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Louie Gohmert, Republican member of Congress from Texas, announced last week that he was giving up his seat to run for attorney general in Texas.

At the very least, this should be entertaining.

Gohmert is widely considered the dumbest member of Congress GOP operative Steve Schmidt called him Americas craziest and dumbest congressman and when you consider the competition for that honor, its no mean achievement. Iowan Steve Kings defeat in the Republican primary last year helped to clear the field, but still, lets give Gohmert his due. And if you believe that being the dumbest member of Congress in any way disqualifies anyone from statewide office in Texas, well, you havent been paying attention to Texas politics.

Gohmert is challenging a fellow Republican, Ken Paxton, the incumbent, for the attorney general nomination. Paxton has been indicted for securities fraud, and former staff members in his office claim that he abused his powers to assist a wealthy donor. (Paxton has denied the allegations, but apparently engaging in potentially felonious behavior doesnt disqualify someone from holding office in Texas.)

I first encountered Gohmert, whom Texas Monthly calls the terror of Tyler, at a huge Religious Right rally in Longview, Texas, back in 2005, where he shared billing with Roy Moore, the notorious Ten Commandments judge from Alabama. Though Gohmert had entered Congress only earlier that year, he was already making a name for himself as one of the few members of Congress to oppose John McCains amendment to outlaw the use of torture by the U.S. government. Gohmert called the McCain amendment stupid.

In preparation for his campaign, its probably a good time to revisit some of Gohmerts statements, beginning with the time he upbraided Eric Holder, Barack Obamas attorney general, for casting aspersions on my asparagus.

Gohmert insisted in 2010 that Muslim women were producing terror babies, children who are born in the United States, who leave and then come back at some future date. And then they would return back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists. And then one day, 20, 30 years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life.

In 2013, he told the Longview Chamber of Commerce that radical Islamists were learning Spanish and then changing their names to Hispanic-sounding last names so they could cross the border. Why? Because we dont have any fear of Hispanics coming into the country, but weve got concerns about radical Islamists.

During a radio interview in 2016, Gohmert went on record in opposition to repealing the militarys dont ask, dont tell policy regarding gay members of the military. Why? Because if youre sitting around getting massages all day ready to go into a big, planned battle, then youre not going to last very long.

LGBTQ rights have been a frequent obsession. After the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage, Gohmert called for the impeachment of several justices. At Liberty University in 2015, Gohmert doubled down with a proposed government-funded study. How about if we take four heterosexual couples, and put them on an island where they have everything they need to live and exist, and we take four couples of just men and put them on an island where they have all they need to survive, he said. And then lets take four couples of just women and put them on an island, and then lets come back in 100 years and see which one nature favors.

Gohmert frequently opines on mating habits. He worried that stopping the flow of oil through the Alaska pipeline would have a direct effect on the caribou population because when caribou want to go on a date, they invite each other to head over to the pipeline. He wondered if a study might be necessary to see how adversely the caribou would be affected if that warm oil ever quit flowing.

On the matter of climate change and attempts to address it, the Republican from Texas has not been silent. Last August, Gohmert asserted that solar panel farms had caused thousands of birds to explode in flame.

Gohmert has his own ideas about how to solve climate change. During a hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee this past June, Gohmert asked an official from the National Forest Service whether there was anything her agency or the Bureau of Land Management could do to change the course of the moons orbit or the Earths orbit around the sun? That, he said, would have profound effects on our climate.

Speaking of profound effects, we could have a lively discussion about where a politician like Gohmert would do the least damage. Rolling Stone has reported that several of the domestic terrorists who stormed the Capitol in January met with Gohmert and other members of Congress beforehand. Gohmert, a prominent proponent of the Big Lie, has denied the allegation, and he has also claimed, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the insurrectionists were not armed.

The editorial board of the Houston Chronicle has argued that Gohmert, who they believe is smarter than some of his buffoonery would suggest, would do less harm by remaining in the House of Representatives than as Texas attorney general. Given the ethically challenged incumbent, its a sobering statement.

In any event, thats a matter for the voters of Texas to decide.

Randall Balmer teaches at Dartmouth College. His latest book is Bad Faith: Race and the Rise of the Religious Right.

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Column: The wit and wisdom of Louie Gohmert - Valley News

Summary

White supremacists march in D.C.. White nationalism on the rise after four years of Trump. Trump`s big lie threatens to dismantle U.S. democracy. Milbank says, media neutrality in the struggle between democracy and fascism is not a virtue.

JOY REID, MSNBC HOST: Good evening, everyone. We begin THE REIDOUT tonight with scenes from Washington D.C. this weekend. You`re looking at more than 100 white supremacists called The Patriot Front, who marched around outside the Lincoln Memorial on Saturday night. Their goal, they say, is to reclaim America on behalf of their white ancestors. And according to the Anti- Defamation League, they openly define themselves as fascists.

Now, if they seem familiar, that`s because they were among the extremist groups at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, though they changed their name after one of their members murdered Heather Heyer with his car. Of course, their extremist views and ridiculous plastic shields earn them lots and lots of mockery this weekend, especially when several were awkwardly left stranded at the Arlington Memorial Bridge because their U-Haul wasn`t large enough to carry them all home. Indeed, the look, okay, really stupid.

And it`s easy to laugh at them, but to do so is will be to under estimate them and the millions like them whose radical ideas are on the assent in this country. Let`s not forget, the many that laughed at Donald Trump back in 2016 and even after he was elected, thanks to four years of Trump, this country is now a backsliding democracy, according to an international think tank, and that is no joke.

The truth is this country doesn`t have a great track record of recognizing authoritarians for what they are, at least not until it`s too late. According Smithsonian Magazine, Benito Mussolini was darling of the American press and American papers credited Italian fascism with saving Italy from the far left and revitalizing its economy.

Similarly, Adolf Hitler was dismissed as a joke, a nonsensical screecher of wild words, according to Newsweek at the time. American press outlets predicted Hitler would be outplayed by more traditional politicians or who become more moderate. In other words, they got it wrong, badly wrong.

Now, fast forward to the current day and we`re seeing similar pattern emerge when it comes to the threat of Trump`s big lie. As Barton Gellman warns in The Atlantic, state Republican operatives have been building an apparatus of election theft under our very noses. He notes that if the plot succeeds, the ballots cast by American voters will not decide the presidency in 2024. Thousands of votes will be thrown away or millions to produce the required effect. The winner will be declared the loser. The loser will be certified president-elect.

That will be the end of democracy as we know it. This American experiment with multiracial democracy, well, that will be over. And yet, for much of the media in this country it`s been business as usual despite that looming threat. As Columnist Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post, too many journalist are caught in a mindless neutrality between democracy and its saboteurs, between fact and fiction. It`s time to take a stand.

For his column, Milbank actually hired a data analytics company to measure and compare media sentiment towards President Biden and toward Donald Trump. He found that Biden`s press for the last four months has been as bad as and for a time even worse than the coverage that Trump received for the same four months of 2020. Not only that, but Trump got roughly twice as much coverage in 2020 as Biden has received in all of 2021 so far.

Milbank notes that the country is in an existential struggle between self- governance and an authoritarian alternative, and we in the news media collectively have given equal if not slightly more favorable treatment to the authoritarians.

Dana Milbank joins me along with Jason Johnson, Professor of Journalism and Politics at Morgan State University and host of the slate podcast, A Word with Jason Johnson, along with Nancy MacLean, historian and author of Democracy in Chains, the Deep History of the Radical Right`s Stealth Plan for America.

Dana, I am going to start with you, because I notice that the response to many media beltway media people to your piece was to fight with you about being mean to their particular media entity, right? You have people from Politico yelling at you on Twitter saying you said mean things to Politico, and it`s like that`s not the point.

And I felt you kept trying to make the point that this isn`t about saying mean things about one media outlet`s coverage. It`s literally the overall impact of their coverage. You wrote, Biden is attempting to salvage democratic norms. The people opposing him are using fascist tools of deception and voter disenfranchisement, neutrality in the struggle is not a virtue.

[19:05:07]

I heard and high-fived you on Twitter. I just want to let you go. Talk about what you`ve seen from the inside of what this media is doing, in your view, that`s helping authoritarianism thrive.

DANA MILBANK, COLUMNIST, THE ATLANTIC: Yes, Joy, and I certainly didn`t mean to suggest that it`s a problem of one outlet or another or this one is better than that. Sure, some are better than others but that`s not the point. This is -- I mean, think about it. Comparing the last four months of 2020 when Donald Trump was threatening to not honor the results of a free and fair election and then ultimately didn`t honor the results of a free and fair election, he was embracing the Proud Boys, white supremacists, he was embracing QAnon, he was the Post Office. And at that period of time, he got similar to more favorable coverage than Biden is getting today. So, I think that`s astonishing.

And, look, people in my business, and I support this notion, we like conflict, we`re combative, we like to hold the power to account, but we`re in a whole different game here. It`s not Democrats against Republicans, it`s small D Democrats against authoritarians. And as you noted in the beginning, in many ways, we`re losing the struggle.

So, I agree with reporters not being partisan but we should be partisan when it comes to democracy. We should be partisan when it comes to the facts, and I think that`s where I think we need to take a stand.

REID: Right. And, Jason, I`ve long said that the media`s only real bias, at least the mainstream media, is towards change and conflict, right? Donald Trump was entertaining for a lot of beltway journalist. He was also open. He gave lots of leaks. His administration gave you lots of data and lots of sort of conflict-driven content. He was a content creator. And so there was -- whereas what I remember when Barack Obama was in, the media generally disliked the Obama administration even though they were not doing anything dangerous, he couldn`t even wear a tan suit. The media would go ballistic and go nuts over him because he wasn`t accessible, because he was seen as cold and not really accessible. There was no access.

My challenge here, and this goes all the way back to the way the media operated in the `20s with Mussolini, is that the media underplays the danger when a political party is out of step with democratic norms and they overstate the horror when a Democrat generally or somebody who is more of a normal politician does anything that makes them annoyed, right, anything irritates sort of elite journalist. I`m worried that that tendency is always going to help the Trumps of the world and always going to hurt the Bidens. And that`s not good for our democracy.

JASON JOHNSON, MSNBC POLITICAL CONTRIBUTOR: Joy, you`re exactly -- no, it`s not. And, Dana, you`re underselling yourself. No, thank you. Thank you for being someone who actually said this and, quite frankly, there is a racialized element to this as well that I`m happy that you`re the individual who said this, because this is something that black journalists have been streaming about since Donald Trump got into office.

When the man ran basically saying, I`m going to clear out this country of anybody who`s not white and straight, it took three years for large numbers of media outlets, and I`ll say the names, not everybody at these particular outlets but The Hill did this, and Politico did this, and The New York Times did this. We`ve all talked about this for years.

It took almost three years for most of the mainstream press to say, hey, this guy is an actual existential threat to democracy, and people who talked about it, especially journalists of color, were called alarmists, were told they were being extreme. And then it literally took a man trying to overthrow an election and then send terrorists to try to overthrow the results in January for a lot of folks to realize it. It is a problem. It is a danger.

Is it entirely the fault of the media? No, it`s not. But it is in part the fault we don`t hold each other accountable and when people want to get angry out messenger instead of taking responsibility for the messages that they have been spewing. This is arguably one of the most important articles of journalism I have seen in a very long time.

I`m so happy that we`re bringing this to the floor. Because as we go into 2022, and a lot of the things that they`ve talked about in The Atlantic start to manifest themselves, when you see in Georgia and Oklahoma and different in Texas where large swaths of are going to get thrown out the window, if we don`t establish the language and dialogue necessary to point these dangers out, then we will have stolen elections and 2024 will already be done.

REID: Yes. And, Nancy, I don`t know if you can pull back up this picture. I mean, you had a group of white supremacists who admit to being fascist, who are proud of it, marched at the Lincoln Memorial, this does not become an alarmed story of existential crisis, whereas Hillary Clinton`s emails about her risotto were the absolute obsession of the media.

And, again, I don`t want to pick on one particular outlet, but The New York Times literally ran an excerpt of the book written by Steve Bannon`s partner and ran that as if it was like a huge breaking news with alleged wrongdoing from the Clinton Foundation that wasn`t even real.

[19:10:12]

But there is this sense that Democrats get held to this sort of normal standard and they get just attacked for any little deviation, a tan suit, emails that you don`t give the media access to, whereas this latitude that we, you know, and, again, not every outlet are giving Republicans, includes trafficking and fascism, anti-Muslim attacks that could get a literal member of Congress killed.

The latitude is so wide. Can you try to help us understand why that is happening?

NANCY MACLEAN, AUTHOR, DEMOCRACY IN CHAINS: Yes, and I want to thank Dana too. That was just an incredible article and so important and needs to be read by everyone, I think, because many of us said what is going on here. The coverage is so imbalanced. And the attacks on the Biden administration and saying Democrats are divided, no, they were legislating. They were doing the hard work of trying to get important things done for the American people. And I think so many in the media, mainstream media, Joy, you`re such a breath of fresh air, but seem not to have any sense of history of political science of what we need in this moment.

So, we know from the work of a scholar who have studied how democracy slide into authoritarian. This doesn`t come with clanging armored tanks and generals strutting around in most modern countries and in most places of serious democratic backsliding, it comes when the rules of democracy are shifted and rigged in order to ensure the triumph of a particular party.

And we know that authoritarians do things, like reject the democratic rules of the game. They deny the legitimacy of the other side, they encourage or tolerate violence and they show a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of their opponents. All four of these things are now characteristics not only of Donald Trump but of the modern Republican Party.

We`re in a situation in which we have to remember this. There are only two Republicans who supported, you know, the -- looking into the impeachment of, I mean, into the attempted coup on January 6th, only two Republicans who voted to censor Representative Gosar when he promoted violence against Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and we could go through many other things. But as Jason was saying too, they are systematically trying to get control of election administration in almost every state they control so that they can rig the election, possibly as early as 2022 but certainly in 2024.

And in those circumstances, as Dana has suggested, and as you`re all suggesting, to act as though, you know, normal media norms of neutrality is to participate in the destruction of democracy before our eyes.

REID: Let me read a little bit from Barton Gellman, who you should also read this piece, all of you great readers out there in The Atlantic. He says, Trump and his party have convinced a dauntingly large number of Americans that the essential workings of democracy are corrupt, that made- up claims of fraud are true, that only cheating can thwart their victory at the polls, that tyranny has usurped their government and that violence is a legitimate response.

And, Dana, I think you were getting at that, as well. And here is the challenge. The Republican Party is an almost mono-racial party. So, they are directing that message at a specific group of white Americans to terrify them into thinking their country is being stolen by people who look like me and Jason. And that in order to stop that, anything is okay.

My challenge is, we as the media have got to point out, that is not normal Republican politics. My father loved Republicans. He was a big Reaganite. That is not normal Republican politics. It`s something entree. Why do you think that we -- is it because the media has been so terrified by the right calling us liberal media and making up the idea that the is liberal? Is that -- is it fear? What do you think is holding people back from telling the truth about it?

MILBANK: Some of it may be fear and some of it may just be returning to the previous business as usual. That was sort of the default position before. It just no longer works now. And the piece by Bart I think is terrific. It`s because of the big lie. It`s not -- it`s not those clowns marching in Washington with their captain America shields. They`re clowns. There are tens of millions of people who are no longer on board with the democratic experiment.

There are at least ten states including Arizona, Texas, Georgia and Florida that was just referenced have given politicians essentially the ability to overrule the vote of the people.

[19:15:07]

This could happen in 2024. There are signs that this is exactly what is going to happen. We can`t sit there and say, oh, that`s bad on the one hand but, well, it`s just as bad that Joe Biden can`t pass his social infrastructure bill. They`re not at all on the same equation.

REID: It`s on the one hand on the other hand. I mean, Nancy, just because you wrote a whole book on this, I`m going to give you the last word on this. It feels like the on the one hand, on the other hand tendency, the media does not want to be at war with Republicans. They never wanted to be at war with Donald Trump. The media doesn`t want that smoke. There is something else they want but it ain`t that. Is that going to allow us to just wake up on January 2025 without our democracy and wonder what happened?

MACLEAN: Yes, absolutely. If that both sidesism continues, we are in absolutely dire straits. And I personally, you know, as you point out, you know, I`ve written about this, I`ve and researched this, this is not about liberals versus conservatives. This is actually not even about Republicans versus Democrats. The Republican Party has been captured by dark money donors and who have fed red meat to that white base for so long now that people have left the factual universe.

You know, we saw today from NPR that the death rate from COVID is now three times higher in states that voted for Donald Trump, and the more they voted for Donald Trump, the higher the death rate. These are people who have left the rails of science, of constitutional democracy and all the incentives, and this is important to understand too, all the incentives in their world pushed for continued behavior. The more outrageous these members of Congress get, the more their social media ratings go up, the more money they get in the end.

So, we have got to find other ways of sounding the alarm and traditional media could be that vehicle. But to do so, they`re going to need a hard looking inward of the kind that Dana has so rightly suggested is well overdue.

REID: Absolutely. And that`s going to be a difficult turn, but I`m so glad to have you all on to talk about this. Dana Milbank, thank you for writing that piece and fighting the good fight. Nancy MacLean, thank you, everybody should read your book. Jason Johnson is sticking around.

Up next on THE REIDOUT, the Justice Department is stepping up to fight for voting rights, speaking of trying to save country`s democracy, taking Texas to court over just absolutely egregious redistricting map.

Also, the latest from the death cult, today`s talking points include catching COVID is good and cancer apparently is contagious.

Plus, for Republican politicians, more examples of how the term pro-life only applies before birth.

And tonight`s absolute worst is so incredibly insensitive, you actually just have to see it to believe it.

THE REIDOUT continues after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:22:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MERRICK GARLAND, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL: Today, the Justice Department has filed suit against the state of Texas for violating Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

Texas has violated Section 2 by creating redistricting plans that deny or abridge the rights of Latino and black voters to vote on account of their race, color or membership in a language minority group.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

REID: The Department of Justice is suing the state of Texas over redistricting maps that they say, as you just heard, explicitly discriminate against Latino and black voters.

Despite minorities making up 95 percent of the state`s population growth, the suit notes that Texas designed its two new congressional seats to have Anglo voting majorities. The suit also asserts that Texas intentionally eliminated a Latino electoral opportunity in West Texas and failed to draw and encompassing -- a seat encompassing the growing Latino electorate in Harris County, which includes Houston.

But the situation in Dallas might be the easiest to visualize, where, as the DOJ put it, Texas surgically excised minority communities from the core of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex by attaching them to the heavily Anglo rural counties, some more than 100 miles away. I mean, does this look like a fairly drawn map to you?

This comes at a time when Republicans are doing everything they can to make sure that Democrats cannot win more elections. In Ohio, lawmakers are hiring lawyers to defend their maps who worked with a North -- their maps - - who worked with a North Carolina -- who worked with the North Carolinian on what a court called one of the largest racial gerrymandering ever encountered.

And in Wisconsin, a group tied to Donald Trump is trying to figure out how to bypass the Senate -- the state`s Democratic governor and how to change how elections are run.

I`m joined now by LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter. And Jason Johnson is back with me.

And, LaTosha, it`s so blatant now. Now, without -- with the Voting Rights Act, essentially on death`s door, Republicans are doing this openly. You`re in the position now of registering and trying to encourage black folks and folks to vote. Black Voters Matter is out there doing that.

How does this change the context? Because if they`re just going to steal the elections, how do we even encourage people to sign up and be a part of the process at all?

LATOSHA BROWN, CO-FOUNDER, BLACK VOTERS MATTER: I think that`s an excellent question.

I think that`s why we have to do more, that, yes, while we`re going to organize, we have been very clear from the beginning with this administration and with Congress that we can`t outorganize what`s happening to us right now, right, and that it is going to take federal legislation.

We`re going to have to put pressure on federal legislation. I think it`s quite ironic that the president is hosting a democracy summit with world leaders, yet, right in his own backyard, what we`re seeing is, we`re seeing efforts to actually undermine and marginalize black voters and brown voters all across this country.

So, if we want to talk about democracy, as my grandmother used to say, charity begins at home.

REID: Yes, I mean, just look at this Texas redistricting plan.

White voters account for 40 percent of the population, but they get 60 percent of the districts. Hispanic voters are 39 percent of the population. They only get 18 percent. Black voters are 12 percent. They get none of the new districts.

[19:25:00]

I mean, Jason, it`s not subtle.

JOHNSON: No, no, it`s not subtle.

And, I mean, these districts they make look like a Dexter blood spatter. They`re just pieces here and there that are just convenient for whatever the Republicans want.

And the concern is -- and LaTosha sort of points this out, being in Georgia and part of the South -- the concern is, even if you can organize, the legislation that is being passed on a lot of these states has basically said the state can step in and throw out whatever the results are if they don`t like them.

REID: Exactly.

JOHNSON: This is an emergency.

And I know this is something that hasn`t been done in 50 or 60 years, but you know what happened when the federal government said, hey, Brown vs. Board of Education, we have got to integrate schools? They sent troops. They sent federal officials to places and said, you will let black children into the school.

This administration can say, we have concerns about how elections are being conducted in this particular state. We`re going to send officials down there. We`re going to send election observers. If we think that people`s civil rights are being violated, we will do a federal takeover.

I know lots of people are going to scream about this. The right-wingers are going to scream. This is what the federal government is supposed to do. If states are violating people`s civil rights, you`re supposed to step in.

And we know perfectly well that the courts alone are not going to be good enough for this, because by the time this gets up to the handmaiden and all those other people hiding in the Supreme Court, they`re going to say that what Texas is doing is fine.

So in order for this government, for the Biden administration to save next year`s elections, they`re going to have to get aggressive and they`re going to have to get creative about protecting people`s rights.

And let`s be clear. Just because you pass legislation doesn`t guarantee Democrats win. Look what happened in Virginia.

REID: Right.

JOHNSON: But it does guarantee that people have a right to vote. And that`s something everybody should be allowed to do regardless of party.

REID: Well, maybe they better go back and get Eric Holder, because I`m not sure Merrick the mild is going to do any of those things that you just mentioned.

Let me listen -- because a lot of this is also personal in Georgia.

You`re in Georgia, LaTosha. So let me play David Perdue. So, David Perdue is fresh off of the controversies about whether he tried to enrich himself off of COVID. And he`s running again. He now wants to run for governor. And he wants to run against Brian Kemp, who Trump is mad at for not fixing the election for him after the fact.

Here he is making it very personal about why he`s running.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID PERDUE, (R), GEORGIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: To fight back, we simply have to be united. Unfortunately, today, we`re divided.

And Brian Kemp and Brad Raffensperger are to blame. Look, I like Brian. This isn`t personal. It`s simple. He has failed all of us and cannot win in November.

Think about how different it would be today if Kemp had fought Abrams first, instead of fighting Trump.

I`m David Perdue. I`m running for governor to make sure Stacey Abrams is never governor of Georgia.

Make no mistake. Abrams will smile, lie and cheat to transform Georgia into her radical vision of a state that would look more like California or New York.

Let me be very clear. Over my dead body will we ever give Stacey Abrams control of our elections again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

The rest is here:
Transcript: The ReidOut, 12/6/21 - MSNBC

I found Jack Batsons opinion column, On The Left (Nov. 22) to be a self-exposing embarrassment. Jack basically called every non-conforming voter a Nazi, Jacks version of democracy a one-party system. He refuses to understand that we already live under a totalitarian government masked by a Covid pandemic.

For the record, Nazis were the National Socialist party. A right-wing political party if youre a communist. Hitler was appointed chancellor; he didnt win it, kinda like many people believe Joe Biden did not win the most ballots. While the Nazis set the brown shirts into motion to attack, beat and destroy the undesirables, the Democrats supported Black Lives Matter and antifa destroying property, beat deplorables and shot cops during the summer of love 2020. States prepared for more violence should Donald Trump get re-elected. Democratic Party leaders stood by and called out their support. Who cares about the rule of law? Four states may well have violated constitutional voting laws by bypassing state-required legislation.

Jack forgot the several occasions when Democrats challenged an election result. He forgot the four years of resist. He forgot that Eric Holder ignored a congressional subpoena. Which party continually strives to separate Americans? Which party promotes CRT and a continued media portrayal of white supremacy instigating hate?

Lets talk about a coup detat: Were going to impeach that mother. . . before Trump was even sworn in. We had two years of a Mueller investigation that was looking for a crime rather than investigating a crime. Nancy Pelosi: Weve been working on impeachment for more than two years. The Goebbel propaganda mainstream media, The New York Times and The Washington Post are now retracting all those lies. I refer to our Department of Justice as the Gestapo; an agency that is set out to destroy any political opposition, including parents at school board meetings.

Theres a political term for the Jacks in the world: Useful idiot; a person promoting a political cause without fully comprehending that theyre actually supporting the political philosophy that they think theyre opposing.

Hank Schwarzbach

Fairfield

Related

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Letter to the Editor: Jack Batson totally off yet again - Fairfield Daily Republic

The attorney general Eric Holder has become the first sitting member of a president's cabinet in US history to be held in contempt of Congress after Republicans vented their fury over a bungled gun-tracking investigation.

Seventeen Democrats, under pressure from the pro-gun lobby the NRA, joined 238 Republicans to carry a criminal contempt resolution against Holder. A currently serving attorney general has never before been censured in this way.

The criminal contempt resolution, passed by 255 to 67, with most Democrats walking out of the chamber en masse before the vote, related to Operation Fast and Furious, a federal investigation launched in Arizona designed to ensnare gun smugglers involved with the Mexican drug cartels.

Thursday's vote was of symbolic value, pointing to the almost total collapse of trust between the two main parties in Congress. Republican anger has been fueled by a conspiracy theory that Fast and Furious was deliberately set up to fail by the Obama administration to pave the way for greater federal gun controls.

Holder delivered an angry statement about 20 minutes after the contempt vote, accusing the Republican leadership of engaging in "election-year politics and gamesmanship". He said the charges against him were "unnecessary and unwarranted" and insisted that as soon as he learnt about flawed tactics of Fast and Furious he had taken action to stop it and make sure such methods were never used again.

"That was my response to Fast and Furious, and any suggestion to the contrary is not consistent with the facts," he said, adding that the Republican leadership was advancing "truly absurd, truly absurd conspiracy theories".John Boehner, the speaker of the House, said: "I don't take this matter lightly. I hoped it would never come to this but no justice department is above the law and the constitution."

Democrats responded by accusing the Republican group in the House of engaging in political hystrionics. John Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan who is a former board member of the NRA, accused the Republicans of engaging in a "partisan political witch-hunt with the attorney general as its target".

In legal terms the vote is of doubtful practical significance as the contempt issue will now be handed to the US attorney for the District of Columbia a prosecutor who, as an official within Holder's department of justice, is unlikely to proceed with a case against his own employer.

In a second vote, the House passed a civil contempt resolution by 258 to 95. That too has limited practical implications. The civil contempt motion will allow the House to proceed to the courts to ask them to force Holder to release the disputed documents, but judges rarely agree to intervene in cases where the president has already invoked executive privilege.

Operation Fast and Furious went awry after agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives practised a controversial technique known as "gun-walking", where low-level smugglers were allowed to traffic weapons in the hope that bigger fish could be caught further down the line.

About 1,400 of the 2,000 guns involved went missing, and two were found at the scene of the killing of a US border agent, Brian Terry. During the debate leading up to the contempt vote, Republican speakers repeatedly referred to the wishes of the Terry family to seek the truth.

The dramatic standoff between the Obama administration and the Republican-controlled House has been provoked by demands that the department of justice hands over thousands of official documents. The Republicans believe the files will show that Holder and other senior administration officials were complicit in the gun-walking and that they tried to cover it up. The DoJ has refused to hand over the documents, saying they are irrelevant to the operation and pointing out that they have already disclosed about 7,600 documents that do relate directly to Fast and Furious.

Last week Obama invoked executive privilege to block the disclosure of the internal documents.

In the runup to the vote, members of both parties from the House oversight and government affairs committee were shown emails to and from Holder relating to Fast and Furious. The correspondence dated from February 2011 precisely the moment when the administration wrongfully told Congress that there had been no gun-walking to Mexico, a false statement that it retracted 10 months later.

The newly disclosed emails, details of which were obtained by Associated Press, appeared to support the attorney general's insistence that at that time he was unaware that guns had been allowed to "walk" at the time. On 23 February, three weeks after the administration denial had been made, Holder wrote to his officials following new revelations in the media to say: "We need answers on this. Not defensive BS. Real answers."

On 3 March, Holder's deputy, James Cole, sent an email to all his officials saying: "We obviously need to get to the bottom of this."

This article was amended on 29 June 2012. The original said that fifteen Democrats joined 238 Republicans to carry a criminal contempt resolution against Holder. This has been corrected.

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Eric Holder held in contempt of Congress after historic ...

Attention all units: Arrest Captain Culpepper.

Fans of classic comedy will recognize that line from the 1963 film, Its a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. It comes at the moment of reluctant realization that the top law enforcement official has used his inside access to beat the comedians to the loot, and then get away with it.

It appears that we have reached the arrest Captain Culpepper moment in U.S. law enforcement, but its not funny.

The Biden administrations Department of Justice obtained search warrants in an investigation of something that doesnt appear to involve any federal crime, and then the FBI raided the homes of three people associated with Project Veritas, a guerrilla journalism organization that uses undercover reporters and hidden cameras to report its stories.

Almost immediately, the details of the raids and confidential legal communications stored on the cell phone of Project Veritas founder James OKeefe were published in the New York Times.

It was too much even for the Biden-friendly American Civil Liberties Union. Project Veritas has engaged in disgraceful deceptions, and reasonable observers might not consider their activities to be journalism at all, an ACLU senior staff attorney said in a statement, Nevertheless, the precedent set in this case could have serious consequences for press freedom.

Theres no could have about it when the FBI shows up with a battering ram at the homes of reporters and a publisher to search for and seize devices, and then somehow confidential communications with an attorney are published verbatim in the New York Times.

On Capitol Hill, the ranking members of three committeesRep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, Rep. James Comer, R-Kentucky, and Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland demanding documents and information about the Project Veritas raids, including how and why the FBI decided to open an investigation at all an investigation into the alleged theft of a diary that allegedly belonged to the presidents daughter, Ashley Biden.

In a statement on the Project Veritas website, OKeefe said the group was approached late last year by tipsters claiming they had a copy of Ashley Bidens diary and were trying to sell it. OKeefe said Project Veritas could not determine if the diary was real, if the diary in fact belonged to Ashley Biden, or if the contents of the diary occurred, and the decision was made not to publish it. He said Project Veritas turned the diary over to law enforcement. Later, excerpts of the diary were published on another website.

What is the federal crime here?

According to OKeefes attorney, one of the search warrants listed transporting material across state lines.

In 2001, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that media outlets cant be held liable for publishing information that someone else obtained illegally, as long as the media outlets themselves did not obtain the material illegally. OKeefes attorney, Paul Calli, told a federal judge that the sources told Project Veritas they obtained the diary after Ashley Biden abandoned it at a house in Delray Beach, Florida.

Given that Project Veritas employees have not been accused of stealing the diary, it begs the question: Are federal law enforcement officials asserting the power to raid the homes of journalists who receive or publish material illegally obtained and leaked by people in contact with government officials?

James OKeefe says his seized cell phone contained confidential contact information for sources. Was the investigation into the theft of Ashley Bidens diary just a pretext to find out who is speaking to Project Veritas?

In 2013, when Joe Biden was vice president, the Department of Justice secretly spied on Associated Press reporters, collecting telephone records for 20 different phone lines including reporters home phones for a two-month period in an apparent effort to find the identity of leakers. The revelation prompted AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt to send a letter to then-Attorney General Eric Holder demanding that copies of the phone records be destroyed. These records potentially reveal communications with confidential sources across all of the news-gathering activities undertaken by the AP during a two-month period, provide a road map to APs news-gathering operations, and disclose information about APs activities and operations that the government has no conceivable right to know, he wrote.

The government doesnt have any rights. It has powers. You have rights. Those rights are defined in the Constitution and in law as prohibitions of certain government actions.

But who do you call when the government is violating the law?

Its time to demand broad congressional hearings on abuses of power in the Department of Justice going back years and perhaps decades. We already know that the government spied on AP reporters, and that the DOJ lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to get a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign advisor. In September, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz issued a report confirming widespread non-compliance with required factual accuracy review procedures for secret surveillance warrant applications.

Thats the context in which the latest outrages including the recent DOJ memo characterizing parents at school board meetings as a potential domestic terror threat must be viewed. The FBI could show up at anyones door with a battering ram and a questionable search warrant. And theyre doing it.

If the United States is going to be a free country, this has to stop. Its time to pick up the phone and call your representatives in Washington. We need bipartisan, bicameral hearings to investigate abuses in federal law enforcement agencies. Attention all units.

(Susan Shelley is a columnist for the Orange County Register in California.)

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Fed raid on Project Veritas unacceptable in free society - Bradford Era