This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. It was originally published at The Conversation.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1465337
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1465337
Any word on the churches that explicitly endorsed the actions of the KKK and under whose aegis they led a terrorist persecution of American citizens?
The burning crucifix wasn’t a giveaway!?
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Speaking only for myself, the KKK Acts were never mentioned during my time in law school. How delightful to find them still on the books 150 years later.
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This is more than a little ironic – having to return to enforcing laws that were originally passed by Republicans to protect blacks, to now protect blacks and other right wing targets from current Republicans.
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Alex Wagner had some guests on last night that talked about the through-line of this, from the Enforcement Acts of the 1870s, to Mango Mussolini’s dad Fred Trump being arrested at a KKK riot in Queens NY in the late 1920s, to the animating and violent actions attempted by Trump and his crooked counsel/toadies to nullify votes in the Capitol on Jan. 6th, particularly in key swing states like GA, to Trump holding his first public appearance/rally after being arrested this week, in Alabama, a state which is actively and currently defying even our current hard-right SCOTUS court which ruled earlier this year that even Alabama’s racist gerrymandered Congressional map was too racist to be legal.
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Odd how the KKK never burns a Darwin “Evolve” Fish symbol on the lawns of black people they are terrorizing.
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Jack Smith demonstrates the value and uses of getting out of the office and getting the bigger picture. He’s made damn good use of his education at the Hague and DOJ. There is a lovely symmetry in the moral vision vibrating off this part of the DOJ strategy.
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Either legal ancient history or thought to be superseded by the Voting Rights Act of 1965? Pre-Holder, that is.
Smith obviously has some pretty smart people on his team, I suspect he did not pull this out of his sombrero.
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I’m more than happy to include Jack Smith’s team including Garland and Monaco.
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An excellent article! Hopefully the Smith tactic will prevail, and Trump will be imprisoned, as he so richly deserves,
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Jack Smith looks like Old Testament justice.
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Atrophy. The feds got sick of attempting to enforce civil rights in the South for roughly a century.
He’s not the first to pick up on the KKK Acts in recent years. The first case I can recall is Roberta Kaplan’s civil lawsuit against the Charlottesville white supremacists. And DOJ charged and convicted Douglass Mackey (a/k/a 'Ricky Vaughn") with it for a scheme trying to trick Black voters to “vote” by text message. I’m sure there are other examples.
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OT: Jack Smith seeking a protective order last evening. He’s not fucking around.
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The penalties for violating 18 USC 241 start at 10 years, but if someone dies during the commission of the crime, there is no limit to the penalties, up to and including the death penalty.
Since people died as a result of that MF trying to overturn the election, the government can go for life imprisonment. None of the other charges carry that kind of penalty.
I don’t expect the government to call for the death penalty, but I, for one, wouldn’t mind seeing this POS being the guest of honor at a public hanging.
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That quote comes from a series of laws enacted in the 1870s called the Ku Klux Klan Acts.
Not familiar with this portion of US history and have never read of the Colfax massacre…just a reminder of the complexities of that era and how little we understand about how norms were developed and unfolded.
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Yeah, we talked a little bit about in another thread last night. While the protective order itself is not that unusual as it was pertaining to document integrity in materials intended to be handed over in discovery, that it cites Trump’s public outbursts (including his “tweet” on his fake Twitter last night) is putting him (and the court) on notice. It even prompted Trump’s team to frantically attempt to cram the shit back up the goose and pathetically claim Trump was merely threatening “RINOs” and “China loving special interest groups”.
What a fucking punk.
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That’s what Steve Bannon was bust panicking on one of his shitshows the other day about. That evil Democrats were going to try and seek the death penalty for their mango messiah.
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If that happened wouldn’t it negate the need for a trial?
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No, no, we must give him a fair trial before we hang the guilty bastard.
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