Just in case you have been working in the yard picking up debris from the last storm, or was it the storm before that one?

Excuse me, as I sometimes get my storms confused. And the debris, including a slender tree or three, is still waiting to be chopped up and taken to the dump. But that is another story for another time. However, if you spend any time at all watching TV, you will see our nation’s political actors (on both sides) elbowing each other out of the way to grab some face time on their favorite network.

Right now (and this may change by the time you read this), the Democrats are braying and snorting about the New York DA’s investigation into the personal life of a former president.

Republicans (except Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis) are fulminating over the alleged audacious conduct allegedly committed by the same DA probing the same alleged personal affairs of the aforementioned former POTUS.

On Sunday’s political shows, a Republican complained the feds, not the state officials, should have jurisdiction. When an interviewer mentioned the NYC DA was supposedly probing a state crime, the GOP representative claimed it should be a federal case because the former POTUS was a former POTUS, and that made it a federal case.

For the record, both the Republicans and Democrats are speculating as grand jury investigations are secret, and no one knows, for sure, what charges, if any, will be filed.

It seems that not too many years ago, the Republicans were celebrating a probe into similar personal conduct of the then-POTUS, who happened to be of the opposite political faith.

Is this a preview of the reaction from both sides if and when the federal special counsel files a charge in connection with his investigation into efforts to overturn the last presidential election?

Also, there is the matter of the Georgia DA using a grand jury to look into GOP efforts to overturn the presidential election in that state. And the New York attorney general is still pawing through the former POTUS’s tax filings.

Meanwhile, the political pundits tell us it is the first time a former president has faced arrest.

Well, that seems to be true. However, a vice president was once charged with murder, but he got off.

In 1804, VP Aaron Burr shot and killed former Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton in a duel.

The two men were rivals in NYC politics, and Burr was mad because Hamilton had opposed him when he ran for president against Thomas Jefferson. Later, Burr sought the governorship of New York. When he was defeated, he blamed Hamilton.

After Burr plugged Hamilton, officials charged Burr with murder, but he fled the jurisdiction. Later, they dropped charges and Burr returned to Washington and finished his term as veep.

We remember that former Nixon veep Spiro Agnew resigned as part of a plea bargain. The feds had him dead to rights on charges he was accepting bribes as a Baltimore official.

They did not arrest him. They allowed him to show up in court and enter a plea to evading taxes. He resigned, paid a $10,000 fine and was sentenced to three years of probation.

In May 1856, as the nations wrestled over the question of slavery, an anti-slavery crusader, Sen. Charles Sumner (R-Massachusetts) was sitting at his desk in the Senate Chamber when Rep. Preston Brooks (D-South Carolina) walked up and whacked him in the head with a cane, causing serious injury.

Brooks was not arrested. The House tried to expel him but failed to earn enough votes to kick him out. However, he resigned and, after a special election, voters returned him to office.

In 1872, President U.S. Grant was arrested – for speeding.

It seems the president was driving a horse-drawn carriage down the streets of Washington when he was stopped by a District policeman.

According to an account in the Washington Post, neighborhood residents had complained about speeders, so local officials sent a Black Civil War vet, Policeman Willliam H. West, to investigate.

When he was there, he stopped President Grant and warned him not to drive so fast. Grant said he didn’t think he was going too fast, but Officer West persisted.

“I am very sorry, Mr. President, to have to do it,” he said, “for you are the chief of the nation, and I am nothing but a policeman, but duty is duty, sir, and I will have to place you under arrest.”

The cop took the president and other speeders to the police station where Grant put up a $20 bond.

At a trial the next day, the judge imposed “a scathing rebuke and heavy fines” on the other speeders, said the Post.

But the judge did not lecture or fine the president.

POTUS skipped his court appearance.