This is the 310th straight day that I have published a blog post. Time to stand up and applaud.

It’s going to be a rainy weekend in Washington (they call it Tropical Storm Ophelia, but I see no rose petals), and it will end with Kol Nidre, which we will once again participate in virtually. I am feeling much better, but the lingering cough is still there and, although I am told I am clearly not contagious, no one wants to be sitting next to a lingering cough. Plus, not surprisingly, crowds scare me right now (for no good reason).

I was sorry to see that New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez and his wife have been indicted once again. I can’t quite figure it out.

By all accounts, Menendez, a self-made man and son of Cuban immigrants, has been a fine Senator, currently serving (or at least until yesterday serving) as chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. About a decade ago, he was indicted for the first time. I don’t remember the details, but it involved whether or not he was doing favors for a Puerto Rican businessman and long time friend, who had given him various types of financial assistance. Like Clarence Thomas, Menendez maintained that there was no quid pro quo, that he was just doing what Senators do, and that his friend was just doing what friends do. (At least, this is my take from memory.) It went all the way to trial, there was a hung jury, and then it was over. Menendez ran for reelection. He was reelected easily.

With that background, you would think that Menendez would have learned a lesson and would have been determined not to let anything like that happen again. Au contraire. Menendez decided to repeat his former ways, perhaps this time on steroids. While the details are yet not 100% clear, it seems that Menendez and his new wife received hundreds of thousands of dollars from New Jersey businessmen and people involved with the government of Egypt, again in return for what appear to be favors. Apparently, Menendez will maintain for a second time that he wasn’t doing anything special for any of these people – he was just performing normal constituent services. I don’t think he has, as of yet, commented on money and the gold ingots that were found in his house and his safe deposit box, and his Mercedes, and he has not commented on the various texts and emails which connect the funds with his “friends”.

I read brief bios of the three others who were indicted with Menendez and his wife. Two things seem clear – these are very bright and talented people whose businesses have not only been successful, but have added to this world (large scale, successful redevelopment activities in New Jersey, and production of halal meat in large quantity). But they are also all individuals who have been the targets of law enforcement in the past. I would really like to know more about their motivations. And about what the mutual attraction is between this type of person and Bob Menendez. BUT SEE JEFF DWYER’S COMMENT BELOW.

And why did they give him such lavish gifts if Menendez did not use his influence to help deflect criminal charges involving at least one of his benefactors, and did not provide information to the Egyptian government so that his friend could become the sole purveyor of halal meat imported into Egypt?

And, there is always, of course, collateral damage. I wonder what the future holds for Menendez’ daughter Alicia, who is an MSNBC weekend anchor and, to me, a talented and forthright media journalist. She is a Harvard graduate with years of journalistic experience and a wonderful reportorial and interviewing style. Remember that Chris Cuomo, another media journalist whom I greatly respected, was not able to hold onto his job after brother Andrew became involved in potential criminal charges involving alleged sexual predation. I hope Alicia Menendez does not meet the same fate, but it will be a difficult dance.

Now, to national politics. Will the Menendez indictment help the Democrats respond to allegations that the Justice Department is not operating as a tool of the Democratic party? You would think it might, although I have already heard some Republicans say that the Justice Department indicted Menendez only to try to show that they are not acting under bias, and that they have made Bob Menendez a target only to take the eyes of the world off their soft treatment of Hunter Biden. Oh, well, sometimes you just can’t win.

One more thing today. Hunter Biden. How can I say this succinctly? We have been brainwashed to think of Hunter Biden as a useless wastrel who, were it not for his father, would never have been able to make a living and who would probably be dead from drugs by now.

Let’s set the record at least halfway straight. Hunter Biden is a Yale Law School graduate, who had a successful career working for a New York investment company of which he was executive vice-president, who has been counsel to a major New York City law firm, who was a Bush-appointed member of the Amtrak board of directors and was vice-president of that board for a period of time, who ran a major charitable organization which worked with the U.N. to bring food to countries where food was in short supply, who with his uncle ran a hedge fund and a consulting company to aid businesses looking to expand overseas, and who – of course – was involved in a Chinese controlled venture capital fund, and a Ukrainian oil company named Burisma.

At the Jim Jordan hearing last week, Jordan said that even Hunter Biden himself had said he had no qualification to sit on the Burisma board. This is not true. In fact, Biden said he was at least as qualified as anyone else on that board, perhaps more so, but that – had he not been his father’s son – he probably would never have been asked to serve on the board. But it doesn’t appear that he was just a name on a board, doing nothing but trying to influence his father.

Okay, one final point about Senator Menendez. The name “Menendez” may be the most unnatural combination of letters to type quickly on a QWERTY keyboard. It’s just downright uncomfortable. Whether that helps him or hurts him, I don’t know. But it does not make him fun.