Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called Monday for Senate investigations into the Capitol breach, and the behavior of his peers Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) to circumvent the protections Congress enjoys.
Johnson…Good…“Ignorance (of everything) is no excuse…”
And this time there will be no “Mitch, may we?”
Good. It’s a start.
I hope, finally, that Democrats are acknowledging what Charlie Brown just never believed about Lucy and the football- that you can’t trust the Republicans and you have to tell them “No”!
Well played. It’s a good starting structure. Now, let it play out, but with a sense of urgency. It will also require discipline as the Senate (as well as House) have a long list of jobs to do and I expect the Republican Party to do everything in their power to slow the de-Trumping of our legal system and appointments, as they signed on to let him run wild and degrade these agencies, committees, and offices with his political hacks. Much to do. Please get started.
Why won’t Pence invoke 24th?
I meant why won’t Oence invoke 25th amendment, does he think trump is mentally fit, or is he afraid of his flying monkeys?
Because he is a coward , terrified of MEGA
I read the Speech and Debate Clause to protect speech on the Senate floor, and to protect Senators from arrest on their way to or from the Senate in connection with what they say there. It does not seem to offer any protection for speech not made during Senate debate, and, certainly, the Senate can dole out its own internal discipline to bad actors like Cruz, Hawley and Johnson for what they say in the Senate.
My question is whether Hawley’s clenched-fist salute to the mob of thugs riled up to attack the Capitol is speech protected by the Speech and Debate Clause. I don’t think so. Funny, though, that that’s a gesture that created so, so much outrage (among Republicans, mainly) at John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the 1968 Olympics.
Sheldon Whitehouse is one of the best, and I would love to see him take the lead on this. Perhaps Majority Leader Schumer could make it a quid pro quo: if those Senators provide their complete phone and text records for the last month voluntarily, they can sit on the committees. That way they will choose not to do so.
Sheldon Whitehouse for the WIN!!
Finally…Democrats boldly wielding the Senate tools.
More of this…please.
I have no particular insight into this much less whether it can succeed in censuring specific Trump enablers even in the case of Hawley and Cruz who were pretty clearly attempting to establish themselves as leaders of the christianist/white-nationalist wing of the Republican party. But at the least it would be nice to see some enforceable rule concerning the repetition of proven falsehoods by Senators during debate. It may be naive but one of the more galling aspects of the Trumpist era is the apparent lack of consequence for, never mind benefits to, flat-out lying.
The former chief of the federal force, Steven Sund, told the Washington Post his supervisors were reluctant to take formal steps to put the Guard on call even as police intelligence suggested that the crowd President Donald Trump had invited to Washington to protest against his defeat was probably going to be much larger than earlier demonstrations.
Sund’s remarks were in contrast with those from officials in other branches of government, who said after Trump’s supporters stormed into the Capitol building last Wednesday that they could have provided more people to secure it – but no one from the Capitol Police asked.
Commanders at Fort Bragg are reviewing Captain Emily Rainey’s involvement in last week’s events in the nation’s capital, but she said she acted within military regulations and that no one in her group broke the law.
“I was a private citizen and doing everything right and within my rights,” Rainey told The Associated Press on Sunday.
Rainey said she led 100 members of Moore County Citizens for Freedom, which describes itself online as a nonpartisan network promoting conservative values, to Washington to “stand against election fraud” and support Trump. She said the group attended the rally but she didn’t know of anyone who entered the Capitol and that they were headed back to their buses hours before an emergency curfew took effect.
I don’t know about relieving these three of committee assignments, or maybe the Dems now with control of the Senate can create and then assign these three to a committee of hard labor? Maybe cleaning the chambers with toothbrushes, and no knee pads might teach them a lesson. Or some other kind of punishing work.
Since Hawley is one of my senators, I want him to still work, or hard labor if you will like making them clean the head stones, with toothbrushes at Arlington. And while their at it, clip the grass around each and every head stone.
Funny what having some actual power can do.
Yep…we need to come out swinging…knock McTurtle off balance from the git go. He can’t be the only Senator who knows how to use every Senate procedural tool.
Because he fears for his life if he does.
