Tag: politics

Democrats Want Over 130 Republicans Banned From Holding Office

More than 130 Republicans have faced challenges to their eligibility to serve in office based on their alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in recent years.

Donald Trump has said the 2020 election was stolen from him because of widespread voter fraud, despite a lack of evidence. Critics say these allegations culminated in a number of failed attempts to block Joe Biden‘s victory—including the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, when Trump supporters violently stormed the building to try to block Congress from certifying Biden’s Electoral College win.

Critics also say those involved in the riot should be barred from holding office, citing Section 3 of the 14th Amendment. It states that those who took an oath to defend the Constitution and went on to engage in “insurrection or rebellion” should not be permitted to hold “any office, civil or military, under the United States.”

Since the 2020 election, at least 134 Republicans, including Trump, have faced legal challenges questioning whether they are qualified to hold office. None of these challenges have been successful.

Newsweek reached out to the Republican National Committee for comment via email.

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Dick Durbin blocks request to subpoena Jeffrey Epstein’s flight logs, Senator Blackburn claims

During a Thursday Senate Judiciary Committee meeting, Democrat Chairman Dick Durbin forbade GOP Senators from speaking out about two Biden judicial nominees ahead of roll call votes. On the same day, Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn accused Durbin of blocking a request she had put forth to subpoena the flight logs of disgraced pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

“I think this deserves some commentary given the nature of the nominee and I’d like to ask to speak on the nomination,” one senator said.

Blackburn added, “Mr. Chairman, I would also like to speak on the nomination.”

Durbin replied, “I understand what you’d like to do, but I’m saying that in fairness, we’ve debated these nominees twice, I ask the clerk to call the roll.”

The room erupted, with senators questioning why they weren’t allowed to speak before the roll call.

“You’re going to have a lot of consequences coming if you go down this road,” Republican Senator Tom Cotton said. “I’ve cautioned a lot of you.”

“So you’re telling us to shut up? You want us to shut up? Is that what you’re saying?” Blackburn said.

One Senator asked those who were not able to speak previously on the issue to raise their hand, adding, “We’ve got several folks, Mr. Chairman, who didn’t have a chance to speak.”

“We want to tell you again why these nominees are awful,” another senator added.

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House Ethics Committee decides not to open investigation into Rep. Bowman over fire alarm scandal

The House Ethics Committee decided on Wednesday to not open an investigation into Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y., over pulling a fire alarm back in September. 

“A majority of the members of the Committee did not agree to establish an ISC or report to the House regarding Representative Bowman’s conduct,” the chairman and ranking member wrote in a statement.

In late September, Bowman pulled the fire alarm in one of the congressional office buildings, interrupting official proceedings. He has been accused of doing so intentionally to delay a vote on government spending.

Last month, Bowman pleaded guilty and has to pay a fine of $1,000 and write an apology to the Capitol Police.

Republicans have called for Bowman to be prosecuted over the stunt.

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Rachel Maddow’s Prequel Is a Deceptively Framed History of the Radical Right

“American democracy itself was under attack from enemies within and without,” Rachel Maddow writes in Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. If you’re not sure whether she is speaking of the past or the present, that’s because she wants to conflate the two.

Prequel is a deeply flawed and deceptively framed history of right-wing radicalism in the United States on the eve of American entry into World War II. Maddow’s treatment of this well-worn topic draws principally from primary sources generated from the protagonists of her story, a collection of private spies and anti-fascist activists, as well as contemporary press reporting, sundry government documents, and a narrow base of secondary sources, one that noticeably omits prominent works in the field. Deficiencies in her sources, methods, and analyses make for a book that recapitulates past passions at the expense of sober reflection and reality.

Maddow opens with her strongest case study, covering the German-born Nazi agent George Sylvester Viereck, who tried to push Americans toward neutrality by using personal connections with Congress to spread noninterventionist literature. She then switches focus to her weakest case study, that of populist Democratic governor and senator Huey “Kingfish” Long and his influence on the Nazi sympathizers Philip Johnson and Gerald L.K. Smith. Maddow does not clarify why Long, who died in 1935, is discussed here. But her tone and source selection imply that she agrees with the Kingfish’s contemporary critics that his populism and demagoguery made him a proto-fascist and a political gateway drug for more radical figures, like Johnson and Smith.

Maddow then abruptly changes focus to the dark history of American segregation and its influence on Nazi racial science, following the German lawyer Heinrich Krieger’s travels through the American South. Then she circles back to more-prominent characters, such as the American fascist Lawrence Dennis, the antisemitic preacher Charles Coughlin, and the abstruse spiritualist (and leader of the fascist Silver Shirts) William Dudley Pelley, among others.

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Meet the evangelical activist who’s had a ‘profound influence’ on Speaker Mike Johnson

Two years before going from a relatively unknown congressman to speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana spoke at a national gathering of Christian lawmakers in North Texas and shared his deep admiration for the man behind the conference: the evangelical activist and self-styled historian David Barton.

“I was introduced to David and his ministry a quarter-century ago,” Johnson said at the ProFamily Legislators Conference, which was being hosted by Barton’s nonprofit WallBuilders, a Texas group dedicated to promoting the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation whose laws should be based on a conservative reading of the Bible.

Johnson told the audience at the December 2021 gathering that Barton’s teachings — which are disputed by many historians — have had “a profound influence on me, and my work, and my life and everything I do.”

Johnson’s effusive praise for Barton, an influential background figure in the conservative evangelical political movement, sends an unmistakable signal about how the devout Christian Republican lawmaker — now second in the line to the presidency — views the role of religion in government and public life, said John Fea, a professor of American history at Messiah University in Pennsylvania.

“David Barton is a political propagandist, he’s a Christian-right activist who cherry picks from the past to promote political agendas in the present, to paint a picture of America’s history as evangelicals would like it to be,” said Fea, who’s also an evangelical. “Mike Johnson comes straight out of that Christian-right world, where Barton’s ideas are highly influential. It’s the air they breathe.”

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Jamaal Bowman CHARGED for pulling fire alarm: New York Democrat facing prosecution for stunt during votes to avoid government shutdown

Rep. Jamaal Bowman has been criminally charged for pulling the fire alarm during a House vote that would have avoided a government shutdown.

The New York Democrat called allegations it was deliberate ‘complete BS’ and thought he was opening a door.

But now the Capitol Police have referred him to prosecutors, who have hit him with one misdemeanor count and ordered him to appear in court.

The September 30th incident took place in the Cannon House Office building and sparked calls from Republicans for him to be expelled from Congress.

The charge was for ‘willfully and knowingly [giving] a false alarm of fire, in violation of DC code’ and the New York Democrat was ordered to appear in court for arraignment on Thursday.

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Meme Artist Douglass Mackey is Sentenced To Seven Months in Prison For Hillary Clinton Voting Meme

Douglass Mackey, a once well-known creator of memes on Twitter, has been sentenced to seven months in prison.

The conviction marks a dramatic escalation in how free speech is being handled in the United States. Rendered in the New York criminal court, Mackey was declared guilty of perpetrating a “conspiracy against rights”—the right to an unobstructed election being the one in focus here.

Mackey, who operated under the alias Ricky Vaughn, had made and shared memes critical of Hillary Clinton during the 2016 Presidential race. His memes humorously suggested that Clinton supporters cast their ballots through text messages – a patently invalid method of voting.

Although such an improper method was clearly ineffective, Mackey was still convicted over the notion of election interference.

Quite interestingly, many have noted, other internet users who shared similar content regarding the option of text voting for Donald Trump were neither charged nor convicted.

The absence of evidence showing any voting attempt made following Mackey’s meme did not deter the US Department of Justice from declaring it an interference. Despite Mackey professing his mere intent of creating a viral meme, similar to those which his fellow Clinton detractors had created; he was singled out and penalized.

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War As An ‘Investment’: The Bizarre Business-Speak Of Mass Killing

Did you know the Russia-Ukraine War is a great “investment” for the United States? A terrific opportunity to kill lots of Russians and to destroy lots of their military equipment at a relatively cheap cost to us? (Just don’t mention the price paid by Ukraine.) It gives new meaning to the expression “making a killing” on the “market.”

To Gordon Gekko’s infamous “greed is good” speech we must now add “war is good.” That war is “right.” That it “works” – at least for America, allegedly.

War as an “investment” truly symbolizes the moral bankruptcy of conventional discourse in the U.S. political mainstream.

Instead of war being a calamity, a catastrophe, a realm of death and destruction, dare I say even a mortal sin of grievous evil, we’re told that instead it’s an investment that’s paying dividends, especially in that growth stock known as Ukraine.

Even body counts and truck counts from the Vietnam War era are being brought back to show what a great “investment” the Ukraine War has been for the U.S.

In her latest, Caitlin Johnstone cites war-lover Max Boot for his advocacy of the Russia-Ukraine War as a continuing investment opportunity for the U.S., including the use of body and truck counts as a measure of progress:

“Russia has lost an estimated 120,000 soldiers and 170,000 to 180,000 have been injured,” [Max] Boot writes [in a Washington Post op-ed]. “Russia has also lost an estimated 2,329 tanks, 2,817 infantry fighting vehicles, 2,868 trucks and jeeps, 354 armored personnel carriers, 538 self-propelled artillery vehicles, 310 towed artillery pieces, 92 fixed-wing aircraft and 106 helicopters.”

CNN has recently made a similar argument…

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Dem Lawmaker Who Pulled Fire Alarm Thinks We’re All Idiots; Republicans Investigate Following Evacuation

Democratic lawmaker Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) thinks we’re all idiots, after offering an unbelievable excuse after he was caught on CCTV pulling the fire alarm in a House office building while Democrats were trying to delay a House vote on the stopgap bill which eventually passed at the 11th hour.

Bowman – who founded a school that would have held several fire drills per year, wants us to believe he mistook this fire alarm…

…for an automatic door opener that he was trying to use to open a clearly marked emergency exit.

In a Saturday statement, Bowman said “I want to personally clear up confusion surrounding today’s events,” adding “Today, as I was rushing to make a vote, I came to a door that is usually open.” (it’s not)

“I am embarrassed to admit that I activated the fire alarm, mistakenly thinking it would open the door.”

And now, Bowman has found himself under investigation.

“Rep (Jamaal) Bowman pulled a fire alarm in Cannon this morning,” said House Administration Committee Chairman Bryan Steil (R-WI), who added that “An investigation into why it was pulled is underway.”

As the Epoch Times notes; The fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building, often called the “Old House Office Building,” was triggered around noon, leading to an evacuation of the entire building while the House was in session. The building was reopened an hour later, after Capitol Police determined the situation was not a threat.

Capitol Police said in a statement late Saturday that an “investigation into what happened and why continues.”

The fire alarms in the Old House Office Building are pull down triggers encased in bright red boxes that read “FIRE.”

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