Pelosi vetoes Republican appointments of Banks, Jordan to House insurrection probe

After House Republican leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy chose Reps. Jim Banks and Jim Jordan as two of his five selections for the congressional committee being created to investigate the events of the Jan. 6 insurrection that rocked the nation, Banks himself now rejecting the appointments of both Banks and Jordan. In a statement, she says she has spoken with McCarthy and "requested" that he recommend two other Republicans to fill those spots. Republican Reps. Rodney Davis, Kelly Armstrong, and Troy Nehls were not objected to—even though Nehls, like Banks and Jordan, was one of the House Republicans who voted to object to the election's certification in the hours immediately after the Capitol had been cleared of violent Trump rioters.

While Pelosi did not explicitly specify the reasons for rejecting Banks and Jordan, the reasons are self-evident. Banks' statement upon being nominated to the committee rejected the very purpose of the committee and vowed to unilaterally expand its scope by demanding the committee review Black Lives Matters-inspired protests while declaring that "Nancy Pelosi created this committee solely to malign conservatives and to justify the Left's authoritarian agenda."

Having made it clear that he believed his primary task on the committee was to weaken its focus and discredit its results, it's little wonder that Pelosi deemed him an unacceptably irresponsible choice.

The case against Jordan is also clear. After surviving revelations of complicity in the sexual assault of college athletes, largely through his own belligerence, Trump ally Jim Jordan became a go-to provocateur for disrupting Trump impeachment investigations, congressional oversight investigations, and any other probes of Trump administration malfeasance. He would be a natural Republican pick to attack and deflect any portion of the probe that touched upon the connections between the Trump White House, the organizers of the "March" to the Capitol, and the militia members who most engaged in violence during the attempt to block the transfer of presidential power. He has a history of rank dishonesty, intentional disruption, belligerent nonsense production, and general shitbaggery in past efforts to sabotage congressional probes, and his presence on this new, vital committee would immediately render it unserious. So he's out.

In what was likely a pre-planned response, Rep. Kevin McCarthy immediately announced that he would be pulling all five Republican-recommended committee members in response to Pelosi's rejection of the two saboteurs. This is consistent with all previous Republican strategies of blocking all congressionally backed probes of the Republican-backed insurrection.

The Pelosi response will likely be either to allow the committee to begin its business with no Republican-backed members or to appoint, as with her appointment of Rep. Liz Cheney, Republican members willing to buck their party's attempted sabotage of the probe. That doesn't mean she will be able to find such people; House Republicans have been thorough in retaliating against members who have gone against their fascist push to claim that the insurrection was not an insurrection, that it was not done by the Trump supporters who have now been arrested for doing it, and that the U.S. presidential election ought to have been overturned to begin with.

New video shows Rep. Mike Nearman coaching people on how to breach Oregon Capitol

Oregon state Rep. Mike Nearman let armed protestors into the state’s Capitol building in December, which led to a violent encounter with the police who sought to remove them. The protestors attacked the police and used pepper spray. 

Nearman willfully endangered the lives of those officers, along with the lives of his fellow lawmakers and Capitol staff. Although the original video of the Republican opening the door was pretty damning, a new video has emerged that leaves no doubt that the storming was planned.

Newly surfaced YouTube video shows Nearman giving instructions to his constituents on how to breach the Capitol building, step-by-step, in a scheme he calls “Operation Hall Pass.” During the in-person and live-streamed event on Dec. 16 gives his chuckling audience guidance on what to text him, where to stand, and how to get in. He knows what he is doing is illegal, which is why he intersperses his instructions with coy language. He says he will deny knowledge of the scheme, and claims he’s just rattling off random numbers—which happened to be his cell phone number. 

The Oregonian broke the story.

“We’re talking about setting up Operation Hall Pass, which I don’t know anything about and if you accuse me of knowing something about, I’ll deny it. But there would be some person’s cell phone which might be” and he recites a phone number beginning with 971.

Nearman was speaking to an anti-union group called the Freedom Foundation, which is funded by billionaires such as Charles Koch and the DeVos family. And as we all know, his instructions were followed five days later, during a special session on Dec. 21.

Nearman lets in the mob

Democrats in charge of the legislature have already stripped Nearman of his committee assignments, and forced him to give up his badge to access the building.   He’s been asked to resign, but has refused. The Oregon GOP is, as expected, deadly silent and complicit, just as national Republicans have been about Jan. 6. 

Nearman also faces criminal charges.

This video compiles the Dec. 16 plotting and the Dec. 21 breach. 

NEW FOOTAGE: watch Oregon's @RepNearman tell people, step-by-step, how to breach the Oregon Capitol... with his assistance. Days later, the breach happened. Videos adapted from @Oregonian Story https://t.co/9tNZpxZHnH pic.twitter.com/pEQO6KsiaB

— John Scott-Railton (@jsrailton) June 5, 2021

Additionally, during the Freedom Foundation plotting event, Nearman explained the best day for the breach, saying “Monday, you’ve got one crack at it there.” The anti-mask maniacs ultimately stormed the Capitol during a one-day special session, held just before Christmas … on a Monday.

Don’t for a second think that these conservative traitors aren’t above promoting violence to stay in power. As sick as this was, state Rep. Nearman is nowhere near as crazy as the current crop of Republicans in the nation’s House, like Reps. Jim Jordan, Louie Gohmert, Mo Brooks, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Greene.  In what reality would someone think that any of these people would be “above” giving  advice and tours to insurrectionists prior to Jan. 6, which they have been accused of doing?

The truth is going to come out, and it isn’t going to be pretty.

Rep who scolded reporter for saying she ignored metal detector is fined for ignoring metal detector

Virginia Foxx is a U.S. representative from North Carolina and not, as you might suspect from her name, a now-bitter original member of Emmet Otter’s Jug Band

Honestly, I’d never heard of her before. Yes, I’m a politics nerd, but apparently she’s been hiding her light under a bushel basket all this time. Or maybe Matt Gaetz’s head was in the way. Who knows, really? Come out from behind Matt’s shadow, Ginny, and claim your place among the parthenon of perfidious putzes polluting the ‘Publican Party. 

Folks, I give you a play in four acts, starring Rep. Foxx. We pick up our story a week after the Capitol riot, a watershed historical event that happened earlier this year but which Republicans are trying to mash down the memory hole. Kind of like Don Jr. flushing burlap sacks full of cocaine after the room service he forgot he ordered finally shows up at the door. (Note: I don’t know that Junior’s actually done this. I don’t even know if he does cocaine. But people are saying. Many, many people.)

Behold!

Just gonna leave this whole thing here. pic.twitter.com/95WXBDySXw

— Matt Fuller (@MEPFuller) May 18, 2021

Let’s unpack that for the non-tweeters, shall we? Our story begins on the morning of Jan. 13, with an observation from The Daily Beast’s Matt Fuller.

This was exactly one week after the Capitol riot, when tensions were presumably at their highest and, for some reason, members of Congress—who were still recovering emotionally from being nearly murdered seven days earlier—were a bit on edge.

Foxx responded within hours: It was FAKE NEWS!

Pop quiz. If a reporter says something and then a Republican says something that directly contradicts the original statement, you should:

a) Believe the reporter

b) Believe the Republican

c) Does there have to be a fucking c)? 

d) Seriously, how did you even get past a)? Why are you still taking this quiz?

About 20 minutes later, Fuller defended his reporting in the strongest terms.

And that’s where these two left their online spat. Until yesterday, that is:

Of course, the Fascistic Ms. Foxx, who voted against both Trump impeachments, was being fined for a new violation, which occurred just a few days ago. But if she’s a scofflaw now, it stands to reason that the reporter who previously called her out was maybe, possibly telling the truth.

From USA Today:

Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., is facing a $5,000 fine for failing to comply with a security screening before entering the House Chamber, a post-Jan. 6 security measure that other Republicans have also on occasion not followed.

On May 13, the congresswoman "ran through the magnetometer, triggering the alarm," and "threw her bag underneath the table" next to the screening device, according to a memorandum of the incident filed by U.S. Capitol Police. Foxx said she was late for a vote, according to a witness statement.

Foxx bypassed a USCP officer who attempted to stop her but returned to the screening area to complete screening procedures after casting her vote. An officer testified she said, "Good thing no one stopped me..." The incident was witnessed by an unknown reporter, according to the memorandum.

“A good thing,” huh? I imagine that’s just what the rioters Donald Trump sent to murder his vice president said, too. 

If Foxx wants the metal detectors to go away and decorum to return, maybe she should have helped excise the Tang-hued tumor that continues to metastasize out of control on our nation’s still-pulsating sphincter (i.e., “Florida”). 

But that would have required far more courage than it takes to blow through a metal detector at the Capitol, huh?

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Just $12.96 for the pack of 4! Or if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE.

Republican leadership unanimously opposes probe of Jan. 6 insurrection

After House Democrats negotiated approximately forever with Republican lawmakers to come up with some version of an independent commission to investigate an insurrection attempt that caused the evacuation of the House and Senate, eventually settling on a version that gives Republicans most of what they demanded, Republican leadership ever so briefly suggested that while they were still opposed to the creation of the committee, they wouldn't tell their membership to vote against it.

That lasted less than a day, of course. By Tuesday evening Republican leadership had sent out messages asking their members to do just that, and while Minority Whip Steve Scalise asserted they were only recommending a no vote, not whipping members against it, his office soon made moves to do that, too. It seems that the compromises giving Republicans equal membership on the committee and shared subpoena power in addition to a hard deadline requiring the commission to finish their report before next January would not accomplish much: On the day of the vote, Republican House and Senate leadership are united in rejecting an independent investigation into the causes of a violent coup attempt aiming to nullify the November elections and install a leader by fiat.

Sen. Mitch McConnell wasted little time in rejecting the commission as well: After similar mumblings purporting to be undecided on the matter, by this morning the Senate Republican leader had—surprise!—also decided that even this commission makeup was too "unbalanced" towards Democrats to be supported.

The swiftness with which both House and Senate leadership reversed their initial Tuesday positions could have something to do with Donald Trump, the insurrection's leader, angrily denouncing the "unfairness" of the proposed investigation later in the day. While McConnell was willing to pin the blame for the insurrection directly on Trump even while crafting blowhard excuses for why the Senate should not impeach Trump over the violence, he has been as consistent as the seditionists themselves in rejecting calls for a commission tasked with reporting on the details.

The reason House and Senate Republicans continue to demand that Congress launch no independent investigation of an act of insurrection that nearly succeeded in capturing or assassinating Trump's declared enemies remains the same as always: A majority of those Republican lawmakers themselves promoted the false propaganda Trump and his team used to attack the integrity of the election, claiming it was "stolen" and therefore must be nullified. Their own actions caused deaths. It was their words that convinced—and continue to convince—the most radicalized members of their base that overturning an American election based on provable hoaxes was both patriotic and necessary.

The commission will find that blame for the violence rests squarely on Donald Trump and his top allies. Trump promoted the Jan. 6 "march" to the Capitol; the intent of the march was to stop Congress from carrying out the final electoral certification that would declare Trump the loser; the goal of the marchers who broke into the Capitol after his speech, scheduled so as to coincide exactly with the congressional count, stated in no uncertain terms that their goal was to end the count, force Congress into rejecting the election's outcome, and reinstate Trump as unconstitutional national leader.

Republican lawmakers were themselves both witnesses to those events and, in many cases, accessories. Rep. Kevin McCarthy is in particular danger if the commission is allowed to summon him to give testimony, as his conversation with Trump on that day—a conversation in which Trump expressed support for the rioters and rejected McCarthy's own pleas for intervention—is significant evidence of Trump's true intent as the violence was unfolding. Numerous Republican lawmakers and Trump appointees have similar testimony on Trump's actions and intent; all of it, put together into an official record of the event, will make clear that the Republican Party allied itself with seditionists that day, and that continued propaganda intended to discredit the outcome of the November election continues to threaten our nation's safety in the aftermath.

To a patriotic party, a full accounting of an attempted violent coup against American democracy would be a necessity. It would result in a far deeper investigation than any other terrorist act, such as the one in Benghazi. But to a party that has slipped into Dear Leaderism, an obsessive distribution of party-backed hoaxes and propaganda claims, condemnations of widespread voting, a near-total rejection of the notion that nonmovement governance is legitimate, and new insistence that crimes in service to Republican goals—Trump himself, Flynn, Manafort, Bannon, Arpaio—are both legitimate and to be celebrated, an accounting for the coup would predictably end in a devastating indictment of their party's corruption.

Not only are party leaders demanding their members withhold their support for such investigations, those leaders will work to sabotage and discredit the probe at every possible opportunity. They will demonize those appointed to the committee as traitors; they will spread new hoaxes claiming testimony against party members is a conspiracy against them.

The commission cannot come to any conclusion other than Trump himself gathered the marchers, painted rebellion as patriotic, and turned them loose to stop the transfer of power. For a Republican Party still stuck to the bottom of his shoe, that is something the public cannot be allowed to hear.

Months after insurrection, America’s political journalists are back in their comfy safe space

It's hard to make the case that the American political press knows how to cover American politics. Time and time again we see stories stuffed into the same structural boxes: Democrats are in disarray; parties differ when describing color of sky; today is the day Donald Golfcheat truly became president. A fascist demand to throw out election results and simply appoint Donald Trump the true winner was both correctly pinned as insurrection and, both before and after its failure, put into its own box so that none of the elected officials who pushed forward fantastical, false claims to justify such demands would require new press treatment going forward—even with the new knowledge that these partisans proved willing to lie to the public, aggressively, in a manner intended to undermine public confidence in democracy itself.

Mere months after the United States passed half a million pandemic deaths due to willful public misinformation by elected officials and the attempted seizure of the U.S. Capitol so that the lawmakers within could be either forced into nullifying an election or executed for their unwillingness to do so, the new political story is “Democratic President In Crisis.” What crisis? Every crisis.

When the Republican president faced impeachment (twice), presided over inexplicable military about-faces endangering allies, instigated new trade wars that caused commodity chaos, demanded relaxations of pandemic warnings based on a belief that health experts were only attempting to damage him politically, lied about the path of a hurricane, lied to investigators about contacts between his campaign and Russian government agents, pushed for the deployment of the U.S. military against political demonstrators, and instigated a still-uncountable number of individual constitutional crises as his staff ran roughshod over congressional powers and executive restrictions while relying on party allies to nullify the attempted checks that would prevent it, it was all a crisis.

So now the new guy's got to be pinned with the crisis label too, and according to the agreed upon standards of journalism, former president Jimmy Carter must be mentioned at least once when doing so. To the headlines! Run, Shadowfax! Show us the meaning of haste!

CNN: Multiple crises at home and abroad provide a reality check for Biden's White House

NBC: Biden battles new crises as honeymoon fades

Fox: Battered Biden under siege as crises confound the White House

And what of this new president's management style? After four years of public belittling of staffers, time set aside in meetings for each participant to flatter Our Leader and compete for his favor, the dismissal of military generals as stupid, the erasure of the State Department and diplomatic corps in favor of transitory declarations via smartphone, and raw contempt for any American citizen who did not vote for him, what balancing character flaws can we highlight in his successor?

New York Times: Beneath Joe Biden’s Folksy Demeanor, a Short Fuse and an Obsession With Details

In that one, we learn that Mr. Biden demands "hours of detail-laden debate" from policy experts before coming to a final decision, and that he has "ire" for those who he believes are either snowing him with acronyms or wasting his time. If Trump's error was a seething contempt for all expertise and an unwillingness to read documents not principally focused around himself, it is possible that the New Guy is similarly unhinged in his desire to consult with "scores of policy experts" before making new policy decisions.

"It is a method of governing that can feel at odds with the urgency of a country still reeling from a pandemic and an economy struggling to recover."

Sure, there you go. Slap a stamp on it, ship it out. New Guy just doesn't feel quite as publicly decisive as Captain Crazythumbs. During the four days it might take New Guy to finalize a policy decision, Old Guy would have already decided five separate times, each decision in direct conflict with the others, and fired off 20 different tweets insulting anyone who objected to any of them.

So then, what are the new crises facing the country? Peculiarly, the ongoing pandemic is not among them. The public has been giving Biden top-tier marks on bringing the pandemic under control as Biden's team oversees drastic ramp-ups in vaccine distribution and the beginning of the pandemic's end begins to appear over the horizon.

One of the Biden Administration "crises" is that vaccinated Americans are now confused as to whether they are still required to wear masks or not. This one is rather easily solved by going to state and local government sites to learn what policies are in place for your own town, or by reading the signs regularly posted on the doors of each place of business informing customers of their current policies, which is precisely what everyone should already have been doing to begin with. This momentary frustration does not seem a good fit for the "crisis" word more often thrown around these days to describe hundreds of thousands of American deaths.

One of the "crises" is a Republican declaration that the southern border is in "crisis" because they say it is. Once justified by the same seasonal surge of border crossings that typically occur during Not Summer in a vast and deadly desert, it is now justified by a handful of Republican lawmakers staring at reeds during Rio Grande small boat tours.

One of the "crises" is that a major fuel pipeline company allowed itself to be breached in a ransomware attack, only to then prove unable to recover its own systems over the span of multiple days. Despite no actual fuel shortage, this caused runs on gas stations nationwide (including in places the pipeline never served to begin with) and several incidents in which patriotic Americans burned their own cars into molten lumps after stuffing their trunks and back seats with filled containers of gasoline so that other patriotic Americans wouldn't buy it first.

As it turns out—and after days of the company evading the question—it was the company’s billing computers that had been brought down in the attack. Pipeline operations were perfectly fine; there was just no way for the company to keep track of who bought their product and now owed them money. One solution, if the closure had extended long enough to seriously jeopardize supplies, might have been an emergency federal order to resume pipeline operations coupled with federal assurance that the government would pay whatever costs the company couldn’t manage to bill their actual customers for.

Unfortunately, that would in all likelihood have ushered in a new era in which fuel traders coordinated with cybercriminals to throw markets into turmoil on purpose, all to profit from the elevated prices the federal government would then pay in order to resolve it. (See: Enron.) It would probably have to have been followed up with a government takeover and restructuring of the "saved" Colonial Pipeline, so that turning off critical pieces of U.S. infrastructure in economy-shaking ways would not become a net profit producer for the company executives overseeing each failure.

One of the "crises" is a shortage of sauces at a chicken sandwich franchise. Sort of. At the moment, only scattered Republicans are pinning that one on the new president, hoping to make it stick. Again, it's probably best to nip this one in the bud through swift government takeover. America cannot be without its sauces, and if the U.S. military cannot swiftly get the sauces to the places the sauces need to be, nobody can. That seems the most "decisive" approach, if we are all getting angsty over the post-Trump president not visibly flailing his arms at each new national panic and our politics-watchers need a booster shot of that old strongman charm.

Then there is the ongoing violence between Israeli government forces and the Palestinians under occupation in annexed lands. Escalating violence does count as a genuine crisis. But it is also one in which the major debates are over how the United States should best put diplomatic pressure on each side, the same debates that have gone on for decades as the United States both acts as major guarantor of Israeli defense and, in doing so, allows hard-right Israeli governments to mete out violence that the state could almost certainly not get away with without U.S. protection.

There is no chance of U.S. military intervention here. Fear not, our government will at some point again thunder into the region with new edicts for How Things Must Be Resolved, only to again slink back off after each new attempt at empire-crafting is thwarted by the human beings who actually live there deciding they would rather not abide by the plans we announced for them. However, immediate options in this case are limited to phone calls and sternly worded public statements. It is a crying shame that real estate scion Jared Kushner was not able to bring peace to the region despite being mostly rich and having access to multiple books purchased off of Amazon, but here we are and here we will remain for some time to come. It will indeed be a test of Biden's abilities, exactly as it had tested every president of the modern era.

What we can gather from all these stories lumped together with the urgent language of crisis is that the press has very, very urgently wanted to return to normal themes and narratives, and mere months after the first nonpeaceful transfer of power since the Civil War we are going to have these narratives shoveled into our faces whether we want it or not. Is Joe Biden too surly? Will the spectacular banality of a pipeline company's IT department echo public memories of Carter-era energy crises if we in the press try very hard to mention those two things together? And what of Republican sniping over immigration or—wait, look there! It appears the national debt has emerged from long hibernation, and it has something to say!

During an entire presidency of incompetence, open corruption, brazen public lying, attempted extortions, and mass U.S. deaths, the press worked feverishly to present constitutional crises and history-shaking events within the standardized frames of partisan sniping, political gamesmanship, and questions being asked. Covering the same authoritarian actions here that have long been called out as authoritarian acts elsewhere, the brain of the national press ... broke. Editors could not stomach making the shift, and so demanded it all be sorted into the columns that past events had been sorted into so that nobody could claim they were treating orchestrated propaganda-peddling with any more hostility than the more truthful statements of past administrations and party leaders.

It was absolutely assured that the end of the Trump presidency—for now—would be treated as something of a class reunion for put-upon editors desperate to get back the political coverage that their networks and papers had been designed to produce. What are the polling implications of Latest New Event? How will this affect midterm voters? Can Leader project decisiveness? What gossip can be culled from the White House? Did somebody snap at someone? Oh, do tell.

To some extent it may be harmless—we all are very, very tired, after all, and individual reporters and pundits are likely as relieved as the rest of us to be able to tell stories that, shockingly, do not appear to threaten our constitutional foundations, or are likely to produce new international trade wars, or result in half a million deaths, or that hint that the sitting president and his closest allies are longtime petty criminals whose careers have been pockmarked with the sort of acts that would the less lawyered among us in prison for a decade or two. It is almost calming.

The problem, though, is that we are not in a new era. The lies of the insurrection are not past—they are continuing in places like Arizona and Georgia. Lawmakers who shouted in fear as violent coup-backing rioters broke through nearby windows are right now claiming that the same riots did not happen or were of no particular consequence. Republican leaders are still deciding, even today, how far they can go in sabotaging investigation of how the past administration's actions, and their own public statements, fomented the violence and caused the resulting deaths.

We are not back to normal, and scurrying back to journalism's safe spaces of four years ago for a bit of solace is doing the same disservice as always.

Is the Biden Administration facing "crisis," as we have come to define that term after the last four years of chaos? Aside from the increasingly ignored pandemic, there is no plausible way to claim so. The Biden team has so far been so irritatingly low-profile and workaday that partisan snipers are expressing exasperation at how little fodder they have been given to work with.

Killing half a million people through incompetence, ignoring congressional powers outright to block legislative probes of executive corruption, being recorded in conversation demanding personal political favors before executing governmental functions, engaging in a slew of pardons specifically rewarding allies who were found to have lied to federal law enforcement officials investigating a specific alleged crime undertaken for your own benefit—those are still crises.

Republicans being upset at border crossing numbers, a few days of public confusion after pandemic safety instructions shift into new transitory phases, or even a few days of irrational panic buying at local gas stations? Listen, buddy, we wish those were presidency-defining crises. I would pay double my current taxes to live in a country where those were the biggest new crises I might ever meet up with after walking out the front door.

A good chunk of Florida is going to be underwater in the next few decades, you know. That sounds like a crisis. Elevated temperatures are causing widespread drought, yet again, and fire season in the West is expected to again be horrific. There's a good chance that combinations of heat and humidity will render portions of the American South inhospitable to human life, and long-neglected infrastructure decisions are now ballooning into system failures with deadly results. In the coming year there is a good chance that a newly political Supreme Court will overturn laws that have underpinned governance for the last half century. There is a very good chance that the next election, the very next one, will feature races with official tallies that are simply nullified by hard-right antidemocratic lawmakers who object to the outcome—and that those lawmakers will succeed in their efforts. There is already a long list of truly existential crises to chose from, and many more are waiting in the wings.

Biff Hummerguy filling his backseat with leaking gas containers because he heard that the cryptocoin blockchain was going to NFT the oil pipes may be a hell of a story, but it's not the thing that is going to drive midterm elections. Unless, that is, political journalism itself is vapid enough to demand it.

Which, God help us all, isn't exactly an idea the rest of us can easily dismiss.

Republicans won’t whip against Jan. 6 commission vote, but McCarthy has ensured its failure

The House is scheduled to vote this week—as soon as Wednesday—on the deal struck by Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson and ranking committee member John Katko for a Jan. 6 commission. Structured much like the 9/11 Commission, the bipartisan committee would investigate the insurrectionist attack on the Capitol.

Thus far, House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy hasn't said whether he'll endorse the deal, but leadership seems spooked enough over backlash against the idiot Republicans who insist that it wasn't a violent insurrection but just another "normal tourist visit." Republican leaders will not whip against the bill, meaning it will be a vote of conscience for their members.

That's after a handful of their members—including Rep. Liz Cheney, who secured a very large megaphone thanks to the House GOP deciding to kick her off the leadership team—spent the last several days blasting the revisionist history coming from their colleagues.

Tuesday, May 18, 2021 · 3:33:26 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

Speaker Pelosi reacts to McCarthy: "I am very pleased that we have a bipartisan bill to come to the floor and [it's] disappointing, but not surprising that [there's] cowardice on the part of some on the Republican side, [to] not to want to find the truth."https://t.co/9ppvhaEeuH

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 18, 2021

On Friday, Cheney told ABC's Jon Karl that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy—who's done nothing but promote Trump's Big Lie in recent months—should testify before the commission. If he doesn't agree to that, Cheney said, he should be subpoenaed. "I think that he very clearly, and said publicly, that he's got information about the president’s state of mind that day," Cheney said. "I would anticipate that, you know—I would hope he doesn't require a subpoena, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he were subpoenaed."

Michigan Republican Rep. Fred Upton called out his colleagues on Sunday, calling their claims that the insurrection was just a patriots' play-date "bogus," and that those claims prove the need for the commission. "It's absolutely bogus. You know, I was there. I watched a number of the folks walk down to the White House and then back. I have a balcony on my office. So I saw them go down. I heard the noise—the flash bangs, I smelled some of the gas as it moved my way," Upton told CNN's Dana Bash on State of the Union. "Get the facts out, try to assure the American public this is what happened, and let the facts lead us to the conclusion," Upton said.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski blasted House Republicans who downplayed the attack on Friday. "I'm offended by that," Murkowski told CNN. "This was not a peaceful protest. When somebody breaks and enters, and then just because you know they don't completely trash your house once you're inside does not mean that it has been peaceful. This was not a peaceful protest." She continued. "We got to get beyond that rhetoric and acknowledge that what happened were acts of aggression and destruction towards an institution, and there were some people intent on (harming) the people that were part of that institution."

She's going to be supporting the commission when the bill gets to the Senate. It is likely to pass there, too, but that's in part because there's a lot that Republicans, including Sen. Mitch McConnell, can do to weaken it.

The legislation creates a commission made up of 10 members, an equal number of members chosen by Democratic and Republican leadership. None of the members can be currently serving government officials and all must have a depth of experience in a combination government, law enforcement, civil rights, and national security service. Democrats would appoint the chair, Republicans the vice chair. The committee would have the power to subpoena McCarthy or anyone else, but if the vice chair wanted to veto that subpoena decision, they could.

The chair—appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer—has the sole power to secure information from the federal agencies and has control over appointing staff. That gives them significant power. But there are still pitfalls for the commission.

One of the key faults of the commission as negotiated is that it has a deadline of the end of this year. Republicans have already dragged it out for five months, and have the chance to do so again, even after the bill passes. Even if McConnell decided against filibustering the bill, he and McCarthy can simple draw out the process of naming their five members.   It's going to hinge a lot on how much McConnell wants to distance the Senate and the party from Trump, how much he wants to try to salvage any measure of dignity for his party. There's certainly no love lost between McConnell and Trump, who he blamed point blank for the Jan. 6 attack. That blame, however, didn't happen until after he voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial.

Tuesday, May 18, 2021 · 1:22:31 PM +00:00 · Joan McCarter

House GOP Leader McCarthy makes it official Tuesday morning: he’s officially opposing the legislation and the commission, saying that Pelosi “refused to negotiate in good faith on basic parameters.” Which is categorically untrue since she handed over the negotiations and had Thompson and Katko figure it out.

“Given the Speaker’s shortsighted scope that does not examine interrelated forms of political violence in America, I cannot support this legislation,” he said. Meaning BLM and Antifa are not explicitly included in the scope of the legislation, though as the commission is structured, the GOP members of it could do McCarthy’s and McConnell’s bidding and yammer on about it all the time. McCarthy’s express opposition makes it much less likely 10 Senate Republicans will support the commission. It will pass the House, but is pretty unlikely to pass in the Senate.

Rep. Clyde said ‘tourists’ invaded the Capitol, but pics show he had a different reaction that day

The pathology involved in conservatives around the country collectively trying to gaslight Americans into believing they didn’t see what they saw and didn’t hear with heard on Jan. 6, 2021, is pretty frightening. But here we are. During “The Capitol Insurrection: Unexplained Delays and Unanswered Questions” hearings held by the House of Representatives, Republicans tried to repaint the history of the Jan. 6 attempt by MAGA types and many Republican officials to forcefully overturn millions of Americans democratically cast votes as not a big deal. In fact, if you looked at it another way, the insurrection was like a big family gathering.

One of the most egregious remembrances of that day came from Republican Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia. During his written statement, he said of the many trespassers and zip-tie carrying insurrections that day in the Capitol building, “You know, if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.” It’s the kind of statement that’s so breathtaking in its denial of all evidence that it seemed to take away Clyde’s breath after he said it. The AP released a new set of images from that distressing and disappointing day that show Clyde very close to the barricaded door to the House chambers. He does not look like a man who is taking it easy as a rambunctious tourist group passes through.

Another shot of what Rep. Clyde would later call tourism.

One of the images appears at the top of this story (and down below for good measure). The second image shows the scene from inside, the one that Clyde said was a nothing burger. In the midst of a pandemic where the American public chose to change the executive branch and the legislative branch of the government in the hopes of getting the things they want out of their government legislated, Clyde’s record so far during the new year has been to vote against every single popular bill put forth by the Biden administration. Clyde, like many GOP officials in our country, is a proponent of the Big Lie. He and his colleagues do not simply promote it and misinform the public about it—they are it.

Clyde voted against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, saying: “No evidence was presented, no witness testified, no cross-examination was conducted, no due process was afforded. And that sets an extremely dangerous precedence for the future." The last quote is a reminder that Clyde is no stranger to lying about the facts. Clyde isn’t unique here. He’s following the party line, and the end game of this political party is minority rule in the form of an oligarchy made to look like a republic.

Below you can watch Clyde make his declaration. He takes a big breath break after saying it before moving on to the next section of his fascist tome to discuss, in a way that implies the whiff of de state conspiracy, the shooting death of Ashli Babbit by Capitol police. As an important reminder, 35-year-old Babbit was jumping through a recently smashed glass partition to gain entrance to a hallway where any number of representatives, senators, and their staff were holed up. The hallway had been barricaded by Capitol police and possibly Secret Service. When Babbit and the insurrectionists forced their way into the building, it was possibile that the next three Americans in the line of succession to the president of the United States were in the Capitol building.

Also important to note: Clyde has lamented Babbit’s death as an “unarmed protester,” but has seemingly forgotten to make similar statements about the shooting deaths in his own state of Ahmaud Arbery or Rayshard Brooks.

Deal struck on Jan. 6 commission, with House vote scheduled next week

After months of foot-dragging and obstruction from Republicans to the forming an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, a bipartisan deal has emerged. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had delegated Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson to work with ranking committee member John Katko of New York to find a solution. One, it should be noted, that has been greeted tepidly by Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Thompson and Katko have crafted legislation to create a commission modeled after the 9/11 panel. It would have 10 members, half of them appointed by Democratic congressional leaders, who would also appoint the chair. Republicans would appoint the other half, including the vice chair. Critically, if the chair and vice chair agree, the panel would have the power to issue subpoenas. So, problematically, they can veto each other's efforts to subpoena witnesses or documents. On the other hand, the chair is given sole power to get information from federal agencies and to appoint staff.

That, New York University law professor Ryan Goodman tells Greg Sargent at The Washington Post, gives the forces of truth a chance to prevail. "Thanks to powers invested in the Chairperson alone, the Democratically-appointed members would have significant control over the direction of the investigation," Goodman said, helping to prevent Republican appointees from "engaging in mischief." He added that the "Chairperson would be able to move ahead quickly with getting information from the government without needing a vote," saying that the chair can "appoint staff" who would "shape how the investigation and hearings unfold."

The bill specifies that those members cannot be "an officer or employee of an instrumentality of government"—i.e. there can be no currently serving government officials on the panel. They must have "national recognition and significant depth of experience in at least two" areas: previous government service; law enforcement; civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy; experience in the armed forces or intelligence or counterrorism; and a background in cybersecurity or technology or law. A final report, including recommendations for preventing future attacks, would be due at the end of this calendar year.

McCarthy told reporters Friday morning that he hadn't looked at the text yet (he's been too busy installing Trump's toady in leadership to pay attention, I guess), but continues to have concerns about the scope. Namely that "you got to look at the buildup before, and what went on afterward," meaning the BLM and antifa straw men.

The House is voting on the bill next week, along with a supplemental funding bill to beef up Capitol security. It will pass, and should get at least a handful of Republican votes, if not a few dozen, including one from Rep. Liz Cheney, who got a coveted Wall Street Journal quote Friday (take that, Stefanik). "I hope we'll be able to really have the kind of investigation we need about what happened on Jan. 6," Cheney said.

"As I have called for since the days just after the attack, an independent, 9/11-style review is critical for getting answers our [Capitol Police] officers and all Americans deserve," Katko said in a statement announcing the agreement. "This is about facts, not partisan politics." Thompson said in his statement. "I am pleased that after many months of intensive discussion, Ranking Member Katko and I were able to reach a bipartisan agreement. […] Inaction—or just moving on—is simply not an option. The creation of this commission is our way of taking responsibility for protecting the U.S. Capitol."

As of this writing, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell hasn't reacted to the announcement that a deal has been struck, or that the legislation should advance in the House as soon as next week. In the past, he's been critical of the effort, casting it as "partisan" and demanding that the commission also encompass "the full scope of the political violence problem in this country," meaning those BLM and antifa straw men again.

One of the problems with McCarthy and McConnell potential foot-dragging is, of course, whether it would pass in the Senate with the filibuster. The other problem is that the two of them are responsible, along with Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, for appointing half of the commission members. That gives them more opportunity to delay, with the clock ticking on the still-unformed commission's deadline for the end of the year for a report and recommendations.

On the other hand, McConnell has no love for Trump. Here's a pretty much hands-off way for him to damage Trump and to fight the Big Lie. He could make sure that at least some of the five Republican appointees aren't Trumpers. There are plenty of former Republican officials who would relish the opportunity to serve as his proxy.

It's also incumbent on someone in Republican leadership to acknowledge reality, especially as the lunatic fringe of the House Republicans have taken over and are in full denial mode. There was the truly ugly revisionism on display in this week's House Oversight hearing, where Republican Rep. Paul Gosar called even investigating the events of Jan. 6 an assault by the "deep-state" on "law-abiding citizens," and GOP Rep. Andrew Clyde said that day in the Capitol looked like a "normal tourist visit." The nation's dumbest man (yes, dumber than Sen. Ron Johnson) Rep. Louie Gohmert took to the floor Friday to flat-out lie about the events of that day.

Here's McConnell's chance to counter what's happening in his party in the House, including the ouster of Cheney in deference to Trump and the Big Lie. After Trump's acquittal on his second impeachment, McConnell excoriated Trump. He said that Trump was "practically and morally responsible" for the attack. "This was an intensifying crescendo of conspiracy theories orchestrated by an outgoing president who seemed determined to either overturn the voters' decision or else torch our institutions on the way out," McConnell said. "A mob was assaulting the Capitol in his name," he said. "These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags and screaming their loyalty to him."

Having said all that, it's now largely going to be up to McConnell to do something about it.

Republicans double down on gaslighting narrative in House hearing: ‘It was not an insurrection’

Republicans clearly have settled on their strategy for a post-Jan. 6 narrative about the Capitol insurrection: Gaslight, gaslight, and then gaslight some more. That was made crystal clear today in a House hearing on the insurrection, when a parade of GOP House members consistently tried to convince the public that what it witnessed that day wasn’t real.

One congressman tried to claim that “it was not an insurrection, and we cannot call it that and be truthful.” Another doubted that the mob was comprised entirely of Donald Trump supporters:” I don’t know who did the poll to say they were Trump supporters.” And their go-to white nationalist complained that “law-abiding citizens” were under attack from “the national security state” in the course of investigating and prosecuting the insurrectionists.

The hearing, titled “The Capitol Insurrection: Unexplained Delays and Unanswered Questions,” featured testimony from former Trump officials—then-acting Attorney General Phil Rosen, and then-acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller—involved in the slow response by security forces to intervene in the riot. Both men generally refused to directly answer any of the questions posed to them by Democrats, and mostly claimed they had done nothing wrong that day.

But the hearing was dominated by Republicans who insisted that Democrats were making much ado out of nothing, like Charles Boyer telling Ingrid Bergman that those gaslights weren’t flickering. The most audacious of the bunch was Congressman Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who opened the hearing’s second half with a straight shot of alternative-universe ether:

This hearing is called “The Capitol Insurrection.” Let’s be honest with the American people: It was not an insurrection, and we cannot call it that and be truthful. The Cambridge English dictionary defines an “insurrection” as, and I quote, “An organized attempt by a group of people to defeat their government and take control of their country, usually by violence.” And then from the Century Dictionary, “The act of rising against civil authority, or governmental restraints, specifically the armed resistance of a number of persons against the power of the state.”

As one of the members who stayed in the Capitol and on the House floor, who with other Republican colleagues, helped to barricade the door until almost 3 p.m. that day from the mob who tried to enter. I can tell you, the House was never breached, and it was not an insurrection.

This is the truth: There was an undisciplined mob, there were some rioters and some who committed acts of vandalism, but let me be clear—there was no insurrection, and to call it an insurrection, in my opinion, is a boldfaced lie.

Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall, people in orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes taking videos and pictures—you know, if you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January 6, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.

There were no firearms confiscated from anyone who breached the Capitol, so the only shot fired on January 6 was from a Capitol Police officer who killed an unarmed protester, Ashli Babbitt, in what will probably, eventually, be determined to be a needless display of lethal force.

Congressman Ralph Norman of South Carolina was similarly skeptical. All those Trump banners carried up the Capitol steps that day by people who got started at a Trump rally failed to persuade him that the crowd actually was comprised of Trump supporters:

When I read this sheet, and on the timeline, let’s see, at 2:07, “a mob of Trump supporters breached the steps”—I don’t know who did a poll that it was Trump supporters. You had the media saying the same thing, just like the media was saying Officer Sicknick was killed with a fire extinguisher, which he was not. But I don’t know who did the poll to say they were Trump supporters.

Clyde similarly displayed a kind of cognitive obtuseness—refusing the plain meaning of words, declining to see what’s plainly in view, while inverting reality and claiming it’s the opposite—while remaining somehow oblivious that his definitions of “insurrection” perfectly described the events of January 6, while an event he considers an “insurrection”—namely, the so-called “Russiagate” investigation—bears little to no resemblance to one:

You know, but the only insurrection I’ve witnessed in my lifetime was the one conducted by the FBI with participants from the DOJ and other agencies under the banner “Russia Russia Russia.” High-ranking employees from these federal agencies and members of an independent counsel coordinated and fed a false narrative for over two years that the 2016 election was stolen and illegitimate. Democrats were on the news almost every night saying the evidence is there, and the mainstream media amplified the fake news. This was indeed a very coordinated and well-funded effort by a determined group of people to overthrow the duly elected president, Donald J. Trump.

Georgia Congressman Jody Hice thought that Trump had established his innocence in inspiring the mob by having urged them at one point to march to the Capitol “peacefully and patriotically,” apparently magically overwhelming his exhortations that “if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore” and using the word “fight” some 20 times:

I would like to address how the media and the many Democrats have put forth a narrative that has been circulating around about how January 6, and has never been corrected. For example, the narrative that President Trump incited riots on January 6, I don’t know even understand, Madam Chair, why you yourself don’t speak the truth as to what President Trump actually stated. And what he said on the morning of January 6, he said that “I know every one of you will soon be marching over to the Capitol buildings to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard today.” Madam Chair, why don’t you talk about how the president used those words, “peacefully and patriotically,” instead of cherry-picking words that you want to use to portray an image of something that did not happen.

Congressman Yvette Herrell of New Mexico also clearly was partaking of some of the same Trump-cult kool-aid, claiming that “fake news” had “poisoned the well”:

Do you feel like the well has been poisoned here? We’ve had so much fake news, cynical politicians, disinformation—far, far from the truth. I mean, we’ve heard that Officer Sicknick was killed by a fire extinguisher in the riot, but indeed he died by natural causes, a stroke. … How much of an impact do you think social media and other outlets had on an investigation?

Miller replied to her that “some people are using that against us very effectively”—to which Herrell quipped: “Yes, I think they call that ‘fake news’.”

Then, apparently keying off Clyde’s rant, she asked each of the witnesses: “Do you classify the events of January 6 as a riot or an insurrection? One or the other.”

Many of the Republicans wanted to talk about Black Lives Matter and antifascists in the context of last summer’s civil unrest over police brutality, reverting to their tried-and-true narrative about a “violent left” that “burned down cities” as being a kind of excuse for a Republican mob to attempt to stop the counting of Electoral College ballots.

Congressman Clay Higgins of Louisiana seemed especially angry:

Nineteen people died during BLM riots last year. Hundreds and hundreds were injured. Teo thousand police officers were injured from BLM riots last year. And yet, we’re gonna discuss today, as if none of that happened, the events of January 6. The hypocrisy of this body is indeed disturbing to the scores of millions of Americans that supported President Trump and love this country, and have been denied access to their own Capitol for over a year!

Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar, who has become Republicans’ go-to white nationalist since the retirement of Iowa’s Steve King, tried to claim that the post-insurrection investigation and resulting indictments and arrests were all the work of the Deep State:

Outright propaganda and lies are being used to unleash the national security state against law-abiding citizens—especially Trump voters. The FBI is fishing through homes of veterans and citizens with no criminal records and restricting the liberties of individuals that have never been accused of a crime. Mr. Biden calls January 6 the worst attack since the Civil War. A president was impeached for his alleged role in that riot. It was reported early, completely unconfirmed, that an armed insurrection, quote, beat a police officer to death with a fire extinguisher. The government has even enlisted Americans to turn in their own neighbors. Federal prosecutor Michael Sherwin on CBS News’ 60 Minutes continued the, quote, “Shock and Awe,” end of quote. Many of my Democratic colleagues opposed the “Shock and Awe” strategy in Iraq. We should similarly oppose its application against American citizens.

His Arizona colleague, Congressman Andy Biggs, also wanted to divert everyone’s attention to leftist protest violence, apparently on the grounds that it justified the insurrection, or at least made Democrats look hypocritical for trying to hold Republicans accountable for it:

Democrats have said that the events of January 6 were an assault on democracy, and if that’s true, if disorderly conduct in a restricted building is an assault on democracy, then what do we call setting fire to federal court in Portland, Oregon, with people inside—what do we call that? For years, we have watched riots in American cities while House Democrats remain silent or actually supported the violence. The federal courthouse in Portland came under attack every night and Democrats said nothing.  

And then he played a video showing select scenes of nighttime protest violence in Portland. No one mentioned that the protests did not involve an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in a national election.

Not a single Republican denounced Donald Trump’s role in the events or even managed to acknowledge that the insurrection was inspired by the broad dissemination of Trump’s claim that the election was stolen, and its broad support by a large number of congressional GOP members and right-wing pundits. That apparently didn’t fit into their cognitive bandwidth.

Investigators tighten circle around Proud Boys for Jan. 6 violence with two more key arrests

Life comes at you fast sometimes. Just last summer, Zach Rehl led his Philadelphia-based contingent of Proud Boys in a counterprotest to support then-Vice President Mike Pence. This week, he was arrested for helping lead a mob inside the U.S. Capitol that was intent on lynching Pence.

Rehl was one of two Proud Boys arrested by the FBI this week and charged with the most serious federal crimes facing the insurrectionists at the Jan 6 Capitol siege: conspiracy to obstruct the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, and to attack Capitol Police officers. Also arrested this week was a Proud Boys leader from North Carolina, Charles Donohoe.

A total of 13 Proud Boys, who played a central role in the ability of the pro-Trump mob to break down police barricades and enter the Capitol building that day, have now been charged in the insurrection. The indictment is similar to one unveiled by prosecutors against two other key Proud Boys figures—Ethan Nordean and Joe Biggs—who played key roles in leading the mob that day.

Last July, Rehl’s Philadelphia Proud Boys group gathered outside a Fraternal Order of Police lodge where Pence was speaking, and a small cluster of protesters had gathered. The men shouted at Black Lives Matter protesters and at a group of women.

Rehl, left, with Biggs on Jan. 6.

Rehl, a 35-year-old Port Richmond man, was among them, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported, “drinking beer and chatting with others in the parking lot who were openly carrying a Proud Boys flag.” Among the men they were chatting with were Philadelphia police officers, underscoring the Proud Boys’ cozy relationship with police officers around the country—a relationship that helped feed their smug far-right extremism. Rehl is a veteran and the son of two Philadelphia police officers.

On Jan. 6, their view of Pence had clearly transformed, largely because the vice president had chosen not to try to contest the validation of the Electoral College votes as Donald Trump had urged him to do—which the crowd at Trump’s rally that morning viewed as a betrayal. The mob entering the Capitol was filmed chanting: “Hang Mike Pence!” Pence himself narrowly escaped encountering this mob, it was revealed during Trump’s subsequent impeachment trial.

Rehl, who later turned up in photos in The New Yorker showing Proud Boys trashing the Senate offices of Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, is expected to have his first hearing in federal court in Philadelphia Friday. His indictment makes clear that federal prosecutors are preparing a conspiracy case charging several Proud Boys with conspiracy, including Biggs and Nordean.

According to indictments released in those cases, investigators say that Biggs, 37, of Ormond Beach, Florida, and Nordean, 30, of Auburn, Washington, were equipped with radios and a bullhorn as they led a mob of about 100 men through the streets of Washington and up the Capitol Mall. Several Proud Boys were among the rioters who shattered windows that enabled others to enter the building and attack Capitol Police officers inside.