Joe biden

So far in his presidency, Joe Biden has largely been able contain the political fallout of the misdeeds of his son Hunter. He has been helped by a pliant press that, with some honorable exceptions, is reluctant to do anything so indecent as reporting on the president’s family. But another crucial factor has been a Justice Department investigation that has progressed at a snail’s pace.  That ongoing investigation into possible tax evasion and a firearms offense, launched more than five years ago, has left Hunter in a holding pattern that suits his father: the White House has been able to bat away questions about whether Hunter had done anything illegal.  That stalemate is now over.

Why everyone lacks credibility on the debt ceiling Time to cough up, America. Tomorrow is Tax Day and, fittingly, Congress returns this week with negotiations over the debt limit at the top of the agenda in Washington. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy set out his stall this morning with a speech in Manhattan. With the summer deadline on the fiscal cliff fast approaching, McCarthy today vowed that “in the coming weeks, the House will vote on a bill to lift the debt ceiling into next year,” adding that the legislation would also “save taxpayers trillions of dollars, make us less dependent on China, and curb high inflation, all without touching Social Security or Medicare.

Why Feinstein’s intransigence will worry the White House I’m not quitting! Dianne Feinstein was channeling her inner Jordan Belfort this week when she refused to cave to calls from fellow Democrats to retire. The eighty-nine-year-old senator has been a headache for her party for some time now, with colleagues seemingly convinced that she is no longer mentally capable of executing her duties as senator and hoping for a speedy, low-key and dignified departure. The Democrats’ Feinstein problem looked like it was solved when, in February, she announced her retirement at the end of her term in 2024. But in early March Feinstein announced she had contracted shingles. Her staff said she’d only be away from the Senate for a few weeks.

Joe Biden’s Ireland trip is all about Joe Biden Half a century since he was sworn in as a US senator, the Biden brand is a well-established series of safe bets: a fondness for aviator sunglasses, a hankering for chocolate chip ice cream. Also high on the list: conspicuous displays of Irishness. The second Irish-American president is fond of quoting Heaney and Yeats. He may be the only teetotaler who enjoys St. Patrick’s Day, which he says is his favorite holiday.  And so much about Biden’s trip to Ireland this week is unsurprising. After landing in Belfast last night, the president this morning had a quick cuppa with British prime minister Rishi Sunak and gave a speech to mark twenty-five years since the Good Friday Agreement.

A few weeks before Easter, a staffer for Republican senator Rand Paul was randomly and brutally attacked in downtown Washington, DC. The staffer, Phillip Todd, was leaving dinner with his friend when an assailant stabbed him four times in the abdomen, skull, brain and lungs. He suffered a punctured lung and potential brain bleeding. Todd was rushed to hospital, where he was operated on and ultimately survived the attack.   The man who stabbed Todd is a forty-two-year-old named Glynn Neal. Like many of DC’s violent criminals, Neal has a lengthy rap sheet. Virginians for Safe Communities, a nonprofit organization, detailed the man’s long history of criminal behavior.

Thanks to New York County district attorney Alvin Bragg, a former president Joe Biden is likely to live out his remaining years watching his only living son go to federal prison. He might even find himself charged as a co-conspirator in one of Hunter Biden’s several financial entanglements for which he currently finds himself under DoJ investigation.   Sure, when that day comes, the media will scream about political prosecutions and the authoritarian streak of President Ron DeSantis and his attorney general. They will write headlines about the United States becoming a banana republic and MSNBC will have to clean graphite off its roof.  None of that will matter, thanks to Alvin Bragg.