There’s a reason Mitch McConnell has been Senate Majority Leader for the past 13 years: He gets the job done.

And the biggest part of that job is keeping the GOP caucus, however necessary. At this point, he appears to have pulled off the feat once again.

Yesterday (1/29), McConnell and Sen. Lisa Murkowski — always a wavering and unreliable GOP vote — met in the morning. After that meeting, The Hill reported, it was clear “that the question of having additional witnesses is settled, and the Senate will vote Friday to wrap up the impeachment trial of President Trump.”

No wonder Mitch has that grin you see above.  Here’s what’s going on.

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On Monday (1/27), the Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration's public charge rule to go into effect, striking down a nationwide injunction from a New York judge.

The rule allows the government to deny green cards to immigrants who receive public assistance and are therefore considered a "public charge."

In addition to the 5-4 decision allowing the rule to go into effect, Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a concurring opinion rebuking activist judges and their rush to apply "nationwide injunctions" against Trump administration policies:

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[This is the full video and White House transcript of President Trump’s magnificent speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday, January 21, 2020]

Well, thank you very much, Klaus.  And a very special congratulations on your 50th year hosting the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum.  A truly amazing achievement.

It’s an honor to address the distinguished members of this organization for the second time as President.  When I spoke at this forum two years ago, I told you that we had launched the great American comeback.  Today, I’m proud to declare that the United States is in the midst of an economic boom the likes of which the world has never seen before.

We’ve regained our stride, we discovered our spirit and reawakened the powerful machinery of American enterprise.  America is thriving, America is flourishing, and yes, America is winning again like never before.

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Political figures have long used their families to route power and benefits for their own self-enrichment.

In my new book, “Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite,” one particular politician — Joe Biden — emerges as the king of the sweetheart deal, with no less than five family members benefiting from his largesse, favorable access and powerful position for commercial gain.

In Biden’s case, these deals include foreign partners and, in some cases, even US taxpayer dollars.

The Biden family’s apparent self-enrichment involves five family members: Joe’s son Hunter, son-in-law Howard, brothers James and Frank, and sister Valerie.

When this subject came up in 2019, Biden declared, “I never talked with my son or my brother or anyone else — even distant family — about their business interests. Period.”

As we will see, this is far from the case …

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It is doubtful that very many people watched hours and hours of the impeachment proceedings in the Senate Tuesday. A little bit went a long way. But this much was abundantly clear:

Adam Schiff is maniacally obsessed with removing President Trump from office.  We have known for years that he is a pathological liar; he lies even when he surely knows his lies will be exposed in due time.

[A pathological liar is someone who lies compulsively, who lies as a way of life, whose estrangement from reality makes them prefer lies to truth.  As such, they suffer from genuine mental illness.]

Schiff appears to have some serious mental problems. Watching him, even in small doses, throughout the first day of the "trial" yesterday and into early this morning (1/21-22)  -- in yet another of the Democrats' sure-to-fail attempts to see President Trump removed from office -- one cannot help but realize we are watching a disturbed man melt down before our eyes.

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Pelosi’s doomed impeachment gambit can’t even be classified as historic. Sorry, Fancy Nancy, but the third time something happens isn’t historic. Quick: Who was the third man on the moon? The third of anything isn’t history. It’s just trivia.

After Pelosi’s little impeachment show flops harder in the Senate than “Cats” did in the multiplex, Trump will return to nonstop trolling of her on the campaign trail. The pertinent sports term is “posterized.”

In every poster-worthy photograph of a particularly exceptional touchdown catch or mythic slam dunk, in the near background there’s always some woebegone defender standing there, deflated and despairing and questioning his life choices. That’s poor Pelosi: posterized.

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Troy Carter, 49 from Middleton Va, says that, other than voting, he’d never been involved in politics. That changed late last year, when he heard that a county board of supervisors in Virginia voted to become a gun sanctuary.

On Monday (1/20), he was one of an estimated 22,000 people who gathered peacefully at the Capitol Square in Richmond, Va., to support gun rights. Many of those attending were visibly armed.

Ninety-one of Virginia’s 96 counties have passed sanctuary measures to resist proposed Democrat state gun regulations.

For Virginians like Mr. Carter, the effort has brought about a political awakening. He learned to shoot when he was six years old. Guns are a normal part of his life, like fishing or going to church every Sunday, and something he considers vital to protecting and providing for his family.

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“To protect our security and our economy, we are also boldly embracing American energy independence.  The United States is now, by far, the number-one producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world, by far.  It’s not even close.  We’ve been so successful that the United States no longer needs to import energy from hostile nations.  With an abundance of American natural gas now available, our European allies no longer have to be vulnerable to unfriendly energy suppliers either.  We urge our friends in Europe to use America’s vast supply and achieve true energy security.”  --President Trump at Davos, January 21

Despite its chic Green parties and ambitious wind and solar agendas, Europe remains by far the world’s largest importer of oil and natural gas.

Europe itself is naturally rich in fossil fuels. Yet in most European countries, horizontal drilling and fracking to extract gas and oil are either illegal or face so many court challenges and popular protests that they are neither culturally nor economically feasible.

In other words, Europe refuses to develop its own gas and oil reserves, and won’t fund the necessary military power to ensure that it can safely import energy from problematic or even hostile sources.

It’s no wonder that Europe’s traditional foreign policy reflects these crazy paradoxes.

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For the past several years, it has become a cute aspect of Democrats in the media and in elected office to allege, without any evidence whatsoever, that their Republican opponents are operating in service of Russia.

It has been repeatedly stated on cable news by a litany of Democrats – without any demands they prove such claims – in behavior that hosts on MSNBC and CNN treat as cute commentary instead of what it really is: allegations of the deepest kind of treachery to the nation they serve.

People who in the same breath decry Donald Trump’s assault on civility will turn to saying his fellow Republicans work for Putin, and no one calls them out on it.

Or as Pelosi pronounces it when she’s had enough Tito’s vodka to get her through the day, “VADAMIR PLOOTIN.”

The truth is, Pelosi’s Putin’s puppet.  Here’s why.

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We were four minutes in to the Dem debate in Des Moines last night (1/14), somewhere on the outskirts of Mideast foreign policy, when the boredom began to take hold. ‘They couldn’t find some of Iowa’s world-renowned meth to spice this stage up at bit’, I muttered, as I cracked open another beer and wondered who in his or her right mind would subject themselves to watching this.

The Democrat frontrunners remain, in order, a doddering septuagenarian who can’t reliably remember what state he’s in, a hectoring schoolmarm, a 78-year-old Communist who has never accomplished anything in 30 years in Congress, and a weird, hairy child from South Bend whose eyebrow waxing gets more meticulous with each passing debate.

That, of course, is Mayor Pete who, when asked about damage caused to local farms and factories due to seasonal flooding in Iowa, pivoted to discussing ‘fire tornados’ in Australia. He blamed both on climate change.

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