I want his press secretary give a conference TODAY and say something like:

I want The Press to engage in a thought experiment with me. Imagine if our president came out and said, "The Supreme Court has granted Presidents immunity from prosecution in matters of the official duty. Well, it is my official duty to warn America that the Court is corrupt. It has been rotted out by folks like Harlan Crow who has corrupted the already dubious ethics of Clarence Thomas into the little stooge he’s become. Both these men should be dead. So, too, should Altio and Kavanaugh. I wouldn’t lose any sleep if I woke up tomorrow to news there were three particular open seats for what was once the highest court. Heck, I might even pardon the guilty. Of course Congress would try to block me from appointing replacement Justices, but it is possible that folks like Mitch McConnell, Jim Jordon, Ted Cruz and others might meet with some tragically fatal accidents, and then maybe Congress wouldn’t have so many objections. I can’t advocate for that, of course. I might be tickled pink to see it, but I can’t tell anyone to go out and do it. I won’t even suggest it! And remember: a presidential pardon only works on federal cases. States might prosecute anyone committing such heinous acts. On the other hand, if a President had a privileged conversation about the Constitution with a State Governor, well… that Governor might decide to do a favor for that unindictable President. God Bless America and God Bless our troops.

– at which point the Press Secretary calls for questions.

Trump stole money from cancer kids. I don’t understand how anyone can miss the slime dripping off him. Yeah, I’m partisan about this.

– and while he’s at it, maybe Biden could see that Alito and Thomas met with some unfortunate fatality… and if congress does not think he should be allowed to replace them, perhaps they, too, would suddenly find their numbers shrinking as the pile of bodies mounts (I’m looking at you, Mitch McConnell).

Watch out for the sloppy reporting in the Salon piece. For example, it states:

“Hur’s claim that Biden couldn’t remember the day his son died was an outrageous lie,” argued Tommy Vietor, a former Obama staffer and commentator.

Vietor DID tweet that, but Salon doesn’t mention that Hur didn’t make that claim. Rather, Hur claimed Biden couldn’t remember the YEAR (not DAY).

“He did not remember, even within several years, when his son Beau died,” the report said. (source NBC).

I liked Tamara Keith’s more accurate coverage posted over here: https://www.wbur.org/npr/1237745840/biden-hur-report-memory-classified-documents

In addition to the delay, the court asked for arguments to an over-broad question:

“Whether and if so to what extent does a former president enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office.”

Note that they COULD have asked something more like, “Were Donald Trump’s actions on and surrounding the January 6th incidents official acts of a President and is Trump therefore immune from criminal prosecution because the conduct was both within his tenure in office and within the scope of his duties?” Of course, that is not what was asked. The actual question asks for long and careful considered speculation on all possible contingencies where the relevant case is about a specific set of actions that could be quickly assessed.

see also: https://www.salon.com/2024/02/28/the-is-indulging-immunity-claim-further-delaying-his-trial/

This Op/Ed expresses my sentiment better than I’d do: https://crooksandliars.com/2024/02/mitch-mcconnell-steps-down-senate

As gun control advocate Shannon Watts writes, “Sen. Mitch McConnell’s legacy will be that he purposefully undermined America’s first Black president, he broke the Supreme Court, he helped elect a fascist President, and he abetted up an insurrection on American soil.”

(and)

Let’s not pretend his successor will be any better. He is likely to be a Trump toady who will bow before the pressure and screw this country even more.

Msnbc’s Alex Wagner pointed out on her show that, “After all, it took just 51 days from the time Trump was kicked off the ballot in Colorado on December 19th to when the Supreme Court heard oral arguments for that case – the 14th Amendment case – on February 8th. Now on December 11th, 2023, Counsel Jack Smith asked the Supreme Court to quickly weigh in on Trump’s immunity appeal and to do so early , which the Court rejected! And now by the time we get to April 22nd, which is when the Court plans to hear arguments in this immunity case, it will have been 133 days since the Court was first asked to hear the appeal. So the pace is… curious? Around 50 days when it helps Donald Trump, and over 130 days when it doesn’t.”

This.

I don’t see how they can cry, “States’ Rights!” all this time and now try to say states DON’T have the right to set their ballots. They do. They keep various 3rd party candidates off ballots all the time for stuff like not having enough signatures to get them ON the ballot.

I heard Trump’s lawyer argue that requiring candidates not-be-insurrectionists was adding a requirement not in the Constitution – except it IS in the Constitution and even though 2/3 of Congress could give a pardon/waiver on that, the fact that they MIGHT do so in the future does not disqualify Trump in the now, which the Colorado lawyer brought up. Later, TV commentators brought up that after the Civil War, a bunch of guys DID preemptively ask Congress for waivers. If Trump got that through now, it sounds like Colorado would have to put him on the ballot.

The Supreme Court decided Bush V. Gore on just the state of Florida. It sounds like they are now deciding Trump V. [Constitution] and trying to blame it on Colorado. Sadly, they seem to want the Constitution to lose. My last hope is that they don’t make this about letting ‘one state decide the president’ because that already happens just based on who each state allows to vote. I’m hoping their decision stems from something actually in the Constitution.

It isn’t as important as a war starting, but it is significantly less common than, say, a mass shooting. I’d rate it along side whether groundhog Punxsutawney Phil sees his shadow: we know it is going to happen, that it has no meaningful impact, but there are still a bunch of people who want to know how the tradition turned out.

How different would things be out there in America if, 15 or 20 years ago, some rich liberal or consortium of liberals had had the wisdom to make a massive investment in local news? There were efforts along these lines, and sometimes they came to something. But they were small. What if, instead of right-wing Sinclair, some liberal company backed by a group of billionaires had bought up local TV stations or radio stations or newspapers all across the country?

Again, we can’t know, but we know this much: Support for Democrats has shriveled in rural America to near nonexistence, such that it is now next to impossible to imagine Democrats being elected to public office at nearly any level in about two-thirds of the country. It’s a tragedy. And it happened for one main reason: Right-wing media took over in these places and convinced people who live in them that liberals are all God-hating superwoke snowflakes who are nevertheless also capable of destroying civilization, and our side didn’t fight it. At all. If someone had formed a liberal Sinclair 20 years ago to gain reach into rural and small-town America, that story would be very different today.

There has in recent years been an impressive growth of nonprofit media outlets, led nationally by ProPublica and laying down roots everywhere, from the aforementioned Baltimore, where the Baltimore Banner has sometimes been scooping the Sun, to my home state of West Virginia, where Pulitzer Prize–winner Ken Ward’s Mountain State Spotlight is doing terrific reporting. These outlets are welcome indeed. They do sharp and necessary reporting. But they’re nonprofits, which, under IRS rules, cannot be partisan. They have to be apolitical.

I think one of the hard issues about making left-wing spin-machines is that a large chunk of the left would reject them. Following the old adage, “Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line,” I fear that you can get the right to follow any ridiculous story because they are unified in wanting their ‘side’ to win, but a good number of Democrats would become disenchanted by fake news and may even become turncoats if asked to believe muckraking spin as Truth. Surely there’s a good number of low-interest left-leaners who would be happy to believe and follow half-truths and lies, but I doubt Democrats would get the same consensus of accepting such as good politics the way Republicans do.

The “set up” is that students were NOT calling for genocide, and she was answering in regards to what was actually said (which, again, was not a call for genocide). She was saying that in the context of a peace rally, wanting Palestinians to be free is a call for equality and not the same as a call to eliminate all Jewish people – though if you said the same thing while firing rockets from Gaza, it would be a call to violence (but then it would not be in English). And they were all completely incompetent and making that distinction for the cameras.

But isn’t public speaking part of leading a University?

Yes, you are right, they were set up, but they should have been repeating over and over that much, if not all, of the speech was free from violent content with NO actual calls to kill or harm anyone. They should have made it clear that chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” at a peace rally may well be a call for equal citizenship (particularly when said by Euro/American types rallying against a distant aggression) despite sounding like a dog whistle to others.

They completely failed at that.

I missed the beginning of that hearing, but caught a fair chunk of it before turning it off as awful grandstanding by some of my least-liked politicians. I noticed the news only carried the worst bits, but honestly, I didn’t really hear any ‘best’ bits that were overlooked. I hope they had some better moments at the beginning, but while I was watching? No. As a group the University heads were just falling into traps or getting a brief reprieve without them recovering or clarifying anything.

FYI: From context I think you meant “defund” rather than “defend”.

Obviously Scalise is a lying liar. George tried to call him out on how funding IRS enforcement would increase revenues, but Scalise (again) dodged by acting as if catching tax cheats would be bad for the ‘working’ man.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Well, you just cited the CBO. I mean, that’s their analysis. It’s going to reduce it because you’re taking away enforcement.

SCALISE: Right, but the CBO said – but the CBO said it’s going to actually hit people making under $400,000 a year with $4 billion in new taxes.

That violates President Biden’s own pledge by the way that he made to low income families. He promised he wouldn’t raise their taxes. CBO said it would be a $4 billion hit to those families.

(CROSSTALK)

… he thinks 400K is low income?

If the situation was reversed which Republicans would have been obligated to vote for, say, Pelosi? Because when she had the slimmest of majorities, they all voted McCarthy and left it to her to come up with the votes. That’s the gig. Get your party in line if you want to govern. Both sides have had problems with this forever, but this time was the worst.

P.S. “bare” means naked. You wanted “bear”, which means endure/carry the weight.

You’re blaming the victim. “She wouldn’t have been raped if she’d just been nicer.” NO.

McCarthy could have saved himself, but wouldn’t.

https://www.businessinsider.com/kevin-mccarthy-lost-speakership-cbs-interview-angered-democrats-votes-2023-10

https://time.com/6320202/house-democrats-refused-save-kevin-mccarthy/

“I think he’s likely the most unprincipled person to ever be Speaker of the House,” Rep. Abigail Spanberger, a Virginia Democrat, told reporters ahead of the vote. “He’s disdainful, he lies about us, he lies about the process of governance. It’s not even a question of whether or not we should take any particular action.”

How can you blame them for – when the abusers start in-fighting – voting to remove an abuser from leadership? How can you blame them for steadfastly voting for a non-abusive leader when the only promise made by the abusive group is that they want to be MORE abusive? The government would have shut down without Democratic help, but the Dems DID help for the sake of the country. Democrats did not create the rule nor make the call to remove McCarthy, but they damned sure had no reason to help any Republicans with all their BS that has nothing to do with moving the country forward and seems solely about posturing for the cameras.

Umm… Republicans made the rule that any solitary Representative could call for a vote to remove the Speaker. Dems didn’t make that rule. In fact, they could have used that rule at any time, but they didn’t. Gaetz® called to oust the speaker. Why? Because McCarthy cut a deal with Dems where both sides lost stuff to keep the government open – and then McCarthy BLAMED the Dems for shutting the government down!

Anyway, working with Democrats was too much for Gaetz, so he moved to oust the Speaker. Most Republicans voted to keep McCarthy, but not all. Meanwhile, Democrats were pretty mad that McCarthy blamed them for a crisis they’d helped avert by accepting concessions. So? So they vote against the guy who threw them under the bus, then unite to vote for one of their own, Jeffries, to replace him.

All that is to say that when I hear people blame the Dems – particularly McCarthy repeatedly saying ‘a handful of Republicans worked with Democrats to cause chaos’ – I wonder anyone can think the Dems are to blame. If Republicans were ‘working’ with Democrats, all they had to do was vote for Jefferies any time in the last 3 weeks and we’d have had a Speaker.

The problem was NO ONE was working with Democrats. Republicans could have peeled off a handful of Democrats by conceding on some points, but the current ® party has made cooperation a death sentence. Politics should be about stuff like which road to fix first and not all the BS it has become.

Meadows has been creating chaos to fill his coffers for years now, so it hurts to hear he won’t face accountability for it.

ABC News has identified several assertions in the book that appear to be contradicted by what Meadows allegedly told investigators behind closed doors.

According to Meadows’ book, the election was “stolen” and “rigged” with help from “allies in the liberal media,” who ignored “actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze.”

…

“The people who rigged this election knew that eventually, these irregularities would come to light … [So] they conducted the operation, then attacked anyone who dared ask questions about what they had done,” his book says.

Meadows went even further while promoting his book on right-wing media in November 2021. When asked by a podcast host if he believes the outcome of the 2020 election was fraudulent, Meadows responded, “I do believe that there are a number of fraudulent states … I’ve seen at least illegal activity in Pennsylvania [and] in Georgia” – referring to two key states that clinched the White House for Biden.

Under the penalty of perjury, Meadows offered a vastly different assessment to Smith’s investigators, telling them he’s never seen any evidence of fraud that would undermine the election’s outcome, according to what sources told ABC News.

So he BELIEVES there was fraud despite never seeing evidence – this side steps the actual proof of accurate counts (hand recounts and the like). He has seen evidence of honestly and he’s ignoring it. I guess the man does not believe in honesty.

…

Meadows has not been charged in Smith’s federal case, he has been charged – along with Trump, Giuliani and 16 others – by authorities in Georgia for allegedly trying to overturn the election results in that state. Four of those charged have already pleaded guilty and agreed to testify for the prosecution, while the others, including Meadows, Trump and Giuliani, have pleaded not guilty and are awaiting trial.

Meadows sought to have the Georgia case against him moved to federal court, but that effort was denied. He is now appealing that decision.

From 2013 to 2020, Meadows represented North Carolina in Congress, where he also led the conservative House Freedom Caucus for two years.

Under the immunity order from Smith’s team, the information Meadows provided to the grand jury earlier this year can’t be used against him in a federal prosecution.

I do hope Georgia gets to prosecute him, and I hope the judge and jury see through his posturing about ‘belief’ in fraud despite evidence of a good count.

Oh lordy, that smirk! Play-acting. Grrrr. I’m sure she thinks the whole thing is sooo unjust.

Rather than taking the blame, she said (in part):

What I did not do, but should have done, your honor, is to make sure that the facts that the other lawyers alleged to be true were, in fact, true. In the frenetic pace of attempting to raise challenges to the election in several states, including Georgia, I failed to do my due diligence.