Pence Stands Up: Former Vice President Mike Pence finally separated himself from Donald Trump, declaring in a speech that the former president was “wrong” to think that Pence could  change the outcome of the 2020 election.

  On the day the electoral college vote was certified, Trump had pressured Pence to declare him the winner even though he had lost. “I had no right to overturn the election,” Pence surprisingly said in a speech delivered to the conservative Federalist Society.

  Trump has criticized Pence for not acting, but pence said, “Frankly there is no idea more un-American than the notion that any one person could choose the American president. Under the Constitution I had no right to  change the outcome of our election.”

  Pence has aspirations to run for president and in speaking up he has drawn a line between himself and the man bedrock Republicans believe they can’t live without. “The truth is there’s more at stake than our party or our political fortunes,” Pence said in his speech. “If we lose faith in the Constitution, we won’t just lose elections — we’ll lose our country.”

Violence as Discourse: The fault lines are showing in the Republican Party.

  The Republican National Committee shockingly voted yesterday to declare the January 6^th Capitol insurrection “legitimate political discourse” and censured Representatives Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois for their participation in the House investigation into the roots of the riot.

  The resolution said the two were participating in “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” It also said the party will cease any support of Cheney and Kinzinger.

  Nine people died in connection with the Capitol attack and 150 police officers were injured. At least 725 people have been arrested and 165 have pleaded guilty, 20 of them to felonies

  Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah wrote on Twitter, “Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost.” 

Viral News: The US death toll in the coronavirus pandemic has surpassed 900,000 and is on the way to million. As of this morning, the US has had 76.4 million cases of Covid-19 and 901,391 people have died.

  While new cases are down 56 percent over the past two weeks, deaths are up 21 percent.

  Around the world, 391 million cases of Covid have been reported and more than 5.7 million have died. 

Job Surge: The US economy added a healthy 467,000 jobs in January, shocking analysts who had been expecting discouraging news. They had been expecting that the Omicron surge of the coronavirus would have put more of a damper on the economy.

The Spin Rack: A Manhattan jury found disgraced lawyer Michael Avenatti guilty of wire fraud and identity theft in taking $300,000 from his former client, the porn star Stormy Daniels whose claim to fame is that she had sex with Donald Trump. It’s Avenatti’s second felony conviction. — Four men have been charged with providing fatal fentanyl-laced heroin to the scar-faced actor Michael K. Williams, known for playing the gay stickup man Omar Little in the HBO series “The Wire.”

Five Rings: All is not what it seems at the Winter Olympics in Beijing. While International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach spoke at the Opening Ceremony about using the Olympics to promote “peace” Russia’s autocrat Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping appeared to show the world they are united in less than peaceful aspirations. 

  Xi supports Putin’s desire to take Ukraine, and Putin supports Xi in his claim that Taiwan is still part of China.

  While China is re-educating and killing its ethnic Uyghur population,  they appointed a Uyghur skier to be one of two athletes who lit the Olympic cauldron. Nothing to see here, folks.

  Symbolic of China’s ability to make things appear to be not what they are is that they landed the Winter Olympics in a place that has no natural snow. The mountains near Beijing are even short of the water needed to make it. But they have managed to create several stripes of artificial snow in the mountains visible from the city. The skiers will not compete on a single flake of natural snow. It’s all artificial, allowing China to convince the world it is something that it is not.

The Flying Tomato: The red-headed American snowboarder Shaun White, who burst into international competition as a teenager and won gold medals in three Olympics, talked yesterday about his decision to retire entirely from competition after these games.

  At 35, this is White’s fifth Olympics. He said at a press conference that he’s developed knee and back issues.  White won halfpipe golds in the 2006, 2010 and 2018 Games. He said he was alone on a chairlift over an empty mountain when he arrived at the decision. “I was watching the sun go down and it just hit me,” he said. “It was very sad and a surreal moment but really joyous as well” 

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