Rep. Katherine Clark (D-Mass.) addresses reporters during a press conference on Wednesday, October 20, 2021 following the closed-door House Democratic Caucus meeting.
The fourth-ranking House Democrat, Assistant Speaker Katherine Clark (Mass.), urged the sergeant-at-arms on Tuesday to force lawmakers who defy the chamber’s mask mandate to cast votes from enclosures in the gallery above to limit potential spread of COVID-19.
Clark said it’s clear that existing fines are not enough to deter certain lawmakers from repeatedly flouting rules requiring everyone to wear masks in the House chamber.
Two far-right Republicans, Georgia Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Andrew Clyde, have each been fined tens of thousands of dollars for repeatedly ignoring the requirement that everyone in the House chamber wear a mask during the pandemic.
And with the highly contagious omicron variant driving caseloads in the nation’s capital to record levels, Clark argued that pandemic safety rules need to be enforced.
She suggested using plexiglass enclosures in the gallery overlooking the House chamber, which were installed last year so that lawmakers subject to quarantine could still cast votes when proxy voting was temporarily unavailable.
“This callous disregard for House rules endangers the health of members of Congress and the professional staff whose physical presence is required to ensure continuity of government,” Clark wrote in the letter to House Sergeant-at-Arms William Walker.
“That is why, in addition to imposing fines, I am requesting that your office begin requiring members who fail to comply with this rule to attend the House floor from the isolation boxes in the House gallery,” Clark wrote.
“This commonsense step will not only protect our dedicated House staff from members who refuse to follow House rules, but it will also allow those members to continue to fulfill their constitutional duty to vote on matters before the House.”
The House mask mandate was first established in July 2020 because numerous GOP lawmakers refused to wear masks, including one who tested positive for COVID-19 after spending time in the chamber and at committee hearings.
The mask requirement applies to the House chamber, surrounding hallways in the Capitol and connected office buildings. The Senate side of the Capitol complex, meanwhile, does not have a mask mandate.
Walker testified before members of the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday that he’s had difficulty enforcing the mask mandate.
“I see people – members, staff – without masks. And I’ll walk up to them and I’ll ask them to put the mask on. And some just walk away from me. Some put it on,” Walker said.
House Democrats imposed fines to enforce the mask requirement shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol in response to several Republicans who declined to wear masks while lawmakers were crowded in a secure space together during the riot. The fines start at $500 for the first offense and $2,500 for subsequent offenses.
Most Republicans have complied with the mask requirement in the House chamber to avoid the fines. But other GOP lawmakers and their staff have pointedly ignored the mask mandate everywhere else in the Capitol complex where they aren’t subject to fines.
And the fines haven’t deterred a handful of GOP lawmakers from refusing to wear masks altogether.
Greene told Newsmax last week that she has been fined close to $90,000 for repeatedly refusing to wear a mask on the House floor. Clyde, meanwhile, has accrued at least $58,000 in mask fines.
Nine other Republicans have also been fined at least once: Reps. Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Mariannette Miller-Meeks (Iowa), Bob Good (Va.), Mary Miller (Ill.), Chip Roy (Texas), Ralph Norman (S.C.), Brian Mast (Fla.), Beth Van Duyne (Texas) and Thomas Massie (Ky.).
House leaders, in consultation with the Capitol physician, are urging everyone to use higher-quality masks like N95s or KN95s and spend as little time as possible on the floor during roll call votes.
At least nine House members have tested positive for COVID-19 since the weekend.
The Capitol physician’s office disclosed last week – before the House and Senate returned to session in recent days – that the rate of positive cases at its COVID-19 testing site has shot up from less than 1 percent to 13 percent.
The House sergeant-at-arms says some maskless lawmakers & staff ignore him even if he tells them personally to abide by the mask rules.
A member of House Dem leadership has an idea: Force maskless lawmakers to vote from "isolation boxes" instead.https://t.co/d0glELTeC4
North Carolina’s new political districts do not violate the state constitution, a panel of three judges ruled unanimously Tuesday.
The GOP-drawn maps would give Republicans a built-in advantage in future elections — but none of the reasons why challengers said the maps are unconstitutional stand up to legal scrutiny, the judges ruled.
In other words, politicians may use the redistricting process to give their party an edge. Indeed, the judges wrote in their 260-page ruling, redistricting is an inherently political process and is meant to be that way.
“Redistricting and the political considerations that are part of that process do not impinge on the right to vote,” they wrote. “Nothing about redistricting affects a person’s right to cast a vote.”
The challengers immediately announced Tuesday that they plan to appeal the ruling. It’s possible that it could go straight to the Supreme Court, which has a Democratic majority.
The three superior court judges who ruled Tuesday were two Republicans, Wake County Judge Graham Shirley and Catawba County Judge Nathaniel Poovey, and one Democrat, Anson County Judge Dawn Layton.
Their ruling upheld both the congressional map — which is expected to give Republicans a 10-4 advantage among North Carolina’s 14 U.S. House of Representatives seats in a 50-50 election — and the maps for state legislature, which are expected to produce strong Republican majorities even if Democrats win the majority of the vote.
The judges wrote that there is no guarantee that the number of seats a political party wins in Congress or the state legislature should be proportional to how much of the statewide vote that party wins.
‘RESULT OF A DEMOCRATIC PROCESS’
The challengers in the case had put forward numerous expert reports that the maps were skewed far to the right — more Republican leaning than 99.99% of a set of billions of hypothetical maps that one expert created, for instance. And the judges sounded almost apologetic in parts of their ruling.
“Despite our disdain for having to deal with issues that potentially lead to results incompatible with democratic principles and subject our State to ridicule, this Court must remind itself that these maps are the result of a democratic process,” the judges wrote.
They added:“Judges, just like many of the citizens they serve, do not always like the results they reach.”
Republican leaders, however, ignored the thinly veiled critiques and focused on the big picture: Their maps will get to be used in every election through 2030, as long as Tuesday’s ruling stands on appeal.
“I am pleased the trial court has ruled in our favor, upholding the maps drawn by the General Assembly in the most transparent process in North Carolina history,” N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore said in a press release.
“Now that a bipartisan court unanimously validated the maps, the people of our state should be able to move on with the 2022 electoral process,” Sen. Warren Daniel, a Morganton Republican and top redistricting official, said in another news release.
HEADING TO THE SUPREME COURT?
Tuesday’s ruling, however, may not be the final word due to the imminent appeal.
The 2022 primary elections are in May. So if the Supreme Court decides to overturn Tuesday’s ruling and forces the maps to be redrawn, that decision would have to happen soon to take effect in 2022 rather than 2024.
“While this ruling is disappointing, all signs ultimately point to the N.C. Supreme Court resolving this case,” said Hilary Harris Klein, an attorney for some of the groups who challenged the maps, in a news release.
She added: “We remain confident that our conclusive evidence of partisan bias, obfuscation, and attacks on Black representation, from expert testimony to the mapmakers’ own admissions, will convince the state’s highest court to protect voters from nefarious efforts to entrench partisan power at the expense of free elections and fair representation.”
Republicans quickly criticized the Supreme Court’s Democratic majority as “conflict-riddled,” foreshadowing the legal battles that are to come over whether certain justices should recuse themselves. But potential conflicts abound on both sides of the court.
Republicans have already asked Democratic Justice Sam Ervin to recuse himself from hearing the case because he is up for reelection this year. And they have routinely criticized Democratic Justice Anita Earls. She is the founder and former executive director of the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, one of the main law firms for the challengers in the case.
On the GOP side, there could be even more calls for recusals. Republican Justice Phil Berger Jr. is the son of the N.C. Senate leader who is a main defendant in the case, and fellow Republican Justice Tamara Barringer was herself a GOP lawmaker until 2019.
NC’S GERRYMANDERING HISTORY
States redraw their political districts at the start of every decade, after new U.S. Census data comes out. In North Carolina, that process has created near-constant controversy. Various courts, both state and federal, ruled the legislature’s maps unconstitutional in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s and 2010s.
Nearly all of those cases, however, were over racial gerrymandering. The lawsuits over the maps for the 2020s have been over partisan gerrymandering, which is a much less settled legal question.
A 2019 ruling in one of the lawsuits over last decade’s maps did find that extreme partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional. But Republican lawmakers didn’t keep fighting after losing at trial — which means there’s no legal precedent from an appellate court to bind the judges who were hearing this new lawsuit.
And unlike the judges in 2019, who said that the N.C. Constitution’s guarantee of free elections means partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional, the judges this year disagreed.
A panel of judges has ruled NC's new political districts aren't unconstitutional. The maps would give the GOP a big advantage in US House races. Will the ruling be appealed to NC Supreme Court? https://t.co/kAe2Q5x5aW
God grant me the serenity to close all the tabs I'm never going to read The courage to read the open tabs that really ought to be read And the wisdom to know the difference
NEW: Republicans in Arizona and Michigan tried to send forged vote certifications declaring trump the winner to the National Archives. NARA refused to accept them. https://t.co/GVqqq5hwJe
Gym Jordan, who helped cover up the sexual assaults of his fellow wrestling coach, has plenty to hide.
Hillary Clinton testified for ELEVEN HOURS and never took the Fifth Amendment or refused to answer any questions because she really did have “nothing to hide.” At the end of her ordeal, the committee chair, Republican Trey Gowdy, a trained prosecutor, apparently unaware that the mic was still hot, confessed that “we got nothing.” He soon resigned his committee chairmanship and then resigned from the congress entirely and has essentially never been heard from again.
All the Republicans who waged years of witch hunts against Hillary, never once getting anything, are now taking the Fifth (probably drinking a few fifths, too), refusing to testify and doing everything possible to avoid questions that they know will prove how directly they were involved in election lies, election fraud and an armed violent attempted overthrow of the United States Capitol.
From Raw Story:
“To answer Jim Jordan, I would quote Jim Jordan from the views that he expressed in the final Benghazi report, where he said that all of the truth must come out,” said Raskin. “Everybody needs to testify, and nobody’s got the right to hide anything from Congress. So, I think he had it right then. Jim Jordan, more than anybody else, knows what dogged, aggressive investigation is about, even when he’s on a wild goose chase, he demands all the information he wants, and we’re not on that. We are on the central investigative mission certainly of this decade, if not this century, to get to the bottom of this terrible political crime that was incited and to a substantial extent organized by Donald Trump.”
Depends on if the state is red or blue. In the blue states you have a chance for a good result out of the state legislatures, red state ones then you are screwed and your rights denied. Scottie
The slumlord who owned the building that burned in the deadliest residential blaze in New York City’s recent history is on Eric Adams‘ transition team for HOUSING ISSUES. https://t.co/HYkLOuyrf2
A caravan of over a dozen private vehicles with taped-over license plates pulls up, the Patriot Front members load up their shields and flags outside Soldier Field here in Chicago pic.twitter.com/JYUl1RDOps
At least they were not abusing and killing unarmed black men. But for that they wouldn’t have been fired. Scottie
Sorry too late then. Scottie
The unvaxxed clogging our hospitals , expecting the overworked staff to cure them strain sympathies. When they recover, will they still support anti-vax pols? Morning newspaper white-space sketch. pic.twitter.com/3WvbBfKvlM
So the reason not to say "screw it, let's just unmask and go back to normal" right now is to try to….flatten the curve. I know that's an expression from way back when, but it applies. We need to slow down infections to keep hospitals from collapsing. 6/n
Texas Children’s Hospital and Baylor College of Medicine announced today that CORBEVAX™, a protein sub-unit COVID-19 Vaccine, whose technology was created and engineered at its Center for Vaccine Development (CVD), has received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) approval from the Drugs Controller General of India (DCGI) to launch in India with other underserved countries to follow.
Dubbed “The World’s COVID-19 Vaccine”, it uses a traditional recombinant protein-based technology that will enable its production at large scales making it widely accessible to inoculate the global population. The initial construct and production process of the vaccine antigen was developed at Texas Children’s Hospital CVD, led by co-directors Drs. Maria Elena Bottazzi and Peter Hotez and in-licensed from BCM Ventures, Baylor College of Medicine’s integrated commercialization team, to Hyderabad-based vaccine and pharmaceutical company Biological E. Limited (BE).
I have debunked this right wing talking point before. Crime is up currently in cities run by both the right and the left, but the misleading right wing media is making it out to be a lot worse than it is and they leave out it is happening in cities run by the Republicans. The right wing uses talking points instead of facts. The crime we have now is less than we had just less than a decade ago. What the right is trying to do is scare the voters into voting for Republicans saying they will be harmed if they don’t and only Republicans can save them. It is a talking point they have used for as long as I can remember. They claim the Democrats are soft on crime and weak on the military. Both are incorrect. Scottie
Rivers is a die hard far right cartoonist. He doesn’t even see the hypocrisy of showing people that sacrificed and gave what they could for a public good he is then comparing to people who won’t even wear a mask to prevent a virus from spreading because it inconveniences them. Really the other suffered for the good of the country with extra work, rationed foods and fuel, not buying stuff to save it for the war effort and yet the people Rivers is championing won’t wear a mask because it seems to harm a mythical freedom they have the rest of us don’t. Scottie
Covered this one before. The CDC guidelines take into account the reality that the US doesn’t have the testing kits we need to do proper testing. The CDC guidelines are easy to understand if you wish to do so. If you listened to the misleading right wing the guidelines are written in a now dead language by space monkeys. It is a case of saying what you wish ere true instead of reporting the reality. Scottie
The US undervalues teachers and uses them as childcare baby sisters to park kids somewhere so the parents can go to work to make profit for the upper incomes. The New Mayor of NY even said it, he needs kids in schools so the parents can work when he was talking about wanting to stop testing for Covid. DeathSantis threatened teachers, schools, and districts if they dared to require masks or vaccines and worse if they tried to do remote learning. Deathsantis has made it clear he is denying Covid is in Florida because it is hurting the tourism trade and the profits wont flow if we admit the truth. Better to infect everyone they say and get it over with. Problem is it is not over with then. There is so far no herd immunity with the coronavirus which is shown as you can get it a second and even third time. Teachers are humans, people with families and they want to not get Covid also. They have the same right to protect themselves as everyone else. The fact that they stop the states from getting tax money and the upper class incomes from profit is the states problem. Pay for more teachers to spread the students out, enforce mask and vaccine requirements, and do remote learning when needed. But the states don’t want to spend more money on kids or teachers / schools, better to let them all die on their own dime the states feel. Scottie
One side, the Democrats are fighting for the people and the public good. The other side, the Republicans are fighting against the public good and for the wealthy / large corporations. It is very misleading of the media that tries to make this both sides are doing it. That is incorrect, each side is fighting for very different ideas and groups of people. Scottie
The main difference is that Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were foreign enemies. The perpetrators of January 6th were domestic enemies, traitors one and all. Scottie
Mail in ballots have been shown to be safe and secure way for people to vote. Several states use only mail in ballots with little problems and no fraud. Drop boxes are simply convenient for people who are busy especially with the slowed down mail system. Again no evidence of any fraud. The only large scale ballot harvesting fraud was in North Carolina where a Republican operative took a bunch of ballots to mark them for the Republican candidate. He got caught. The point is small scale fraud happens and the people get caught. Like the four people so far from the Villages in Florida who voted more than once for tRump. Ballot gathering or bunching is simply a convenience to help people who can not get out and post their ballot themselves. It is a service not a crime. What the right doesn’t like about the voting rights bill is it helps people who have a right to vote to vote. The right doesn’t want all eligible voters to vote because they will lose. But that is democracy, they need to change their message to appeal to more people. They do not seem to want a democracy, but instead to allow only the people who vote for them to vote.
The allowing non-citizens to vote in local communities where they have lived for many years makes sense. It gives people who live there a say in their community. Studies have shown that when people are part of the community they work for the well being of that community. This is not federal elections, not even state office holders, it is simply local community issues. No big deal and no down side. Scottie
Equating the ending of a 20 year war and the removing of US troops along with mostly peaceful protests against police abuse / murder of unarmed people to violent attacks against the country with thousands of deaths or the attack on the capital to stop a legislative action is despicable. The ones mentioned by VP Harris were attacks against the US sovereignty. That is a huge difference from the others added despite the right wing media hype over them. Scottie
Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade said that former President Donald Trump needed to “learn to lose” regarding the results of the 2020 election in an appearance on Media Buzz with host Howie Kurtz.
To introduce his colleague, Kurtz noted that “at the heart of the outraged media coverage of January 6 is Donald Trump’s insistence — we sometimes get several statements a day from him — that he he did not lose the election. You have some thoughts about that.”
“Yeah, I do,” Kilmeade replied. “I think that in life, you have to learn to lose. Hillary Clinton has to learn that. You know, Al Gore pretty much did learn that. Stacey Abrams didn’t learn that.”
“And if you did, in fact, get screwed out of this election, put together an A-team list of lawyers — not the ones we witnessed — and show us the districts and show us how,” Kilmeade continued, obliquely referring to the dozens and dozens of lawsuits that Trump lost in state and federal courts across the country. “I have not seen any of that.”
“And people were very receptive,” the Fox & Friends co-host said, noting the skepticism on the right that Joe Biden could win, and citing the history of how Andrew Jackson had “lost a controversial election despite winning the popular vote,” and then cut a deal to become secretary of state, and then “goes and wins the next two elections and becomes more powerful.”
“In life, we have to learn to lose, Democrats and Republicans,” said Kilmeade.
“Is it anti-Trump by the media to report the fact that there is no significant evidence of widespread fraud?” asked Kurtz.
“It isn’t,” Kilmeade replied, also agreeing with Kurtz that Trump’s “re-litigating 2020 is not helping the country.”
As Kurtz mentioned, this was not the first time Kilmeade has made such comments on air. On Friday’s episode of Fox & Friends, he implored his viewers to accept the election results, and specifically called out Trump’s baseless election fraud claims. “That doesn’t help the country,” he said.
As Trump’s team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show the secretaries of state for those states sent those certificates to the Jan. 6 panel, along with correspondence between the National Archives and state officials about the documents.
The National Archives sent emails to the Arizona secretary of state on Dec. 11, 2020, passing along the forged certificates “for your awareness” and informing the state officials the Archives would not accept them. Arizona then took legal action against at least one of the groups who sent in the fake documents, sending a cease and desist letter to a pro-Trump “sovereign citizen” group telling them to stop using the state seal and referring the matter to the state attorney general.
It was an ill-conceived attempt to trick the National Archives into declaring Donald Trump the winner of both Michigan and Arizona https://t.co/A8oRFpvaLy
I almost did not do the roundup today. I got up at 4:30 AM to get ready for my first in the morning doctors appointment. I got multiple shots into my spine. They give a numbing shot to the area, then quickly follow it up with the insertion of a catheter, and then come back and inject the substance into the vertebrae . My vertebrae are misshapen and destroyed. They grow in ways that catch or pinch my nerves. Some times they stretch the nerves and others they smash / pinch them. Each produces different sensations and pain levels. At one injection the pain was so bad that I nearly passed out. The doctor told me he had to inject the stuff right above the nerve causing it to have a lot of pressure so the signal it sent to the brain was intense to say the least.
I got home and Ron fed me a wonderful baked pasta dish he made and I went right to bed. Then hours later I got up and started the Roundup. I love it so much I really want to do it. But I have to do a bunch of legal paperwork in the next few days to get a bunch of stuff done so the roundup may be late or just skipped. Best wishes to everyone. Scottie
While the owners of Walmart, the wealthiest family in the country, became over $60 billion richer during the pandemic, they are now slashing the paid leave of their employees in half. Outrageous. We must end corporate greed and raise the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour.
They demand government support and get it while the people suffer. We seen this oveer the last two years. Scottie
SCOTUS when the Trump administration unilaterally rewrites immigration law to keep out refugees: cool cool cool 😎
SCOTUS when the Biden administration relies on a textual delegation of authority to protect workers from the deadliest pandemic in American history: pic.twitter.com/Qq36EwHZka
This is due to gerrymandering / voter suppression laws , and big money in politics. Why listen to the voters is only your supporters can vote? Scottie
When you want to do something terrible, you make stuff up to rationalize it. Hillary gave a concession speech the morning after the election was called. Obama hosted Trump at the White House as president-elect two days later. If Trump did what they did, Jan. 6 doesn’t happen. https://t.co/BxUWpyXh5N
Dick Cheney and Karl Rove, actual devils, are calling out today’s Republican traitors.
Would love to hear Republicans denounce white supremacy. Out loud. On the record. On a regular basis. Same with their base.
White conservative terror wants to be regarded as the default.
If you want democracy, you want to expand voting rights.
A caravan of over a dozen private vehicles with taped-over license plates pulls up, the Patriot Front members load up their shields and flags outside Soldier Field here in Chicago pic.twitter.com/JYUl1RDOps
It is absolutely wild to me how many people legit think exposing an entire generation of kids to Covid is better than skipping a couple weeks of school.
We know long haul Covid is very harmful, we know some aspects of Covid in kids manifests after they seem to get better. What we don’t know is what the long term effects of Covid are on the brain / nervous system. If it causes you to lose taste and smell when sick, what does it do long term to your sensory nerves? Do we really want to take the chance with kids?
Situation still tenuous. He won the first case in court yet the Australian government has said they will appeal the ruling. Scottie
How many rude annoying people treat servers when they go out to eat. Scottie
It all starts with elections of representatives who decide policy and law. If the representative is owned by the 1%, then interests of working people are abandoned. USAunify.org
Iszac Henig, a (pre-t) trans man competing on the Yale team won several races and beat Lia Thomas. Cue conservative media only citing that Iszac is trans and all of social media assuming he's a trans woman and engaging in horrific transphobia while ironically affirming Iszac. pic.twitter.com/cj5vBKuBUd
School choice is a dog whistle, it is code for what the right really wants. Segregated schools paid for by the tax payer. They basically want schools that teach / preach their views paid for by the public. That was what most charter schools were, a disguised attempt to get around the public curriculum but being paid for by the public. Religious people want to be able to send their kids to private schools paid for by the taxpayer so kids can be indoctrinated into science denying bigots, the white supremacist want white only schools so their kids don’t have to mix with the non-whites they are taught to look down on, and the wealthy want you the public to pay for expensive great schools their kids get to attend so they wont have to associate with the general population they see as be low them. Scottie
Of course Republicans would prefer to quietly strangle your right to vote like a python than publicly tread on the topic. In the reality-reversed alternative universe Ramirez is writing from, he thinks allowing more people to vote more easily with equal access for all voters and all votes being counted with equal weight is treading on freedom? What Michael Ramirez wants to see is an election system in which white suburban and rural voters can get in and out of a convenient, nearby polling place in five minutes, while those in minority areas see most polling places closed until they have to drive very far and then wait in line for six or seven hours (with a prohibition on providing them with food or water) in order to vote, with the proviso that if the state legislature doesn’t like the outcome, it can throw out the results and install its own outcome.
Ramirez wants to return to the original voting standard as envisioned by the original founders: white male landowners are the only ones allowed to vote. He seems oblivious to the fact (or just doesn’t care about facts) that we have had twenty-seven amendments since then, each written by a new set of founders, that have equal weight to the original Constitution and which include many expansions of the right to vote to include all adult citizens age eighteen or over regardless of race, ethnicity, previous condition of servitude, gender and without undue burdens imposed.
Michael Ramirez demonstrates what Senator Raphael Warnock meant when he said, “Some people don’t want some people to vote.”Scottie
The CDC is an organization made up of skilled people with expertise / education to protect the people of the US for the viruses and diseases that threaten the public. That is their jobs and they do it well. They give the White House their best advice and suggestions. As we seen in the last administration the White House can ignore their advice if the president wishes to do so. Scottie
Pearl Harbor and 9/11 took more American lives than the January 6 attempted coup so, in that sense, were greater tragedies.
But Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were attacks by FOREIGN agents.
January 6 was an act of treason perpetrated by a sitting president to obstruct the peaceful transfer of power after HE LOST AN ELECTION BY MORE THAN SEVEN MILLION VOTES.
January 6 was an act of terroristic treason COMMITTED BY AMERICANS, not foreigners.
January 6 was the first time the U.S. CAPITOL had been taken over by hostile forces since the War of 1812. Not even during the Civil War did the Capitol get taken over; the KKKonfederate flag was never raised inside the U.S. Capitol until January 6.
January 6 was the first time ever that the Constitutional electoral role of certifying a presidential election was disrupted by force.
After Pearl Harbor and 9/11, you didn’t have 30-40% of the population SUPPORTING THE FOREIGN ATTACKERS.
Comparing January 6 and Pearl Harbor or 9/11 is like comparing an orange with a bushel of apples. Pearl Harbor and 9/11 were FOREIGN attacks that caused more loss of life but united our country. January 6 caused fewer deaths but further divided our country.
ANYONE WHO SUPPORTS, MINIMIZES OR RATIONALIZES THE TRAITOROUS, TERRORISTIC ATTEMPTED COUP is a traitor.
The U.S. Constitution provides two possible definitions of treason: either giving aid or comfort to the enemy (with enemy defined in legal decisions to mean as an adversarial combatant in a declared war), which clearly does not apply, or being in open rebellion against the United States government, which applied for those who waged violent rebellion against the United States during the Civil War and reasonably applies to what happened on January 6.
A violent, armed insurrection against the United States Capitol for the purpose of stopping the congress from completing a CONSTITUTIONALLY-MANDATED PRO-FORMA DUTY in order to OVERTHROW A LAWFUL ELECTION is clearly an act of open rebellion against the United States.
Much evidence has already been made public and much evidence will be revealed in the days to come as more serious charges are filed.
And we all watched on television as an ARMED MOB of Trump insurrectionists, in response to directions from the president in a carefully-planned military maneuver including printed T-shirts equating themselves to July 4, 1776, invaded the U.S. Capitol and forcibly disrupted a CONSTITUTIONALLY-MANDATED pro-forma session to complete a federal election. They came armed, including weapons of various sorts (including some firearms, we now know), and including zip ties, wall climbing equipment, wearing bulletproof vests, and many other indications of a well-planned insurrection.
Whether or not the Justice Department decides to file charges of treason, the actions that have been charged and proved so far, with more to come, clearly rise to the Constitutional definition.
All those who defend, rationalize, minimize or excuse these acts of violent rebellion against the United States are complicit after the fact in the treason.
Seems to me the places having less of a problem getting and keeping restaurant workers are the ones ditching tips and paying more. Sure, they’ve raised their prices, but adjusted for not tipping, it comes out as a push for the customer. Aw, whose a good boy?! Works for leftovers. The dog, but not the previous waiter. Scottie
Why not use empty buildings / apartments to house the homeless. it is win win for the landlords, the homeless, and the government. In places were this has been done it has found to be cheaper than locking up the homeless or other ways to deal with them. Scottie
More than 760 kids under the age of 18 are getting hospitalized with COVID-19 on average each day, according to CDC data. It’s the highest average ever reported for the age group.
“”For the week ending December 30, 2021, more than 325,000 cases were reported among children—a 64 percent increase from the previous week and nearly double the cases from two weeks prior,” says Dr. Noah Greenspan, PT, DPT, a cardiopulmonary physical therapist and the director of Pulmonary Wellness ComplexPT, who has been treating COVID patients since the beginning of the pandemic.”
Normally I would put this anti-CDC stuff in the misleading right wing media section, but the recent guidelines that changed several times a day for several days due to lack of tests for the Coronavirus variants and people needing to work to survive. So this time he has a point. While the recommendations have changed rapidly recently the CDC has to take into account reality when they issue their guidelines. Their job is to recommend the best public health measures to take to best protect the people from a public health threat. The reality is the US doesn’t currently have enough tests for people to test and quarantine then test again until they are negative for Coronavirus as they were doing, and people also need to work to survive in the US so have to be able to go back to work with out a negative test. While the CDC guidelines are not the optimum they are the best considering the circumstances. Scottie
Twelve people were killed Wednesday when gunmen stormed a French satirical news magazine, a weekly publication called Charlie Hebdo, which has published cartoons of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. Scottie
As January 6th was an attempt to stop the peaceful transfer of power, an attempted coup, an insurrection designed to deny the will of the people who voted to elect Biden president in a fair and valid election, yes it was much worse. The attack and deaths of 9/11 couldn’t destroy the US nor stop the government from functioning. Jan 6th did stop the government from functioning and could have destroyed / ended the US form of democratic government by force. Scottie
“The general public and the politicians who serve them, like me, tend to reflexively support punitive sentencing measures that often fail to promote public safety and result in needless deprivation of freedom, burdensome taxpayer cost and unimaginable racial and regional disparities,” Mariani said. Supporters of the change contend it would help promote rehabilitation and save taxpayer money by freeing up prison space.
DFL Gov. Tim Walz shared some thoughts on the proposal earlier this week, saying he thinks the commission will make sure the most violent criminals remain locked up.
“Trying to tell Minnesotans that this is somehow going to make them less safe is simply not true,” Walz said. “The sentencing commission is made up of a vast swath of expertise. So, I would expect them to make the right decision on that, to be smart about what it takes for Minnesota to keep Minnesotans safe.“ Scottie
A Florida official admitted Thursday that as many as 1 million COVID-19 test kits expired in a state warehouse over the last few days of December while coronavirus cases were skyrocketing and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said nothing about the health crisis.
Kevin Guthrie, director of the state Division of Emergency Management, made the startling revelation about the Abbott Laboratories rapid test kits in response to a reporter’s question at a Palm Beach press conference where DeSantis was touting the state’s acquisition of an additional 1 million tests.
Guthrie claimed at the press conference that there was simply no demand for the tests that expired — despite massively long lines of Floridians waiting for tests that were available elsewhere, and despite drugstores being sold out of COVID tests.
DeSantis on Friday defended his administration’s decision to allow up to one million Covid-19 rapid test kits to expire, a move that comes as he is facing increasing criticism from Democrats over his handling of the Omicron surge.
DeSantis has argued that the stockpile resulted from a lack of demand in the later part of 2021 and blamed President Joe Biden’s administration for not granting extensions to keep the tests eligible — something it did in September for three months.
In the days before Thursday’s admission, DeSantis had focused on erasing the “testing psychology,” essentially arguing against the practice that all individuals should get tests regardless of whether they show Covid-related symptoms while railing against the federal government for not providing tests.
Official insists there was no demand for the test kits despite massive lines and sold-out stocks. DeSantis was touting the acquisition of 1 million more tests. https://t.co/mLaBJJbj28
This combo of booking photos released by the Sumter County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office shows Oren Miller, left, and Gary Search, two Sumter County commissioners who were suspended from office on Thursday, Jan. 6, 2022, several weeks after being arrested and charged with lying during an investigation of possible Sunshine Law violations. (Sumter County Sheriff’s Office via AP)
Two county commissioners in central Florida were suspended from office Thursday, several weeks after being arrested and charged with lying during an investigation of possible Sunshine Law violations.
Gov. Ron DeSantis issued two executive orders to remove Sumter County commissioners Oren Miller and Gary Search from their elected offices until their criminal cases are resolved, in accordance with state law. Miller and Search were arrested Dec. 15 and charged with perjury.
DeSantis, Miller and Search are all Republicans. Miller and Search are both residents of The Villages, a massive retirement community.
Florida’s Sunshine Law requires public access for any gathering of two or more members of the same government board to discuss a matter that could foreseeably come before that board for action. The Fifth Circuit State Attorney’s Office initially received three complaints last year that Miller and Search were communicating through Miller’s wife.
Phone records showed Miller and Search contacted each other directly over 40 times between November 2020, when they were both elected, and July 2021, prosecutors said. Miller told investigators the calls stopped in January or February after they realized the communication might be an issue, and Search told investigators he had no contact with Miller outside public meetings, according to court documents. The phone records showed that nearly half of the calls between the two men were made after January 2021.
Arrest affidavits didn’t say what Miller and Search were discussing, but many of the calls were made just before or just after scheduled county commission meetings, prosecutors said.
Defense attorneys for Miller and Search didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment from The Associated Press.
Scottie's Playtime 
Gym Jordan, who helped cover up the sexual assaults of his fellow wrestling coach, has plenty to hide.
Hillary Clinton testified for ELEVEN HOURS and never took the Fifth Amendment or refused to answer any questions because she really did have “nothing to hide.” At the end of her ordeal, the committee chair, Republican Trey Gowdy, a trained prosecutor, apparently unaware that the mic was still hot, confessed that “we got nothing.” He soon resigned his committee chairmanship and then resigned from the congress entirely and has essentially never been heard from again.
All the Republicans who waged years of witch hunts against Hillary, never once getting anything, are now taking the Fifth (probably drinking a few fifths, too), refusing to testify and doing everything possible to avoid questions that they know will prove how directly they were involved in election lies, election fraud and an armed violent attempted overthrow of the United States Capitol.
From Raw Story:
“To answer Jim Jordan, I would quote Jim Jordan from the views that he expressed in the final Benghazi report, where he said that all of the truth must come out,” said Raskin. “Everybody needs to testify, and nobody’s got the right to hide anything from Congress. So, I think he had it right then. Jim Jordan, more than anybody else, knows what dogged, aggressive investigation is about, even when he’s on a wild goose chase, he demands all the information he wants, and we’re not on that. We are on the central investigative mission certainly of this decade, if not this century, to get to the bottom of this terrible political crime that was incited and to a substantial extent organized by Donald Trump.”