At several moments during Thursday’s impeachment inquiry, Republicans relied on a misleading reading of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to defend President Trump’s conduct towards Ukraine.

Happy Friday, December 13. After an eleventh-hour recess, the House Judiciary Committee will reconvene to vote Friday morning on the articles of impeachment. Here’s more on that and the other stories we’re watching.

My view of yesterday’s UK election is that if your party literally takes no position on the great issue of the day (Brexit, in this case) and has a party leader considered toxic by a significant swath of the electorate, you’re probably going to have a pretty bad election outcome. The fact that Labour was also running significantly to the left of the country as a whole and you have a good recipe for a near catastrophic election result, which is basically what happened.

But what interests me more is that the result makes it highly questionable whether there will even be a United Kingdom in the next five or ten years, at least one with its current borders and constituent nations.

Good morning and happy Monday, December 16. The House Judiciary Committee filed its impeachment report early Monday morning, outlining its justification for the two articles of impeachment against President Trump — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Here’s more on that and other stories we’re following. 

Let me point your attention to Sen. Schumer’s letter and proposal to Sen. McConnell about the upcoming Senate trial. In essence, he proposes the Senate adopt the trial rules adopted unanimously for Bill Clinton’s trial in 1999. Note that in 1999, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress. So they had a fairly free hand to run things as they chose. Not to be snarky but those rules really amount to no more than holding a trial – equal time for both sides to present a case, a reasonable time limits on prosecution and defense, ability to call witnesses, etc.