USA Politics (redux)

[LKB]

Positive signs. 👍

[Karl Henning]

Next door to an admission of guilt?

Trump asks Supreme Court to keep records from House Jan. 6 committee

[drogulus]

Fla. man sentenced to 5 years for attacking police, the longest Jan. 6 riot sentence yet

     That's the fire extinguisher guy, isn't it?

[Karl Henning]

     That's the fire extinguisher guy, isn't it?

Aye.

[Karl Henning]

Rudy Giuliani and One America News sued by Georgia poll workers falsely accused of electoral fraud

[Karl Henning]

For US Evangelicals, it's down with Jesus, up with Trump.

Opinion: Trump idolatry has undermined religious faith


By Jennifer Rubin
Columnist

Yesterday at 1:41 p.m. EST

Much has been written about White evangelicals' central role in the fraying of democracy. More attention, however, should be paid to the damage the political movement has inflicted on religion itself.

The demographic — which remains in the throes of White grievance and an apocalyptic vision that postulates America (indeed "Western civilization") is under attack from socialists, foreigners and secularists — forms the core of the MAGA movement. Many have rejected the sanctity of elections, the principle of inclusion and even objective reality.

The consequences have been dire for American politics. The siege mentality has morphed into an ends-justify-the-means style of politics in which lies, brutal discourse and even violence are applauded as necessary to protect "real America." Essential features of democracy, such as the peaceful transfer of power, compromise with political opponents and defining America as an idea and not a racial or religious identity, have fallen by the wayside.

Sadly, the degradation of democracy has intensified in the wake of Joe Biden's victory. The doctrinal elevation of the "big lie," the increase in violent rhetoric and the effort to rig elections all reflect a heightened desperation by the MAGA crowd. This has driven the GOP to new lows (e.g., vaccine refusal to "own the libs," virtually all House Republicans defending an animation depicting the murder of a congresswoman).

While lovers of democracy around the world view these developments in horror, we should not lose track of the damage the MAGA movement has wrought to religious values. Peter Wehner, an evangelical Christian and former adviser to President George W. Bush, explains in a column for the Atlantic how a recent speech from Donald Trump Jr. reflects the inversion of religious faith. "The former president's son," Wehner writes, "has a message for the tens of millions of evangelicals who form the energized base of the GOP: the scriptures are essentially a manual for suckers. The teachings of Jesus have 'gotten us nothing.' "

Wehner continues:

It's worse than that, really; the ethic of Jesus has gotten in the way of successfully prosecuting the culture wars against the left. If the ethic of Jesus encourages sensibilities that might cause people in politics to act a little less brutally, a bit more civilly, with a touch more grace? Then it needs to go. Decency is for suckers.

Understanding this phenomenon goes a long way toward explaining the MAGA crowd's very unreligious cruelty toward immigrants, its selfish refusal to vaccinate to protect the most vulnerable and its veneration of a vulgar, misogynistic cult leader. If you wonder how so many "people of faith" can behave in such ways, understand that their "faith" has become hostile to traditional religious values such as kindness, empathy, self-restraint, grace, honesty and humility.

Robert P. Jones, who leads the Public Religion Research Institute, writes that "in the upside-down world white evangelicalism has become, the willingness to act in self-sacrificial ways for the sake of vulnerable others — even amid a global pandemic — has become rare, even antithetical, to an aggressive, rights-asserting white Christian culture." The result is reckless self-indulgence that places some evangelicals' own aversion to "being told what to do" ahead of the health and lives of vulnerable populations.

Jones explains:

White evangelicals remain the most vaccine resistant of any major religious group, with one quarter (25%) refusing vaccination (compared to only 13% of the country). And these refusal rates are not all tied to theological objections. Only 13% of white evangelicals say the teachings of their religion prohibit receiving a vaccine, a rate comparable to the general public (10%).

Strikingly, the evidence suggests churches and pastors are the heart of the problem. White evangelicals who attend religious services regularly are twice as likely as less frequent attenders to be vaccine refusers (30% vs. 15%). If ever there were clear evidence of a massive abdication of pastoral responsibility and leadership, this is it.

As self-identified evangelicals reject small inconveniences and show disdain for others' lives, Jones observes, "there is no hint of awareness that their actions are a mockery of the central biblical injunction to care for the orphan, the widow, the stranger, and the vulnerable among us."

In sum, while the White evangelical political movement has done immeasurable damage to our democracy, its descent into MAGA politics, conspiratorial thinking and cult worship has had catastrophic results for the religious values evangelicals once held dear. Jones writes: "It's important to say this straight. This refusal to act to protect the vulnerable — particularly because of the low personal costs involved — is raw, callous selfishness. Exhibited by people I love, it is heartbreaking. Expressed by people who claim to be followers of Jesus, it is maddening."

If these trends continue uninterrupted, we will wind up with a country rooted in neither democratic principles nor religious values. That would be a mean, violent and intolerant future few of us would want to experience.

[SimonNZ]

Karl: have you encountered Kristen Kobes Du Mez's book Jesus and John Wayne?

[Karl Henning]

Karl: have you encountered Kristen Kobes Du Mez's book Jesus and John Wayne?

I don't think I have.

[SimonNZ]

I don't think I have.

I haven't read the book yet, but have heard a number of interviews with the author where she makes a compelling case that Trump's piggishness was a feature not a bug for the evangelicals, and was entirely in keeping with decades of evangelicals opinion on rugged masculinity, hierarchy and nationalism. None of which ever had much connection to the actual Bible, and certainly not to the actual Jesus who they've always viewed as some kind of Rambo figure.

There's a particularly thorough 2-hour interview on The Dig podcast where she goes right through the history of evangelical thought in the twentieth century, leading quite directly to all of Trumps worst characteristics. She make it clear they weren't holding their noses when they were voting.

[Karl Henning]

I haven't read the book yet, but have heard a number of interviews with the author where she makes a compelling case that Trump's piggishness was a feature not a bug for the evangelicals, and was entirely in keeping with decades of evangelicals opinion on rugged masculinity, hierarchy and nationalism. None of which ever had much connection to the actual Bible, and certainly not to the actual Jesus who they've always viewed as some kind of Rambo figure.

There's a particularly thorough 2-hour interview on The Dig podcast where she goes right through the history of evangelical thought in the twentieth century, leading quite directly to all of Trumps worst characteristics. She make it clear they weren't holding their noses when they were voting.

No, indeed.

[Karl Henning]

Ghislaine Maxwell convicted of helping Jeffrey Epstein sexually abuse teenage girls

[Karl Henning]

It gives me no pleasure to share this:

Next Year Will Be Worse

[Fëanor]

It gives me no pleasure to share this:

Next Year Will Be Worse

Not being an American voter I don't presume to speculate whether Kevin McCarthy will be Republican majority leader, but I am pretty sure Republicans will regain the House and Senate ...

In the curdest vernacular, American democracy will be effed in the rectum if that happens.  I wouldn't feel so bad about that if were just you guys, but the effects will be dire for the rest of the world as well.

With Republican-dominated state legislatures controlling the election process, US democracy is already in the "managed" category.

[Karl Henning]

Opinion: The smoking gun that Liz Cheney is looking for on Trump comes into view

By Greg Sargent
Columnist
Today at 10:45 a.m. EST

For weeks, Rep. Liz Cheney has hinted that the House select committee examining Jan. 6 might urge the Justice Department to consider prosecuting Donald Trump. The grounds for this criminal referral might be that Trump obstructed the "official proceeding" in which Congress counts presidential electors.

Now we're able to glean a clearer sense of what the Wyoming Republican has in mind. It provides a peek at the smoking gun that Cheney and the committee are searching for — or one of them, anyway.

The core of the matter is this: For more than two hours, Trump watched his supporters wage a violent assault on the seat of U.S. government for the purpose of disrupting the 2020 election's conclusion, after having incited them to commit that disruption, and didn't call them off.

Some comments from Cheney herself — and clarification I've now obtained from a Cheney spokesman — shed new light on where this is going. The short version: It's likely the committee will explore recommending changes to federal law to further clarify that obstructing the electoral count in Congress is a crime subject to stiff penalties.

This is an idea worth considering. It would be another step toward securing our political system against a future Jan. 6. It would raise the question of whether Republicans would support such a move.

On Sunday, Cheney told ABC News that Trump's failure to call off his mob constituted a "dereliction of duty." She noted that at any point, Trump could have gone on TV and urged the mob to stop, but didn't. Cheney added:

I think one of the things the committee needs to look at — we're looking at a legislative purpose — is whether we need enhanced penalties for that kind of dereliction of duty.

I asked a Cheney spokesman for clarification of this. "The committee will explore whether to make changes to current law to hold a future president accountable," he told me, without elaborating. "That's part of the legislative purpose of the committee."

Now note that Cheney has repeatedly suggested the committee is examining whether Trump, in refusing to talk down the mob, might have done so as part of a deliberate effort to obstruct Congress' counting of electors.

The committee is reportedly looking at whether to make that the basis for recommending criminal prosecution. The grounds would be that it violated federal law barring obstruction of an "official proceeding."

Determining whether Trump's conduct constituted such a violation is complicated. It might require determining whether Trump saw the violence as instrumentally helpful in subverting the electoral count, and deliberately refrained from calling off the attack to serve that express goal.

The committee has established that numerous Republicans frantically urged Trump to call off the riot, even as he enjoyed watching it all unfold on TV. Journalist Jon Karl reports that Trump didn't take at least one of their calls.

The committee wants to determine whether Trump indicated a desire to see the mob continue disrupting the electoral count. We don't know if it will prove this.

Then there's the question of whether disrupting the electoral count constitutes obstructing an official proceeding, and whether Trump, in inciting the mob to descend on the Capitol during that count, participated in that obstruction. We don't know exactly what we'll learn there, either.

But beyond that, we can now surmise where this will likely go: Precisely because the statute is murky on these points, the committee will likely recommend changes to it that make it clearer that disrupting the electoral count is a federal crime, and further penalize it.

Reform to prevent another Jan. 6

This is an idea worth talking about, and NYU law professor Ryan Goodman says it's legally doable.

"It would be valuable for the committee to deliver recommendations for strengthening the federal criminal code to protect against obstruction of the electoral count," Goodman told me. Such a reform, he added, would ensure that "criminal law fully deals with efforts to disrupt" that count, which "could help deter future threats to our democracy."

Goodman said the committee could recommend this while avoiding implying that Trump's conduct did not violate current statute. It could recommend "enhancing the criminal penalties for obstructing the electoral count."

This would write an explicit protection against obstructing the electoral count into the law, Goodman said, but without undercutting the idea that "obstruction of congressional proceedings is already criminal."

This goal would undercut the Republican talking point that the committee lacks no real legislative purpose and is illegitimate. Mulling such a reform is obviously a legitimate legislative purpose, as is mulling reform of the Electoral Count Act.

In an important sense, we already have our smoking gun. As Cheney told ABC News:

We have firsthand testimony that his daughter Ivanka went in at least twice to ask him to please stop this violence.

Any man who would not do so, any man who would provoke a violent assault on the Capitol to stop the counting of electoral votes, any man who would watch television as police officers were being beaten, as his supporters were invading the Capitol of the United States, is clearly unfit for future office, clearly can never be anywhere near the Oval Office ever again.

How many congressional Republicans would agree with this statement? How is it possible that the answer is: Very few?

This is why it will be interesting to see if Republicans will support strengthening the criminal code against disruption of the electoral count, and whether a certain pair of Democratic senators will support ending the filibuster to pass such a safeguard.

We may soon get answers to those questions. And they probably won't be to our liking.

[Fëanor]

Opinion: The smoking gun that Liz Cheney is looking for on Trump comes into view

By Greg Sargent
Columnist
Today at 10:45 a.m. EST
...
On Sunday, Cheney told ABC News that Trump's failure to call off his mob constituted a "dereliction of duty." She noted that at any point, Trump could have gone on TV and urged the mob to stop, but didn't. Cheney added:

I think one of the things the committee needs to look at — we're looking at a legislative purpose — is whether we need enhanced penalties for that kind of dereliction of duty.
...
The committee wants to determine whether Trump indicated a desire to see the mob continue disrupting the electoral count. We don't know if it will prove this.

What seems clear to me is that Trump's failure for hours to intervene or take appropriate to control violent rioters attacking Congress is clear factual dereliction of duty, the obvious remedy for which is impeachment, (assuming impeachment is legally possible after the President's term has expired).

That dereliction is quite apart from proving whether, in fact, Trump actually incited the mob action in the first place.  I'm not sure why additional legislation should be necessary, but I'm not clear on the American legal system.

But what does seem clear to me is that Trump-supporting Republicans would thwart the legislation as they certainly would another impeachment of Trump.

What is also clear to me is that large segments of the GOP have become a fascist conspiracy to destroy American democracy, (such as it presently is).

[Karl Henning]

What seems clear to me is that Trump's failure for hours to intervene or take appropriate to control violent rioters attacking Congress is clear factual dereliction of duty, the obvious remedy for which is impeachment, (assuming impeachment is legally possible after the President's term has expired).

Hence Trump's second impeachment, from which the complicit GOP Senators acquitted him. The Constitution's checks and balances don't function when you have a gallery full of bad-faith actors. Democracy in the US is in a depressing tailspin.

That dereliction is quite apart from proving whether, in fact, Trump actually incited the mob action in the first place.  I'm not sure why additional legislation should be necessary, but I'm not clear on the American legal system.

But what does seem clear to me is that Trump-supporting Republicans would thwart the legislation as they certainly would another impeachment of Trump.

What is also clear to me is that large segments of the GOP have become a fascist conspiracy to destroy American democracy, (such as it presently is).

The action at this point is not more legislation, but prosecutions by the Dept of Justice.

[Spotted Horses]

The action at this point is not more legislation, but prosecutions by the Dept of Justice.

We are at the sorry point where prosecutors are afraid that prosecution of Trump and enablers of his attempt to nullify the election result would appear partisan and tend to push more conspiracy minded people into the Trump camp.

[Karl Henning]

We are at the sorry point where prosecutors are afraid that prosecution of Trump and enablers of his attempt to nullify the election result would appear partisan and tend to push more conspiracy minded people into the Trump camp.

Yes. Triumph of the bad actors.

[BasilValentine]

Oh Jeez.  He obstructed an official proceeding not only by failing to call off the deluded hoard, he did so by inciting the mob and planning and helping to execute a freaking coup.

[Karl Henning]

Here's hoping:

Garland: DOJ will hold those responsible for Jan. 6 riot accountable, whether they were present or committed other crimes