In Contempt: The full House of Representatives last night voted to hold former Donald Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the January 6^thinvestigating committee. Only two Republicans voted in favor.

  He is the first former member of Congress to be charged with contempt in 200 years and now faces possible criminal prosecution.

   Meadows had already turned over about 9,000 pages of documents, some of them making shocking revelations about what was going on with Trump and the White House as the election loss and January 6^th insurrection unfolded. After doing that, Meadows then claimed silence under the executive privilege under the wing of Donald Trump. But you can’t have it both ways — once you open the door, it’s open.

  The committee released a November 4th message from one unidentified Republican proposing to Meadows an “aggressive strategy” in which Republican-controlled legislatures in Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and other states would “just send their own electors” instead of the Biden electors chosen by voters.

  On January 6^th one unidentified member of Congress messaged Meadows, “It’s really bad up here on the hill.” Another said, “The President needs to stop this asap,” and still another “Fix this now.”

  Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney said last night, “As the violence was underway on the 6th, it was evident to all, but we know that for 187 minutes, President Trump refused to act.” 

   In what amounts to an earth shaking statement by the normally tight-lipped Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the Kentucky Republican said, “I do think we’re all watching, as you are, what is unfolding on the house side, and it will be interesting to reveal all the participants who were involved.”

Covid Nation: More than 800,000 Americans have died of Covid-19 … 800,473 as of this morning.

  And as we pass that landmark, the Centers for Disease Control warns that there’s a coming wave of the Omicron variant as soon as next month. The percentage of Omicron infections collectively in New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands has already reached 13.1 percent.

  Covid is running rampant through the backfield of the National Football league. Thirty-seven players tested positive Monday, the highest single-day total since the start of the pandemic. 

  The Los Angeles Rams had five players test positive for the coronavirus ahead of Monday night’s confrontation with Arizona. In Detroit, the Lions  report eight players positive in eight days. And an employee of the Washington Football team reported what may be the league’s first case of the Omicron variant.

  In a memo to all 32 teams, the NFL ordered coaches and employees who work directly with players to get booster shots by Dec. 27 or be relegated to noncontact roles “to ensure that we continue to reduce risk of transmission and allow us to complete the NFL season safely during the pandemic.”

  In a development for treatment, the study of the new Covid pill developed by Pfizer confirmed that it helps stave off severe disease, the company announced. “We are confident that, if authorized or approved, this potential treatment could be a critical tool to help quell the pandemic,” Pfizer’s chief executive said in a statement.

Behind the Badge: New York City’s Mayor-elect Eric Adams is expected to appoint the city’s first black woman to be the next NYPD commissioner. In New York, that’s the chief of police.

  Keechant Sewell is a 22-year veteran of the Nassau County police and is now  

chief of detectives in charge of about 350 people. The NYPD has 35,000 cops.

The Spin Rack: Vishal Garg, the Better.com CEO who’s been the butt of the internet since he invited 900 employees to join him on a Zoom meeting then fired them, has been sent to his room to think about himself. An email to employees from the board of directors said that Garg is “taking time off effective immediately.” — Belarus Opposition Leader  Sergei Tikhanovsky who’s been challenging the power of the country’s authoritarian leader, Aleksandr Lukashenko, has been sentenced to 18 years in prison after trial in a closed court. — An autopsy revealed severe brain disease in former NFL defensive back Phillip Adams who shot and killed six people in Rock Hill, South Carolina before killing himself  last April, authorities announced Tuesday. The diagnosis was stage 2 chronic traumatic encephalopathy. He played football for 20 years, six of them and 78 games in the NFL. 

The Obit Page: Masayuki Uemura, engineer who developed the Nintendo Entertainment System, setting off a revolution in home video gaming,  has died at age 78.

  Home video gaming was struggling after the early introduction of games like “Pong” that were unable to match the quality of arcade hits like Pac-Man and Space Invaders. After Uemura’s invention hit the market, you couldn’t be a kid without a Nintendo set.

Change of Mind: A Capitol rioter who wore an American flag jacket while he attacked police officers with a fire extinguisher during the January 6th insurrection is having what appears to a deathbed conversion.

  Facing a federal request to send him to prison for five years, Robert Palmer of Florida has told the judge in his case that he now realizes the former president and his close supporters were lying when they claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

  Palmer sprayed officers with a fire extinguisher and then threw the fire extinguisher at the police line. 

  He wrote to the judge, “They kept spitting out the false narrative about a stolen election and how it was ‘our duty’ to stand up to tyranny.” He said, “Little did I realize that they were the tyrannical ones desperate to hold on to power at any cost even by creating the chaos they knew would happen with such rhetoric.”

  Let’s see if that saves him some jail time.

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