Personal Policy: In their second day of opening arguments, The House impeachment managers directly attacked the Trump defense that he was conducting foreign policy with Ukraine, not pushing an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden for political advantage.

  While Trump and his advocates have claimed that he was trying to rout out corruption in Ukraine, the managers argued that he was only angling for personal advantage — abuse of power as described in Article I of the impeachment.

  Neither Trump nor his operatives in Ukraine had demanded a general investigation of corruption in Ukraine, only an investigation, or just the announcement of an investigation, of Biden and his son Hunter.

  California Rep. Adam Schiff, the lead manager, said, “The president has confirmed what he wanted in his own words.” Schiff said, “He has made it clear he didn’t care about corruption, he cared only about himself. Now it is up to us to do something about it, to make sure that a president, that this president, cannot pursue an objective that places himself above our country.”

  Trump’s lawyers told reporters that mention of the Bidens opened the door for calling them as witnesses in the trial, something they have previously threatened. “It’s now relevant,” Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow told reporters.

  Joe Biden told reporters he would not be willing to testify and refuses to be party to a “witness swap.” Biden said, “I’m not going to play his game,” adding, “The Senate job is now to try him. My job is to beat him.”

  Trump tweeted, “The Democrats don’t want a Witness Trade because Shifty Schiff, the Biden’s, the fake Whistleblower(& his lawyer), the second Whistleblower (who vanished after I released the Transcripts), the so-called ‘informer’, & many other Democrat disasters, would be a BIG problem for them!” 

  We disagree. There’s no apostrophe in the plural of Biden.

   Jerrold Nadler, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on the Senate floor, “Impeachment is the Constitution’s final answer to a president who mistakes himself for a king.” He tackled the Republican defense that Trump has not committed an actual crime saying, “Impeachment is not punishment for a crime. Impeachment exists to address threats to the political system.”

  Trump, meanwhile, is worried about his television ratings. He tweeted this morning, “After having been treated unbelievably unfairly in the House, and then having to endure hour after hour of lies, fraud & deception by Shifty Schiff, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer & their crew, looks like my lawyers will be forced to start on Saturday, which is called Death Valley in T.V.”

By the Numbers: According to the FiveThirtyEight blog, an average of 48.1 percent of Americans want Trump removed from office. FiveThirtyEight’s own poll puts it at 54 percent. CNN and Pew Research both have it at 51.

Wrong Side of the Pond: The US turned down Britain’s request to extradite American for an American Anne Sacoolas who killed a 19 year old teenager riding his motorcycle in a road accident last year. Sacoolas fled the country and the State Department says she’s covered by diplomatic immunity. The British government called it “a denial of justice.”

Fox in the Henhouse: CBS News is being heaped with criticism for hiring President Trump’s first chief of staff, Reince Priebus, to be a political analyst for the election season. Priebus served 189 days with Trump, the shortest tenure of any White House chief of staff in history.

  In his first appearances Priebus has spoken not as an analyst, but a defender of Trump. Speaking of the impeachment on CBS This Morning, Priebus said, “This wasn’t a fair trial and it’s not a trial at all. It’s a political exercise.”

  Priebus said, “If you’re going to impeach a president and you’re going to convict him you actually have to have the direct proof and they haven’t done it. They haven’t put the right witnesses up.”

  A political analyst, rather than a partisan, would have said the Democrats don’t have the right witnesses because they have been blocked and stonewalled by a President refusing to cooperate. Priebus is entitled to his view, but CBS should not be paying him to deliver it.

The Bulletin Board: The State Department announced that pregnant women may be denied visas to the US if officials think they’re seeking citizenship for the child by giving birth in the country. — Actress Anabella Sciorra testified yesterday in the Manhattan trial of movie producer Harvey Weinstein that he raped her in her apartment in the 1990s. Sciorra’s accusation is too old to be prosecuted, but she is one of several women being called to establish a pattern of Weinstein’s sexually predatory behavior. She said on the witness stand, “It was so disgusting my body started to shake in a way that was unusual. It was like a seizure or something.” — China is attempting to corral the spread of a deadly coronavirus by essentially put a quarantine on 10 cities and 33 million people. Disney closed its theme park in Shanghai. At least 25 people have died and more than 800 infected.

The Obit Page: Jim Lehrer, who hosted the evening news on Public Television for 36 years and moderated a dozen presidential debates, has died at age 85. Paired for most of those years with Robert McNeil, Lehrer presented a more sober and sometimes duller report than commercial television. He considered his broadcast to be a newspaper for the airwaves.

  “I have an old-fashioned view that news is not a commodity,” Lehrer told The American Journalism Review in 2001. “News is information that’s required in a democratic society, and Thomas Jefferson said a democracy is dependent on an informed citizenry. That sounds corny, but I don’t care whether it sounds corny or not. It’s the truth.”

Pull Over Here: General Motors and Honda have unveiled a new self-driving electric vehicle that has no steering wheel, brake or accelerator pedals, windshield wipers, or rear view mirror. The Origin, as it’s called, doesn’t even have a front or back. 

  Don’t get excited. You can’t buy the boxy thing either. The six-passenger Origin will be available only for use with a ride-sharing app. And you won’t be able to use the app until GM and Honda actually make the Origin, which should become a reality sometime before the flying car. 

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