Category: Democracy

Just a fraction of Americans think U.S. democracy is working well

Posted on by Kerry Eleveld

Americans are broadly worried about the state of our democracy, according to a new poll released from the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

A plurality of 45% of respondents say it's either not working "too well" or not working "well at all," according to the poll, while just 16% of Americans believe democracy is working "well" or "extremely well." Another 38% are somewhere in between, saying it's working "somewhat well."

On a slightly brighter side, a majority of Americans (54%) are optimistic that the country has a bright future and its best days are yet to come, while 45% say the country's best days are behind it. Those numbers have remained roughly stable since last fall, when the outlet asked the same question in October 2020.

Two-thirds of respondents also said Joe Biden was legitimately elected while 33% said he wasn't; 61% also approve of the way Biden is handling his job as president.

Meanwhile, respondents widely shared the belief that the following principles are essential to the identity of the U.S.:

  • 88%, a fair judicial system and the rule of law
  • 85%, individual liberties and freedoms as defined by the Constitution
  • 83%, the ability of people living here to get good jobs and achieve the American dream
  • 80%, a democratically elected government

A separate poll from the ABC News/Ipsos found that 56% of Americans say Trump should be convicted and barred from holding office again, and 43% say he should not be. The finding comes on the eve of Trump’s impeachment trial and figures worse for him than polling from just before his last impeachment trial, when an ABC/Washington Post poll found 47% of Americans said the Senate should vote to convict Trump and remove him from office while 49% said he should not be removed from office.

Mitt Romney Suggests Trump Impeachment Necessary For ‘Unity In Our Country’

Posted on by John Hanson

Republican Senator Mitt Romney suggested Sunday that impeaching former President Donald Trump could bring national unity.

The “Never Trump” Senator made his comments on “Fox News Sunday” with host Chris Wallace.

Watch the interview below.

RELATED: Pelosi Sending Impeachment Article to Senate Monday, GOP Senators Warn McConnell Against Vote To Convict

Romney Argues Senate Trial Necessary For Unity

Wallace asked Romney, “Senator, do you support holding this impeachment trial, and what do you think the rules should be on the length of the trial and whether or not to call witnesses?”

Romney replied, “Well, we’re certainly going to have a trial. I wish that weren’t necessary, with the president’s conduct with regard to the call to the secretary of state in Georgia as well as the incitation towards the insurrection that led to the attack on the Capital calls for a trial.”

Then the anti-Trump Republican suggested that the impeachment could bring more unity for the U.S.

“If we are going to have unity in our country, I think it’s important to recognize the need for accountability, for truth, and justice,” Romney said.

Romney: ‘Pretty Clear’ Trump Spent A Year Trying To ‘Corrupt The Election’

He added, “So I think there will be a trial, and I hope it goes as quickly as possible, but that’s up to the council on both sides.”

Romney said it has been “pretty clear” over the last year and Trump had been trying to corrupt the election.

“I think it’s pretty clear that over the last year or so there has been an effort to corrupt the election of the United States and it was not by President Biden, it was by President Trump and that corruption we saw with regards to the conduct in Ukraine as well as the call to Secretary of state Raffensperger as well as the in citation to insurrection.”

Romney has a long history of anti-Trump sentiment.

Romney was the only Republican Senator to vote to convict President Trump during the first impeachment trial. 

In 2016, Romney famously gave a “Never Trump” speech when it became clear that Trump was likely to win the Republican nomination for President.

RELATED: Joy Behar Comes Unglued – Says Trump ‘Made It His Business For Four Years To Rape This Country’

The Utah senator finished his interview with Wallace by saying Trump provoked an attack on American democracy.

“I mean, this is obviously very serious and an attack on the very foundation of our democracy, and it is something that has to be considered and resolved,” Romney added.

Watch:

The post Mitt Romney Suggests Trump Impeachment Necessary For ‘Unity In Our Country’ appeared first on The Political Insider.

We can’t fix our democracy without understanding the roots of its problems

Posted on (Updated by Laura Clawson

The House has just impeached Donald Trump for the second time following a violent insurrection by his supporters that endangered the lives of Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress. Trump got into the White House to begin with despite losing the popular vote in 2016, but went on to pack the federal courts with lifetime judges, including appointing one in three Supreme Court justices. The recent Republican Senate majority, which refused to rein in Trump’s abuses after his first impeachment, was elected with 20 million fewer votes than the Democratic minority.

You don’t have to look far or hard for evidence of the flaws in U.S. democracy. But in thinking about how to fix it, it’s helpful to have a framework for understanding what’s going on here—the roots of the problems and how deep they go. Political scientist Douglas Amy offers a start on that with Second Rate Democracy, a website laying out 17 ways the U.S. lags behind other major western countries on democracy.

In the introduction, Amy notes that:

  • Besides Denmark, no other advanced democracy follows the U.S. example and appoints Supreme Court justices for life – all now have mandatory term limits or age limits for justices.
  • None use an Electoral College that allows a minority of voters to choose its chief executive.
  • Most use different voting systems that make gerrymandering impossible and create more representative multi-party legislatures.
  • None have anything like our misrepresentative Senate that gives the 40 million voters in the 22 smallest states forty-four seats, while giving 40 million Californians two seats.
  • Nearly all have rejected our conflict-prone separation-of-powers model of government and have chosen instead a more cooperative parliamentary system that avoids the legislative gridlock that plagues our government.
  • And all rely much more on public money, not private money from rich organizations and individuals, to fund their election campaigns.

Amy offers a framework for assessing the health of democracies, from majority rule and fair representation to the rule of law, political equality, and public participation. To fix the problem, we need to understand the problem. This is one resource for doing so.

Siege of the Capitol the culmination of the GOP’s long embrace of anti-democratic authoritarianism

Posted on by David Neiwert

Republicans scurried to distance themselves Wednesday from the horrifying takeover of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., by a riotous mob of fanatical Donald Trump supporters. “Those who made this attack on our government need to be identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” tweeted Sen. Lindsey Graham. Those storming the Capitol need to stop NOW,” chimed in Sen. Ted Cruz. The Senate Republicans’ Twitter account posted: “This is not who we are.”

This is, however, exactly who they are. What happened Wednesday was the apotheosis of the GOP’s two-decades-and-longer descent into right-wing authoritarianism, fueled by eliminationist hate talk, reality-bereft conspiracist sedition, anti-democratic rhetoric and politics, and the full-throated embrace under Trump of the politics of intimidation and thuggery. It came home to roost not just for Republicans, but for us all.

This radical authoritarianism was evident not just in the intent of the Capitol siege—an insurrectionist attempt to force Congress to overturn the known results of the November presidential election—but in the faces and voices of the men and women who comprised Wednesday’s mob.

  • In the crowd of rioters invading the Capitol building while chanting “treason” and “our house.”
  • In the grinning young white man who offered a Nazi salute to the invading rioters.
  • In the mobs harassing journalists and destroying their equipment, telling them: “Every corner you set up now, we’ll be there.”
  • In the voice of the man chanting inside the Capitol: “Traitors get the rope!”
  • In the zip ties and handgun carried by one of the Capitol invaders, suggesting that these insurrectionists intended to take hostages, and perhaps to execute them.
  • In the voice of the woman from Knoxville, Tennessee, who explained why, despite being maced, she had attempted to enter the building: “We’re storming the Capitol! It’s the revolution!”

There is little question that one man is primarily responsible for the unleashing of this kind of proto-fascist politics: Donald Trump. As I explained a few months ago:

Predicated by his mutual embrace of the far right in the 2015-2016 campaign, Trump’s election to the presidency unleashed a Pandora’s box of white-nationalist demons, beginning with a remarkable surge in hate crimes during his first month, and then his first two years, in office. Its apotheosis has come in the form of a rising tide of far-right mass domestic terrorism and mass killings, as well the spread of armed right-wing “Boogaloo” radicals and militiamen creating mayhem amid civil unrest around the nation.

Trump’s response all along has been to dance a tango in which, after sending out a signal of encouragement (such as his “very fine people on both sides” comments after the white-nationalist violence in Charlottesville in August 2017), he follows up with an anodyne disavowal of far-right extremists that is believed by no one, least of all white nationalists. Whenever queried about whether white nationalists pose a threat—as he was after a right-wing terrorist’s lethal attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, when he answered: “I don’t really, I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems”—Trump has consistently downplayed the threat of the radical right.

More recently, the appearance at the very least that Trump is deliberately encouraging a violent response to his political opposition has been growing. When far-right militiamen have gathered in places like Richmond, Virginia, and Lansing, Michigan, to shake their weapons in an attempt to intimidate lawmakers and other elected government officials, Trump has tweeted out his encouragement. When a teenage militiaman in Kenosha, Wisconsin, shot three Black Lives Matter protesters, two fatally, Trump defended him while mischaracterizing the shootings. When far-right conspiracy theorists created a hoax rumor that antifascists and leftists were responsible for the wildfires sweeping the rural West Coast—resulting in armed vigilantes setting up “citizens patrols” and highway checkpoints, sometimes with the encouragement of local police—Trump retweeted a meme promoting the hoax.

The reality currently confronting Americans is that the extremist right has been organizing around a strategy of intimidation and threats by armed “Patriots”—embodied by street-brawling proto-fascist groups like the Proud Boys, Patriot Prayer, American Guard, and the “III Percent” militias, along with their “Boogaloo” cohort, all of them eager to use their prodigious weaponry against their fellow Americans in a “civil war.” And what we have seen occurring as the 2020 campaign has progressed is that the line of demarcation between these right-wing extremists and ordinary Trump-loving Republicans has all but vanished.

However, Trump never could have accomplished this kind of empowerment of the radical right, not to mention his ceaseless underhanded attacks on our democratic institutions, without having been enabled at every step by an enthusiastic Republican Party, both its establishment wing and its far-right “populist” bloc, as well as an army of authoritarian devotees in right-wing media and social media.

People like Cruz and Graham, as well as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and former Attorneys General Jeff Sessions and William Barr, all have played major roles in enabling Trump’s multiple depredations. At every step, Republicans have avidly empowered Trump as he has ravaged our international alliances, our national security apparatus, our courts, our Justice and Education and State departments (not to mention Interior, Energy, Treasury, and multiple other departments, notably the Environmental Protection Agency).

The problems with the Republican Party and the conservative movement generally extend well beyond the past four years, and well beyond Trump himself. Indeed, the man the party empowered and enabled to undermine our democratic institutions is the embodiment of conditions created within the GOP for the previous four decades and longer, all of them profoundly anti-democratic and authoritarian.

The strands of authoritarianism that conservatives wove together for many years to create the noose that is Donald Trump are all clear and on the record:

  • Ronald Reagan’s abiding anti-government sentiments (“Government is not the solution to our problem, it is the problem”) became deeply embedded as a fundamental approach to governance within the conservative movement—guaranteeing not just its incoherence and cognitive dissonance, but inevitably its antagonism to democratic institutions, particularly voting rights.
  • Bill Clinton’s presidency—or rather, the conservative reaction against it—begat the far-right “Patriot” movement that Trump now essentially leads, borne of “New World Order” conspiracy theories, Bircherite nationalism, and hysterical fearmongering. It also established what became a permanent right-wing ethos in which any kind of Democratic presidency is characterized as illegitimate, and the Republican Party became the vehicle for pushing this claim (as in the Javier-esque impeachment effort the GOP then undertook).
  • During the Bush years, any questioning of the Republican administration’s conduct of the Afghanistan and Iraq post-9/11 invasions (thanks in no small part to a relentless drumbeat of fearmongering after those terrorist attacks) was summarily attacked by its defenders as “on the side of the terrorists” and “helping the terrorists win”—that is, disloyal and treasonous. Not just war critics but anyone who dared question Bush policies would find themselves summarily subjected to a barrage of smears and eliminationist rhetoric. “We don't want to get rid of all liberals,” Rush Limbaugh was fond of saying. “I want to keep a couple, for example, on every major U.S. college campus so that we never forget who these people are."
  • John McCain’s presidential nomination in 2008 gave us Sarah Palin, who more than any Republican politician previously normalized the know-nothing “populist” politics that now completely dominate the party. It also unleashed the tide of nativist bigotry—manifested especially in the expressed world views of her adoring fans, who had no hesitation in pronouncing Barack Obama a Muslim, a terrorist, and a man who “hates white people”—on which Trump would later surf into the White House.

This tide soon swelled to mass proportions during Obama’s presidency under the aegis of the Tea Party phenomenon, which was portrayed in the press as a populist uprising for conservative values but which in reality was a major conduit for the revival and ultimate mainstreaming of the far-right “Patriot”/militia movement of the 1990s, and all of its attendant conspiracist fearmongering and bigotry (manifested especially in the “Birther” conspiracy theories). Trump, who built his political power by promoting that theory, declared himself the personification of the Tea Party in 2011, and by the time he announced his campaign in 2015, he was broadly perceived as just that.

By winning first the GOP nomination and then the presidency, Trump culminated all these long-developing trends into a genuinely authoritarian politics fueled by ignorance and bigotry and resentment, filtered through the prism of paranoid conspiracism. All of which has led us to the pass we reached this week.

The conspiracist authoritarianism has long ceased to be merely a fringe element. Over 80 percent of Trump voters believe that Joe Biden won the election fraudulently. In one poll taken yesterday, 45 percent of Republicans approved of the Capitol siege, and 68 percent said it posed no threat to democracy. This is who they are.

The Republican Party’s hostility to democracy—embodied by conservatives’ running refrain that “America is not a democracy, it’s a republic”—has become its official policy over the past decade, manifested most apparently in its egregious voter suppression policies and court rulings that reached a fever pitch in recent years. It’s now a commonplace for Republican politicians (notably Trump himself) to fret that a high voter turnout is nearly certain to translate into Democratic wins as a reason to even further suppress the vote.

As David Frum (a never-Trump conservative) noted in his book Trumpocracy: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” On Wednesday, that rejection became undeniably, irrevocably manifest.

Rather than taking a hard look at what they have become after the mob their president ginned up stormed the Capitol, today’s lame attempts by conservatives to gaslight the public about what happened Wednesday (with figures like Matt Gaetz and Mo Brooks trying to gaslight the public by claiming the invaders were actually “antifa”) make all too clear that the Republican Party, now consumed by right-wing authoritarianism, has ceased to be a viable partner in a working democracy. The problem the rest of us now face is how to proceed from here.

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

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

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 Michigan’s 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 Pennsylvania’s 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!

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

Posted on by Ian Reifowitz

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.

Fascism at CPAC, Bernie winning by being the least-weak, and more you might have missed

Posted on by Cara Zelaya

Doesn’t it feel like February is fully blurring together AND that it’s lasted about a decade? The New Hampshire primary was this week. THIS week. Feels like a month ago.

Anyway, here’s what you might have missed. 

Disgusted with Republicans? You don't have to wait until November—we can beat one next month

By David Nir

At moments like these, November can feel a long way off. But if you want to channel your disgust and your anger into productive action right now, there’s something you can do: Help elect union plumber Harold “Howie” Hayes to the Pennsylvania state House next month.

Of course, we can’t all help but be worried and paying attention to the huge presidential race in November, but we need to make sure that we’re fighting for progressives EVERYWHERE, ensuring that our candidates are getting the resources that they need. 

Howie’s race is particularly interesting. Please help out if you can, it’s one of the best ways that we can #resist. 

On March 17, the Keystone State will hold a special election in the 18th House District, located in the Philadelphia suburbs. The seat became vacant when its former representative won a different office last year—one of more than a dozen Republicans in the chamber who’ve decided to bail rather than seek re-election.

Better still, this area has a history of supporting Democrats at the top of the ticket: It voted for Hillary Clinton by a 53-44 margin in 2016, and supported Gov. Tom Wolf and Sen. Bob Casey by more than 20 points apiece in 2018. And here’s the key stat: Thanks to big gains two years ago, Democrats need to flip just nine seats to take control of the 203-member House this fall, despite the GOP’s extreme gerrymander. If we win in March, that figure shrinks to eight.

Sanders wins New Hampshire by being the least-weak of a suddenly weak field

By kos

In 2016, Bernie Sanders won roughly 50% of the Iowa vote (if not more; no popular vote was recorded). This year? His final vote was 26.5%, essentially halved.

In 2016, Sanders received 152,193 votes in New Hampshire in a 60-38 blowout of Hillary Clinton. This year, he barely eked out a one-point victory over small liberal college-town Mayor Pete Buttigieg, receiving only 75,690 votes, or 25.7% of the vote. Again, he lost half of his 2016 support.

Are you a Sanders supporter? Are you still on the fence? Here at Daily Kos, we are staunch Blue No Matter Who folks. That doesn’t mean that we’re not concerned about the current state of the primary. 

No white male has ever gotten 63 million votes in a presidential election. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both hit 65 million. When our nominees look like our base, we perform better. But this latent fear of the white Republican voter, stoked by Biden, did a real disservice to the women in the race.  So he stomps into the race, when no one was asking for him, damages serious, credible candidates by dint of his name recognition, and then runs the most godawful campaign of the cycle, leaving nothing but a damaged legacy in its wake. Unbelievable.

Fascism: CPAC head warns Romney to stay away, saying he would fear for senator's 'personal safety'

By Hunter

It was easy to miss in all the [raises arms, gestures broadly in all directions], but on Sunday Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Chair and aggressive Trumpophile Matt Schlapp delivered a warning of sorts to Utah Sen. Mitt Romney: Not only are you not invited to this year's CPAC, Mitt, but it could be very bad for you if you dared show up.

Romney dared to do his job and follow his sense of values and ethics. Unfortunately, if you’re a Republican, you now face serious consequences for daring to have any sense of morals. 

"We won’t credential him as a conservative. I suppose if he wants to come as a non-conservative and debate an issue with us, maybe in the future we would have him come. This year, I’d actually be afraid for his physical safety, people are so mad at him," Schlapp told interviewer Greta Van Susteren.

What will Trump do if there is violence enacted toward a member of his own party who openly disagrees with him, like Romney? Do we have to look further than to remember how he treated Senator McCain? 

Indeed, CPAC is in many ways now the heart of the new Republican fascism. It has always been a den for the crackpots of the far-far-right, but that did not stop it in past years from becoming a must-stop speech location for conservative lawmakers, pundits, hangers-on and archconservative administration officials. The discussion has always been conspiratorial and angry, but in recent years has become more explicitly fascist in nature.

Great. Wonderful. Yikes. That’s no terrifying at all. …

House Judiciary Committee passes NO BAN Act to terminate Trump's Muslim ban

By Gabe Ortiz

The House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday voted 22-10 to advance the NO BAN Act, which would terminate impeached president Donald Trump’s Muslim ban, to the full House floor. Politico reports that the vote was split along party lines, with Democrats voting in favor of ending this discriminatory policy, and Republicans voting in favor of continued state-sanctioned discrimination against Muslims.

Advocates cheered the bill’s passage in committee, with the executive director of the civil rights organization Muslim Advocates, Farhana Khera, saying in a statement, “This historic bill could be the first ever passed by a chamber of Congress to specifically affirm the civil rights of American Muslims.” A hearing held by House Democrats last year on the NO BAN Act was believed to be the chamber’s first-ever hearing on Muslim civil rights.

We’re, of course, worried that this will die in the Senate. But it’s vital that the House and the rest of us activists and organizers keep up the fight. We have to show that we have better values than the current Senate and our racist wannabe fascist president.

This is how democracies die': House Democrats' flagging urgency on Barr's depravity is inexcusable

By Kerry Eleveld 

The rule of law is the very virtue that separates a democracy from a dictatorship. Though one’s ability to vote is a feature of democracy, elections are meaningless without a functional legal apparatus to safeguard them. People are allowed to cast votes in virtual dictatorships all the time, but their collective will is ultimately crushed by leaders who rig the outcomes. Without the rule of law America is doomed as a democracy, and the sanctity of the legal system is exactly what Donald Trump and his attorney general, William Barr, are working to dismantle in real time by turning the Department of Justice into a tool of the State.

This was easily the biggest story of the week here in the United States, but it is truly terrifying that it doesn’t seem to be spurring rampant national protests instantly. This is a code red.

Trump is reportedly seething after enduring three years of investigations for which he is constitutionally incapable of taking any responsibility. Sure, he called for Russia to find Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016, and Russia followed suit almost immediately by hacking the Democratic National Committee. Sure, he asked the Ukrainian president to investigate his political rival Joe Biden and withheld desperately needed funding and political backing to pressure him into doing so. But Trump is never wrong, can never be questioned, and surely has never been held accountable in his life. And now that he will carry the stain of impeachment to his grave, there’s going to be hell to pay and the nation’s top law enforcement officer has proven eager to help wherever possible.

I can not repeat myself enough here: we can not let this stand.

But this goes way beyond the interference Barr ran last year on public release of the Mueller report, which otherwise would have been devastating to Trump. Barr is now intervening in the administration of justice on multiple cases, weaponizing the Justice Department against Trump’s political enemies, and shielding Trump’s allies from the full force of the law.

The list of interventions is simply staggering. In brief, they include a relentless effort to find wrongdoing by the officials at the FBI and CIA involved with launching the Russia investigation in 2016, taking specific aim at former FBI Director James Comey and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe (who was already denied his pension benefits by Barr’s predecessor after decades of service at that bureau).

And on the leniency side, Barr has moved in recent weeks to lighten the punishment for two Trump loyalists and former campaign advisers, Mike Flynn and Roger Stone. In service of that goal, Barr removed the Senate-approved U.S. attorney in D.C. and replaced her in the interim with a close ally from his office, Timothy Shea, who has gladly done Barr’s bidding. Shea is the guy who earlier this week signed off on overruling the sentencing recommendations made by the four federal prosecutors on Stone’s case who have all since resigned in protest. While all these actions are indefensible, Barr’s interference with the sentencing recommendations of a Trump ally was so unprecedented that it has elicited an outcry from a groundswell of former federal prosecutors and Justice Department officials.

We are living in truly terrifying times. We can not grow disheartened or weary; we have to take care of one another and fight like our republic depends on us; because it does. Now more than ever. 

Friends, were there any stories this week you thought we should have highlighted? Are you also totally freaking out but in it for the long-haul to defend our country from the CPACs, the Trumps, the racists?

I’d love to talk to you all below. Let me know. 

Cartoon: Autocracy, it just works better!

Posted on by Mark Fiore

Vimeo Video

Well, it’s been a tough week for democracy. First, Democrats in Iowa completely screwed up the first major step to picking a nominee who will hopefully replace President Trump. Of course the Iowa caucuses are fundamentally flawed and ridiculous, but using an untested mobile app as the foundation of a nominating process is just plain stupid.

Then there was the bad but entirely expected and outrageous news that Trump was acquitted. You know, the guy who sold out our nation and an important ally at war with Russia so he could mess with Joe Biden and win the 2020 election. Thanks to spineless Senate Republicans (except for Mitt Romney, of course), Trump can now do whatever he wants.

Steal the election? No problem! Send in the clowns to investigate Biden and unfounded conspiracies that undermine our intelligence agencies? Go for it! We have just entered a much crazier and dangerous phase of Trumpism. Besides that, enjoy the cartoon, and be sure to visit me over on Patreon for behind-the-scenes goodies, prints, and more!

Warren Wants to Control Your Freedom of Speech

Posted on by LifeZette

By David Kamioner | January 29, 2020

Have a problem with Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts?

She doesn’t want you to be allowed to express it online.

Freedom of speech?

To her, it’s to be torched in the bonfire of her desire to silence anything and any person who may oppose her.

RELATED: Alan Dershowitz Hits Back at Elizabeth Warren

Warren has, in her zest to play to the prejudices of the extreme hard left, gone all the way to the end of the leftist dial and embraced the theories of national socialism and indeed the brand of authoritarian socialism that ruled in the Soviet Union for decades and continues to hold sway in the modern Democrat ideological homelands of Cuba and Venezuela.

Specifically, Warren said in a press release she wants to make a crime out of “disseminating false information” online and would prosecute tech giants for “false information that disempowers voters and undermines democracy.”

Who would decide what constitutes “false information” and what “disempowers and undermines?”

She would.

In her own words, “I will push for new laws that impose tough civil and criminal penalties for knowingly disseminating this kind of information, which has the explicit purpose of undermining the basic right to vote. The stakes of this election are too high — we need to fight the spread of false information that disempowers voters and undermines democracy,” Warren said. “I’ll do my part — and I’m calling on my fellow candidates and big tech companies to do their part too.”

Criminal penalties for speaking online against the likes of Warren and her ilk?

I hope I get a nice cell, one with a decent wine cellar and a walk-in humidor.

Perhaps it should be lauded that the Senator has dropped her mask and now fully and publicly supports installing national criminal penalties for opposing what Warren personally deems false and disempowering.

RELATED: GOP Brings Out Three Big Guns in Senate Trial of Trump

Even putting aside the outright fascist tone of her statements, in this era of the PC Thought Police and identitarian lunacy no doubt taking issue with any insanity the left may spread would be considered illegal and subject to prosecution.

Just how would a real republic, where people can freely voice their views, be able to operate under these strictures?

That’s just it. The Democrats fully well know one can’t.

Because a functioning republic is not what they’re interested in. Their only ambition is raw power at any cost.

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

Read more at LifeZette:
Rocket Strikes U.S. Embassy in Baghdad
More GOP Senators Could Defect in Impeachment Trial
Bolton Manuscript Leaked, Romney and Collins May Vote Against the President

The post Warren Wants to Control Your Freedom of Speech appeared first on The Political Insider.