I’m fighting off a case of caught-on-an-airliner-wintertime-creeping-crud, so spent most of the day consuming bourbon and lemon and watching the impeachment hearing.  I’m actually glad I did.  Some takeaways:

1. My faith in loyal, non-partisan, professional career public servants was restored.  Ambassador Taylor and Secretary Kent were pitch perfect.  They showed deep knowledge and experience, took no sides, resisted efforts by both sides to do that, and simply stated cold hard facts.  With impeccable credentials and reputations, their testimony was powerful and, pardon the pun, unimpeachable.  It was refreshing to witness that.
2. Ambassador Taylor dropped a bombshell of new evidence testifying that since his testimony, it has been reported to him that one of his staff overhear a cell phone conversation between Sondland and Trump (in a Kiev restaurant, no less) where Sondland told Trump that Zelensky was going to play ball.
3. Schiff did a reasonably good job laying out the case.  He has said that his goal is to get all the major news in during the first hour, and he did that, taking into account frivolous interruptions from the other side.
4. The Republicans have nothing.  NOTHING; zip, nada, zilch, zero.  Nunes and Jordan, the Trump’s chief ass lickers, only repeated the same threadbare tropes, and it seemed their ONLY strategy was to confuse.  It was pitiful, and he even floated one those ridiculous conspiracy theories that the Ukrainians were “out to get Trump”.
5. The Republicans demanded their be a vote on subpoenaing the Whistleblower, even though that’s against Federal law.  They also wailed about how the Whistleblower “started all this” and should be forced to appear.
6. We know how this is going to go…Schiff could show  body cam footage of Trump clubbing a person to death on fifth avenue and Nunedan would say “What? That happens every day.”  The only thing that will swing this is getting a secret ballot in the Senate when it comes to the vote so Republican senators would do their goddam jobs without paying a price.

Oh, and one last detail. One of the best moments of the day was after one of Jordan’s diatribe’s about “the most important witness” not being produced, Peter Welch, Dem from Vermont retorted, “I’d be glad to have the person who started it all come in and testify. President Trump is welcome to take a seat right there.”  Have a look:

I’ll be following along again tomorrow.  Should be interesting.  It’s certainly historic.