Never Again

Never Again

We must defend Democracy

 

The U.S. House Select Committee investigating the insurrection on January 6^th presented compelling evidence on Thursday night showing clearly that Donald Trump violated his oath of office to protect and defend the Constitution when he refused to do anything to stop the violent insurrection at the Capitol for over three hours. 

 

Trump summoned the mob to Washington D.C on January 6^th and sent them to the Capitol to “fight like hell” to stop Congress from certifying the election he lost. During the uprising, Trump watched the violence perpetrated by his supporters on Fox News from the comfort of the private dining room next to the Oval Office. 

 

As soon as the mob breached the Capitol security perimeter, close advisors, members of his own family, and senior White House officials all told him he needed to go on television to condemn the violence and tell his supporters at the Capitol to stand down and go home. He refused and fueled the fire further by tweeting how his own Vice President was a coward for not stopping Congress from certifying the election results. He only made calls to his allies in the Senate and Rudi Giuliani, his election conspiracy lawyer. His final statement on January 6^th told the insurrectionists they were good people and he loved them. That statement only came when law enforcement reinforcements were being dispatched to quell the violence after orders from Vice President Pence. Even after the violence was over and the rioters had gone away, he could not bring himself to condemn what they had done or admit the election was lost. 

 

The nation heard evidence that Trump had every opportunity to stop the carnage and chose to do nothing, hoping his supporters would be successful in stopping Congress from certifying the results of the election. Not only did he choose to say nothing to his supporters, he also chose not to call in any help for the besieged Capitol police officers who were trying to protect the Capitol and members of Congress who were there fulfilling their constitutional duties. 

 

The first duty of every President is to defend the Constitution and the branches of our government that document created.  His oath required him to defend the processes for the peaceful and orderly transfer of power after the elections created in the Constitution. Trump’s choice to do nothing to stop the violence violated his oath and those duties. 

 

The hearings into the events of January 6^th have revealed many loyal Republicans who worked for Trump for years who believe what he did and did not do on January 6 and 7 crossed the line and threatened the very foundations of our democracy. Those who have testified before the committee have demonstrated that the tribalism of the cult of Trump does have its limits. There are places where even those Trump loyalists refuse to go. 

 

Thursday’s witnesses, a deputy press secretary and a senior deputy national security advisor, put country over party when it comes to a violent attempt to prevent the orderly transfer of power from the losing administration to the winning one. They agreed that the “Big Lie” had no validity and that it was wrong to keep insisting the election had been stolen.  These brave citizens risked the opprobrium of their peers by standing up for the principles of the founding fathers and speaking truth to power. 

 

They join other Republican White House staffers who have come forward to testify about the events and actions of the former president that imperiled our democracy. Not only are they to be commended for their courage but they will be remembered for doing the right thing when their country called for the truth. They demonstrated that you can be a conservative Republican, tell the truth and stand up for our democracy without buying into the conspiracy theories and cult of personality all too prevalent in today’s GOP. 

 

GOP Rep. Liz Cheney chaired Thursday’s hearing. Her closing remarks are a clarion call for other conservatives to abandon the cult of Trump and to put county over party. She laid bare the errors in the “Big Lie” and how we must make changes to our laws so that the events of January 6^th are never repeated. For those in her party who have ignored the hearings and think they are just political theatre, her words, and those of fellow Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger, are a reminder that facts and truth matter, especially in the conduct of government officials. Those who ignore those warnings do so at their peril. 

 

 

Thanks SCOTUS

 Thanks SCOTUS for the Path to Victory

Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court for helping to create a path to a Democratic victory in this fall’s mid-term elections. Unwittingly, the ultra-conservative majority of the Court’s Justices joined forces with the House Select Sub-Committee investigating the insurrection on January 6th and the several state Attorney Generals investigating the “Big Lie” efforts to overturn the last presidential election. These combined forces will do more to mobilize the electorate than any of them could have imagined. 

The Supreme Court’s trifecta of cases that over-ruled Roe v. Wade, struck down New York’s reasonable restrictions on public carrying of firearms and gutted the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to limit harmful emissions from power plants struck every major element of a Democratic platform. 

Progressive Democrats have long stood up for a woman’s right to choose whether to have a child or not. Several generations of women have gotten used to the protection of their bodily autonomy provided by Roe v. Wade and it’s offspring. They will not go peacefully into the good night now that protection has been stripped from them and their children. Justice Thomas did his cause no good by urging the Court to go after other rights that the Court has recognized as part of “substantive due process” such has the right of married couples to use contraceptives, the ability of same-sex couples to marry, and the general right to privacy that protects against government intervention into what goes on in people’s bedrooms. Those who fear Justice Thomas might be gunning for them will certainly join women who have been relegated to second class citizenship in electing those who will stand up for them and codify their previous protections. 

In striking down the New York laws prohibiting most public carrying of firearms, the Court further energized those clamoring for reasonable federal gun control measures to staunch the bleeding caused by horrific gun violence that has overtaken cities and towns across the land. Congress saw the handwriting on the wall, passing the first gun control measures in decades as citizens rise-up to demand more control over the carnage caused by unfettered access to weapons of mass destruction. 

Finally, the Court put a nail in the GOP’s coffin by limiting the ability of government regulators to protect our air and water. Most Americans have come to understand that only by uniform regulation will our ability to breathe clean air and drink clean water be preserved for future generations. I grew up with brown air in Southern California in the 1950s. I know what it is like to struggle to breathe due to intense smog caused by automobile emissions. I was kept inside on many summer days due to ozone alerts until California started to regulate auto emissions and clean up California’s air. We won’t go back to rivers that catch fire due to flammable pollutants being dumped into them. We won’t go back to catastrophes like the poisoning of the drinking water in Flint, Michigan. 

If the Court’s leap to the far right was not enough to get voters off their couches and to the polls, the revelations of the House Select Committee investigation into the riots and assault on the Capitol on January 6th last year might just get it done. The Committee has done a masterful job of exposing the fraudulent “Big Lie” and placing the former president and members of his inner circle in the middle of a conspiracy to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from the president who lost the election to the one who won. If criminal indictments of the former president and his cohorts are not forthcoming, many will be rightfully concerned that our justice system is not up to protecting our democracy. 

Not waiting for the U.S. Department of Justice to act more forcibly against the former president and his gang of law breakers, several state Attorneys General have started their own investigations into the illegal behaviors so neatly laid out by the Select Committee. Georgia is looking into the effort to persuade the Secretary of State there to find votes for the former president that did not exist. New York is looking into the various business ventures of the former president and his family and their dubious tax filings. Other states are looking into the fraudulent electors sent to Washington to replace those rightfully elected to the Electoral College as a result of the free and fair elections in their states. Those depending upon the endorsement of the former president to carry the day in their local elections this fall will be sadly disappointed that they hitched their wagon to a long dead horse. 

All the issues raised by these efforts will mobilize voters like we have not seen in decades. The blue wave that is rising will sweep those who would strip us of protected freedoms, remove protection of clean air and water, make guns omnipresent on our streets from office for a long time to come.