Is Sally Yates big news? Let me suggest that the answer is no. Is Sally Yates conspiracy theory fodder? Again no. Is Sally Yates going to be the biggest thing on the immediate horizon? Absolutely, thanks to the great, off-the-rails Trump Obfuscation Machine. But make no mistake, Sally is a gateway to the biggest story there is. That would be the fall of Donald Trump. Let's unpack that.

The Yates part

The Yates matter can be handled quickly. She was the Acting Attorney General. Trump fired her. She may know something about Flynn. Devin Nunes is the head of the GOP-run House Intelligence Committee.

He refuses to recuse himself, presumably because it is obvious he is in Donald Trump's pocket and Democrats be damned. He also refuses to call Sally to the stand. He is in Trump's pocket, remember?

The closer to Flynn

The reason Flynn is important is that he may have broken the law in the service of one Donald Trump. He is at present the star witness. As far as we know he belongs to FBI Director James Comey who he has described himself as slippery. There has been nary a reference to Flynn in days. Is Comey sequestering him? At least one person on Twitter agrees with me. He asks, "Shouldn't every news outlet in America be asking one question: Where Is Michael Flynn?"

The thesis

The general trajectory of things from where I sit looks like this.

Neither the House hearing or the forthcoming Senate hearing will actually solve anything. The Senate may pressure Trump to lay bare his tax returns. That will produce more heat than light. At some point, the cry for Flynn will rise and then it remains to see what exactly would or could happen. The thesis is that whether Flynn is key or not, Trump is running scared.

There could be something criminal that Trump has been covering up. In that short sentence are grounds for impeachment. A cover-up will get you gone, as the ghost of Richard Nixon might say.

An alternative thesis

Are you getting bored?

I am. I am tired of tawdry exercises from the Trump nursery. I am also getting scared. Scared that Trump will figure the classic way out. Start a war. We are in thrall to a master of ginning things up. If he can gin up the White House he can do much worse.