So, Wednesday was a big deal politically in a couple of places.

Big news in Britain as their Supreme Court tells Johnson his suspension of Parliament isn’t going to happen, and Brexit looks on the way to being rebaselined again, almost as many times as the “modernization” project I’m part of around these parts. I’m not as informed on UK politics as some of my friends are, so I won’t really dig deeply here, but I’m keeping my eyes on things over there. I don’t expect Boris is going to be PM very long.

Then, this whistleblower thing on my side of the Atlantic, which keeps getting more complicated. I’ve been following it, as you say, with interest. Mid-day Wednesday I noticed my congressman came out publicly in favor of impeachment proceedings regarding the alleged quid pro quo aid-for-political-dirt business between Trump and the President of Ukraine; this a few hours after the Op Ed in the WaPo Wednesday morning where several freshmen congresspersons from more conservative districts (including Rep. Spanberger one district over) with experience in public service in defense and intelligence; the “Anti-Squad” if you will, calling for the same, and a few before Speaker Pelosi made the announcement that formal impeachment proceedings will be opened.

45, of course, responded with the usual decorum, though with the supposed impending release of the transcript of the Ukraine call (I’m honestly hoping for a recording as well), and his basically admitting to withholding the funding to Ukraine before the call in a public forum, this alleged infraction (of however many before) might actually have some teeth.

As for what it means in the scheme of things? I honestly don’t know. The last time we went through this, back in 1998, with Clinton, for a different sort of thing entirely, it ended up accomplishing not much at all apart from inserting “what the definition of ‘is’ is” into the national lexicon. The activity here has a bit more in common with Nixon and Watergate shortly before I was born (which never got to actual voting on Articles of Impeachment before his resignation), what with it having to do with re-election concerns and digging up dirt on opponents. Like I said, this one feels like it’s got some teeth, or at least I want to believe it does.

That said, 2019 is not 1974. The world of US Politics is a lot more fragmented, coarse, and partisan, and, sad to say, less noble and dedicated to the greater ideals of public service. If the House does draw up and vote on Articles, it’s entirely possible the Republican-led Senate might just sit on them (as Sen. McConnell did with the Garland nomination in the last year of the Obama presidency), or, as has been the case with pretty much every other shady grift or questionable activity the administration has engaged in thus far (of which there are many), double-down on the assertion that there was no wrongdoing.

I’m not going to speculate just yet, of course. There’s a lot happening and a lot of moving parts out there, and unlike in the 1970s (or even the late 90s), information flows much faster, from more sources, than ever before. This post will probably be outdated by the time it actually gets published.

update later: Oh yeah…the “transcript”(not a transcript) was pretty batshit, as was the RNC sending their internal talking points/response out to House Democrats, then trying to recall the email….it’s a really weird day.

Whatever’s going to happen though, this is history we’re watching.