Liz Cheney Speech in the Congress of the United States

Sadly few people were there to hear Liz Cheney’s speech. Her well written and spoken speech should be a model for others who cherish this democratic republic.

As the story was told and retold on the House floor, Ben Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention in 1787, when someone shouted out, “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?”

To which Franklin supposedly responded, with a rejoinder at once witty and ominous: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

A Nation of Haters

I am back to this topic again because it keeps coming up in the news. It is necessary for me to remind you that HATE is alive and well in America.

The sickening hatred of all Non-White Christian Americans has never been worse than it is today. They are racists. (Racist definition: a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.)

When the president of the United States promotes hatred for minorities it provides the haters with the encouragement they crave.

“You Will Not Replace Us” is a white supremacist slogan that became popular in early 2017, as did its acronym version, YWNRU. The slogan appeared on white supremacist flyers, banners and graffiti in a variety of places in the first six months of 2017, gaining wider attention when white supremacists used the phrase at several rallies held in Charlottesville, Virginia, culminating in the large and violent Unite the Right event in August 2017. Many in that march were chanting “Jews will not replace us.”

Now the focus is on Asian Americans. The hate against them was promoted by former president Donald Trump who called the COVD-19 virus the China virus. The haters have seen that as a signal to attack them.

The history of hate of Asian Americans is not new. The Chinese Exclusion Act was a United States federal law signed by President Chester A. Arthur on May 6, 1882, prohibiting all immigration of Chinese laborers.

A total of 11,507 people of German ancestry were interned during war II, comprising 36.1% of the total internments under the US Justice Department’s Enemy Alien Control Program. By contrast, an estimated 110,000–120,000 Japanese-Americans were forcibly relocated from the West Coast and incarcerated in internment camps run by the US War Department’s War Relocation Authority.

2018 marked an anniversary if a massacre of 15 Mexicans in el Paso, Texas. The slaughter, which was carried out by white Texas Rangers, US soldiers, and local vigilantes, was justified by labeling the Mexican American families “bandits” and criminals. It wouldn’t be the las.t On The August 3, 2019 a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, which left 22 people dead, appeared to be the deadliest terror attack and hate crime against Latinos in recent American history.

The Pittsburgh synagogue shooting was a mass shooting that took place on October 27, 2018, at the Tree of Life – Or L’Simcha Congregation in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

The Charleston church shooting (also known as the Charleston church massacre)^[6][7][8] was a mass shooting on June 17, 2015, in Charleston, South Carolina, in which nine African Americans were killed during a Bible study at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Dylann Roof, the killer, was a 21-year-old white supremacist, had attended the Bible study before he committed the shooting. He was found to have targeted members of this church because of its history and stature.

President Joe Biden may have empathy for those who have been attacked but it will take more than showing compassion to alter the hate in so many hearts.

The United States is at War

The fear of domestic terrorists who want to bring down the United States government is real. The House of Representatives has canceled their Thursday March 4 session because there is credible evidence that there will be an attack on the Capitol building.

U.S. Capitol Police officials said Wednesday they have “obtained intelligence that shows a possible plot to breach the Capitol by an identified militia group on Thursday, March 4” — the date that far-right conspiracy theorists believe former President Donald Trump will return to power.

There are discredited internet conspiracy theories that allege the world is run by a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles. Followers of the fringe movement believe that the 2020 U.S. presidential election was stolen from Trump, who has pushed baseless claims of voter fraud along with his allies.

QAnon followers also believed that Trump would not actually leave office on Inauguration Day but rather would declare martial law, announce mass arrests of Democrats and stop Joe Biden from becoming president. When that didn’t happen, the date was moved from Jan. 20 to March 4.

There are many among the conspiracy groups who believe Ulysses S. Grant was the last legal president of the United States because he was the last president inaugurated on March 4. That is the focus on March 4 as the day that Donald Trump will be inaugurated for a second term as the 19th president. I do not know how the conspiracy people explain the four years that Trump was president. There is no reasonable explanation. The conspiracy theorists have yet to square the facts that is probably because they don’t want to look at reality.

Those of you who think this is all nonsense should look at what happened on January 6 at the Capitol. This is the start of a war. January 6 was the first attack. There will be more attacks if the perpetrators are unsuccessful on March 4.

Trump Charged with “inciting violence”

It really does not make any difference what anyone says about the incitement on January 6. Most Republican senators are not going to vote a guilty verdict. The comments that the Republican Party is now the Trump Party appears accurate. Trump’s inexplicable hold over the GOP is almost 100%.

But just for the discussion what is incitement, exactly? The dictionary definition of “incite,” according to Merriam-Webster, is simple: “to move to action : stir up : spur on : urge on.” Trump clearly did that, when he directed his supporters to march toward Capitol Hill from a rally held under the “Stop the Steal” banner.

But there’s a much more detailed definition in US law, which is:

“…the term ‘to incite a riot’, or ‘to organize, promote, encourage, participate in, or carry on a riot”, includes, but is not limited to, urging or instigating other persons to riot, but shall not be deemed to mean the mere oral or written (1) advocacy of ideas or (2) expression of belief, not involving advocacy of any act or acts of violence or assertion of the rightness of, or the right to commit, any such act or acts.”

Federal courts said Trump did not incite a mob back in 2016 when he told supporters to turn on protesters, who later sued the President.

The New York Times has a thorough examination of how courts have looked upon “incitement.” Read that here.

The history of “incitement”: Oliver Wendell Holmes, the First Amendment-protecting Supreme Court justice who pushed the idea that a person can’t shout fire in a crowded theater, built the “clear and present danger” test for speech. He argued Congress could only regulate speech when it represented a “present danger of immediate evil or an intent to bring it about.”

More recently, the Supreme Court has protected all sorts of speech, like flag burning, crude political hyperbole and, importantly in this instance is Brandenburg v. Ohio, which allows advocating crime as long as it doesn’t incite imminent lawlessness.

Trump’s legal team repeatedly cited that case in a legal brief laying out their free speech-focused defense.

Most of this information is from CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf

The Exodus – Can the GOP Survive?

Angry and vindictive, Donald Trump has destroyed the Republican Party. As an independent I want to see at least two functioning political parties. That arrangement ensures that extremists do not pull the nation in a direction that does not reflect the wishes and values of most people. His positions do not reflect the historic conservative views that many Americans appreciate. He used Republican positions when they suited him. He has made the Republican Party a reflection of his opinions. Trump delights in having the support of fringe groups like QAnon and right wing militia groups and anti-Semitic hate groups that support conspiracy theories.

The GOP has been the party of big business and free trade. During the 20th and 21st centuries the party came to be associated with laissez-faire capitalism, low taxes, and conservative social policies. The modern Republican Party supports states’ rights against the power of the federal government in most cases, and it opposes the federal regulation of traditionally state and local matters, such as policing and education. The Republicans advocate reduced taxes as a means of stimulating the economy and advancing individual economic freedom. They tend to oppose extensive government regulation of the economy, government-funded social programs, affirmative action, and policies aimed at strengthening the rights of workers.

“There’s Nothing Left’: Why Thousands of Republicans Are Leaving the Party,” NYT: “An analysis of January voting records by The New York Times found that nearly 140,000 Republicans had quit the party in 25 states that had readily available data (19 states do not have registration by party). Voting experts said the data indicated a stronger-than-usual flight from a political party after a presidential election, as well as the potential start of a damaging period for G.O.P. registrations as voters recoil from the Capitol violence and its fallout.

“The biggest spikes in Republicans leaving the party came in the days after Jan. 6, especially in California, where there were 1,020 Republican changes on Jan. 5 — and then 3,243 on Jan. 7. In Arizona, there were 233 Republican changes in the first five days of January, and 3,317 in the next week. Most of the Republicans in these states and others switched to unaffiliated status” says Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations.

@RichardHaass: “I changed my registration to ‘no party affiliation’ after 40 years. I worked for Reagan & Bush 41 & 43. But today’s Rep Party no longer embraces the policies & principles that led me to join it. To paraphrase Ronald Reagan, I didn’t leave the Republican Party; the Party left me.”

Liz Cheney’s Blockbuster Fox News Interview

Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney sat for an interview with “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace in which she made clear that she has no plans of backing off her criticism of former President Donald Trump.

Her unwavering support of the rule of law and her allegiance to the constitution is not a political party issue. Every American should honor that belief. Her refusal to disavow conspiracy theories suggested by QAnon or other conspiracy groups will bring her respect from her political opponents.

Here were the key points she made to Wallace as identified by CNN’s Chris Cillizza. Her words provide the justification for finding Donald Trump guilty of the the charge of inciting a riot.

1. “The oath that I took to the Constitution compelled me to vote for impeachment and it doesn’t bend to partisanship, it doesn’t bend to political pressure. It’s the most important oath that we take.”

2. “I think, you know, that people in the party are mistaken. They believe that BLM and Antifa were behind what happened here at the Capitol. It’s just simply not the case, not true and we’re going to have a lot of work we have to do.”

3. “The extent to which the president, President Trump, for months leading up to January 6 spread the notion that the election had been stolen or that the election was rigged was a lie and people need to understand that. We need to make sure that we as Republicans are the party of truth that we are being honest about what really did happen in 2020 so we actually have a chance to win in 2022 and win the White House back in 2024.”

4. “I think this vote and conference made very clear, we are the party of Lincoln, we are not the party of QAnon or anti-Semitism or Holocaust deniers, or white supremacy or conspiracy theories. That’s not who we are.”

5. “People will want to know exactly what the president was doing. They want to know, for example, whether the tweet he sent out calling Vice President Pence a coward while the attack was underway, whether that tweet, for example, was a premeditated effort to provoke violence. There are a lot of questions that have to be answered and there will be many, many criminal investigations looking at every aspect of this and everyone who was involved, as there should be.”

6. “We have never seen that kind of an assault by a president of the United States on another branch of government and that can never happen again.”

7. “What we already know does constitute the gravest violation of his oath of office by any president in the history of the country, and this is not something that we can simply look past or pretend didn’t happen or try to move on. We’ve got to make sure this never happens again.”

8. “So it should not have gotten to the point that it did. I don’t believe the Democrats have any business determining who from the Republicans sit on committees, but we should have dealt with it ourselves.”

9. “Somebody who has provoked an attack on the United States Capitol to prevent the counting of electoral votes, which resulted in five people dying, who refused to stand up immediately when he was asked and stop the violence, that — that is a person who does not have a role as a leader of our party going forward.”

10. “We have to make sure that we are able to convey to the American voters, we are the party of responsibility, we are the party of truth, that we actually can be trusted to handle the challenges this nation faces like Covid, and that’s going to require us to focus on substance and policy and issues going forward but we should not be embracing the former president.”

The Meaning of “Fight like Hell”

Donald Trump exhorted his followers to “fight like hell” before they swarmed the Capitol on January 6. What did Trump mean? A quote from his speech that day: “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

It appears the rioters chose to hear “fight like hell” over “peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Although we are just more than a month into the 117th Congress, Richard Shelby is the fourth GOP senator to say he won’t run for reelection — joining Sens. Pat Toomey (Pennsylvania), Richard Burr (North Carolina) and Rob Portman (Ohio) on the sidelines. (By contrast, no Democratic senators have announced their retirement at this point.)

With the exception of Shelby who is 86 years old. Toomey is 59 years old. Burr is 65 years old. Portman is 65 years old. Those three are relatively young senators. The average age of senators is 63.

So with the exception of Shelby what is the motivation for their decision not to run for re-election?

If all four of these men vote “not guilty” in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump they have decided to move on to other interests than serving in the senate.

Which take precedent? Political party or defending the constitution?

Arcane – The Filibuster

The filibuster is Unfathomable, and Obscure. It is complicated and therefore understood or known by only a few people.

Filibuster is a tactic used in the United States Senate to prevent a measure from being brought to a vote by means of obstruction. The most common form occurs when one or more senators attempt to delay or block a vote on a bill by extending debate on the measure.

The Senate can overcome a filibuster if it invokes cloture — a vote by 60 members of the Senate to place a 30-hour time limit on consideration of a bill or other matter.

Cloture, adopted as Rule 22 in 1917, used to require a two-thirds majority vote. However, due to the difficulty of obtaining a two-thirds vote, the Senate changed the rule in 1975 and reduced the number of votes required to three-fifths (or 60).

In 2005 Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist threatened to use the nuclear option to end Democratic-led filibusters of judicial nominees submitted by President George W. Bush. And in July 2013, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid threatened its use to stop Republicans from filibustering President Barack Obama’s executive-branch nominees.

Senators have never successfully made good on their threat to invoke the nuclear option and bring an end to the filibuster, but if they did, it could have huge consequences for the future of the Senate and the ability to keep the majority in check.

In November 2013, Senate Democrats led by Harry Reid used the nuclear option to eliminate the 60-vote rule on executive branch nominations and federal judicial appointments. In April 2017, Senate Republicans led by Mitch McConnell extended the nuclear option to Supreme Court nominations in order to end debate on the nomination of Neil Gorsuch.^[2]^[3]^{McConnell loves the filibuster when it suits his purpose.}

Filibuster is called respect for the minority. And this is called democracy in America.