Politics

When Cockburn turns on the television these days, something is missing. Then he realizes — that (very) little something is Dr. Anthony Fauci, whose 400-plus media events during the Covid pandemic made him a fixture of the tube. Then one day, after we made him the highest paid employee in the federal government, Fauci upped and left, abandoning us to figure out on our own if we should stay home when we’re sick. or if coughing on our ancient relatives is a good idea or not. But if you thought you’d seen the last of Fauci, never fear — the man has reemerged like an Omicron variant, this time as a motivational speaker.

We might have finally discovered something that politicians are worse at than budgeting: regulating emotions. What is in the water in Washington, DC that is causing these adults to constantly melt down in public? First there was President Biden’s now-former chief of staff Ron Klain. The man who has been accused of being the brains behind the Biden operation is moving on from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue… well, maybe. Klain delivered a mawkish farewell address in the White House East Room, with his 80-year-old boss proudly looking on a few feet behind him. To say Ron got choked up would be an understatement. He gushed over the Biden family and the administration’s accomplishments. He even heaped praise on Joe Biden’s parenting skills.

George Santos is frustrated. In an hour-long interview with The Spectator, Santos tried to make it clear he came to Washington with the hope to get things done. But he’s been “slapped in the face” with the reality that there is so much red tape. “Washington, DC is performance art,” he says. “This is a master course on performing arts... everybody here is acting.” Santos of course knows a thing or two about acting; his exploits have been well publicized since his election. Perhaps the most well-known of his roles took the form of his popular drag performances in Brazil. A fan of drag for many years, it’s surprising to learn that Santos only began watching RuPaul’s Drag Race only once the coronavirus pandemic hit.

Last week, British Columbia became the first province in Canada and the second jurisdiction in North America to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of hard drugs for personal use. Those drugs include heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, and even fentanyl, a synthetic opioid more than 50 times more powerful than heroin. British Columbia follows Oregon, which decriminalized all drugs in 2020, taking a more proactive — if controversial — approach to address the alarming number of overdose deaths across the region. Under the state's new guidelines, adults 18 years and older caught with less than 2.5 grams of an illicit substance will not be arrested or charged with a criminal offense.

Boris Johnson’s call to arms Boris Johnson started a speech in Washington urging continued support for Ukraine this morning with three words: “God bless America.” The former British prime minister (and one-time Spectator editor) is in town in his burgeoning role as a freelance champion of the Ukrainian cause — and he began with a message of thanks for the leading role taken by the United States in arming and supporting Ukraine’s fight against Russia. When in power, Johnson was one of the Western leaders most committed to backing Ukraine. Now, freed from the constraints of Downing Street, he has chosen to spend his new-found free time helping the Ukrainian cause — even if that puts him at odds with his successor, Rishi Sunak.

Racism has become an unfalsifiable proposition. Such is the central take-away from the race industry’s tortured reaction to a brutal police beating in Memphis, Tennessee. Five Memphis officers responded to what was initially reported as a car driving the wrong way down a street. The officers’ tactics during the stop of driver Tyre Nichols, captured on video, were an abomination: while shouting contradictory commands, the officers immediately escalated their use of force without apparent cause. It was Nichols who tried to deescalate the chaos — a responsibility usually put on officers, not on suspects. The cops struggled without coordination to cuff him, while delivering gratuitous kicks, punches to the face and baton strikes.

Republicans are losing the debt-limit standoff  Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy will meet on Wednesday for talks on the debt ceiling. Just don’t call this powwow a “negotiation.” Biden has said he will only sign a clean bill — i.e. a no-strings-attached increase to the limit on federal borrowing. And so, as far as the White House’s public position is concerned, there’s nothing to negotiate. A statement from the White House on Sunday described the meeting as “a discussion on a range of issues” and said that Biden “will ask what the Speaker’s plan is” and “if he intends to meet his Constitutional obligation to prevent a national default.” Biden took the same tough line last week, pledging to “veto everything they send me.

It should be obvious by now that too many classified documents are floating around Florida, Delaware, and Indiana. They were removed without authorization and stored improperly under Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and Mike Pence respectively. Most of them, it seems, were hurriedly packed by government aides during an administration’s final days, even as the president and vice president were busy handling their official responsibilities. National security law doesn’t distinguish between the accidental and deliberate mishandling of classified documents, but the public does. They know the president and vice president bear heavy, official burdens until the moment they are replaced.

Mitch Daniels visited Washington this week to test the ground on the Senate side of Capitol Hill. "I’m worried about winning it and regretting it for six years," he told Politico. And well he might. The former Indiana governor and Purdue University president is debating whether to run for the seat of incumbent Indiana Senator Mike Braun, who after just one term decided he'd rather be back as governor in Indianapolis than stay in the cooling saucer for even one more minute. Daniels may find it equally abhorrent to join a body as a junior senator at the age of seventy-three. Either way, a run by him would immediately thrust the Indiana Republican primary into the national narrative, framed as a war between the pre-Trump and post-Trump GOP.