To the trumpies trying to hide it, I quote every fascist, authoritarian asshole who ever crushed civil rights in the name of false national security:
What are you afraid of?
And from Stephen Robinson at Wonkette:We need more Rashida Tlaibs in Congress. Impeach the Motherfucker should be a central Democratic Party slogan. Let the pearl-clutchers cry in a corner. The future is not with them.
It's possible that in the future, historians won't even bother referring to the 45th president by his birth name but will just call him "that motherfucker."
George Packer documents how all of that is different from the days of Richard Nixon and Watergate.The institutional clout that ended the Presidency of Richard Nixon no longer exists. The honest press, for all its success in exposing daily scandals, won’t persuade the unpersuadable or shame the shameless, while the dishonest press is Trump’s personal amplifier. The federal courts, including the Supreme Court, are rapidly becoming instruments of partisan advocacy, as reliably conservative as elected legislatures. It’s impossible to imagine the Roberts Court voting unanimously against the President, as the Burger Court, including five Republican appointees, did in forcing Nixon to turn over his tapes. (Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee to succeed Anthony Kennedy, has even suggested that the decision was wrong.) Congress has readily submitted to the President’s will, as if legislation and oversight were burdens to be relinquished. And, when the independent counsel finally releases his report, it will have only the potency that the guardians of the law and the Constitution give it.That is why the title of Packard’s article is “All That’s Left is the Vote.” He opens by making a deeply disturbing, but perhaps accurate, prediction.…three months from now, American democracy will be on the line. The midterm elections in November are the last remaining obstacle to President Trump’s consolidation of power.
So no, the notion that Republicans will turn on Trump even should Mueller or the Senate present evidence of conspiracy or worse is ludicrous. They will defend Trump even at the cost of their own livelihoods. The Republican party is nothing more than the racist, misogynist, bigoted cult of personality that worships Trump, and so are all of his voters.
I'm tired of being nice to them. It's only made them love Trump more.
It's time to call these assholes out this November and throw them out of power for good. Get registered, get ready, get friends, get to the polls. At every turn President Obama's open hand was met by fist after fist.
Now it's time to fight.
This piece by Adam Serwer clarifies the big question about how to think about this gusher of Trump scandals:The sheer volume of Trump scandals can seem difficult to keep track of.
SNIP
There are not many Trump scandals. There is one Trump scandal. Singular: the corruption of the American government by the president and his associates, who are using their official power for personal and financial gain rather than for the welfare of the American people, and their attempts to shield that corruption from political consequences, public scrutiny, or legal accountability.
SNIP
In each of these cases, the president or one of his associates was seeking to profit, personally or financially, from their official duties and powers. When that conduct has potentially run afoul of the law, Trump has sought to bend federal law enforcement to his whim, the better to protect himself and his associates from legal accountability. The president’s ongoing chastising of his own Justice Department, and his war of words with current and former FBI officials, stem less from any coherent ideological principle than from Trump’s desperate need to protect himself. An authoritarian model of law enforcement,where the president personally decides who is prosecuted and who is not based on his own political agenda, is simply the best way for Trump to shield himself and his inner circle from legal consequences.
The president is lawless. His lawyer is lawless. Both of his lawyers. All they know is to lie, deny, distort, extort, and bully. The country is being governed by Mafiosi values. If the Democrats are unwilling to say that, they’ll let down millions of Americans who are counting on them to defend the law, and they’ll lose, and deserve to. History sometimes presents moments when caution is called for. This isn’t one of them.
I'm glad to see it. This is from Move On, but I think it's happening with every Resistance group in the country:
Host a Mueller Firing Rapid Response EventNew revelations of Russia's meddling in our elections are increasing the odds that Donald Trump will try to block the investigation of his Administration's potential collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice.
Experts believe that there is a good possibility that Trump will fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
If Trump fires Mueller, we want to be ready to take the streets to protest within hours - to demand that Congress respond quickly and forcefully – to protect our democracy and justice system.This isn't hysteria. People need to be prepared for what they will do in case this constitutional crisis comes to pass.
No matter what happens to him as far as impeachment or the Russia collusion investigation, the notion that he utterly dismantled the first black president's legacy so thoroughly and completely will always earn him a permanent place as a god among white supremacist America.
The goal was always to erase Barack Obama from history and to erase any political power his supporters have, to put us in our place as America is "made great again", to unravel in months what it took him years to create. Millions of Americans are happy to vote for the white man who does that.
Every time we let this pass without screaming bloody murder normalizes
it and brings closer the day when all "elected" officials will be
expected to take bribes and do what the highest bidders demand.
On New Years Eve (Trump) held a party where people paid for the privilege of spending time with him. It wasn't a charity or a fundraiser. It was for Mar-a-lago his own club. The money went into his own pockets. People are paying to be in his presence. Like he's Kim Kardashian.
And some of his "guests" were foreign business partners. They are undoubtedly very excited to have the president of the United States doing business with them. It's likely going to be quite profitable for all concerned:
SNIP
He is going to be running the business out of the white house. That is completely obvious. He's simply unable to extricate himself from it and the temptation to swing his clout around as president to "do deals" for the family business is much to great for him to resist.
And, short of impeachment, I don't think there's anything to be done. The Republicans are fine with it, his own voters think it's terrific for the president to pillage the country as long as it's their president and the people who are normally up in arms about "elite" corruption seem to be rather blase about this. Lord knows, the FBI couldn't care less. So here we are. Just making note of it and moving on.
House Speaker Greg Stumbo on Wednesday appointed a special committee to investigate whether Gov. Matt Bevin's administration stopped a road project in Jessamine County this year in retaliation against the Democratic state representative who had rejected Bevin's overtures that he switch political parties and become a Republican.Stumbo said his office's examination of records related to the project "raises serious questions as to the retaliation that may have been used by the administration" against Rep. Russ Meyer, a Nicholasville Democrat.The House speaker emphasized during a news conference in the House chamber that the state had to pay the road contractor on that project $625,000 in damages last spring because the contractor could not begin work on the project by a deadline set in the contract."For some reason, $625,000 in taxpayers' money was paid for a contract which, from our investigation and our conversations with people who are knowledgeable about these matters, could have been fulfilled and gone forward with," Stumbo said.
Meyer alleged in August that Bevin had left a message threatening him and his district after he refused to change parties.
Projection is a hell of a drug.State Rep. Russ Meyer, D-Nicholasville, released a recording of a voicemail message Tuesday that he received in December from Matt Bevin in which Meyer says the Republican governor warned him of the “impacts” of not switching political parties.Meyer said in an interview Tuesday morning that he received the call from Bevin on his cellphone at 8:40 a.m. Dec. 17 after he had informed Bevin’s chief of staff, Blake Brickman, that he wasn’t going to switch parties.Meyer said he had met with the governor and Brickman on Dec. 15 and talked to Brickman again Dec. 16.In the tape Meyer released Tuesday, Bevin said he was “a little disappointed by some of what I’m hearing. Would love to speak to you.”"I want to make sure you understand, uh, where, where things are in my mind and the decisions I’m going to make, uh, in the days ahead, the weeks ahead, the months ahead. I want you to be very aware of what the impacts of those decisions will be as it relates to you, your seat, your district, etc. — just so we have all the cards on the table,” Bevin said.Meyer said Tuesday that he thinks a major road project in his district was postponed recently because he decided to remain a Democrat. The Bevin administration has denied that.The $11 million project was an extension of East Brannon Road in Jessamine County to Tates Creek Road near the Fayette County line. It had been approved by Gov. Steve Beshear, a Democrat, just before he left office in December.The Bevin administration delayed the project, saying the Beshear administration didn’t secure a necessary portion of land before the deadline to begin work. The state was contractually obligated to pay The Allen Co. $625,000 in damages because of the delay.House Speaker Greg Stumbo, D-Prestonsburg, told reporters Tuesday that state or federal officials should investigate the matter.“I would think that either state or federal authorities would look at this and at least give it a look and see,” Stumbo said. “There’s certainly very serious allegations about the abuse of the separation of powers.”If the allegations are true, Stumbo said, the House would consider pursuing articles of impeachment against Bevin.“If they canceled that project to retaliate against a member that was duly elected, then that’s a waste of taxpayer money and in my judgment, that’s a theft,” Stumbo said.Bevin’s director of communications, Jessica Ditto, said Stumbo has lost credibility with the people of Kentucky.“Speaker Stumbo’s erratic behavior and foolish comments are an embarrassment to the commonwealth,” Ditto said in a statement. “Kentuckians deserve better than such buffoonery from our leaders.”
Like Digby, I was 15, and I remember it and the consequences the same way:
I didn't experience euphoria. I was stunned though. Seeing the most powerful man in the world brought low by his own hubris (and psychic wounds) was an early lesson in human nature. A real life greek tragedy in front of my very eyes.My very conservative republican grandmother never directly criticized Nixon, for whom she had voted three times. But in 1974, the very early days of Second Wave Feminism, my very un-feminist grandmother took me aside to say this:
Perlstein said something very interesting yesterday on MSNBC. He pointed out that all of this was really a very fine moment for America. The system worked. The leaders of our nation were able to come to a consensus about something gone very wrong and rectify it. It began a period of national self-reflection, a reckoning of sorts with the dark side of our power which had been sorely abused in the post war world. It was painful and difficult but as a nation we were facing up to ourselves and attempting to make adjustments in order to live up to our ideals. We were maturing as a country.
And then along came Reagan with his happy horseshit about American goodness and patriotism, giving excuses for everything, assuring the citizens that we could do no wrong. He infantalized us, making it impossible for America to become a truly mature nation able to face its own past and deal responsibly with its immense power around the globe. You know, actually be the "exceptional" country we like to pretend we are today.
This was a big moment, one that could have truly changed the trajectory of our nation in a positive way. But apparently we just couldn't face up to what we were becoming. And so we turned to a man who made us feel like children again.
DR Tucker at Political Animal:
I’ll say this about Nixon: he was wrong, crooked, and vile in a great many ways—but on his worst day, he was better than George W. Bush.
The loss of former House GOP majority leader Eric Cantor in his primary and the reaction by the Republicans to that loss tells me one thing: they're going to try to impeach Obama sometime in 2015
And it's the only way Democrats can take back Congress in November.
Steve M:
The benghazi inquisition might be a bigger deal than a lot of non-Fox viewers think because it's starting to get buy-in from the so-called liberal media. Yes, non-Republican journalists still think there's no crime involved and therefore no cover-up that should be actionable ... but, really, the White House committed a political error, didn't he? So, really, he had it coming, right? Therefore, if the GOP is going to paralyze the country with a phony constitutional crisis for the rest of this year --or the next two and a half years, or onward into infinity if Hillary Clinton is elected president but Congress is still Republican-controlled -- then it's as much Obama's fault as the Republicans', isn't it? Wasn't Obama asking for it?
SNIP
Yes, but this line of thought easily morphs into the sort of "just world" thinking that partly absolves Republicans of responsibility for the fraud they're committing. It's as if these reporters are watching a kid get bullied in the junior high cafeteria and telling themselves that, after all, he does all those weird things, so of course he gets picked on. They lose perspective on what should be the unacceptability of what's being done.
SNIP
A nasty cafeteria beatdown is now inevitable, and reporters and pundits are making themselves comfortable with the idea that it's going to happen, because acknowledging that sociopaths control half our government is too much to ask of them.Don't despair; Steve Benen reminds us of how repug bullshit attacks on a Democratic president backfired.
Everybody who's surprised the repugs are still claiming that the very existence of Barack Obama on the planet is cause for impeachment, stand on your head.
Last week it was the "scandal" of a president daring to issue exercutive orders.
What's really scandalous and unconstitutional to them is that there is a NI**ER IN THE WHITE HOUSE! Of course everything he does is an immediate threat to the very survival of the nation. Repugs have been fighting this unspeakable abomination for four years now and haven't even been trying to hide their reasons.
Racism is the source, the inspiration, the reason for everything repugs do. Even the fraudulent "pro-life" movement is nothing but cover for their racism.
Digby:
In discussions with Falwell, Weyrich cited various social ills that necessitated evangelical involvement in politics, particularly abortion, school prayer and the rise of feminism. His pleas initially fell on deaf ears.So let me add my voice to so many others saying to repugs: PLEASE impeach President Obama, and do it before the 2014 elections.
"I was trying to get those people interested in those issues and I utterly failed," Weyrich recalled in an interview in the early 1990s. "What changed their mind was Jimmy Carter's intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation."
In 1979, at Weyrich's behest, Falwell founded a group that he called the Moral Majority. Along with a vanguard of evangelical icons including D. James Kennedy, Pat Robertson and Tim LaHaye, Falwell's organization hoisted the banner of the "pro-family" movement, declaring war on abortion and homosexuality. But were it not for the federal government's attempts to enable little black boys and black girls to go to school with little white boys and white girls, the Christian right's culture war would likely never have come into being. "The Religious New Right did not start because of a concern about abortion," former Falwell ally Ed Dobson told author Randall Balmer in 1990. "I sat in the non-smoke-filled back room with the Moral Majority, and I frankly do not remember abortion ever being mentioned as a reason why we ought to do something."
As I said, it's not fair to attribute the current evangelical opposition to abortion to this shady history. It's been a long time and I assume their feelings are sincere. But I also think it's important to realize that this evangelical opposition was conceived as a purely political strategy to organize in the wake of desegregation. These ancient fault lines are all connected.
After everything repugs have done for the last four years to destroy their own party and guarantee the landslide reelection of President Barack Obama, they really only have one place to go.
Steve Benen at Maddowblog:
Rep. Todd Akin (R) of Missouri, a U.S. Senate candidate this year, hosted a town-hall meeting this week, and heard from a constituent who wants to see President Obama impeached. The right-wing congressman seemed quite fond of the idea.
If you can't make out the audio, Akin considered the "tactical" question of what would happen to the articles of impeachment in the Senate, but added, "At a certain point you just say, 'Enough, I don't care enough about the Senate, duty calls us to just get up and just impeach this guy.'" The Missouri Republican added that the president is "a complete menace to our civilization."
And on what grounds, pray tell, would Akin try to impeach Obama? The Senate candidate pointed to "all of the czars" and the notion that the president "completely ignores the train wreck of the economy." He wasn't kidding.
This is obviously ridiculous rhetoric from an unhinged conservative, but I'm fascinated by how often Republicans use the "I" word in public, as if presidential impeachment is some sort of toy.
Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) talked last month about impeaching Obama for no apparent reason; Fox News' Neil Cavuto suggested in January that Obama might be open to impeachment over recess appointments; Rep. Trent Franks (R-Ariz.) has raised the prospect of impeaching Obama over DOMA; and Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) talked up the idea of presidential impeachment because "it would tie things up" in Washington for a while, making governing impossible.
What's more, in 2010, both Rep. Darrel Issa (R-Calif.) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) also raised the specter of impeaching Obama.
I don't seriously expect congressional Republicans to pursue this, but the fact that so many GOP lawmakers feel comfortable speaking like this, out loud and in public, is a reminder of just how extreme some elements of the Republican Party have become.
C'mon, GOP! Remember how Democrats impeached George W. Bush over his failure to to enforce the law protecting abortion clinics? Here's your chance to get revenge and guarantee a repug landslide in November - Impeach him!
From TPM:
The Obama Justice Department has concluded that legislation banning same-sex couples from receiving military and veterans benefits violates the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment and will no longer defend the statute in court, Attorney General Eric Holder wrote in a letter to Congressional leaders on Friday.
“The legislative record of these provisions contains no rationale for providing veterans’ benefits to opposite-sex couples of veterans but not to legally married same-sex spouses of veterans,” Holder wrote. “Neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of Veterans Affairs identified any justifications for that distinction that would warrant treating these provisions differently from Section 3 of DOMA.”
Holder said DOJ would no longer defend the provisions in Title 38 which prevent same-sex couples who are legally married from obtaining benefits. He said that Congress would be provided a “full and fair opportunity” to defend the statues in the McLaughlin v. Panetta case if they wished to do so.
As Holder writes, the benefits in question “include medical and dental benefits, basic housing allowances, travel and transportation allowances, family separation benefits, military identification cards, visitation rights in military hospitals, survivor benefits, and the right to be buried together in military cemetaries.”
Read Holder’s full letter here.
Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:
I take back what I wrote last week. Apparently at least one Democrat does understand how to fight back against one of the worst corporatists on the Supreme Court:With Democrats increasingly outraged over the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision that allowed unlimited corporate spending in elections -- a change conservatives have been more successful at taking advantage of -- a Democratic congressman is raising the prospect of impeaching the Supreme Court's chief justice over the issue.
"I mean, the Supreme Court has done a tremendous disservice to the United States of America," Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. "They have done more to undermine our democracy with theirCitizens United decision than all of the Republican operatives in the world in this campaign. They've opened the floodgates, and personally, I'm investigating articles of impeachment against Justice Roberts for perjuring during his Senate hearings, where he said he wouldn't be a judicial activist, and he wouldn't overturn precedents.
"In his 2005 confirmation hearings, Roberts famously said, "Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire."
According to DeFazio, Roberts hasn't stood by his own doctrine. He pointed to former Justice John Paul Stevens's dissent in the case, in which he said the Citizens United case was not properly brought before the Supreme Court. "This procedure is unusual and inadvisable for a court," Stevens said of the process. "Our colleagues' suggestion that 'we are asked to reconsider Austin and, in effect, McConnell," ante, at 1, would be more accurate if rephrased to state that 'we have asked ourselves' to reconsider those cases."
"Justice Stevens makes the point that Roberts decided a case that wasn't even before the Court, and invited the issue before the Court," said DeFazio. "It was the most extraordinary condemnation I've ever read of a perverted majority on the Supreme Court, at least in recent years."
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