“Though his staff initially believed Trump would make a statement in front of cameras following his second impeachment trial, that no longer appears to be the plan. Reporters stationed in Palm Beach have been told a statement from the former president is no longer expected” reports CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins.

Good morning again, we have received a large number of calls into 9-1-1 regarding the current power outage problem around the area. Please understand, in regards to the power outage, there is nothing we can do about that.

— WacoPolice (@WacoPolice) February 15, 2021

Wall Street Journal: “The end of the Senate impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump sets the stage for his successor to pursue his agenda with a Congress no longer encumbered by the wrenching task of accounting for the storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. The reality for President Biden, however, is that in pursuing priorities from pandemic relief to measures to address climate change and infrastructure renewal, he will have a difficult time achieving the bipartisanship the Senate showed in the trial that failed to convict Mr. Trump.”

“Republicans, who no longer control the White House or either chamber of Congress, are now divided between those who back Mr. Trump and those who wish he would fade away. For many, the path to recovering power will mean uniting those two factions around a common cause. By the Sunday morning after the impeachment trial, it was clear that one cause will be to rally in opposition to Mr. Biden’s agenda, and the GOP’s most strident voices were already signaling that fight. ‘My goal is to win in 2022 to stop the most radical agenda I’ve seen coming out of the Democratic presidency of Joe Biden,’ said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) on Fox News. ‘Biden is giving Republicans plenty of ammo,’ said Republican strategist Scott Reed. ‘His continuing lurch to the left on domestic policy is creating a strong contrast for the midterm elections already.’ Democrats are aiming to move swiftly on Mr. Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic-recovery package. This week the House will begin pulling the various pieces into a single bill for passage by the end of the month.”

“President Joe Biden reopened the federal health insurance marketplace on Monday for three months, citing the importance of access to health care when more than 1 out of every 12 Americans has been infected with the coronavirus. Per Axios’ Caitlin Owens, of the 15 million people eligible for coverage under the Affordable Care Act, 4 million are eligible for a free high-deductible plan, 4.9 million would qualify for a subsidized plan and 6 million wouldn’t qualify for any subsidy” – Axios.

Louisville Courier Journal: “If a U.S. senator from Kentucky doesn’t finish their term, current law allows the governor to choose anyone to fill the role – and it doesn’t matter which party they represent. So, for example, if Republican Sens. Mitch McConnell or Rand Paul left office early – either by choice, expulsion, or death – Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear could put a Democrat in that position. State Senate President Robert Stivers (R-Manchester) wants to change that, and he has McConnell’s backing to do it. Stivers’ proposal, introduced Wednesday as Senate Bill 228, would require the governor to pick someone who shares the same political party as the departing senator. It would also make them select that person from a list of three names provided by the executive committee of the departing senator’s state party.”

“The York County Republican Committee late Saturday censured U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey following his decision to find former President Donald Trump guilty at the end of the weeklong impeachment trial. Trump was acquitted by a 57-43 Senate vote. The committee in its press release said that Toomey’s voting record over the past four years runs counter to the principles of the GOP and that he’s out of touch with the core beliefs of Pennsylvania Republicans” WITF reports.

“Toomey’s voting record overwhelming favors conservative issues and has a 93 percent rating from the Club for Growth. ‘For the past four years Sen. Toomey sat silently as a hyper-partisan Democrat Congress relentlessly attacked President Trump, impeaching him twice on fabricated charges,’ said state House Representative Dawn Keefer, who proposed the resolution. ‘Given [Toomey’s] recent support of the second unconstitutional impeachment effort against a president who is no longer in office, the York County Republican Committee has reached the limits of its frustration.’ Jeff Piccola, the committee chairman, said it’s ‘so sad that Sen. Toomey has never attempted to reach out to the York County Republican Party to justify his vote to proceed with the House’s impeachment of President Trump with an investigation, evidence or due process.'”

David Frum, The Atlantic: “The system of government in the United States has evolved in many important ways since 1787. But the mistrust of unpropertied majorities – especially urban unpropertied majorities – persists. In no other comparably developed society is voting as difficult; in no peer society are votes weighted as unequally; in no peer society is there a legislative chamber where 41 percent of the lawmakers can routinely outvote 59 percent, as happens in the U.S. Senate. This system is justified today with the same arguments as when it was established a quarter millennium ago. ‘We’re not a democracy,’ tweeted Senator Mike Lee of Utah in October. Lee explained his meaning in a second tweet that crammed Madisonian theory into fewer than 280 characters. ‘Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and [prosperity] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.'”

“American anti-majoritarians have always promised that minority privilege will deliver positive results: stability, sobriety, the security of the public debt, and tranquil and peaceful presidential elections. But again and again, those promises have proved the exact opposite of reality. In practice, the privileged minority has shown itself to be unstable and unsober. In 2020, Trump lost the presidency by more than 7 million votes, an even larger margin than the nearly 3-million-vote deficit he suffered in 2016. In a ‘rank democracy,’ to borrow Lee’s language, that would have been the end of the ball game. But the mechanics of the Electoral College allowed the defeated president to incite his followers into mounting the first attempt in U.S. history to seize the presidency by violence. Far from preventing them, the anti-majoritarian mechanisms of presidential elections were the crucial culprit in creating the ‘tumult and disorder’ and the ‘heats and ferments’ that so worried the authors of the Constitution.”

“After former President Donald Trump’s acquittal at his second Senate impeachment trial, bipartisan support appears to be growing for an independent Sept. 11-style commission into the deadly insurrection that took place at the U.S. Capitol. Investigations into the riot were already planned, with Senate hearings scheduled later this month in the Senate Rules Committee.”

“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has asked retired Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré to lead an immediate review of the Capitol’s security process. Lawmakers from both parties, speaking on Sunday’s news shows, signaled that even more inquiries were likely. The Senate verdict Saturday, with its 57-43 majority falling 10 votes short of the two-thirds needed to convict Trump, hardly put to rest the debate about the Republican former president’s culpability for the Jan. 6 assault” – AP.

Otter Globe and Intelligencer: “The Republican Party faces a number of substantial complications now that they’ve voted to acquit President Trump during his Senate Impeachment trial. This article will outline how the GOP now faces a serious problem regarding the 2024 Presidential election cycle, how the standard regarding Brandenberg v. Ohio and whataboutism over ‘Democrats used the word fight too’ will not work in a court of law, and how Trump and his allies are likely to face criminal charges for conspiracy to defraud the government by interfering in a Federal election.”

“This article is a follow up to pieces that I published on January 11th, and February 7th. In those articles I predicted that Senate Republicans would turn the impeachment proceeding into a demonstration of their political cowardice and fealty to Trump. The results of the vote, along with Mitch McConnell’s rant afterwards that Trump was ‘morally responsible’ for the riots (even though McConnell voted ‘not guilty’ on the charge of inciting the riots in the impeachment proceeding) make clear that prediction was born out absolutely.”

I wish this was parody. https://t.co/zYw82CuF5y

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 15, 2021

The Babylon Bee literally bills itself on its profile as “Fake News You Can Trust.”

Thanks to Derp State Follies for the tip.

A Delaware judge dismissed a defamation suit former Trump advisor Carter Page filed against a Verizon subsidiary that runs sites including Yahoo News and AOL, and formerly owned the HuffPost, the Washington Post reports.

In July 2020, Page sued Oath, Inc., a company that was rebranded as Verizon Media, claiming that its constituent entities defamed him by falsely linking him to the federal investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.  Page claimed he was harmed by false and defamatory information published by the companies as far back as 2016.

Judge Craig Karsnitz of the Superior Court of Delaware, however, ruled that the stories, including those by reporter Michael Isikoff, were not defamatory nor were they untrue.

DeadState: “Speaking on Fox News this Sunday, former GOP Rep. and current Fox contributor Sean Duffy floated a new conspiracy theory about the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, suggesting that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had knowledge of the attack beforehand and failed to act.”

“According to Duffy, the reason Democrats didn’t call witnesses during Trump’s impeachment trial is because they didn’t want to see ‘what we were going to find.’ ‘What did Nancy Pelosi know?” Duffy told Fox host Will Cain. ‘When did she know it? If she knew that there was an attack on Capitol, why didn’t she secure it earlier? Why didn’t she bring in the National Guard? What did Mitch McConnell know? What did AOC know?’ Duffy’s wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, then chimed in and floated D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser as a possible conspirator.”

L. Lin Wood, the election conspiracy lawyer who advocated for Donald Trump’s claim that the entire November 2020 was rigged against him, is facing a 1,600-page disciplinary complaint filed by the State Bar of Georgia, according to Business Insider.

To help in his preparation for the hearing, Wood had posted the entire complaint online and asked his self-described “Army of Patriots” to dig up information on the members of the panel that will adjudicate the complaint.

“The State Disciplinary Board of the State Bar of Georgia has received information concerning the above-named attorney that suggests that said attorney may have violated one or more of the Georgia Rules of Professional Conduct,” the complaint reads.  Wood uploaded the complaint to a Dropbox file; it is marked “confidential.”

For the first time in four years, the President of the United States as tweeted out a message wishing his spouse a Happy Valentine’s Day.

The love of my life and the life of my love. Happy Valentine’s Day, Jilly. pic.twitter.com/LjLLIjvP1C

— President Biden (@POTUS) February 14, 2021

A vandal spraypainted the word “traitor” on the driveway of Donald Trump’s lawyer Michael van der Veen’s house in suburban Philadelphia overnight, ABC News reports.

“My entire family, my business, my law firm are under siege right now,” van der Veen said during a Fox News interview Sunday morning.  He said he spent the night in Washington, DC after the Senate acquitted Trump, with 57 Senators voting to convict.

A personal injury attorney, van der Veen joined Trump’s legal team after Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, refused to represent Trump because, he claimed, he was a witness to the incident.  Trump’s next team quit a week before the trial, alleged due to a disagreement over fees and how to argue the case.

For the first time since November 4, 2020, the seven-day moving average of new coronavirus cases has dropped below the 100,000 mark, signalling a new dip in the spread of the virus around the nation, the Associated Press reports.

The average peaked on January 12, 2021 at nearly 250,000 new daily cases.  It dipped below 100,000 on Friday and stayed below that threshold on Saturday.

“We are still at about 100,000 cases a day. We are still at around 1,500 to 3,500 deaths per day. The cases are more than two-and-a-half-fold times what we saw over the summer,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It’s encouraging to see these trends coming down, but they’re coming down from an extraordinarily high place.”

“Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spent more than $10,000 in taxpayer funds on engraved Madison Dinner-branded pens that he gifted to attendees of the notorious dinner parties, according to records obtained by CREW in an ongoing FOIA lawsuit” reports MSNBC’s Kyle Griffin.

“Though President Joe Biden’s swath of day-one executive orders included a 60-day pause on all wall construction – and ended the national emergency that Trump declared so he could reroute billions of dollars in Pentagon funding toward the effort – the cleanup is just beginning. The new administration has inherited a much larger quagmire, involving expensive outstanding contracts, hundreds of miles of unfinished construction, and frustrated parties all along the border. Overseeing an alphabet soup of government agencies involved in the undertaking, President Biden must now figure out which option is the least bad.”

“Finishing the thing is out of the question. In his executive order, Biden said a wall spanning ‘the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution.’ But neither is a complete undoing; in July, Biden said he would not take down the wall, an endeavor that would cost billions as he fights for funding for pandemic relief. Installing a hodgepodge of ‘smart security’ technology paid for with reallocated wall cash, together with limited barrier removal in sensitive areas, appears to be the most likely outcome. But that half measure will be expensive, and will require maintenance costs for the steel that stays in the ground. Even doing nothing at all will hurt the purse thanks to contract cancellations. One Army Corps estimate from December suggests that if no more work is done and no panels are taken down, taxpayers will still eat another $700 million on ‘demobilization’ fees. Less than a month into his administration, President Biden has taken some steps toward reforming an immigration system that his predecessor made as inhospitable as possible for the migrants navigating it. Though the suspension of policies like ‘Remain in Mexico’ and a pause on hostile Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics have had immediate effects, the steel on the border is proving a more durable policy obstacle” – New York Magazine.

Reuters: “New York City police have arrested a suspect in connection with a spate of stabbing attacks on the city’s subway that left two people dead, authorities said on Sunday. Rigoberto Lopez is charged with one count of first-degree murder, two counts of second-degree murder, and two counts of second-degree attempted murder, the NYPD said on Twitter. The four unprovoked attacks apparently targeted homeless people and took place on the A train or at stations served by it beginning on Friday morning. Local radio station 1010WINS, citing police sources, said Lopez was taken into custody late on Saturday wearing blood-soaked clothes and shoes.”