Jeffrey Epstein Tag

No witnesses, no documents. No surprise. The first impeachment trial in the history of the United States to forbid the presence of factual evidence and witnesses is now drawing to a close.

Because as a writer I work mostly at home; because I'm both a news junkie and a political junkie; because being female, double tasking comes second nature to me; because how often do we get to watch living history in which we have standing, a stake, and a part?; because of all this and more, I watched virtually every boring, exhilarating moment of the first week of Donald Trump's Senate impeachment trial. I know that others didn't have that enviable privilege or didn’t choose that tiresome challenge, depending on how you view it. But I know that I also reorganized my closets and drawers, paid bills, watered and fed numerous plants, wrote these notes, made soup, organized a podcast, had three meetings, interviewed two people and was interviewed by a third, dealt with a bathroom-shower-small-flood disaster, and answered mail, all with one eye and ear glued to the TV. ...

That’s an odd, uncomfortable title for any writing of mine. I thought I thought vengeance a waste of energy. Then a recent barrage of news stories set me off. Nothing unique about any of them, given the pattern we’re used to under patriarchy. But the barrage, across a range of contexts, kept drumming the same insult home. There’s Trump's boy, Brett Kavanaugh, confirmed to the Supreme Court for life by the narrowest of margins, after having been credibly, publicly, convincingly accused of sexual assault, and responding with an indignant tantrum before the Senate committee. Now the story breaks that additional credible witnesses contacted the FBI to testify in agreement with Dr. Blasey Ford, the survivor of his assault—but the FBI refused even to interview them. Did the FBI, pressured by the White House and GOP-dominated Senate, just cave in? Was the FBI worn out by right-wing accusations against its own...