The News Near and Far is making me feel bipolar
Connecting the dots is in full swing in DC.
- Rudy Giuliani is likely to lose his right to practice law in DC for pushing the baseless conspiracy theory in court. He’s already lost the right to practice law in his home state of New York.
- Roger Stone and Alex Jones and Ali Alexander are key Trump mooks coordinating with the seditionist groups and likely to face prosecution. Dr. Marcy Wheeler is a brilliant sleuth in connecting the unspoken dots of DOJ investigations.
- Trump’s Cabinet secretaries discussed removing him from office after the insurrection effort. Vice President Pence nixed that idea. Trump’s adviser, John Eastman, pushed hard to get Pence to agree to his cockamamie and illegal scheme to steal the election from the majority of voters and states. Pence’s lawyer pushed back harder and finally called Eastman’s scheme ‘bullshit’.
- Trump’s chief law enforcement officer, Attorney General Bill Barr, publicly said he’d seen no evidence of significant voter fraud and resigned before the insurrection, unwilling to promote the lie. Ivanka Trump accepted Barr’s verdict and testified as much before the January 6th committee. Her father countered yesterday, indicating she was out of the loop and wasn’t monitoring the election results.
Forthcoming: the next public hearing comes Monday. The schedule’s not set after that though it’s been indicated they could have up to three hearings each week throughout June. While it’s clear the committee has enough testimony to encourage the DOJ to indict the ex-President, I remain highly skeptical that federal criminal charges will be filed. That’s because (a) our justice system is weighted against the middle class and poor with little precedent for prosecuting billionaires, (b) the DOJ is aware such prosecution could provoke further violence from radical pro-Trump extremists, and with Ginni Thomas helping further the effort to steal the election for Trump, the DOJ knows court challenges to the Supreme Court are likely to fail.
Marchers in cities across the country today are advocating for more sensible gun regulations. Yesterday the president of Gun Owners for Responsible Ownership and others spoke out about the difficulty of defining what guns and ammo should be restricted. But he indicated responsible gun owners calling for sensible regulations outnumbered the extremists the NRA speaks for.
Kemp says he is not for an all-out ban of AR-15-type rifles, but said the weapon should fall under the National Firearms Act, which places limits on ownership of "shotguns and rifles having barrels less than 18 inches in length, certain firearms described as 'any other weapons,' machine guns, and firearm mufflers and silencers."
Having AR-15-style weapons covered under the NFA, would provide "an incredibly detailed, thorough background check at a higher cost," Kemp said. "You never hear machine guns being used in shootings, rarely, nor silencers," he added.
He also said the country should put back in place the Federal Assault Weapons Ban enacted in 1994 and lasted 10 years, which covered the AR-15.
"We know the ban worked because we saw less shootings involving those types of weapons," he said of that period.
Kemp expressed his frustration at what he called, "gun advocate extremists." "They don't like having to do the background check. They don't like not being able to carry weapons wherever they want. They don't like the process of having to get a concealed carry permit," he said.
"[They] don't believe there should be any restrictions on the types of ammunition you can buy, or … armor piercing … [they] feel like there shouldn't be any restrictions since the Second Amendment is how we founded the country. It's my God-given right. Well, God didn't write the Constitution, nor amendments," he added.
The sunny forecasts for the Ukrainian resistance have ended as the new Russian strategies and far greater firepower are proving superior. It doesn’t appear the US and NATO allies are getting fresh ammo and weapons to Ukraine fast enough. But Russia is concentrating its efforts on a few key areas as the previous overbroad assault spread their resources too thin.
So parts of Ukraine are being chipped away and it looks like that could continue for many months ahead. It’s sad and a bit infuriating that some citizens here are wholly supportive of Putin’s war.
Anthony Perry is a name worth remembering. He received an unexpected reward for acting selflessly in an emergency, while others were busy videoing a person in imminent danger of dying. I make it a point to quickly forget the names of mass shooters - as they are people not worth remembering by anyone. But it’s equally important to remember the names of people who step up to do the right thing.
Thank you for ending with that last hopeful story (although reading about how people on the platform were recording with their cameras rather than helping was a little infuriating). So, semi-hopeful, at least. And Peter and Kate are always worthwhile.