January 9, 2021

Congress Has All the Impeachment Evidence It Needs

Congress Has All the Impeachment Evidence It Needs
The attack on the Capitol didn’t start with Trump’s speech. He’s been fomenting insurrection for weeks.

By WILLIAM SALETAN
JAN 08, 20216:39 PM


(Slate) Did President Donald Trump incite Wednesday’s assault on the U.S. Capitol? The answer seems obvious, but a formal case against him, through impeachment or prosecution under insurrection or incitement statutes, requires specific evidence. The speech he delivered shortly before his supporters stormed the Capitol is part of the evidence, but there’s more. Since Dec. 14, when the Electoral College sealed Joe Biden’s victory, Trump has instructed his followers to wage war, disregard legal constraints, and overturn the election by any means necessary.

Every previous president who lost the Electoral College conceded defeat. Even Al Gore, who challenged Florida’s ballot count in 2000 when he was vice president, conceded five days before the electors voted. But Trump refused. “This Fake Election can no longer stand,” he tweeted on Dec. 15, hours after the electors affirmed Biden’s win. “Get moving Republicans.” Trump urged his allies in Congress to block certification of the electoral vote. When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell acknowledged Biden’s election, Trump rebuked McConnell and replied that the “Republican Party must finally learn to fight.” On Dec. 19, Trump called on his followers to swarm Washington and pressure Congress to keep him in power. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” the president tweeted. “Be there, will be wild!”

Trump dismissed the election as a coup. “The rigging of the 2020 election was only the final step in the Democrats’ and the media’s yearslong effort to overthrow the will of the American people,” he declared in a Dec. 22 video address from the White House. He called Biden a “fake president” and said Biden’s election should never be accepted. Then, on Dec. 26, the president called for war. “If a Democrat Presidential Candidate had an Election Rigged & Stolen, with proof of such acts at a level never seen before, the Democrat Senators would consider it an act of war, and fight to the death,” he raged. “Mitch & the Republicans do NOTHING, just want to let it pass. NO FIGHT!”

One crucial element of Trump’s insurrectionism was a persistent message to ignore unfavorable rulings by courts. “These States ‘election laws’ were made up by local judges & politicians, not by their Legislatures,” he said of states that had voted for Biden. Therefore, the president told his followers, “the whole State Election” should be discarded as illegal. When the Supreme Court refused to intervene on Trump’s behalf, he scoffed, “The U.S. Supreme Court has been totally incompetent and weak on the massive Election Fraud.” He demanded that Republican senators “step up and fight for the Presidency” because “Courts are bad” and had failed to stand with him. ............(more)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/trump-capitol-attack-impeachment-evidence-insurrection.html

January 9, 2021

Here are the 3 Michigan Republicans who still voted to overturn election results, despite the attack

(Detroit Metro Times) Yesterday, President Trump stood in front of thousands at the White House for the “Stop the Steal” rally and instructed his supporters to march to the U.S. Capitol, where they then attacked law enforcement officers and broke into the federal building. Incited by false allegations of a stolen election, the terrorist attack resulted in four deaths and over 50 arrests.

However, despite all of this, 147 Republican lawmakers still stood by their decision to stand in the way of certifying the presidential election, and perpetuate a lie that directly ultimately ended in violence.

....(snip)....

Here are the three Michigan Republicans who, despite the first non-peaceful transfer of power in 220 years because of Trump’s baseless rhetoric, still voted to sustain one or both objections:

• Rep. Jack Bergman of Watersmeet
• Rep. Lisa McClain of Bruce Township
• Rep. Tim Walberg of Tipton

The decision by these politicians to support a failed Trump-led coup has resulted in progressive lawmakers demanding accountability for the GOP colleagues who were complicit in yesterday’s attack. ............(more)

https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2021/01/07/here-are-the-3-michigan-republicans-who-still-voted-to-overturn-election-results-despite-the-attack-on-the-us-capitol

January 9, 2021

See how they run: did Trump's former allies get out in time?

(Guardian UK) In the 16th century, mice and rats were credited with knowing when a rotten house was on the verge of collapse.

This evolved into the idiom about fleeing a sinking ship, but the original version suggested more prescience, an ability to anticipate oblivion and get out ahead of time.

The question hovering over the officials quitting the White House is whether they have left it too late, whether they will carry the Donald Trump stain no matter how fast they run.

The education secretary, Betsy DeVos, the transport secretary, Elaine Chao, and the deputy national security adviser, Matt Pottinger, are among at least a dozen officials and aides who have resigned since a mob of the president’s supporters stormed the US Capitol on Wednesday, leading to five deaths, including that of a police officer.

....(snip)....

Some former officials, even those who left the administration before Wednesday’s mayhem, say they have struggled to find work because of association with the president.

“People who are hiring see everything that’s happened and have to question your morals and ethics – especially in terms of what continues to happen today – on why you chose to work for that environment,” Olivia Troye, a former homeland security and White House official who left in August, told Politico. ............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/08/see-how-they-run-did-trumps-former-allies-get-out-in-time

January 8, 2021

An urgent and immediate task for the Biden-Harris administration has to be.....

..... weeding out the sleeper cells within the federal security apparatus and the Pentagon. Something's rotten in Denmark.

January 8, 2021

Trump has tweeted he won't be at the inauguration, per MSNBC

Quelle surprise.

January 8, 2021

'Being black in America requires emotional aerobics': Regina King on 'powder keg' movie One Night...

'Being black in America requires emotional aerobics': Regina King on 'powder keg' movie One Night in Miami
Steve Rose

The Oscar-winning Beale Street actor on success and her sharply topical feature debut, a civil rights-era film that coincided with the explosive rise of Black Lives Matter


(Guardian UK) To say Regina King is “having a moment” feels a little inappropriate, considering that she is 35 years into her career. But it also feels like an understatement. In the past five years she has won an Oscar, four Emmys and numerous other awards for her performances in a string of acclaimed titles, including Barry Jenkins’s If Beale Street Could Talk, the prescient comic-book miniseries Watchmen and the Netflix race-crime drama Seven Seconds. As well as marching her down several miles of red carpet, the flurry of attention has catapulted her into a new echelon of star power.

Now she is also making waves as a director. Her debut feature, One Night in Miami, was the first film directed by an African American woman ever to screen at the Venice film festival. The resultant acclaim, combined with the resonance of the civil rights-era story, puts it in contention for the upcoming awards season; she is considered a shoo-in for the best director shortlists. Everything King touches seems to be turning to gold right now. What’s her secret?

“Oh, man, I don’t know that it’s a secret,” she says on the phone from Los Angeles. “I think two things that are consistent is that I enjoy the art form. I enjoy storytelling. I was lucky to have a talent for something that I guess … what is that thing? If you can make your hobby your career you should never get bored with it. I love what I do. I love the discoveries that come along with it. So that, coupled with hard work, creates, I guess, what they call luck – you know, preparation and opportunity.”

....(snip)....

So now King has the courage and the power, and, she points out, the wisdom, to make a difference. In terms of the Malcolm X/Sam Cooke debate in One Night in Miami – direct, confrontational activism versus longer-term change from within – she is really doing both. She is evidently choosing roles and stories with a worthwhile agenda, as an actor, director and producer (as well as One Night in Miami, she produced and directed TV pilot The Finest, on five African American sisters in the New York police force). ............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/jan/08/regina-king-one-night-miami-oscar-winning-beale-street-actor-black-lives-matter?

January 8, 2021

Apologies from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer

January 8, 2021

Ted Cruz tried to defend Trump's coup. He then praised the white supremacist Compromise of 1877

(Salon) One of the most prominent Republican supporters of Donald Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election and undemocratically install himself into power, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, defended the president's coup effort by praising a notorious event in American history that helped cement white supremacy after the Civil War.

In a speech delivered during the debate over certifying electoral votes — and shortly before a far-right mob stormed the Capitol to disrupt those proceedings — Cruz urged the Senate to "look to history" by acting as Congress did when there was a dispute between Republican candidate Rutherford Hayes and Democratic candidate Samuel Tilden in the 1876 election. Cruz argued that, when there were accusations of cheating in that contest, "this Congress appointed an electoral commission to examine claims of voter fraud" including five members of the Supreme Court, five members of the Senate and five members of the House of Representatives. He claimed that they "examined the evidence and rendered a judgment, and what I would urge of this body is that we do the same," calling for a "10-day emergency audit" to investigate the 2020 election results.

Cruz's speech curiously left out a very important fact: the Compromise of 1877.

Because the 1876 electoral commission had more Republicans than Democrats, and ultimately voted along party lines as expected, Hayes' supporters could only get Democrats on board by striking an informal deal known as the Compromise of 1877. The terms of that agreement were that Democrats would allow Hayes to become president, and not start another civil war (the previous one had ended 12 years earlier), if Republicans agreed to pull the last remaining federal troops out of the South. As a result, the period known as Reconstruction — one in which efforts were made to bring about racial equality in the former Confederate states — officially came to a close, condemning generations of African Americans to white supremacist governments in the South. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2021/01/07/ted-cruz-tried-to-defend-trumps-coup-he-then-called-for-a-return-to-a-white-supremacist-comprise/

January 8, 2021

Capitol Police Chief resigning, per CNN.

January 8, 2021

How Josh Hawley's political ploy backfired massively

(CNN) Josh Hawley looked like he had seen a ghost.

The 40-something Missouri Republican senator was clearly shaken and uncertain of himself Wednesday night as he spoke on the Senate floor -- decrying the violence that had led to the seizure of the US Capitol by pro-Trump forces earlier in the day, even while still trying to defend his much-publicized plan to object to the Electoral College results in several states.

"Violence is not how you achieve change," Hawley cautioned. "Violence is not how you achieve something better."

Well, yes. But, maybe -- just maybe -- Hawley should have realized that BEFORE he decided to become the first senator to sign on to the objection to the Electoral College, ensuring that there would be both debate and votes on these objections.

It was more than a little ironic then that the man who let the genie out of the bottle was suddenly condemning what that genie did. Who could have known that encouraging false -- and debunked -- claims about nonexistent fraud could lead ardent Trump supporters to act on their dissatisfaction and anger when gathered in a large group in Washington? Man, what a shock! Not. .............(more)

https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/07/politics/josh-hawley-kansas-city-star-electoral-college/index.html