Today is Sunday, June 12, 2022. With one day left until the second public hearing of the January 6 committee investigating the insurrection on that date fomented by an American president, Donald Dumpf’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen writes for MSNBC an opinion piece in which he writes, “We’re finally learning the truth about how craven the GOP’s Jan. 6 lies really are.”

Cohen bluntly indicates that “The American people were shown evidence of Trump’s lies to the American public, his illegitimate efforts to use the Justice Department to further his false claims, and his fomenting of the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol.”

The once-legal counsel to the insurrectionist noted what was most striking about the hearing on Thursday night was the “complicity of Trump’s allies, both inside the White House and on Capitol Hill. They cynically enabled his assault on American democracy, even though it now seems apparent that they didn’t even believe a word of it,” Cohen states.

Cohen opines that a vast majority of Republicans would actually acknowledge Dumpf’s primary culpability for the violence that took place on January 6, if a private survey of these craven lawmakers would ever be taken. “Most,” he said, “would likely acknowledge that his claims of a stolen election are, to quote former Attorney General Bill Barr, ‘bullshit.'”

The few repugnicans who have called Dumpf out for his role in the insurrection have been ostracized from the party or are choosing not to seek reelection. Rep. Adam Kinzinger, the only other Republican on the Jan. 6 committee, has decided to bow out of politics after his term ends. Liz Cheney, however, is still in the fight, but she is struggling to keep her job against a pro-Dumpf Republican primary opponent, and the race looks increasingly like a long shot for her at the moment.

It’s very apparent that the overwhelming majority of congressional repugnicans and those seeking to become congressional repugnicans have chosen to peddle the former president’s lies to their supporters. Cohen sagely writes about this trend in many repugnicans: “They’d rather be members of Congress than patriots.” Here repugnicans have plenty of company among Dumpf’s inner circle.

We heard on Thursday how Dumpf’s closest advisers knew as early as November that their boss lost the 2020 presidential election. A key Dumpf aide, Jason Miller, recounted Trump being told, in the Oval Office, by a campaign data expert that he was going to lose.

This recognition of the truth did not stop Dumpf’s allies from parroting the Golden Idol’s deceptions and enabling his election fraud obsession. Even Bill Barr spent months before the campaign raising false claims about potential voter fraud, which never existed, and allowing partisan Justice Department investigations to take place in the run-up to Election Day.

Dumpf’s Chief of Staff Mark Meadows continued to push the Big Lie about 2020, even to the point of bringing election deniers like Rudy Giuliani, Sydney Powell, and Mike “The Pillow Guy” Lindell into the White House to tell Dumpf the lies he was so desperate to hear.

Cohen then concludes his analysis by saying that, on Monday, the American public will see more clearly how deep that repugnican dishonor runs, in a nod to Vice Chair Cheney’s rebuke to the entire repugnican party on Thursday in which she reprimanded her fellow repugnican colleagues: “There will come a day when President Trump is gone. But your dishonor will remain.”

Today – miracle of miracles – a bipartisan group of senators announced an agreement on principle for gun safety legislation, which includes “needed mental health resources, improves school safety, and support for students, and helps ensure dangerous criminals and those who are adjudicated as mentally ill can’t purchase weapons.” This stunning pronouncement is covered in today’s online CNN article by Dana Bash, Manu Raju, and Donald Judd entitled “Bipartisan group of senators announces agreement on gun control.” Going over the several proposals reached by a consensus of Democrats of Republicans, I see that the more dramatic proposals like raising the minimum age to buy a high-powered rifle from 18 to 21 and banning all assault weapons did not pas muster with this group of senators. However, this proposed legislation does include the support of 10 repugnican senators, which would give the final proposal enough support to overcome the Senate filibuster. The agreement must be viewed as significant, given how divided lawmakers have been over the gun issue.

Instead of raising the minimum age to buy weapons, the proposal includes an enhanced review process for buyers under the age of 21 and penalties for straw purchasing.

Additionally, there is a so-called red flag provision in the proposal in which the government may provide “resources to states and tribes to create and administer laws that help ensure deadly weapons are kept out of the hands of individuals whom a court has determined to be a significant danger to themselves or others.” The proposal would also include “major investments to increase access to mental health and suicide prevention programs; and other support services available in the community, including crisis and trauma intervention and recovery.”

The legislation would also include provisions to augment safety measures in and around primary and secondary schools, which is a repugnican concern in the wake of the Uvalde tragedy.

Recognizing that the agreement “does not do everything that I think is needed,” President Biden did admit that “it reflects important steps in the right direction.” If passed, Biden wrote, the framework would mark “the most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades.” The President also said there is no reason why the proposal should not quickly move through the Senate and the House.

Gun-control activist organizations like March for Our Lives, the student-led movement focused on gun violence protection, said it welcomes the proposed reforms. Commenting on the proposed regulations, David Hogg, one of the group’s cofounders and a survivor of the 2018 Parkland school shooting, said, “In a less broken society, we would be able to require background checks every single time someone wants to buy a gun, and we would ban assault rifles outright.” He continued, “But even if one life is saved or one attempted mass shooting is prevented because of these regulations, we believe that it is worth fighting for.” He thanked the bipartisan group of Senators that worked on the compromise.

I commend this group of Senators for taking up the initiative to finally do something after so many years of inertia. Let’s hope this legislation does go through the House and Senate with dispatch. There is no time to lose!

It’s nice to have a positive story to relay here, isn’t it?

Happy viewing tomorrow of the 1/6 committee hearing. It should be an explosive start to the week, don’t you think?

Stay safe and be well.