TGIF 5/11/19

Friday again, already? Let's dive in to our good week/bad week review.

On the bad week side of the ledger, let's took at Rand Paul, the irony-blind junior senator from Kentucky, who's been known to have a battle or two with the Senate leadership, including the other senator from Kentucky, what's his name, the guy who's married to Trump's Transportation Secretary, Elaine Chao? Oh, Mitch McConnell, that's the guy.

The other day, Paul tweeted that his colleague, North Carolina's Richard Burr, must not have gotten the memo that the case is closed on the Mueller investigation per an edict from Mitch McConnell.  Does Paul wish that his colleagues would have sent him a reminder about what McConnell thinks is right? I suspect not, but you never know.

Burr, you see, as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr. to come chat with the Committee. Lots of people are confident that Trump Jr. lied during his testimony to Congress, but you know how things go -- you don't question anything that a Trump does if you value your political future.

And while the Senate Majority Leader had not responded to requests for comment, that's not a problem because if you can't get the Majority Leader himself, you get the next best thing - no, not the Transportation Secretary, you get one of his donors. I kid you not.

But a top McConnell donor, who is also close with the Trump White House, told Breitbart News that McConnell must intervene to end Burr's decision to go rogue. 

"What Burr's doing isn't just a slap in the face to the President and his family, it's a slap in the face to Americans across the country," the top McConnell donor said. "It's incumbent that Leader McConnell steps up to the plate and strips Senator Burr's Chairmanship of the IntelCommittee. If he refuses to do that, then he shoulders just as much blame for this travesty of justice as the Senator from North Carolina. 

To which I say, as an American across the country, "hit me with your best shot" and "thank you sir, may I have another?" And I'll also add that, as McConnell is the least popular senator according to his constituents (34% positive/50% negative), he darn well better listen to whoever this top donor is if he wants to get re-elected, by golly.

I think Senator Burr's having a good week. He's doing the right thing, so kudos to him. Another Republican that's doing the right thing? That's Texas Rep. Will Hurd, who said that Robert Mueller should testify before Congress. According to an email update I received from Newsweek Magazine, Burr said

We're talking about a report, one dude's opinion of a report written by another dude. Let's have that dude that wrote the report come to Congress and talk about that and people get to ask him questions. And then, again, we should be talking about this disinformation strategy and how to deal with it in the future. 

Burr, who is the only Republican representing a district on the Southern Border (and who opposes the president's wall), sounds like a breath of fresh air for the Rs. Kudos to him as well.

Who else is there this week?

State Senators in Alabama, who were on the verge of passing an abortion bill that would call for criminalizing abortions after six weeks gestation, a point at which many women don't know they're pregnant. Passage was delayed until next week after a tumultuous session in which the Republicans tried to strip off an amendment addressing pregnancies resulting from rape or incest by a simple voice vote. Dems wanted the votes recorded individually.

They're supposed to go home and talk to their constituents, or the voices in their heads or hearts, or the voices "coming out of (their)...wherever" as the president has said, and come back refreshed to do the dirty deed on Tuesday.

No word yet on whether a fetus, which is a person, they say, and deserving of the full protection of the law, according to Senator Clyde Chambliss, can be deducted from an Alabaman's taxes prior to birth, or if they're going to stick with the old way of doing things on that front.

Without sharing my own opinion on the bill, I think we'd have to say the Republican Senators had a bad week - they were all set to pull the trigger, and then got tripped up by the pesky Democrats.

On the decidedly good week side of the ledger, we've got some kids doing awesome things to smile about.  First, there's Shailyn Ryan, who saved her best friend's life by performing the Heimlich maneuver on her when she started choking in the lunchroom.

And then, there are the 400 or so kids who stopped to say goodbye to a woman in their neighborhood as she prepared to move to an assisted living home. Tinney Davidson, who's 88 years old, has been waving to the kids as they went by her house on their way to school for the past 12 years. Davidson is awesome, and so are all of the kids who befriended her over the years, and who showed up for one last wave.

How was your week?