Month: January 2023

Someone’s shooting at Democratic politicians’ homes, offices

It’s called the Dark Corner. In the remote foothills of extreme northeast Greenville County, South Carolina, it was a region known for hidden moonshine stills even one hundred years after the Civil War. Occasionally the Dark Corner made the news at 11. Someone would pump a 12-gauge round through a local’s front door and drive off. No one ever seemed to get hurt. Family feuds were still a thing in the Dark Corner.

This is different. And similar. Let’s pray it gets no worse (Associated Press):

Bullets flew through one home’s front door and garage. At another home, three bullets went into the bedroom of a 10-year-old girl in a series of shootings that had at least one thing in common: They all targeted the homes or offices of elected Democratic officials in New Mexico.

Nobody was injured in the shootings that are being investigated by local and federal authorities. Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina said they’re working to determine if the attacks that started in early December and were scattered around the state’s largest city are connected.

The attacks come amid a sharp rise in threats to members of Congress and two years after supporters of then-President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol and sent lawmakers running for their lives. Local school board members and election workers across the country have also endured harassment, intimidation and threats of violence.

Authorities have identified neither a suspect nor a motive. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent in charge reports that the ATF is anaylzing empty casings to determine if the same weapon was used at each site.

The shootings began Dec. 4 when eight rounds were fired at the home of Bernalillo County Commissioner Adriann Barboa, police said. Seven days later, someone fired more than a dozen shots at former Bernalillo County Commissioner Debbie O’Malley’s home.

Albuquerque police said technology that can detect the sound of gunfire indicated shots fired near New Mexico Attorney General Raul Torrez’s former campaign office on Dec. 10. Nobody was in the building at the time, and police said they found no damage.

Just this week, multiple shots were fired at the home of state Sen. Linda Lopez — a lead sponsor of a 2021 bill that reversed New Mexico’s ban on most abortion procedures — and the office of state Sen. Moe Maestas. Maestas, an attorney, co-sponsored a bill last year to set new criminal penalties for threatening state and local judges. It didn’t pass.

It wasn’t until Jan. 3 that Albuquerque police Chief Harold Medina opened an investigation into what appears to be a pattern. State officials have scrubbed the Legislature’s website of lawmakers’ phone numbers and work addresses “out of an abundance of caution.” They did so temporarily two years ago after the Jan. 6 insurrection.

NPR:

“We do have some leads,” Albuquerque Mayor Tim Keller said. He acknowledged the obvious connection of all the victims belonging to the same party, but warned people not to speculate about the violence while evidence still is being gathered.

“We’re worried and concerned that these are connected and possibly politically motivated or personally motivated,” Keller said. “But we don’t know that for a fact.”

There are always yahoos with guns too cowardly to do more than fire rounds through front doors and drive off. What’s changed are the caliber of the weapons and the character of the feuds. This feud is one-sided. Only one “family” is going to guns.

The Dark Corner has seen gentrification since the 1960s, and the encroachment of golf communities and weekend hikers and cyclists. It’s still plenty dark up there at night.

The London Zoo began its week-long count of approx 14,000 animals — here’s why the annual census is critical to conservation efforts pic.twitter.com/eoXcB8AU10

— NowThis Impact (@nowthisimpact) January 5, 2023

Here are some more cute baby animals just because we need to see more cute baby animals right now.

Which side are they on?

This has been very interesting to watch. They literally didn’t know what to do. So they did everything.

The seemingly never-ending fight for the House speakership has exposed a glaring rift within the Republican Party, with a group of hard-right holdouts refusing to budge when it comes to electing Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House.

While McCarthy continues to negotiate and offer up every concession he can think of to try to sway this MAGA faction to finally give him the speaker’s gavel, the ultraconservative members have declared themselves “Never Kevin” while watching McCarthy squirm through 11 (and counting) unsuccessful votes.

Throughout this ordeal, the majority of Fox News hosts and commentators have clearly thrown in with the establishment wing of the GOP (and former President Donald Trump) and urged the far-right contingent to do what’s best for the party and stand down. Yet, at the same time, the conservative cable giant’s loudest and most influential voice has increasingly backed the anti-McCarthy crowd while taking swings at his own colleagues.

With each round of speaker votes that McCarthy has lost since Tuesday, primetime star Tucker Carlson has grown increasingly more outspoken in his support for the rebel group of lawmakers opposing the California lawmaker.

For example, after McCarthy fell short in his first three votes, Carlson called the inter-party struggle “refreshing” and a sign of true “democracy” while simultaneously praising McCarthy—whom he has long criticized.

“To be fair, this is politics and McCarthy does have strengths,” he declared. “It’s not easy being speaker when the House is this closely divided. And in some ways, Kevin McCarthy is perfectly suited for that. He’s skilled in politics. Not a small thing.”

The right-wing nationalist host, though, set a marker that night, listing off a set of demands that the holdouts would force McCarthy to accept in order to become speaker. According to Carlson on Tuesday night, McCarthy shouldn’t be speaker unless he appointed Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) to chair a “Frank Church committee” probing the FBI and releasing all the footage from the Jan. 6 insurrection. (Carlson has pushed several conspiracy theories about the Capitol attack.)

By the time Wednesday arrived, Carlson made it clear that he was fully siding with the “Never Kevin” crowd, all while most of his Fox cohorts were begging the group to fold and end the standoff.

“Oh, you’ve got reservations about Kevin McCarthy? You don’t want to be ruled by a man who wears a Ukrainian flag lapel pin and lives with Frank Luntz?” Carlson snarked on Wednesday night, referencing McCarthy’s close friendship with Luntz, a pollster and GOP insider.

Carlson also blasted Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), a vocal critic of the anti-McCarthy hardliners, calling the conservative lawmaker “the snarling face of the donor class” for comparing the group to “terrorists.”

Just an hour later, however, Carlson’s primetime compadre Sean Hannity locked horns with Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), one of the leaders of the “Never Kevin” contingent. Repeatedly urging the pro-Trump congresswoman to “pack it in” and take the loss, Hannity grew increasingly agitated as Boebert dismissed his pleas.

Hannity’s shouting match with Boebert, meanwhile, prompted Fox’s smaller far-right media rivals to pounce and call out the conservative network for casting in with the “uniparty swamp rats.” Newsmax host and serial plagiarist Benny Johnson, for instance, called Hannity “the Praetorian Guard of the establishment” while decrying his “embarrassing” interview with Boebert.

If Hannity’s face-off with Boebert made the far-right mad, Fox & Friend’s host Brian Kilmeade’s description of the holdout group made them absolutely furious. Grousing on Thursday morning about the continued stalemate, Kilmeade fumed that “this is how insincere the insurrectionists are.” Realizing almost immediately how loaded that term is, especially on the right, Kilmeade tried to take it back.

“Probably shouldn’t use that word,” he scrambled. “The people that don’t wanna vote for Kevin McCarthy.”

His Fox & Friends co-host, Steve Doocy, was also irate over the dead-enders in the House GOP caucus. “I heard so many people say, ‘You know, that’s just how democracy works.’ This is not democracy. This is a televised hijacking,” Doocy asserted. “They are intent, simply, on blowing up the party, which they are doing, and this Congress. They do not care.”

Despite the anger directed their way by MAGA media figures and ultra-right provocateurs, Fox News pundits have continued to rush to the network’s airwaves to denounce the “Never Kevin” crew.

“Just as you can’t give in to terrorists and you can’t give in to hostage-takers, you can’t allow them to take the conference hostage and win,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Fox News contributor, proclaimed on Hannity’s show.

“They all look like idiots, and that’s how they are acting,” Fox commentator Ari Fleischer, a former Bush White House press secretary, exclaimed on Thursday.

Fox News host Jeanine Pirro went even further on Thursday’s broadcast of The Five, crying that the hardliners were “making the Republicans look ridiculous” while attacking Boebert personally. “With all due respect, I mean, the woman barely won her race,” she added.

Fox News contributor Ben Domenech also compared the House impasse to a “terrorist standoff” during a Fox Business Network appearance on Thursday—a bridge that was apparently too far for Carlson.

The primetime host included Domenech’s remarks in a montage of other cable news personalities criticizing the holdouts, leaving his most biting mockery for his Fox colleague.

“Another one of the buffoons in the clip you just saw went further and called the whole thing terrorism, which is the remorseless use of violence against a civilian population to effect a political goal,” Carlson huffed, adding that Domenech was part of the “moron community.” (Of course, this is far from the first time that Carlson has taken public shots at his Fox News colleagues. Memorably, his mockery of veteran Fox News anchor Shepard Smith—who defended another Fox News personality that Carlson ridiculed on-air—led to Smith’s departure.)

While Carlson continues to cheer on the GOP infighting and touts it as “what democracy looks like,” another one of his right-wing primetime colleagues has tried to thread a needle by supporting the process while calling on unity.

“What looks chaotic and kind of seems counterproductive to many—it’s actually, in its own way, refreshing because it’s democracy in action,” Laura Ingraham said on Wednesday night. She also went on to say that the group was “playing with fire” and “blocking McCarthy” didn’t help them in the long run.

And on Thursday night, she was telling the rebels that it was time to end the standoff before confronting the top ringleader of the group, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL). In the end, Gaetz told Ingraham that he would resign if the Republicans struck a deal with Democrats to get McCarthy the speakership.

Yeah, they just love democracy in action — unless a Democrat wins in which case it’s obviously cheating and requires many more restrictions.

The right wing media didn’t know how to read this because the fact is that the entire GOP caucus is very extreme and they are basically on both sides. So they went both ways, sometimes during the same program. Some Fox hosts were concerned that the Republicans looked foolish but they’ve since realized that their audience doesn’t care about looking foolish. I mean, come on. This is a party, a media and a movement that has been genuflecting to Orange Julius Caesar for the past six years. Clearly, looking like a bunch of clowns is not a problem for them.

By the way …

Fox News hosts on 1/6: what they texted vs. what they said pic.twitter.com/hgERmfI7yU

— The Recount (@therecount) January 6, 2023

The Supremes bear responsibility for building it

Denis Aftergut in Slate:

Ultimately, in politics, only voters can deliver the message, “You’ve hit bottom, and you need to change your ways.” But the MAGA House majority’s inability to select a speaker may already be pushing voters to stage an intervention in 2024.

There’s an irony in this early failure. Republicans came to it through a shameless addiction to power without principle. Starting in 2010, they gained political dominance across the country in state legislatures and wielded that power by gerrymandering congressional maps. The distorted districting maps they adopted herded minority voters and Democratic ones into electoral zones that looked like intoxicated amoeba. All that extreme gerrymandering has led directly to the current fiasco in the House.

The effort has put more Republican members of Congress in safe seats, with fewer Democratic constituents to answer to. That left the victors free to test the limits of their extremism.

Momentously, in 2019, a radical Supreme Court majority composed of Republican nominees issued a 5–4 decision in Rucho v. Common Cause. It gave radical partisan gerrymandering the court’s blessing as constitutional. The fifth vote in that ruling came from ultraconservative justice Neil Gorsuch, who was only seated after Senate Republicans unscrupulously refused to hold a confirmation hearing for Merrick Garland. He would have almost certainly cast the fifth vote the other way.

If you doubt Rucho’s effect in creating today’s Republican House majority, look to Florida as a case study. In 2022, its governor, Ron DeSantis, “strong-armed” through the state legislature an extreme, gerrymandered map that eliminated half of Florida’s Black-dominated districts. In November’s election, the state flipped red three blue congressional seats.

Similarly, North Carolina’s gerrymandering added three Republican seats that, based on the state’s Democratic vote-share, should have gone Democratic. (Incidentally, North Carolina is the state whose gerrymandered map the Supreme Court upheld in Rucho, and it is also the state whose map the court will judge in this term’s much-discussed case of Moore v. Harper.)

Similar results seem to have occurred in Texas and Kentucky, where partisan voter registrations are evenly divided. Yet in Texas, 25 of the 38 congressional representatives are Republican, a 2-to-1 ratio. In Kentucky, five of the six representatives are Republican.

Democrats, too, have gerrymandered in states whose legislatures they control, but their efforts have been far surpassed by Republicans’, and without the destructive effects for the country’s institutions.

And so, the debacle we’ve been witnessing in Congress. From gerrymandered Republican seats come noncompetitive districts that elect hardliners with little to no incentive to compromise on choosing a speaker—or anything else. They gain attention via television and social media and raise money from their MAGA base by standing firm and dropping pipe bombs on the system of governing, and rarely face consequences for the fallout.

The speaker-selection logjam is bound to break before long. But this saga will not be the last of gerrymandering’s legacy. Kevin McCarthy has conceded to his party’s extremists so much of the Republican speaker’s power that, whether or not he wins, the same people who have extorted him will spend the next two years treating the speaker’s podium as Kevin’s concession stand

The right has moved in lockstep for years toward the goal of what anti-tax activist Grover Norquist called “drowning the government in the bathtub.” That metaphor was much too mild. They have been working toward the goal of blowing up the government. And they’re getting closer all the time.

Chief Justice John Roberts was chosen because he had been a strong advocate of curtailing voting rights going all the way back to his early days in the Reagan administration. His legacy will be the empowerment of fascism in the Republican party. And he’s now the most liberal member of the conservative majority.

2 yrs ago
"#DonaldTrump was in the WhiteHouse dining rm by 1:25, where he 'was informed of violence at the Capitol w/in 15 mins of leaving the stage after his speech at the Ellipse.'
Doing nothing to stop the #jan6Insurrection [he] got cozy" watching Fox.https://t.co/KYqKBrisoZ

— Laurie Garrett (@Laurie_Garrett) January 6, 2023

If you have the time, click through to that link for a thorough January 6th timeline. It’s as astonishing today as it was then.

And considering what these people are doing today on the House floor, it’s clear they were not in any way chagrined. They are still making a mockery of the United States by acting like petulant children who will burn the place down if they don’t get their way.

And keep this in mind:

.@chrislhayes on the original sin of the speaker chaos: "The majority of this House Republican caucus…voted with the mob for the coup. That has never been repented for, it’s never been apologized for, it’s never been redeemed in any way. It is the sin that haunts all of this." pic.twitter.com/5IOt3qBVP1

— All In with Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) January 6, 2023

Wow pic.twitter.com/9gccU53NCh

— Acyn (@Acyn) January 6, 2023

It’s infuriating that he had to deal with that but it’s a pleasure to watch someone so capably slap that nonsense into tomorrow. I don’t normally think Democrats should waste their breath on Fox because they are usually just there as target practice. Buttigieg is one of the very few who has the talent and the temperament to handle it with lethal class.

These people are so shameless. When you think about how Trump took his toxic spawn on trips all over the world, including to meet the queen of England, it makes your head explode. He even had that airhead Ivanka running meetings at the G8. Please.

Not really. The inmates will be running the asylum no matter what.

Today is the second anniversary of the January 6 insurrection. On that day a group of right wing extremists breached the U.S. Capitol, declaring, “this is OUR house.” They ransacked the place and attempted to hunt down Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi with the intention of staging a coup d’état. Two years later we are witnessing another group of right wing extremists attempting a takeover. This time, they’re staging an insurrection against their own party by refusing to allow a new speaker to be elected unless their demands are met. And unlike two years ago, they’re going to be successful.

Yesterday, Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy endured a third straight day of ritual humiliation as his party was unable to get the 218 votes needed to grant him the Speakership after 11 rounds of voting. This is the first time since 1859, on the cusp of the Civil War, that the process has taken this many votes. As Congressman-elect Jeff Jackson, D-N.C., quipped when it went to the 10th ballot, “the last time it took this many ballots to elect a Speaker, Davy Crockett had a vote.”

A group of about 20 defecting members continues to vote against McCarthy, switching back and forth between alternatives and giving angry speeches about “the swamp” and McCarthy’s character flaws. They’re getting plenty of screen time and seem to be enjoying themselves. But they do have an agenda beyond simply stopping the hated McCarthy from becoming speaker, as much as they desire that outcome. They want to run the place.

As the NY Times laid out, most of these insurrectionists are members of the House Freedom Caucus. The majority are election deniers and all but one of the incumbents were “objectors” to the electoral vote count two years ago. Seventeen of them were endorsed by Donald Trump although they don’t seem to care about his opinion since they are all ignoring his entreaties to vote for McCarthy. All but Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado are from very safe red districts where their voters love to see the RINO establishment take a beating, and they all have independent fund-raising capabilities through the use of right wing media. 

According to Robert Costa of CBS News last night, there’s more. Much more. They also want a number of rules changes, budget promises and committee guarantees, making the Freedom Caucus “central” to the House.

Costa tweeted:

If this deal goes thru and McCarthy become speaker, you’re looking at a House where McCarthy is speaker and/but the Freedom Caucus is at the table on all big things: rules for floor, standoffs on budgets, and spreading HFC moves to key fiscal committees (approps, budget, etc.)

It’s comparable as one person puts it to Boehner welcoming the Tea Party into the leadership in 2011 and making the RSC’s right wing a powerful force on all tricky fiscal and spending items… others say it could tie McCarthy’s hands in terms of any deals with President Biden.

Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz appeared on Fox News and confirmed it:

B) Gaetz: If my colleagues get what they want from McCarthy, the chairman of the Freedom Caucus will actually be more important than the Speaker of the House in determining the legislation that reaches the floor, how amendments are processed and how spending occurs going forward.

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) January 6, 2023

That’s correct. Kevin McCarthy is negotiating to turn the Speaker of the House into a ceremonial position. Surely he can keep that big office Matt Gaetz charged he’s “squatting” in illegally, although if it’s necessary to let Boebert have it as part of the deal, I’m sure he’ll agree to that too. Nobody has ever wanted a title as much as Kevin McCarthy wants this one.

It’s hard to see how the nation stays unscathed when they hold the debt ceiling hostage in order to destroy everything they can.

None of what they are giving away in this negotiation really changes anything. McCarthy isn’t really giving up much of substance. As they have demonstrated this week, they already run everything. With a majority this narrow, it only takes a handful of shameless sh*t-disturbers to bring everything to a crashing halt until they get their way. And let’s face it, 90 percent of the GOP caucus is more or less on board with the Freedom Caucus policy agenda. They may squabble a bit about the details but overall they’re fine with it.

"The debt, the border, China and our educational system."

This is one of the supposed moderates in the GOP caucus saying that all Republicans are unified because they see "our educational system" as a primary threat to the country. pic.twitter.com/fbmVO2siCS

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) January 6, 2023

This Congress was always going to be a circus. We knew that going in. And when it became clear that the margin was so narrow, it also was clear they would hold their usual “oversight” spectacles without any restraint. The country can survive that, although it’s a degrading exercise for everyone involved. But it’s hard to see how the nation stays unscathed when they hold the debt ceiling hostage in order to destroy everything they can.

With this Speaker pageant, they’re proving they will do it. And nobody, least of all Kevin McCarthy (or any other Speaker they produce) can do a damn thing about it. We went through this before in 2011 and 2013 when Republicans used the debt ceiling to prolong the recovery from the financial crisis. (You will note that they very docilely acquiesced to raising it during the Trump years.) They are ten times as volatile now.

It remains to be seen if Kevin McCarthy manages to abase himself enough to squeak through and get the ceremonial Speaker’s gavel. Unless Republicans all throw up their hands and decide to vote for one of the Insurrectionist 20’s obscure back bench alternatives like Florida Rep. Byron Donalds or Oklahoma Rep. Kevin Hern, it’s hard to imagine anyone else wanting the job at this point.

Maybe that’s the best argument McCarthy has going for him right now. He’s the only one who is self-destructive enough to want it in the first place and he’ll do absolutely anything to keep it. Matt Gaetz gets that and I won’t be surprised if the rest of the holdouts see it too. Kevin McCarthy will make a very nice Freedom Caucus ceremonial bobblehead. Maybe they’ll even let him keep his parking place. 

DOJ examines Trump’s actions

Donald Trump likes to use variants of “nobody’s ever seen.” It seems Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team of investigators are gathering evidence against him the likes of which nobody’s ever seen (Bloomberg):

Officials in several states confirmed they have complied with an early round of grand jury subpoenas from Smith’s office. One set of material reviewed by Bloomberg from a key battleground in Nevada shows Trump’s 2020 campaign representatives lobbing accusations of fraud and mismanagement at local officials in the days after the election.

Attorneys working under Smith are also poring over dozens of interview transcripts from the congressional panel that just wrapped up its own Jan. 6 probe, said people familiar with the investigation, who asked not to be named to discuss information not yet public. That includes testimony from White House aides who said Trump knew he lost the election and at least one Republican official who linked the former president to efforts to seat alternate slates of electors in some states he lost.

Trump is the focus of two Smith-led investigations, one into Trump’s handling of federal documents. The other centers on Trump’s involvement in efforts to overturn the 2020 election and alleged complicity in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters two years ago today.

State and county officials in Arizona, Georgia, New Mexico and Nevada confirmed they’ve complied with subpoenas. Officials in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin declined to comment or didn’t immediately respond.

Trump may be in for an unhappy New Year:

Some charging decisions could be made within weeks, especially if Smith moves to pressure individuals into cooperating. The special counsel’s office and Justice Department leaders realize that the historic investigations and the potential for politically explosive indictments and trials will collide with the 2024 presidential election calendar as the year goes on, according to people familiar. 

As Smith’s team pores over the January 6 Committeee interview transcripts, they will look for sufficient evidence for bringing any charges, including on those recommended by J6 members in their criminal referrals.

“You want to make sure you understand what they said before, what follow up needs to be done, and for those witnesses you think might be valuable, there’s a whole bunch of work to see if what they said can be corroborated,” said Kelly Currie, a partner at Crowell & Moring and former colleague of Smith’s at the Justice Department.

Trump continues to lose court battles with investigators and did again this week (New York Times):

A federal judge has ordered lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump to give the government the names of the private investigators who searched Mr. Trump’s properties late last year for any remaining classified documents, part of what appeared to be a step by the Justice Department toward questioning the investigators about their efforts, two people familiar with the matter said.

The order, issued on Wednesday by Beryl A. Howell, the chief judge of the Federal District Court in Washington, was the latest twist in a monthslong dispute between prosecutors and Mr. Trump’s lawyers about how forthcoming the former president has been in returning classified material that he removed from the White House after he left office. Hundreds of classified documents were later recovered by the government from Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.

The fact that the Justice Department sought a formal order for the investigators’ names suggests an increasing breakdown in trust between prosecutors investigating the documents case and Mr. Trump’s legal team. And the request comes as a special counsel has taken over the inquiry into whether Mr. Trump willfully retained sensitive records or obstructed the government’s efforts to retrieve them.

“Increasing breakdown in trust” implies there was ever any from the start. Trump and his associates (Flunkies? Cronies? Goombahs?) have proven themselves untrustworthy.

Fulton Co., Ga. District Attorney Fani Willis has yet to weigh in with charges against Trump for election tampering that may be the easiest of all to prove. It’s all on a recorded phone call.

Insurrection Caucus knocks J6 anniversary off front pages

Leaders of the GOP’s House Insurrection Caucus are heavily invested in screen time. Not on their smart phones. On your television and social media feeds. Governing is not what they are in Washington, D.C. to do. Accruing power is.

Interviews on Fox News and other outlets (even MSNBC these days) builds a national profile, grows online followers, and expands fundraising opportunities. Personal fame, acquired through political performance, is a more rapid, more certain path to power than the drudge work of crafting sound legislation and shepherding it through Congress. The Insurrection Caucus came to be influencers, not legislators.

Donald Trump brought celebrity with him to the job of politics. But the 2020 loser is sidelined in Mar-a-Lago awaiting indictments. Republicans lacking his preternatural skills at self-promotion have discovered that keeping the press focused on themselves involves being destructively and performatively anti-establishment. Sex and drugs and rock and roll was for liberals. Trashing hotel rooms does not get press coverage. Trashing Congress does. Either from the outside, as insurrectionists did two years ago today, or from the inside, as the Insurrection Caucus has this week in the GOP’s internecine battle over electing a speaker. It’s political punk rock with guns.

They reject technical ability and virtuosity the way rock critic Robert Christgau said the early punks “scornfully rejected the political idealism and Californian flower-power silliness of hippie myth.” The GOP’s political punks reject the give-and-take of democracy for the “nihilistic swagger” of performative norm-breaking (New York Times):

“It’s not about policies, it’s about the fight,” said Doug Heye, a former aide to Representative Eric Cantor, the onetime majority leader who lost his seat in a stunning 2014 upset by a far-right challenger, David Brat. “The more you hear the word ‘fight’ or ‘fighter,’ the less you hear about a strategy for winning that fight.”

That’s because winning is no more their goal than governing is.

Chris Stirewalt, a former editor at Fox News, said that “what happens online, on talk radio and on Fox prime time has been and will continue to be the harbinger of what House Republicans will do.” He added that the representatives and congressional aides he was speaking with were “all talking about how their positions were playing with the different hosts and sites.”

It’s better to burn out than to fade away. They’re working harder at burning bright than at doing right. The question is how many Americans are willing to have them burn down the country with the rest of us in it.

Ron DeSantis’ Surgeon General is a liar

Surprise:

Joseph A. Ladapo, a professor of medicine at the University of Florida and the state’s surgeon general, relied upon a flawed analysis and may have violated university research integrity rules when he issued guidancelast fall discouraging young men from receiving common coronavirus vaccines, according to a report from a medical school faculty task force. But the university says it has no plans to investigate the matter.

Ladapo recommended inOctoberthat men younger than 40 not take mRNA vaccinations for covid, pointing to an “abnormally high risk of cardiac-related death.” Doctors and public health officials swiftly pounced, dismissing the underlying research for its small sample size, lack of detail and shaky methodology.

In its new report, a task force of the University of Florida College of Medicine’s Faculty Council cites numerous deficiencies in the analysis Ladapo used to justify his vaccine recommendation. A summary said the work was “seriously flawed.” The report’s authors say Ladapo engaged in “careless, irregular, or contentious research practices.”

The report, which was shared on Tuesday night with medical school faculty members and obtained by The Washington Post, is the first formal challenge to Ladapo from his academic colleagues. It was referred to the university’s Office of Research Integrity, Security and Compliance, a UFspokesman confirmed on Tuesday. Under university guidelines, the referral could havecompelled the state’s flagship university to consider a formal investigation of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’s surgeon general.

But the university’s top research officer said on Wednesday it would close the matter, because Ladapo’s work as a state official was outside the school’s purview.

“As this work was done by the Dr. Joseph Ladapo in his role as the state of Florida Surgeon General and not in his role as a UF faculty member, the UF Office of Research Integrity, Security and Compliance has no standing to consider the allegations or concerns regarding research integrity set forth in the Faculty Council task force report,” David Norton, the university’s vice president for research, said in a statement provided to The Post.

The faculty panel does not suggest Ladapo committed classic research misconduct, such as falsifying data or plagiarism. Instead, its report zeroes in on what it describes as methodological flaws in the analysis, which was presented to the public without any named authors — much less their credentials. The analysis relies on data that is not statistically significant, the task force concluded, and it fails to compare the risks of vaccination with the benefits, such as limiting covid-19 deaths and reducing hospitalizations. Finally, the analysis claims deaths are cardiac-related without sufficient evidence to support that, the task force stated. As a result, it adds, Ladapo’s guidance may have violated a section of UF’s research integrity policy that concerns “questionable research practices.”

He’s biased and dishonest. And he is the one Ron DeSantis is going to use to convince half the country that vaccines are killing people with his “Vaccine Commission.” This brings to mind some historical precedents that we aren’t allowed to talk about. It’s depraved.