Month: August 2018

It’s who she is

by digby

Apparently, Congressional representative Barbara Comstock is getting down and dirty in her race in Virginia:

Here’s why political consultants are (mostly) dumb: they polled “do you think ms-13 is dangerous and threatening” and OF COURSE a huge majority of voters said yes. (do i still have to tell you this is a thread) https://t.co/2VwUKdCN3P

— Aleigha Cavalier (@aleighacavalier) August 9, 2018

So, congrats @BarbaraComstock, you’re not only going to lose, but now you’ll not only go down as a shill for the @NRA, but also someone who’d stoop to gross, cheap, and ill-conceived political tactics just like @GillespieForVA.

— Aleigha Cavalier (@aleighacavalier) August 9, 2018

Barbara Comstock has been trying to reinvent herself as some kind of moderate, common sense Republican. She is not. She’s a professional character assassin. None of that is against her will.

If you don’t believe me, read this.

As voters turn their attention toward the coming presidential election, an abiding question from the previous one frustrates Democrats: How is it, they wonder, that Al Gore told small fibs and was branded a liar while George W. Bush told big ones and was elected President? Gore’s many exaggerations may have been foolish—that he had somehow invented the Internet, that he grew up on a Tennessee farm, and so on. But surely, this line of thinking goes, they paled alongside Bush’s audacious claim that he could cut taxes by $1.3 trillion, effortlessly privatize Social Security, and still balance the budget.

A large part of the answer can be found in a BBC documentary titled Digging the Dirt, which was filmed during the 2000 campaign and never aired in the United States. The film centers on a team of Republican opposition researchers —a species that has existed in politics for eons but had recently undergone an evolutionary leap. From deep within the Republican National Committee headquarters the BBC tracked the efforts of this team, whose job it was to discredit and destroy Al Gore.

Comstock ran that operation. And it was ugly.

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Ingraham’s crusade

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

The big earthquake of the 2018 primary season so far has been the unseating of powerful member of the Democratic House leader Joe Crowley by Alexandria Ocasio-Ortez in NY. This isn’t a common occurrence, needless to say, but it does happen from time to time, most recently four years ago when an obscure economics professor named David Brat unseated GOP House leader and “young gun” Eric Cantor of Virginia. At the time, much of the chattering class chalked the defeat up to “all politics is local” saying that Cantor had neglected the district. That analysis was wrong. Brat won because of one very hot issue that was boiling over in the right wing media: immigration.

The right wing star most responsible for pushing that issue into the GOP mainstream was talk radio host Laura Ingraham. She even went to the district to campaign for Brat, solely on the basis of his hardcore stance against the central American kids who were in the news at the time for gathering at the border seeking asylum.

Ingraham was on a tear during that crisis, ranting daily about the ungrateful little wretches coming to our sacred borders asking for an undeserved handout. When she heard that some of these refugees weren’t taking to the food in their detention centers she described them as spoiled brats and mocked them by playing an old TV commercial with the slogan “yo qiero Taco Bell?”.  She made this declaration to the kids themselves:

“Oh no you won’t. This is our country… Our borders matter to us. Our way of life and our culture matter to us. Our jobs and our wages matter to us. No you won’t.”

During this period Donald Trump was seriously considering jumping into the presidential election and he had his friend Roger Stone’s hired hand, Sam Nunberg, listen to thousands of hours of talk radio and report back to him about what they were talking about. He didn’t have any strong feelings about immigration at the time but when he got a strong response at the conservative CPAC gathering that year for saying “we either have borders or we don’t,” he was all in. He rode that anti-immigration wave all the way to the White House.

Meanwhile, the Republican establishment had been trying to tamp down this growing xenophobia because it had been obvious for a while that the problem these talk radio zealots were accusing the Democrats of trying to solve by encouraging immigration was far more applicable to their own party. The 2012 “autopsy” made it very clear that the GOP was in grave danger of becoming an all white party in a country that was becoming less and less white. The lesson that the activists like Ingraham took from that was to try to reverse the trend and rid the country of as many people of color as possible. And they were joined by a faction in the US congress led by the man who would become one of Trump’s earliest supporters, Senator Jeff Sessions.

In 2015, he and his aide, now Senior White House adviser, Stephen Miller, drafted a document that laid out a plan to end not only illegal immigration but put a stop to all legal immigration as well, arguing that the country could not “absorb” any more people from other cultures. It pointed to the 1924 Immigration Act, which curbed immigration of most non-whites, Catholics, Jews, Arabs, southern Italians for several decades, as its model.

From the moment Sessions signed on with Trump (and subsequently submitted to Trump’s ongoing ritual humiliation of him for recusing himself from the Russia investigation) it has been clear that he did so because he saw the best opportunity he’s ever had to advance this nativist and racist agenda.

The Attorney General has no greater supporter in that effort than Laura Ingraham who caused some big ripples again this week with a xenophobic rant on her Fox News show in which she attacked both legal and illegal immigration. It was called “The left’s effort to remake America”:

Laura Ingraham: “The America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore. Massive demographic changes have been foisted on the American people, and they are changes that none of us ever voted for, and most of us don’t like … this is related to both illegal and legal immigration” pic.twitter.com/s5G2qIY4W0

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) August 9, 2018

She went on to describe lurid details of crimes committed by undocumented immigrants in much the same language President Trump commonly uses to paint them as deviant and subhuman. And then she asked the president to give an address to the nation from the Oval Office:

The president can be so persuasive, so give us the whole truth, Mr. President, the good, the bad, and yes, the uncomfortable. This is a national emergency and he must demand that Congress act now. There is something slipping away in this country and it’s not about race or ethnicity. It’s what was once a common understanding by both parties that American citizenship is a privilege, and one that at a minimum requires respect for the rule of law and loyalty to our constitution.

First, it is not a national emergency. Border crossings are far below what they were a decade ago. And this president is the last person on earth to make a case for the rule of law and loyalty to the constitution since he demonstrates on a daily basis that he has no respect for the first or even a rudimentary understanding of the second.

Nonetheless, this policy is being implemented. The Muslim ban, ICE deportations and the horrifying separation of families at the border are just the beginning.  NBC news reported this week that Trump’s unctuous factotum Stephen Miller has written a proposal to “make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare.” The purpose is to reduce the number of immigrants who obtain citizenship and, therefore, the right to vote. That’s what’s known as a “win-win” in the Trump administration.

Yesterday it was announced that Melania Trump’s parents got in just under the wire. Sponsored by their daughter and her husband under the much maligned “family migration” system they became US citizens. It’s unknown just what “merit” the president believes they have that qualifies them under his new proposals but one can’t help but notice that they are Caucasian so Laura Ingraham no doubt has little concern that they will be polluting American culture like those little children at the border.

“Turn the plane around”
by Tom Sullivan

The Trump administration’s rush to deport as many immigrants as possible as swiftly as possible met with a swift kick from a federal judge Thursday (NPR):

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., has threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen in contempt of court if they fail to return to the U.S. a mother and daughter seeking asylum. The immigrants were deported ahead of a scheduled hearing with the court on Thursday.

A transcript of Thursday’s hearing shows U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan angry after being told the asylum-seekers had been deported and were on a plane out of the U.S. even while a government attorney was telling him they wouldn’t be deported before midnight.

“This is pretty outrageous,” Sullivan said, “Somebody in pursuit of justice in a United States court is just — is spirited away while her attorneys are arguing for justice for her?”

During a court recess, ACLU lawyers for a woman known in court filings as Carmen received word the woman and her child had already been placed on plane to El Salvador.

“I’m not happy about this at all,” Sullivan continued. “This is not acceptable.” Sullivan issued an order blocking the removal of eight more immigrants from the same lawsuit and ordered federal officials to “turn the plane around,” the Washington Post reports:

“In compliance with the court’s order, upon arrival in El Salvador, the plaintiffs did not disembark and were promptly returned to the United States,” a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official said Thursday evening.

Eunice Lee, who is co-counsel for the plaintiffs in the case and co-legal director at the University of California at Hastings’s Center for Gender and Refugee Studies, said: “It must have been absolutely terrifying for them to think they would be returning to a country where they raised very credible claims of persecution and death. It’s outrageous to me that while we were working around the clock, filing briefings for this case’s early morning hearing, that people in the government were actively arranging for Carmen’s deportation.”

The ACLU issued a statement on the proceedings:

Our clients on that deportation flight, Carmen* and her daughter, fled El Salvador to escape two decades of horrific sexual abuse by her husband and death threats from a violent gang. Carmen was repeatedly raped, stalked, and threatened with death by her abusive husband, even when they were living apart. In June 2018, she and her daughter escaped, seeking asylum in the United States. Despite asylum officers finding that their accounts were truthful, they were ultimately denied them asylum protection because they did not have a “credible fear of persecution.”

This disconnect is the direct result of new policies issued by Attorney General Jeff Sessions that wrongly instruct asylum officers to deny whole categories of asylum claims, specifically gutting protections for immigrants fleeing domestic violence and gang brutality.

Sessions has now characterized these types of persecution as insufficient to invoke asylum protections, despite decades of settled domestic and international law which recognize gender-based persecution as a basis for asylum. Federal courts have also recognized asylum claims in a variety of circumstances involving gang brutality.

Seeking asylum is not a crime. It is protected under U.S. and international law. From the introduction to the CONVENTION RELATING TO THE STATUS OF REFUGEES:

The Convention further stipulates that, subject to specific exceptions, refugees should not be penalized for their illegal entry or stay. This recognizes that the seeking of asylum can require refugees to breach immigration rules. Prohibited penalties might include being charged with immigration or criminal offences relating to the seeking of asylum, or being arbitrarily detained purely on the basis of seeking asylum. Importantly, the Convention contains various safeguards against the expulsion of refugees. The principle of nonrefoulement is so fundamental that no reservations or derogations may be made to it. It provides that no one shall expel or return (“refouler”) a refugee against his or her will, in any manner whatsoever, to a territory where he or she fears threats to life or freedom.

Not that we bother with niceties like adhering to international law anymore. (Or to any other kind of law, for that matter.)

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Fahrenheit 11/9

by digby

This looks like something to look forward to:

Here’s the exclusive trailer for Michael Moore’s (@MMFlint) newest documentary “Fahrenheit 11/9.” It’s in theaters Sept. 21. pic.twitter.com/eHLPy1J9o4

— HuffPost (@HuffPost) August 9, 2018

He’s speaking to the choir of course. But the choir needs to be singing loudly — and voting — so this kind of thing is useful.

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Yes, it is happening here

by digby

I know it’s considered to be the very height of middle-aged Resistance hysteria to be concerned about Trump and impending fascism. But E.J. Dionne goes there today and I think it’s a compelling case:

How do democratic countries get to the point where they give up on self-rule? Under what circumstances do demagogues capture large audiences through irrational, emotional appeals unmoored from fact, logic or morality? When do politicians responsible for maintaining a democratic system surrender to dictators? 

These questions are more pertinent to us in the early 21st century than we would wish. During the 1990s, democracy was thought to be on the march. Now, we worry that the international tide is turning toward autocracy and authoritarianism. This is why Benjamin Carter Hett’s “The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic” should join your summer reading list. 

Hett is a professor of history at Hunter College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. He joins the company of distinguished scholars, notably Richard J. Evans and Ian Kershaw, who have shed light on the social and political forces that brought a murderous regime to life through a democratic system. 

But if this is an oft-told tragic tale, Hett’s brisk and lucid study offers compelling new perspectives inspired by current threats to free societies around the world. 

“In each era, we see the past differently, according to how we see ourselves and our own experiences,” Hett writes. “One era will notice things about the past that another will not. This is one reason why history is, and has to be, constantly rewritten.” 

It is both eerie and enlightening how much of Hett’s account rings true in our time. Consider this declaration from Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler’s chief propagandist: “Certainly we want to build a wall, a protective wall.” There is this dolorous observation from the socialist Ernst Toller: “The people are tired of reason, tired of thought and reflection. They ask, what has reason done for us in the last few years, what good have insights and knowledge done us.” 

As Hett notes, “The key to understanding why many Germans supported [Hitler] lies in the Nazis’ rejection of a rational, factual world. . . . Hitler could give voice to this flight from reality as could no other German politician of his time.” 

The larger story he tells resonates, too. Hett argues the Nazi movement was “a response to an overwhelming triumph of global liberal capitalism at the end of the Great War” and that the logic of a chaotic moment “pushed opponents of austerity to become opponents of liberal democracy as well.” The Nazi movement was rooted in anti-Semitism, bigotry and exclusion. But it also exploited economic discontent bred by orthodox economic policies that deepened the pain of the Depression. 

Conservatives everywhere should ponder the choices made by the German establishment, including big business, the military, culturally traditional Protestants and big landowners. They all helped bring Hitler to power because they hated the left — including the moderate Social Democrats, the backbone of the Weimar Republic — more than they loved republican government and political freedom. 

Hett writes that members of “the conservative establishment . . . could have stopped Hitler in his tracks. Instead, they chose to use him, although the Nazi-conservative alliance was always an awkward one.” He notes at another point: “Democracy was not working for them precisely because their interests could not attract the support of a majority, even a large plurality, of voters.”
The politicians and power brokers who helped Hitler become chancellor believed they could deploy him to destroy the left, but also keep him under control. They achieved the first, but not the second. The consequences were catastrophic to those slaughtered in Hitler’s genocide, and to Germany as a whole. German conservatives had no desire to see their country pulverized by war and shrunken in size afterward. But their choices during the 1930s brought about exactly this outcome.

There is a reluctance to draw lessons from the Nazi experience because personal comparisons between contemporary politicians and Hitler are always a mistake. Hitler’s crimes are in a category of horror all their own. But this should not stop us from heeding the warnings of a political era that led to the collapse of freedom in Germany. Seeing it “as the result of a large protest movement colliding with complex patterns of elite self-interest, in a culture increasingly prone to aggressive mythmaking and irrationality . . . strips away the exotic and foreign look of swastika banners and goose-stepping Stormtroopers.” Hett adds: “Suddenly, the whole thing looks close and familiar.” 

He leaves out one important factor: left and center infighting. The communists and the liberals and the socialists were all obsessively fighting amongst themselves and consequently failed to form a solid resistance.

The good news is that this doesn’t seem to be happening here at the moment. For all of the Democratic party’s perpetual “disarray” it appears to be handling whatever ideological differences exist within it quite maturely and with a shared sense of purpose about the political crisis in which we find ourselves.

As Michelle Goldberg observed on MSNBC yesterday, a party that has a big majority with various factions is good problem to have in a democracy.

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“I want to apologize to the nation for my vote for him.”

by digby

CNN checked in with the Real Americans again. And this time there were a couple of dissenters. Via Daily Kos:

Camerota asked the panelists if they were just as excited today about their vote for Trump as they were on Election Day, three raised their hands (one said he might be even more enthused). But when asked who regretted their votes, two raised their hands. (When pressed, the final panelist, who hadn’t raised her hand, had very pointed things to say about his temperament.)

But one panelist in particular — a white male — was emphatic:

PANELIST: “In my mind, and the way I look at him now, I think he’s a monster, I think he’s a bigot. I think that he’s doing a lot of things to ruin people’s lives. … I think that he’s taking this country in the wrong direction, and it’s a terrifying time.”

CAMEROTA: “Was there a moment that turned you?”

PANELIST: “It was when I heard about what was going on on the southern border.”

CAMEROTA: “What part did you object to?”

PANELIST: “Well, the family separation, and the children in cages.”

Later, the same panelist called his vote for Trump “the biggest mistake I ever made.”

PANELIST: “I want to apologize to the nation for my vote for him. It was the wrong thing to do; it was the biggest mistake I ever made. Like I said, he is a racist.”

CAMEROTA: “Why do you believe he’s racist?”

PANELIST: “Why do I believe he’s racist? Look what happened in Puerto Rico. He said, ‘Oh, they want to just cry and, you know …’ They needed help. Just because they’re not white-skinned, he doesn’t want to go down there and help them out?”

Here’s the entire segment. It gets pretty heated.

I wonder if there are 77,000 people like him around the country? After all that’s all it took, across three states, to give Trump his pathetic electoral college victory. Plus Comey and Russians and misogyny. If so, Trump’s strategy of playing to the base won’t work.

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40 years later: Time to MOVE on?

By Dennis Hartley

Yesterday marked an auspicious anniversary. From the transcript of this morning’s Democracy Now broadcast:

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, today marks the 40th anniversary of a massive police operation in Philadelphia that culminated in the siege of the headquarters of a radical group known as MOVE, dedicated to black liberation and a back-to-nature lifestyle. The group was founded by John Africa, and all its members took the surname Africa. It was August 8th, 1978, when police tried to remove members of MOVE from their communal home with water cannons and battering rams, even as some continued to hide in the basement with children. This is how an eyewitness described the scene in the documentary MOVE: Confrontation in Philadelphia. The documentary was directed and produced by Karen Pomer and Jane Manicini.

EYEWITNESS: I was standing on the porch, 3207—3207 Pearl Street. And I could hear—well, it’s only about 20 feet from MOVE headquarters. I could hear voices. I could distinguish who was calling. You know, I could distinguish the kids crying. You know, very clearly, he was calling out for help.

REPORTER: And two minutes later, hoses are blasted at the house to flood MOVE members out of the basement.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: During the siege on MOVE’s house, gunfire was exchanged, and a police officer named James Ramp was killed. MOVE members were beaten by officers as they were forced out of the home, including Delbert Africa, who was unarmed and half-naked as TV news cameras filmed police grabbing him by his dreadlocks, throwing him to the ground and kicking and stomping him. Two years later, nine MOVE members were convicted of third-degree murder in Ramp’s death. They were sentenced to 30 to 100 years in prison and became the MOVE 9.

AMY GOODMAN: Philadelphia police attacks on MOVE would later reach new levels on May 13, 1985, when they surrounded the MOVE house, fired thousands of rounds of ammunition, then dropped a bomb on the house from a helicopter. The fire from the attack incinerated six adults and five children and destroyed not only the MOVE home, but 65 homes in the neighborhood.

Goodman goes on to conduct an interesting interview with Debbie Africa, the first of the “MOVE 9” to be released from prison, and her son Mike Jr., who was born soon after his mother was incarcerated (they were reunited this past June, when Debbie was paroled).

The rise and fall of the MOVE organization is one of the more fascinating (and tragic) chapters in America’s sociopolitical history. While I have not had a chance to see the aforementioned documentary, I did write a piece about the related 2013 documentary Let the Fire Burn, which seems apropos to repost today. The film is well worth seeking out.

[The following was originally posted on Hullabaloo on December 7, 2013)]

While obscured in public memory by the (relatively) more “recent” 1993 Branch Davidian siege in Waco, the eerily similar demise of the Philadelphia-based MOVE organization 8 years earlier was no less tragic on a human level, nor any less disconcerting in its ominous sociopolitical implications.

In an enlightening new documentary called Let the Fire Burn, director Jason Osder has parsed a trove of archival “live-at-the-scene” TV reports, deposition videos, law enforcement surveillance footage, and other sundry “found” footage (much of it previously unseen by the general public) and created a tight narrative that plays like an edge-of-your-seat political thriller.

Depending upon whom you might ask, MOVE was an “organization”, a “religious cult”, a “radical group”, or all of the above. The biggest question in my mind (and one the film doesn’t necessarily delve into) is whether it was another example of psychotic entelechy. So what is “psychotic entelechy”, exactly? Well, according to Stan A. Lindsay, the author of Psychotic Entelechy: The Dangers of Spiritual Gifts Theology, it would be “…the tendency of some individuals to be so desirous of fulfilling or bringing to perfection the implications of their terminologies that they engage in very hazardous or damaging actions”.

In the context of Lindsay’s book, he is expanding on some of the ideas laid down by literary theorist Kenneth Burke and applying them to possibly explain the self-destructive traits shared by the charismatic leaders of modern-day cults like The People’s Temple, Order of the Solar Tradition, Heaven’s Gate, and The Branch Davidians. He ponders whether all the tragic deaths that resulted should be labeled as “suicides, murders, or accidents”.

Whether MOVE belongs on that list is perhaps debatable, but in Osder’s film, you do get the sense that leader John Africa (an adapted surname that all followers used) was a charismatic person. He founded the group in 1972, based on an odd hodgepodge of tenets borrowed from Rastafarianism, Black Nationalism and green politics; with a Luddite view of technology (think ELF meets the Panthers…by way of the Amish). Toss in some vaguely egalitarian philosophies about communal living, and I think you’re there.

The group, which shared a town house, largely kept itself to itself (at least at first) but started to draw the attention of Philadelphia law enforcement when a number of their neighbors began expressing concern to the authorities about sanitation issues (the group built compost piles around their building using refuse and human excrement) and the distressing appearance of possible malnutrition among the children of the commune (some of the footage in the film would seem to bear out the latter claim).

The city engaged in a year-long bureaucratic standoff with MOVE over their refusal to vacate, culminating in an attempted forced removal turned-gun battle with police in 1978 that left one officer dead. Nine MOVE members were convicted of 3rd-degree murder and jailed.

The remaining members of MOVE relocated their HQ, but it didn’t take long to wear out their welcome with the new neighbors (John Africa’s strange, rambling political harangues, delivered via loudspeakers mounted outside the MOVE house certainly didn’t help). Africa and his followers began to develop a siege mentality, shuttering up all the windows and constructing a makeshift pillbox style bunker on the roof. Naturally, these actions only served to ratchet up the tension and goad local law enforcement.

On May 13, 1985 it all came to a head when a heavily armed contingent of cops moved in, ostensibly to arrest MOVE members on a number of indictments. Anyone who remembers the shocking news footage knows that the day did not end well. Gunfire was exchanged after tear gas and high-pressure water hoses failed to end the standoff, so authorities decided to take a little shortcut and drop a satchel of C-4 onto the roof of the building. 11 MOVE members (including 5 children) died in the resulting inferno, which consumed 61 homes.

Putting aside any debate or speculation for a moment over whether or not John Africa and his disciples were deranged criminals, or whether or not the group’s actions were self-consciously provocative or politically convoluted, one simple fact remains and bears repeating: “Someone” decided that it was a perfectly acceptable action plan, in the middle of a dense residential neighborhood (located in the City of Brotherly Love, no less) to drop a bomb on a building with children inside it.

Even more appalling is the callous indifference and casual racism displayed by some of the officials and police who are seen in the film testifying before the Mayor’s investigative commission (the sole ray of light, one compassionate officer who braved crossfire to help a young boy escape the burning building, was chastised by fellow officers afterward as a “ni**er lover” for his trouble).

Let the Fire Burn is not only an essential document of an American tragedy, but a cautionary tale and vital reminder of how far we still have go in purging the vestiges of institutional racism in this country (1985 was not that long ago).

In a strange bit of Kismet, I saw this film the day before Nelson Mandela died, which has naturally prompted a steady stream of retrospectives about Apartheid on the nightly news. Did you know that in 1985, there was a raging debate over whether we should impose sanctions on South Africa? (*sigh*) Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees.

Previous posts with related themes:

The Black Power Mixtape

More reviews at Den of Cinema
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–Dennis Hartley

Another confession: Nunes admits to being Trump’s accomplice in the cover up

by digby

Answering Christopher Buskirk’s Question 

by tristero

On today’s printed op-ed page in the NY Times, the far-right commentator Christopher Buskirk asks in an absolutely absurd article:

When they talk about President Trump, why are so many Democratic politicians talking about treason?

Answer: Because Americans who conspired with a foreign power to undermine the integrity of the American election system behaved treasonously. And it’s becoming increasingly clear that that is exactly what Trump and so many of his top supporters have done.

Now I have a question for Mr Buskirk:

Your politics aside for a moment, you clearly can neither think nor write with even a smidgeon of coherence or ethics. But assuming you actually believe what you write (a nearly inconceivable possibility but let’s just say…), you’re merely a stooge for truly dangerous ideologies and people.

So what on earth are you doing with access to some of the most influential editorial real-estate in the world?

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Bonus: Mr. Buskirk asked another question:

It’s worth remembering that unlike “high crimes and misdemeanors,” treason is a capital offense. Should we take Mr. Merkley, Mr. Hoyer and Mr. Smith and the others tossing around this most serious accusation at their word? Do they believe that the United States Congress should send Mr. Trump to the scaffold as the British Parliament did to Charles I during the English Civil War?

Answer: No. As Pope Francis recently affirmed, capital punishment is never acceptable. But if evidence beyond a reasonable doubt is presented that Trump and his cronies did commit treason, then jail time commensurate with the offenses is justified.