CONFIRMATION BIAS: Vice President-elect JD Vance spent yesterday squiring former Rep. Matt Gaetz around Capitol Hill, lobbying senators to approve Gaetz’s appointment as Attorney General despite testimony against him about drug use, paid sex, and sex with a 17-year-old. 

  The NY Times reports that Federal investigators tracked payments  from Gaetz to women including some who testified that he hired them for sex. The Times reports that a document they’ve seen “is a chart that shows a web of thousands of dollars in Venmo payments between Mr. Gaetz and a group of his friends, associates and women who had drug-fueled sex parties between 2017 and 2020, according to testimony that participants are said to have given to federal and congressional investigators.” 

  The graphic looks like one of those spider web links of victims and suspects you see on a detective show. Among those women paid was a 17-year-old, the Times reports.

  While Gaetz met with senators and the Times released its report, the House Ethics Committee met behind closed doors where they were deadlocked on whether to release their investigation report on the same issues. They have five Republicans and five Democrats.

  Gaetz resigned from the House after Trump announced his nomination to put him at the head of the Justice Department, thereby rendering the investigation moot. It would be rare, but the committee could still release an ethics report on a former House member.

  A long list of nominees under previous presidents has  been eliminated for far less that what Gaetz is accused of doing; having illegal immigrant nannies, smoking marijuana, and failing to pay taxes. Under Trump, a convicted felon also adjudicated to have raped a woman in a department store dressing room, there is no shame or regret for misdeeds.

THE DOCTOR OF OZ: Television doctor Mehmet Oz, who is Donald Trump’s nominee to run Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare, has a long history of being a successful doctor, a university medical professor, and a purveyor of quack remedies for weight including raspberry ketones, garcinia cambogia, and green coffee bean extract. He heralded  these for their  “magic” or “miracle” ability to help people drop weight. Many of those claims lacked evidence or have been proved false.

 In 2014 Dr. Oz admitted before a Senate subcommittee that his claims often “don’t have the scientific muster to present as fact.” In 2018 Dr. Oz agreed to pay $5.25 million to end a lawsuit that accused him of exaggerating the benefits of weight loss supplements.

THE IMMIGRANT: A 26-year-old illegal immigrant from Venezuela was convicted yesterday and sentenced to life in prison without parole for the murder of nursing student Laken Riley that Donald Trump made an issue in his presidential campaign.

  Jose Ibarra, who entered the country illegally, declined a jury and chose to be tried by Judge Patrick Haggard.

  Riley’s murder has been cited by Trump and his supporters claiming that the Biden Administration allowed a flood of criminals and freed inmates of insane asylums to enter the country. With no basis in evidence, Trump said last month, “How about allowing people to come to an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers, many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States.”

  Riley, 22, was attacked and killed in February while jogging on a trail at the University of Georgia campus in Athens. Surveillance videos revealed later showed Ibarra snooping around campus buildings possibly looking for a target victim. Prosecutors in advance of sentencing also played a video of family members collapsing in grief when told that Laken’s body had been found.

  Before sentencing, Judge Haggard said he hoped for Riley’s family and friends that happy memories will one day replace their grief.

BOMB CYCLONE: A powerful storm off the Pacific known as a “bomb cyclone” left severe damage and at least two people dead in the Northwest. Trees, power poles, and electrical lines were downed amid high winds, heavy rain, and snow.

  One woman was killed in her shower when an enormous tree punched through the roof of her home. 

THE WAR ROOM: Ukraine fired a number of British longer range cruise missiles into Russia’s Kursk region yesterday, a day after the country’s first firing of American long-range missiles, according to Pentagon and Ukrainian officials.

  The Russians, who invaded Ukraine more than 2 ½ years ago, are complaining that the use of these longer-range Western weapons is a major escalation of the conflict. The US and Britain say their decision to release the longer-range missiles is in response to 10,000 North Korean troops joining the fight on the Russian side.

  In another development, the Biden administration decided to supply Ukraine with American-made anti-personnel mines to stall Russian advances. The mines to be supplied go inert after a period of time to eliminate the risk of non-combatants getting blown up years later.

THE SPIN RACK: Speaker Mike Johnson declared that single-sex bathrooms in the Capitol and House office buildings will be available only to those of the biological sex shown on the door, barring from the ladies room Delaware Democrat  and Representative-elect Sarah McBride, who will be the first openly transgender person in Congress. — The US yesterday vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate and unconditional cease-fire between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, where 44,000 people have been killed in the last 13 months.  — The stock of the Target discount chain plunged 21 percent following weak sales ahead of Christmas. 

BELOW THE FOLD: The SS United States, the ocean liner that once set a time record for crossing the Atlantic before passenger ships had shopping malls and waterslides, is bound for a watery grave off Florida where it will be sunk to become an artificial reef. In its prime the ship that was retired in 1969 could move at 44 mph.

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