I’m back after a week off. (Well, not really. I turned my featured post from two weeks ago into a sermon at a Unitarian Universalist church.) Did I miss anything?
On the one hand I missed a lot, but on the other it was all fairly predictable: Covid has continued to rage out of control. Biden has been saying sensible things and appointing well-qualified people to his administration. Trump’s I-won-the-election claims have gotten more outrageous as the door closes on his coup attempt. And while he won’t recognize that he’s leaving the White House, he’s working on pardons to immunize allies and relatives who would otherwise have legal vulnerability when he’s not there to hold back the Justice Department.
There are two featured posts this week. The first is a note on pardons that grew too large for the weekly summary. There’s just too much to cover, and it involves some interesting (to an amateur law geek) points of constitutional interpretation about self-pardons, preemptive pardons, pardons to obstruct justice, and so on. So “Pardons and Their Limits” should be out between 9 and 10 EST.
The second examines the internal Republican strife that has been breaking out since the election: Republican officials and judges who are trying to maintain contact with reality and stay on the right side of the law are running afoul of the true believers in the MAGA fantasy world. In Georgia, Republicans are bashing each other when they need to be uniting behind their candidates in the upcoming Senate runoff elections. This conflict has deep roots: For decades establishment Republicans have believed they could exploit the fantasies of their base, and then put those conspiracy theories back into their bottles when it came time to govern. But now the fantasy world is demanding loyalty and punishing those who deviate.
That post is “Republicans Are Reaping the Whirlwind”, and it may not be out until noon or so.
Finally, the weekly summary covers the virus and the vaccines, the Supreme Court’s about-face on restricting church services, Biden’s appointments, and a few other stories. That should be out a bit later than usual, maybe in the 1-2 range.
The Weekly Sift 