Month: October 2021

If my normal approach to reasoning is logical but not quite rectilinear, the death of my 26 year old stepson Jesse, on September 27, has created something more akin to a Jackson Pollack canvas. Emotions that are normally in check are running wild in all directions. I feel a bit like Mr. Spock when his human side overpowers his Vulcan one, and while unlike Spock I am not at all ashamed of my broken heart and loss of composure, it does make it difficult to go about my job in the usual way.

Let’s face it. A tragic life event like this cannot but cast virtually everything in a new light. The bricks of an established worldview are thrown up like feathers and it takes time for them to settle back into a new pattern. Things that seemed vitally important three weeks ago now seem trivial, and perhaps some things that were on the back burner now have greater urgency.

The last thing I wrote before Jesse died was a piece called A Perilous Week of Deadly Land Mines. I was anticipating the negotiations over the Build Back Better reconciliation bill: “Following along with what’s happening in Congress, it’s easy to see how someone could have a panic attack.” I knew things were coming to a head both in my family life and in Washington DC, and I really was having panic attacks.

On Friday, we’ll bury Jesse and on Saturday we’ll celebrate his life with friends and family. We’ve been keeping busy making preparations for these solemn occasions, but come Sunday our friends and family will go back to their regular lives and we’ll have to sort out what happens for us going forward. I can’t say what that will look like because I don’t know what it will feel like. I know it will take some form of putting one foot in front of the other, but the actual path is obscured right now.

Maybe I’ll go back to writing about politics in much the same way I always have, and maybe I won’t. I’m not sure how much of a say I actually have in that decision. It feels like I’ll be learning things about myself that I never knew, and I can’t predict how I’ll learn to function. If I can function at all, I’ll consider that a good sign.

For now, my focus is on grieving and celebrating– on enjoying seeing the faces of people I love and who cared about Jesse, and who care about me and his mother Erica, father Bert, and his brothers Randy and Finn.

Come next week, I’ll try to get back in the saddle. If the horse bucks me off, that won’t be at all unexpected. I’ll get up and try again.

Hi everyone. We’ve made it to another midweek. This time I’d start with something a bit on the relaxing side: Brian Eno’s earliest attempt at ambient music, as far as I am aware. This is the title track for the LP Discreet Music:

It fit in pretty well with some of the minimalism from the era, and reminds me a bit of some French Impressionism that caught my ear when I was young. Think Satie. The inspiration came by sheer chance. Brian Eno got injured badly enough in a car accident to require hospitalization. There was a record player in his room, and a friend had offered to put on some LP of harp music. His friend left before checking that the sound was sufficient enough for him to fully appreciate the music from his bed, and he was still to incapacitated to get up and change the volume. So he listened to the rain against the window and the occasional harp sounds that he could manage to hear, and the rest was history. That experience transformed how he experienced sound at least in musical form, and when he got healthy enough, he went into the studio to begin to experiment with this new insight of his. This piece would set the stage for the more ambient pieces on his next studio albums, including the first of his Ambient series (Music for Airports).

Out of some rough experiences, sometimes something beautiful emerges. Eno is still alive and well, and actively recording. He’s influenced countless recording artists. Enjoy and relax.

Cheers!

I’ve never been impressed with Jon Gruden as a coach or an intellect, but I did at least enjoy the glint in his eye and his obvious enthusiasm for life and professional football. I guess I’m not surprised to learn that he’s a right-wing asshole although I never considered his politics prior to the current controversy that cost him his job as head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders.

I’m often frustrated when politics intersect with pro football because I feel like a lot of people who are not fans of the sport don’t understand how decisions are made. When you’re putting together a football team, you really don’t want to have distractions. The margin between a winning and losing franchise is so thin that you can’t be expected to be successful if your quarterback isn’t almost psychotically focused on watching game film and preparing for the next opponent. You don’t want your players answering questions constantly about the political views of their teammates. The captains of your team need to command universal respect in the locker room, not divide the clubhouse with social commentary.

Joe Gruden was an equal opportunity offender in his private email correspondence. He called the NFL commissioner a faggot and wrote that NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith, who is black, “has lips the size of michellin tires.” He shared photos of topless cheerleaders, said the owner of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers could suck his dick, and criticized the Rams for drafting an openly gay player.

Some people think it’s wrong to fire someone for things they said privately, although to be clear Gruden resigned. It’s fair to say, however, that he was going to lose his job either way. But the reason he couldn’t coach anymore wasn’t specifically because he said some politically incorrect things in emails to friends and associates. It’s because those statements revealed things about his belief system that made it impossible to lead an NFL franchise.

The racist trope about DeMaurice Smith’s lips was probably enough on its own to lose him the respect of his locker room, which is majority black and includes white players who are equally unimpressed. But Gruden also revealed a callous disregard for player safety by railing against league efforts to limit concussions. That appears to have been his primary beef with league commissioner Roger Goodell.

In numerous emails during a seven-year period ending in early 2018, Gruden criticized Goodell and the league for trying to reduce concussions…

Gruden told ESPN on Sunday that the league was reviewing emails in which he criticized Goodell, and explained that he had been upset about team owners’ lockout of the players in 2011, when some of the emails were written. Gruden said in that interview that he had used an expletive to refer to Goodell and that he did so because he disapproved of Goodell’s emphasis on safety, which he believed was scaring parents into steering their sons away from football.

This is typical right-wing thinking. To Gruden, parents were growing shy about letting their kids play football because the NFL was trying to make the game safer rather than because medical science had revealed the true dangers of the sport. But his reasoning is beside the point. The important thing is that he didn’t put the well-being of the players first.

The relationship between players and coaches is built on trust and respect, and Gruden was never going to have either after these emails were revealed. He and many other white coaches could lead effectively despite having political views that run contrary to most of his players. It wasn’t a deal-breaker that he had “old school” views about women and gays. But the fact that he’s privately contemptuous of blacks and that he doesn’t put player safety first meant that he could no longer command respect.

And that loss of respect isn’t related to how his players learned about his private opinions. What matters is the truth, and the truth is what cost Gruden his job.

In some ways, this is a lot like the situation with Colin Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who has been unemployable in the NFL since his decision to kneel during the national anthem in protest of policy brutality against blacks. Many people have rightly noted that Kaerpernick is more talented than dozens of quarterbacks, mainly backups, who play in the league. What they tend to miss is that he’s not so talented as to make up for the distraction he’d create in the clubhouse. It’s true he was initially blackballed for his political beliefs, but that is not why teams continue to take a pass on bringing him into their clubhouse. Like Gruden, he has the tools to do the job but not the ability to keep a team’s focus on football.

The situation with Gruden is more severe however. While a 53-man football roster would inevitably have a few players who dislike Kaepernick for his political views, the main distraction he’d create would be driven by the media. Gruden’s problem is that no player would trust him to look after their safety and the vast majority would not want to play for a racist. So, while Gruden can still develop a game plan and teach players how to be better performers on the field, he can never again be an effective leader. He’s unemployable.

In Kaepernick’s case, he made a sacrifice. He may not have realized at the outset that his political activism could cost him his career, but he didn’t back down when it started to become clear that it would. Gruden hasn’t made any sacrifices or put anyone else’s interest above his own. Political correctness didn’t cost him job. His true character did that.

I basically agree with Yascha Mounck about the two main points of his piece for the Atlantic, but I think he makes very poor arguments. His thesis is that while no one has any right to a speaking engagement at a college, once one is offered no college should rescind the invitation under political pressure, and that this is especially true when the controversy surrounding the proposed speaker has nothing to do with their area of expertise.

I think this is the correct stance to take, albeit there have to allowable exceptions when, for example, the inviters actually agree that a mistake has been made.

In the relevant case, a University of Chicago professor of geophysics named Dorian Abbot was scheduled to deliver the annual John Carlson Lecture at MIT on “exciting new results in climate science.” However, he doesn’t believe affirmative action should be used in college admissions and proposes an alternative criteria that is strictly based on merit and would preclude legacy and athletic considerations as well as racial preferences. This opinion caused opposition to his speaking engagement on climate science and MIT buckled under the pressure.

For Mounck, this sets a very dangerous precedent, and I agree. But one of Mounck’s primary defenses of Prof. Abbot is that his views on affirmative action are consistent with the views of a majority of Americans and therefore should not be considered controversial or particularly problematic. I understand why Mounck makes this point, but it’s a bad one that undermines his case.

An opinion can be held by a majority and still be extremely controversial. Most people think abortion rights should be protected, but would anyone argue that this is a largely uncontested view? There are Catholic bishops who want to deny communion to anyone who holds that position on abortion, including political leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden. So, while I would object if Notre Dame or Georgetown canceled a speech by the president or Speaker of the House because of their views on abortion, I don’t see that the fact they hold a majority position is relevant.

Moreover, majority positions do not always remain majority positions. Opinions have changed on white supremacy, women’s rights, and gay rights in part because a vocal and organized minority made a strong case over time and worked to marginalize the previous consensus.

Let’s start with something simple. Colleges ought to have some standards about who should be invited to speak. A lot of heartache can be avoided by not inviting the wrong people in the first place. What’s the point in inviting an advocate of slavery, for example? Is that really still a topic for open debate? Likewise, is there any real value in having a talk by a Holocaust denier?

I think Mounck wants to argue that opposing race-based preferences in college admissions isn’t as toxic as advocating we go back to segregated public facilities. I think that’s correct, and I think he should straightforwardly make that case rather than build his argument on current popular opinion.

He’s on stronger ground when he says that it’s key that college admissions have nothing to do with climate science and that climate scientists should not be subject to cancellation if they hold unrelated political opinions that cause discomfort and protest.

In general, professors should not face restrictions in who they can invite to speak on campus, and broad political tests should not be applied especially when they don’t touch on the subject of the talk. But let’s be clear about something. Asking a politician to talk about politics is reasonable, even if that politician happens to be, say, a climate science denier. Asking a climate science-denying politician to talk about climate science is not reasonable, because they don’t have anything but disinformation to offer. This is the same reason we don’t have flat-earthers testify in congressional hearings about the latest space mission. I think it’s reasonable for colleges to have some (loose and flexible) guidelines about what’s appropriate and what is not.

I can’t think of a justification for having Milo Yiannopoulos speak on a campus other than creating controversy. You don’t want to have people come and lie and mislead the audience because that’s not education and that’s not debate. But once invited, I think it’s probably a better approach for students to punish the person who extended the invitation than to ask the administration to intervene. They can shame the professor. They can boycott his or her class. Perhaps they can argue that the professor has violated the universities loose and flexible guidelines on who’s an appropriate speaker.

But the students can be wrong, too. And, in the case of Prof. Abbot, that appears to be the case. He was invited to speak about climate science because he’s an expert on climate science. He wasn’t going to misinform the audience. He wasn’t going to discuss his opinion of affirmative action, the military withdrawal from Afghanistan or anything outside his area of expertise. That’s enough to satisfy a reasonable standard for speaking engagements.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be starting a new painting. I’m back at Bodiam Castle in the UK. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 8×10 inch canvas panel.

I started my sketch using my usual grind, duplicating the grid I made over a copy of the photo itself. Over that I added some preliminary paint.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

By now most of you have probably seen videos like this showing how school board meetings around the country have been disrupted.

https://twitter.com/formvscontent/status/1425329439420866563?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1425329439420866563%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fimmasmartypants.blogspot.com%2F2021%2F10%2Fhow-conservatives-are-exploiting-dark.html

The threats have been pretty unambiguous (note: Lynch is running for Northampton County executive, not governor).

PA GOP Gov candidate Steve Lynch today: “Forget going into these school boards with freaking data. You go in to these school boards to remove them. I’m going in with 20 strong men and I’m gonna give them an option – they can leave or they can be removed.” pic.twitter.com/A0M6SsOldI

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 30, 2021

Matt Shuham documented what has been going on with a few examples.

[A]mid right-wing anger at school mask rules and bogeyman issues like “critical race theory,” examples of potentially criminal behavior aimed at educators and public health officials at school board meetings are abundant, including reports of pushing, throwing things, alleged battery, numerous reports of threats, and comments like “we will find you” and “we know who you are.”

That is why, a little over a week ago, the National School Boards Association wrote a letter to the Biden administration asking for help.

While local and state law enforcement agencies are working with public school officials in several communities to prevent further disruptions to educational services and school district operations, law enforcement officials in some jurisdictions need assistance – including help with monitoring the threat levels. As these threats and acts of violence have become more prevalent – during public school board meetings, via documented threats transmitted through the U.S. Postal Service, through social media and other online platforms, and around personal properties – NSBA respectfully asks that a joint collaboration among federal law enforcement agencies, state and local law enforcement, and with public school officials be undertaken to focus on these threats.

One sentence in that letter has been used to manufacture an uproar among right wingers. It reads: “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

On Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland responded to the NSBA request with a memo. I’m going to copy the whole thing because it is important to know exactly what he said.

In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools. While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.

Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values. Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.

The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate. In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.

Coordination and partnership with local law enforcement is critical to implementing these measures for the benefit of our nation’s nearly 14,000 public school districts. To this end, I am directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days ofthe issuance ofthis memorandum. These meetings will facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.

The Department is steadfast in its commitment to protect all people in the United States from violence, threats of violence, and other forms of intimidation arid harassment.

Almost immediately, Christopher Rufo, who manufactured the right wing freak-out about critical race theory, twisted Garland’s memo beyond recognition when he tweeted: “BREAKING: Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose critical race theory in public schools, citing ‘threats.'” Rufo also lied by adding that the NSBA’s letter requested that protests be classified as domestic terrorism.

As Breitbart documented, in the next few hours, at least 13 Republican politicians retweeted Rufo’s tweet, adding their outrage by suggesting that Garland had “weaponized” DOJ to go after Biden’s enemies.

On Tuesday Deputy AG Lisa Monaco testified at the Senate Judiciary Committee regarding reauthorization of the Violence Against Women’s Act. Both Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley used their time to attack the Garland memo. Chris Hayes developed a video montage to “read Hawley into” what is actually going on at the local level.

https://twitter.com/allinwithchris/status/1445555425416384518?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1445555425416384518%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fimmasmartypants.blogspot.com%2F2021%2F10%2Fhow-conservatives-are-exploiting-dark.html

Of course Fox News is all over this one. By Tuesday night, Tucker Carlson devoted his entire opening segment (16 minutes of incoherent ranting) to the lie.

If you are one of the troglodytes who thinks you should have some say in what your children are taught in the schools that you pay for, you should know that the Biden administration now views you as a domestic terrorist. They are fully willing to use armed agents of the state to compel you to shut up.

Later in the show, when Carlson had Hawley on to feed the lie, the Fox News host actually twisted things even further in order to find a way to blame the whole thing on the Black guy  – former President Barack Obama. Referring to Deputy AG Monaco, he said:

That is the person, by the way, who actually runs the Justice Department. And she’s actually run by Susan Rice at the White House, who takes her direction from Barack Obama. Just so you know how it actually works.

If you haven’t heard that the Biden administration is using armed agents of the state to compel parents to shut up, then you probably haven’t been paying a lot of attention to the right-wing media ecosphere (perhaps smartly). But you can bet that your MAGA friends/family know all about it because it is a very hot topic on that side of the political divide.

There’s a lot I could say about this particular lie. But I think that one of the most important points was captured by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Here’s what they reported about what has been happening in Wisconsin.

A loose network of conservative groups with ties to major Republican donors and party-aligned think tanks is quietly lending firepower to local activists engaged in culture war fights in schools across the country.

While they are drawn by the anger of parents opposed to school policies on racial history or COVID-19 protocols like mask mandates, the groups are often run by political operatives and lawyers standing ready to amplify local disputes.

In a wealthy Milwaukee suburb, a law firm heavily financed by a conservative foundation that has fought climate change mitigation and that has ties to former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election helped parents seeking to recall Mequon-Thiensville school board members, chiefly over the board’s hiring of a diversity consultant. A new national advocacy group, Parents Defending Education, promoted the Wisconsin parents’ tactics as a model.

As I noted previously, the conservative foundation they referred to is the Bradley Foundation. Later in the article, they made this important point:

It’s a fight likely to help Republicans in congressional elections next year, said Ian Prior, a former Justice Department official who is now the executive director of a conservative organization called Fight for Schools, which is working to recall board members in Loudoun County.

“You’re going to need a team. You’re going to need a command staff. You’re going to need what I call the army of moms,” he said at a conservative conference in Texas in July.

In addition to Fight for Schools, the Journal Sentinel identifies two other groups: Parents Defending Education and No Left Turn. But according to an analysis by NBC News, there are at least 165 local and national groups that aim to disrupt lessons on race and gender. Where is funding for all of that coming from? At Open Secrets, Alyce McFadden writes that a secretive ‘dark money’ network has launched an anti-critical race theory campaign. For example:

A deep-pocketed “dark money” group is spending “well over $1 million” on an ad campaign against the inclusion of racial justice topics in K-12 curricula.

The Concord Fund is a conservative dark money group better known as the Judicial Crisis Network. It registered Free to Learn Action as a “fictitious name” — or legal alias — on June 21, the Daily Poster reported Thursday. Free to Learn’s website does not disclose its relationship with the Concord Fund and describes itself as a “nonpartisan” group dedicated to promoting education without “pressure or requirements to subscribe to a singular worldview and activist curriculum with a political agenda.”…

Another group, Parents Defending Education, is led and incorporated by Nicole Neily, a long-time conservative writer and researcher. Neily also heads Speech First Inc., a charitable nonprofit with ties to the Koch Network that promotes conservative speech on college campuses.

The Judicial Crisis Network (which is now Free to Learn Action) is one of Leonard Leo’s creations, as outlined in an in-depth report from the Washington Post on how the former director of the Federalist Society funneled dark money into Republican efforts to stack the courts with conservatives.

JCN, the group that has office space on the same hall as the Federalist Society, launched a $7 million media campaign to bolster the Republican-controlled Senate in preventing Obama from filling the seat, according to a JCN news release at the time.

This graph from that report indicates how that scheme worked, and is probably instructive of what is happening now.

Leo’s dark money eventually made its way to the Independent Women’s Voice, whose leadership made regular appearances on Fox News to promote Trump’s Supreme Court nominees.

These days, regular guests on Fox News include Asra Nomani, who “helps run” Parents Defending Education, and Elana Fishbein, founder of No Left Turn. Here’s a clip of Nomani on Fox and Friends this week:

In Case You Missed @AsraNomani on @foxandfriends this morning talking about the @TheJusticeDept & @NSBAPublicEd, you can watch the whole segment here: https://t.co/AD2jwkRVIP pic.twitter.com/OeXKxC9MOu

— Parents Defending Education (@DefendingEd) October 6, 2021

So the scheme is that dark money is funding these so-called “grassroots groups” and right wing media amplifies their lies. Make no mistake about it: Republicans plan to exploit the hell out of all of this in 2022, as McFadden documented.

On June 24, the Republican Study Committee circulated a memo authored by Committee Chair Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) to its members urging them to “lean into the culture war.”

“Because the backlash against Critical Race Theory is real,” Banks wrote. “We are beginning to see an organic movement from parents across the country … who are fed up with the lessons their kids are being taught. As House conservatives, we should be sending a signal to these concerned parents: We have your back.”

While parents across the country have objected to the teaching of critical race theory in schools, a network of established dark money groups funded by secret donors are stoking the purportedly “organic” anti-CRT sentiment Banks describes.

Putting a lie to Kevin Drum’s claim that it is liberals who created the so-called “culture war,” it is actually Republicans who plan to capitalize on the way that right wing funders and media have fabricated the whole controversy over critical race theory.

If you’re wondering what to do about all of that, I believe that Rachel Vindman has the answer.

https://twitter.com/savedemocracy18/status/1445912757749100545?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1445912757749100545%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fimmasmartypants.blogspot.com%2F2021%2F10%2Fhow-conservatives-are-exploiting-dark.html

I’m actually surprised to learn that a tourist has been sentenced to four days in jail for being too close to grizzly bears in Yellowstone Park. I’m not gonna lie; I’m afraid of bears. My older brother Andrew took me to Yellowstone the summer before I began high school and we woke up one morning and saw bear tracks in our campsite. Later that day, at the ranger station, we learned that someone had been mauled to death by a grizzly that night in a different part of the park. I’ve always kind of felt like it could have been us.

Despite that scare, I loved the trip I took with Andrew. A couple of years ago, we took the whole family on a similar trip including a couple of days at Yellowstone. We saw a lot of wildlife, but thankfully no bears. We did some hikes in areas where encountering a grizzly was a very real possibility, and I was on constant alert and armed with bear spray. I had a weird sense that I was tempting fate by returning to the place where a bear had come so close to my tent.

We did get chased by a bison though. We raced back to the car and were lucky to make it, but we had been maintaining a respectful distance when it happened. The law says you must keep at least 100 yards away from wildlife, and the bison was initially on the other side of a stream and several hundred yards from the road. They move fast when they want to, however, and we learned that streams don’t slow them down a bit.

They say that the 100-yard barrier is for the benefit of the animals, and that’s true, but it’s also so the tourists don’t get mauled and trampled.

Check out this clip of a @YellowstoneNPS grizzly bear bluff charging a tourist that got too close. Darcie Addington took this from the safety of her vehicle. She doesn't know the other woman, but says several people warned her. Remember to give bears at least 100 yards of space. pic.twitter.com/7rnMgKGNxm

— NBC Montana (@NBCMontana) May 12, 2021

The woman in that video was almost impossibly stupid. I suppose sending her to jail will potentially save a life somewhere down the line. I guess that’s the point.

If you want to feel sad, I suggest you read the most recent Staff Minority Report produced by Senate Republicans on the Judiciary Committee.. It’s the congressional equivalent of a judicial dissent meant to criticize the findings of the full committee. It’s an attempted rebuttal to a lengthy report entitled Subverting Justice: How the Former President and His Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election. 

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa is responsible for issuing the Minority Report, and his method is to acknowledge most of what Trump did but to explain it away by pointing out that the disgraced former president ultimately backed down on taking the most dramatic steps. A good example is Grassley’s insistence that Trump listened to his advisers and refrained from firing Jeffrey Rosen as acting Attorney General. Yet, Trump was only dissuaded from taking that step when many of those advisers, including two of his attorneys, said they would resign in protest if he went through with it.

Similarly, Grassley gives Trump credit for rejecting a plan hatched by Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division Jeffrey Clark to have the DOJ recommend that “some states with reported voter irregularities…hold a legislative session to choose different electors.” But, again, Trump backed down only when faced with prospect of mass resignations at the Department of Justice.

Both plots were discussed at a January 3, 2021 meeting in the Oval Office meeting. At that point, the election results had already been certified for several weeks. Trump was trying to convince the DOJ to help him remain in power anyway, which was not only insane but clearly a violation of our entire constitutional system. He threatened to replace Rosen as acting attorney general with Clark, and spent several hours trying to get the attendees on board for a coup.

This is clear from CNN’s article which draws on the full committee report:

[Richard] Donoghue and Rosen also recalled White House lawyers [Pat] Cipollone and Patrick Philbin pushing back on the plan to replace Rosen with Clark, with Cipollone calling Clark’s letter a “murder-suicide pact” and the two White House lawyers indicating that they would also resign, according to the report.

Despite the threat of mass resignations, Trump “continued for some time to entertain the idea of installing Clark in Rosen’s place,” the report notes. It also says that Donoghue told the panel that Trump did not reject Clark’s course of action until “‘very deep into the conversation,’ within the final 15 minutes of the two- to three-hour meeting.”

Needless to say, there would have been a different outcome if Trump hadn’t faced such stiff resistance. It doesn’t make sense to say that Trump listened to his advisers. He failed to convince them to launch a coup, so he tried to use a mob on January 6 instead. Grassley and the Senate Republicans are okay with that.

Most of the time I really appreciate Kevin Drum’s commitment to charts and data. But a few months ago, he published a couple of pieces aimed at making the point that “[s]ince 1994, Democrats have moved left far more than Republicans have moved right.” As the title of his second piece suggests, he uses that data to blame the so-called “culture wars” on liberals. I’m a little late in addressing all of that, but it’s because I’ve been stewing about it for a while now.

There are a lot of problems with the data Drum shared. For the most part, his charts show that over the years, more Democrats have aligned themselves with party positions. That is very different than the notion that the party has moved left. To demonstrate the latter, he would need to examine how Democratic policies have changed on issues like immigration, abortion, marriage equality, or guns. That is not what his data shows.

If we go back to 1994, we can see that there has been a lot of movement on the issue of marriage equality. But the chart Drum uses for that one actually tells the real story.

It’s not just Democrats who have embraced marriage equality – even 55% of Republicans and 73% of independents are on board. There has been a sea change in this country on that issue. Republicans are fighting that movement, while Democrats have embraced it.

One of the follies of Drum’s analysis has to do with the dates he chose for his data. He posits that Democrats started moving left in 1994, but the charts he uses to defend that position have starting dates ranging from 1997 to 2003. The excludes the reality that this was the discussion about immigration in 1980 between two men who went on to be Republican presidents.

They’re still panning for gold in Grimes Creek. It’s been that way since 1862, when pioneer George Grimes found gold there and then was almost immediately killed. Shoshone Indians were blamed, but with that kind of money on the line who can really be sure? Before long, the Boise valley will filling up with white folks eager to stake a claim, and they didn’t want harassment from the Shoshones.

The killing of Grimes and other Indian depredations led to the organization of a volunteer company of the Placerville miners in March 1863, whose captain was Jefferson Standifer, a man prominent among adventurers for his energy and daring. They pursued the Indians to Salmon Falls, where they had fortifications, killing fifteen and wounding as many more. Returning from this expedition about the last of the month, Standifer raised another company of 200, which made a reconnaissance over the mountains to the Payette, and across the Snake River, up the Malheur, where they came upon Indians, whose depredations were the most serious obstacle to the prosperity of the Boise basin. Fortifications had been erected by them on an elevated position, which was also defended by rifle-pits. Laying siege to the place, the company spent a day in trying to get near enough to make their rifles effective, but without success until the second day, when by artifice the Indians were induced to surrender, and were thereupon nearly all killed in revenge for their murdered comrades by the ruthless white man.

To punish the hostile Indians in Idaho, Fort Boise was established July 1, 1863, by P. Lugenbeel, with two companies of Washington infantry in the regular service. It was situated on the Boise River about forty miles above the old fort of the Hudson’s Bay Company, near the site of the modern Boise City.

Prior to Mr. Lugenbeel setting out with his band of genocidal white men, President Abraham Lincoln was compelled on March 4 to recognize Idaho as a U.S. territory. It had to wait until 1890 to be a full-blown state, and much longer than that to experience any kind of effective oversight from the federal government.

It’s notable that Fort Boise was established on the first day of the Battle of Gettysburg. Would you have rather have been fighting for Gen. Robert E. Lee or panning for gold in the Rocky Mountains? For the first Idahoans, being outside the reach of the draft boards was part of the point.

The dynamics of the Civil War triggered territorial changes. Anti-war Democrats and draft dodgers, many from Southern and border states, poured into the eastern part of the territory in 1862, lured by gold and silver strikes. The balance of power between the pro-Union Republicans of “Clam country” and the influx of Democrats threatened to shift the territory’s regional power to one potentially sympathetic to the Confederacy.

Later on, it was more important to be outside the reach of the Environmental Protection Agency, if possible. There weren’t people who were likely to listen if you told them to drive 55.

There is something admirable about the pioneering spirit, but it’s always been accompanied by lawlessness, violence and greed. Their kind of freedom has often been a fig leaf for brutality and exploitation. That’s the seed for the modern Idaho where their politicians compete with each other to be the most awful human beings in the country.

On Tuesday, Idaho Gov. Brad Little joined nine other Republican governors in Texas to discuss the Biden administration’s handling of immigration at the southern border. While he was away, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin was temporarily in change, and she went a little crazy.

First, she wrote a letter to Major General Michael J. Garshak, seeking information on how to activate the Idaho National Guard and send it to the border in Texas and Arizona. Then she issued an executive order “to prevent employers from requiring their employees be vaccinated against Covid-19.”

General Garshak immediately responded by telling her, “I am unaware of any request for Idaho National Guard assistance under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) from Texas or Arizona. As you are aware, the Idaho National Guard is not a law enforcement agency.”

Gov. Little issued a statement declaring, “I am in Texas performing my duties as the duly elected Governor of Idaho, and I have not authorized the Lt. Governor to act on my behalf. I will be rescinding and reversing any actions taken by the Lt. Governor when I return.”

This is a natural development–a toxic mixing of white supremacy and anti-Washington paranoia and resentment, all wrapped up in a elite dripping with greed and exploitation.

Janice McGeachin may be insane, but she’s probably got the politics right. I won’t be surprised at all if she’s the next governor in Boise.