Glenn Kirschner – The many crimes of Mark Meadows make him the prime candidate for prosecutors to flip against Trump
Meidas Touch – Special Counsel Jack Smith’s NEXT MOVES REVEALED by Former Top Federal Prosecutor
Ojeda LIVE – January 6 Ethics Investigation
Mrs. Betty Bowers (does her impression of Melania)
Wait Until The Entire Cat Family Appears
Beau – Let’s talk about Hutchinson, theories, and fireplaces….
Yesterday, I realized thet I had forgotten to update the OT to reflect that Tuesday evening my BFF had picked up for me the only prescriotion I can’t get delivered, and while she was here she also helped me take an interior door, whose hinges had fallen out, outside to the back yard. So, even with help, I was enervated – again – and thus overslept – again. However, after getting up late, I at least managed to write a tough letter to another friend and enclose it in a package with a sweater I had made her – and purchase the paid shipping label from USPS and schedule pickup tomorrow. The letter was tough because she has a record of being in touch with me when things are going well for her and getting out of touch when theings are not going well – and I needed to say “I see right through you” but in such a way as to suggest I am purely supportive, not condescending. I hope it works.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
Crooks & Liars – There’s A First Time For Everything
Quote – [T]here is a first time for everything. And sometimes, those things can be very stupid, which can lead to another first time for other things. Someone had to, for the first time, put a warning on a cup of coffee that it might be hot, because some numbskull didn’t know that. Same for most of the other warning labels that can be found everywhere.
Click through (there’s also a video.) Sane people who doubt whether Trump** should be prosecuted mostly lean on one or both of two pillars – precedent and division. We’ve discussed how not prosecuting would be in the long run more divisive than prosecutiong. This article accurately takes down the pillar of precedent.
DU (applegrove) – Garland Bans Political Appointees from Campaign Events
Quote – Attorney General Merrick Garland banned political appointees at the Department of Justice from participating in campaign events in any form. Wrote Garland in a memo: “We must do all we can to maintain public trust and ensure that politics — both in fact and appearance — does not compromise or affect the integrity of our work.”
Click through – it’s short, but applegrove provides a couple of sources if anyone wants to dig deeper. I applaud this move. The old standard was not unreasonable as long as Americans were not unreasonable. Now they are, and we need more spelled out.
Food For Thought
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
Walter Shaub is the ethics maven ad the Project for Gobernment oversight (POGO). He writes a (roughly) weekly column on the subject, titled “The Bridge,” which comes out in a dedicated newsletter. Normally, when a column comes out in a newsletter, under the auspices of a group which operrates a website, there is somewhere on line one can find that column and link to it. This is not the case with The Bridge. I have tried in the past and failed, but I tried again anyway and actually got closer than I ever had – there is a place at POGO’s site which refers to The Bridge and claims to link to “the latest” (IIRC, “the latest” this week were from April and May.) The current one is not there. I am sharing it in full here, because, while ethics is always important, I found this one, with its history lesson, particularly compelling.
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IT’S ALL JUST A LITTLE BIT OF HISTORY REPEATING ♫ Fans of authoritarianism are trotting out an old scam with renewed fervor. News reports indicate allies of former President Donald Trump have revived a plan to smash the federal civil service and take the nation back to the mid-19th century, when corruption flourished. Back then, hiring was based on political loyalty rather than loyalty to the Constitution and the laws of this land. This practice of political patronage hiring was known as the “spoils system” because the spoils of political victory — in this case, federal jobs — went to the victor. In 1883, the government began a long, slow process of dismantling this primitive system and constructing a professional civil service. Now, 139 years later, only about 4,000 positions in the federal government are filled with political appointees, and the remaining 2.1 million are filled on the basis of merit, not political allegiance.  President Chester Arthur signed into law the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act on Jan. 16, 1883 | National Archives |
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A Modern-Day Spoils System A neo-spoils system would reverse this progress and make tens of thousands of federal employees (maybe eventually hundreds of thousands) subject to firing at will by the president. That would give us a federal workforce staffed by political actors loyal only to the president and not to the rule of law. It would transform the federal government into a powerful weapon for an authoritarian president seeking to shatter democracy. A whistleblower complaint concerning Trump appointees who helped conceal his extortion of Ukraine showed us what that looks like. This would be more of the same, but on an enormous scale. Gone would be the due process protections for federal officials who refuse to carry out unlawful orders. Currently, most non-probationary civilian employees can appeal a firing or severe disciplinary action to an independent board or an arbitrator. These protections exist more for our benefit than for individual federal employees. They protect the public by making it harder for political appointees to fire whistleblowers or other employees who reject corrupt schemes. Trump tried stripping due process rights for certain federal employees back in October 2020, but he couldn’t get his new system implemented before his term ended. Exploiting a statutory loophole, he issued an executive order creating a new category of federal employment, called “Schedule F,” which would have converted some career federal employees to at-will employees so he could fire anyone who resisted the sort of corruption that led to the January 6 insurrection. A right-wing think tank, America First Policy Institute, issued a report last year laying out a strategy for executing the plan next time an authoritarian president is in the White House. And support for it is growing among politicians who appear to prefer the 19th century to the 21st.  Title of America First Policy Institute “report” |
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The Last Line of Defense It’s worth remembering that it was career federal employees who refused to take Trump to the Capitol to lead the January 6th domestic terrorist attack on Congress, exposed his extortion of Ukraine, refused to join him in encouraging the public to try a dangerous drug that wasn’t approved for COVID symptoms, and investigated his obstruction of justice. These patriots are obstacles to authoritarianism, which is probably why America First Policy Institute’s report says it aims to prevent a repeat of “bureaucratic resistance during the Trump Administration.” Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA) introduced an amendment to the House of Representatives’ version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) to put limits on a president’s power to gut the civil service. The NDAA is the must-pass defense bill that makes it through Congress each year. But the Senate and the House have to work out any differences in the bills they pass, and it’s not guaranteed this language will make it into the final version of the NDAA that goes to the president for signature. Along with Representative Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA), Connolly previously introduced a standalone House bill that, like his NDAA amendment, would place new limits on a president’s ability to strip due process rights for federal employees. On Tuesday, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) and several cosponsors introduced an identical version of the Connolly bill in the Senate. It is vital that Connolly’s amendment and, eventually, more comprehensive reforms are passed to shore up gaps in civil service protections because — make no mistake — the plan to crush the civil service is an effort in service of authoritarianism. As I’ve written before, federal workers are the last line of defense against a president who wants to weaponize the government against the American people in defiance of the rule of law. If you gut the protections for these public servants, you tear down a wall between us and tyranny. Congress must fight this battle now before it’s too late. |
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WHAT TO READ (AND LISTEN TO) Want to dig deeper? Here’s my suggested reading list:
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The Bridge is a new kind of policy newsletter, delivering issues at the heart of government integrity out from DC to the rest of the world. Did someone forward this to you? Sign up here.
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Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, I can hardly even imagine how many pearls would be clutched and how many fainting couches be in use if Republicans were to read this. How many shouts of “Fake News!” (when it’s neither new nor fake.) How many laws would be wrotten to prevent the teaching of this history in public schools (I’m pretty sure no public school is teaching this – I certainly don’t recall learning it in school.) If they ever get into power – God help us.
The Furies and I will be back.
Yesterday, I had said I planned to rest, and I guess I did. I slept almost 4 hours passed my (only a suggestion) alarm time. When I did get up, my back was really complaining (which the TENS fixed up pretty quickly), but my shouldr felt fine. I think (hope) I have found the sweet spot to assuage that particular pain point. In any case, I have material – two stories about Colorado, one a good example and the other a horror story – and also a story on a crime prevention tactic hat actually works (so of course it has no chance against Republicans.) Today’s cartoon memorializes the first known summit conference in WEurope (I for one would not be surprised t learn that native Americans were doind it long before that.)
Also, please, everyone, cick back (under the comments, on the left) to the post published just before this Thread for Nameless’s wonderful post. (And here I thought I was the queen of workarounds. This is brilliant!)
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
The 19th – Colorado is the first state to abolish anonymous sperm and egg donors. Activist Erin Jackson on why that matters.
Quote – In 2021, Jackson, who had no prior advocacy experience, joined a handful of other activists in starting the U.S. Donor Conceived Council, a political advocacy group. Sen. Stephen Fenberg, the president of Colorado’s state senate, reached out to Jackson to ask what donor-conceived people want to see happen in terms of regulation of the fertility industry. Jackson was armed with data she had collected outlining the types of policy positions her community wanted to see. Fenberg ran with it: Jackson and the U.S. Donor Conceived Council were instrumental in shaping first-of-its-kind legislation in Colorado.
Click through for details. Ethics is complicated. The original concept of anonymity was based on the assumption tha donors had a right to protection, but this ignored the fact that those who resulted had a right to information too. What you don’t know CAN hurt you.
CPR News – Victim IDs released in coal slide at Pueblo power plant
Quote – The men worked for Utah-based Savage, a contractor for Xcel Energy that operates the plant’s coal yard. Witnesses reported that the accident happened on a feeder pile for the station’s coal-fired power plant, which is Colorado’s largest…. Rescuers found the bodies of the two men buried beneath about 60 feet of coal after a day-long search. The men had been standing about 30 feet up a slope of the pile when the slide occurred, according to the Pueblo Fire Department.
Click through for background (including a lin to the original story). This is an extremely good argumant for terminating the use of coal world-wide. (Not that Republicans care about people dying as long as they are making money.)
Vox – A study gave cash and therapy to men at risk of criminal behavior. 10 years later, the results are in.
Quote – That’s such an incredibly good deal that it sounds too good to be true. But it’s been borne out by the research of Chris Blattman, Margaret Sheridan, Julian Jamison, and Sebastian Chaskel. Their new study provides experimental evidence that offering at-risk men a few weeks of behavioral therapy plus a bit of cash reduces the future risk of crime and violence, even 10 years after the intervention.
Click through for full story. It’s far more complex than a single quote can communicate.
Food For Thought
Glenn Kirschner – Will Trump’s Written Confession Regarding Pence “Overturning” Election Prod DOJ into Action?
Meidas Touch – BANNING Books and Protecting Traitor Crooks is the GOP Agenda
The Lincoln Project – Last Week in the Republican Party
RepresentUs – How Congress Makes Bank Off War
VoteVets – Generations
Rocky Mountain Mike – Groundhog Day – 2022 – “I Got Kool-Aid”
Beau – Let’s talk about Biden’s executive order and Vanessa Guillen….