There are a number of crazy political events taking place right now, from the Paxton trial in the Texas senate to the GOP threat to remove a Democratic Supreme Court Justice in Wisconsin and the impending impeachment of Joe Biden. (Oddly, the only one that’s justified in the one in Texas, brought by Republicans against a Republican so corrupt even they couldn’t ignore it.) We also have trials against former president Trump in civil and criminal court pending in five different jurisdictions. Oh, and we’re also looking at a possible government shutdown. It’s a lot. The one place that seemed relatively sane, at least by comparison, was the U.S. Senate. Sure they had a some big dramatic fights last year over President Biden’s legislative agenda but they were pretty standard policy battles that mostly took place within the Democratic caucus. The Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson were as ugly as usual but they didn’t feature a lot of fireworks. All in all it’s been a fairly functional institution lately. But that’s not to say that the Republicans haven’t been playing any games at all. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has Paul has abused the power given to any Senator to block nominations to the executive branch by putting holds on all State Department nominees in order to force the foreign relations committee to “access COVID-19 documents being held by various government agencies.” His complaint is that he’s only allowed to read the documents in private and isn’t allowed…