Good morning. I’m Walter Shapiro, and I will be your pretty good helmsman this morning. I fear I can’t be a Great Helmsman because that title is reserved for Chairman Mao.

Joe Biden is in Rome, where he is the second Catholic president ever to meet with a pope. John Kennedy’s 1963 audience with Pope Paul VI at the Vatican was the first. As the online New York Times pointedly noted, “Mr. Biden, who is usually tardy to meetings, pulled up to the Vatican at noon on the dot.”

During the first season of Saturday Night Live, there was a running joke about a recently deceased Spanish dictator. Every week, Chevy Chase, during the Weekend Update news segment, would deadpan, “Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.” That’s how I feel about Biden’s perpetually stalled legislative package. I keep hearing Chase’s voice intoning, “The Biden agenda is still in limbo.” We will have more about Biden’s downsized $1.75 trillion spending plan in a few paragraphs when The New Republic’s tireless Grace Segers gets her well-deserved shout-out.

Two stories this morning highlight the legacy of morally reprehensible conduct under Republican presidents. The Wall Street Journal reveals, on the front page of the print edition, that the Biden administration is negotiating a legal settlement of $450,000 per person with immigrant families who were separated from their children under Donald Trump’s heartless and legally dubious “zero tolerance” policy. And the Times reports on a Guantánamo detainee’s harrowing account of his brutal torture during the worst days of the Bush-Cheney regime. The description by Majid Khan, in the first torture story ever delivered in open court, is a reminder of the enduring shame of “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

And a special treat for those following the controversy over Trump’s conspiratorial and inaccurate letter about the 2020 election that was published without any fact-checks by the Journal’s right-wing editorial page staff. In an editorial this morning, the Journal justifies its permissive factual standards in a way that isn’t exactly flattering to the Former Guy: “We think it’s news when an ex-President who may run in 2024 wrote what he did, even if (or perhaps especially if) his claims are bananas.”

A brief pause at the breakfast table and a glance at the print Tabloid of Record (a.k.a. the New York Post) produced the latest on a certain out-of-office politician: “CUOMO SEX RAP. Former gov charged with ‘forcible touching’ will be arrested.”   

At NewRepublic.com, we feature Grace’s adroit summary of another exhausting and frustrating day on Capitol Hill: “At this point, you could be forgiven for being confused about what’s actually happening in Congress. In fact, if it makes you feel better, it’s not entirely clear whether members of Congress know what’s happening right now.” Abdul El-Sayed offers a smart piece on Biden’s shrinking poll numbers, reminding the political doomsters that it’s mostly about Covid-19 and not his policies. And Tana Ganeva brings us an against-the-grain article on the downsides of those ubiquitous Crime Stoppers tip lines. 

Hoping that next week brings a dollop of clarity for us all, 
Walter Shapiro, staff writer

Yesterday’s politics question: We asked what distinguishes Madison Cawthorn from everyone else in the House of Representatives. We meant objectively speaking, aside from his apparent fascination with the Third Reich.

Yesterday’s answer: At 26, Cawthorn is the youngest member.

Maybe prompted by our question, Cawthorn got another honor yesterday. He was inducted into the House Freedom Caucus, the Skull and Bones of the nutcase Republicans. That’s impressive since it’s unusual for the group, as Politico notes, “to add new members in the middle of a congressional term.” Obviously, Cawthorn is doing something right—something very far right—in his come-from-behind race to surpass Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Today’s political question, in honor of Biden’s visit to the Vatican: On September 12, 1960, candidate John Kennedy directly confronted the whispering campaign that he would be controlled by the pope if he were elected president. In a stirring speech upholding the separation of church and state, JFK declared, “Contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for president. I am the Democratic Party’s candidate for president who happens also to be a Catholic.”

The question: Where and to what group did Kennedy deliver that famous speech?

Pop-culture question (or rather a window into my idea of what is pop culture): In 1956, a now-famous play made its American debut at the Coconut Grove Playhouse in Florida. The show was billed as “the laugh sensation of two continents.”

Name the play and its author. (This story, by the way, is one of the few things I remember from my long-ago days in graduate school.)