President Biden Should Address the Nation

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I write to urge Joe Biden, President of the United States, to appear on national television and address the nation regarding the collapse of the House of Representatives as a functioning legislative body.

The House of Representatives is essential to the development and passage of legislation that is essential to national security, financing the government, and a multitude of political, economic, and social services on which the country, and many parts of the world, depend. It is now clear that the House as a functional half of the Legislative third of the Constitution’s three central elements is no longer functional as a small minority of elected officials, most of whom supported the overthrow of the government on January 6, 2021, now answer to an unelected person who has made clear his determination to return to the presidency and dismantle the federal government.

Most “educated” Americans are aware that the U.S. Constitution sets up a tripartite arrangement of government authority such that each of the three parts operates as a check against the others. The constitutional Framers did not, however, understand the role that political parties would come to play within that system.

As best we can tell from the historical records, the Framers believed the checks and balances established in the Constitution among the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches would over the long haul produce outcomes that reflected the ‘will of the people.’ The basic idea was that the will of the majority would control outcomes, but protections for the minority position were built in as well, especially through the series of amendments in the Bill of Rights and others later.

Part of the success was dependent upon the Fourth Estate – the free press that was watching everything and sharing factual information (including information the politicians wanted to keep secret) to help the voters to exercise their ultimate control over who was placed in positions of power in the tripartite system.

It was in many ways a brilliant arrangement that has stood the test of time most of the time, including even the development of political parties. It has withstood demagoguery, treachery, treason, and, yes, even ignorance. It has so far withstood the emergence of the Fifth Estate, defined roughly as “groupings of outlier viewpoints in contemporary society … most associated with bloggers, journalists publishing in non-mainstream media outlets, and the social media.”https://tinyurl.com/4e7bsxjv

To be sure there are cracks in the edifice, but cracks have appeared, and been filled, many times since the ratification in 1787. The Civil War comes to mind, among others. The system has flaws, of course; it is a complex and novel system created by humans who had limited knowledge of science and who were focused on creating a national legal regime that would never again depend upon an autocrat, a king or king-like person, as ruler. The resulting government “of the people, by the people, and for the people” has performed miracles and also perpetrated outrages such as the near-extermination of the Indigenous Tribes that occupied the contingent for centuries before Europeans discovered it. The new system also failed to deal effectively with slavery and paid a dear price for that mistake. Again, the Civil War leaps to mind. We are still plagued with the consequences of the powerful tribalism that determines so much of our national and local policy today. Whether and how we can resolve those issues is beyond my understanding.

Now, however, a new and existentially dangerous phenomenon has emerged. The evidence is everywhere, all day every day, as the news media perpetuate through breathless coverage every inane and insane utterance from the mouth of Donald Trump and the politicians who sustain him. The evidence also may be found in the stunning reality of Trump’s indictments in four cases:

As of March 2024, Donald Trump has been personally charged with 88 criminal offenses in four criminal cases. This total reflects charges related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, election interference in Georgia, falsifying business records in New York, and mishandling classified records after leaving the presidency. Donald Trump is the first former president in U.S. history to be criminally indicted.https://tinyurl.com/5ekhak9c

Trump is now acting as dictator to the House of Representatives whose far-right wing members actively support his every wish. The current Speaker has decided that obeying Trump is his most important responsibility. Thus, matters of national security such as aid to Ukraine will not be voted on because Trump wants to help Vladimir Putin subjugate Ukraine in preparation for Russia’s moving against NATO countries whom Trump will also undermine.

It is the privilege, of course, for every member of Congress to vote as he/she chooses, if the constituents are willing to accept those decisions. But voting against something is far different than refusing to hold a vote at all. Speaker Johnson, doing the expressed will of Donald Trump, has refused to bring Ukraine aid legislation to a vote despite the opinion of all responsible U.S. national security and military authorities that such aid is now critical to Ukraine’s ability to withstand the Russian onslaught.

I am reminded of the decisions made by the United States during the early phases of World War II when Jewish refugees were turned away from our shores, sent back to be slaughtered by the Germans.

Donald Trump has never been elected to the House of Representatives but is now essentially in charge of its agenda. Action of the U.S. Congress to pass legislation requires the participation of the House as well as the Senate. Speaker Johnson has subordinated himself and the rest of the House to the will of Donald Trump, which is, I suggest, a blatant violation of Johnson’s oath of office:

I, AB, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

And there is this:

5 U.S. Code § 7311 – Loyalty and striking.

An individual may not accept or hold a position in the Government of the United States … if he—

(1) advocates the overthrow of our constitutional form of government;

(2) is a member of an organization that he knows advocates the overthrow of our constitutional form of government;

(3) participates in a strike, or asserts the right to strike, against the Government of the United States ….

There can be no serious argument that Russia is not an enemy of the United States. The actions, or inactions, of the Speaker and those who support him are, in my judgment, clear acts of treason against the United States.

In researching this post, I also found this:

The Speaker’s role as presiding officer is an impartial one, and his rulings serve to protect the rights of the minority.

[House Practice: A Guide to the Rules, Precedents and Procedures of the House; Chapter 34. Office of the Speaker, U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

That Guide [citations omitted] also contains these commands:

Many matters have been held to be beyond the scope of the Speaker’s responsibility under the rules. The Speaker does not:

Construe the legislative or legal effect of a pending measure   or comment on the merits thereof.

 Respond to hypothetical questions, render anticipatory rulings, or decide a question not directly presented by the  proceedings.

 Pass on the constitutional powers of the House, the constitutionality of House rules, or the constitutionality of  amendments offered to pending bills.

 Resolve questions on the consistency of an amendment with the measure to which it is offered, or with an amendment that already has been adopted, or on the consistency of proposed action with other acts of the House.

 Rule on the sufficiency or effect of committee reports or whether the committee has followed instructions.

 Rule on the propriety or expediency of a proposed course of action.  Construe the consequences of a pending vote.

You can form your own judgment whether the refusal to permit votes, and thereby deprive the House of its constitutional role in the government, is consistent with all those directives. No doubt Republicans will bellow that Democratic speakers have also violated these rules. If so, they were wrong too, but right now the problem is Speaker Johnson and his lord and master, Donald Trump.

It is time for President Biden to address this treachery to the nation. The government of the United States cannot function if the House simply refuses to take up critical legislation at the will of an unelected former president and a small minority of extremist legislators. It is time, past time, to call the question on these traitors.

Supreme Court Sells Out to Trump in Insurrection Case

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Earlier today, the United States Supreme Court denied Trump’s request to stay the judgment of the DC Circuit that his claim of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution be stayed, while still taking review of the case through a procedural maneuver suggested as a fall-back by Special Counsel Jack Smith.

The Court’s schedule for briefing and argument of the case is ludicrous in light of what has gone before. The case has been briefed and argued to death in the lower courts, and thoroughly developed decisions rendered. There is no justification for a briefing and argument schedule taking the case to the week of April 22, 2024, almost two months further into the presidential election schedule.

Trump has until March 19, to file his brief, which will almost certainly be a mere reprise of arguments and citations already presented to and rejected by the DC District Court and the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. The Special Counsel is given three weeks (to respond, a period vastly longer that he is likely to require, given what has gone before, but a faster reply will not change the argument date. Oral argument will occur, if the schedule holds, a week after Trump’s reply brief.

Trump likely will find some excuse to whine about the schedule and seek to extend it.

The Court may then take weeks more, perhaps longer, to decide the case. The order is not signed and there is no indication that any justice dissented.

Unbelievable.

If Trump Is Elected in 2024

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I expect to have much to say about this as time goes on, especially if, as seems more likely each day, Trump remains on all the state ballots and is not tried and convicted of any of his multitude of felonies before the election. For now, I will just list some of what is being reported as the Trump plan for his second term as President. http://tinyurl.com/4bxpv8mf

Based on reporting by people in a position to know, Trump will:

  1. Create an “enemies list” of people he plans to punish for their opposition to him.
  2. Invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.

This effort is being led by Jeffrey Clark, the lawyer who was working with Trump to use the Department of Justice to overturn the 2020 election by, among other things, pressing state officials to submit phony certificates to the electoral college. He is one of six unnamed co-conspirators in the federal election interference case and has been charged in Georgia with violating the state anti-racketeering law and attempting to create a false statement regarding the 2020 election. How Clark retains his license to practice law remains a mystery.

  1. Direct the Justice Department to investigate and punish former officials and allies who were critical of his time in office, including his former chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and former attorney general William P. Barr, ex-attorney Ty Cobb and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley.
  2. Order the prosecution of officials at the FBI and Justice Department who resist him.
  3. Appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family.
  4. “Trump has told advisers that he is looking for lawyers who are loyal to him to serve in a second term — complaining about his White House Counsel’s Office unwillingness to go along with some of his ideas in his first term or help him in his bid to overturn his 2020 election defeat.”
  5. “Trump’s core group of West Wing advisers for a second term is widely expected to include Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump’s hard-line immigration policies including family separation.”
  6. Alumni have also saved lists of … career officers they viewed as uncooperative and would seek to fire based on an executive order to weaken civil service protections.

“… a former Office of Personnel Management chief of staff said, “We don’t want careerists, we don’t want people here who are opportunists,” he said. “We want conservative warriors.”

  1. “Trump declared on Truth Social (on Veterans Day weekend, no less) that “the radical left thugs … live like vermin within the confines of our country.” He repeated the invective during an appearance in New Hampshire.” http://tinyurl.com/2brrsar8

As Forbes pointed out, “The former president’s incendiary rhetoric invokes a term frequently used by Nazis to dehumanize Jews, including a 1939 quote attributed to Hitler: ‘This vermin must be destroyed. The Jews are our sworn enemies.’”

  1. The New York Times reportedthat Trump “is planning an extreme expansion of his first-term crackdown on immigration if he returns to power in 2025 — including preparing to round up undocumented people already in the United States on a vast scale and detain them in sprawling camps while they wait to be expelled.” Likewise, The Post reported on “specific plans for using the federal government to punish critics and opponents should he win a second term, with the former president naming individuals he wants to investigate or prosecute and his associates drafting plans to potentially invoke the Insurrection Act on his first day in office to allow him to deploy the military against civil demonstrations.”
  2. The Post just days later  reported on Trump’s Univision appearance in which he uttered a bone-chilling threat: “If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business,” Trump said. “They’d be out of the election.”
  3. Axios reported that Trump allies “are pre-screening the ideologies of thousands of potentialfoot soldiers, as part of an unprecedented operation to centralize and expand his power at every level of the U.S. government if he wins in 2024.” The report added: “Hundreds of people are spending tens of millions of dollars to install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents.”
  4. Trump will terminate aid to Ukraine and try to force that country to yield to Russia’s imperialist demands to take over the country. Trump will likely also eviscerate NATO, leaving its constituent countries vulnerable to Russian attack.

Just this weekend, Trump said “if the threatened country was in arrears on its NATO dues, he and the United States would not provide protection. For emphasis, Trump said that — on the contrary — he would “encourage” the aggressor to do “whatever the hell they want.”http://tinyurl.com/yc6ysv3d

In practice, the MAGA gang’s plans will look to end the independence of the civil service, long a bedrock of the stability and coherence of federal policy across both Democratic and Republican administrations.

Equally problematic is the current challenge to the power/authority of independent federal agencies to interpret federal statutory ambiguities under the doctrine known as Chevron Deference. MAGA Republicans want to end Chevron Deference so that if Congress has been ambiguous in legislation or failed to explain every aspect of what the legislation requires, those ambiguities and failures cannot be cured by the responsible agencies, regardless of the consequences. Given the paralysis of the Congress arising from the MAGA Republicans demand that their views control every legislative outcome, the end of Chevron Deference would be catastrophic for the functioning of the federal government.

The bottom line: the return of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2024 will lead directly and immediately to the end of democracy as the United States has known it since the Founding. The United States will become a dependency of Russia, a tool of Vladimir Putin whom Trump admires above all other world leaders.

The MAGA Republicans who have convinced themselves Trump cares about them will quickly, but too late, discover, that it was all a ruse.

 

Stefanik Admits She Would Sabotage the Constitution

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While the media have lost their minds over the gratuitous political hit job by the Special Counsel investigating President Biden’s possession of confidential government documents, the story about Elise Stefanik’s repudiation of her oath of office has all but disappeared from CNN.com where reports indicate her remark was made.

The story is that Stefanik said she would not have done what VP Pence did on January 6 – she admitted she would not have certified the election of Joe Biden. She declared this despite the fact that virtually all legal scholars worthy of the name agree that refusing to certify would have violated the Constitution.

Stefanik has thus admitted she is unfit for office. She is a fascist who places submission to the Great Leader Trump ahead of her fealty to the Constitution. Such a person cannot be trusted to honor her oath of office or to act in the public interest.

Stefanik’s rejection of the Constitution to seek the favor of Donald Trump is consistent with some other behavior related to the January 6 insurrection incited by Trump. In the moment, Stefanik posted on Twitter:

Then, Stefanik, revealing her true colors, said that the DOJ probes into those involved were “baseless witch hunt investigations.” Stefanik has also called those convicted and jailed for their actions “hostages.” http://tinyurl.com/mry7fkkc

In a typical Stefanik response, she had an advisor attack Liz Cheney for pointing out the flip-flop, accusing Cheney of “having a mental breakdown looking at archives of years old press releases.” The response was a pathetic deflection but not a response to the substance of the fact that Stefanik has changed her position 100 percent to align with Trump’s preposterous claim that the entire January 6 episode was just a peaceful demonstration by concerned citizens.

When challenged repeatedly to address her turnaround, Stefanik deflected to rant about other issues and other aspects of her speech, raving about Hunter Biden and repeating Republican talking points divorced from reality. http://tinyurl.com/49dw7dky

Stefanik has made clear she cares nothing about the truth and has no sense of responsibility to follow oaths she takes as a public official. Stefanik is an enemy of the United States, a traitor to its values as reflected in the Constitution to rejecting her obligations to the Constitution are not protected by the Speech and Debate Clause of Article I, Section 6.

The oath of office taken by Congressional representatives is clear:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.

Stefanik has now rejected that oath and on that basis alone should be removed from Congress and barred from any future ballots for federal office.

Merrick Garland Should Resign

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Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Robert K. Hur to investigate and determine whether to prosecute President Biden for retaining in an unsecured manner confidential government documents during periods when he was not Vice President or President of the United States.

Mr. Hur is a very smart man with great intellectual and experiential credentials. The report issued is remarkable in its level of detail and thoroughness with which the investigation was conducted. I believe it reached the clearly correct conclusion in declining prosecution of Mr. Biden and his “ghostwriter” to whom some confidential information was provided during the writing of Mr. Biden’s books.

The problem traces to the fact that Mr. Hur was a Trump appointee during his prior service as the United States Attorney for Maryland, a position in which he served from 2018 to 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K._Hur Why Garland chose him to lead the investigation of President Biden will probably remain a mystery.

What is clear is that Mr. Hur, in deciding that the evidence did not warrant prosecution, went out of his way to psychoanalyze Biden’s thought/emotional processes and, in the end, in an action reminiscent of James Comey’s decision to violate DOJ policy and knife Hillary Clinton in the back on the eve of the 2016 election, to comment on how Biden would come across in front of a jury. The basic idea was to present Biden as a kindly old man with a failing memory who would be seen as sympathetic by some or all the jurors who would, out of sympathy, acquit him of any criminal charges.

These comments were not necessary to the ultimate conclusions of the report. The evidence alone, combined with the historical practices of prior presidents and vice presidents, including the conservative icon, Ronald Reagan in particular, and the history of non-prosecution by DOJ, were sufficient to support the non-prosecution conclusion. But Mr. Hur took the opportunity to plunge a knife in Biden’s back anyway, suggesting that he had, deliberately or otherwise, presented himself as an “historic figure” and a “man of presidential timber” but also a man whose memory was “significantly limited” with “limited precision and recall” of the details of events many years in the past.

At trial, the report found, “Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.” Thus, the report concluded, it would be “difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties-of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

Given the thoroughness of the document investigation, reported in hundreds of pages of intricate details, including photos of document containers and of Biden in meetings with various folders and documents present at his place (shocking!), the absence of evidence that any of the secret materials were ever disclosed to anyone from a foreign power or otherwise seen by anyone except the ghostwriter assisting Biden in preparing his book manuscripts, the evidence and the evidence alone was a sufficient basis for the declination to prosecute. Indeed, the report makes this point repeatedly. The observations about Biden’s view of himself in history and the suggestion that he would appear to a criminal jury as a kindly doddering old man were gratuitous and completely unnecessary to the critical findings of the investigation.

Mr. Hur cannot possibly be unaware of the hypocritical claims being relentlessly made by Republican supporters of Donald Trump, and by Trump himself, that President Biden is “over the hill” and not mentally competent to serve another term as President. Yet Hur volunteered both his psychoanalysis of what was motivating Biden through his long years of public service and his commentary about how Biden would likely appear to a jury if prosecuted, which, of course, the report found unjustified.

I acknowledge that Hur drew a sharp distinction between President Biden’s response to the document investigation – full and immediate cooperation – with that of Donald Trump – resistance, lies, obstruction”

Most notably, after being given multiple chances to return classified documents and avoid prosecution, Mr. Trump allegedly did the opposite. According to the indictment, he not only refused to return the documents for many months, but he also obstructed justice by enlisting others to destroy evidence and then to lie about it. In contrast, Mr. Biden turned in classified documents to the National Archives and the Department of Justice, consented to the search of multiple locations including his homes, sat for a voluntary interview. and in other ways cooperated with the investigation.

That brief admission that Biden handled the investigation appropriately in contrast to Donald Trump does not overcome the gratuitous and disingenuous undermining of Biden, given Hur’s presumptive awareness of the currency of the issue in the political arena.

In the circumstances, Mr. Hur’s treatment of Biden’s alleged mental state is grotesquely political. The inclusion of those observations in the report will play out however it does. But Merrick Garland appointed him and enabled this repeat of the Comey experience to undermine another Democratic candidate for president.

Garland bears the ultimate responsibility for this situation and should resign now. He permitted Hur to “weaponize” the investigation into a political attack on President Biden that is enabling paroxysmal enthusiasm among the fascists supporting Trump, characterized as a “political nightmare” and “political disaster” by USAToday. http://tinyurl.com/57hzncsh

Garland diddled around with the Trump insurrection case, resulting in delays that may lead to the 2024 election being held before Trump is tried for public conduct in January 2021, an unconscionable failure. Now this.

It’s time for a new Attorney General.

 

 

 

One Step Closer to Justice

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Today, finally, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, released its opinion unanimously rejecting all of Donald Trump’s claims that he is immune from criminal prosecution for the four crimes charged in the indictment for his attempt to overthrow the government by overturning the 2020 election he lost. The opinion may be read at https://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf

The decision is comprehensive and definitive in every respect. The operative sections are relatively short and succinct, so I will not belabor them with futher analysis. Read it for yourself.

Why it took this long to issue will remain a mystery but the stage is now set for final review by the Supreme Court. That review may be moot since the Court will hear oral argument on February 8 at 10 AM on the Colorado ballot case and could decide, for practical purposes, all the controlling issues in that case. You may listen to the oral argument in the Supreme Court here: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/listen-live-supreme-court-hears-case-to-decide-if-trump-is-eligible-to-run-for-president

… A Man Unacquainted With Honor, Courage, And Character ….

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Writers are often advised to begin their work with a powerful sentence that will be remembered. Some of those come readily to mind. Charles Dickens gave us an entire paragraph:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way….

Herman Melville was more succinct. The first line of the novel’s story is:

Call me Ismael.

Whether the first paragraph of the Prologue in Liz Cheney’s Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning is of equal standing, I leave to the judgment of others:

This is the story of the moment when American democracy began to unravel. It is the story of the men and women who fought to save it, and of the enablers and collaborators whose actions ensured the threat would grow and metastasize. It is the story of the most dangerous man ever to inhabit the Oval Office, and of the many steps he took to subvert our Constitution.

The title to this post is found near the end of Cheney’s book. The full paragraph:

One leader ceding power to the next, gracious in defeat, pledging unity for the good of the nation – that is what is required by fidelity to the Constitution and love of country. We depend upon the goodwill of our leaders and their dedication to duty to ensure the survival of our republic. Only a man unacquainted with honor, courage, and character would see weakness in this.

That man is Donald Trump.

To be clear, I abhor most of Liz Cheney’s views on politics and public policy. But her book is, I believe, required reading for everyone interested in understanding more deeply the events leading up to, through, and after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. The writing is fluid, clear and pulls no punches. It is an easy read in the sense of flow. And deeply disturbing. Much of it will not be a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to the nation’s politics since 2015 or so, but there is much new information and important detail. It is, I believe, entirely true. If you can stand the truth, you must read it.

I am not going to digest all the details here. Instead, I have chosen to highlight some of the lies told by some of the key players in the story Cheney tells with clarity and effect. The lies are organized by the people who told them. The list also includes some, though far from all, of the traitorous conduct of Trump and his enablers in Congress and elsewhere. It is important in the most fundamental sense that we record and understand the full extent of the mendacity, dishonesty, treachery and outright treason of Trump and his promoters.

Donald Trump –

(1) on November 9 Trump fired Mark Esper, his Secretary of Defense and appointed Chris Miller, described by Cheney as “quite possibly the least-qualified nominee to become secretary of defense since the position was created in 1947;”

(2) The next day Trump appointed Kash Patel, with zero military experience, as Miller’s chief of staff, and Douglas MacGregor, a pro-Putin propagandist, as Miller’s senior advisor;

(3) Nov. 17, 2020, Trump fired Chris Krebs director of Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency for having the temerity to assert that the election was secure; a Trump lawyer publicly said Krebs should be killed; no action was taken against him;

(4) Trump tried to co-op the Justice Department by replacing Jeff Rosen with compliant Jeffrey Clark as Acting Attorney General & only backed down when faced with threats of mass resignations;

(5) Trump supporters directed death threats at Liz Cheney and others who pursued the truth about Trump’s involvement in the January 6 attacks;

(6) Evidence that Trump’s plan to reject the election outcome was advance-planned and fully premeditated was overwhelming;

(7) flatly declared that the election fraud he claimed to exist, but knew did not, was sufficient grounds to suspend the law and the Constitution;

(8) Trump organizations paid for legal representation for Cassidy Hutchinson, among others. Her lawyer disobeyed her instructions and suggested she could simply “not remember” certain key pieces of information when testifying.

Kevin McCarthy – a California Republican, was elected to the House in 2007 and became the 55th Speaker in January 2023, a short-lived experience as he was ousted by his party in October 2023.

(1) McCarthy, like Trump himself, was fully aware that typical voting patterns would make it appear Trump was in the lead at the end of Election Day and that later counting of legitimate absentee and mail-in ballots could change the early result. Nevertheless, on November 5 McCarthy appeared on Fox News to declare that Trump won the election. When questioned about this the next day, McCarthy lied and denied he had said the election was stolen;

(2) McCarthy lied about whether he would sign a friend-of-the-court brief supporting Trump’s false election theft claims and stating the signers had specific proof of that theft;

(3) When Congress overrode Trump’s veto of the National Defense Authorization Act, in 2020, McCarthy announced he would never vote to override a veto by a president of his own party;

(4) When pressed by House Republicans to explain his position on whether it was proper to object to the counting of Electoral College votes on January 6, McCarthy refused to answer;

(5) Even after Trump’s call to Georgia’s Secretary of State Raffensperger to demand that he “find” sufficient votes to change the election outcome, McCarthy announced he would be objecting to the election results;

(6) McCarthy falsely assured members of Congress that security measures were in place to provide for their safety on January 6;

(7) McCarthy joined Eric Trump in threatening first-term members of Congress they would be primaried if they did not actively object to the certification of Biden’s victory;

(8) McCarthy lied to Cheney about his position when the certification process resumed; he said he would oppose further objections, but that was not true;

(9) McCarthy joined Whip Scalise and 137 House Republicans in voting to object to electoral votes in Pennsylvania and Arizona; seven Republican senators did the same: Cruz, Hawley, Hyde-Smith, Kennedy, Lummis, Marshall, Scott, and Tuberville;

(10) On January 11, McCarthy proposed options to impeaching Trump for his actions on January 6;

(11) McCarthy’s continued support for Trump, combined with Trump’s own rhetoric, instilled fear of physical attack against the person and families of any Republican voting to impeach Trump;

(12) McCarthy initially purported to support the legislation establishing the January 6 National Commission, but his support was withdrawn;

(13) On January 25, as the articles of the second Trump impeachment were being sent to the Senate, McCarthy said on Fox News that the impeachment was “a farce,” and reversed prior statements about the January 6 events;

(14) McCarthy traded support for Trump to get access to fundraising sources Trump controlled;

(15) McCarthy lied in claiming that the social media platform Parler, used by the Proud Boys to coordinate their January 6 attack, had been shut down merely because it was conservative;

(16) McCarthy negotiated with Democrats to establish an evenly divided commission to investigate January 6; got everything he asked for, then withdrew his support for the legislation;

(17) Having declined the opportunity to appoint Republicans to the January 6 Select Committee, McCarthy then disingenuously claimed the Committee was deficient because purely partisan.

Mark Meadows –

(1) to cover for Trump, and himself, refused to testify about messages related to Trump’s actions on January 6 that were not covered by any privilege;

(2) worked with Congressman Scott Perry to try to replace leadership at DOJ with people that would do Trump’s bidding without question;

(3) Lied when claiming that Trump had ordered National Guard troops to be on alert for January 6 trouble;

(4) Lied about Trump’s intention to go to the Capitol with the mob on January 6.

Rep. Jim Jordan –

(1) during the Republican leadership call on November 6, Jordan was not interested in discussing procedures and laws about challenging votes. He said: “The only thing that matters is winning;”

(2) During the attack on the Capitol, Jordan was in communication with Trump & plotting how to prevent counting of the electoral votes;

(3) refused to comply with a subpoena for testimony from the January 6 Select Committee, placing his loyalty to Trump ahead of his oath of office;

(4) praised the Department of Justice for investigating the January 6 attack, arguing that the House Select Committee was thus unnecessary, then claimed DOJ was being “weaponized” against Trump;

(5) almost certainly lied to the Congress about his conversations with Trump during which Trump said to instructed the then-Acting Deputy Attorney General to “just say the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

Rep. Louie Gohmert – sued VP Pence seeking a ruling Pence could refuse to count some electoral votes on January 6. When the suit was dismissed, Gohmert said that the only option left was violence in the streets.

Rep. Mike Johnston –destined to replace McCarthy as Speaker,

(1) circulated a “friend of the court” brief to support Trump’s false election claims while lying to Republican representatives about the contents of the brief that “made numerous false factual and constitutional claims;”

(2) when the Supreme Court rejected Texas’ lawsuit challenging the 2020 results in four states won by Biden, Johnston declared that the “rule of law” was dead;

(3) on January 5, declared that, despite being fully aware of multiple court decisions to the contrary, four states had violated the Constitution & Republicans would be voting to reject their designated electors;

(4) joined other Republican members in claiming power found nowhere in the Constitution to overturn the election but only in the five key states Biden won;

Katrina Pearson – senior advisor to the Trump campaign, at a December 2020 rally in Washington urged the crowd to “fight like patriots,” arguing that the entire government had been “weaponized against us.” Multiple speakers, including Trump-pardoned former general Michael Flynn, suggested there was some action the people could take that would change the election result.

Former General Michael Flynn –

(1) on December 17, 2021, in an interview on Newsmax, said Trump had authority to seize voting machines and could use the military to force a redo of the election in the swing states he lost;

(2) pleaded the 5th Amendment rather than answer questions from the January 6 Committee about his communications with Trump;

(3) Pleaded the 5th Amendment when asked whether he believed in the peaceful transition of power in the United States.

Senator Ted Cruz on January 2, 2021, led a group of Republican Senators announcing they would object to electors from “disputed states,” citing zero evidence to support “unprecedented allegations” of fraud and other unspecified irregularities. Cruz had coordinated the plan with Mark Meadows in the Trump White House.

Jenna Ellis — one of Trump’s lawyers

(1) announced on a January 4 call that seven states had “dueling slates of electors,” a legally impossible state of affairs since the authentic elector slates had already been certified by their respective governors;

(2) claimed, without evidence, that those seven states had violated their own election laws.

Freedom Caucus Members – even after being told in detail of the injuries suffered by Capitol Police on January 6, the Freedom Caucus Republicans persisted in pressing objections to certification of the election;

Rep. Andrew Clyde — lied to first-term Republican congressmen on January 8, claiming Republican leadership had decided Trump had not incited the January 6 violence.

Senator Mitch McConnell – helped sabotage the legislation to create an independent commission to investigate January 6.

Leader of Wyoming Republican Party – was a member of the Oath Keepers who participated in the January 6 attack.

21 Republican House Members – voted against awarding the Congressional Gold Medal to police who defended the Capitol on January 6.

Rep. Jim Banks (Republican – Indiana) – falsely claimed to be the Ranking Member of the Selected January 6 Committee to which he had never been appointed.

Steve Bannon — knew about Trump’s plan, even before the election, to lie that the election was stolen; Trump’s plan was premeditated.

Ronna McDaniel – Republican National Committee Chair

(1) agreed to pay many of Trump’s legal bills to fight the charges related to January 6;

(2) actively helped Trump assemble and activate fake slates of electors in states Biden won.

John Eastman – attorney for Trump

(1) crafted and promoted a plan for overturning the 2020 election even while admitting that the Supreme Court would reject the legal principle on which the plan was based;

(2) Pleaded the 5th Amendment 100 times when interviewed by the January 6 Committee;

(3) Sued the January 6 Committee to prevent its examination of Eastman’s emails related to the January 6 scheme to overturn the election; the court found his legal theories specious and the plan unlawful; Eastman did not appeal.

Jeffrey Clark – slated to be installed as head of DOJ to do Trump’s bidding in overturning the election, pleaded the 5th Amendment in testimony before the January 6 Committee.

Ronnie Jackson – Trump’s physician in the White House, later elected to Congress from Texas, refused to testify to explain why the Oath Keepers were talking about him by name during the January 6 attack.

Jared Kushner –

(1) admitted he participated in pushing lies about the outcome of the 2020 election;

(2) dismissed White House lawyers’ threats to resign as merely “whining,” not to be taken seriously,

Kayleigh McEnany – Trump’s White House Press Secretary, twisted herself in knots and likely lied when asserting memory failures about information other White House staff admitted to and that she almost certainly knew at the time.

Ginni Thomas – wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and aggressive promoter of lies about the election, rejected the findings of the 60 courts that considered Trump’s claims of election fraud; she simply refused to believe the truth.

Senator Tom Cotton – actively supported Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

Rep. Scott Perry – actively worked to support Trump’s effort to replace DOJ leadership with Jeffrey Clark who would do Trump’s bidding regarding the false claim of election fraud.

There is much more to the full narrative. Cheney’s book should be read by everyone who believes in the U.S. Constitution and that Trump must be held accountable for his many crimes.

National Tragedy in the Making

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It’s official. Trump’s trial in Washington for federal crimes arising from the January 6 attack is on “hold” until the Court of Appeals decides Trump’s preposterous claim of “absolute immunity” for his conduct related to that event and many other crimes he committed while in office and after. http://tinyurl.com/3c57hjtd The delay in the Court of Appeals is unconscionable. The Court should be working around the clock to decide and publish its opinion so that the next inevitable step in the appellate process can take place while there is still time to try and convict Trump before the 2024 election.

The DC Circuit judges are fiddling while Rome burns. This is unacceptable and illustrates yet again how someone with vast resources (not his, by the way, but contributed by his easily duped supporters) can use, misuse, and abuse the legal system to their benefit. Trump’s appeal was filed on December 7, almost two months ago. The case has been briefed and argued (January 9) with Trump’s counsel arguing that Trump’s immunity extends to his premeditated murder of political opponents. That’s where we are.

Even if the Circuit Court judges release their opinion on Monday, Trump will almost certainly seek en banc review by the full bench of Circuit judges. That should be denied but given the history, it would be no surprise if they granted it, leading to still more delay before the immunity issue lands in the Supreme Court. It’s already there, of course, in a different form from the Colorado ballot case but there is not going to be a rush to opine there either.

Meanwhile, in Florida, Trump’s loyalist judge Aileen Cannon continues to slow-walk the Mar-a-Lago documents case even as it appears that the FBI failed to examine a locked room there that may contain still more confidential intelligence documents for which Trump claims, without plausible basis, ownership as against the federal government.

The other major case, in Georgia, has been wracked by chaos arising from the monumentally stupid appointment of a prosecutor with whom the chief prosecutor apparently has a romantic relationship. Substantively, the relationship has nothing much to do with the question of Trump’s attempt to subvert the election outcome in Georgia but given the sensitivities of the case, the result of the disclosures has led to a massive distraction and possible delays or worse in the prosecution of the case.

I am at a loss for words on all this. The nation is being ill-served by the people it most counts on for vigorous and professional enforcement of the laws and Constitution, while a blatantly criminal traitor makes mince-meat of the judicial process.

If The Scots Can Do This, Why Can’t We?

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A November report in the BBC News indicates that a solar-powered boat has been developed and launched in the Philippines. http://tinyurl.com/52vyjys4

Aside: [I Googled this story and found no indication of coverage by any major U.S. news outlet online or otherwise.]

This is a solar-powered version of the “banca” boat, a traditional vessel typically made of wood and powered by a diesel engine, notorious polluters.

Stromness-based Aquatera, an Orkney company, said this was the first of its kind to be powered by renewables. The banca forms the backbone of coastal communities in the Philippines, providing lifeline sources of food, water, and livelihoods through tourism and fishing.

The new version can carry six passengers and two crew and travel up to five hours with a maximum speed of 11 knots. It has a cold-storage facility for the delivery of perishable goods and temperature-sensitive commodities, such as vaccines, to remote communities.

Ian Hutchison, director of Oceantera, said:

Through this initiative, we plan to work with local businesses, communities, and partners to help establish fossil-fuel-free transportation networks across the Philippines and wider South East [sic] Asia.

The project was included in the Renewable Energy-Powered Marine Transport for Island Communities project, funded by the United States Agency for International Development.

One small step for man ….

Can We Save Ourselves?

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It’s hard to figure out what’s worse: the collapse of the common understanding of how adherence to the U.S. Constitution defines our nation or the collapse of our common understanding of what it’s going take for mankind, as a species, to survive on our dying planet. It’s the classic Hobson’s Choice: both bad.

A recent article (November 2023) in the Washington Post discussed our use and abuse of plastics, the once-miracle material that now threatens to destroy everything. http://tinyurl.com/45cbc7xm  Here are a few mind-numbing facts assembled by Journalist Tatiana Schlossberg, author of “Inconspicuous Consumption: The Environmental Impact You Don’t Know You Have” and the newsletter “News From a Changing Planet:”

Between 1950 and 2021, humanity produced about 11 billion metric tons of virgin plastic — that’s the weight of 110,000 U.S. aircraft carriers. Only about 2 billion tons of this is still in use. The rest — some 8.7 billion tons — is waste: 71 percent has ended up in landfills or somewhere else in the environment, including the ocean; 12 percent has been recycled; 17 percent has been incinerated. At the rate we’re going, global plastic waste will rise 60 percent by 2050.

As things stand, from 2010 to 2050 alone, the world could generate enough to cover all of Manhattan with a pile of plastic more than two miles high.

Microplastics have been found in breast milk and in our blood. Around the world, up to 60 percent of all recycled plastic is collected by waste pickers, often members of poor and marginalized communities, who suffer from inhaling caustic fumes from burning plastic and drinking water heavily contaminated with microplastics.

The author strikes a note of optimism by citing a 175-country agreement in 2022 to “develop a legally binding international treaty to end plastic pollution by 2040.” This is the classic “agreement to agree” scenario, if we can. The author maintains that a combination of a mere nine policies “could reduce annual plastic waste by more than 87 percent.”

I will spare you the agonizing details of what’s possible and let you read for yourself. Then you can decide whether you think any of this will happen. Just note this:

U.N. negotiators just finished meeting again in Nairobi to begin crafting the actual treaty, in hopes of completing it by the end of next year [2024], though progress seems to have stalled, a result of excessive influence from oil and gas industry lobbyists, according to nongovernmental organizations. [emphasis added]

Those folks will no doubt be joined by the likes of Amazon and, in the DC area, Giant Foods, whose packaging practices have zero apparent regard for the efficient use of cardboard and plastic packing materials. As the world’s number-one plastic polluter, we should be able to count on U.S. leadership in this effort to save the planet, but don’t count on it.

It will take, I suggest, a massive public uprising to compel industry to pay attention to this existential threat to the survival of our species. Given everything else going on in American politics right now, such an uprising seems a pure fantasy.

One thing seems certain, when the end comes, it won’t be pretty. The worst dystopian stories you’ve ever read will seem like child’s play. We almost at the irrevocable tipping point on climate change, so add the destruction of the oceans and all the rest and you can begin to imagine what will happen. This is not a movie, and there will be no miraculous “save” just before the end.