The Editor's Back Fence

What happened in the Senate on Thursday?

1) Anyone on the Senate committee which interviewed James Comey who has been to law school, and Comey himself, has passed a course in the law of evidence. Various kinds of evidence are given various degrees of credibility in a courtroom, with a contemporaneous account near the top of the list, right up there with deathbed confessions. Smart fella that he is, Comey was expertly creating exactly the evidentiary record he will need for whatever happens next. Kamala Harris, another smart cookie and a former prosecutor as so many of them are,then asked a whole series of questions calculated to elicit the right record from Comey, unanswerable in open session but surely to be asked later in closed session. Trump and his obviously sleazy Vegas mouthpiece didn't have a chance against those two.

2) Anyone seen any Mafia movies lately? Dialogue: "a) Do you want to go on living? b) I hope you do what I want. c) Since you didn't do what I want, you're dead." Trump obviously made Comey "an offer he couldn't refuse", and when Comey refused, he was fired. QED. This was not a simple "hope".

And for the real story about what's been going on in Washington, watch this: