The New York Daily News on how Special Counsel John Durham spent four years not finding the FBI conspiracy that Trump and Barr claimed:

When Special Counsel Bob Mueller, probing Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 election by helping Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, completed his report, he sent it to Attorney General Bill Barr on March 22, 2019, a Friday. Two days later, Barr issued his own four-page summary of the report, which radically distorted and twisted Mueller’s work, over Mueller’s repeated objections.

It wasn’t until almost a month later, on April 19, following a lengthy press conference, that Barr published Mueller’s report and everyone saw that Barr had blatantly and intentionally mischaracterized Mueller’s findings to undermine the truth that Putin’s spies had meddled in our democratic process to try to aid Trump.

A month later, on May 13, Barr directed U.S. Attorney John Durham to examine the origin of the Russia probe regarding Trump’s campaign (which the FBI had commenced on July 31, 2016, dubbing it Crossfire Hurricane, before Mueller took it over in 2017).

On Dec. 9, 2019, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz concluded that the FBI was warranted to open the probe.

Last Friday, one day shy of four years after Durham began, he delivered his report to AG Merrick Garland. While Barr held Mueller’s report close for only two days, Garland took an extra day. But then this AG simply published the report, in full and without comment or spin or interpretation.

While Mueller rightly complained about Barr, this is what Durham wrote in his letter presenting his report to Garland: “Finally, we want to thank you and your office for permitting our inquiry to proceed independently and without interference.”

Durham found no conspiracy inside the U.S. government to get Trump, although he differed from the IG that after an initial review, the FBI should have not pursued the matter of possible collusion between Trump’s campaign and Moscow.

Despite the lies of Barr and Trump, this was no FBI hoax. Putin and his spies did steal emails from the Democrats and gave them to WikiLeaks. And Russia did use the internet to attack Clinton and support Trump. It was all real.

The Baltimore Sun on whether Congress capable of serious action on freight rail safety:

On Feb. 3, the only sound echoing farther than the thundering crash of the derailment of a 1.7-mile-long Norfolk Southern freight train carrying hazardous materials in East Palestine, Ohio was the subsequent outcry from politicians. Make no mistake, this was a disaster with explosions and fire (some of it deliberately set as a controlled burn to reduce the scale of the toxic spill). Despite the enormous turnout of emergency personnel and first-responders, elected officials from Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on down questioned whether federal regulators have been asleep at the switch, whether it would ever be safe again to live within 30 miles of the site and even complained about which government officials were willing to visit East Palestine and when (President Joe Biden’s non-appearance proving most auspicious). And as some politicians were quickly bemoaning the environmental and public health harm done to residents of two potential swing states in the 2024 presidential election (Ohio and Pennsylvania), others were fiercely guarding against the possibility that toxic waste from the site might be headed to their state for treatment or disposal.

Far more quiet, however, has been the effort within Congress to do something more meaningful about freight rail safety than loud oratory. Last week, the Senate Commerce Committee voted to approve the Railway Safety Act on a bipartisan basis. The legislation would authorize a number of important safety steps, including the use of trackside “defect detectors” set every 15 miles that would observe axle and signal problems in passing trains (railroads voluntarily use them today every 25 miles), require trains carrying flammable liquids to slow down in urban areas, upgrade braking, and notify states of the kinds of materials trains will be transporting. It would also mandate two-person crews and require the Federal Railroad Administration to study the safety impact of longer and heavier trains, both of which may well have been factors in the Ohio derailment. The measure is likely to be approved by the full Senate as it has the support of leadership, but the U.S. House of Representatives and its leadership have been quite a different story.

So far, there’s been a deafening silence coming out of the House where legislation to the Senate bill has been introduced. More than three months after the disaster, the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure has not even scheduled a hearing. It’s not difficult to speculate why. House Republicans are working hard to portray the Biden administration as anti-business and a disaster for the economy. It obviously doesn’t help that narrative if they’ve signed onto legislation that, while much-needed to protect the health and safety of all Americans (and especially those living near tracks), is opposed by the freight operators as too costly and expands the federal government’s regulatory reach. In short, it’s all very well to complain when regulators haven’t prevented a major toxic spill, it’s quite another to give those regulators that money and authority to do their job effectively.

The truth is that train derailments happen frequently — on average, about three per day, according to the FRA. They just aren’t usually so catastrophic, and that argues for a strong regulatory response. Yet the one area where elected officials seem willing to crack down is the wrong one. So far, a number of states have drawn the line on accepting any contaminated water or soil from the East Palestine cleanup efforts, among them Oklahoma, Texas, Michigan and Maryland. Just last week, U.S. Rep. Kweisi Mfume announced he was “adamantly opposed” to revised plans to bring polluted water to Clean Harbors Baltimore, the facility along Russell Street specifically designed to handle liquid contaminants with the treated results shipped back to Ohio. He did not, however, offer the EPA any guidance on how best to deal with the contaminated water.

None of this should be a surprise, of course. Politicians are often cheered for seeming to stand up against polluters, but rarely, if ever, do they excite voters or campaign contributors by actually doing something meaningful about them. Why would anyone welcome toxics, including vinyl chloride and benzene — already proven capable of killing thousands of fish, crustaceans, amphibians and other marine animals anywhere near them? And yet we blithely accept that these trains (and trucks, of course) carrying these chemicals and worse will motor on while meaningful protections against potential future disasters quietly stall on Capitol Hill.

Is this anyway to run a railroad? Or supervise one?