Dear Capitolisters,

I hope you enjoyed Capitolism’s summer vacation as much as I did.

“More tooth, less tail” is a common refrain from defense leaders in search of more combat power as budgets have flatlined.

The self-proclaimed heroes and martyrs of the Texas Democratic House members who fled to Washington, D.C., aboard a chartered plane (without masks but with a case of Miller Lite and stronger liquids carried discretely in plain brown paper bags) have achieved little except to break quorum and thereby stop the special legislative session back home and prove themselves a super-spreader event in the nation’s capital.