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Rolling Stone: Supreme Court Rules 6-3 That the Planet Should Burn

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2022 //
138

The Supreme Court issued a major ruling limiting the authority of the Environmental Protection Agency to curb emissions from power plants. This will have a major negative effect on curbing climate change.

Rolling Stone says the Court voted to let the planet burn.

The Trump majority strikes again.

West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency stemmed from the Clean Air Act, an Obama-era law that mandated certain emissions regulations. West Virginia was one of several fossil-fuel-rich states to sue the EPA over the regulations, leading the Supreme Court to rule that the Clean Power Plan (the part of the Clean Air Act that called for emissions regulations) must be suspended until the courts could upheld its legality. The Trump administration issued its own industry-friendly plan that may have even increased emissions, but it never went into effect, either. The courts struck the Affordable Clean Energy plan down just as the former president was leaving office….

It’s now up to the Biden administration to propose a replacement. It will be severely limited in its ability to do so thanks to the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday.

Elena Kagan authored the dissenting opinion. “Whatever else this Court may know about, it does not have a clue about how to address climate change,” the liberal justice wrote. “The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decision maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.”

On the same subject: a roundup of articles about this horrible decision by David Pell of Next Draft

June 30th – The Day’s Most Fascinating News — https://wp.me/pbRvtl-7dF:

This Supreme Court wants a more religious America and after the past week of decisions, a lot more of us are praying. The latest 6-3 decision that may send even ardent atheists into the arms of the lord is one that limits “how the nation’s main anti-air pollution law can be used to reduce carbon dioxide emissions from power plants.” Most of the headlines I’m seeing frame this in typically narrow political terms like WaPo’s, Justices limit EPA power to combat climate change, a blow to Biden’s agenda. Hah. If only the damage were limited to one president’s agenda. Rolling Stone with the more accurate headline: Supreme Court Rules 6-3 That the Planet Should Burn. Justice Elana Kagan with the dissent. “And let’s say the obvious: The stakes here are high. Yet the Court today prevents congressionally authorized agency action to curb power plants’ carbon dioxide emissions. The Court appoints it- self—instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decision- maker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening. Respectfully, I dissent.”

+ “Credit where due: the Supreme Court’s 6–3 ruling in West Virginia v. E.P.A. is the culmination of a five-decade effort to make sure that the federal government won’t threaten the business status quo. Lewis Powell’s famous memo, written in 1971, before he joined the Supreme Court—between the enactment of a strong Clean Air Act and a strong Clean Water Act, each with huge popular support—called on ‘businessmen’ to stand up to the tide of voices “from the college campus, the pulpit, the media, the intellectual and literary journals, the arts and sciences, and from politicians” calling for progressive change.” Bill McKibben in The New Yorker: The Supreme Court Tries to Overrule the Climate. “In essence, the ruling begins to strip away the power of agencies such as the E.P.A. to enforce policy: instead of allowing federal agencies to enforce, say, the Clean Air Act to clean the air, in this new dispensation, Congress would have to pass regulations that are much more explicit, as each new pollutant came to the fore … But, of course, the Court has also insured that ‘getting a clear statement from Congress’ to address our deepest problems is essentially impossible.”

+ NYT: The case is a crucial moment in the G.O.P. drive to tilt courts against climate action. (Um… congrats?) 

+ Historian Heather Cox Richardson: “The Supreme Court has gone rogue. We are in a full-blown Constitutional crisis. Congress must act. And we must pressure Congress to act, while it still can.” In the meantime, Earth is down 6-3 in the ninth inning.

+ In another ruling issued today, Clarence Thomas suggested Covid vaccines are derived from the cells of ‘aborted children.’ (They’re not. But oh well…)

Categories Deregulation, Environment, Republicans, Trump

Mercedes Schneider: The Coach’s Prayer Was Neither “Personal” Nor “Private”

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2022 //
59

Mercedes Schneider writes about Neil Gorsuch’s opinion on behalf of the Supreme Court’s extremist supermajority, upholding a coach’s right to engage in “personal” and “private” prayer.

The problem, she points out, is that his prayer was neither personal nor private.

Why did Gorsuch distort/PREVARICATE/LIE ABOUT the facts? My guess is that he is advancing an incremental plan by the Court’s extremists to restore prayer in the schools and overturn the 1962 decision that banned it (Engel v. Vitale).

Mercedes S. does something unusual but necessary. She goes beyond the Gorsuch opinion and reads the rulings against the coach in the appellate court, which show how Gorsuch simply ignored the facts of the case.

The appellate court rejected Coach Kennedy’s claim that he was engaged in personal, private prayer:

Below is the Kennedy backstory as detailed by Ninth Circuit Judge Milan Smith (beginning at page 9), who calls Appellant Kennedy’s supposed silent, private prayer narrative “false.” Smith begins by calling out a colleague on the bench, Judge O’Scannlain, for being taken in by it:

Unlike Odysseus, who was able to resist the seductive song of the Sirens by being tied to a mast and having his shipmates stop their ears with bees’ wax, our colleague, Judge O’Scannlain, appears to have succumbed to the Siren song of a deceitful narrative of this case spun by counsel for Appellant, to the effect that Joseph Kennedy, a Bremerton High School (BHS) football coach, was disciplined for holding silent, private prayers. That narrative is false.

Although I discuss the events in greater detail below, the reader should know the following basic truth ab initio: Kennedy was never disciplined by BHS for offering silent, private prayers. In fact, the record shows clearly that Kennedy initially offered silent, private prayers while on the job from the time he began working at BHS, but added an increasingly public and audible element to his prayers over the next approximately seven years before the Bremerton School District (BSD) leadership became aware that he had invited the players and a coach from another school to join him and his players in prayer at the fifty-yard line after the conclusion of a football game. He was disciplined only after BSD tried in vain to reach an accommodation with him after he (in a letter from his counsel) demanded the right to pray in the middle of the football field immediately after the conclusion of games while the players were on the field, and the crowd was still in the stands. He advertised in the area’s largest newspaper, and local and national TV stations, that he intended to defy BSD’s instructions not to publicly pray with his players while still on duty even though he said he might lose his job as a result.

As he said he would, Kennedy prayed out loud in the middle of the football field immediately after the conclusion of the first game after his lawyer’s letter was sent, surrounded by players, members of the opposing team, parents, a local politician, and members of the news media with television cameras recording the event, all of whom had been advised of Kennedy’s intended actions through the local news and social media.

She adds additional details, all of which demonstrate that Justice Gorsuch and his colleagues bought a fictional tale to advance their zeal to restore prayer in the schools.

Categories Accountability, Lies, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state

Rep. Boebert: “I’m Tired of This Separation of Church and State Junk”

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2022 //
129

Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Trump Republican from Colorado, apparently never took a class in civics, government or history and is an embarrassment to the Congress in which she serves. She won her primary on Tuesday. Boebert is a high school dropout who earned her GED in 2020, according to Wikipedia. She is a born-again Christian and a strident advocate of guns; she and her husband own a restaurant—Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado,where staff are encouraged to carry guns. From the following report, which appeared in the Washington Post, it is certain that she is ignorant about the Constitution and the Founding Fathers.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)…says she is “tired” of the U.S. separation of church and state, a long-standing concept stemming from a “stinking letter” penned by one of the Founding Fathers.

Speaking at a religious service Sunday in Colorado, she told worshipers: “The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it.”

She added: “I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter, and it means nothing like what they say it does.” Her comments were first reported by the Denver Post.

The Constitution’s First Amendment, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” has been widely interpreted to mean the separation of church and state — although the phrase is not explicitly used.


Gwen Calais-Haase, a political scientist at Harvard University, told The Washington Post that Boebert’s interpretation of the Constitution was “false, misleading and dangerous.” Calais-Haase said she was “extremely worried about the environment of misinformation that extremist politicians take advantage of for their own gains.”

Steven K. Green, a professor of law and affiliated professor of history and religious studies at Willamette University, agreed, saying, “Rep. Boebert is wrong on both matters.”


“While the phrase separation of church and state does not appear verbatim in the Constitution, neither do many accepted constitutional principles such as separation of powers, judicial review, executive privilege, or the right to marry and parental rights, no doubt rights that Rep. Boebert cherishes,” wrote Green, the author of “Separating Church and State: A History.”

Categories Colorado, Elections, Extremism, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Stupid

Thoughts on The Latest 1/6 Hearing

By dianeravitch
June 29, 2022 //
41

The testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to Mark Meadows (chief of staff to Trump) was riveting. If you didn’t see it, find it on the Internet and watch in full.

What she described was a conspiracy to overthrow the results of the election, a last-ditch effort to keep Trump in power by any means necessary.

Trump was speaking at the Ellipse and was disappointed by the crowd size (again!). When he realized that many of his supporters were excluded because they were carrying guns, he wanted the metal detectors removed so all his supporters could join the crowd because they weren’t gunning for him.

Trump expected to join an armed mob marching to the Capitol. That was the plan. But his own Secret Service guards wouldn’t let him go there because he might be in danger. He tried to grab the steering wheel of the SUV, but was thwarted by his personal guard, whom he tried to throttle. Personally, I regret that his security detail did not take him to the Capitol. Imagine the scene. The president in the midst of a mob, smashing windows, banging on the doors of the Senate Chamber, chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” perhaps putting his feet on Pelosi’s desk. If that had happened, not only would he have been disgraced in the eyes of the world, but he would have to abandon his phony protestations of innocence.

But his security detail protected him from himself.

Back at the White House, he watched the mob deface the Capitol and ignored pleas by friends like Kevin McCarthy, Jim Jordan, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, even Ivanka and Don Jr. to call off the marauders. He did nothing. Meadows did nothing.

Hutchinson went on to describe his reaction when Trump learned in December that Bill Barr had told the AP that the Justice Department had not found fraud of a size that would change the election result: he threw his plate against the wall of the White House private dining room, smearing the walls with catsup and the floor with broken porcelain. This was not the only time this happened, she testified under oath. Trump was also known to pull the tablecloth off the table, sending the food and dishes to the floor. (Was he trying that magic trick where the magician pulls the cloth and all the dishes remain in place?)

After hours of violence in the Capitol, Trump finally made a video calling on his supporters to go home. He said “I love you.”

Not long afterwards, his political allies ludicrously claimed that the invasion of the Capitol had been staged by Antifa. Why did Trump tell Antifa “I love you”? If they were Antifa, why did he want so badly to join them as they rioted? If they were Antifa, why didn’t he tell them to go home immediately? Why were so many Proud Boys and Oathkeepers and other militant crackpots leading the crowd if they were Antifa?

The corpulent man-baby was a sore loser. He preferred to destroy our system of government and unleash violence and mayhem in the Capitol rather than admit defeat. He sent a mob that he knew was armed to wreak maximum damage on the Natuon’s Capitol. He would have been satisfied to see his servile Vice-President Mike Pence hung by the mob, to see Nancy Pelosi beaten to death by the mob, to see Senators and members of the House brutalized, and to unleash the raging horde on all his political enemies rather than admit that he lost the election.

The Republican Party and its elected leaders has embraced the bully who has dragged them into the muck of rebellion, violence, and contempt for the Constitution. As Liz Cheney memorably said to her colleagues at the first meeting of the 1/6 Commission: “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”

Honor? When did we last hear that word mentioned in the same breath with the name of President 45? Will the Republican Party survive its servile embrace of the Malevolent Fool who would be King?

What, if any consequences, will there be for a man who attempted to overthrow the government and shred the Constitution? And for those who aided and abetted his treason?

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Republicans, Trump

Dana Milbank: If Texas Secedes, Good Riddance!

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2022 //
164

Dana Milbank is my favorite columnist at the Washington Post. In this column, he responds to the Texas GOP platform, which proposes that the state secede from the US and become a sovereign nation. Milbank says. “Good riddance!” As a native Texan, I’m ashamed for my state, ashamed that it’s been taken over by theocrats and dumbbells.

The Lone Star State does not have the best track record as a sovereign power. The Republic of Texas survived only 10 years from independence to annexation by the United States in 1845. Texas seceded during the Civil War — and, with the rest of the Confederacy, was crushed.


But, as the saying goes: If at first you don’t secede, try, try again. The Texas GOP now wants the state to vote on declaring independence.


And the United States should let Texas go! Better yet, let’s offer Texas a severance package that includes Oklahoma to sweeten secession — the Sooner the better.

Over the weekend, while many Americans were celebrating the 167th anniversary of Juneteenth (when Union Gen. Gordon Granger, in Galveston, Tex., delivered the order abolishing slavery) the Texas Republican Party voted on a platform declaring that federal laws it dislikes “should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified.”


The proposed platform (it’s expected to be approved when votes are tallied) adds: “Texas retains the right to secede from the United States, and the Texas Legislature should be called upon to pass a referendum consistent thereto.” It wants the secession referendum “in the 2023 general election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.”


Yee-haw!


Of course, protections would have to be negotiated for parts of Texas that wish to remain on Team Normal. Dallas, Houston, Austin, San Antonio and parts of South Texas would remain in the United States, and they will need guaranteed safe passage to New Orleans or Santa Fe, along with regular airlifts of sustainable produce, accurate textbooks and contraceptives.

But consider the benefits to the rest of the country: Two fewer Republican senators, two dozen fewer Republican members of the House, annual savings of $83 billion in defense funds that Texas gets. And the best reason? The Texas GOP has so little regard for the Constitution that it is calling for a “Convention of the States” to effectively rewrite it — and so little regard for the United States that it wishes to leave.


In democracy’s place, the Republican Party, which enjoys one-party rule in Texas, is effectively proposing a church state. If you liked Crusader states and Muslim caliphates, you’ll love the Confederate Theocracy of Texas.


The Texas GOP platform gives us a good idea what such a paradise for Christian nationalists would look like. Texas would officially declare that “homosexuality is an abnormal lifestyle choice.” It would redefine marriage as a “covenant only between one biological man and one biological woman,” and it would “nullify” any court rulings to the contrary. (The gay Log Cabin Republicans were banned from setting up a booth at the convention.) It would fill schools with “prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments” but ban “the teaching of sex education.” It would abolish all abortions and require students to “learn about the Humanity of the Preborn Child.”


The Texas Theocracy, which maintains that President Biden “was not legitimately elected,” would keep only traces of democracy. It wants the Voting Rights Act of 1965 “repealed,” and it would rewrite the state constitution to empower minority rule by small, rural (and White) counties. It would rescind voters’ right to elect senators and the Constitution’s guarantee of birthright citizenship.

The Texas Theocracy would probably be broke; it wants to abolish the federal income tax, “Axe the Property Tax” and do away with the estate tax and various business taxes. Yet it is planning a hawkish foreign policy! The platform argues that Texas is currently “under an active invasion” and should take “any and all appropriate measures the sovereign state defines as necessary to defend” itself. It imagines attacks by a “One World Government, or The Great Reset” — an internet-born conspiracy belief — and proposes “withdrawal from the current United Nations.” The Theocracy would put the “wild” back in the West, abolishing the minimum wage, environmental and banking regulations, and “red-flag” laws or waiting periods to prevent dangerous people from buying guns.

Above all, the Confederate Theocracy of Texas would be defined by thought police. It would penalize “woke corporations” and businesses that disagree with the theocracy over abortion, race, trans rights and the “inalienable right to refuse vaccination.”

Government programs would be stripped of “education involving race.” Evolution and climate change “shall be taught as challengeable scientific theories subject to change.” There would be a “complete repeal of the hate crime laws.” The Texas Revolution “shall not be ‘reimagined’” in a way the theocracy finds “disrespectful.” Confederate monuments “shall be protected,” “plaques honoring the Confederate widows” restored, and lessons on “the tyrannical history of socialism” required.

In their platform, the Texas Republicans invoked “God” or the “Creator” 18 times and “sovereignty” or sovereign power 24 times. And the word “democracy”? Only once — in reference to China.

I hope you can read the comments. Readers suggest other states that should secede with Texas.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Guns, Ignorance, Lies, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Texas, Trump

Texas: GOP Rejects Democracy, Embraces Theocracy

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2022 //
148

Dean Obeidallah, a regular contributor to CNN, describes the Texas GOP’s defiant rejection of democracy. In an earlier post, I pointed out that the state convention booed Senator Jon Cornyn for daring to negotiate a bipartisan gun control deal (which did not include any of President Biden’s demands). That was the mildest of their actions.

He writes:

CNN) – Disturbing video from the Texas Republican Convention this weekend shows convention-goers mocking GOP Rep. Dan Crenshaw — a Navy SEAL veteran who lost his right eye to a bomb in Afghanistan — with the term “eye patch McCain.”

Fox News’ Tucker Carlson coined the derisive nickname after the Texas lawmaker dared to express support for beleaguered Ukraine following Russia’s barbaric attack on it.

But apparently even more heinous in the eyes of some attendees is that Crenshaw rejected former President Donald Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was stolen. One man wearing a red “Make America Great Again” hat can be seen yelling in an online video, “Dan Crenshaw is a traitor!” and “He needs to be hung for treason!”

As despicable as the behavior toward Crenshaw was, even more alarming were the actions taken by the Texas GOP and the convention’s 5,000-plus delegates.

The gathering rejected the outcome of a democratic election, supported bigotry toward the LGBTQ community and imposed far-right religious beliefs on others by seeking to have them enshrined into law. And that wasn’t half of it.

In fact, the convention showed us one thing: Texas Republicans are no longer hiding their extremism. Instead, they are openly embracing it.

Even before the opening gavel, they gave us a glimpse of the party’s extremism in the Lone Star State by banning the Log Cabin Republicans from setting up a booth at the convention.

Texas Republican Party Chairman Matt Rinaldi cast the deciding vote on the move to bar the group that has advocated for LGBTQ Republicans for decades. “I think it’s inappropriate given the state of our nation right now for us to play sexual identity politics,” Rinaldi told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Once it formally got underway, the convention took a number of appalling and un-American actions. First, delegates approved a measure declaring that President Joe Biden “was not legitimately elected.” In short, the Texas GOP — like Trump himself — is embracing a lie because it’s unhappy with the election results. Put more bluntly, the Texas GOP voted to reject American democracy.

Republican delegates also booed John Cornyn, the senior US senator from Texas, at the convention Friday because of the Republican lawmaker’s role leading negotiations to reach a Senate deal on a bill to stem gun violence. Those legislative efforts follow last month’s horrific shooting that claimed the lives of 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas.

The platform approved at the convention called for repealing or nullifying gun laws already in place, such as the Gun Control Act of 1968, which prevents felons and other dangerous people from being able to purchase a gun legally. Apparently, the Texas GOP believes that even dangerous people should have a constitutionally protected right to buy a gun.

The Texas GOP platform also embraced ramping up anti-abortion rhetoric in public schools. For example, the platform states that “Texas students should learn about the Humanity of the Preborn Child, including … that life begins at fertilization.” It even seeks to force students to watch “a live ultrasound” and for high-schoolers to read an anti-abortion booklet that critics say “includes scientifically unsupported claims and shames women seeking abortion care,” according to The Texas Tribune.

It sounds like the curriculum that you might find in a theocratic government such as the Taliban — not one in the United States funded by taxpayer dollars. But the GOP in large swaths of this country is no longer hesitant to support laws to impose its religious beliefs — as we see with measures some Republicans champion that would totally ban abortion. The GOP convention’s document additionally urges officials “not to infringe on Texas school students’ and staffs’ rights to pray and engage in religious speech.”

The Texas GOP platform also does its best to demonize those in the transgender community. It describes transgender people as suffering from “a genuine and extremely rare mental health condition.” And it sees sexual reassignment surgery as a form of medical malpractice.

The platform takes aim at gay Americans as well with the statement that homosexuality is “an abnormal lifestyle choice.” Instructively, the Texas GOP platform did not include such language in 2018 and 2020.

This platform gives us a glimpse into the views of the Republican base on key issues that in turn will pressure GOP elected officials in Texas — and possibly beyond the state — to adopt similarly extreme positions or run the risk of a primary challenge from an even more extreme Republican.

What caused this move to the far right? Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston, told The Texas Tribune about the state GOP’s new extreme platform, “Donald Trump radicalized the party and accelerated the demands from the base.” He added alarmingly, “There simply aren’t limits now on what the base might ask for.”

I agree — in part. I don’t think Trump radicalized the base — rather he simply gave people permission to be who they always wanted to be.

But I agree with Rottinghaus that there are now no limits for what the GOP base might seek — be it rejecting election results it doesn’t agree with to enacting more laws based on extreme religious beliefs. And that should deeply alarm every American who wants to live in a democratic republic.

The convention also issued a call to repeal the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which guaranteed the right to vote for every citizen of voting age.

The only thing the Texas GOP neglected to do was pass a resolution congratulating the shooter at Uvalde for exercising his “God-given right” to use his AR15 as he saw fit.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Guns, Ignorance, Politics, Republicans, Trump

Texas GOP Outraged that Sen. Cornyn Negotiated Gun Control Deal

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2022 //
65

Texas Senator Jon Cornyn returned to Texas, after leading bipartisan talks on a weak gun control bill, only to discover that his fellow Republicans were furious at him for participating in any deal

WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. John Cornyn was back in Texas Friday without a final bipartisan gun bill and set to address a state GOP party whose members are furious with him for working with Democrats on reforms they say will violate their “God given rights.”

Cornyn left D.C. on Thursday evening, telling reporters that “it’s fish or cut bait at this point” on the legislation after he and other negotiators spent days ironing out details behind the scenes. But they were unable to reach a final agreement as they ran up against a self-imposed deadline to get the bill written this week.

“Indecision and delay jeopardize the likelihood of a bill because you can’t write what is undecided and without a bill there is nothing to vote on,” Cornyn tweeted. “We are still talking and the clock is ticking…”

Meanwhile, committee members hashing out the Texas GOP platform at its biennialconvention in Houston advanced a resolutionThursday night rejecting the gun deal in its current form and rebuking 10 Republicans who have publicly supported it.

“All gun control is a violation of the Second Amendment,” the resolution says.

When it came Senator Cornyn’s turn to speak at the state GOP convention, he was booed repeatedly, amid shouts of “no gun control.”

Clearly, the Texas GOP wants no limits whatever on the right of any individual to buy a gun of any kind, any size, any caliber, no matter whether they are deranged or have a criminal background or are terrorists.

Categories Guns, Republicans, Texas

Michael Gerson: The Pathetic Response of The GOP to the 1/6 Hearings

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2022 //
23

Michael Gerson, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, describes the response of Republicans to the first day of public hearings of the January 6 commission:

The Jan. 6 committee’s riveting televised opening night might not have converted the pro-Trump revisionists, but it has left them without excuses. The evidence is overwhelming that a sitting president gathered a violent mob and charged it with intimidating members of Congress and his own vice president into illegally reversing the outcome of a presidential election on the basis of an obvious lie.

There is only one narrative about Jan. 6 that history will accept: the evidence meticulously gathered and presented by the House select committee.

In some ways, pressing the case against former president Donald Trump is not hard, because he confirms its general outlines. He still seems to regard the riot as the highest expression of MAGA loyalty to his person. He still insists he should be reinstated as president. He still seems to believe then-Vice President Mike Pence was a weak-kneed traitor for refusing to overturn the constitutional order. Because Trump can’t admit error, he often effectively admits guilt.

The response of congressional Republican leaders to Thursday’s hearing — that it is more important to focus on inflation than sedition — has demonstrated their vast political and moral shallowness. The juxtaposition of testimony by U.S. Capitol Police officer Caroline Edwards (“I was slipping in people’s blood”) and a tweet from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee account (“All. Old. News.”) was telling.

One imagines a 20-something GOP staffer straining (and failing) to be clever. The contrast between the police officer’s sacrifice and the tweeter’s infantile partisanship raises some questions: Is anyone teaching young Republicans that public service can be honorable and costly? Why doesn’t some mature public official shake these shills and urge silence in the presence of patriotic virtues they don’t possess?

Categories Democracy, Lies, Republicans, Trump

The Moral Collapse of Today’s Republican Party

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2022 //
75

Peter Wehner, once a loyal and very conservative Republican, now excoriates the moral collapse of the GOP.

He writes in The Atlantic:

The sheer scale of Donald Trump’s depravity is unmatched in the history of the American presidency, and the Republican Party—the self-described party of law and order and “constitutional conservatives,” of morality and traditional values, of patriotism and Lee Greenwood songs—made it possible. It gave Trump cover when he needed it. It attacked his critics when he demanded it. It embraced his nihilistic ethic. It amplified his lies. When House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy—a man who for a few fleeting hours after the January 6 insurrection dared to speak critically of Donald Trump—traveled to Mar-a-Lago a few days later to kiss his ring, it was an act of self-abasement that was representative of his party, his morally desolate party.

Categories Accountability, Hypocrisy, Lies, Republicans, Trump

The January 6 Committee: Facts vs. Lies

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2022 //
282

I watched the hearings from start to finish. They were gripping. The first fact that was established was that the people closest to Trump told him that he had lost the election. His Attorney General William Barr told Trump in no uncertain terms that his claims that the election was stolen were “bullshit.” The outcome was not affected by election fraud, Barr said. Barr said his refusal to accept the result was hurting the country. Ivanka testified that she believed Bill Barr.

But unlike every other American president, Trump refused to admit he lost. He listened to Rudy Guiliani, Sidney Powell, and Michael Flynn, who encouraged his fantasy that he could overturn the election. His advisors tried to separate him from the loonies, but they were unsuccessful.

He and his lawyers filed 60+ lawsuits alleging fraud, but all of them failed because of lack of evidence.

Trump encouraged his zealous MAGA followers to believe that the election was rigged and stolen. His extremist followers—the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers—were eager to help. On December 19, after meeting with Guiliani, Powell, and Flynn, he tweeted to his followers to come to DC on January 6, the day the election results were to be certified. He predicted “it will be wild.” On January 5, Steve Bannon said that on the following day, “All hell will break loose.”

The Proud Boys and the Oath keepers were there, as were thousands of other MAGA zealots. Trump encouraged his followers to March on the Capitol. He said that everything hinges on Mike Pence “doing the right thing,” I.e. refusing to accept the results from states where the votes were close.

When the mob attacked the Capitol, they chanted “Hang Mike Pence.” They sought Nancy Pelosi. No one knows what they would have done had they broken into the chambers while members of Congress were present.

The committee showed video of the insurrection that had not been seen before. It was a violent and wild scene, with men beating police officers repeatedly, using clubs and even flag poles as weapons. It was a scene of carnage. The video was powerful and shocking. As the video ended, Trump’s voice was superimposed, saying something like “There was a lot of love that day.” But the scene of his MAGA buddies pummeling and brutalizing cops was not loving.

Through the hours in which the mob stormed the Capitol, Trump refused to call for help. He did not call out the National Guard or the Secretary of Defense or Homeland Security. Mike Pence, from his secret location, called desperately for help. So did other Republican members of Congress. But it was hours before reinforcements arrived.

Just for the hell of it, when the hearing was over, I turned on FOX News. It was sickening. Laura Ingraham ridiculed Liz Cheney and said she was interminable and boring. No mention of the evidence of Trump’s lies and inaction. Most outrageous was Ingraham’s spin: Our democracy was never at risk. The Democrats and traitor Cheney exaggerated, she lied. No, democracy was never at risk. So what if hundreds and thousands of violent insurrectionists tried to stop the peaceful transfer of power, a tradition that began with George Washington. So what if the Trump mob beat up the law officers. So what if one of the police died of a stroke and four committed suicide.

What if the cops had not held the mob out as long as they did? What if they had seized Pence, Pelosi, Schiff, Raskin and others they hated?

No threat to our democracy? How could Laura Ingraham lie so egregiously with a straight face?

Trump issued a statement about the blood assault on the seat of the US government:

“January 6th was not simply a protest, it represented the greatest movement in the history of our Country to Make America Great Again,” he wrote in a statement.

Dana Milbank wrote this after watching the hearings last night:

Liz Cheney was addressing her fellow Republicans. But more than that, she was speaking to posterity.
“I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible,” she said at Thursday night’s opening hearing of the Jan. 6 House select committee. “There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.”


The Wyoming congresswoman, daughter of the former vice president, and vice chair of the committee, outlined for the country, and for history, two contrasting stories about the bloody insurrection.

One was a tale of honor and duty. Officials in the Justice Department and White House, to a greater extent than was previously known, confronted Trump about his election lies and repeatedly threatened to resign if he followed through with his darkest impulses.

The other was a tale of brutality and deceit by Trump and a small band of loyalists. They knew he had lost, and yet, as Cheney put it, “Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated, seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.”

In perhaps the most chilling moment of the hearing, Cheney spoke of former White House officials’ testimony about Trump’s bloodthirstiness toward his own vice president. “Aware of the rioters’ chants to hang Mike Pence, the president responded with this sentiment, quote, ‘Maybe our supporters have the right idea.’ Mike Pence, quote, ‘deserves it.’ ”

I never thought I would say this but it’s true: Mike Pence saved our democracy by refusing to follow Trump’s demand to hand him the election that he lost. Pence followed the Constitution and foiled the coup.

And after watching the hearings, I sent $100 to Liz Cheney’s re-election campaign.

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Categories Accountability, Corruption, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Democrats, Lies, Republicans, Trump
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