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.

Everybody’s favorite bad liar and gotta-be-on-drugs to act like he does, Devin Nunes, is loudly burping out of his mouth again.

But whatever drugs he’s taking has not helped with his paranoia.  His rambling interview at a local rightwing radio station is an adventure in persecution complexities.

By the way, he has also caught that thing that Trump has hugely bigly.

Nunes was then asked why an all-Republican Congress was not passing more legislation. He corrected the caller, saying the House, Senate and Trump have signed more bills into law than any previous Congress/presidential combination in history up to this point.

Oh, that might be a tiny exaggeration.

But, here’s the part that got me.  Nunes says that he can’t possibly have town halls because, you know, citizens might show up and we can’t be having that.  Do you know why?

“The last thing we’re going to do is give in to a lot of left-wing activists and media,” Nunes said. “And with these security situations, I don’t know how any member of Congress can do a town hall.”

Security situations?  What the hell is that? Do you want to know who shows up in person and walks along a rope line shaking hands?  Gabby Gifford, that’s who.

Nunes is a coward.

Go read the interview linked above.  The guy is nine cents short of a dime.

Poor Devin Nunes.  Look what you’ve done to him.  He’s had to step aside “temporarily” as chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

“Several leftwing activist groups have filed accusations against me with the Office of Congressional Ethics,” Nunes said in the statement. “The charges are entirely false and politically motivated, and are being leveled just as the American people are beginning to learn the truth about the improper unmasking of the identities of U.S. citizens and other abuses of power.”

And you’re gonna pay dearly for being mean to Nunes.

West Texas Obama-hating congressman Mike Conaway is taking over as chair.  He’s ethically challenged.  And in the Koch brothers herd.

And Conaway will be assisted by the lovely and charming Trey Gowdy.  Y’all, Gowdy sets off every fight or flight bone in my body.

I am willing to bet that this ends up with Gowdy and Conway banging each other over the head with gavels.

If this is true, and I highly suspect it is, Nunes not only needs to resign as committee chairman, he needs to resign as congressman.

As we suspected, the person who leaked the report to Nunes is Michael Ellis, a former staff member of the Intelligence Committee and closely tied to Nunes.  But, there’s been another official identified.

[Ezra] Cohen-Watnick is a former Defense Intelligence Agency official who was originally brought to the White House by Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser. The officials said that this month, shortly after Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter about being wiretapped on the orders of President Barack Obama, Mr. Cohen-Watnick began reviewing highly classified reports detailing the intercepted communications of foreign officials.

What the fool tarnation is Flynn’s guy, who is often described as his protege, still doing there?  And why are we paying our tax money for him to spend time reviewing “highly classified reports” to try to support Trump’s wacko theory?  How do we know he’s not also reviewing those documents to support Flynn?

And here’s why I think that.

After H.R. McMaster was chosen as the new National Security Adviser, The Washington Post reported that McMaster told Cohen-Watnick that he would be moved to another job. U.S. officials told the Post that CIA Director Mike Pompeo told McMaster that those in the intelligence community didn’t think the young Cohen-Watnick was “up to the job.”

According to Politico, which first reported on this incident, Cohen-Watnick then went to Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. Two days after McMaster told him he would get a new job, Cohen-Watnick was back in the same place Flynn put him in.

So the new National Security Advisor wanted to fire him but Kushner and Bannon wanted him back in his old job.  He’s 30 years old. What the hell? Does anydamnbody know who is in charge?

I am telling you this one damn thing – this Nunes thing stinks like he’s got a goat under each arm and a pocketful of week old crawfish.

Y’all, Nunes has to put some hard ridden miles between himself and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Now.

The Washington Post says they now know why Trump panicked last night and starting tweeting about Hillary.

The Trump administration sought to block former acting attorney general Sally Yates from testifying to Congress in the House investigation of links between Russian officials and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, The Washington Post has learned, a position that is likely to further anger Democrats who have accused Republicans of trying to damage the inquiry.

Trump claims he has presidential communications privilege over Yates’ expected testimony that disagrees sharply with what White House officials are claiming.  Uh, no. Honey, if John Dean can testify against Nixon, Yates can testify against Trump.

So now Nunes canceling the open hearing is starting to make a whole lot of sense.  To crooks.  It makes a lot of sense to crooks.

I gotta tell ya, maybe Nunes can talk water into a boil at twenty paces, but it’s just bubbles. There ain’t nothing there other than bubbles. His explanation of what happened on the grounds of the White House has more twists than a pretzel factory.

I saw that he went on Bill O’Reilly yesterday and said that of course the Democrats want him to step down because “they are afraid of me.”  Honey, your own momma is afraid of you but it’s because you’re dumb, and dumb people do crazy things.  You are only scary because you are dumb crazy and so madly in love with Donald Trump that even Ivanka is jealous.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Okay, here’s the deal.

Devin Nunes, National Man of Mystery, made an announcement that Trump’s communications may have been picked up by the CIA.  He won’t say where he got that information or why he took it to the White House before revealing it to other members of the committee.

Well, let’s add another conundrum to this. Nunes admits that he was on “White House grounds” the day before he made the announcement, but that he did not go in the White House.

In all fairness, there are other buildings that share the White House grounds.

It went down like this.

Two congressional sources said Nunes was with a staff member Tuesday night when he got a message, got out of the car and got into an Uber. Staff did not hear again from him that night.

They next heard from Nunes Wednesday morning, the day he scheduled a news conference before going to the White House. The staff do not know where he went Tuesday night.

Bond. James Bond.

Or maybe hiking the Appalachian trail?

A specially called Congress Anonymous meeting?

Nunes said he was there for additional meetings “to confirm what I already knew” but said he wouldn’t comment further so as to not “compromise sources and methods.”

Okay, look, if you already knew it, couldn’t you confirm it with yourself?

An unnamed government official says that Nunes was seen at the National Security Council offices of the Eisenhower building on that night, probably pretending to the Mata Hari.

Nunes has more secrets than a parish priest in Las Vegas.

Congressman, you can be on the House Intelligence Committee or you can be Jason Bourne, but you can’t be both.