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The House of Representatives has opened up an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. I am suddenly reminded of an old episode of the “Dukes of Hazzard” where Boss Hogg quipped that they would throw the Duke boys in jail. When asked the charge he just said they would come up with something later. Jurisprudence was set back a few centuries that day. Thank God it was just poorly written fiction.

Fiction has become reality as the Republicans in the House have no idea what crimes Biden committed. They just assume he has done something. His brother repaid a loan. His son repaid a loan. He was on the speaker phone once with someone his son worked with to say hello. These are all horrible crimes and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The trouble is that there isn’t a law against any of those things. I suppose the House could pass such a law on the fly to make it illegal, but they couldn’t pass gas at a family function. They’ve been the second least productive Congress in the nation’s history. They passed 22 bills in the last calendar year. The Congress between 1931 and 1932 passed the least with 21. Congratulations Kevin, er Mike er who is in charge now?

This is how things are going in Washington. Donald Trump was impeached twice and had a majority vote for conviction both times. Only two other presidents had been impeached previously. None have been convicted. The general idea is that Trump can then go on the campaign trail and argue that Biden was also impeached, so they really are just the same at the end of the day. Nihilism is defined as “the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless.” In other words, there are no rules and there is no discernable moral code. It is an old Soviet mind trick. Essentially, if everyone is evil then my evil really doesn’t matter. Sure, there are degrees of evil, but that is just a thought experiment. We then can compare Edwin Edwards to Ted Bundy and put them on the same pedestal of evil.

The folks in the House GOP are hoping that you don’t notice the difference. You won’t notice the difference between a man charged 91 different times in four different jurisdictions and a guy where criminal plots are being thrown out like a pitch meeting at the WB Network. The ever-relevant Hunter Biden offered to testify at a public hearing and James Comer made it sound like Biden had kicked his dog. How dare you expose our bullshit in front of God and everyone?

The sad thing is that this actually works on some people. Thankfully, it won’t work on enough to make a big difference. Most of his voters know Biden isn’t really a crook. They know their guy is. They just don’t care. He is a crook fighting for them. At least he’s fighting the same people they fight with on a regular basis. Well, maybe he’s just using a bunch of fighting words.

It’s going to be entertaining though. Forget about anything getting done. We have another budget crunch coming in February and this particular Congress seems incapable of focusing on two things at once. Do we focus on the fake impeachment and manufacturing evidence of a crime that isn’t really a crime? Do we focus on actually funding the government and making sure essential services are met? Damn this is hard.

This past week has been a difficult one and that is particularly in Texas. Kate Cox was a normal Texan with two children and she and her husband were hoping for a third. 20 weeks into the pregnancy something horrible happened. They were given the kind of diagnosis that no one wants to hear. Their baby was no longer viable and it would threaten her life if it were brought to term.

The Texas law prevents abortions that late into the pregnancy. Cox asked for an exception since the baby was not viable, her health would be in danger, and performing the procedure now would preserve her ability to have children in the future. The district court heard the evidence and granted the exception.

Ken Paxton in his own special way filed an immediate appeal and threatened to have anyone that assisted her prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. The Texas Supreme Court dragged their feet so Cox travelled to an unknown state and had the procedure done. Just to be thorough, the Texas Supreme Court then ruled that the district court’s ruling was null and void. There will be no exceptions.

As a cradle Catholic, I am really torn on this one. I tend to be against abortion in most instances. The key term is most. If the baby can be had safely and the baby is viable I much prefer adoption over abortion. However, I have to acknowledge two very important distinctions. The first is that all pregnancies are different and come with their own challenges. In Cox’s case, she wanted the baby, but that was no longer a legitimate possibility and the outcome was going to be crushing if not deadly.

Doctors and families are the ones that should make these calls. Is the mother’s life in danger? Is the baby in danger? Is this a case of the child having a abnormality that would impact its quality of life or will the child literally die shortly after birth? The fact is that no one carries a child to that point and chooses to have an abortion because the child is an inconvenience.

The second consideration is that abortion is a personal choice. I would never choose to have an abortion unless my life or the life of the baby were in danger. I will never be pregnant. It’s not my choice. If we believe in free will then we also believe that people ultimately have the choice to make decisions that we might think are bad ones. We may disagree with the choice.

In Cox’s case, that question is moot. The child wasn’t going to survive. So, what are we doing exactly? Why is Paxton being such a jackass? This was never about Cox. She had the means to go elsewhere to take care of her procedure. I think if you shot them up with truth serum they would admit that the law really wasn’t about her or women like her.

It was a signal to women in general. We have control over you. We control your reproductive health, your health in general, and your future. We make all of these choices for you because we can’t trust to make them on your own. It was a signal to everyone else that your situation doesn’t matter. You had your opportunity and you didn’t take it. The idea of prosecuting doctors for performing live saving care is beyond repugnant. You almost want to paint one of those curly mustaches on Paxton to complete the illusion that he is a megalomaniacal villain chortling in the background. We can do better Texas. We have to do better.

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Fervor is defined simply as intensity and passion of your feelings. We’ve talked a lot in this space about how cults and cult like behavior is predicated on the shutting down of the factual portion of the brain. The great irony is that the group that calls liberals snowflakes and talks about how we are governed by our feelings are completely taken over by their own feelings and irrational beliefs.

Their messiah said he would not act like a dictator. Well, that’s not entirely true. He would act like one on day one but only day one. He would invoke the Insurrection Act and marshal the forces of the military against its own citizens. Still, that would only be for one day. He says he would stop after that. He doesn’t want to be a dictator. Now, if anyone can parse out those two contradictory statements they can be my guest.

I cannot fathom how one avoids the cognitive dissonance of railing against the powers of the state and its desire to disarm the citizenry while championing a guy that wants to declare martial law. Yet, that is where we are. Let’s ignore the fact that we have heard all of this before. Let’s ignore that we know exactly where this leads because we have all seen it before. For those not cast under the spell of this fervor let’s consider where this goes logically. Who exactly is the vermin? Who are the undesirables? Who are the people that we want to round up like wild animals so that we can ship them out somewhere else?

Imagine the level of hatred that one must have to not only feel that way about another person (or worse a group of people) but also make serious plans on how to actually get this done. This was the fricking Heritage Foundation. It’s a conservative think tank. These are their brightest minds. These aren’t a couple of buddies sitting at the bar four martinis into the evening. This plan wasn’t scribbled on a cocktail napkin before stumbling to their Uber ride home. Project 2025 is that plan.

One can’t intellectually talk about the criminality of Joe Biden and his obvious mental decline with any rational seriousness. For one, one cannot possibly coordinate that level of sophistication and far-reaching avarice while also in cognitive decline. For another, one cannot rationally watch both men and come away that one is clearly on top of his game while the other is an addlebrained jackass. At least you can’t watch them and say that Biden is the addlebrained jackass.

This is all a psychological dodge. One has to develop a fairly intricate series of faux beliefs in order to justify this level of hate in their own mind. People generally aren’t this evil on their own. They don’t go around rounding up their neighbors or putting people in cages like animals. They have to convince themselves they are defending something. They have to convince themselves they are being invaded by some force they can’t quite understand or define. That’s fervor.

So, all cities are at the gates of hell. People are invading our country and are threatening to steal our whiteness (er identity or culture). Liberals in education and the arts are grooming our kids and turning them gay. There is a war on Christmas. There is a war on Jesus. Those murderous and dangerous brown people are coming for you, your job, and your vacation home in Minnesota.

Except it is all a lie. There are big lies and there are gigantic, gargantuan lies. The big lie was about the last election. The gigantic, gargantuan lie is an us vs. them lie. You don’t break that with facts. I’m not sure how you do it. All you can do is keep a close eye. They will come for us too. That much you can guarantee.

A long, long time ago, I heard an exhortation to sign up at a social media site called “Twitter”. It was the newest thing. At first, I didn’t because…why? But when I had to attend a social media in-service class in my old school district, the assignment was to enroll in every conceivable social media site we could think of, or ones on the list provided for us.

So I did.

I already had a MySpace account, so all I had to do was to create accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest, Instagram, Reddit and others I have forgotten about.

I used Twitter exclusively for a year or so just to play a game on Comedy Central.

I actually won once.

Then Elon bought Twitter and the whole place went to H-E-double-hockeysticks as “X” and I opted out of what was becoming a sewer for traitors and porn bots.

And then I signed up for a new Meta group called “Threads”. Threads is fun like Twitter used to be. Yes, there are Trump Trolls there, too. But not as many. More often, you find self-meming memes on Threads, which just give me the giggles sometimes.

Like today’s