Report: House Members Nearly Come To Blows As Congress Preaches Unity To America

Two House members nearly came to blows and had to be separated by a Capitol staffer after several lawmakers had preached about coming together as Americans.

The wild scene took place as lawmakers debated certifying the Electoral votes from Pennsylvania.

An altercation reportedly took place between Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) and Rep. Colin Allred (D-TX), though what prompted it remains unclear.

Reporters in attendance, according to Fox News, suggest Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Conor Lamb’s characterization of the violence earlier in the day may have prompted the scuffle.

“It didn’t materialize out of nowhere,” Lamb said of the violence. “It was inspired by lies. The same lies that you’re hearing in this room tonight.”

Republicans objected, to which Lamb responded, “The truth hurts!”

C-Span video captured Lamb speaking and a commotion behind him.

Harris is a 63-year-old U.S. Navy veteran while Allred is a 37-year-old former college football player at Baylor.

RELATED: Ilhan Omar, Squad Members Call For Trump’s Impeachment, Expulsion Of Republican Lawmakers

House Members Andy Harris and Colin Allred Almost Comes to Blows

Remarkably, this near-fight took place late into the night where lawmakers spent countless minutes preaching to the American people about unity and coming together.

After witnessing the violence at the Capitol, numerous Republicans backed down from contesting the election and defending the Constitution as some sort of olive branch to Democrats who have been fomenting discord for months.

Republican Sens. Steve Daines and James Lankford, CNN notes, said: “We must stand together as Americans. We must defend our Constitution and the rule of law.”

Yet Lamb accused lawmakers in the chamber of being liars for defending the Constitution. That doesn’t sound like coming together.

RELATED: Mitch McConnell Blasts Republican Senators Who Challenge Electoral College Results

The House Literally Preached Unity

House Republican minority leader Kevin McCarthy received a standing ovation for a speech that stated while Democrats and Republicans might not agree on everything, “now is the moment to show America that we work best together.”

“Mobs don’t rule America. Laws rule America,” he added. “It was true when our cities were burning this summer and it is true now.”

And to symbolize that ‘unity,’ Mass Live reports:

The comment got loud applause from Republicans. Democrats in the chamber sat silently.

Just like they did for years’ worth of State of the Union speeches when President Trump repeatedly urged unity between the two parties.

The New York Times revealed that after President-elect Joe Biden’s victory had been certified by lawmakers, the Senate chaplain delivered “a powerful prayer calling for unity.”

“Use us to bring healing and unity to our hurting and divided nation and world,” chaplain Barry C. Black said. “Thank you for what you have blessed our lawmakers to accomplish in spite of threats to liberty.”

What a great example Lamb, Allred, and Harris have set.

The post Report: House Members Nearly Come To Blows As Congress Preaches Unity To America appeared first on The Political Insider.

A breakdown of all 126 seditious Republicans who signed on for a coup d’état

When Texas sued to overturn four other states’ election results in the hopes of installing illegitimate, two-time popular vote loser, and white supremacist mediocrity Donald Trump into a second presidential term, they exposed how many elected officials are straight-up wannabe oligarchs. The fact that even in the upside-down world we are living in, with the hijacked ultra conservative Supreme Court in place, most everybody knew there was little chance of the Supreme Court stepping in and hearing the case, which should tip one off to how far afield this maneuver is. It’s the kind of thing that most people would rather not put their name on since it is the sort of thing people should go to jail for—if laws concerning sedition and treason are real laws.

Many of the people on this list came into office during the tea party wave of 2010. If you don’t remember what the tea party is, it’s sort of like if you looked at the American Revolution for independence and democracy and your takeaway was … being a racist asshole. Another way to look at it is if you looked at the Civil War in the United States and boiled it down to … being a racist asshole. Let’s make sure we remember the 126 fascists who signed on for this attack on American democracy, and maybe even learn a smidgen more about them and their histories of being terrible people. A tip of the hat goes to community members republicinsanity and Carmeninvermont—republicinsanity for the Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day series that is frequently sourced here, and Carmeninvermont for the easy-to-read and understand list of GOP anti-democracy Republicans who want to overthrow our elections process in order to hoist up the most mediocre man in American history.

Here is a nice list of the 126 Republican officials who whether charged with sedition and treason or not, are guilty of trying to, at the very least, thwart the will of the American people and overturn our democratically elected president:

Mike Johnson of Louisiana’s 4th Congressional District made small headlines this past summer when his attempts to “gotcha” assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland Aaron Zelinsky for not appearing in person during a pandemic blew up in his face. Zelinsky, who had a newborn at home, explained that he had spoken with his family’s doctor and they thought potentially exposing the newborn to a pandemic wasn’t a good move.

Gary Palmer of Alabama’s 6th Congressional District is one of those conservative think tankers whose big ideas include: attacking same sex marriage and nonbinary public restrooms. Big thinker.

Steve Scalise of Louisiana’s 1st Congressional District is a storied hypocrite and swamp creature of epic proportions.

Jim Jordan of Ohio’s 4th Congressional District is a person, so cowardly and so craven, he has built a career on his ability to ignore some of the most heinous crimes happening under his watch. Jordan’s act of sedition comes down lower on his list of sins than most others on this list.

Ralph Abraham of Louisiana’s 5th Congressional District is a shoot from the hip bigot with ideas that were last considered fresh in 1770.

Rick W. Allen of Georgia’s 12th Congressional District has one truly great claim to fame, he “disgusted” some Republicans once upon a time by reading anti-LGBTQ passages from the Bible. Different times. Different times.

James R. Baird of Indiana’s 4th Congressional District was attacked with an insensitive and offensive mailer, by an out of state conservative super PAC in 2018, during his Republican primary. He seemed pretty offended at the time, but I guess he’s decided to let all of that go in order to overthrow the government.

Jim Banks of Indiana’s 3rd Congressional District spent the early weeks of the global pandemic to help pen a nonbonding resolution blaming China for COVID-19. That’s what he did to help Americans.

Jack Bergman of Michigan’s 1st Congressional District blamed the press for the domestic terrorist shooting that injured Rep. Steve Scalise.

Andy Biggs of Arizona’s 5th Congressional District didn't go so far as to call Democrats who didn’t applaud during Donald Trump’s State of the Union “treasonous” but did believe they were “disrespectful” and that they might have to answer to God. He’s also had to leave public events after being booed offstage for saying that climate change wasn’t settled science.

Gus Bilirakis of Florida’s 12th Congressional District came into the office he sort of inherited from his father. He’s been a good anti-women’s rights Republican since 2006 and pretty much does what he’s told to do. And he’s in Florida where Republicans tell you to do the real bottom of the barrel stuff.

Dan Bishop of North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District came into office after actual election fraudster Republican Mark Harris had to step away due to controversy over … election fraud. Bishop is best known for writing North Carolina’s anti-trans “bathroom bill.”

Mike Bost of Illinois’s 12th Congressional District is famously prone to outrageous outbursts. He’s also known for cowering away from constituents when asked about his attempts to rip away millions of people’s health insurance. 

Kevin Brady of Texas’s 8th Congressional District was that diminutive bald white guy that got a nice grin going in the Rose garden for when the Republican Party gave away billions to the rich in their tax scam. That’s his great achievement.

Mo Brooks of Alabama’s 5th Congressional District read Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf on the floor of the House in a twisted attempt to skewer the Democratic officials over their pursuit of an investigation into Trump’s campaign ties to Russia. He did this on the heels of calling for the National Guard to “be allowed to use whatever force is necessary to secure that border.”

Ken Buck of Colorado’s 4th Congressional District has faced questions over whether he pressured another party official to submit incorrect election results and then blew through some RNC money to make that fraud work. To call Buck a scumbag is offensive to bags filled with scum.

Ted Budd of North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District is one of the Republicans who signed on to this bit of treason while in quarantine, after announcing he had tested positive for COVID-19.

Tim Burchett of Tennessee’s 2nd Congressional District believes in Bigfoot and eating roadkill instead of providing better social services.

Michael C. Burgess of Texas’s 26th Congressional District is the kind of guy that called for President Barack Obama to be impeached over Benghazi and then became suspiciously silent when Donald Trump was impeached for his law breaking and corruption-filled campaign.

Bradley Byrne of Alabama’s 1st Congressional District took time away from releasing racist attack ads to sign on for fascism!

Ken Calvert of California’s 42nd Congressional District is a famous “family values” hypocrite (see busted with pants around his ankles, with a sex worker who was not his wife).

Earl L. “Buddy” Carter of Georgia’s 1st Congressional District. I couldn’t find much on Buddy, but I do know that he doesn’t believe in democracy.

Ben Cline of Virginia’s 6th Congressional District was one of the dozen security threats with feet that breached national security for a hack partisan performance piece, led by Florida man Matt Gaetz.

Michael Cloud of Texas’s 27th Congressional District owes his seat to the fact that repeatedly disgraceful Blake Farenthold had to leave office, and Republicans have successfully repressed the vote in his district.

Mike Conaway of Texas’s 11th Congressional District knows a ton about stealing elections as he famously said, in 2017, that Democratic Sen. Harry Reid and other Democrats had enlisted “Mexican soap opera stars, singers and entertainers who had immense influence in those communities into Las Vegas, to entertain, get out the vote and so forth. Those are foreign actors, foreign people, influencing the vote in Nevada.”

Rick Crawford of Arkansas’s 1st Congressional District is maybe best known for his opposition to taking down Confederate monuments saying it was akin to Holocaust denialism and would lead to the closure of Holocaust museums. There’s not much else to say about that.

Dan Crenshaw of Texas’s 2nd Congressional District is a dirtbag who lies and pretends he isn’t just a groveling McConnell follower.

Mario Diaz-Balart of Florida’s 25th Congressional District has the distinction of being the first member of Congress to test positive for COVID-19. He will also be remembered as one of those Republicans who refused to speak to Donald Trump’s describing countries as “shitholes.” Courage is something these men do not have.

Jeff Duncan of South Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District has enjoyed trying, and failing, to do away with important census data, by attempting to have it legislated out of being collected. Too much thinking for Mr. Duncan, I guess.

Neal P. Dunn of Florida’s 2nd Congressional District has made sure to tell news outlets how worried he was and is for children separated from their loved ones due to Trump and the Republican Party’s zero tolerance immigration policies. Not surprisingly, he’s done absolutely nothing to fix this inhumane practice.

Tom Emmer of Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District has complained about constituents wanting stuff like healthcare protections and he’s tried in vain to weaken the Endangered Species Act. He’s never been particularly interested in a Democracy and doesn’t plan on starting now.

Ron Estes of Kansas’s 4th Congressional District literally walked in a swamp in the hopes of riding his way through a tight election. Sadly, Estes never left that swamp, he seems to have just grown gills.

Drew Ferguson of Georgia’s 3rd Congressional District has a social media team that can’t tell the difference between World War II American soldiers and Nazis. True story!

Chuck Fleischmann of Tennessee's 3rd Congressional District is the kind of guy that takes a question about the many outrageous attacks made publicly by Donald Trump and answers it by blaming Nancy Pelosi for being mean. But in Fleischmann’s defense, he’s been peddling the election fraud fantasy publicly, with zero evidence, since his lord and liege Trump told him to.

Bill Flores of Texas’s 17th Congressional District has made sure to point out that he would ignore the calls from his constituents in regards to Trump’s problematic relationship with Russia and instead make claims that same sex marriage led to civil unrest in Baltimore. The civil unrest in Baltimore connected to the death of Freddie Gray in police custody and the lack of justice he ultimately received.

Jeff Fortenberry of Nebraska’s 1st Congressional District got off his high horse to finally openly expose himself as the right-wing, batshit bananas hack that he’s always been and pretended not to be.

Virginia Foxx of North Carolina’s 5th Congressional District took time away from analogizing the regulation of for-profit colleges with the Holocaust to practice some good old Nazi fascism and overthrow our Democracy. She also once tried to argue that the murder of Matthew Shepard was not a hate crime. In fact, she said the premise was a “hoax.”

Russ Fulcher of Idaho’s 1st Congressional District is a climate denier … as of 2018. He also claims that God wants Idahoians to mine the ground and log away the trees in the state.

Matt Gaetz of Florida’s 1st Congressional District is this guy. What can be said about Matt Gaetz that hasn’t been written in excrement on the soles of Donald Trump and Sean Hannity’s tiny shoes

Greg Gianforte, governor-elect of Montana, assaulted a reporter for asking tough questions and then lied about it to police.

Bob Gibbs of Ohio’s 7th Congressional District is the classic overly emotional conservative white male politician that uses hyperbole but demands that people take that incongruous hyperbole as fact.

Louie Gohmert of Texas’s 1st Congressional District is an unintelligent person but he is also a relatively powerful and disturbingly racist and unintelligent person.

Lance Gooden of Texas’s 5th Congressional District has been in the pocket of a Texas hotelier for years and owes most of his financial support to him. In fact, Gooden is in business with millionaire Monty Bennett and it seems that Bennett is the only person in the state of Texas that Gooden feels he needs to answer to. Gooden’s one claim to fame over the past couple of years was coming up with a plan to DNA test all new immigrants at the border, something that is problematic for about 1 million reasons.

Sam Graves of Missouri’s 6th Congressional District is the kind of guy that runs on homophobia.

Mark Green of Tennessee’s 7th Congressional District is also a homophobe with a history of trying to create laws that would allow for the wholesale discrimination of LGBTQ folks in businesses throughout the Volunteer State.

Michael Guest of Mississippi’s 3rd Congressional District is on the House Committee on Ethics. Drink that in: a guy that signed on for a coup d’etat represents Republican ethics in the House. Guest is also a supporter of Confederate fashion-lover and general old-timey racist Cindy Hyde-Smith.

Andy Harris of Maryland’s 1st Congressional District is a person who ran on a campaign against the Affordable Healthcare Act and then demanded to know why his government-sponsored healthcare didn’t take effect until after one month in office. And his dad was a Nazi-supporter—not like a neo-Nazi supporter, but an actual Germany during World War II Nazi supporter. Hubris is too nice a word for what Andy Harris is about.

Vicky Hartzler of Missouri’s 4th Congressional District is really most famous for being an anti-gay activist. Imagine if that was your claim to fame?

Kevin Hern of Oklahoma’s 1st Congressional District is directly connected to arguably the single most corrupt official in recent Oklahoma history, Scott Pruitt. He’s also been a big promoter of superspreader COVID-19 events.

Clay Higgins of Louisiana’s 3rd Congressional District is a former Louisiana police officer who lost his job for what would be considered criminal behavior if he hadn’t been on the unjust side of the thin blue line. He’s also a scary racist fascist who believes in authoritarian rule.

Trey Hollingsworth of Indiana’s 9th Congressional District believes that the hundreds of thousands of Americans dead from COVID-19 are the “lesser of these two evils.” The other evil in that sentence is “our way of life as Americans.”

Richard Hudson of North Carolina’s 8th Congressional District is your run-of-the-mill, anti-women’s rights, Obama birther conspiracy theorist, demands drug testing in exchange for food assistance Republican. 

Bill Huizenga of Michigans 2nd Congressional District has been investigated for corruption and has gone so far as to try and get rid of corruption laws that might conflict with his … corruption.

Bill Johnson of Ohio’s 6th Congressional District is a big Islamophobe GOP official. That seems to be his main strength. Like many of the people on this list, Johnson came into office on the ultra-conservative tea party wave of 2010. 

John Joyce of Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional District is new to the scene, but we now know one thing about his political ideology.

Fred Keller of Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District barely understands his own elections, let alone national ones.

Mike Kelly of Pennsylvanias 16th Congressional District has been on board this election fraud train since suing to have Black people’s votes in Pennsylvania nullified.

Trent Kelly of Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District gave his in-person seal of approval on the Trump administration’s family separation practices.

Steve King of Iowa’s 4th Congressional District is a lame duck racist who would sign anything so long as the devil told him to.

David Kustoff of Tennessee’s 8th Congressional District’s biggest claim to fame is being a sort of poor man’s Tom Cotton.

Darin LaHood of Illinois’s 18th Congressional District took time away from trying to govern women’s bodies with his Bible to sign off on treason!

Doug LaMalfa of California’s 1st Congressional District has been promoting doubt about the Democratic process, with zero evidence, since the beginning of November. LaMalfa is a mixture of painfully pathetic xenophobia along with quoting the bible to deny climate science.

Doug Lamborn of Colorado’s 5th Congressional District is the guy that continued to force his staff to work in the close proximity of his office during the current pandemic, and then reportedly told his staff not to tell their roommates about COVID-19 symptoms they were having after coming into contact with someone with COVID-19. Think about that.

Robert E. Latta of Ohio’s 5th Congressional District has magically increased his wealth while in Washington by a reported 238%, and while he isn’t the wealthiest Ohio Republican, he’s made the biggest jump in wealth since entering office. Strange!

Debbie Lesko of Arizona’s 8th Congressional District once said that the dozens of sexual assaults alleged against Donald Trump should be investigated and then promptly forgot all about that as she co-sponsored a bill that would require women to prove to their employers that they took birth control for reasons other than … birth control. 

Blaine Luetkemeyer of Missouri’s 3rd Congressional District’s main function in the Republican Party is to figure out ways to allow payday lenders to launder their money. 

Kenny Marchant of Texas’s 24th Congressional District is retiring and throwing democracy under the bus as he walks out the door.

Roger Marshall of Kansas’s 1st Congressional District is the kind of guy that runs away from answering questions and participating in debates while also plagiarizing other people’s campaigns, because he has no ethical standards.

Tom McClintock of California’s 4th Congressional District is the kind of guy that was still hanging out with right-wing criminal and strange lying machine Dinesh D’Souza. D’Souza is one of those guys that almost makes you feel bad for being a human being.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers of Washington’s 5th Congressional District is a person that literally said she had made "protecting those with pre-existing conditions” a “priority” during her time in office. She voted to repeal those very protections nine times—as in one less than 10 times.

Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania’s 9th Congressional District has called the Postal Service’s dismantling by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy a “fabricated problem being pushed by Democrats.”

Carol D. Miller of West Virginia’s 3rd Congressional District has the distinction of being the only new woman Republican congressional member in the 2018 blue wave election cycle. Miller wants to make sure the other fascists in her party know that she, too, can be a fascist!

John Moolenaar of Michigan’s 4th Congressional District’s only claim to fame has been to vote against calling Donald Trump’s racist statement against “the Squad” racist. This makes John Moolenaar a racist.

Alex X. Mooney of West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District was one of the dunderheaded crew of Matt Gaetz-led legislators breaking the law and threatening the country’s national security in the hopes of being on camera

Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma’s 2nd Congressional District doesn’t know how many branches of government there are, nor does he understand how government works. He’s clearly not alone in this.

Gregory Murphy of North Carolina’s 3rd Congressional District told the public that the only reason Sen. Kamala Harris was chosen to be Joe Biden’s running mate was because of “her color and her race.” He finished that thought by wondering aloud if this was “how we pick our leaders now in America??” I guess Murphy is hoping that we just pick a white pseudo-billionaire to make important decisions for a majority of people that do not want him to?

Dan Newhouse of Washington’s 4th Congressional District is one of the many Republican officials that recently contracted COVID-19.

Ralph Norman of South Carolina’s 5th Congressional District brandished a loaded weapon during a constituent breakfast and placed it on the table in front of people discussing gun safety.

Scott Perry of Pennsylvania’s 10th Congressional District once argued that God, as in the Judeo-Christian deity of the Bible, was an environmental polluter like, say, Duke Energy.

Guy Reschenthaler of Pennsylvania’s 14th Congressional District believes that the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police means that taxpayers should invest more money into police departments. He’s also a guy that wrote a forward for an incredibly hate-filled book, and then said he hadn’t read the book, even though his forward was about reading the writer’s hate-filled work. U-S-A!

Tom Rice of South Carolina’s 7th Congressional District spent weeks in the state legislature refusing to wear a mask indoors and then announced that he and his wife and his son had all tested positive for COVID-19.  

John Rose of Tennessee’s 6th Congressional District’s big claim to fame was being one of the many Republicans, at different times, to block disaster relief help for Puerto Rico.

David Rouzer of North Carolina’s 7th Congressional District is a Trump defender with all of the general Republican bonafides we have come to expect: tax breaks for the rich, voting against reauthorizing the Violence Against Women Act, and being a part of the Gaetz impeachment crash party.

John Rutherford of Florida’s 4th Congressional District has frequently been dragged on Twitter for the most racist and idiotic attacks on Democratic women of color.

Austin Scott of Georgia’s 8th Congressional District recently tested positive for COVID-19.

Mike Simpson of Idaho’s 2nd Congressional District took his head from out of his own ass long enough to sign on for fascism.

Adrian Smith of Nebraska’s 3rd Congressional District sort of disappeared on his constituents, just  like the rest of the Republican Party during this year’s pandemic.

Jason Smith of Missouri’s 8th Congressional District’s great moment of cleverness was when he attacked the ACA for taxing tanning salons, saying Democrats might as well “tax the sun.” He also spun it as a tax on women. Of course, Smith had a long history of attacking women in the legislature by trying to defund Planned Parenthood, as well as attacking children by voting against Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program funds.

Ross Spano of Florida’s 15th Congressional District took time away from his campaign finance scandal, and losing his primary, to support another one-term corrupt politician.

Elise Stefanik of New York’s 21st Congressional District is something of an easily verifiable liar. Let’s all look forward to the day, likely a few weeks from now, when Stefanik tells a local news reporter that she never supported the wholesale destruction of the democratic process.

Glenn Thompson of Pennsylvania’s 15th Congressional District is a big Second Amendment fella who has said things in the past like “You know, the Second Amendment has nothing to do with hunting. It’s about safety. If someone is coming into my house in the middle of the night to hurt my family, I want as many bullets as possible.” I guess he needs all the bullets to shoot holes in Democratically casted votes?

Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District knows lots about election fraud and election law violations as he has been tied to all kinds of under-the-table, dirty, and likely illegal tricks to win his position in Wisconsin’s legislature.

William Timmons of South Carolina’s 4th Congressional District is most recently remembered for defending Trump’s racism by saying everybody is being called racist and so nobody is racist. Trying to get rid of Black Americans’ votes wholesale is a great example of an attempt at systemizing racism. Just a thought.

Ann Wagner of Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District is one of the legislators in Congress with the least amount of votes on actual legislation. I guess she’s lazy? She was one of the first Republican officials to stand in front of microphones and tell Americans that based on her high level of knowledge, from “multiple, multiple briefings at the federal level,” she knew—as of March 7—that the United States was at a very “low risk” of having a COVID-19 pandemic. Ann Wagner should be disqualified from doing anything but eating oatmeal.

Tim Walberg of Michigan’s 7th Congressional District is one of those “family values” Republicans who wants to take away everyone else’s rights using the federal government. 

Michael Waltz of Florida’s 6th Congressional District is already having newspapers who endorsed him apologize for supporting sedition. This is one of those “never Trumpers” who very quickly began licking the boots of Donald Trump the moment Trump came into power.

Randy Weber of Texas’s 14th Congressional District replaced Ron Paul in Congress. There’s not much more that needs to be said. A second-rate version of Ron Paul, while better than the fifth-rate version of Paul that is Rand, is still worse than having an old can of Tab sitting in a seat and being your representative.

Daniel Webster of Florida’s 11th Congressional District is … so much Florida!

Brad Wenstrup of Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District just followed in the footsteps of Jim “I-turn-the-other-way-when-being-told-about-the-wholesale-molestation-of-young-people-I’m-supposed-to-be-in-charge-of” Jordan.

Bruce Westerman of Arkansas’s 4th Congressional District has sat on top of a pile of logging industry money for years and shockingly (read: “not shockingly”) has been a lead sponsor on some super anti-climate, pro-logging bits of legislation that attempt to hand our trees over to private industry for profit.

Roger Williams of Texas’ 25th Congressional District is the guy that tried to pressure a bank to help out his flailing oil investor donor. Swamp stuff.

Joe Wilson of South Carolina’s 2nd Congressional District loves to vote for American wars but not for healthcare funding for American veterans of said wars. He’s almost a perfect Republican! He’s also in a district that’s drawn deeply red and acts like the petty little emperor he wants to be.

Rob Wittman of Virginia’s 1st Congressional District was able to fly mostly under the radar for his attempts at profiteering off of the COVID-19 pandemic when he bought into a pharmaceutical company which was producing an antiviral drug that hoped to help with COVID-19 treatments, and at the exact same time emailing his constituents that there was no coronavirus pandemic in the United States, and you didn’t need to worry about it. You know, like a real piece of shit.

Ron Wright of Texas’s 6th Congressional District is a relatively new congressman, whose views on school mass shootings include calling for public hangings as a solution. Not working on the gun thing, just hanging people.

Ted S. Yoho of Florida’s 3rd Congressional District is the soon-to-be retiring congressman from Florida who famously “didn’t attend one single deposition” as a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee when Congress was investigating Trump’s Ukrainian bribery. He’s also the sweetie pie who, in a confrontation with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez resorted to calling her a “fucking bitch,” because his ability to debate matches the size of his courage.

Lee Zeldin of New York’s 1st Congressional District is best known for his intense Islamophobia and his unerring and idiotic support of the Trump administration from Day One.

Remember these (mostly white) men (and a couple of white women). They are the people who hope to be a middle-management fascistic vanguard in an oligarchy for the rich. Share your own stories about any of the people listed above down below in the comments.

Happy New Year!

Report: Democrats Plan To Pursue Investigations Into President Trump After He Leaves Office

Democrats have every intention of pursuing investigations into President Trump and his administration even after he leaves office, CNN reports.

According to the network, some lawmakers have expressed interest in continuing the witch hunt against the President.

“They [Democrats] argue they have an obligation to scrutinize the actions of Trump and his administration that they charge violated constitutional norms and eroded the separation of powers,” the report states.

There are also multiple ongoing lawsuits according to CNN, “including efforts to obtain Trump’s tax returns, key financial documents, testimony from a former White House counsel and grand jury material from the Mueller report.”

These “will continue into the new Congress,” likely throttling any effort by President-elect Biden to create unity in an increasingly dysfunctional place like Washington, D.C.

RELATED: Congressman Admits Democrats Seeking to Indict Trump After He Leaves Office

Democrats Plan To Investigate Trump After He Leaves Office, Something They Did Before He Ever Took Office

To demonstrate how absurd the left’s dogged pursuit of President Trump is and has been, CNN notes Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) “would want to investigate things that are profoundly damaging to our system of government.”

Raskin, of course, plotted Trump’s impeachment before he stepped foot in the White House.

In fact, prior to President Trump’s inauguration day, Raskin had impeachment on the brain.

“I just know that if I’m going to vote to impeach the man at some point, I would like to be able to look him in the eye on Inauguration Day,” he said when asked if he planned on attending the event.

Raskin has also been a strong proponent of invoking the 25th Amendment as a means to remove the President from office.

The Democrats’ past four years, with Raskin as a prime example, have resulted in zero legislative accomplishments as they focused solely on harassing Trump from the day they found out he beat Hillary Clinton.

RELATED: Candace Owens Slams ‘Spoiled Rotten Brat’ AOC For Claiming Her Work Ethic Is Better Than Republicans

President Trump Should Pardon Himself Regarding Future Investigations

Congressman Matt Gaetz believes President Trump should consider a pardon for himself and others in his administration as a means to fend off the radical left.

“He should pardon everyone from himself to his administration officials to Joe Exotic if he has to,” Gaetz joked.

While the comments may have been light-hearted, the threat from the radical left is real.

Congressman Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) has demanded a thorough and continuing investigation and prosecution of the President and members of his administration.

Actor Rob Reiner has also advised that a “non-partisan commission” should be created to investigate Trump after he leaves office to “restore faith in our Constitution and the Rule of Law.”

And Democrat Rep. Maxine Waters (CA) has also called for continuing investigations into the President.

“We should send a message across the world that we will not tolerate the undermining of our democracy in the way this president has done,” Waters said.

“So again, I don’t know what President-elect Biden would do, but I certainly would support investigating the president.”

If President-elect Biden had a spine and the brain cells to pull it off, he’d pardon Trump and his family as one of his first moves towards unity and a clear call to the radical left that their destruction of the integrity of the office of the presidency will no longer be tolerated.

The post Report: Democrats Plan To Pursue Investigations Into President Trump After He Leaves Office appeared first on The Political Insider.

Who Wants to Blow Up Our Constitution? (Spoiler: It’s Not Trump)

By Charles Lipson for RealClearPolitics

The most profound attacks on Donald Trump are that his presidency is illegitimate and that he wants to destroy our constitutional structure.

The Democrats have leveled those accusations for four years, accompanied by charges he is a wannabe dictator, elected thanks to his good buddy, Vladimir Putin.

These frenzied charges, we now know, were invented and paid for by Hillary Clinton’s campaign, and then funneled to the U.S. government through the FBI, Department of Justice, and State Department.

Meanwhile, the CIA and then the FBI were busy spying on the Trump campaign (and, later, in the FBI’s case, on the Trump presidency), trying to find “collusion” with Russia.

Their relentless effort led to the appointment of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, whose partisan team knew almost immediately there was no proof of these damning allegations.

They should have told the public immediately.

Instead, they spent the next two years trying — and failing — to catch President Trump on a “process” crime of obstructing justice, without any underlying crime to investigate.

RELATED: Secret Report: CIA’s Brennan Overruled Dissenters Who Concluded Russia Favored Hillary

They were pursuing a person, not a crime, violating our most basic idea of legitimate law enforcement.

Trump actually cooperated fully with the collusion investigation, providing millions of otherwise-privileged documents, but he didn’t bite on a personal interview designed to catch him in a purported false statement.

(His promise to cooperate fully with Mueller’s collusion investigation was based on the special counsel’s explicit promise to complete the investigation quickly. Mueller’s team reneged on that assurance after they received all the White House documents and testimony they sought.)

Why bother trying to lure the president into a false-statement trap if you can’t indict him?

Simple: because Mueller’s team, effectively led by his zealous deputy, Andrew Weissmann, wanted to help House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, so she could impeach the president.

That effort failed because the special prosecutor’s office  didn’t come up with convincing evidence. The investigation by Pelosi acolyte Adam Schiff also failed.

As chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Schiff had already elicited testimony, under oath, from Obama administration officials, all of whom said there was no evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.

He kept that testimony secret for two years so the public would never find out.

With these failures accumulating, Schiff’s team suddenly spied another pot of gold at the end of the rainbow: alleged malfeasance by Trump regarding Ukraine.

RELATED: Investigation: The Senate’s ‘Russian Collusion’ Report Had No Smoking Gun

It was fool’s gold, but it was enough for House Democrats, who voted to impeach the president on a party-line vote. The public wasn’t convinced.

House Democrats never won the broad support they needed to convince senators to remove a duly-elected president. How badly did this impeachment effort fail?

The Democratic National Convention, held just six months later, simply ignored the whole embarrassing episode.

Even the most rabid partisans didn’t care.

These repeated attacks may not have forced Trump out of office, but they succeeded in another way: They hobbled his presidency for four years. Today, the cumulative damage makes his reelection an uphill struggle.

So does the COVID pandemic and Trump’s response to it, which the public considers mediocre (or worse) and confusing.

Trump’s narcissism/constant self-promotion doesn’t help, either. It repels many educated voters, especially with women.

The vitriolic conflicts surrounding Donald Trump have obscured two crucial issues, which voters ought to weigh carefully as they choose the next president.

One is the difference between Trump’s impulsive, divisive personality and the policies he has actually pursued. The other is the Democrats’ threat to significantly change the structure of American government.

The two issues are intertwined since Trump’s policies are, at bottom, an effort to restore America’s traditional federal structure and limit the power of unelected officials in Washington.

His efforts to roll back the regulatory state also curtail the power of lobbyists and their powerful employers, since they hold the greatest influence over detailed rules and regulations, not general laws like tax rates.

Trump’s tweets and rambling public comments project strong, personalized, centralized power. That’s the essence of the “wannabe dictator” charge against him.

In fact, his basic policies are quite different from that self-inflated persona.

For all Trump’s braggadocio, he has tried to move the country away from Washington’s centralized control, away from control by executive branch bureaucracies (though not from the White House itself), and toward federalism and policymaking by the elected officials.

No president in modern times has waged a more sustained battle against powerful entrenched interests and their phalanx of lobbyists, who rotate in and out of government.

Trump’s most important domestic policies are aimed squarely at wresting control from these special interests and their apologists in the mainstream media.

To do so, Trump has tried to return policymaking to elected officials and senior Cabinet appointees and away from the lower-level bureaucrats, whose regulations dominate Americans’ everyday lives.

Likewise, he has tried to wrest control of the federal courts away from judges who act like unelected legislators and return them to judges who see a more modest role for themselves: interpreting laws and the Constitution as written.

Taken together, Trump’s major initiatives are an effort to restore the traditional balance between Washington and the states, between those elected to make laws and those responsible for executing them or adjudicating disputes.

Not surprisingly, these efforts have met ferocious opposition, led by liberals who established the bureaucratic behemoths in the mid-1960s, by progressives who want to expand them still further, and by interest groups that profit from these massive programs.

These disputes, not Trump’s personality, are the heart of America’s modern political divide.

Joe Biden is simply the familiar face of the old guard, repeating hoary nostrums by rote. Their last ideas died decades ago.

Their only answer now is to enlarge the programs and spend more money.

The new ideas come not from this nomenclatura but from the progressive and socialist left, who want to take giant strides toward centralized, regulatory government, paid for with higher taxes and more debt.

They are determined to redistribute wealth on an unprecedented scale and impose vast regulatory schemes, beginning with health care and energy.

RELATED: Joe Biden Vows No New Coal Or Oil Plants In America

They want to “reimagine” policing, jails, and immigration, without so much as deigning to explain why this wouldn’t result in letting violent criminals run loose in our cities and states, while opening the Southern border to an influx of illegal migrants (who would then receive the bounty of larger government welfare programs).

Since these ideas lack broad voter support, Biden is not running on them.

He is running an almost entirely on one idea: Trump is dreadful and needs to be replaced. Biden’s own prospective policies are as well hidden as the Wizard of Oz.

There are three reasons Biden and the Democrats won’t say what they will do. Despite what happened to them in 2016, they believe a purely negative campaign can win the White House.

They are betting that revulsion with Trump is that high. Second, the more Biden and Kamala Harris say, the more likely they are to alienate either progressive activists or center-left independents – and they need both groups to win.

Third, the media doesn’t press them for answers, so why give them? The mainstream media want Democrats to win, and they have behaved more like adjuncts of the Biden campaign than neutral reporters.

RELATED: CNN Reporter Complains About Trump Removing Mask – Video Shows Her Taking Mask Off Inside White House

A negative campaign does not mean the Democrats won’t enact a positive agenda if they are elected.

Senior Democrats on Capitol Hill have already floated ideas that would fundamentally alter both Congress and the courts — that is, Articles I and III of the Constitution.

To do that, they must not only win the presidency and both houses of Congress, they must change the Senate’s long-established rules, which allow a sufficiently large minority to stop radical legislation.

If that minority is 40 votes or more, its members can “filibuster” the bill and prevent its passage.

What Democrats are suggesting is they will abolish the filibuster in order to pass sweeping legislation with just 50 votes and Vice President Kamala Harris to break the tie.

RELATED: Senate Republicans Can Do What They Want, Democrats Already Shot the Hostage

Since the filibuster is a Senate rule, not a constitutional requirement, it can be changed by a simple majority as the first act of the new Senate.

With the minority neutered, a Democratic Senate could move quickly to enact their party’s agenda, just as the House would. The Senate without a filibuster would resemble the House, only with longer terms.

Those who propose these changes are weighing short-term goals: the policies they want to implement.

Whatever you think of those goals, the means they propose would eliminate a vital element of the Founders’ constitutional structure, which set up a Senate to slow (or stop) impetuous action and required large majorities to enact new laws.

Although the Founders wanted a more energetic government than the Articles of Confederation, their new structure included multiple “veto points,” plus the Bill of Rights, all designed to prevent an overly aggressive government from trampling citizens’ liberties.

Changing the Senate rules is not the only major change being floated. Democratic leaders apparently want to add two new states to the union, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia.

The goal, obviously, is to lock in their party’s control of the Senate for years to come. Again, Democrats would need to eliminate the filibuster since all Republicans (and perhaps a few Democrats) would object.

Some Democrats also propose yet another institutional change, this one to the third branch of government.

They want to expand the Supreme Court beyond its current nine members, which it has had since 1869. Thanks to Republican presidents and Republican Senates, the court now has a conservative majority.

RELATED: It’s Starting: Democrats Introduce Bill To Limit Supreme Court Terms

Democrats have suggested packing the court with several new, liberal justices to outvote the conservatives.

Given the scope of these proposed changes, you would think the party floating them would be forced to say whether they were really determined to blow up Articles I and III of the Constitution.

In fact, they won’t say. It would be “a distraction” even to discuss it, declare Biden and Harris. The Democrats’ Senate leader won’t say, either. His coy line is that “everything is on the table.” Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.

What about Democrats running for Senate in hard-fought races in Colorado, Arizona, North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, Iowa, and Maine? Have they been pressed to say yea or nay on these issues?

No.

The result is that the biggest issues lay hidden in the shadows as we enter the final stages of the election, the most consequential one of the modern era.

RELATED: Top Dem Senator Is Asked By CNN To Explain How Nomination Of Amy Coney Barrett Is ‘Illegal Or Illegitimate’ – He Can’t Do It

The institutional changes being proposed mean we are not just voting for a president, a senator, and a representative. We could be voting on the basic structure of our central government, the role of the courts, and the relationship between Washington and the states.

Yet the presidential debate said little about it. It was simply a flurry of crude interruptions, mostly by Trump, and mud-slinging by both candidates.

They never engaged each other directly on the fundamental issues. That was a travesty for the country and a missed opportunity for Trump.

We are being kept in the dark as we vote on what could be monumental changes. Let’s debate those changes openly. Turn on the damned lights.

Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.

Charles Lipson is the Peter B. Ritzma Professor of Political Science Emeritus at the University of Chicago, where he founded the Program on International Politics, Economics, and Security. He can be reached at charles.lipson@gmail.com.

The post Who Wants to Blow Up Our Constitution? (Spoiler: It’s Not Trump) appeared first on The Political Insider.

Kevin McCarthy: We’ll Oust Nancy Pelosi If She Tries To Impeach Trump Over SCOTUS Pick

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy threatened to oust Nancy Pelosi if she attempts to impeach Trump as a means to stop his Supreme Court nominee.

Pelosi, in an interview earlier this week with ABC News’ “This Week,” refused to rule out impeachment of the President or Attorney General William Barr to halt the nomination.

“We have arrows in our quiver that I’m not about to discuss right now, but the fact is we have a big challenge in our country,” the House Speaker stated.

“Listening to the speaker on television this weekend – if she tries to move for an impeachment based upon the president following the Constitution, I think there will be a move on the floor to no longer have the question of her being Speaker,” McCarthy threatened.

“She may think she has a quiver — we do too,” he told reporters.

RELATED: AOC, Pelosi Hint Impeachment Should Be Considered To Stop Trump Supreme Court Selection

Kevin McCarthy Explains Why He’ll Oust Nancy Pelosi

McCarthy proceeded to explain why Pelosi’s threat to impeach – a process typically reserved for high crimes and misdemeanors – would lead to her being ousted.

“The president is supposed to move forward and they will,” he said noting it is Trump’s Constitutional duty to select a replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the SCOTUS.

“The Senate is supposed to take the action and they will — it’s their constitutional right and they are following through,” he added.

“If Pelosi and House Democrats try to impeach the president, we will take the movement to remove her from speakership,” he reiterated.

RELATED: Tucker Exposes Democrats’ Plan To Stop Trump’s SCOTUS Pick – ‘Burn The Entire F***ing Thing Down’

Pelosi and the Democrats Will Do Anything to Stop Trump From Filling the SCOTUS Vacancy

Impeachment hasn’t been the only arrow in the quiver that Pelosi and the Democrats have threatened to use if they don’t get their way.

Should Trump lose and Democrats regain control of both Houses of Congress, they’ve made it clear they’ll consider packing the Supreme Court with more liberal judges.

New York Rep. Jerry Nadler called on his colleagues to do just that.

Joe Biden said in 2019 that Democrats would “live to rue that day” should they decide to pack the Supreme Court.

More recently, the Democrat nominee has declined to answer the question saying it would distract from the issue at hand.

The late Justice Ginsburg, in an interview with NPR last year, opposed the idea of expanding the court.

“Nine seems to be a good number. It’s been that way for a long time,” she said, adding, “I think it was a bad idea when President Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the court.”

The post Kevin McCarthy: We’ll Oust Nancy Pelosi If She Tries To Impeach Trump Over SCOTUS Pick appeared first on The Political Insider.

Trump must be impeached and removed for commuting Roger Stone’s sentence. Rule of law demands it

It’s very simple: By commuting Roger Stone’s sentence, The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote has sent a clear signal that anyone who does something illegal on his behalf, or who has knowledge of something illegal he has done and lies about it under oath, and/or to investigators, will never be punished. This an act that fatally weakens the constitutionally mandated checks and balances through which our democracy prevents a president from achieving dictatorial power.

Investigations cannot proceed toward any sort of justice if no one is required to tell the truth. That much should be apparent to any reasonable, objective observer, no matter their party. This president has now created a shield around himself so that he can—so long as he simply maintains the loyalty of his minions—do literally anything he wants and remain free of accountability or punishment. That cannot be allowed to stand. Our system offers but one remedy.

Thus far, only a single Republican office-holder of note has spoken out about Trump’s attack on the rule of law. All other Republicans must take a stand—either for the would-be Tyrant from Trump Tower, or for American constitutional democracy. There is no in-between.

Unprecedented, historic corruption: an American president commutes the sentence of a person convicted by a jury of lying to shield that very president.

— Mitt Romney (@MittRomney) July 11, 2020

We know the reasons we will hear from those who counsel against impeachment and removal: “but the election…..” You know what? Fuck that. This is about standing up for our Constitution. And not just the Second Amendment.

For far too long, Trump and Republican leaders in Congress, and in the states, have acted in ways that are technically within their rights (does Merrick Garland ring a bell?), but which violate fundamental constitutional norms. Commuting Roger Stone, however, goes far beyond violating norms. Even Richard Nixon didn’t pull anything like this. Trump’s corrupt actions represent a blatant attempt to destroy our democracy, and the only way to stop him is for Congress to take the one power the Constitution provides to rein in such a president.

Congress must impeach and remove Donald Trump. Now.

When it comes to packing the federal courts, McConnell and Trump have no shame—and no principles

Focusing on the long-term—especially about matters of governmental and political process—isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do in the middle of a pandemic. However, Republicans never seem to think it’s the wrong time to push every button made available to them in their quest to gain as much power as possible. No matter what constitutional or historical norms they have to trample on, Donald Trump and his party are determined to create a conservative judiciary at the federal level that will endure for a quarter-century or more.

Let’s start, however, with what’s going on in 2020. Moscow Mitch—Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, that is—has been doing things the Founders likely never envisioned when they wrote our Constitution. He, along with allies, have been making calls to aging conservative jurists on the federal courts, reminding them that the clock is ticking—on Trump’s time in the White House, on the Republicans’ hold on the Senate, and, most appropriately given his embrace of the nickname “Grim Reaper,” on their very lives. McConnell has been urging them to all retire ASAP so that he and The Man Who Lost The Popular Vote can put as many young whipper-snappers as possible into lifetime seats on the federal bench, seats they’ll hold long past a Sasha Obama presidency.

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer recently called McConnell out on this blatant manipulation of the process: “Senator McConnell knows he can’t achieve any of his extreme goals legislatively, so he continues to attempt to pull America to the far right by packing the courts.”

As The New York Times notes, some progressives have made statements urging justices to stay in their positions so that Trump can’t appoint their successors, but McConnell has achieved a new low by targeting individual judges and asking them to retire. This ask is a nasty one, on par with greedy heirs rooting for wealthy relatives to die sometime before 2010 came to an end ... just so they could dodge the temporarily-repealed estate tax.

McConnell here is repeating, in private, sentiments that members of his party such as Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley publicly expressed in the run-up to the 2018 midterms: “If you are thinking about quitting this year, do it yesterday. If we have a Democrat Senate, you’re never going to get the kind of people that are strict constructionists.”

For anyone confused, “strict constructionists”—i.e., conservative judges who claim that all they do is look to the plain text of the Constitution when making their rulings—is really just a fancy term Republicans use in public to give a more objective veneer to their preferred judicial approach, which almost always—coincidentally, of course—comes down on the side of the powerful. In other words, characterizing conservative judges as strict constructionists sounds less political than saying that they are right-wing ideologues who vote just like Rush Limbaugh would—even though the latter is the truth.

Republicans are being quite systematic about this whole affair. Their efforts are supported by a private organization called the Article III Project, named after the part of the Constitution that establishes lifetime tenure for federal judges, subject to impeachment and removal if they fail to live up to the standard of “good behaviour” laid down therein. This group exists to “fight for the confirmation of President Trump’s judicial nominees.”

The helpful folks over at A3P—that’s their clever moniker—want to clear out as many existing judges as possible. They’ve identified 90 who were appointed by a previous Republican president and who, based on their age and how many years they’ve served, either qualify or will qualify by year’s end for something called senior status.

According to the court system’s rules, those who take senior status now rather than outright retire allow Trump to put another, younger conservative in their place just as if they had retired. But judges on senior status get to keep drawing their full salary, hire clerks, and hear a reduced caseload. If this sounds bananas to you, you’re not alone. In fact, it’s the best of both worlds for those senior judges and for Republican leaders who want to increase their imprint on the judiciary. Thanks to A3P’s work, McConnell has a long list of people to target and a very attractive offer to make them.

McConnell and Trump have made a great effort to, in the senator’s words, “leave no vacancy behind.” They have placed 51 judges onto the U.S. Court of Appeals in Trump’s first three years (and 191 federal judges overall, as well as two on the Supreme Court), compared to 55 in Barack Obama’s entire eight years in office, and 62 during George W. Bush’s presidency. Trump has now named more than one-quarter of all sitting U.S. Appeals Court justices.

A good chunk of those new appellate judges—more than one out of three—took a spot previously held by a Democratic-appointed justice, thus shifting the bench hard to the right. Particularly noteworthy is the contrast between the diversity of the judges Obama appointed—only 31% of whom were white men, compared to 67% for Trump. For reference, somewhere around 40-45% of lawyers are white males, and white males constitute around 30% of the overall U.S. population, according to census data.

The New York Times conducted an in-depth analysis earlier this month of these Trump judges and found that they differ “significantly” from those nominated by either Obama or G.W. Bush. Regarding their activities prior to being nominated by Trump, they had been “more openly engaged in causes important to Republicans, such as opposition to gay marriage and to government funding for abortion.” They were also more likely to have been political appointees and made political donations. Even more alarming has been their impact after taking up their new positions:

When ruling on cases, they have been notably more likely than other Republican appointees to disagree with peers selected by Democratic presidents, and more likely to agree with those Republican appointees, suggesting they are more consistently conservative. Among the dozen or so judges that most fit the pattern, The Times found, are three Mr. Trump has signaled were on his Supreme Court shortlist.

While the appellate courts favor consensus and disagreement remains relatively rare — there were 125 instances when a Trump appointee wrote the majority opinion or dissent in a split decision — the new judges have ruled on disputed cases across a range of contentious issues, including abortion, immigration, L.G.B.T. rights and lobbying requirements, the examination shows.

Sen. McConnell has long been clear about the level of importance he places on reshaping the federal judiciary. "There are over 1,200 executive branch appointments that come to us for confirmation, and among the most important—in fact, I would argue, the most important—confirmations we have are lifetime appointments to the judiciary," McConnell told NPR. "Obviously, this is my top priority."

McConnell’s success in placing conservative judges on the federal bench during Trump’s tenure is a direct result of his actions in the final two years of Obama’s presidency. After Republicans took control of the Senate in 2015, they basically just stopped approving his nominees. The Brookings Institution noted the “unprecedentedly miniscule number of confirmations” that were carried out in those two years under McConnell’s leadership. That’s why there were 103 open seats on the federal bench for Trump to fill when he was inaugurated.

Without question, the most important of those openings was on the Supreme Court. McConnell ensured that seat remained open for almost a full year after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia by denying a hearing, let alone a vote, to President Obama’s nominee, U.S. District Court Chief Justice Merrick Garland. Garland was a moderate about whom Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch had said in 2010: “I have no doubts that Garland would get a lot of (Senate) votes. And I will do my best to help him get them.” However, Hatch did not keep his word in 2016. Oh, and during the Supreme Court confirmation process for Brett Kavanaugh, he pretended like the Garland nomination never happened. That’s what you call a double back-flip worth of bullshit.

Additionally, Garland was 63 years old when Obama nominated him, so his age itself served as a kind of compromise when compared to, for example, the nomination of 43-year-old Clarence Thomas by George H.W. Bush to a lifetime seat on the highest court back in 1992.

The way McConnell and Co. abused the established process when they essentially ignored a presidential nomination to the Supreme Court also qualifies as unprecedented, despite widely debunked Republican protestations to the contrary. As The New York Times editorial board wrote shortly after the 2016 election, the seat in which Justice Neil Gorsuch now sits is a “stolen seat.” Encouraging a mass wave of retirements in order to give Trump an even more outsized imprint on the federal judiciary would, if it succeeds, represent another form of theft.

All of this—from the blocking of Garland to the personalized arm-twisting aimed at getting judges to give up their seats in the coming months before it’s too late—reflects a level of cynicism and rejection of principle that has defined the contemporary Republican Party going back to even before Trump took it over. Principles? To Republicans, those are for suckers, i.e. Democrats.

Our Constitution’s authors were, generally speaking, not naive. They didn’t trust easily—they created the Electoral College because they didn’t trust the people to directly elect our president. However, the Framers failed to anticipate how the rules they wrote into the Constitution might be abused. They likely did not imagine that the Senate’s charge to provide “advice and consent,” as laid out in Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 of the Constitution, would lead to the kind of treatment with which the nomination of Judge Garland was met. The Framers never planned for Mitch McConnell.

Because of what he has done, Democrats are faced with a choice if and when they retake the White House and the Senate. Do they act in kind, and similarly game the system? Or do they take the high road, which would allow Republicans to hold on to their ill-gotten gains in the judicial branch? Keep in minds they all too often use those gains to further tighten their grip on power through judicial rulings on, for example, matters like voting rights or gerrymandering.

There’s only one way out of that dilemma: namely, to fundamentally alter the process so that it could not be gamed so easily. We need to get rid of lifetime tenure for federal judges, from the Supreme Court right on down the line. There are many different proposals out there, most of which focus on term limits for the highest court, but McConnell’s most recent actions make clear that such limits are necessary at lower levels as well. I haven’t seen polling done on term limits for all federal judges, but Supreme Court term limits are quite popular, with Democrats, Republicans, and independents all expressing similar levels of support.

To be sure, it would not be easy to implement such changes, as they would require a constitutional amendment. Nevertheless, such changes are necessary because any process that is based on principles, for example the idea that life tenure for justices is necessary to ensure that they'll be independent and removed from politics, will be abused by Republicans who have no principles at all.

Our democratic system must be governed by processes that prevent abuse by the unprincipled. As I’ve written before, Republicans seem to be taking their cues from young adult fiction of all places, leaning on the values of Harry Potter’s nemesis, Lord Voldemort—derived from Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher who has inspired everyone on the right from Hitler to today’s white nationalists (even if they all get him wrong, but that’s another story): “There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.”

Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly wrote that McConnell’s recent “outreach” to aging Republican judges indicates that he is “running scared” because “he is aware that his party will soon be out of power.” I rarely hope that McConnell is right about anything.

This time, however, Moscow Mitch and I are completely on the same page.

Ian Reifowitz is the author of The Tribalization of Politics: How Rush Limbaugh's Race-Baiting Rhetoric on the Obama Presidency Paved the Way for Trump (Foreword by Markos Moulitsas)

Nancy Pelosi Questions Whether Trump Is A Person Of Faith

By PoliZette Staff | February 17, 2020

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) hit a new low in her anti-Trump behavior this weekend when she questioned the president’s Christian faith.

During an interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, Pelosi seemed to suggest that Donald Trump is not actually a man of faith, saying that if he was a real Christian, he would know that people of faith like her pray “even for him.”

After alleging that GOP senators did not have the “courage” to vote guilty on impeachment, Pelosi said, “Except for Mitt Romney. God bless him. And then the president criticized him for using his faith.”

“Look I don’t know if the president is a person of faith. It’s not for me to make that judgment,” Pelosi continued.

“He criticized you about saying you prayed for him as well,” Amanpour countered.

MORE NEWS: Challenger DeAnna Lorraine charging hard against Nancy Pelosi

“He said I didn’t pray for him,” Pelosi said. “I thought if he was a person of faith he would recognize other people of faith. And if he prayed he would recognize that other people do, even for him.”

This comes as Trump and Pelosi have been trading barbs over one another’s faith in recent weeks.

“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong,” Trump said at the National Prayer Breakfast earlier this month, referring to Romney’s vote to impeach him. “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you,’ when they know that that’s not so.”

Pelosi has frequently said that she is praying for Trump, and in response to his comments, she accused him of being irreligious.

“I pray hard for him, because he’s so off the track of our Constitution, our values, our country,” she said, calling the presidency a “heavy responsibility.”

“I thought what he said about — what he said about Senator Romney was particularly without class,” Pelosi continued, according to The Washington Examiner. “He’s talking about things that he knows little about: faith and prayer.”

Regardless of Pelosi’s personal feelings on Trump, there is no excuse for her questioning his faith. This is just another example of a powerful Democrat crossing the line when it comes to attack on Trump.

Shame on you, Nancy Pelosi.

This piece originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
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Barbra Streisand bizarrely claims Trump is ‘directly responsible’ for growing hate against children
San Fran Democrats admit to various sexcapades, an affair that helped Kamala Harris

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