ORANGE ALERT: Lawyers arguing presidential immunity for Donald Trump told a federal appeals panel that a president could be criminally charged only if impeached and convicted first, even if he had ordered the assassination of a political rival. A lawyer for the special counsel called that idea frightening and the judges were, at the least, skeptical.

  “What kind of world are we living in?” if a president could use the state to assassinate a political rival and not be prosecuted for it, Assistant Special Counsel James Pearce asked.

  Judge Karen Henderson said, “I think it’s paradoxical to say that his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed allows him to violate the criminal law,” 

  The former president is under federal indictment for his attempts to overthrow the 2020 election.Trump lawyer D. John Sauer said the framers of the Constitution created presidential immunity to avoid “politically motivated prosecutions” and said the only exception to presidential immunity would be if Trump, or any president, were to be impeached and convicted first. “To authorize the prosecution of a president for official acts would open a Pandora’s box from which this nation may never recover,” he said. Of course, he skipped over the question of whether attempting to reverse the results of the 2020 election could be considered an “official act” of the presidency.

  Trump was in court — voluntarily — but posted on social media earlier in the day that “Crooked Joe is forcing me into a courtroom in our nation’s capital to defend my right to presidential immunity – a right granted to every other president in history.”

 A quick decision is crucial for getting Trump to trial before the November election. The trial is scheduled for March 4^th, but the immunity case is certain to go to the Supreme Court, which is likely to take its time.

TOP SECRET: The mystery of why Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has been in the hospital has been cleared up. Austin had surgery for prostate cancer in late December and ended up in the intensive care ward January 2nd with a painful infection, according to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. 

   The hospital statement said the infection has since cleared and Austin’s cancer prognosis is “excellent.”

  The continuing mystery is why Austin kept it all a secret, even from major players in the Biden administration with a need to know. He is described as a very private man. Austin was diagnosed in early December and had surgery December 22^nd. He returned to the hospital January 1^st without telling the deputy secretary of defense. President Biden did not learn Austin was in the hospital until Friday, January 5^th, and the President was not told the full story of Austin’s troubles until yesterday.

  Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said, “It is not optimal for a situation like this to go as long as it did without the commander in chief knowing about it.”

ISRAEL AT WAR: One of Israel’s best known actors, Idan Amedi, who was one of the stars of the Netflix anti-terrorism series “Fauda,” is reported to have been badly wounded during fighting in Gaza Strip. He was the tall one in the cast. Amedi is said to be in critical condition but not in danger of dying.

  Shortly before he was wounded, Amedi told an Israeli television station about hunting for Hamas tunnels beneath Gaza. “We found kilometers of tunnels here,” Amedi said, “weaponry, even special weaponry. We’ve been busy the past two days trying to destroy it.”

  The Israeli army recently took reporters on tour in Gaza, showing them tunnels, underground weapons storage and manufacturing facilities, and stocks of rockets — all of it near or under civilian areas. In routing out Hamas with heavy weapons, Israel has killed more than 23,000 Palestinians according to the Hamas-controlled health ministry.

INTENTIONAL GROUNDING: New York jets QB Aaron Rodgers is refusing to apologize for suggesting without evidence that the name of late night host Jimmy Kimmel would be in the documents released from the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking lawsuit. Appearing yesterday on “The Pat McAfee Show” on ESPN, Rodgers denied accusing Kimmel of being a pedophile. “I’m not calling him one and neither should you,” Rodgers said. “Let me make that crystal clear.”

  But last week in anticipation of the document release, Rodgers said, “There’s a lot of people including Jimmy Kimmel who are really hoping that doesn’t come out.”

  Kimmel spent seven minutes Monday night dismantling Rodgers, who is the Marjorie Taylor Greene of football. Kimmel said, “he genuinely thinks that because God gave him the ability to throw a ball he’s smarter than everyone else.” He said, “Aaron got two As on his report card and they were both in the name Aaron.”

THE SPIN RACK: US and British warships yesterday intercepted 21 missiles fired by Houthi rebels at shipping in the Red Sea. — The American Red Cross declared an emergency blood shortage, saying blood donation is the lowest it’s been for 20 years. — Singer Sinéad O’Connor died of natural causes, the London coroner’s office said in a statement yesterday. O’Connor’s death in July at 56 had been suspected to be suicide or a drug overdose, but the coroner did not give an exact cause. — A serious fuel leak has forced a US company on Tuesday to give up on landing its spacecraft on the moon to deposit the remains of people who wanted eternity is space. 

GETTING WARMER: The US reduced emissions of climate-warming greenhouse gasses last year by 1.9 percent — not enough to head off climate change and global warming. The US needs to reduce emission by about seven percent a year to meet the 2030 target of 50 percent down from 2005.

BELOW THE FOLD: Discussing the Alaska Airlines incident, newly minted talk show host Charles Barkley said that he believes failure to put the fastening bolts in an airliner door is a fireable offense. 

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