Buried down in a Wall Street Journal story on the decision-making behind the U.S. strike on Gen. Qassem Soleimani:

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It now seems very clear that that Ukrainian airliner that crashed after takeoff from Tehran was accidentally shot down by the Iranian military, almost certainly on some kind of hair trigger alert awaiting possible US retaliation after the volley of missiles which were retaliation for the assassination of Qassem Soleimani.

This was pretty clear on the basis of logic and probability. Even as aerophobe, I know that airliner crashes are extremely, extremely rare. In those rare instances, they seldom fall out of the sky on fire as this one did. The fact that this happened basically at the exact moment when the Iranians would have been awaiting US retaliation from the air in response to their missile attack makes the probabilities pretty clear.

We’re back to this question of when Nancy Pelosi is going to send the articles of impeachment, now going on a month old, to the Senate. One relatively prominent member of the Democratic caucus, Chairman Adam Smith (D-WA), actually went off message and then had to walk back his remarks this morning. So is it time? Is it time for Speaker Pelosi to go ahead and get on with it?

I can’t see any reason to rush this. Really none at all.

After a holiday hiatus, the podcast is back this week. We dig into the Iran conflict and the state of impeachment. Take a listen here, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Happy Thursday, January 9. A House Democrat signaled earlier this morning that there might be an element of restlessness swelling within House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) caucus over her prolonged possession of the articles of impeachment. Hours later, he walked it back. Here’s more on that and other stories we’re following today.

TPM Reader BF disagrees with JB about who was pushing who on Trump’s decision to kill Qasem Solemaini …

No, no, no. JB is wrong here. This isn’t about Pompeo or some other lone actor talking Trump into something. And it isn’t about Trump surprising everyone by choosing a throw-away option.

I’ve written a few times that opacity, extortion and confusion are the hallmarks of Trumpism. I’ve spent the last couple months trying to draw these ideas together for a larger project. Part of this story centers on the ways American politics and specifically America’s relations abroad have been subsumed under fuzzy or opaque ties with a series of foreign powers — specifically ones where power is personalized in either strongman or familial rule, where political power is bundled together with wealth.

Good morning and happy Wednesday, January 8. There’s been quite a bit of news already this morning, and we’re waiting to hear the President’s address in response to Iran’s attack on two U.S. military bases in Iraq last night. That’s expected at 11 a.m. Here’s more on that and other stories we’re following:

Multiple reports say that Iran (not just proxies or Iran-backed militias in Iraq) has launched a volley of missiles targeting a number of bases in Iraq which house US troops. There’s very little information available about what damage these attacks have caused or whether there are casualties or fatalities. The White House has signaled a possible Presidential address to the nation tonight. It’s hard to imagine anything and I mean anything positive coming from that, to put it mildly.

Let me share a few thoughts on this.

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Interesting response from TPM Reader JB, who has a background in government work …

I pretty much do believe sources within the Trump administration who claim to be surprised Trump took the extreme option of ordering the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, for two reasons. One is that he very likely had seen a variant of this option presented before, for example after the US drone shootdown incident last summer or the missile strike on Saudi oil facilities shortly after that. He didn’t bite on it then, which may have made some people complacent.