Posts Tagged ‘UNITED STATES SENATE’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 8, 2022 at 12:10 am
Many “heroes” come out of the woodwork only after the danger is safely past.
First up: Today’s Republicans in the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Joseph Biden the 46th President of the United States. Trump, running for a second term, got 74,196,153 votes.
Yet more than two months after the election, Trump refused to concede, insisting that he won—and repeatedly claiming falsely that he was the victim of massive vote fraud.
Donald Trump
With the Senate due to certify states’ Electoral College results on January 6, Trump pressed Vice President Mike Pence to illegally flip the results of the election to give him a win. Pence refused.
For weeks Trump called upon his legions of Right-wing followers to descend on Washington, D.C. on that day. On December 20, he tweeted: “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
On January 6, 2021, tens of thousands of Stormtrumpers heard Trump denounce the election. Then they stormed and breached the United States Capitol. They easily brushed aside Capitol Police, who made no effort to arrest or shoot them.
Many of the lawmakers’ office buildings were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite target of Trump and the Right.
Not until nightfall—hours later—did police finally restore order to the capitol.
Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley had intended to dispute the results of the 2020 election. As many as 25 Senators and 140 House Republicans had intended to join him.
But now most of Trump’s longtime Congressional supporters feared they would be tarred—rightly—as his accessories to that day’s outrage. They might even be voted out of office!
Suddenly, many of them found reasons to reject a challenge to the Electoral College votes.
In addition:
- Many of them piously claimed they were shocked—shocked!—by that day’s violence—carefully omitting that by their overt or covert support of Trump’s lies they had helped create the climate for its ignition.
- Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—who had refused to condemn Trump’s efforts to overturn the election result—called the invasion a “failed insurrection.”
- Senator Lindsey Graham, who had relentlessly defended Trump’s lies and outrages for four years, now dared to admit: “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are lawfully elected.”
- Twitter, which for years had ignored Trump’s flagrant violations of its rules against threats and harassment, now found it possible to ban Trump from its website.
Something similar happened in Washington, D.C., in 1954.
From 1950 to 1954, Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy terrorized the nation, accusing anyone who disagreed with him of being a Communist—and leaving ruined lives in his wake.
Joseph R. McCarthy
Among those civilians and government officials he slandered as Communists were:
- President Harry S. Truman
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow
- Secretary of State George C. Marshall
- Columnist Drew Pearson
Finally, in 1954, McCarthy overreached himself and accused the U.S. Army of being a hotbed of Communist traitors. Joseph Welch, counsel for the Army, destroyed McCarthy’s credibility in a now-famous retort:
“Senator, may we not drop this?….You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Later that year, the Senate censured McCarthy and he rapidly declined in power and health.
- Senatorial colleagues who had once courted his support now avoided him.
- They left the Senate when he rose to speak.
- Reporters who had once fawned on him for his latest sensational slander now ignored him.
- Eisenhower—who had sought McCarthy’s support during his 1952 race for President—joked that “McCarthyism” was now “McCarthywasm.”
Fast-forward to July 12, 2012—and the release of former FBI Director Louie Freeh’s report on serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky. As the assistant football coach at Penn State University (PSU), he had used the football facilities to sexually attack numerous young boys.
Jerry Sandusky
But Sandusky was regarded as more than a second-banana. He received Assistant Coach of the Year awards in 1986 and 1999, and authored several books about his coaching experiences.
In 1977, Sandusky founded The Second Mile, a non-profit charity serving underprivileged, at-risk youth.
College football is a $2.6 billion-a-year business. And Penn State is one of its premiere brands, with revenue of $70 million in 2010.
PSU’s seven-month internal investigation, headed by Freeh, revealed:
- Joe Paterno, head coach of the Penn State Nittany Lions, was aware of a 1998 criminal investigation of Sandusky.
- So was president Graham Spanier, athletic director Tim Curley and vice president Gary Schultz.
- In 2001, then-graduate assistant Mike McQueary reported to Paterno that he’d seen Sandusky attacking a boy in the shower.
- Paterno, Spanier, Curley and Schultz then conspired to cover up for Sandusky.
- The rapes of these boys occurred in the Lasch Building—where Paterno had his office.
In 2011, Sandusky was arrested and charged with sexually abusing young boys over a 15-year period.
On June 22, 2012, he was convicted on 45 of the 48 charges. He will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
On the day the Freeh report was released, Nike—a longtime sponsor for Penn State—announced that it would remove Paterno’s name from the child care center at its world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 29, 2022 at 12:11 am
On November 3, 80 million voters elected former Vice President Joe Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
President Donald Trump had often “joked” that America needed a “President-for-Life.” Now he demanded that he be awarded that title.
Trump refused to accept that verdict.
Speaking from the White House in the early hours of November 4, he said: “Millions and millions of people voted for us tonight, and a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise that group of people and we won’t stand for it.”
For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.
States ignored his demand and kept counting.
Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud.
He claimed:
- Illegal aliens had been allowed to vote.
- Trump ballots had been systematically destroyed.
- Tampered voting machines had turned Trump votes into Biden ones.
Throughout November and December, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. More than 30 cases were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.
For 20 days, General Services Administrator Emily Murphy refused to release $7.3 million in transition funding and Federal resources to the President-elect’s team.
Under the law governing presidential transitions, Murphy was responsible for determining the winner based on publicly available information before the actual Electoral College vote.
Finally, on November 23, Murphy released the transition funding and resources.
Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.
Nothing changed.
On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session to convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.
Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so.
Top Republicans—such as Vice President Mike Pence and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—refused to congratulate Biden as the winner.
None of them branded Trump’s efforts to overturn the election as those of a tyrant.
Just as Germans did nothing to stop Adolf Hitler’s inexorable march toward war—and the destruction of millions of lives and Germany itself—so, too, did Americans seem paralyzed to end the equally self-destructive reign of the man often dubbed “Carrot Caligula.”
Gaius Caligula was “the mad emperor” of ancient Rome. Like Trump, he lived by a philosophy of “Let them hate me, so long as they fear me.”
He ruled as the most powerful man of his time—three years, 10 months and eight days. And all but the first six months of his reign were drenched in slaughter and debauchery.
There were basically three ways America’s slide into tyranny could have been stopped:
First, Congressional Republicans could have revolted against Trump’s authority and/or agenda.
They could have demanded that Trump accept the verdict of the electorate—as every other past President had.
But they didn’t.
Republicans feared that if they openly defied him, his fanatical base would turn on them in coming elections—and end their comfortable reign of power and privileges.
Second, invoking the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
This allows the Vice President and a majority of the Cabinet to recommend the removal of the President in cases where he is “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” It also allows the House and Senate to confirm the recommendation over the President’s objection by two-thirds vote.
The Vice President then takes over as President.
A case could easily have been made that Trump, emotionally distraught over his loss and determined to circumvent the will of the electorate, had been rendered unfit to continue in office.
This did not happen.
Most of Trump’s cabinet rightly feared him. He fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017 and publicly humiliated his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, for more than a year until firing him in 2018. Vice President Mike Pence in particular had set new records for sycophancy.
Third, the “Caligula solution.” Like Trump, Caligula delighted in humiliating others. His fatal mistake was taunting Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard. Caligula considered Chaerea effeminate owing to a weak voice and mocked him with names like “Priapus” and “Venus.”
Gaius Caligula
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.
Trump had similarly behaved arrogantly toward his Secret Service guards. He forced them to work without pay during his 35-day government shutdown in 2018. He also forced them to accompany him to COVID-infected states—both during the Presidential campaign and afterward. Many of them had been stricken with this often lethal disease as a result.
During Adolf Hitler’s 12-years reign of Nazi Germany, high-ranking military officers tried to kill him at least 42 times.
The best-known of these attempts occurred on July 20, 1944, when Colonel Count Claus Shenk von Stauffenberg planted a bomb in a conference room attended by Hitler and his generals. Hitler survived only by sheer luck.
By contrast, no similar plot was aimed at Donald Trump.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on March 28, 2022 at 12:10 am
“Why are we letting one man systematically destroy our nation before our eyes?”
It’s a question millions of Americans asked themselves after Donald Trump became President of the United States.
Millions of Germans asked themselves the same question throughout the six years of World War II.
In September, 1938, as Adolf Hitler threatened to go to war against France and England over Czechoslovakia, most Germans feared he would. They knew that Germany was not ready for war, despite all of their Fuhrer’s boasts about how invincible the Third Reich was.
A group of high-ranking German army officers was prepared to overthrow Hitler—provided that England and France held firm and handed him a major diplomatic reverse.
But then England and France—though more powerful than Germany—flinched at the thought of war.
They surrendered to Hitler’s demands that he be given the “Sudetenland”—the northern, southwest and western regions of Czechoslovakia, inhabited mostly by ethnic Germans.
Hitler’s popularity among Germans soared. He had expanded the territories of the Reich by absorbing Austria and Czechoslovakia—without a shot being fired!
The plotters in the German high command, realizing that public opinion stood overwhelmingly against them, abandoned their plans for a coup. They decided to wait for a more favorable time.
It never came.
Adolf Hitler and his generals
Less than one year after the infamous “Munich conference,” England and France were at war—and fighting for the lives of their peoples.
As for the Germans: Most of them blindly followed their Fuhrer right to the end—believing his lies (or at least wanting to believe them), serving in his legions, defending his rampant criminality.
And then, in April, 1945, with Russian armies pouring into Berlin, it was too late for conspiracies against the man who had led them to total destruction.
Germans paid the price for their loyalty to a murderous dictator—through countless rapes, murders and the wholesale destruction of their cities. And from 1945 to 1989, Germans living in the eastern part of their country paid the price as slaves to the Soviet Union.
Have Americans learned anything from this this warning from history about subservience to a madman?
The answer seems to be half-yes, half-no.
In 2016, almost 63 million Americans elected Donald Trump—a racist, serial adulterer and longtime fraudster—as President.
Donald Trump
Upon taking office on January 20, 2017, Trump began undermining one public or private institution after another.
- Repeatedly attacking the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
- Siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency which unanimously agreed that Russia had subverted the 2016 Presidential election.
- Firing FBI Director James Comey for investigating that subversion.
- Giving Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak highly classified CIA Intelligence about an Islamic State plot to turn laptops into concealable bombs.
- Shutting down the Federal Government for 35 days because Democrats refused to fund his ineffective “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay. The shutdown ended due to public outrage—without Trump getting the funding amount he had demanded.
- Trying to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear former Vice President Joe Biden, who was likely to be his Democratic opponent in the 2020 Presidential election.
- Allowing the deadly COVID-19 virus to ravage the country, infecting (to date) 14.8 million Americans and killing 282,000.
- Attacking medical experts and governors who urged Americans to wear masks and socially distance to protect themselves from COVID-19.
- Ordering his Right-wing followers to defy states’ orders to citizens to “stay-at-home” and wear of masks in public to halt surging COVID-19 rates.
And throughout all those outrages, House and Senate Republican majorities remained silent or vigorously supported him.
A typical example:
On June 4, 2020, during protests over the police murder of black security guard George Floyd, a curfew was imposed on Buffalo, New York. As police swept through Niagara Square, Martin Gugino, a 75-year-old peace activist with the Catholic Worker Movement, walked into their path as if attempting to speak with them.
Two officers pushed him and he fell backwards, hitting the back of his head on the pavement and losing consciousness.
On June 9, Trump charged that Gugino was part of a radical leftist “set up.” Trump offered no evidence to back up his slander.
Typical Republican responses included:
- Kentucky Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to say whether Trump’s tweet was appropriate.
- Texas Senator Ted Cruz: “I don’t comment on the tweets.”
- Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson said he hadn’t seen the tweet—and didn’t want it read to him: “I would rather not hear it.”
- Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander: “Voters can evaluate that. I’m not going to give a running commentary on the President’s tweets.”
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters outvoted 74,196,153 Republican voters to elect former Vice President Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 18, 2022 at 12:14 am
As a result of the vast increase in election security, President Donald Trump failed to get the help he expected from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
The result: He lost the 2020 Presidential election.
Thus, Joe Biden won the popular vote by 81,268,924 to 74,216,154 for Trump—and the Electoral College by 306 to 232.
Two days later, Trump claimed: “And this is a case where they’re trying to steal an election, they’re trying to rig an election.”
Chris Krebs was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). And the man most responsible for ensuring election security.
Chris Krebs
On November 12, to counter the growing chorus of lies from Trump and his Right-wing allies, he put out the following statement:
“The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history. There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.”
On November 17, Trump fired Chris Krebs.
Too cowardly to confront Krebs, Trump fired him by tweet—and accompanied the outrage with yet another lie:
“The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 election was highly inaccurate, in that there were massive improprieties and fraud, including dead people voting, poll watchers not allowed into polling locations, glitches in the voting machines which changed votes from Trump to Biden, late voting, and many more.
“Therefore, effective immediately, Chris Krebs has been terminated as director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.”
Donald Trump
Asked by “60 Minutes'” Scott Pelley if he was surprised to be fired, Krebs replied: “I don’t know if I was necessarily surprised. It’s not how I wanted to go out. The thing that upsets me the most about that is I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to my team.
“And I’d worked with them for three and a half years, in the trenches. Building an agency, putting CISA on the national stage. And I love that team. And I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye, so that’s what I’m most upset about.”
Krebs was no dyed-in-the-wool Democrat but a life-long Republican. He gave up a lucrative job as Microsoft’s head of cybersecurity policy to join the Trump administration. He wanted to serve his country by creating a dedicated cybersecurity agency for the first time.
Still, he had his reservations about taking the job. As he told the Financial Times: “The flaws of this man [Trump] were obvious to everybody that was willing to pay attention. [But] to do your job, you have to be able to compartmentalize. I was willing to do that.
“Over time, it eats away at you. It eats away at you, the other parts of the department that were doing stuff that just seemed so inhumane. I was never involved in any of those policy conversations.”
By January 6, 2021, Trump had exhausted his legal efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
From November 3 to December 14, Trump and his allies lost 59 times in court, either withdrawing cases or having them dismissed by Federal and state judges.
Of these attempts to challenge the results of the 2020 election, Krebs told Pelley:
“It was upsetting because what I saw was an apparent attempt to undermine confidence in the election, to confuse people, to scare people. It’s not me, it’s not just CISA. It’s the tens of thousands of election workers out there that had been working nonstop, 18-hour days, for months.
“They’re getting death threats for trying to carry out one of our core democratic institutions, an election. And that was, again, to me, a press conference that I just– it didn’t make sense. What it was actively doing was undermining democracy. And that’s dangerous.”
On January 6, the United States Senate, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding, met to certify states’ Electoral College results of the 2020 election.
That morning, Trump urged Pence to flip the results of the election to give him a win.
Pence replied that he lacked the power to overturn those results.
At noon, Trump appeared at the Ellipse, a 52-acre park south of the White House fence. A stage had been set up for him to address tens of thousands of his supporters, who eagerly awaited him.
Trump ordered them to march on the Capitol building to express their anger at his loss—and thus intimidate Congressional officials to reject the results.
The Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside Capitol Police, who made little effort to arrest or shoot them.
The “Jolly Roger” meets Donald Trump
Three hours passed before the mob was dispersed and order was restored.
Yet for all the terrible drama of that day, the true hero of the moment went unrecognized.
By depriving Trump of Russian help, Chris Krebs had ensured a victory for democracy.
On the evening of January 6, the House and Senate met again to count the Electoral Votes.
And as expected, the two bodies pronounced Joseph Biden the winner—bringing an end to Donald Trump’s reign of criminality and treason.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 17, 2022 at 12:15 am
“TIME’s Person of the Year over the course of nearly a century has been a measuring stick for where the world is and where it’s going. But how to make sense of 2020, a year without measure? A year marked by multiple crises, all at once, all over the world: A once-in-a-century plague. Brutal racial injustice. Glaring inequality. Apocalyptic wildfires. Democracy under fire.”
Thus opens the web page advertising TIME magazine’s “Person of the Year” choice of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
On the surface, choosing Biden and Harris makes sense: “Joe Biden was elected President of the United States in the midst of an existential debate over what reality we inhabit. Perhaps the only thing Americans agree on right now is that the future of the country is at stake, even as they fiercely disagree about why.”
As for the shared legacy of Biden and Harris: “If Donald Trump was a force for disruption and division over the past four years, Biden and Harris show where the nation is heading: a blend of ethnicities, lived experiences and worldviews that must find a way forward together if the American experiment is to survive.”
Yet a lesser-known but far more consequential choice for “Person of the Year” would have been Chris Krebs.
Because, without Chris Krebs, there would not now be a Biden Presidency.
During the 2016 Presidential race, Russian propaganda had played a major role in convincing millions of Americans to vote for Donald Trump. Social media platforms—especially Facebook and Twitter—were flooded with genuinely fake news to sow discord among Americans and create a pathway for Trump’s election.
And where Internet trolls left off, Russian computer hackers took over.
Hillary Clinton won the popular vote—65,853,514 to 62,984,828 for Trump. But in the United States, what counts in Presidential elections is the Electoral College vote. And there Trump won: 304 to 227.
What put him over the top in the Electoral College was the help he got from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
And the point man for this was Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) run by DHS.
Born in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1977, Krebs had received a B.A. in environmental sciences from the University of Virginia in 1999, and a J.D. from the George Mason University School of Law in 2007.
Chris Krebs
Krebs had served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Infrastructure Protection, and later worked in the private sector as Director for Cybersecurity Policy for Microsoft.
In preparation for the 2020 Presidential election, Krebs launched a massive effort to counter lies spread by Russians—and Americans—on social media platforms. As he explained to Scott Pelley during a “60 Minutes” interview aired on November 29, 2020:
“So we spent something on the order of three and a half years of gaming out every possible scenario for how a foreign actor could interfere with an election. Countless, countless scenarios.”
Krebs’ to-do list included paper ballots:
“Paper ballots give you the ability to audit, to go back and check the tape and make sure that you got the count right. And that’s really one of the keys to success for a secure 2020 election. Ninety-five percent of the ballots cast in the 2020 election had a paper record associated with it. Compared to 2016, about 82%.
“That gives you the ability to prove that there was no malicious algorithm or hacked software that adjusted the tally of the vote, and just look at what happened in Georgia. Georgia has machines that tabulate the vote. They then held a hand recount and the outcome was consistent with the machine vote.”
Krebs’ duties included:
- Sharing intelligence from agencies such as the CIA and National Security Agency with local officials about foreign efforts at election interference.
- Ensuring that domestic voting equipment was secure.
- Attacking domestic misinformation head-on.
At his command lay the resources of a series of powerful Federal investigative agencies:
“We had the Department of Defense Cyber Command. We had the National Security Agency. We had the FBI. We had the Secret Service. We also had representatives from the Election Assistance Commission, which is the federal independent agency that supports the actual administration of elections.
“We had representatives from some of the election equipment vendors. And they’re critical because they’re the ones out there that know what’s going on on the ground if there’s any sort of issue with some of their systems. And we had representatives from state and local governments.”
Misinformation led CISA to create a new “Rumor Control” website ahead of the 2020 election. Its main goal was to debunk rumors surrounding the 2020 election that had been spreading throughout the country.
As a result, Krebs was widely praised for revamping the department’s cybersecurity efforts and increasing coordination with state and local governments.
By all accounts—except Donald Trump’s—the November 3, 2020 election went very smoothly.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 9, 2022 at 12:12 am
In 2016, “reality show” host Donald Trump—with major assistance from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin—was elected President.
Throughout his four-year term, the Right enthusiastically supported him despite a record of unprecedented infamy—which included:
- Repeatedly and viciously attacking the nation’s free press for daring to report his growing list of crimes and disasters, calling it “the enemy of the American people.”
- Publicly siding with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin against American Intelligence agencies—such as the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency—which unanimously agreed that Russia had interfered with the 2016 Presidential election.
- Praising Nazis and Ku Klux Klansmen.
- Using his position as President to further enrich himself, in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.
- Attacking and alienating America’s oldest allies, such as Canada and Great Britain.
- Firing FBI Director James Comey for refusing to pledge his personal loyalty to Trump—and continuing to investigate Russian subversion of the 2016 election.
- Shutting down the Federal Government on December 22, 2018, because Democrats refused to fund his “border wall” between the United States and Mexico. An estimated 380,000 government employees were furloughed and another 420,000 were ordered to work without pay.
- Trying to coerce Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear former Vice President Joe Biden, who was likely to be his Democratic opponent in the 2020 Presidential election.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of Americans supported Trump’s actions or refused to actively oppose them.
On April 27, 2020, “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough offered an important insight about why most Americans ignored Trump’s crimes and outrages for so long:
“I’ve said from the very beginning: You can lie about independent counsels, people won’t listen. You can lie about former FBI directors—“
MIKA BRZEZINSKI: “It doesn’t impact their lives.”
JOE SCARBOROUGH: “They’re still going to work, the kids are doing fine, they’ve got enough money to pay their rent, to pay their mortgage. You can even lie about the Ukraine call—they don’t really care.”
Then-White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders provided strong evidence for this when she bragged, on June 4, 2018:
“Since taking office, the President has strengthened American leadership, security, prosperity, and accountability. And as we saw from Friday’s jobs report, our economy is stronger, Americans are optimistic, and business is booming.”
Donald Trump
Many Congressional Republicans echoed this: The American people care only about the economy—and how well-off they are.
But COVID-19 changed all that. Suddenly, millions of Americans found themselves stuck at home with their children. Many of them couldn’t go to work—because they were sick or their jobs had disappeared. Their 401Ks suddenly became worthless.
Had COVID-19 not intervened, Trump would still be President. And he wouldn’t have had to call on aid from Vladimir Putin. Millions of Right-wing, “I’ve-got-mine-so-screw-you” Americans would have happily returned him to office as “President-for-Life.”
During his 12-year reign, Adolf Hitler was the target of at least 42 overthrow plots. The most famous of these occurred on July 20, 1944.
So far as is known, Donald Trump was not the target of even one.
- No Cabinet members dared to invoke the Twenty-Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution to remove Trump for office as “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.”
- House and Senate Republicans rubberstamped his every infamy. When he praised North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-Un or attacked Vietnam POW John McCain or falsely charged massive voter fraud, Republicans stayed silent or loudly parroted his lies.
- On February 5, 2020, the Republican-dominated Senate—ignoring the overwhelming evidence against him—acquitted Trump on both impeachment articles: Obstruction of Congress and abuse of power.
- Just hours after Trump incited the deadly January 6, 2021 coup attempt at the United States Capitol, 147 Republicans lawmakers in the House and Senate voted to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss—following months of his baseless claims that the November election had been stolen.
- At the Pentagon, American generals stood mute as Trump repeatedly abused their ability and integrity, while pursuing policies calculated to aid Russia.
- Although they regularly met with Trump, none of them plotted his removal.
- No FBI agents—steeped in Federal criminal law—built a case for Trump’s indictment and prosecution. This despite his attacking their integrity and even firing their director, James Comey, for investigating Russia’s subversion of the 2016 election.
Trump knows he cannot win office in a free election.
So notorious was the role played by Russian trolls and hackers in winning Trump the 2016 election that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was determined to prevent a repetition in 2020.
Chris Krebs, the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, revamped the department’s cybersecurity efforts and increased coordination with state and local governments.
By all accounts—except Donald Trump’s—the November 3, 2020 election was virtually free of fraud. As a result, Trump lost.
That’s why legislators in Republican-controlled states are trying to corrupt election machinery at state and local levels—to nullify the votes of millions of Democrats in the 2022 and 2024 elections.
If they can restore a lifelong criminal to absolute power in 2024, Joseph Biden will be the last democratically-elected American President.
And Donald Trump will live out his dictatorial fantasies as “President-for-Life.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Military, Politics, Social commentary on February 8, 2022 at 12:10 am
In his January 19 press conference, President Joseph Biden said: “I actually like Mitch McConnell. We like one another.”
In reality, McConnell refused to acknowledge Biden’s legitimacy as President-elect until December 15, 2020—more than one month after Biden’s election on November 3.
Additionally, at least 147 Republicans sided with Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. And even after the treasonous attempted coup of January 6, 2021, many of them still refuse to accept the legitimacy of Biden’s win.
January 6, 2021’s attempted coup
Tyler Merbler from USA, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
Republicans have enthusiastically embraced Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him—despite overwhelming evidence that it wasn’t.
Legislators in Republican-controlled states are now working furiously to corrupt election machinery at state and local levels so they can nullify the votes of millions of Democrats in the 2022 and 2024 elections.
Their ultimate goal: Restore a lifelong criminal and Russia-appeasing traitor to absolute power as “President-for-Life.”
In 1996, Newt Gingrich, then Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, wrote a memo entitled “Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.” It encouraged Republicans to attack Democrats with such words as “corrupt,” “selfish,” “destructive,” “hypocrisy,” “liberal,” “sick,” and “traitors.”
Republicans learned long ago that most voters aren’t moved by appeals to their rationality. Instead, what counts with them are emotions. And Republicans have become experts at appealing to these—especially the baser ones.
For Republicans, the Big Three emotions are: Hatred, Greed and Fear.
This has enabled Republicans to repeatedly score impressive electoral victories: Out of 17 Presidential elections since the end of World War II, Republicans have won 10.
But it’s not enough to see Republicans for what they are. Americans need to be seen for what they are.
Historically, the United States has always been a highly conservative nation. Going from “conservative” to “Fascist” is a relatively easy step—as millions of Donald Trump’s supporters have proven.
Since the end of World War 11, Republicans have regularly hurled the charge of “treason” against anyone who dared to run against them for office or think other than Republican-sponsored thoughts.
Republicans had been locked out of the White House from 1933 to 1952, during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.
Determined to regain the Presidency by any means, they found that attacking the integrity of their fellow Americans a highly effective tactic.
During the 1950s, Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy rode a wave of paranoia to national prominence—by attacking the patriotism of anyone who disagreed with him.
Joseph McCarthy
The fact that McCarthy never uncovered one actual case of treason was conveniently overlooked during his lifetime.
During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Republicans tried to paint Bill Clinton as a brainwashed “Manchurian candidate” because he had briefly visited the Soviet Union during his college years.
After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Republicans lost their “soft on Communism” slander-line. So they tried to persuade voters that Democrats were “soft on crime.”
When riots flared in 1992 after the acquittal of LAPD officers who had savagely beaten Rodney King, President George H.W. Bush blamed the carnage on the “Great Society” programs of the 1960s.
George H.W. Bush
After losing the White House to Clinton at the polls in 1992 and 1996, Republicans tried to oust him another way: By impeaching him over a tryst with a penis-loving intern named Monica Lewinsky.
The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach, but the effort was defeated in the Democratically-controlled Senate.
The 2008 election of Barack Obama pushed the Republican “treason chorus” to new heights of infamy.
Barack Obama
Almost immediately after Obama took office, he came under attack by an industry of right-wing book authors such as Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh.
Consider the vocabulary Right-wingers use to describe their political adversaries:
“Liberals,” “radicals, “bankrupting,” “treason,” subversion,” “slander,” “terrorism,” “betrayal,” “catastrophe,” “shattering the American dream,” “leftists,” “Communists,” “government takeover,” “socialism,” “power grab,” “secularism,” “environmentalism.”
And while the Right lusts to constantly compare Democrats and liberals (the two aren’t always the same) to Nazis, its propaganda campaign draws heavily on Adolf Hitler’s own advice.
In Mein Kampf, the Nazi leader laid out his formula for successful propaganda: “All effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials.
“Those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotypical formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.
“[The masses] more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.”
Thus, Republicans spent the eight years of Barack Obama’s Presidency repeating the lie that he was born in Kenya—not Hawaii, as the long-form version of his birth certificate attests.
The reason: To “prove” that he was an illegitimate President, and should be removed from office.
To Republicans’ dismay, their slander campaign didn’t prevent Obama from being elected in 2008—and re-elected in 2012.
In 2016, “reality show” host Donald Trump—with major assistance from Russian dictator Vladimir Putin—was elected President. Throughout his four-year term, the Right enthusiastically supported him—despite a record of unprecedented infamy.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 11, 2022 at 12:11 am
Merrick Brian Garland has served as:
- A special assistant to Attorney General Benjamin Civviletti (1979 – 1981).
- Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1997 – 2021).
- Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (2013 – 2020).
Yet, as United States Attorney General, he is now presiding over the closing days of the American Republic.
On January 6, 2021, President Donald Trump incited a treasonous attack on the United States Capitol Building. There, the United States Senate, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding, would certify states’ Electoral College results of that election.
Since former Vice President Joseph Biden had gotten 306 votes compared to 232 for Trump, the outcome was already known. And Trump, who had often “joked” about becoming “President-for-Life,” wanted that verdict overturned.
The Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside Capitol Police, who made little effort to arrest Only or shoot them.
Only one rioter was shot: Ashli Babbitt, as she climbed through a shattered window in a barricaded door
By comparison: At the battle of the Alamo, 200 Texan defenders killed 600 Mexican attackers.
Stormtrumpers attacking Capitol police
After giving his inflammatory speech, Trump returned to the White House. There he gleefully watched his handiwork on television—and refused to call off his supporters or call the National Guard.
More than three hours passed before police—using riot gear, shields and batons—retook control of the Capitol.
By January 5, 2022, more than 700 Stormtrumpers have been arrested and charged.
- More than 150 defendants have pleaded guilty.
- About one-tenth of these—71—have been sentenced by January 1, 2022.
- The most common charge pleaded to is illegally parading or demonstrating in the Capitol, a misdemeanor.
- Of those who have been sentenced, fewer than half have received prison time.
- The median prison sentence to date is 45 days.
- Another
Yet no major Trump supporter has been arrested, let alone indicted. Such as:
- Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, who cried to the demonstrators, “Let’s have trial by combat!”
- Donald Trump, Jr., who, just hours before the Trump mob stormed Congress, threatened Republican lawmakers at a large rally outside the White House: “These guys better fight for Trump. Because if they’re not, guess what? I’m going to be in your backyard in a couple of months!”
- Rep, Mo Brooks (R-Ala.) who incited the Trump crowd with: “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass!”
- Donald Trump. He not only incited his followers to attack the Capitol, he has spent the last six months spreading poisonous lies that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him through “massive” voter fraud. As a result, he continues to undermine the democratic process as he terrorizes the Republican party to stand behind him.
There is a historical precedent for this, and it does not bode well for our Republic.
On November 9, 1923, Nazi Party Fuhrer Adolf Hitler tried to overthrow the government in Munich, Bavaria.
About 2,000 Nazis marched to the center of Munich, where they confronted heavily-armed police. A shootout erupted, killing 16 Nazis and four policemen.
Hitler was injured during the clash, but managed to escape. Two days later, he was arrested and charged with treason.
Put on trial, he found himself treated as a celebrity by a judge sympathetic to Right-wing groups. He was allowed to brutally cross-examine witnesses and even make inflammatory speeches.
At the end of the trial, he was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.
Serving time in Landsberg Prison, in Bavaria. he wrote his infamous book, Mein Kampf-–“My Struggle.” Part autobiography, part political treatise, it laid out his future plans—including the extermination of the Jews and the conquest of the Soviet Union.
Adolf Hitler leaving Landsberg Prison, December, 20, 1924
Nine months later, he was released on parole—by authorities loyal to the authoritarian Right instead of the newly-created Weimar Republic.
Hitler immediately began rebuilding the shattered Nazi party—and deciding on a new strategy to gain power. Never again would he resort to armed force. He would win office by election—or intrigue.
On January 30, 1933, those intrigues made him Chancellor of Germany.
Writes historian Volker Ullrich, in his monumental 2016 biography, Hitler: Ascent 1889 – 1939: “Historians have perennially tried to answer the question of whether Hitler’s rise to power could have been halted….
“There were repeated opportunities to end Hitler’s run of triumphs. The most obvious one was after the failed Putsch of November 1923. Had the Munich rabble-rouser been forced to serve his full five-year term of imprisonment in Landsberg, it is extremely unlikely that he would have been able to restart his political career.”
Thus, it isn’t just what happens that can influence the course of history. Often, it’s what doesn’t happen that has at least as great a result.
A 10- to 20-year prison sentence for Donald Trump would scuttle his chances for becoming dictator—and send a warning message to other Right-wingers.
The United States Justice Department now faces the same choice faced by the judges of the Weimar Republic: Enforce the law against a ruthless tyrant—or stand by while he mounts a comeback.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on January 10, 2022 at 12:10 am
After graduating from Harvard Law School, Merrick Brian Garland served as a special assistant to Attorney General Benjamin Civviletti from 1979 to 1981.
As a federal prosecutor, he played a leading role in the investigation and prosecution of the Oklahoma City bombers.
He then served as judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (1997 – 2021) and then as Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (2013 – 2020).
In 2016, President Barack Obama nominated him to serve as an associate Justice of the Supreme Court to fill the vacancy created by the death of Antonin Scalia. But Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to hold a hearing or vote on your nomination.
Merrick Garland
Yet, as United States Attorney General, he is now presiding over the closing days of the American Republic.
As the bestselling book, Peril, makes clear:
- There was a detailed plan by Republicans to illegally retain President Donald Trump in office.
- The votes of 81 million Americans who had voted for former Vice President Joseph Biden would have been scrapped in what was intended to be a Right-wing coup.
According to authors Bob Woodward and Robert Costa:
- Attorney John Eastman first proposed the plan to Vice President Mike Pence on January 4 in the Oval Office with Trump in attendance.
- The memo called for throwing out the election results in seven states under the false claim that those states had used alternate electors.
- Eastman’s memo was sent to Senator Mile Lee (R-Utah) and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who served as one of Trump’s attorneys at the time.
- They tried to convince Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) that there was rampant fraud in the 2020 election.
- Both Graham and Lee reportedly argued that the fraud claims had no merit.
On January 6, the United States Senate, with Vice President Mike Pence presiding, would certify states’ Electoral College results of that election.
Since Biden had gotten 306 votes compared to 232 for Trump, the outcome was already known.
On that morning, Trump tried to convince Pence to reject the electoral votes that had been cast for Biden. This would mean flipping the results of the 2020 Presidential election to give him a win.
Pence replied that he lacked the power to overturn those results.
But as Pence went off to the Capitol Building housing the Senate and House of Representatives, Trump had one last card to play.
Mike Pence
For weeks Trump had ordered his legions of Right-wing Stormtrumpers to descend on Washington, D.C. by January 6.
On December 20, he had tweeted: “Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
In tweets, he promoted the rally again on December 27 and 30, and January 1.
On January 6, Trump appeared at the Ellipse, a 52-acre park south of the White House fence and north of Constitution Avenue and the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
A stage had been set up for him to address tens of thousands of his supporters, who eagerly awaited him.
Trump ordered them to march on the Capitol building to express their anger at the voting process and to intimidate their elected officials to reject the results.
Donald Trump addresses his Stormtrumpers
“All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by a bold and radical left Democrats which is what they are doing and stolen by the fake news media.
“Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore, and that is what this is all about. And to use a favorite term that all of you people really came up with, we will stop the steal….
“And after this, we’re going to walk down and I’ll be there with you. We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And we’re going to cheer on our brave Senators and Congressmen and women and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
“Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated.”
The Stormtrumpers marched to the United States Capitol—and quickly brushed aside Capitol Police.
Capitol Police facing off with Stormtrumpers
Among their outrages:
- Members of the mob attacked police with chemical agents and lead pipes.
- Many of the attackers wore body armor and two-way radio headsets similar to those used by police.
- Many of the lawmakers’ offices were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite Right-wing target.
- Rioters yelled “Hang Mike Pence!” and “Hang Nancy Pelosi”
- Pipe bombs ere found at the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters offices.
- Some rioters carried Confederate flags or Nazi emblems. Others carried crosses and signs saying, “Jesus Saves” and “Jesus 2020.”
- At least 140 police officers were injured.
- More than $1 million dollars of damage was done to the Capitol building.
- Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) yelled at several fellow Republicans who were challenging President-elect Biden’s electoral votes: “This is what you’ve gotten, guys!”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on January 6, 2022 at 12:12 am
On January 6, 2021, thousands of Right-wing Donald Trump supporters—many of them armed—stormed the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
After overwhelming the Capitol Police force, they damaged and occupied parts of the building for several hours. Legislators huddled fearfully while National Guard units from several states finally evicted the insurrectionists.
The Capitol attack marked the first time in American history when a defeated Presidential candidate violently sought to remain in office.
It may also mark a desperately-needed change in the priorities of American law enforcement, which has traditionally focused on Left-wingers—and especially blacks—as the country’s mortal enemies.
Option 2: The Justice Department could begin waging all-out war on Right-wing militia groups planning to unleash violence in 2024.
Numerous commentators have noted the contrast between the tepid police response to the Capitol attack by white Right-wingers and the brutal crackdown on peaceful liberal blacks protesting the murder of George Floyd in Washington D.C. on June 1, 2020.
U.S. Park Police and National Guard troops used tear gas, rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, horses, shields and batons to clear protesters from Lafayette Square—so Trump could stage a photo-op at St. John’s Episcopal Church.
After 9/11, American law enforcement and Intelligence agencies initiated major reforms to focus on Islamic terrorism.
A similar reform effort, focusing on Right-wing terrorism, could include the following:
- The FBI’s designating Right-wing political and terrorist groups as the Nation’s #1 enemy.
- Reviving the FBI’s legendary COINTELPRO (“Counterintelligence Program”) that destroyed the Ku Klux Klan in the late 1960s. Among the methods that can be used:
- Turning the Bureau’s powerful arsenal—bugs, wiretaps, informants, SWAT teams—on them.
- Buying the cooperation of informants within Right-wing organizations.
- Conducting “black bag jobs” to steal membership lists of of Right-wing organizations.
- Breaking up the marriages of prominent Right-wingers by circulating rumors of their infidelity among their wives.
- Informing the employers of known Right-wing terrorists of their employees’ criminal activity, resulting in the firing of untold numbers of them.
- Contacting the news media to publicize the arrests of prominent Right-wing leaders.
- When Right-wing terrorists target Federal law enforcement agents and/or their families for harassment or worse, they can be targeted for similar intimidation or removal.
FBI SWAT member
A revised COINTELPRO could be supplemented by the following:
- Creating tip hotlines for reporting illegal Right-wing activities—and offering rewards for information that leads to arrests.
- Prosecuting militia groups for violating Federal firearms laws.
- Treating calls for the murder of members of Congress—as Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has done—as felonies punishable by lengthy imprisonment.
- Prosecuting Right-wing leaders involved in the treasonous assault on the United States Capitol Building.
- Prosecuting as “accessories to treason” all those Republican members of Congress who stoked Right-wing anger by lying that the 2020 Presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump, although every objective news source proved he had lost.
- Directing the Treasury Department’s Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) at fundamentalist Christian churches that finance Right-wing terrorism-–just as it halts the financing of Islamic terrorist groups by Islamic organizations.
- Using drones, planes and/or helicopters to provide security against similar Right-wing terror demonstrations—especially in Washington, D.C.
- Using the Federal Communications Commission to ban Fox News—the Nation’s #1 Right-wing propaganda network—from representing itself as a legitimate news network, and requiring that its stories carry labels warning viewers: “This is Right-wing propaganda, NOT news.”
- Encouraging victims of Right-wing hate-speech to file libel/slander lawsuits against their abusers—such as the parents of murdered children at Sandy Hook Elementary School successfully did against Alex Jones.
- Using Federal anti-terrorist laws to arrest, prosecute and imprison Right-wingers who openly carry firearms and threaten violence, even if states allow such display of firearms.
- Seizing the assets of individuals and organizations found guilty of Right-wing terrorism offenses.
Option 3: The “Caligula Solution.”
Like Donald Trump, the Roman emperor Gaius Caligula delighted in humiliating others. His fatal mistake was taunting Cassius Chaerea, a member of his own bodyguard.
On January 22 41 A.D. Chaerea and several other bodyguards hacked Caligula to death with swords before other guards could save him.
Trump has similarly behaved arrogantly toward his Secret Service guards.
- He forced them to work without pay during his 35-day government shutdown in 2018.
- He also forced them to accompany him to COVID-infected states—both during the Presidential campaign and afterward.
- Many of them have been stricken with this often lethal disease as a result.
Even as an ex-President, Trump continues to insult anyone who challenges him. This includes not only Democrats but Republicans he feels don’t pay him sufficient homage—or, worse, dare to oppose him for the party’s 2024 Presidential nomination.
At the same time, he publicly exposes himself to a potential assassin virtually every day. And the mere presence of bodyguards is no guarantee against assassination.
Presidential candidate George C. Wallace was shot and paralyzed by a gunman while mingling with supporters in a Maryland shopping center in 1972. And President Ronald Reagan was shot and almost killed in 1981 while walking to his bulletproof limousine in Washington, D.C.
Both men were under protection by the U.S. Secret Service at the time.
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SHOWING AMAZING COURAGE–ONCE DANGER IS SAFELY PAST
In Bureaucracy, History, Law, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on April 8, 2022 at 12:10 amMany “heroes” come out of the woodwork only after the danger is safely past.
First up: Today’s Republicans in the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters elected former Vice President Joseph Biden the 46th President of the United States. Trump, running for a second term, got 74,196,153 votes.
Yet more than two months after the election, Trump refused to concede, insisting that he won—and repeatedly claiming falsely that he was the victim of massive vote fraud.
Donald Trump
With the Senate due to certify states’ Electoral College results on January 6, Trump pressed Vice President Mike Pence to illegally flip the results of the election to give him a win. Pence refused.
For weeks Trump called upon his legions of Right-wing followers to descend on Washington, D.C. on that day. On December 20, he tweeted: “Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!”
On January 6, 2021, tens of thousands of Stormtrumpers heard Trump denounce the election. Then they stormed and breached the United States Capitol. They easily brushed aside Capitol Police, who made no effort to arrest or shoot them.
Many of the lawmakers’ office buildings were occupied and vandalized—including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a favorite target of Trump and the Right.
Not until nightfall—hours later—did police finally restore order to the capitol.
Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley had intended to dispute the results of the 2020 election. As many as 25 Senators and 140 House Republicans had intended to join him.
But now most of Trump’s longtime Congressional supporters feared they would be tarred—rightly—as his accessories to that day’s outrage. They might even be voted out of office!
Suddenly, many of them found reasons to reject a challenge to the Electoral College votes.
In addition:
Something similar happened in Washington, D.C., in 1954.
From 1950 to 1954, Wisconsin Republican Senator Joseph R. McCarthy terrorized the nation, accusing anyone who disagreed with him of being a Communist—and leaving ruined lives in his wake.
Joseph R. McCarthy
Among those civilians and government officials he slandered as Communists were:
Finally, in 1954, McCarthy overreached himself and accused the U.S. Army of being a hotbed of Communist traitors. Joseph Welch, counsel for the Army, destroyed McCarthy’s credibility in a now-famous retort:
“Senator, may we not drop this?….You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?”
Later that year, the Senate censured McCarthy and he rapidly declined in power and health.
Fast-forward to July 12, 2012—and the release of former FBI Director Louie Freeh’s report on serial pedophile Jerry Sandusky. As the assistant football coach at Penn State University (PSU), he had used the football facilities to sexually attack numerous young boys.
Jerry Sandusky
But Sandusky was regarded as more than a second-banana. He received Assistant Coach of the Year awards in 1986 and 1999, and authored several books about his coaching experiences.
In 1977, Sandusky founded The Second Mile, a non-profit charity serving underprivileged, at-risk youth.
College football is a $2.6 billion-a-year business. And Penn State is one of its premiere brands, with revenue of $70 million in 2010.
PSU’s seven-month internal investigation, headed by Freeh, revealed:
In 2011, Sandusky was arrested and charged with sexually abusing young boys over a 15-year period.
On June 22, 2012, he was convicted on 45 of the 48 charges. He will likely spend the rest of his life in prison.
On the day the Freeh report was released, Nike—a longtime sponsor for Penn State—announced that it would remove Paterno’s name from the child care center at its world headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon.
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