My take on Ashli Babbitt is that, on the continuum of the criminals who were illegally occupying the Capitol on January 6, with the two extremes being “collateral damage” and “fucking terrorist,” she was somewhere in the middle. She does not seem to have been anything other than one more jacked up trump sucker who had no insight, but sure displayed incredibly poor judgment. And paid for it.
As for the officer who shot her, he was doing his job correctly, under incredible duress and pressure. I wish there had been more physical security barriers and armed 'peace" officers up front and at all entry points, who might have been able to restrict and contain the criminal mob. JMHO.
I’ll withhold the “terrorist” label from the many people who are simply charged with misdemeanor trespassing because all they did was enter the Capitol and mill around without assaulting anyone, causing any property damage, or packing weapons.
Anyone who actively breached barriers, sought to target public officials, tangled with law enforcement, or helped to plan any of the foregoing is a fucking terrorist. Ashli Babbitt is a dead terrorist on each of items (1) through (3) in that list.
And some of those charged with felonies are facing actual terrorism sentencing enhancements, mostly Proud Boys and Oathkeeper associates.
I’d like to see every single person who illegally entered the Capitol who was not there acting as a Capitol-related law officer, credentialed medical responder, or credentialed journalist, should be identified and charged for at least a misdemeanor, and sanctioned with at least a $500 fine to make restitution. And put on the record.
Literally everyone they can identify who entered the building without authorization is being charged with, at least, misdemeanors for trespassing in a restricted area. That adds up to roughly half of the 600 or so who have been charged so far.
All the assholes who entered the building while armed with any kind of weapon – including bear spray, flagpoles (a fave weapon of the Proud Boy set because you can look like a patriotic American when you’re really just planning to beat the shit out of lefties), tasers, and knives – are getting hit with felonies that are gonna land their insurrectionist asses in prison for a term measured in years.
Terrorists who tangled with cops, breached the chambers or offices, or who displayed special enthusiasm for stopping the certification are going to be going away for probably 5-15 years, depending on the severity of the offense and prior criminal records (which many of them have).
The scum who planned it are getting hit with criminal conspiracy charges that make each of them liable for everything that happened as a result of their planning. They will be going away for a very long time indeed even if they can show some serious cooperation with the investigators. It’s really entertaining watching those people start to turn on each other via plea deals. And the odds of Roger Stone getting taken down in all that seem pretty favorable.
Goldman’s thinking is a mystery. Why interview Cohen ten times, and seat a grand jury for six months, if this is the final provable case of two years of investigation? I don’t know from Cy Vance, but Tish James is not going to just give up shrug her shoulders and walk away this early in the process. Plus lawyer spin notwithstanding, these look like pretty serious charges of crimes committed over a decade and a half, and no doubt going back decades before that. I’m sorry Mr. Goldman but I’m not buying your spin. What ax have you to grind?
Um, I’m not sure what you mean. My take is the Democrats got rolled on the “bipartisan” deal which the GOP won’t honor anyway, they just want to delay and obfuscate and grandstand. Killing that deal in favor of passing everything in a reconciliation is a win right?
What you just said makes absolutely no sense. If they can get their ducks in a row, they’ve absolutely nailed it. The bipartisan part will pass and they can force reconciliation to get more of what we want. My comment refers to whether they will mess it up with in-fighting.
The only people who got rolled on the bipartisan deal were the GQP. They’ve been painted into a corner. If they block it, they look like fucking idiots and it won’t go well for them…and we still get to use reconciliation. If they go along with it, we get good things that are in it and Joe gets the credit. Meanwhile, we’ll be able to stack onto that whatever we can agree to shove through in reconciliation.
The problem will be if the Dems start their stupid in-fighting and can’t agree on what should be in the reconciliation package, and I’m not sure we can trust Team Unicorn not to fuck things up that badly out of spite. THAT is what the article is about and therefore what my comment was about. No idea where you came up with the ridiculous idea that the Dems somehow got rolled by getting the GQP to agree to something bipartisan without the GQP forcing them to agree not to push even more things through reconciliation. The GQP fucked up their own strategy royally and realized it too late…and now they’re coming back around to agreeing to pass the bipartisan bill because they’ve realized that their only best bet is to try to usurp all the credit for it via right wing media propaganda.
