14th Amendment? Not Here and Now

When it’s proven that Trump engaged in an insurrection, his a** will be in a great deal more trouble than simply being banned from public office.

When it’s proven that Trump engaged in an insurrection, his a** will be in a great deal more trouble than simply being banned from public office.

The man’s not an idiot. He knows goddamn well that he lost. He didn’t ask Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for a recount; he told him to “find me 11,780 votes.”
The truth is that, knowing this, he tried to overturn the results of a free and fair election. This wasn’t a psychologically-driven action; it was a cold and calculated act of treason.
Of course, the way Biden played this was prudent; making this accusation would have been a terrible mistake. When the facts are on the table, the justice system will move accordingly.

Prime-time televised hearings seem to be a good tool to get this started.
As dug in as many Trump supporters are, watching irrefutable evidence unfold in real time, and seeing indictments unsealed may have some effect. We can only hope.

To those concerned about the low profile that Merrick Garland is keeping, bear in mind that there were zero leaks before he unsealed the indictments against Timothy McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and the Unabomber. They were all convicted and there were no successful appeals.

It’s not the police who need to be retrained, it’s the public. We have grown into a mouthy, mobile phone wielding, vulgar, uncivil society with no personal responsibility and the attitude of ‘it’s the other person’s fault, you owe me’. A society where children grow up with no boundaries or knowledge or concern for civil society and personal responsibility.
To be sure, he has a point about disrespectful and noncompliant people, but IMO, to blame citizens’ behavior and to take no responsibility for things like the spate of deaths of unarmed black people is just atrocious. It’s completely obvious that the police need to be trained in de-escalating situations, using no more force than required, and not treating black people more harshly than whites. If you wear a badge and reject that, you really need to find another line of work.

Merrick Garland, U.S. attorney general
Apparently, fans of American democracy are thrilled that Merrick Garland says he’ll “Follow the facts wherever they lead.”
What, precisely, did you expect him to say? Here’s something that would have gotten some rightful attention:
“Ya know, let’s not get ourselves into a snit about this. After all, “rule of law” is just a catch phrase. We have a long-standing tradition that rich and powerful people are above the law; in fact, we have a well-deserved international reputation for this exact notion, for which we should be very proud.”
Seriously, we’d all like to see this moving along faster, but we should have every confidence that the attempted coup will not be swept under the rug.

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After all, it is possible that we’ll get to a point and ask ourselves, “What on Earth were we thinking?”
We didn’t put people on the moon and build computers by believing that the Deep State was trying to enslave our population. Maybe it’s simply time to move on.

What will ultimately be revealed about the insurrection and the planning that went into it remains at least partially a mystery, but the concept that it spontaneously generated from the energy in the crowd is the purest malarkey.

Insofar as this is a civil rather than criminal case, the Fifth Amendment doesn’t come into play. Should be interesting.