Ray Epps

Are the January 6 hearings over yet? Is this a miniseries or will it be picked up for season two? And does the cast of this ensemble production have anything to say about being snubbed at this year’s Emmys? No matter what final “findings” the democracy-defending committee leaves us with, this saga will rightly go down in history as nothing more than a show trial. It didn’t have to be this way. Last year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refused to allow Republican congressmen Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio to serve on the select committee investigating what Joe Biden describes as the “worst attack on the US since the Civil War.

Imagine a BLM member's trial in which the prosecution simply played violent videos over and over, which weren't even related to the defendant in question. Sound fair? No? Well, welcome to the Third Trump Impeachment, aka the January 6 televised hearings. Having watched a lot of PBS back in the day, I kept waiting for chairman Bennie Thompson to promise a Democratic Party tote bag if I phoned in my pledge of $50 or more. That was the tone from, as they say, gavel to gavel. But there are so many important things being left out in the Dems' desire to showcase violence. Here are just five of the issues that the hearings have left unquestioned. *** Dems and groupie Liz Cheney constantly use words like coup, insurrection, incitement, sedition, and treason.

Despite the best efforts of the media, the Democrats, and Liz Cheney, the Capitol protests of January 6 refuse to lodge themselves in the public consciousness as a nightmarish enormity. According to The Narrative, it was an “insurrection” that was worse than 9/11, worse than Pearl Harbor, the worst attack on “our democracy” since the Civil War. Yet almost no one believes that. Why? Because at the end of the day, the rambunctious events of January 6 were nine tenths theater, one tenth tragedy. Tucker Carlson was right. It was a protest that “got out of hand.” That fact is slowly crystalizing as the official narrative begins to crumble. The other day, I wrote a column lamenting Ted Cruz’s comments at the Senate hearings on the January 6 protest at the Capitol.

At least since the 2016 election, one of my favorites politicians — one of the few I could stomach at all — was Ted Cruz. He is certainly one of the smartest and most articulate members of Congress — not, I know, a high bar, but Ted really is someone with deep rhetorical gifts, an illuminating grasp of constitutional principles and a steely eyed appreciation of political realities. After a very brief flirtation with Scott Walker, my favored candidate for president in 2016 was Ted Cruz. I endorsed him publicly and even labored on the outskirts of his campaign for a couple of months. But it was not to be. His announcement that, should he win the Republican nomination, he would pick the egregious Carly Fiorina as a running mate made me raise an eyebrow.