It’s about who the hell we are as a country. — President Biden, Feb. 3, 2021

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The quote above did not pertain to dispelling the lies cloaking the terrorist attacks of September 2001. It was part of a Washington Post story, HERE, by Erica Werner and Jeff Stein, about the president’s sense that Washington needs to act fast on changing Senate rules to pass by a simple majority the administration’s $1.9 trillion package for Covid-19 economic relief.

Still, an Associated Press photo by Evan Vucci of a meeting in the Oval Office showed what appeared to be a bust of Sen. Robert Kennedy (1925-1968) near the wall behind President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris; he had been U.S. attorney general and a principal adviser to his brother, President Kennedy (1917-1963). Also at the meeting were Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. Harris. 

(Harris was a district attorney in California and then the state’s attorney general before becoming a U.S. senator in 2017. Leahy, currently chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had been a state’s attorney in Vermont earlier in his career; he and then-Sen. Tom Daschle, D-S.D., Senate majority leader from 2001 to 2003, were apparent targets in the anthrax attacks that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Schumer served eight terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from New York State before becoming a U.S. senator in 1999.)

And by a 145-61 vote, U.S. Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., remains as the House Republicans’ third-ranking leader as her party’s members “overwhelmingly rebuffed a rebellion by hard-right conservatives,” while new U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., faced a vote today in the House that would remove her from committees “for her online embrace of racist and violent views and bizarre conspiracy theories,” according to THIS story by AP reporters Alan Fram, Steve Peoples and Brian Slodysko.

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Hilton Valentine, founding guitarist of the English band The Animals, died last Friday. THIS AP story by Pan Pylas has some details about Valentine and The Animals. Links to two songs performed by the group containing his playing are HERE, HERE and HERE.