Go to the Video: The Senate voted 56-44 yesterday to determine that trying Donald Trump after he’s out of office is constitutional and the trial will proceed. The vote was a strong signal for how it will go on the question of Trump’s actual guilt. Only six Republicans crossed the party line and it will require 17 to convict the former president. 

  The surprise vote came from Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who had previously compared the Trump impeachment to a “Soviet show trial.” He said, “The House managers made a compelling cogent case and the president’s team did not.”  

  House managers opened Trump’s second trial with a video timeline of the former president’s speech at the Ellipse and the beginning of the Capitol insurrection. It was devastating.

  After Trump urged the mob to march on the Capitol, participants shouted “Take the building,” “Fight for Trump” and “Pence is a traitor! Traitor Pence!”

  “You ask what a high crime and misdemeanor is under our Constitution,” said Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin,  the lead House prosecutor after the video had played. “That’s a high crime and misdemeanor. If that’s not an impeachable offense, then there’s no such thing.”

  Early in his statement of defense for Trump, lawyer Bruce Castor said, “The other day when I was down here in Washington, I came down earlier in the week to try to figure out how to find my way around.” He still hasn’t.

  In a rambling argument, Castor revealed that he’s not a constitutional scholar. He was the kid who didn’t do the reading for class. The nut of his case is that impeaching Trump and preventing him from holding office would disenfranchise the former president’s voters and therefore is unconstitutional, even though the provision to do just that is in the Constitution.

  Some Republican senators later described the defense as “a disaster.” When this is over, Castor will have trouble getting clients in traffic court. He claimed, “We are really here because the majority in the House of Representatives does not want to face Donald Trump as their political rival in the future.”

  Castor also admitted what the former president will not. He said, “President Trump no longer is in office. The object of the Constitution has been achieved. He was removed by the voters.”

Viral News: The US is quickly approaching its Covid-19 inoculation goal of 1.5 million people a day. That’s up from 900,000 when President Biden took office.

  About 33 million Americans have received at least one dose and President Biden has vowed to reach 100 million by his 100^th day in office.

  Deaths are declining overall, but still high. Another 3,124 Americans died in the past 24 hours.

The Kobe Crash: The pilot in the Kobe Bryant helicopter crash became disoriented in clouds and failed to follow proper procedures for getting out, according to investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board.

  Once in the clouds, investigators say, the pilot Ara Zoboyan probably thought he was climbing when in fact he was plunging, a classic aviation accident. The investigators said Zoboyan should have steadied the craft and called air controllers for help.

  Basketball great Kobe Bryant, his 13-year-old daughter, and six other people died in the crash in January 2020.

Precious Metals: It used to be the car’s radio was the target, but The NY Times reports that the big thing now for thieves is the catalytic converter in the exhaust system. The converters that reduce air pollution are loaded with valuable metals. With tightening auto pollution standards around the world, they are even more valuable, worth a couple of hundred dollars at a scrap yard.

Who’s Sorry Now: Capitol riot suspect Jacob Chansley, the  howling guy in fur, tattoos, and cow horns better known as the “QAnon Shaman” issued an apology saying, “I deeply regret and am sorry that I entered the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. I should not have been there.”

  He said, he was “deeply disappointed” in former President Trump for not being “honorable.”

The Bulletin Board: Quaker Oats announced that it has re-named its famous but racist Aunt Jemima brand pancake mix and syrup as the Pearl Milling Company. — For the first time in 109 years, the US Chamber of Commerce, a business lobbying group, has named a woman to run the organization.Suzanne Clark joined the chamber in 1997. — At least five people were wounded yesterday in a shooting at a health clinic in Buffalo, Minnesota. The 67-year-old shooter was arrested. — Alpine skier Ted Ligety, who won two Olympic gold medals, announced he’s retiring from racing at age 36 to settle down to life with his wife and three children. 

Point of No Return: Maryland’s Jamie Raskin spoke tearfully yesterday in the Senate about bringing his 24-year-old daughter and a son-in-law to the Capitol the day of the insurrection. Raskin is the congressman whose clinically-depressed son committed suicide in December.

  Raskin said that when it appeared everyone was safe, “I hugged them and I apologized. And I told my daughter, Tabitha, who’s 24 and a brilliant algebra teacher in Teach for America. Now, I told her how sorry I was. And I promised her that it would not be like this again, the next time she came back to the Capitol with me. And you know what she said? She said, ‘Dad, I don’t want to come back to the Capitol.’”

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