The Presidential President: President Biden last night delivered one of the most presidential speeches delivered by a president in 50 years, appealing for his dramatic spending plans to launch America into the next century.

  He was direct, hopeful, articulate, intelligent, and sensible about everything from economic recovery, taxes on the rich, guns, and rubbing out the Covid-19 pandemic.

  Speaking to a thinly-attended, socially-distanced joint session of Congress, Biden said, “After 100 days of rescue and renewal, America is ready for a takeoff, in my view. We’re working again, dreaming again, discovering again, and leading the world again.” 

  Biden outlined a $1.8 trillion agenda for spending increases that would pay for community college education, reduce the cost of child care, and support women in the work force, much of it paid for by increased taxes on high earners. He calls it  “The American Families Plan.”

  He said his plans would be as transformative as building the transcontinental railroad and the interstate highway system. “It creates jobs to upgrade our transportation infrastructure. Jobs modernizing our roads, bridges, highways. Jobs building ports and airports, rail corridors, transit lines. It’s clean water.” 

  This brings to about $6 trillion in spending that Biden has proposed in his first 100 days in office. His economic rescue plan is $1.9 trillion; Jobs plan, $2.3 trillion; and now the families plan, $1.8 trillion. As the late Sen Everett Dirksen famously said in 1969, “pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

America’s Suspect: Federal agents yesterday served a search warrant on the New York home and office of Donald Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani who in the days after the 9/11 attacks was wholesomely known as “America’s Mayor.” 

  The search is related to a federal investigation into whether Giuliani broke lobbying laws as President Trump’s personal lawyer. The NY Times reports according to sources that investigators seized his electronics.

  It’s an extraordinary move by the Justice Department, which requires a higher level of approval to take action against a lawyer, let alone a lawyer who once represented a president and was mayor of New York.

  The investigation has to do with the Ukraine affair during the Trump administration and whether Giuliani was involved in the effort to dig dirt on Joe Biden’s troubled son, Hunter, and whether Giuliani was involved with pushing out the then US ambassador to Ukraine, who was obstructing his Biden effort.

  The investigation is reported to be inquiring whether Giuliani was working the situation both ways, undermining the ambassador on behalf of Trump and working for the Ukrainians, who for their own reasons wanted the ambassador gone.

Video Blocked: A North Carolina judge declined to release the body-camera footage in the shooting death of Andrew Brown Jr., allowing a prosecutor to delay for at least 30 days.

  The local sheriff’s office, whose officers recorded the video, and lawyers for media outlets, had petitioned Judge Jeff Foster to release all of it after days of protests over the shooting.

  Foster said the news media had no right to obtain the video. He did order redacted versions of the videos from six cameras to be made available within 10 days to Brown’s adult son, Khalil Ferebee, and immediate family. 

Indicted: Three men who chased and killed black jogger Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia last year have been indicted on federal charges of committing a hate crime and attempted kidnapping. They also been indicted on state murder charges.

The Obit Page: Michael Collins, one astronaut in the first US mission putting men on the moon who didn’t get to moonwalk, has died at age 90. 

  While  Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set down on the moon, Collins orbited in the lunar command module as it circled above the moon. Collins played a vital role, but while Armstrong and Aldrin went on to become big celebrities, Collins became the “forgotten astronaut.”

  “The thing I remember most is the view of planet Earth from a great distance,” Collins said in a 2016 NPR interview. “Tiny. Very shiny. Blue and white. Bright. Beautiful. Serene and fragile.”

Shooting an Elephant: A video uncovered by an anti-gun website called The Trace and The New Yorker shows Wayne LaPierre, the head of the National Rifle Association, botching the kill of an elephant in Botswana.

  LaPierre downs the elephant with his first shot, but as you hear the creature gurgling, he fails to finish the job with more shots from only a few feet away until a guide steps in for the kill. 

  The video shows not only that LaPierre is a man who would celebrate killing an elephant, but he’s a lousy shot.

 School for Dunces:  Sometimes it’s the teachers who should be sent to the corner to finish their homework.

  A K through 8 private school in Miami sent its faculty and staff a letter about the importance of Covid-19 vaccinations. It was not about getting  vaccinated. It was about not getting  vaccinated.

   Leila Centner, one of the co-founders of Centner Academy wrote “with a very heavy heart” that if faculty members get a shot, they would have to stay away from students.

  The school bills itself as a “happiness school” focused on children’s mindfulness and emotional intelligence, but also a  school that supports “medical freedom from mandated vaccines.”

  Centner wrote that “reports have surfaced recently of non-vaccinated people being negatively impacted by interacting with people who have been vaccinated.” She claimed that “We have at least three women with menstrual cycles impacted after having spent time with a vaccinated person.”

  Really, she said that. 

  Centner told the faculty that if they want the vaccine they should wait until summer, but if they get the shot they might not have a job in the fall. The school’s publicist told The NY Times  in a statement that vaccinated people “may be transmitting something from their bodies.” 

  Centner’s website says they focus on  “happiness, health, relationships, and resilience.” It says nothing about teaching science. 

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