Madame Speaker closed out the short and modest debate over whether the House of Representatives would send the Articles of Impeachment over to the Senate—Spoiler: They did.—by unburdening herself as regards the Republican minority, and Madame Speaker came with the goods. Rep. Doug Collins, the braying jackass of an auctioneer from the House Judiciary Committee, went off into the izonkosphere again recently by saying that Democrats were "in love with terrorists," for which he had to apologize. Pelosi made a point of thanking Collins for the mea culpa he’d tendered for his "ridiculous remarks," thereby reminding everyone that Collins is a ridiculous figure. But then she got down to business.

Responding to remarks by House Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy, which had addressed everything but the matter at hand, Pelosi referred to the evidence released on Tuesday regarding Lev Parnas, Rudy Giuliani’s old running buddy, who, Pelosi noted, "was recently photographed with the Republican leader." Then, regarding a particularly piquant piece of that evidence, Pelosi went long.



The president considered [congressional funds] his private ATM machine I guess and said he could say to the president he could make, "do me a favor." Do me a favor? Do you paint houses, too? What is this, do me a favor?



And yes, in case you were wondering, and as proof of her current pop culture bona fides, the Speaker of the House just inferred that the President* of the United States might just be the equivalent of a mob boss.



Kevin McCarthy got what was coming. Tom Williams Getty Images

However delightful those moments might have been, along came Susan Collins later Wednesday afternoon to burnish her reputation as the wettest wet blanket in the Senate.

I wonder why the House did not put that into the record and it’s only now being revealed. Well, doesn’t that suggest that the House did an incomplete job then?

It is not possible that the senator is this dumb. The House didn’t add the Parnas evidence into the record until this week because a court hadn’t allowed its release until this week.

What I think is that Collins thought she had a good thing going with her do-si-do about leading a group of Republicans who might just vote to allow witnesses, which would have given her some good-government cover in a trial she felt would end in acquittal anyway. This is consonant with her entire political career, which has been demonstrated to be utterly useless in the face of a lawless president*. Now, though, a flood of evidence demonstrating the president*'s guilt is inundating the Congress and the news, and it threatens to sweep away Collins’s careful middling of her obvious constitutional duties, and she doesn’t like it very much. Enough with Susan Collins. I mean, god almighty, enough.



Oh, and Lev Parnas stopped by to chat with kindly Doc Maddow on the electric teevee.



Shit’s getting real.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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