Last week I learned from a neighbor that Donald Trump deliberately allowed the Biden-Harris ticket to win the 2020 election so they could destroy the  Democrats with stupid policies. I also learned that only a biologist can define a woman from the now confirmed nominee for a not-yet-vacant seat on the Supreme Court who was selected by President Biden because she was a Black woman. (Maybe he had a biologist on his staff to help him decide this.)  Speaking of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, I remembered that once again Democrats, including Biden, have taken credit for minority appointments after having dashed the prospects for those made by Republicans.

While Biden was on the[Senate Judiciary]committee in November 2003,[Janice Rogers ] Brown was nominated to the D.C. Circuit. She was met with a filibuster, garnering only 53 of the 60 votes needed to overcome that. Biden was among the senators that filibustered Brown and other Bush-appointed nominees from 2003 to 2005.

A group called the Gang of 14, a group of 14 senators which included Biden, negotiated the end of that two-year filibuster in 2005. 

It wasn't until June of 2005 that Brown was confirmed by the Senate, becoming the second Black woman to serve as D.C. Circuit judge. Biden voted against her nomination.

A month after Brown's confirmation, her name was floated for a Supreme Court vacancy. 

Biden said on CBS' Face the Nation in July 2005 that he would not support a Brown nomination to the nation's highest court: "I can assure you that would be a very, very, very difficult fight and she probably would be filibustered."

I also learned that not for the first time Black nominees for office have exaggerated their struggles to reach top slots. Don Surber writes:

Ketanji Jackson became a justice on Friday. She said, "In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court of the United States."

Baloney.

She was born in 1970, 6 years after segregation was outlawed. Thurgood Marshall was already on the Supreme Court when she was born. Affirmative action cleared the way for her to attend Harvard and Harvard Law. The color line was broken before she was born and the sex barrier when she was 10.

Jackson is an elitist trying to steal the valor of those who struggled for freedom.

This week I learned that you can get rabies on Capitol Hill and COVID at Gridiron Club dinners. Even better, I learned that hugging and kissing do not constitute “close contact.” Nine people on Capitol Hill were bitten by a fox. When it was captured and euthanized they found out it was rabid, necessitating euthanizing her three kits and a course of treatment for its victims. Among the victims were California congressman Ami Berra and Politico reporter Ximena Bustillo. Congressman Berra is not certain the trapped and euthanized fox is the one who bit him. And his fear may be founded, as foxes are all over the city.

Foxes are not uncommon in DC and the National Park Service says the animals adapt well to both city and rural life. There are numerous fox dens on the National Mall, a downtown park that hosts many of the city's iconic monuments, but their location can change year to year.

The Capitol complex only recently reopened after having been closed for most of the pandemic.

Having met and apparently conquered the wildlife terror on Capitol Hill, A-list Democrats and their media lapdogs feasted at the Gridiron Club annual dinner where they mingled freely and mostly unmasked -- though the servers all were required to be masked. The guests laughed at the COVID skits which featured actors “dressed as the coronavirus, like large, green bouncing balls with red frills.” 

Unfortunately, the virus seems to have had the last laugh, as over a dozen of the revelers tested positive for COVID-19 even though entrants had to show proof of vaccination. Among those who tested positive after the gala were congressmen Adam Schiff and Joaquin Castro, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Vice President Harris’s communications director Jamal Simmons, a half-dozen journalists, and members of the White House and National Security Council staffs. The president of the Gridiron Club indicated there may be more who will test positive.

There is no way of being certain about when they first contacted covid. But they did interact with other guests during the night and we have to be realistic and expect more cases.

Apparently not related to the Gridiron fete, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi tested positive two days after she closely mingled with, hugged, and kissed President Biden. Her spokesperson said she was fully vaccinated and boosted and will quarantine as she encouraged “everyone to get vaccinated, boosted and test regularly.”

While she stood close to the President as they celebrated the signing of an executive order to remedy the “glitch” in Obamacare, and she hugged and kissed him, the White House insists she and the president were not in “close contact” something the CDC indicates is sustained unmasked contact within six feet for more than 15 minutes.

Here are videos of the event -- you decide.  

Using the CDC guideline on what constitutes “close contact” church services were banned, and businesses, schools, and restaurants were shuttered.

This would not be the first time Speaker Pelosi violated CDC guidelines. Even as she required all House members to wear masks on the floor of the House (and fined those who disobeyed) she ignored the mask rules then in place to get her hair done. The rule rescinding masking in the House was lifted at the end of February, in time for the State of the Union address.