[ Posted Friday, July 29th, 2022 – 17:18 UTC ]
That title, of course, is intended as a spoof of what some consider the most overused go-to headline in the Washington punditocracy's toolbox: "Democrats In Disarray!" For once, the absolute opposite seems to be true, and it is so glaringly obvious that even the political press's pooh-bahs have had to admit it (full credit where it is due: we got the title from a Politico article). Because Senator Joe Manchin (of all people!) just turned a very rainy day into some beautiful sunshine.
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[ Posted Monday, July 25th, 2022 – 15:56 UTC ]
Today Representative Elaine Luria tweeted out what could be called a deleted scene from the video testimony presented at the most-recent House Select Committee hearing. This new video shows more of Donald Trump's edits to the speech that his aides prepared for him to give on January 7th, the day after the failed insurrection attempt. From the Washington Post report today:
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[ Posted Friday, July 22nd, 2022 – 16:10 UTC ]
Initially, tonight's hearing by the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6th was supposed to be the final hearing. That was before all the rest of the hearings caused so many other witnesses and tangential stories to come out of the woodwork. Nevertheless, it was indeed (as I wrote yesterday) the "season finale" of the summer miniseries of televised hearings. The committee is now promising to reconvene and hold more public hearings in September, to cover all the new information. The committee will stay busy during the August congressional break, digging into all the new evidence and witnesses who have come forward, and then they'll report back afterwards to the public. So there's all that to look forward to....
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[ Posted Thursday, July 21st, 2022 – 16:16 UTC ]
I write this just before the start of the season finale of "House Select Committee Investigates January 6th" -- which I should mention is not actually the title of a television miniseries, as these hearings are not being presented for entertainment purposes. They are being presented for informational purposes, because every American deserves to know what happened before, during, and after that dark day in American history. They are hours-long extended public service announcements, in other words. Very sober proceedings exposing very serious crimes and misdemeanors -- including, tonight, dereliction of duty by the country's commander-in-chief.
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[ Posted Friday, July 15th, 2022 – 17:51 UTC ]
And so, once again, we find ourselves in a very familiar place. Senator Joe Manchin has just yanked the rug out from under the lion's share of what he was supposedly negotiating in good faith with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (and the entire rest of the Democratic Party). Manchin let it be known that two of the biggest things he himself had said he was going to strongly support (in the pared-down version of President Joe Biden's Build Back Better plan) were suddenly verboten and off the table. In other words, Joe Manchin successfully wasted everyone's time -- once again -- for months on end.
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[ Posted Tuesday, July 12th, 2022 – 17:47 UTC ]
After an extended break (which was interrupted by the unplanned sixth of these live hearings), the House Select Committee to Investigate January 6th reconvened today for the seventh such hearing. Today's hearing centered around the violent rightwing militia groups that attacked the United States Capitol, and how they were encouraged to do so by Donald Trump.
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[ Posted Monday, July 11th, 2022 – 16:07 UTC ]
After a holiday break, the House Select Committee on January 6th will reconvene their public hearing schedule tomorrow, at 1:00 P.M. Eastern time. The only thing they've revealed (as of this writing) is that tomorrow's testimony will focus on the role played by right-wing militias such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and will also highlight Donald Trump's actions (and, more importantly, inaction) on January 6th. No witness lists have been made public yet, so we might have to wait until tomorrow to even know who will be there (although there is already plenty of in-depth media speculation about who could show up).
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[ Posted Friday, July 8th, 2022 – 16:59 UTC ]
President Joe Biden capped off a pretty good week with a pretty good speech today, given right before he signed an executive order to do what he could to protect women's rights. Biden did so, of course, in response to the "extreme" Supreme Court decision which overturned Roe v. Wade.
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[ Posted Friday, July 1st, 2022 – 16:56 UTC ]
The two biggest political topics of the past week were the continuing outrages piling up from both the Supreme Court and the House Select Committee on January 6th.
On Tuesday, a young aide who worked for Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, appeared in a surprise House committee hearing. The previous week, the committee had let it be known that there would be no hearings over the two-week Independence Day break. But a day beforehand, a new hearing was announced without fanfare and without any details.
The witness who appeared, Cassidy Hutchinson, had apparently been getting threatening messages from those still surrounding Donald Trump. They read like mob bosses leaning on a witness who might spill the beans:
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[ Posted Wednesday, June 29th, 2022 – 16:19 UTC ]
There is a nationwide audience for the revelations that keeping coming forth from the House Select Committee on January 6th, but the most important audience these hearings really have is Attorney General Merrick Garland (and all the people in the Department of Justice who have also been investigating the insurrection attempt). What will Garland do when the hearings conclude and (a few months later) when the committee's final report is publicly issued?
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