“President Trump was, without question, a driving force in the catastrophic events that took place on January 6 by encouraging masses of rioters to incite violence on elected officials, staff members, and our representative democracy as a whole," he said in the video.

“I voted to impeach President Trump. His inciting rhetoric was un-American, abhorrent, and absolutely an impeachable offense. It’s time to put country over politics," he said.

“Speaker Pelosi has thrown precedent and process out the window by turning what should be a thorough investigation into a rushed political stunt. I wish, more than anything, that we had more time to hold hearings to ensure due process," the video continued. “Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi did not afford us that option.”

I wish, more than anything, that we had more time to hold hearings to ensure due process,"

The same Republicans who blamed Islamic clerics for inspiring Islamic terrorism refuse to hold Trump responsible for inspiring the attack on the Capitol. Cruz says proposals to impeach the president or remove him through the 25th Amendment are just “vindictiveness” and “partisan spite” from people who “hate Donald Trump.” Jordan says impeachment would be a slap at the “75 million Americans who supported the president.” Issa brushes off Trump’s incendiary rhetoric as a “misstep,” and he argues that impeachment would be “kicking him when he’s down.” When an interviewer asked Issa whether Trump bore any responsibility for the violence at the Capitol, the congressman pleaded, “I don’t make it my practice to judge anything other than the outcome.”
...
After four years of inquisitions into the deaths of four Americans in Libya, they’re accusing Democrats, in Issa’s words, of “overplaying a lot of things, including the death of these people on Capitol Hill.” Republicans stand firmly against terrorism, it seems, until the terrorists are Republicans.

10 Republican votes for impeachment. So, 202 Republican Congresspeople are OK with this. 202. Two hundred and two. 95 percent. Nine-five.

Someone alluded to Lucy and the football the yesterday or the day before, and so it ever is.

we need witnesses and stuff for the Senate trial

"If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other." -- Ulysses S. Grant

I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's

Fun fact: the Mason-Dixon line was not the border between Union and Confederacy but between free and slave states. Maryland and Delaware were south the the Mason-Dixon line, but never joined the CSA.

"If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other." -- Ulysses S. Grant

"If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other." -- Ulysses S. Grant
Eh, a little from column A, a little from column B...

10 Republican votes for impeachment. So, 202 Republican Congresspeople are OK with this. 202. Two hundred and two. 95 percent. Nine-five.

As for many of the rest, I don't even think it's party over country and it's instead about making certain they appease the voters back home.

Oh, ok. No problem then.

Two hundred and two.

Clapper stands proudly with the 4 non-voters.

Once the violence began, when the Capitol was under siege, when the Capitol Police were being beaten and killed, and when the Vice President and the Congress were being locked down, the President was watching and tweeted about the Vice President’s lack of courage.

For hours while the riot continued, the President communicated only on Twitter and offered only weak requests for restraint.

...

I have backed this President through thick and thin for four years. I campaigned for him and voted for him twice. But, this utter failure is inexcusable.

Washington Post is reporting Trump is refusing to pay Giuliani.

I really hope Rudy sues him for payment — if nothing else, the potential comedic value of such litigation is off the charts.

Where the citizen is sovereign and the official the servant, where no power is exercised except by the will of the people, it is important that the sovereign — the people — should possess intelligence.

And what turned Alan Dershowitz into such a total scumbag?

Two Virginia police officers, including one who bragged on social media that he didn’t do anything illegal by storming the U.S. Capitol, now face charges from the Department of Justice for their roles in the riot.

Jacob Fracker and Thomas Robertson, who work for the Rocky Mount Police Department, were arrested Wednesday, the Justice Department said. Both were charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority.

“CNN and the Left are just mad because we actually attacked the government who is the problem and not some random small business … The right IN ONE DAY took the f****** U.S. Capitol. Keep poking us,” Robertson is quoted as saying on Facebook.

ETAsk: And what turned Alan Dershowitz into such a total scumbag?

So many of the free speech lawyer (previous) "heroes" ultimately turned to the dark side: Dershowitz, Kuntsler, Kuby...

has been charged with throwing a fire extinguisher at police.

Robert Lee

What did Kuntsler and Kuby do? I know they defended the blind sheik and other unsavory types, but everyone is entitled to a defense.

Do they?

Do they deserve a defense? Is that the question? Not in Trump's America, but in the US, yes.

Does a terrorist deserve top legal talent such as Kuby or Kuntsler?

In that world, I would agree, the worst criminals deserve equal defense. The point is, they don't deserve better.

When Rudolph W. Giuliani was treating his efforts to carry out President Trump’s wishes to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election as a payment opportunity — he proposed a daily retainer of $20,000 for his legal services from the burgeoning Trump campaign legal fund — the president dismissed it and responded by demanding to personally approve each expense.
Nine weeks and another impeachment later, Mr. Trump began the day on Thursday by asking aides to erase any sign of a rift. Stripped of his Twitter account, Mr. Trump conveyed his praise through an adviser, Jason Miller, who tweeted: “Just spoke with President Trump, and he told me that @RudyGiuliani is a great guy and a Patriot who devoted his services to the country! We all love America’s Mayor!”
White House officials are universally angry with Mr. Giuliani and blame him for both of Mr. Trump’s impeachments. But the president is another story.

i'm sure most people have more faith in the military than i do, but if....if....if they were preparing to launch a coup to ensure that their godking remained president after his due expiration, i'd have to imagine the images we're seeing from washington are exactly the ones we'd see before such a scenario played out.

My brother's a recently retired naval officer. He continues to reassure me that the military will not follow an illegal order. And the Joint Chiefs put out that letter a few days ago -- it's bad enough that they felt they had to release it, but good enough that they stood up for the rule of law.

And if you want to feel better, big business much prefers stability to chaos. Civil wars aren't good for the bottom line. And that's the most important component of the power structure in this country.

That said, we've gone through a lot of "can't happen" scenarios the last four years that have, in fact, wound up happening. So I hear where you're coming from.

And this is a fairly compliant area (in terms masks in public places I guess). Are the infections mostly coming from social gatherings?

The Missouri House of Representatives has canceled next week's session due to rising COVID-19 cases two days after voting down a measure requiring masks and social distancing.

Days after President Donald Trump incited supporters to attack the U.S. Capitol in an effort to overturn the election, an evangelical pastor in Frisco told his congregation they have an “executive order” to keep Trump in office.
Brandon Burden, the pastor at KingdomLife, is a former Frisco City Council candidate and member of the Frisco Conservative Coalition, a political action committee. He and the church are known around Frisco social media circles to promote conservative ideals and leaders, including Trump, who made history Wednesday as the only president to be impeached twice.
At the end of Sunday’s service, Burden discussed the need to prepare for a national blackout or any emergency that could occur between Sunday and the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on Jan. 20. He told the congregation to stock up on food, water and gas for generators and to keep their weapons loaded.
“We are locked and loaded at the Burden house,” he said.

Add it all up, and as long as this much business activity is taking place, until more widespread vaccination has been done, I think it's gong to be difficult to get the positivity rate down much more, even with the mild winter we've had.

New: US Capitol Police arrested a Virginia man as he attempted to pass through a police checkpoint in downtown Washington Friday with fake inaugural credentials, a loaded handgun & over 500 rounds of ammunition, CNN reporting.

Too bad it's not really feasible to make people tour the ICU's, like how Germans were shown the death camps.

Does a terrorist deserve top legal talent such as Kuby or Kuntsler?

Online misinformation about the U.S. election fraud plunged by as much as 73 percent the week after President Donald Trump was kicked off Twitter, Facebook, and other social media sites, reports the Washington Post. There are other factors that could have contributed to that dramatic drop, including the banning of lots of accounts that peddled conspiracy theories, including those affiliated with QAnon. But, overall, the research by Zignal Labs suggests tech companies can prevent false information from spreading if they decide to take decisive action. In the week after Trump was banned from Twitter, conversations about election fraud plunged from 2.5 million mentions to 688,000 mentions across several social media platforms.

Too bad it's not really feasible to make people tour the ICU's, like how Germans were shown the death camps.

Has there been any measured writing yet on how Los Angeles got so badly ###### so fast?

#11793 Wishful thinking I think. There's no mixed messaging in Canada and there's been a pretty big recent uptick everywhere.

Basically a lot of people parsed, "safe to come out of (semi) lockdown" as "Covid over" (and therefore no need for basic measures like distancing and masking) -- despite pretty consistent messaging from all levels of government.