and that is moral, then it is not a political party; it is merely a conspiracy to seize power."

President Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin just met for their first summit since Biden was sworn in. They've known each other for years and there are many stories about their frosty interactions in the past. But hopefully, there will be something of a proverbial "reset" between the two countries coming out of this meeting after the disastrous embarrassment of the Trump years.

Back at home, however, we are very much haunted by the ghosts of old troubles. There used to be a quaint old tradition of members of outgoing administrations keeping quiet for a period of time to allow the new regime to set their own policies and establish their own relationships with foreign leaders. Needless to say, like all other norms and traditions, that one has been chucked in the garbage can and Trump and his top henchmen are all screaming that Biden has already failed.

People who are afraid often engage in self-soothing behavior such as denial and wishful thinking. Unfortunately, reality is not so malleable as to be bent by such actions.

Barbara Comstock is a "respectable" and "traditional" Republican who served as a member of the House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. In a recent column at The New York Times, she tries to grapple with the realities of Trumpism and American neofascism's full control over today's Republican Party. Her solution? To try to rally the "good" Republicans to resist Donald Trump's influence and power by having a proper investigation into the events of Jan. 6.

The idea that the Republicans are the party of the working class is now conventional wisdom among some members of the Washington press corps. That has bothered me for a variety of reasons, but I don't recall reporting the following annoyance. If the Republicans are the party of the working class, what does that mean in terms of class? We don't know, because most of the press corps does not bother asking the question.

This article was originally published at The Editorial Board

The American right is currently in an utter panic over "critical race theory" being taught in public schools.

On Fox News, there's been an explosion of hysterical coverage, complete with contradictory segments where hosts claim they "don't see people for skin color" before whining that "the United States of America elected an African-American as president of the United States" and "the biggest entertainers, the biggest sports stars are African-Americans." Republicans who otherwise claim to be defenders of free speech are busy trying to pass laws canceling any kind of talk they deem "critical race theory," which, in practice, amounts to bans on talking about historical facts. Across the nation, white parents are crowding school board meetings, melting down over this "critical race theory" thing they've heard so much about.

My friend and colleague on SiriusXM radio, Dean Obeidallah, reminded me yesterday when we were chatting on his show that he pointed out last week that "air rage" incidents have exploded this year. He wrote a great op-ed about it for CNN here.

This article was originally published at The Hartmann Report

The constant drip of "revelations" about the Trump regime's crimes are about to become a torrent and a flood. In all, these "revelations" are very much like a firehose tied in a knot that is about to burst.

Over the course of the last few weeks, it has been revealed that the Trump regime spied upon journalists at the Washington Post and CNN who were reporting on Russian influence in the 2016 election.

Over the winter at least 151 Texans died as 4.5 million homes and businesses went without power in a massive failure created by poor planning, lack of regulation, and sheer greed.

Last week Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott promised he had fixed the problem.

It's quite a relief to see President Biden overseas acting like a normal president after the last four years of embarrassment on the world stage. Our traditional allies also appear to be exhaling for the first time since November of 2016 because they know that the U.S., with all of its flaws, is at least in the hands of someone who has a grasp of the job requirements. The latest Pew survey shows that the people of other countries are relieved as well. The numbers have done shifted 180 degrees since Trump left office.

They can't be completely reassured, of course, since Trump continues to insist that he is the true president in exile as he issues pseudo-tweets from his lavish golfing palaces and continues to spread the Big Lie. Things are still weird enough here in America that I'm sure the rest of the world still has its guard up. As anyone following events closely knows, there is something very nefarious going on around the country that could upend this brief moment of semi-normality. And while it's taken a while for many in the media to grasp the novel nature of this latest threat, they are now getting up to speed. Take Fred Hiatt of the Washington Post, who wrote an editorial over the weekend in which he compared the Republicans to termites, "destructive but largely unseen, anti-democracy forces around the country are gnawing at the foundations of America's free and fair elections."