Hegseth calls sinking boats and striking Iran 'the job, and it's the job well done.'

…(cont) Then Tuesday. The House holds its procedural vote, and the man behind the podium — first time in six months; I wrote that down because I wanted to see if anyone else would — calls the impeachment "a political spectacle," then "a personal manifesto driven by ego." A few questions later he had another word for it, and then another, for a different reporter: a farce; sabotage. He ran the operations himself, out loud — Iran, the cartels, Maduro, Yemen — "everyone was a lawful operation ordered by the commander-in-chief, then ordered by myself, notified to Congress and executed by American warriors who did their jobs." Legal. That's the word he kept coming back to, not me. "We sank the boats carrying poison into our communities. We put a narco dictator in handcuffs. These are not high crimes. This is the job, and it's the job well done." Down the hall, the Speaker called the whole push "shameful." Across town, the President called the man who filed it "a total loser," and asked the Justice Department to look into the lawmakers behind it — the same ask from three days before, aimed now at the people who actually filed it.

Here's what I keep coming back to, and I'm no lawyer. I keep my car's registration in the glovebox, folded under the owner's manual, because that paper is what says the car is legal to be on the road. A cop pulls me over, I hand him the registration, that's the end of it. He doesn't call the state and ask them to investigate the cop. The paper does the work.

Oh — hang on, one more thing before you get up. I wrote that down too. I just can't find where the statute says a disagreement needs investigating to stay settled. Maybe it's filed under legal.