Viral News: Five aides to Vice President Mike Pence, including his chief of staff, have tested positive for the coronavirus. 

  Pence is head of the White House task force to stop the pandemic in the US and couldn’t keep it out of his office.  Yet despite the infection of five people near him, he’s ignoring CDC guidelines to isolate for 14 days as he continues to campaign for the re-election of Donald Trump.

  The President in recent days has gone from denying the severity of the pandemic to claiming the whole thing is overblown by the medical profession, Democrats, and the press. Saturday night in North Carolina he said, “They’d prolong the pandemic. That’s all I hear about now. That’s all I hear. You turn on television. COVID COVID COVID COVID COVID. A plane goes down, 500 people dead, they don’t talk about it. COVID, COVID, COVID.”

  No such thing has happened. The plane crash is the pandemic in which, as of this morning, 225,239 Americans are dead.

  White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows yesterday effectively admitted defeat, telling CNN’sJake Tapper, “We’re not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations.”

  After hearing that, Vice President Joe Biden issued a statement saying, “This wasn’t a slip by Meadows; it was a candid acknowledgment of what President Trump’s strategy has clearly been from the beginning of this crisis: to wave the white flag of defeat and hope that by ignoring it, the virus would simply go away. It hasn’t, and it won’t.”

Speech Fracking: Biden hasn’t been able to avoid the hot water either. Treading a fine line between environmentalism and the oil lobby, Biden slipped on a slick in last Thursday’s debate saying, “I have a transition from the oil industry, yes.”

  Trump relied, “Oh, that’s a big statement,” and Biden said, “I will transition. It is a big statement.”

  Trump and the Republicans have been using that in the past few days to portray Biden as a danger to the powerful oil industry. Campaigning yesterday in New Hampshire Trump said, “Unfortunately for his party, he said he will transition out of oil. And I said, ‘Are you listening, Texas, right? Are you listening Pennsylvania?’ And are all the people in the country because we have an energy independent country right now.”

Sue Casa: Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner are threatening to sue the anti-Trump Republican organization, The Lincoln Project, for unflattering posters they’ve put up in New York. 

  Ivanka is featured with her hands gesturing like she’s advertising a product next to statistics of the coronavirus dead. Jared is shown next to body bags and a quote of him saying New Yorkers “are going to suffer and that’s their problem.” 

  A letter from their lawyer to The Lincoln Project says, “If these billboard ads are not immediately removed, we will sue you for what will doubtless be enormous compensatory and punitive damages.”

  Javanka’s lawyer seems unaware that the two are public figures and employees of the government, which makes anyone who criticizes them immune to libel and slander suits.

  The Lincoln Project replied, “Your clients are no longer mere Upper East Side socialites, able to sue at the slightest offense to their personal sensitivities.” Their lawyer said, “These billboards are not causing Mr. Kushner and Ms. Trump’s standing with the public to plummet. Their incompetence is.” 

Judge Not: The Senate voted 51-48 yesterday to end a filibuster and set up Judge Amy Coney Barrett for confirmation to the Supreme Court as soon as today. If confirmed, Barrett will be President Trump’s third Supreme Court appointment.

  Senate Republicans have jammed through the Barrett nomination in just a few weeks after having blocked and killed President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland over the last 10 months of the former President’s term. On the eve of an election in which the Republicans could become the minority in both houses of Congress, the Barrett nomination has set off serious discussion about recomposing the Supreme Court.  

  Columnist EJ Dionne writes for The Washington Post that, “The truly scandalous lack of institutional patriotism on the right has finally led many of the most sober liberals and moderates to ponder what they opposed even a month ago: The only genuinely practical and proper remedy to conservative court-packing is to undo its impact by enlarging the court.

  One idea is to enlarge the court to 29 justices and randomly pick from the roster a panel of 9 to handle individual cases. The size of the court would reduce the impact of the arrival or departure of any one justice.

  Dionne writes, “It’s not court enlargement that’s radical. Balancing a stacked court is a necessary response to the right’s radicalism and (apologies, Thomas Jefferson) to its long train of abuses. 

The Obit Page: Singer/songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker, who wrote the immortal “Mr. Bojangles,” has died of throat cancer at age 78. The song was covered by a lot of artists, but his version was the most affecting.

  Walker didn’t make up the story for that song. He was spending  night in the New Orleans drunk tank where he met a street dancer who was always in and out of jail:

“I knew a man Bojangles and he danced for you
In worn out shoes
Silver hair, a ragged shirt and baggy pants
The old soft shoe

He jumped so high
He jumped so high
Then he’d lightly touched down”

Double Buckner: The Los Angeles Dodgers won game five of the World Series last night, now leading Tampa Bay 3-2.

 The Dodgers lost game four on the last play of the game when center fielder Chris Taylor bobbled the ball before relaying to first baseman Max Muncy, who fired the ball to catcher Will Smith. He dropped it and the Rays scored, winning it 7-8. 

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