unraveling

12.31.23 – New Year's Eve

In the rear view mirror

Time for the inevitable year-in-review. I figure I'd better write before I start reading, or else I'll never get to it. Memories were flowing in last night's dreams, someone I haven't seen in nearly forever made a cameo. No lines, but it was in a theater, in the middle of a big, musical production, and she was as young as when I knew her, which, you know, neither of us are any more. Even further back, my still-dark-morning soundtrack reached for Boz Skaggs, "Loan Me a Dime" and then something tipped it to "Christmas in Prison," from John Prine's "Sweet Revenge" album, one half of a century ago.

Wait a while, eternity
Old Mother Nature's got nothing on me.
Come to me, run to me, come to me now,
we're rolling my sweetheart, we're flowing by god.

Turns out, old Mother Nature did have quite a bit on him, finishing with Covid-19, in early April, 2020. My journal one year ago tomorrow shows me One resolution: journal more often. And an aspirational exhortation from Thích Nhất Hạnh: "Live from the core of your being."

I accomplished the first, still working on the second, as ever. I also bicycled more often, and further than for many years. Not sure if I resolved to do that, or just did it, every day I felt like it, for 2,500-some miles. Errands, loops from home, mostly, but some excursions. On January 4th, Perihelion, after the House adjourned until 8pm EST without electing a Speaker in 6 tries, it was time for a bike ride. For example.

Went up Pierce Park Lane, to the top of Cartwright Road and zoom back down, 15.2 mi. Good work, under cloudy (but not inverted) skies. Headwind uphill, I reveled in the extra exercise. About the time I tought "I should see some deer along here," I did. Nine mulies, just below Deer Trail Lane.

In the wee hours of morning, it occurs to me that more of my personal journal than I've emptied into the blog over the years might be more interesting than the (increasingly) political obsessions of late. I think of the catchy acronym I learned from Tom Kosnik at Stanford a third of a century ago, a recipe for successful somethings or other. CRUD: Credible, Relevant, Unique, Durable. One or two out of four ain't bad?

On the eve of retiring, that retrospective feeling hangs heavy in the air. What I wrote from church on the first 8th of the year: "we're privileged to consider the non-material more of and let go of. Listen...

Loosen, loosen, baby, You don't have to carry
The weight of the world in your muscles and bones,
Let go, let go, let go.

The four-span through truss from the railroad spur into the heart of downtown has reached the unceremonious end of its centennial, and if anyone other than me has remarked upon it, I missed that. It could use some fresh paint in spots.

Then at (Zoom) church, the opening hymn, #58 in Singing the Living Tradition, "Ring Out, Wild Bells," from Alfred Lord Tennyson, and the 19th century. That 4th verse! (It's the 6th of 8 in the full poem on Wikipedia.)

Ring out false pride in place and blood,
the civic slander and the spite;
ring in the love of truth and right;
in the common love of good.

30.Dec.2023

Fast away the old year passes

and while wading through the "last minute" fundraising appeals, looking for a couple of transaction messages I do want, I'm also finding a few (ok, more than a few) messages that slid by without getting deserved attention. Quick rundown? We'll see.

HCR, Dec. 17 "It seems that former president Donald Trump is aligning his supporters with a global far-right movement to destroy democracy," echoing Hitler, quoting Putin, praising Kim Jong Un, and Viktor Orbán, who gushed to return the favor, calling Trump “the man who can save the Western world.” (And yeah, I know I covered that one already, but there's more.) For Christmas, she reminded us of Thomas Paine's exhortation in the darkest days of the Revolutionary War.

“Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered, yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value.”

For Boxing Day, the surprise historical twist of the oligarchs of the collapsed Soviet Union making the US the money-laundering capital of the world. (Yay for deregulation!)

And finally, started another book in my library loan stack, Bradley Onishi's Preparing for War; the extremist history of White Christian nationalism—and what comes next. It was released on Jan. 6, 2023, for a nice touch. Dark reading for dark times.

29.Dec.2023

Even a blind squirrel

Skimming the headlines from Nikki Haley's recent uncritical race theory about the Civil War, and the reaction of her opponents for the Republican nomination next year, I sum-tooted my take:

Say what you will about Nikki Haley's Civil War stumble: having (her and) all her Republican competitors now declaring the truth instead of the old Lost Cause canard is genuine progress.

I mean, even if Ron DeSantis gave it a "Yikes." But maybe my reading of the reactions was too glossy? Thom Hartmann took a deeper dive, providing the rather astonishing text of Haley's response to the question of “What caused the Civil War?” It's as if a late-night bull session came to life inside her head, and stumbled out into the street, more than a little tipsy. It was FREEDOMS! No irony intended.

“I think the cause of the Civil War was basically how government was going to run — the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.”

Ah, yes, ok. The freedoms?

“I think it always comes down to the role of government and what the rights of the people are. And I will always stand by the fact that I think government was intended to secure the rights and freedoms of the people. It was never meant to be all things to all people.”

Yes, of course, not all things to all people.

“Government doesn’t need to tell you how to live your life. They don’t need to tell you what you can and can’t do.”

Hold on there, ma'am.

We've got a Constitution that tells us (and government!) what we (and it) can and can't do, in broad terms, and then we have federal, state, and local laws and what-not that boy howdy tell us what we can and can't do. Stop on Red, stay right of the double yellow line and all that. And those proscriptions apply equally to Republicans, Democrats, whatever, and the unaffiliated.

“They [them government] don’t need to be a part of your life. They need to make sure that you have freedom. We need to have capitalism. We need to have economic freedom. We need to make sure that we do all things so that individuals have the liberties so that they can have freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to do or be anything they want to be without government getting in the way.”

FREEDOM TO DO ANYTHING THEY WANT WITHOUT GOVERNMENT GETTING IN THE WAY? In her walkback, oddly, she claimed the part she didn't say was "the easy part," even though that esprit de l'escalier didn't kick in until the next day, and it was tainted with her blaming "a Democratic plant" for asking her some kind of trick question.

To jump to the chase in Hartmann's worthy post: "the Confederacy rose up not simply to preserve slavery and the Southern oligarchy, but to extend that oligarchy to the rest of the United States." And, "The South has, since the 1830s, been the epicenter of an anti-democratic, anti-American plot to replace our representative government with rule by the morbidly rich."

Who want to insist that you cannot tell them what to do, and that they will tell us what we can (and cannot) do. I repeat myself.

Calling all Constitutionalists

Down at the bottom of the year, and on the precipice of another momentous (and almost year-long) election season, top of the inbox sums up the Zeitgeist:

• Timothy Snyder, Trump cannot run for office According to the U.S. Constitution. If we're, ah, still going by that? It's "as clear as can be on this point." "Anyone who has taken an oath as an officer of government, and then taken part in an insurrection, may not hold any office thereafter."
• And from Robert Reich, Why the hell is Trump rising in the polls? (Why American capitalism is so rotten, Part 6). "[M]any of you have asked why Trump is rising in the polls despite his increasingly explicit neofascism, and why Biden is falling despite a good economy. Fearing the worst, you ask what can be done to preserve American democracy."

I forget who said it, Maine's Secretary of State? (gift link to the WaPo story) Maybe, but I can't find the verbatim quote about how yes, the 14th Amendment has never been used to do this to an ex-president before, because we've never had a president who participated in an insurrection. "Participated in" is a bit precious there, isn't it? While Trump and his lawyers and his base go apoplectic, and I presume the usual barrage of death threats being forwarded to anyone (and especially any woman) who stands in his path to autocracy.

The 14th amendment has been used (another gift link!), a few times, most recently to remove a county commissioner in New Mexico from office for his particiption in the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection that was formented by Donald J. Trump, while we all watched on national TV. Couy Griffin has a Wikipedia page on him now.

"He took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States ... [and then] engaged in that insurrection after taking his oath," the judge in the case wrote. Speaking of precious, here's Griffin's shocked response for being held to account:

"I don't think it's fair to accuse me of insurrection. I didn't have any intent of being a part of an insurrection or a violent mob. My intent of going to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6 was because I had concerns that our elections had been compromised."

"Concerns" and intent aside, NPR reported that

Griffin's group, called Cowboys for Trump, "played a key role in Stop the Steal mobilization efforts" ahead of Jan. 6, 2021. Video from that day shows Griffin "working up" supporters of Trump against then-Vice President Mike Pence, the court says. And there is also footage of Griffin illegally breaching multiple security barriers and egging on violence by rallying rioters with a bullhorn.

Griffin also faces consequences for failing to register that organization as a poltical action committee. He said he never operated the organization in that capacity. Funny.

CREW has a FAQ page, not yet updated with result of the appeal. Wikipedia tells me the New Mexico Supreme Court, which dismissed the appeal on procedural grounds in November, 2022 and reaffirmed the dismissal in February 2023. TPM's page (for the dismissal) shows him in full cowboy regalia, spurs that go jingle jangle jingle, I have to assume, riding a horse on New York's 5th Ave. The WaPo backgrounder has Paul Ratje's photo from a special meeting of the Otero County Board of Commissioners a month before his removal, showing either a finger gun, or "L" for loser.

Read Snyder's exhortation to help fill out your BINGO card for arguments in Trump's favor. (It's just the Democrats; everyone can run for president; and Trump hasn't been convicted of insurrection—yet!)

"I don’t think that this is an argument made in good faith. Trump himself does not contest the facts. Indeed, his purported campaign for president right now is based precisely on his participation in an insurrection, which he advertises in public appearances and in social media."

Speaking of losers, Trump's Christmas Eve farrago of self-pity and tired lies, posted to his antisocial media platform, quoted in Reich's blog:

“THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, LIED TO CONGRESS, CHEATED ON FISA, RIGGED A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ALLOWED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS, TO INVADE OUR COUNTRY, SCREWED UP IN AFGHANISTAN, & JOE BIDEN’S MISFITS & THUGS, LIKE DERANGED JACK SMITH, ARE COMING AFTER ME, AT LEVELS OF PERSECUTION NEVER SEEN BEFORE IN OUR COUNTRY???”

...Referring to Biden and Special Counsel Jack Smith, he said: “MAY THEY ROT IN HELL. AGAIN, MERRY CHRISTMAS!”

And a Ho Ho Ho to you too, sir! Trump's claim that this is “the most dangerous time in the history of our country” is one of the few things he has right. Reich blames the vanishing "American dream" as an underlying cause of dissatisfaction (in spite of the impressive list of Biden's accomplishments, and an economy more than recovered from the ravages of the pandemic, and Russia's attack on Ukraine.

The dream that "if you work hard you'll get ahead" is losing mind share. 53% of those polled in 2012 said yeah. 48% in 2016. This October, only 36% of voters think that's true. They may not have the absurdly widening income gap in the U.S. on their minds, but if you need a picture of the rising tide not lifting all boats you could hardly do better than the 1% vs. the 90% than Reich's chart (next to one about the declining chance that children will earn more than their parents, from well over 75% for those born in the middle of last century, to just about 50-50 for those born in the 1980s.

Reich thinks we can repeat the successes of "readapt[ing] the rules of the political economy to constrain the political power of wealthy minorities at the top" from Jacksonian 1830s, the turn-of-the-20th-century reform era, and the New Deal 1930s. If only we can recognize how much better that plan is to a term of autocratic retribution for all the perceived slights accumulated by a malignant narcissist.

Christmas, 2023

It's a Christmas story

Can't say how I heard about The Fixers, but nearly four years after its early-2020 publication, it's an easy check-out from the library, and it joined my oversized winter reading stack. The dust jacket, subtitle ("The Bottom-feeders, crooked lawyers, gossipmongers, and porn stars who created the 45th president"), and photos ("Stormy," the Donald, Michael Cohen) have a tabloid feel (homage to the subject matter), but authors Joe Palazzolo and Michael Rothfeld are legit reporters (for the Wall Street Journal, no less), and won the Pulitzer Prize for their "hush money series" at the root of the book.

About halfway through, the authors' voice breaks into the consistently "omniscient narrative," and it was only then that I realized they were legitimate reporters, and it's assembled from a body of in-depth journalism. (Or, from New York, a bawdy of journalism. Sorry, not sorry.) I could've read the dust jacket, but I didn't.

Now just weeks away from another rash of Republican primaries, the stories that seemed utterly shocking (and in a more civil society, disqualifying) feel like ancient history, but after 30 chapters, the 25-page Epilogue [spoiler alert!] leads through the Mueller report (and Bill Barr's "catch and kill"), into the nexus with Ukraine (and of course, Russia, Russia, Russia), and right up to the first impeachment of Donald J. Trump. We're reminded that it was 2014 when "Russia invaded Ukraine, annexed its peninsula of Crimea, and armed separatist rebels," eight years before escalating its war toward comprehensive destruction.

Imagine having forged five years of reporting (with five decades of history under it) into a book and having to end it just as the ultimate show-stopper of the "vulgar circus" had entered the center ring under the Big Top. There's still the day job. For Palazzolo the federal judiciary, privacy, gun laws and anticorruption beat at the WSJ, for Rothfeld, a move to NYT as the book was being finished.

Apart from the interesting and varied narrative itself (which can feel like too-well trodden ground at this remove), the book is interesting for a look inside what genuine reporting entails, working against perpetrators' efforts to conceal malfeasance and malefactors, reconstructing the full story of what's going on with limited evidence, figuring out who to talk to next, and how to work around the the chaff and counterattacks.

And beat the competition. The WSJ broke this story in October, 2016, and other media organizations added additional bits they'd dug up but weren't (yet) prepared to publish without more corroboration.

The news never stops; it takes something extraordinary to justify digging into the meta-news this deeply, but it helps show how absurd facile dismissals of "the media" are. The head vulgarian's "contribution" has been to insert name-calling adjectives to try to negate a lifetime of corruption, and repeat them tirelessly. All of what should have been disqualifying in 2016 turned out to be insufficient, as a deeply rigged system (rigged in favor of xenophobic populism, as it turns out, so long as moneyed interests are served first) produced the worst-case scenario. The institutional corruption in and beyond the Electoral College worked to abet a replay in 2020, and when that failed, Trump shifted to sedition, and fomenting a violent insurrection.

Or a "normal tourist visit", depending who you talk to. With the benefit of 5 months insight, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-TX) pooh poohed Jan. 6, 2021 as merely "a mob of misfits, committing disorderly conduct, violent entry, civil disorder, vandalism, unlawful excetera [sic]." Something approaching half the country is still not sure we've had enough of "populism," and is ready to move on to the next round of misfits, disorderly conduct, violent entry, civil disorder, vandalism and perhaps some full-blown fascist excetera. (All that matters is how voters in half a dozen "swing states" sort themselves out.)

Jill Filipovic reviewed the book for the Washington Post, under a more direct headline, All the president's crooked men, the month it came out, as "not a particularly enjoyable read."

"Amid a trying Democratic primary race, an impeachment that revealed stunning offenses but is nonetheless unlikely to result in the removal of the president, and the slow grind to what many worry will be a 2020 Trump victory, reading detail after excruciating detail of the depravity, stupidity and venality of all the president’s men is enough to send one full-pitch into an existential crisis.

"You should probably read this book anyway."

If you're in a hurry, maybe just skip ahead to Chapter 30, and the Epilogue.

Christmas Eve, 2023

Universal reflections

Tidying up for the family get-together, I got around to reading some of the two-week-old New York Times. The newsprinted version provides juxtapositions that won't turn up in "the feed," the relentless parade of shiny (bloody) teasers that assault us by the hour. More time to consider how Norman Lear reshaped the way America saw black families, wrapped around a small, dense ad from Humane Civilization Worldwide ("COP28 Pledges Will Hardly Save Us"). On the home page of their website, an unsigned, first-person "short summary" spells out the problem—"We are sliding towards worst-case scenarios"— and the opportunity: "Living simpler and healthier, closer to nature, with more interpersonal connectedness, people will be happier."

We do have agreement on something, at least in the headline for particle physicists and their "road map" for the next decade. Drop a bad pun (a "muon shot") under the slightly weird transportation metaphor, and illustrate with a 30-year-old image of the abandoned Superconducting Super Collider project looking like a cross between an Indiana Jones movie and Dune. "Muons provide more bang for the buck than the protons used in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, and would push the search for new forces and particles deeper than ever into the unknown," we're told. The unknown in this instance is "how the universe works as whole." Hitoshi Murayama, a physicist at the University of California, Berkeley, provided that cosmic goal, and the last words, echoing Paul Gauguin,

“Particle physics is really at the heart of what we are, who we are,” he said, adding that all of us, physicist or not, “would like to understand why we exist, where we came from and where we’re going.”

Brian Tate set Gaugin's questions to music, taught me and other members of the Unitarian Universalist Musicians Network to sing it in the round (naturally), and two decades on, the pandemic motivated Dr. Glen Thomas Rideout to make himself a quintet, and provide us with this glorious performance for a Sunday (or any other) morning.

23.Dec.23

Blew the whistle

Did not take the "READ THE LATEST" jump, because I'm pretty much up to speed. But I was motivated to respond directly to the sender. Knowing that members of Congress typically don't accept email (form submissions) from out of their own district, I got the bright idea to send it to the committee this guy chairs. And how nice, there's a convenient Blow the Whistle form. So, toot, toot, James.

Dear Chairman Comer, and members of the House Oversight Committee:

I'm a recipient of the "Comer for Congress" spam emails. The latest one ("READ THE LATEST"), sent "With Courage," features the supposed outrage that "Hunter Biden defied my lawful subpoena" and how the chairman plans to initiate contempt of Congress proceedings.

As you all know, Hunter Biden expressed willingness to testify in a public committee hearing, and was quite clear in his reason for not wanting to testify in a private hearing or deposition; the chairman or his allies would be likely to selectively leak whatever parts could best advance "outrage."

And fundraising.

Your job is to SERVE the whole United States, and to uphold its Constitution.

The pathetic attempt to prosecute Hunter Biden, and provide support for Donald J. Trump's ongoing campaign and lawlessness do not serve the country. This is not "courage." It is not doing anything constructive for the people of this country, while you all take a long holiday break and ignore the actual obligations of your office.

We see you. We see what you are doing. It is vile.

Update:
The NYT reported this sad story on the 22d; I hadn't seen it before writing to Comer, but it adds another tawdry layer on the House GOP's weaponization program. Hunter Biden Text Cited in Impeachment Inquiry Is Not What G.O.P. Suggests.

12.22.23

Song and dance man

What's not to like about a "Happiness Campaign"? According to the New York Times (gift link!), "it all started when a 70-year-old fish market stall owner named 'Booghy' was grooving in public." Which is in violation of Iranian law.

"[I]n Iran, dancing in public, especially by women and between men and women, is banned. Although the rule is regularly defied, enforcing it has been arbitrary. Music, dancing and singing are deeply rooted in Iran’s culture and attempts by Islamic clerics to take that away in their 43 years of rule have by and large failed."

It seems Booghy got his start as a football cheerleader, "carr[ying] a megaphone, walking the bleachers, and energizing the fans by honking loudly." And it is definitely keeping him in shape.

“My reason for dancing is to make people happy,” Mr. Bana Motejaded told a local television reporter this week. “I only want people to be happy and to change their mood.”

I'd read halfway through the story, enjoyed a few of the Instagram videos, and got distracted by other stuff, came back mid-afternoon to see "Then came the crackdown" (on December 7). And then... an uprising turned it around.

"The government retreated. The police in Gilan province issued a statement on Monday denying Mr. Bana Motejaded was ever even arrested. They resurrected his Instagram page with all its previous posts of dancing and singing. Local news channels flocked to interview him and in one video that some say was likely coerced he says he was not arrested.

"He now has close to a million followers on his Instagram page and is hailed by many Iranians as a national hero who inadvertently sparked a renewed call for change."

Problem-solving (and sabotage)

It was... a week ago that I last wrote about the "border crisis," just as the House started its long holiday break from it. Comes back to mind with HCR's daily, noting that Speaker Mike Johnson "wrote a letter to President Joe Biden asking him to make [significant] changes [to nation's border policy] himself through executive action."

Wouldn't that be clever? They can blame all its faults on Biden, take credit for making something happen, and hope that Biden's negotiating with the GOP terrorists will piss off progressives to boot. Meanwhile, while the Republicans are glugging nog by an open fire,

"White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre today reminded reporters that the White House has been negotiating with senators to come up with a bipartisan deal despite the absence of House members, and that Biden has been negotiating with the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, to address the border situation.

"In the next few days, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and White House Homeland Security Advisor Liz Sherwood-Randall will all travel to Mexico to meet with President López Obrador to discuss border challenges, all in the spirit of the 2022 Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection, an agreement between 21 Caribbean and Latin American nations, including the United States, to strengthen international frameworks to make migration safe, orderly, and humane."

I did check to see whether any new fundraising spam from Johnson (in particular) had come in after I emptied the bucket yesterday, and was a tiny bit surprised not to find any. Plenty from the usual suspects, of course, Junior asking for "one last favor for my father and me," ha ha. (That's actually from the NRSC, wanting me to complete their "End-of-Year Assessment.") The NRCC slush fund "wanted to do our part in passing along holiday cheer" and tells me I HAVE WON! a "Christmas Golden Gavel," as one of "the MOST deserving of patriots." I'm certainly, uh, honored, but not too motivated to press the "claim my reward" [sic] button. Patriotism should be its own reward, don't you think?

Solstice #2, 2023

Right-wing spam tropes

Subject "the enemy within" addressed to "Patriot," Communist revolution in Russia, Barack Obama is "the real mastermind," the "true architect behind the bogus Russian collusion witch hunt," Huey Newton and the Black Panthers, Black Lives Matter, oh, "the castration of our military," "devastation and destruction." "The reviews [sic] speak for themselves," the author says, citing blurbs from Dinesh D'Souza, Mark Levin, Laura Ingraham. Marxist dystopia, eh. And the ultimate gaslighting: "they don't care how much they have to lie, cheat or steal to achieve" said dystopia. Gosh for only a $35 donation to the David Horowitz Freedom Center, I could get a "complimentary" copy of his book. Also from Horowitz, flogging his book, "Most of the American people have no clue what we're up against," "Barack Obama radically transformed our country" (thanks, Obama!) and "The devastation and destruction we see today has been over a decade in..." which is to say the same screed chopped in different slices.

Stephen "vermin" Miller has a "501(c)(3) public charity" too, America First Legal, with a pitch that starts with "As you well know." Eventually it gets to "the current leftist dystopia," in which, idk, the stock market is hitting record highs, the economy has added 13.9 million jobs, unemployment is the lowest it's been in more than half a century, the number and rate of violent crimes have gone down. (The news isn't all good; there are detailed facts from reliable sources we can check, as opposed to listening to fascist speech-writers say stupid things.)

REMOVED FROM BALLOT is trending, naturally, from Donald J. Trump and Junior, [red light emoji]BREAKING TRUMP 2024 NEWS[red light emoji], Elise Stefanik, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Ronna McDaniel, Richard Viguerie. And here's a good one, from "ALERT," You have [1] MISSED MESSAGE.

Credible sources reporting on the extremist campaigning and fund-raising are caught in the filter too often as well (in spite of my whitelisting them, which is irksome). Heather Cox Richardson's December 17, 2023 Letter from an American, for example, had this, featuring what I'm sure is another Stephen Miller phrase:

"On Saturday, in Durham, New Hampshire, Trump echoed Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s attacks on immigrants, saying they are “poisoning the blood of our country”—although two of his three wives were immigrants—and quoted Russian president Vladimir Putin’s attacks on American democracy. Trump went on to praise North Korean autocratic leader Kim Jong Un and align himself with Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, the darling of the American right wing, who has destroyed Hungary’s democracy and replaced it with a dictatorship.

In the Autocratic Mutual Admiration Society pages, Orbán has a man-crush on the Donald, too: "the man who can save the Western world,” oh my. Vlad Vlad will be chortling over that.

20.Dec.2023

Satire warning

ProPublica keeps digging, and the Permian Basin underlying the swamp of SCOTUS corruption keeps gushing. Their latest describes how grumpy Clarence Thomas wanted a raise or else he (and maybe Toni Scalia) would quit, prompting the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts, Leonidas Ralph Mecham, to broach the "delicate matter" with Chief Justice Renquist. Congress never acted to lift the ban on speaking fees, or deliver a big raise, "but in the years that followed Thomas accepted a stream of gifts from friends and acquaintances that appears to be unparalleled in the modern history of the Supreme Court" to help ends meet, and to "supplement[] his lifestyle."

The front page of last Sunday's New York Times, led the jump into three full pages to tell the behind the scenes story of the dismantling of Roe v. Wade, including, you know, the Kabuki theater of artfully disguised perjury in confirmation hearings, and the culminating perfidy of Mitch McConnell to stack the court in favor of the decades-long campaign. With Ruth Bader Ginsberg dead and her replacement fast-tracked in during the 2020 election, some of the refashioned court (especially its newest member) was worried about seeming too much in a hurry. They slow-played announcing the decision they'd already made to hear Dobbs, allowing them to bide their time and arguments while other cases went through lower courts.

For his part, Chief Roberts didn't want to do the U-turn on precedent that the rest of the conservatives were ready to make, worrying about the court "look[ing] as if it had been waiting for a new justice to take on a challenge to Roe."

You think? That seems rather precious. "Guard[ing] the court's legitimacy" was not exactly served. By the time they did finally announce the decision to take the case, they'd lost Barrett's vote for cert.

Kavanaugh, Alito, Gorsuch and Thomas "overrode [their] five colleagues—including all the female justices—who had an array of concerns" about taking the case. "The men appeared to be betting that Justice Barrett would ultimately side with them, pushing her into a case she had not wanted to take."

[A]s a professor in 2013, [Barrett] had written a law review article laying out the kind of dilemma she faced in spring 2021. “If the court’s opinions change with its membership, public confidence in the court as an institution might decline,” she noted. “Its members might be seen as partisan rather than impartial and case law as fueled by power rather than reason.”

Yes, exactly. With the "audience before the court secure,"

Mississippi made the case more monumental, abruptly changing its strategy. “Roe and Casey are egregiously wrong,” the state’s main brief declared on its first page. It urged the justices to be bold. “The question becomes whether this court should overrule those decisions. It should.”

The author of the transformative brief, Scott Stewart, newly solicitor general of Mississippi, had worked for Thomas as a clerk, and "maintained close ties to the court," so that was nice. Alito would use his punchline, opining that "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start."

More directly to the point, Alexendra Petri fires for effect (with "satire" in the URL, just to be clear): Thanks for being a Supreme Court Patreon! Don’t forget to claim your perks.

And finally, not satire: WaPo also provided a guide to the (very special) friends and patrons of Clarence and Ginni Thomas.

But here we are

Joyce Vance's take on Next Steps caught my attention this morning, for the first commentary on the Colorado Supreme Court's bombshell, to (potentially) remove Donald J. Trump from the state's ballot, for cause, under the 14th Amendment. (They've stayed their judgment a moment to let the big SOCTUS weigh-in... quickly. "Colorado’s Secretary of State must certify the candidates for the 2024 presidential primary ballot by January 5...")

You remember that amendment we added after the last Civil War? The one that instantiated "equal protection of the laws," and disqualified once office-holding insurrectionists and rebels from again being office-holders? (And also declared that "The validity of the public debt of the United States ... shall not be questioned," excepting "any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave.")

The Colorado supreme court voted 4-3, a hair's breadth in a momentuous decision, "that Trump will undoubtedly use to inflame passions." True to form, the NYT's daily news tease led with the "explosive ruling" and put the poll-driven story about how his "Legal Jeopardy Hasn’t Hurt His G.O.P. Support" next in line. "More than 60 percent of Republicans think that if the former president wins the primary he should remain the party’s nominee — even if he is subsequently convicted of a federal crime."

60%. So much for the party that used to flaunt its "law and order" bona fides, eh. And not just any old crime like racist housing discrimination, business fraud, campaign finance violations, rape, and what-not. The crime of engaging in insurrection. Of seeking to overthrow the lawful government of the United States. (Four members of) Colorado's high court, "mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions," and of their "solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach” reversed the district court's ruling that somehow the office of President was excluded from the 14th amendment's purview. In a short stack of bullet points, summarized:

• The challenge to Trump's status is valid;
• No implementing legislation for the 14th Amendment's Section Three is required;
• Judicial review isn't precluded by "the political question doctrine";
• Section Three encompasses the office of the Presidency;
• January 6, 2021 constituted an "insurrection";
• Then-president Trump "engaged in" insurrection through his personal actions (c.f. pages 103-116 of the SCOTSOC decision); and
• His inciting speech was not protected by the First Amendment (ibid., p.116-132).

Ipso facto, "President Trump is disqualified from holding the office of President under Section Three."

Chief Justice Boatright's dissent was motivated by the "complexity" of the case being too great for expedited procedures, and besides, Trump doesn't (yet) have "an insurrection-related conviction," so we should hold off?! Justice Samour dissented similarly, opining that Trump hasn't had enough due process yet, and that Section Three isn't self-executing. There ought to be a law, he insists (since Section Five said there could be one). He worries that other states don't have the effective statutes that Colorado does, so that Trump may be DQ'd in less than all fifty states (and don't forget about the District of Columbia, with as many votes as Wyoming). Samour is also not convinced that it has been adequately shown that Trump engaged in insurrection. Rose Mary Woods chuckles softly from the other side of the rainbow bridge. Rounding out the 11 + 43 + 25 pages of dissent (my perusal shifting to "cut to the chase" nearly 200 pages in), Justice Maria Encarnacion Berkenkotter protests that they don't have enough law to work with yet to adjudicate Section Three challenges.

Returning to Vance's blog:

"We talk a lot about what will happen if Trump is elected in 2024. But we also need to talk about what could happen if he loses.

"We know the answer, of course, because we’ve already lived through it once before. We know Trump will lie and say he won. He will claim the election was stolen from him and that Democrats engaged in massive fraud. He will go to court, where he will lose, but he will drag things out and try to undermine confidence in the outcome of the election. And regrettably, some number of his followers will believe him, again, and perhaps even hear his criticism as a call to action."

Her call to action is to VOTE. So that we can "hand Trump a loss that is so numerically overwhelming that it makes claims of fraud demonstrably false." Never mind that the claims about the 2020 election were demonstrably false; adjudicated false in more than 60 court cases, and substantiated in none. (Just ask Rudy Giuliani!) Trump's penchant for lying about everything, and inciting at every opportunity mocks the concept of falsity, to say nothing of justice.

The "why didn't you vote?" analysis from 2014 did not include as one of its big 4 categories the elephant in the room: the antidemocratic Electoral College, the very nut of why we're having this conversation. Idaho's four votes are not going to go to a Democrat, now matter how crimey the Republican nominee turns out to be. That hasn't stopped me from voting for ten Democrats, but neither has my vote been tallied in Congress on any January 6 in the last five decades. Given our slapdash system, constructed on principles of minority rule, we need to focus effort for maximum effect: get out the vote, and persuade voters in that handful of "swing" states that may decide yet another too-for-comfort election. Scratch and claw our way out of the swamp until we have the numbers to fix the root cause of the dysfunction.

"There are lots of opportunities to help and the best way to find them is to start talking and planning with people now. It may seem early, but the Iowa caucuses are less than a month away. Visiting with friends and family over the holidays and new years is exactly the right time to get started. And, we’ll all be holding our breath a little bit as we see how Trump responds to the news from Colorado. It should be unthinkable for a serious candidate for the presidency to be so volatile and have so little regard for the rule of law that his compliance with a court’s decision cannot be taken for granted. But here we are."

15.Dec.2023

Protégés and prototypes

The far-right bulk (it's bigger than a wing now) of the Republican Party has managed to put off aid to Ukraine as a special Christmas gift to Vladimir Putin. While the House GOP was running out the clock before the "holiday," they also found time to meet and greet members of the Hungarian Institute of International Affairs and staff from the Hungarian embassy, in a two-day event hosted by the Heritage Foundation. And Victor Orbán managed to stymie unity in the EU to quash aid to Ukraine as well. Today's Hartmann Report is dire: The GOP has Adopted Orbán as their Official Role Model.

As the Soviet Union was collapsing in 1990, "Hungary held its first real elections since 1945; in 1999, it joined NATO; and in 2004, it became a member of the European Union."

And then, when he acquired power, Viktor Orbán succeeded in pulling off what Donald Trump had only tried and failed at. For 20 years, Hungary was a functioning democracy; today, it’s a corrupt neofascist oligarchy. Europeans refer to it as “soft fascism.”

The usual suspects on our side of the pond are highlighted. The former guy, Ron DeSantis, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and Matt Schlapp, among them.

“In opening comments, CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp said that CPAC in the U.S. had decided to ‘go Hungarian’ in their approach to the media, deciding for themselves ‘who is a journalist and who is not a journalist’ when determining which outlets to allow into their events.”

More stolen documents news

Or, less is more, since this particular binder is still missing. A collection of raw Russian intelligence disappeared under Trump, mirabile dictu. The particular bagman might be a mystery, but we know where the buck stopped. Kind of a Monday puzzle with how easy it is to connect the dots. James Gleick outlines it in a toot:

"In the last days of his presidency, Trump personally ordered a super-sensitive classified binder of intelligence—about Russia interfering in the election on his behalf—to be delivered to him.

"On his way out the door, Trump absconded with boxes of classified material.

"The binder contained raw intelligence on Russian agents, including sources and methods. It was never returned. It is still missing."

Anything, ah, important in there?

"...raw intelligence the US and its NATO allies collected on Russians and Russian agents, including sources and methods that informed the US government’s assessment that Russian President Vladimir Putin sought to help Trump win the 2016 election, sources tell CNN.

"The intelligence was so sensitive that lawmakers and congressional aides with top secret security clearances were able to review the material only at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, where their work scrutinizing it was itself kept in a locked safe.

"The binder was last seen at the White House during Trump’s final days in office...."

Professional failures

You know the old saying, when the going gets tough, the toughs... take a three week holiday. The situation at the southern border is so dire, the House Republicans are insisting on doing nothing else first, and you know what? They're not doing anything about it either, because “polling consistently shows that immigration is the most toxic issue on the campaign trail for Biden. Why take that off the table as an attack on him in 2024?” (Quoted from Politico Playbook, a rollicking "unofficial guide to official Washington" linked from this morning's Letter from an American.)

I'm old enough to remember when the bipartisan Gang of Eight senators managed to get the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013 through the Senate with a 68-32 supermajority and John Boehner sat on it until it and the 113th Congress expired.

Idaho's own Raúl Labrador was then a House back bencher, but parlayed his complicated résumé into a seat at the adults' table for the House version of bipartisanship (the "Group" of Eight), ever so briefly. He quit that over the sticking point of immigrants getting healthcare insurance, and after a moment of relief (“It was easier to have discussions that were productive with Labrador out, because people could focus and not go off on tangents,” Democrat Zoe Lofgren noted), the Tea Party (remember them?!) got hinky about losing their guy on the team, and the effort fell apart. ICYMI, ProPublica and the NYT Magazine had a detailed debrief in 2016, How Washington Blew Its Best Chance to Fix Immigration. Judging by the racist xenophobia that Trump used to launch his presidential bid in 2015, and while that bid still seemed like a bad joke, Labrador opined (in a rare moment of accurate self-assessment), “The reason we have Donald Trump as a nominee today is because we as Republicans have failed on this issue.”

Here we go again. Speaking of Raúl Labrador, after failing a try to be Idaho's governor, we got the booby prize of him as Attorney General, where he's doing his damndest to make good on his campaign promise to be a rank partisan rather than serving all the people of the state. Suing his own clients, attacking state agencies, getting himself disqualified from litigation, sticking Idaho taxpayers with legal bills, trying to get a California statute invalidated, and generally plowing new ground in dysfunction.

14.Dec.2023

Race to the bottom

After yesterday's performative party-line vote to "open an impeachment inquiry," based on stuff and nonsense, but utterly heart-warming to the former guy with two, count 'em two impeachments (who would be barred from a sequel but for the quisling Republican senators), I was moved to send another missive to Idaho's senior member of the House, Mike Simpson. Before hearing back from the last one, or the phone call this month.

Subject: National defense, integrity, and the rule of law... but mostly LEADERSHIP MIA

Still no regular appropriations for FY2024, no Farm Bill, no resolution for Ukraine funding, and on and on.

The Republican program to STOP government, and to BREAK government, and to sabotage every initiative from the Democratic party is going "great." Oh, and facilitating the return of a criminal to the White House, with more solid plans for autocracy this time around.

What on earth are you doing, Mike? Toeing the party line vote for an IMPEACHMENT INQUIRY with out a shred of evidence? And then TAKING A LONG WEEKEND?

When will we see some leadership from you, to get us off the disastrous course we're on?

Then I pulled up the Dec. 13 Letter from an American from Heather Cox Richardson from the inbox. It's not just going to be a LONG WEEKEND, but a WEEKS-LONG BREAK for ah, holidays with the fam, fundraising, and whatever else they want to do, other than THEIR JOBS. Criminey.

When asked what he’s hoping to gain from an impeachment inquiry, Representative Troy Nehls (R-TX) answered: “All I can say is Donald J. Trump 2024, baby.”

Dark Brandon "reacted with uncharacteristic [but utterly appropriate] anger, calling out Republicans for" pretty much everything. Can't wait for the confab voting for "contempt of Congress" for Hunter Biden not answering a subpoena to the star chamber, while the contemptible Jim Jordan ignored his duty to testify to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol. It doesn't take a vivid imagination to see through to his role in insurrection. C-Span has a lot of receipts. Oh, and the other parade marshall, James Comer has some skeevy business dealings that we're learning more about as we go.

In service to the Trump org's continuing program of [proven!] fraud and malfeasance. The effort to "bothsides" the Democrats' record is pitiful, and would be comical if it weren't tragic. But it keeps the spotlight off the ongoing sabotage and obstruction, which is apparently good enough for government miswork. You don't need to take it from me; take it from the Republicans, in their own words. Ken Buck of Colorado, for example. “Republicans in the House who are itching for an impeachment are relying on an imagined history.”

Postscript: Joyce Vance's Wednesday Round Up takes a deeper dive into the myriad legal actions in process against the former guy, and his prime directive of delay, delay, delay, in the hopes that he can re-take power and dismiss, dismiss, dismiss. "Trump has a terrible track record when it comes to using the presidential immunity defense," she reminds us. "The consistent theme among courts that have considered the issue: Trump does not get to hide behind presidential immunity to shield decidedly unpresidential conduct." With my emphasis added:

"Trump wants to make use of the protections designed to let presidents serve the American people as a shield for behavior that only benefited him. Common sense tells us presidents cannot be above that law and that, in fact, they must be held to a higher standard, that they took an oath to serve. As discouraging as it is to watch the back and forth and the delays and wonder if Trump will ever be held accountable, the courts have the opportunity and the obligation to live up to the fundamental principles that make us a country of laws, not kings, and the next few weeks will likely tell the tale of whether they will meet them."

Update (12/15):
Remarkably, and for the first time I can recall, I got a quick, timely response by email. It's pretty much blah blah blah, reciting facts obviously known to me, but hey, it's the canned reply. Recites a little US Constitution, and eventually gets to the punchline:

"In a democratic society, impeachment should never be used to address differences of opinion on policy issues. However, when there are serious allegations into a President's conduct, an impeachment inquiry is the first step in investigating the possible crimes committed."

Implying there are "serious allegations." Riiiight.

9.Dec.2023

Foreboding

What brought me to that Jay Rosen bloop (what do you call a toot on Bluesky?), and to the Robert Kagan piece (which I'd pulled up but hadn't yet read) was Thomas Zimmer's think piece, Donald Trump, American Dictator. "Nothing is ever inevitable. But every political analysis needs to start from the recognition that there is an eminently plausible - and fairly straightforward - path from here to autocratic rule."

You should have already heard about (and let me edit their ambivalent "may be" headline) Why a Second Trump Presidency Would Certainly Be More Radical Than His First in the New York Times, and the entire special issue of The Atlantic is in the to-read stack.

Sorry if there's a paywall in your way (we just re-upped); the black and white image captured by Kent Nishimura for the LA Times/Getty, captioned "This is how Trump's first term ended" is its arresting banner.

Zimmer notes that Kagan's message is "from the heart of the political power center in Washington," not "the Left." He served in the Reagan State Department, now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. Zimmer's lead-in to asessing how effective the message might be:

"With last week’s piece, this immensely influential Never Trump Ex-Republican interventionist hawk has provided what is widely regarded as the most urgent warning and what might emerge as the central reference point and rallying cry in the democratic coalition’s defense against Trumpism."

Is this our waning days of Weimar Germany before the fall of the republic? Maybe not quite that dire, Zimmer is thinking. Maybe we'd be "closer to Orbán Hungary than to Putin Russia." Yikes.

A pervasive “bipartisan disgust with the political system in general” – and it does not matter who is actually responsible, only that the man in charge, the man who is currently president, will be blamed; and that Trump offers a compellingly simple solution to all the dysfunction: himself – the autocratic leader who alone can fix it all.

Never mind how utterly implausible "I alone can fix it" was, coming from a man who bankrupted a casino, and couldn't succeed selling steaks and liquor in America. Kagan figures we're three months from Trump "lock[ing] up the Republican nomination," and "millions of Republican voters turn[ing] out to choose the person whom no one allegedly wants."

"Like people on a riverboat, we have long known there is a waterfall ahead but assume we will somehow find our way to shore before we go over the edge."

Here's what that waterfall looks like to Kagan:

"If Trump does win the election, he will immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold that office ... with the fewest constraints of any president, fewer even than in his own first term.

"What limits those powers? The most obvious answer is the institutions of justice — all of which Trump, by his very election, will have defied and revealed as impotent. A court system that could not control Trump as a private individual is not going to control him better when he is president of the United States and appointing his own attorney general and all the other top officials at the Justice Department. Think of the power of a man who gets himself elected president despite indictments, courtroom appearances and perhaps even conviction? Would he even obey a directive of the Supreme Court? Or would he instead ask how many armored divisions the chief justice has?

"Will a future Congress stop him? Presidents can accomplish a lot these days without congressional approval, as even Barack Obama showed. The one check Congress has on a rogue president, namely, impeachment and conviction, has already proved all but impossible — even when Trump was out of office and wielded modest institutional power over his party."

Postscript:
In news I'm not imaginative enough to make up, the guy who worked his hillbilly elegy into a Senate seat, J.D. Vance, sent a strongly worded letter to the Attorney General and Secretary of State demanding that they "assuage [his] curiosity" by answering his eight questions. By January 6, 2024. Starting with:

"Will the Department of Justice open an investigation into Robert Kagan for potential violations of 18 U.S.C. § 241, 18 U.S.C. § 2383, or any other federal criminal statute?"

He's comparing an opinion piece in the Washington Post to former guy's prosecutions. Seriously.

"As you know, prosecutors in the Department of Justice have embraced several stunningly broad interpretations of federal law in their bid to ensnare President Trump in criminal wrongdoing."

Ensnare, is that what happened? Then, in quintessential fashion proving Kagan's point, he goes after Kagan's wife for good measure; just wondering, he says, whether "in the view of the State Department, Victoria Nuland’s close relationship with her husband might compromise her judgment about the best interests of the United States" (in her job in the Biden administration).

I'll let Ruth Marcus take the response to Vance's "preening, Trump-toadying stunt" from there.

Gray skies are gonna clear up

My first dip into "BlueSky," I suppose it is, the bsky.app domain, produces a more voluble "JavaScript Required" notice than I think I've seen before, claiming "This is a heavily interactive web application, and JavaScript is required. Simple HTML interfaces are possible, but that is not what this is." Heavily interactive. That was above a brief text post by Jay Rosen, shown without formatting, followed by a shortened wapo link, expanding to Robert Kagan's analysis of the Trump dictatorship on the near horizon. (It's the talk of the town right now.)

Turning on javascript morphs it into a giant splash screen, spelling out Bluesky, inviting me to get an account... and hiding the content I came for. Ick. Going back the way I came, and viewing source, I see it reiterates the content—fully—in a description meta tag, and in the body (below that funky "warning").

They also want me to go to blueskyweb.xyz and atproto.com to "learn more about Bluesky." After this introduction, meh.

8.Dec.2023

Gag him

One sentence from the NYT report about the three-judge appeals court panel upholding, but narrowing the gag order from Judge Chutkan in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA v. DONALD J. TRUMP, accusing the former guy of conspiracy to defraud the US, to obstruct an official proceeding, of obstructing and attempting to obstruct an official proceeding, and a conspiracy against voters' rights. You know the story. False statements, that the defendant knew were false, intended to "create an intense national atmosphere of mistrust and anger, and erode public faith in the adminstration of the election."

"Mr. Trump has often blurred the lines between his criminal cases and his presidential campaign, using court appearances to deliver political talking points and employing public remarks to assail his prosecutions as a form of persecution."

"Blurring the lines," yes. Such that we can't tell the difference between his criminal activities and the political campaign that supports them. What the judges said (h/t to Marcy Wheeler for the excerpt), my emphasis added:

"Many of former President Trump’s public statements attacking witnesses, trial participants, and court staff pose a danger to the integrity of these criminal proceedings. That danger is magnified by the predictable torrent of threats of retribution and violence that the district court found follows when Mr. Trump speaks out forcefully against individuals in connection with this case and the 2020 election aftermath on which the indictment focuses. The district court appropriately found that those threats and harassment undermine the integrity of this criminal proceeding by communicating directly or indirectly with witnesses and potential witnesses about their testimony, evidence, and cooperation in the justice process. They also impede the administration of justice by exposing counsel and members of the court’s and counsel’s staffs to fear and intimidating pressure. The First Amendment does not afford trial participants, including defendants, free rein to use their knowledge or position within the trial as a tool for encumbering the judicial process."

Stuff and nonsense in the House

It's not much, but I keep trying to get through to our member of Congress, Rep. Mike Simpson. Called the DC office this morning, and calmly (but emphatically) expressed the following, as his constituent. I assume they don't record much detail, so I tried to make a few simple points.

First of all, that the "impeachment inquiry" vote slated for next week is nonsensical, and that "as I'm sure Mike knows, there is no evidence of high crimes or misdemeanors, and this is just the opening act for the Donald Trump retribution tour." I urged a NO vote, not least because THERE IS MUCH MORE IMPORTANT WORK THAT IS NOT GETTING DONE.

Two priorities for that: DO THE WORK OF PASSING A BUDGET, now more than 2 months overdue. Without the brinksmanship that's damaging the economy, and the country's credit rating. And second, SUPPORT UKRAINE IN DEFENDING ITSELF AGAINST RUSSIA.

"I want Republicans to work with Democrats, and not just keep passing symbolic bills that are dead on arrival in the Senate. Mike should be a key player in that, and I know he has the skill and experience to help."

Simpson has been supporting Ukraine consistently (as the staffer mentioned). The GOP for Ukraine report card, last updated October 3, gave him a nearly perfect record. He missed the vote quashing Marjorie Taylor Greene's amendment to strike $300 million of assistance for Ukraine from the National Defense Authorization Act, but that failed 89-341. As compared to Idaho's other member, Russ Fulcher, on the anti-Ukraine side of 4 out of the 6 votes they've tracked.

7.Dec.2023

D.C. blotter

Used to be, we had to wait for the 6 o'clock news and some avuncular talking head to tell us what was what. Now it's coming at us in technicolor multimedia, 24/7. The bad news (literally!) is that it's more important than ever for "consumers" of information to distill fact from fiction, and to recognize tainted sources of misinformation, and disinformation.

Quality sources (and/or modest effort with a search engine) augment reporting, analysis, and opinion with direct sources. We can read the original documents, for ourselves. Today's case in point is a very readable, 9-page filing by Special Counsel Jack Smith, brought to me by Joyce Vance's Civil Discourse blog: What Jack Smith Says, in his 404(b) notice, "advising the Court and Trump of other crimes and bad acts committed by Trump that he intends to offer as evidence when the D.C. election interference case goes to trial."

The second sentence in the first paragraph includes a link to the original document (which has a few sections redacted), on storage.courtlistener.com. You don't have to take her (or my) word for it, you can have your own copy, for free.

Below the screen shot of the caption and top of the document, there's a "previously on Civil Discourse" paragraph (and link) explaining the Federal Rule of Evidence 404(b), and then Vance's professional description of "the six areas where [the special counsel is] going to introduce evidence. You should read her analysis; I'm not a former U.S. Attorney. But I can tell you the section titles conveniently outline the story. My shorter version of "Historical Evidence" (A & B), "Evidence" (C), "Pre- and Post-Conspiracy Evidence (D & E), and "Post-Conspiracy Evidence":

1. The Defendant’s Consistent Plan of Baselessly Claiming Election Fraud;
2. the Defendant’s Common Plan to Refuse to Commit to a Peaceful Transition of Power;
3. the Defendant and Co-Conspirators’ Knowledge of the Unfavorable Election Results and Motive and Intent to Subvert Them;
4. That the Defendant and Co-Conspirators Suppressed Proof Their Fraud Claims Were False and Retaliated Against Officials Who Undermined Their Criminal Plans;
5. the Defendant’s Public Attacks on Individuals, Encouragement of Violence, and Knowledge of the Foreseeable Consequences; and
6. the Defendant’s Steadfast Support and Endorsement of Rioters

Under part E, this:

"In apparent response, the defendant then doubled down and recommenced his attacks on the election workers in posts on Truth Social. He even zeroed in on one of the election workers, falsely writing that she was an election fraudster, a liar, and one of the “treacher[ous]... monsters” who stole the country, and that she would be in legal trouble.

There is a voluminous public record of Donald J. Trump's vicious accusations that reliably project admissions of his own vile and sociopathic behavior. He is, without a doubt, an election fraudster, a liar, and an extraordinarily treacherous monster who stole a major political party, attempted to steal the country last time around, and is in the midst of a second attempt.

And he is definitely in legal trouble.

The Republican Party stared into the abyss that passes for Trump's soul, told the truth about it in some cases during the 2016 campaign, and then developed traumatic amnesia after Russia and a cast of seditious sychophants helped him stumble into the White House. Most of them have yet to tear themselves away.

The last section, regarding "post-conspiracy evidence of the defendant’s steadfast support and endorsement of rioters," is utterly damning. (As is what it says about the remnant members of the hijacked major party who continue to endorse, promote, facilitate, or even just acquiesce to Trump's undisguised bid for autocracy.) The final paragraph from the special counsel is masterfully succinct. With my emphasis added:

"Evidence of the defendant’s post-conspiracy embrace of particularly violent and notorious rioters is admissible to establish the defendant’s motive and intent on January 6—that he sent supporters, including groups like the Proud Boys, whom he knew were angry, and whom he now calls “patriots,” to the Capitol to achieve the criminal objective of obstructing the congressional certification. In addition, his statements in this time period agreeing that he then held, and still holds, enormous influence over his supporters’ actions is evidence of his knowledge and intent to obstruct the certification, as he chose not to exercise that influence to mitigate the violence on January 6. Perhaps most importantly, the defendant’s embrace of January 6 rioters is evidence of his intent during the charged conspiracies, because it shows that these individuals acted as he directed them to act; indeed, this evidence shows that the rioters’ disruption of the certification proceeding is exactly what the defendant intended on January 6. And finally, evidence of the defendant’s statements regarding possible pardons for January 6 offenders is admissible to help the jury assess the credibility and motives of trial witnesses, because through such comments, the defendant is publicly signaling that the law does not apply to those who act at his urging regardless of the legality of their actions."

6.Dec.2023

It isn't fun any more

Kevin McCarthy went from king of the (small) world, to old news (with a pay cut), and you know what? He's just going to quit, end of the month. Planning "to serve American in new ways," and I'm sure he'll apply his vaunted fund-raising prowess to his own account. Bigly.

Curious miscount in the WaPo article; it'll be the end of a 17 year go in the House, 2007-2023, not 16. That after 4 years in the California Assembly. And this: "His ouster marked the first time in history that the House voted to remove its leader, a move that threw the chamber into a period of instability." The "period of instability" started longer ago than that, eh.

The new guy, Mike Johnson, feeling his apex, says we just have to have an impeachment inquiry because it's our solemn duty. He's also working the email address lists, of course. One of his latest missives indexed under "Maybe I'm just endlessly saying the same thing." Props for truth in advertising, at least, but so soon? Just send money. We can never get enough.

5.Dec.2023

Let's do the time warp again

So weird, I thought we were already having an "impeachment inquiry" and fishing expedition, but I guess the Comer-Jordan show so far was an impeachment inquiry inquiry? Just making sure that "impeach Joe Biden!" stays top of mind. Joyce Vance updates the plot, with a lovely photo of Marjorie Taylor Greene pressing the former guy's flesh. Ok, not really "lovely," but you get the picture.

"Today, news that House Republicans are prepared to move forward with a floor vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden. It’s a vote designed, at least in their eyes, to legitimize the manufactured impeachment effort. As we discussed when MAGA got impeachment fever in September, it’s baseless. It is not grounded in even a scintilla of fact. There is nothing Joe Biden is credibly alleged to have done that qualifies as a high crime and misdemeanor, the constitutional standard for impeaching a president. It is disproven rumor and innuendo, smoke and mirrors."

Nevertheless, Useful Tool Mike Johnson fatuously opined that an impeachment inquiry vote is a “necessary step” and something he thinks “we have to do at this juncture.”

"As if to underline that they’ve got nothing, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky) resorted, again, to mischaracterizing repayments of loans within the Biden family as sketchy transactions. Comer’s spokesman sent an email to members of the press, reported in the Washington Post, that claimed three payments of $1,380 made from Hunter Biden to his Dad in 2018 (when Biden was neither president nor vice president) were “part of a pattern revealing Joe Biden knew about, participated in and benefited from his family’s influence-peddling schemes.” In fact, they were payments related to a car of his Dad’s that Hunter Biden was using."

Meanwhile, the House has yet to pass a budget for the fiscal year that began October 1st. Nine and a half weeks ago. But yeah, let's do the impeachment thing. It's like... I don't know...

"precisely the strategy Trump was trying to use when his efforts to withhold aid from Ukraine until President Zelenskyy announced a (bogus) investigation into Biden’s corruption got Trump impeached for the first time. It is what House Republicans have landed on for 2024. Sometimes history actually does rhyme."

But wait, there's more, and explains the illustration up top (and Vance's headline: "A Revenge Impeachment"):

“I did brief [Trump] on the strategy that I want to see laid out with impeachment,” Marjorie Taylor Greene told The New York Times back in September. Greene added that she told Trump she wants the impeachment inquiry to be “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.”

Vance's conclusion is an important reminder (my emphasis added):

"One of the challenges as we go into the next election cycle is making sure people remember what Republicans have done—and left undone. There will be dog whistles and rumormongering and October surprises aplenty, to say nothing of voter suppression, Roger Stone-level dirty tricks, and Trump’s lies. It is important to make sure people understand, in a moment where democracy is still fragile and there is so much trouble in the world, that we must have leadership that believes in governing, not in political theater."

4.Dec.2023

Sympathy for the Devil

There are a lot of similarities between the extreme right wings of the state Republican parties in Texas and Idaho, I imagine. It's nice to have the news not about us now and then, but the news. OMG. From Judd Legum's Popular Information again: Texas Republican Party rejects ban on associating with Nazi sympathizers. The nut of it was, could they agree to this:

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Republican Party of Texas have no association whatsoever with any individual or organization that is known to espouse anti-Semitism, pro-Nazi sympathies, or Holocaust denial.

? And the answer was... not quite. Failed on a 29-32 vote. Might be "a slippery slope," or "too vague." The Texas Tribune mentions that "roughly half the board also tried to prevent a record of the vote from being kept," so at least there's some shame involved. Not that you could tell from state Senator Robert Lee "Bob" Hall III, who happened to receive $50,000 from Defend Texas Liberty, a PAC "that two West Texas oil billionaires have used to fund [the right wing], including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Attorney General Ken Paxton."

“If you want to pass a resolution, I would make it positive,” Hall said to executive committee members on Friday. “We don’t need to do our enemy’s work for them.”

Hall reiterated that stance in an interview with the Tribune, calling the [Nick] Fuentes meeting a “mistake” but claiming that there was “no evidence” that [Jonathan] Stickland or Defend Texas Liberty are antisemitic. “I've had meetings with transgenders, gays and lesbians,” Hall said. “Does that make me a transgender, gay or a lesbian?”

Asked if he was comparing gay people to white supremacists or Hitler admirers like Fuentes, Hall responded: “I’m talking about people who are political hot potatoes.”

3.Dec.2023

Just one kiss

We (re)watched a good old movie last night, Shakespeare in Love, from a quarter century ago. We were all so much younger, including Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ben Affleck, Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire Judi Dench, and hey, there was Doc Martin as Richard Burbage. What a great date movie. I didn't pick up on one detail until reading the Wikipedia page: it was the Master of the Revels who was "sleeping with" (we never see them sleeping, actually) Will's original love interest, Rosaline. Said Master doesn't have a large role, but his springy bed and his official capacity move the plot along at key moments, by (spoiler alert?) closing theaters for moral transgressions, for one. Back in the Elizabethan day (ironically enough), having a woman on stage was too too much. Better to have men in drag playing the female roles.

Further down the vein of fictional drama, 20-year-old Lanah Burkhardt was in performance before a school board in Texas to say that when she was 11, "a single kiss" in a Scholastic book tipped her over into a "debilitating addiction to pornography." So, ah, we need to eliminate kissing in everything children might see? Actually, she went a bit further than that, arguing ALL books from that dastardly publisher should be removed, and there shouldn't be any more book fairs from them either. As reported in Judd Legum's Popular Information blog,

Burkhardt's appearance was promoted by SkyTree Book Fairs, a newly formed organization marketing itself as "an alternative to the sexually explicit content distributed in Scholastic's book fairs."

You'll be forgiven if you've never heard of SkyTree; "it appears to be a hastily assembled offshoot of Brave Books, which publishes children's books by right-wing pundits and pseudo-celebrities." And did Brave Books forget to mention that Ms. Burkhardt is their "Public relations coordinator"? Yes they did. Never mind that, their cocked-up alarum is working. The Master of the Revels has nothing on them:

"Burkhardt's gambit has already had an impact. The Conroe school board, after listening to her story, voted to restrict access to Drama, the Scholastic book featuring a kiss, from all students in the 8th grade and below. One of the school board members, Melissa Dungan, suggested replacing Scholastic with SkyTree Book Fairs. "All glory to God," Burkhardt posted in response to the news."

It gets creepier from there. Among the authors Brave Books is selling are Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), Sean Spicer, and disgraced former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

raveling

Tom von Alten