Far more serious than even the gravest legal language can convey

Yesterday I took a night off from blogging. My church had an ice cream social and I enjoyed hanging out with friends. Though since I last wrote the nasty guy was indicted again, this time for his role in the events that resulted in the Jan 6 Capitol attack. An Associated Press article posted on Daily Kos lays out the charges.

Trump is charged with four counts: obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and conspiracy to prevent others from carrying out their constitutional rights.

The obstruction charge, which was about obstructing the Electoral College vote, is the same one that has been brought against 1,000 Jan 6 rioters, including members of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. More than 100 have plead guilty or been convicted at trial. The conspiracy to defraud the US means he’s accused of using “dishonesty, fraud, and deceit to impair, obstruct, and defeat” the certifying of the election results. The one about constitutional rights is about the right to vote and have one’s vote counted. “The conspiracy doesn't have to be successful, meaning the fraud doesn't have to actually affect the election.” Kos of Kos wrote about the nasty guy’s response to the indictment. It seems “Sleepy Joe” has become the “Biden Crime Family.” Now if they could only find a crime. It takes a truly nasty guy to cry about “weaponizing the Department of Justice” when his first campaign was all about “Lock her up” and he has promised to weaponize the Department of Justice to go after his enemies.

It goes back to that old mantra: Every Republican accusation is an admission. No one does projection better than a Republican.

He also complains the indictment is coming during a campaign (which he claims makes it political – a candidate removing a rival). But amassing the supporting evidence, strong enough to indict a president and presidential contender, takes times and one must get it right. Kos has a bit more, but that’s enough for me. An article by Laura Clawson of Kos explains the charges in more detail here and here. Dartagnan of the Kos community explained the gravity of the indictments in a manner easily grasped:

Under the scheme Trump is now charged with, 81 million Americans would have had their votes for the highest elected office in this land rendered meaningless, effectively erased, as if they’d never existed. That’s 81 million Biden voters instantly disenfranchised; their judgments, motives, hopes, and everything that shaped them, abruptly negated. Their trips to the local voting precinct during a pandemic, their careful consideration and concern in filling out mail-in ballots, their discussions with spouses and family about which presidential candidate they should vote for, all crudely and unilaterally disregarded and trashed. Had Trump succeeded in this plan, half the voting nation would have experienced the absolute foundation of their own citizenship snatched away from them in one single, tyrannical power grab, making them—for all intents and purposes—noncitizens. That would have led to massive protests in the street, the likes of which this nation has never seen. Work for millions would have come to a complete standstill. There would have been riots, property destruction, and violence on a national scale as voters vented their fury. And, as special counsel Jack Smith’s Tuesday indictment shows, Trump was prepared to respond to those anticipated protests by calling out the military to quell them. ... It was nothing short of dictatorial rule, using the nation’s armed forces against over half of the nation’s electorate, whom he would have already effectively disenfranchised. It would have been a profound, unspeakable crime against this nation and its people, one far more serious than even the gravest legal language can convey.

The nasty guy’s lawyer was on NPR saying his defense would be that the nasty guy was acting out his free speech rights. Republicans have taken up the cry this is a free speech issue. Joan McCarter of Kos explained, quoting the indictment.

Special counsel Jack Smith knew this would be a key argument from Trump, and quickly debunked it on page 2 of the indictment. “The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won,” the indictment says. “He was also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means …. [I]n many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts … were uniformly unsuccessful. “Shortly after Election Day, the Defendant also pursued unlawful means of discounting legitimate votes and subverting the election results.” That’s what Trump is being indicted for: his actions.

McCarter included a quote from Rep. Jamie Raskin explaining this on MSNBC. McCarter included the whole quote. Here’s part of it:

It’s like you can say, “I think the currency is phony and everybody should be allowed to make up their own money.” You can say that, but the minute that you start printing your own money, now you run afoul of the counterfeit laws, and it’s the exact same thing with the Electoral College.

Clawson reported that “The media has embraced the claim that free speech means freedom to commit crimes.” McCarter explained that a tax cut package for rich people was stopped in the House by Republicans. Yeah, that’s right. The 2017 Tax Scam capped the federal deduction for state and local taxes down to $10K. It was to punish people in blue states where state and local property taxes are higher. Getting taxes above that amount only happens to rich people. Republicans in blue state districts want that cap removed. Republican leadership want to keep the cap for the same reason they added it in 2017.

So the one thing that Republicans could long be counted on to accomplish—tax cuts for the rich—is out of their reach because the cuts wouldn’t go to the right rich people. Those supposed moderates are blocking it, but not because they want more help for more people, and not because they want to use the real leverage they have in this closely divided Congress for good. They aren’t bucking leadership on the stuff that is so damaging and polarizing: the abortion bans, the LGBTQ persecution, the book bans.

They also voted for all the poison culture war pills in the defense authorization. So don’t think of them as the good guys. Stephen Wolf of Kos Elections reminded us of the six swing states in the 2020 election. They were ripe for election subversion (and we certainly saw attempts in Michigan). As Wolf explains, with the official swearing in of Janet Protaseiwicz onto the Wisconsin Supreme Court, four of the six – Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – now have Democrat or progressive majorities in their high courts. And they will be able to protect elections. Jeff Sharlet wrote the book The Undertow about our current Slow Civil War. Before I wrote about it I lost access to his original thread describing the book and haven’t yet found it in the Thread Reader. I did find other threads he’s also tagged with Undertow and here are excerpts from one discussing trans kids.

Childhood—the freedom to discover who you are—is under attack. Parents & kids usually go together. So if you’re speaking of “parents’ rights,” whose rights are you *not* mentioning? Yeah. Kids. “Parents’ rights” replaces kids’ right to figure out who they are w/ parents’ “rights” to tell them who they must be. Kids don’t always understand when adults are being passive aggressive. But they feel it. That’s the gaslighting. Adults taking advantage of kids’ limited experience to attack them & then tell them it’s for their own good & if they feel bad they’re defective. This is worst—potentially deadly—for trans kids. But even cishet kids are being gaslighted by “parents’ rights.” The policing of their bodies, always too much, has escalated. They’re being taught to look at other kids with suspicion. They’re being made complicit in hate.

A couple cartoons from the comments of a pundit roundup for Kos. I had written about Justice Alito’s latest pronouncements.. Drew Sheneman drew Alito saying:

Congress has no authority over the court. Who do they think they are, billionaires?

Randy Bish posted a cartoon with a guy saying:

Throughout history, whenever anyone thought of a traitor, my name was always the first to come up. And now, it appears that I’m being replaced by some orange charlatan.”

That guy is labeled “Benedict Arnold.”