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September 2018

This week's developments on the Korean Peninsula following June's Singapore Summit have been fascinating. First, North Korean media is now reporting that Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his commitment to a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula.
The statement from the Korean Central News Agency wasn't new information — Kim has repeatedly declared similar intentions before — but allows hopes to rise that diplomacy can get back on track after the recriminations that followed Kim's meeting in June with U.S. President Donald Trump in Singapore. The impasse between North Korea and the United States, with neither side seemingly willing to make any substantive move, has generated widespread skepticism over Trump's claims that Kim is intent on dismantling his nuclear weapons program.

Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh faces the Senate Judiciary Committee for the third day on Thursday. The hearing starts at 9:30AM ET. Wednesday lasted 12 hours, but today should be a little shorter since senators only get 20 minutes to ask questions. Yet I expect many interruptions from protesters.

Sheldon Whitehouse may have had the worst performance on Day 2 of the Brett Kavanaugh hearings. And that's saying a lot. In a forum filled with Democrat attempts to play gotcha with Kavanaugh, Whitehouse displayed the disdain and contempt for his political opponents that has become his hallmark.

This case of the week, Williams v. State, is out of the Georgia Supreme Court, in a decision handed down just last week, and involves a man whose claimed “warning shot” earned him life in prison, even though the bullet he fired wasn’t proven to have harmed anyone. Stoplight Confrontation Between Two Groups The facts involve two groups of men stopped at a red light who get into a lethal confrontation. The Defendant was in the front passenger seat of his friend’s Ford Mustang, with others in the back of the car. The Defendant and others in the Mustang were armed. A Dodge Challenger rolled up next to the Mustang containing several other men. The two groups had some pre-existing animosity, and began to yell at each other.

After days of unrest in eastern Germany, German politicians are calling for the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) to be placed under police surveillance. In a move that is seen as precursor to a nationwide surveillance of the party, German authorities placed the youth wing of the AfD in the states of Lower Saxony and Bremen under police observation. Thomas Oppermann, the vice president of the German parliament, said the German intelligence service BfV should monitor the AfD party for possible links to far-right groups. “The refugee question divides society, and the AfD is riding ever more radically on this wave,” Oppermann told German newspaper Die Welt. “That is why security services should be watching the collaboration between the AfD and neo-Nazis very closely.”

Today at 9:30 AM, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh will face day 2 of his confirmation hearings with the Senate Judiciary Committee. Maybe today we will actually hear Kavanaugh speak! The Democrats spent almost the first two hours trying to convince Chairman Chuck Grassley to adjourn the hearings over the lack of documents. Then the Senators had their opening statements, which took all day, and protesters interrupted a lot of the proceedings. Today each senator will have 30 minutes to question Kavanaugh.

NBC's Chuck Todd amuses me; I don't know if it's his lethargic presence or his pretense at earnest thoughtfulness.  Maybe it's his "sleepy eyes."  Whatever it is, I rarely miss Meet the Press just for the chance to giggle as Todd's weekly impression of Chandler Bing from Friends (all those oddly-timed pauses and the weird emphasis on random words just cracks me up).  Whatever it is, I find it hard to take Todd seriously; he's such a doofus and that he sees himself as a person of great gravitas just adds to the funny. When I saw that he had published an article at the Atlantic, I couldn't click over quickly enough.  Sure, much of his pretentious goofiness needs to be seen and heard to be appreciated, but he's such a sloppy thinker that I just had to know what he had written.

Give the media an obvious political stunt and they'll run with it like it's fact, Fred Guttenberg Edition: Fred Guttenberg lost a child during Nikolas Cruz's shooting rampage in Parkland, Florida. He was also invited to the hearings as a guest of Sen. Feinstein. Just before the hearings broke for lunch, Guttenberg approached Kavanaugh and attempted to shake his hand. Kavanaugh declined and walked away.