Hegseth pins a medal on the sentinel who told his laughing entourage to be quiet at the Tomb

…(cont) The Secretary of Defense goes to Arlington, to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. CBS has it, the Times has it, the Guardian has it: laughter and talking were heard from his group, and an Army sentinel told the Secretary and his guests to maintain respect. The sentinel is working off the standing orders there, correct? So that's my first question for the re-enactment: at what hour on Tuesday does somebody in that party decide the correction was the right call? While the cars are still inside the cemetery, or after the clips are on television?

NBC has it and the Guardian has it: the Secretary awarded a Joint Service Commendation Medal to that same sentinel. The Post calls it a top award. There are photographs of the pinning and the handshake, posted by the Secretary himself, and the words that went with them — let me read these off the page so I don't get them wrong — "We love soldiers. We love standards. Well done, Specialist. Carry on Patriots."

So walk me through the citation. Somebody typed sentences onto it. In the record of those two men there is one piece of conduct between them, it happened Tuesday at the Tomb, and the soldier's half of it was telling the Secretary's party to be quiet. Does that go into the sentences, or does it get left out and the medal float there on its own?

Two days before the cemetery — Monday the 9th — the same Secretary had a different document with his name on it. A Kentucky congressman, Thomas Massie, took the House floor to force a vote on impeachment articles he had filed in September. Common Dreams carries his words: the Secretary "knowingly executed and implemented unlawful orders" in carrying out the war with Iran, launched in February, and Massie's language is that it came without congressional authorization. The President doubled down, defended him, and said he both won and is winning that war. The articles failed. Eleven Democrats weren't in the chamber to vote — enough of them, standing there, to have carried it. One got emotional and told the Post it was rush-hour traffic.

And before any of that, two more lines in the notebook, both dated: his staff broke a priceless globe, and he fired the Joint Staff's top planner. I'm not making anything of them. I only note that it's the same hand doing the signing on Thursday.

Here's where I get stuck. My brother-in-law painted his pegboard out in the garage and traced every tool before he hung it, so the outline of the ratchet is on the wall whether the ratchet is or isn't. You stand there and you know what's gone and exactly how big it was. Is a commendation that kind of tracing? Because if it is, what the outline on Tuesday's wall says is that a standard was in force at the Tomb and a specialist is the one who enforced it. So who's the tool and who's the outline in that photograph?

Oh — excuse me, before you get your coat. Do the other document for me the same way, just the procedure: who has to be standing in the room for the House to take the count, and what's the figure at the bottom of Monday's tally? I wrote it down twice and both times it came out seven.