Tag: politics

GOP Congressman Stands By Accusation Some Fellow Members Have Been Compromised

One of the more colorful conservative members of the U.S. House told HuffPost he stands by recent remarks in which he said some of his fellow members were likely victims of blackmail.

But Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.), who made the comments on a Dec. 21 podcast with a right-wing commentator, declined to elaborate on who he was talking about or give any other details.

“You as a member of the media understand confidentiality, and I appreciate that, and I am going to keep that confidential unless those people tell me otherwise,” Burchett told HuffPost on Thursday.

Asked if he was standing by his comments, Burchett said, “Sure. I’m not going to back up.”

And when asked if he believed there were House members who had decided how to vote based on compromising material about them held by foreign powers, Burchett said, “Absolutely. And other powers. It doesn’t have to be foreign powers.”

On “The Benny Show” podcast, hosted by Benny Johnson, Burchett said, without pointing to specific evidence or names, that powerful people protect their own interests by blackmail.

“The old honey pot. The Russians do that. And I’m sure members of Congress have been caught up. Why in the world would good conservatives vote for crazy stuff like what we’ve been seeing out of Congress?” he asked.

He said members may be on a trip or at a bar, meet someone and buy them a drink.

“Next thing you know, you’re in a hotel room with them, naked. Next thing you know, you’re about to make a key vote, and what happens? Some well-dressed person comes up and whispers into your ear, ‘Hey, man, there’s tapes out on you. Were you in a motel room on whatever with whoever?’ And then you’re, like, ‘Uh-oh.’ And they say, ‘You really ought not be voting for this thing.’”

“They know what to get at. If it’s women, drugs, booze — it’ll find you in D.C. And other elected offices,” he told Johnson.

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Who’s To Blame For The Elite Extreme Left?

Many writers decry the American political scene as “too divisive.” But I don’t think this goes to the root of our political problems. A much more serious concern is that a very powerful minority of Americans reject the core principles upon which our Constitution and our society rest: principles of Western Civilization, republican government, and the Judeo-Christian heritage.

In the view of this minority, the American Founding was a crime, people should be judged largely on race and gender, elections should be manipulated (to protect “our democracy”), the traditional family structure should be abandoned, sexual mores should be perverted, and government should be nearly omnipotent.

These ideas resemble a variant of fascism in which everyone serves the state and individual rights—economic and political—are exercised only by the elite’s permission. This minority not only believe these things themselves, but they want to force you to accept them also. They’re authoritarian, even totalitarian.

When the rest of us push back against their agenda, it isn’t “divisiveness.” It’s self-defense.

The Power of the Elite

Despite our efforts of self-defense, this group has been remarkably successful in setting the national agenda. One example: From 1998 to 2014, there were 30 state referenda on the definition of civil marriage. The advocates of traditional marriage—that is, between a man and a woman—won all these referenda, and most of them by decisive supermajorities.

But the agenda-setters wanted same-sex civil marriage; therefore, now it’s imposed on every state, no matter what the voters might think. So much for “our democracy.”

Once same-sex civil marriage was secured, the agenda-setters proceeded to implement even more outré policies: critical race theory, “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” and, at least in some states, infanticide and the mutilation of children.

And despite the fact that most Americans think we have too much government and not enough freedom, under the guidance of the agenda-setters, government continues to grow.

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White House says ICE will reduce deportations, detention capacity if Republicans don’t pass border bill

The White House on Thursday announced that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will soon be “forced” to reduce operations at the southern border due to lack of funds.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that because Republicans have not passed the bipartisan border security agreement with funding for Israel and Ukraine, the administration is left with no choice but to pull back from the border.

“Because congressional Republicans are choosing partisan politics over our national security and refusing to pass the bipartisan national security agreement that includes significant border reforms and funding, over the coming weeks, ICE will be forced to reduce operations because of budget shortfalls,” Jean-Pierre said during a gaggle on Air Force One.

“We have asked Congress for additional funding and resources, and every time Congress has provided less than we asked for, or most recently, completely ignored our supplemental request,” she said.

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Recommended reading…

Get it HERE.

“By offering a radical review of the last one hundred years of US history, this work is intended as a counterpoint to the rampant revisionism of the flurry of books glorifying the “American Century”. Beginning with the rather bold and decidedly controversial assertion that the current political system in place in the United States at the dawn of the twenty-first century is fascism, the first part of this book attempts to justify that claim by first defining exactly what fascism iscorrecting various widely-held misconceptionsand then analyzing how closely we as a nation conform to that definition. Also included is a review of some of the hidden history and key events of World War II. Part II offers a retrospective of the twentieth century American presidential administrations, to demonstrate that the steady and inexorable march towards overt fascism was a defining characteristic that remained unchanged. The final section looks at the still very much alive eugenics movement, and analyzes the role played by the psychiatric establishment in validating the fascist state. This book will surely find no shortage of detractors, but if read with an open mind, it just may change the way you view the world.”

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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