59 thoughts on “Why Not Give Meadows Immunity?”

  1. IMHO that’s exactly what he and his lawyers are angling for given the insider stuff he wrote in his book and all those documents he turned over to the committee without hesitation.   that way he can tell his lord and master former guy he was forced to spill his guts, lawyers said he had no alternative and “FU & your stupid NDA anyway.”

  2. pilar, last night you wrote:

    This whole contempt thing came about during the 1700’s when Congress must have had a dungeon somewhere to throw these scoundrels until they came to their senses.  This ain’t 1790 and there is no dungeon.

    perhaps, things have changed since jan. 6 and since this was written, but here’s an article by cap. architect which seems to agree with you:

    “Prisons” and “Jails” in the U.S. Capitol | AOC

    Several rooms in the United States Capitol have been used at various times for the detention of offenders. They were called guard rooms, and it is not always possible to determine whether those rooms were kept strictly for custody of prisoners or were used also as guard stations.
    An 1826 report from the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds included plans for a guard room and other spaces in a terrace on the west front of the Capitol. An 1859 receipt shows that the House of Representatives and the Senate evidently were charged equal assessments for equipment of the guard room, indicating that one such room served both houses of Congress.
    In 1829, journalist Anne Royall attended the inauguration of President Andrew Jackson and made her way into the Capitol; she would later write, “I ran upstairs to look out some upper windows, and here I found a colored man in a violent passion. He had been locked up.” Unfortunately, no information has been found about the location or circumstances of the man’s confinement, nor of his identity.
    On April 8, 1861, troops in the Capitol during the Civil War “established . . . a guard house in the room now occupied as the House of Representatives post office, in the southeast corner of the ground floor of the Capitol.” An October 6, 1902, article in the Washington Evening Star states that the first man arrested by the military authorities during the war was imprisoned here, being accused of filling artillery shells with sawdust while working at the U.S. arsenal. Freed after ten days by the intercession of his friends in the city, he was later rumored to have served the Confederate forces as a gunner. The room is now numbered H-124 and is assigned to the Sergeant at Arms.
    Another incarceration is reported in the Evening Star of February 13, 1862: “After considerable discussion the House adopted a resolution directing the confinement of Mr. [Henry] Wikof until he shall purge himself of contempt or is discharged by the House. The accused was then placed in the guard room under the Capitol.” Wickof reportedly had refused to “give a satisfactory answer to the charge preferred against him”; no further information about Wikof, his alleged offense or the disposition of the matter has been found in the records of the Architect of the Capitol.
    […]
    There is no evidence in the records of the Architect of the Capitol of any designated “guard room” or “detention area” in the Capitol since that time.

  3. but then there’s this from 2019:

    Just where is this secret House jail located? – Roll Call

    Speaker Nancy Pelosi resurfaced one of the Capitol’s most enduring mysteries when answering a question about whether Democrats might imprison Trump administration officials who defy Congress: the House jail. But where is this mysterious cell?

    “We do have a little jail down in the basement of the Capitol, but if we were arresting all of the people in the administration, we would have an overcrowded jail situation. And I’m not for that,” Pelosi said Wednesday at a Washington Post live event.

    [continues]

  5. ‘Authoritarian movement is on the march’: Lincoln Project ad outlines 2022 election stakes (floridapolitics.com)

    In 2022, Democracy itself is on the ballot. That’s the message from the Never Trumpers at the Lincoln Project, who have a new ad spotlighting their commitment to fight for voting rights.
    The minute-long “Protect America” spot will air Thursday and Friday in the Palm Beach and Washington D.C. media markets. Lincoln Project co-founder Reed Galen frames the new ad in the group’s larger mission, which is to thwart “authoritarian” Republicans.
    “In America’s two-party system, we have one party that believes in our nation’s founding democratic principles and another that seeks to threaten those principles in the pursuit of raw political power,” Galen said. “Their authoritarian movement is on the march.”
    Galen cites Congress members’ votes regarding certification of the 2020 Presidential Election and state-level bills designed to restrict voting rights.
    […]
    The ad tracks the “long American journey” in the fight for the right to vote, linking images of the Boston Tea Party and the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th Century, before warning that Republicans want to roll back the clock and “steal what so many Americans died to protect.”
    “This is how democracies die. There aren’t good people on both sides in this fight,” a gravel-voiced male narrator warns.
    >[continues]

    Our mission is clear: Protect America.

  7. I just know so many folks, even some family members, who are still on board with Orange Adolf.   I hope the LP ads can do something to de-program them from the cult. 

    https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/09/politics/biden-hispanic-voters-democrats-problem/index.html

    There is no block of “Hispanic voters.” They are not any more homogeneous than women or Presbyterians or white folks when it comes to voting. Floridians don’t pull Repug for the same reasons Texans do. However, there is a problem and it’s messaging. Toot your own horn, Dems. Don’t be afraid to go low going after Republicans, either.

  9. how ’bout these bozos? pretty clear what they’re instigating next, kinda corroborates intent behind jan 6 insurrection and the one they’re planning next

    Gaetz, Bannon Say Shock Troops Should Take Control If Trump Wins in 2024 (insider.com)

    Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and the former White House advisor Steve Bannon floated an idea that an “army of patriots” and “shock troops” should be prepared to take over the government if former President Donald Trump were to run and win in 2024.
    During Thursday’s episode of Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, he and Gaetz outlined their plan if Trump should win.
    Trump has not yet publicly announced he is running in 2024.
    “People didn’t like that Donald Trump raised his voice, but sometimes you gotta raise your voice to raise a ruckus and to raise an army of patriots who love this country and will fight for her,” Gaetz said
    […]
    It is unclear what Gaetz and Bannon meant, specifically, with references to an “army of patriots” and “shock troops.” Representatives for Gaetz and Bannon did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider.
    In October, Bannon made a similar, albeit less detailed suggestion when calling into NBC News.
    “If you’re going to take over the administrative state and deconstruct it, then you have to have shock troops prepared to take it over immediately,” Bannon said. “I gave ’em fire and brimstone.”
    [continues]

  11. While there is some truth to the thought that gops fear “the base”,  I think it’s just as likely that it’s a matter of blackmail.  Kevin scurried down to Florida like a scared little bitch really quickly din’he?   And Little Lindsay….remember he went from rabid anti-trump to rabid pro-trumper over the course of one golf game? Who does that?   And Meadows—“That book I wrote?  Fake news!”
    Want to explain such loyalty to the worm who walks like a man?
    Look for the blackmail. Very simple that way.
    You can dig up lots of dirt when you control intelligence agencies, or when you can have access to Russian intelligence, huh……

  12. If you want the little scurrying cockroaches to testify you have to scare them more than the blackmail does.  

  13. And, of course, the head of the snake is most likely (and allegedly) a product of being blackmailed his own self.  

  16. in re sturge (our very own sherlock holmes) comment

    Here I had heard what he had heard, I had seen what he had seen, and yet from his words it was evident that he saw clearly not only what had happened, but what was about to happen, while to me the whole business was still confused and grotesque.
    Dr. John Watson
    -The Red-Headed League

  17. Sturge
    “When explaining the actions of humans, never attribute to evil when stupidity will suffice”
    Although, your senator swapped ends so fast that I’m amazed he didn’t end up in the ditch. So about him? You may be right. It was a performance that is hard to explain by everyday stupidity.
    Jack

  19. too bad chris doesn’t sue him and make him pay for whatever medical bills were incurred and for any long term covid problems he has.

    bet some of those gold star family folk would who were also infected later that day by the walking talking pestilent

  20. Craig, Pat
    I’ve got the next 3 Sundays lined up. The 19 and 26 are dated so you know the order. 
    Hopefully by that time I will have moved and have established reliable internet connection. Althought doing all that during the holidays may make that iffy.
    I think I have one more load to go, plus numerous things that need doing to transfer control of the local neighborhood organization.
    Jack

  21. SCOTUS is so ideologically skewed, now, John Roberts has become a liberal to try and preserve it.
     
    Upholding that nonsense TX law is the end of the American legal system

  22. Somewhat along the lines of the discussion, but pulling in the judicial branch, from Wapo.

    The Supreme Court isn’t well. The only hope for a cure is more justices.

    By Nancy Gertner 
    and 

    Laurence H. Tribe

     

    Nancy Gertner is a retired U.S. District Court judge. Laurence H. Tribe is Carl M. Loeb University Professor emeritus and professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School. Both served on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court.

    We now believe that Congress must expand the size of the Supreme Court and do so as soon as possible. We did not come to this conclusion lightly.

    One of us is a constitutional law scholar and frequent advocate before the Supreme Court, the other a federal judge for 17 years. After serving on the Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court over eight months, hearing multiple witnesses, reading draft upon draft of the final report issued this week, our views have evolved. We started out leaning toward term limits for Supreme Court justices but against court expansion and ended up doubtful about term limits but in favor of expanding the size of the court.
    …

    But make no mistake: In voting to submit the report to the president neither of us cast a vote of confidence in the Supreme Court itself. Sadly, we no longer have that confidence, given three things: first, the dubious legitimacy of the way some justices were appointed; second, what Justice Sonia Sotomayor rightly called the “stench” of politics hovering over this court’s deliberations about the most contentious issues; and third, the anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian direction of this court’s decisions about matters such as voting rights, gerrymandering and the corrupting effects of dark money.

    Those judicial decisions haven’t been just wrong; they put the court — and, more important, our entire system of government — on a one-way trip from a defective but still hopeful democracy toward a system in which the few corruptly govern the many, something between autocracy and oligarchy. Instead of serving as a guardrail against going over that cliff, our Supreme Court has become an all-too-willing accomplice in that disaster.
    …

    None of the reforms that have been proposed precisely fit the problem that needs remedying. Term limits cannot be implemented in time to change the court’s self-reinforcing trajectory. And while much can be said in favor of the narrower repairs the commission addressed — such as increasing the transparency of the court’s proceedings, reducing its discretion over its docket or imposing constraints on its use of emergency procedures (“the shadow docket”) — none is adequate.

    Offsetting the way the court has been “packed” in an antidemocratic direction with added appointments leaning the other way is the most significant clearly constitutional step that could be taken quickly. Of course, there is no guarantee that new justices would change the destructive direction of judicial doctrine we have identified; respect for judicial independence makes that impossible. Of course, successive presidents might expand the court further, absent an unattainable constitutional amendment fixing its size at a number such as 13. But the costs are worth the benefits.
    …

    and 

    The Rule of Six: A newly radicalized Supreme Court is poised to reshape the nation

    By Ruth Marcus

    Deputy editorial page editor

    This essay was updated following the Supreme Court’s Dec. 1 oral argument on Mississippi’s abortion law.

    Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr., the Eisenhower appointee who became the liberal lion of the Warren Court, had a tradition for introducing every new batch of law clerks to the realities of the institution.

    “Brennan liked to greet his new clerks each fall by asking them what they thought was the most important thing they needed to know as they began their work in his chambers,” Seth Stern and Stephen Wermiel write in “Liberal Champion,” their Brennan biography. “The … stumped novices would watch quizzically as Brennan held up five fingers. Brennan then explained that with five votes, you could accomplish anything.”

    Brennan, master vote-counter and vote-cajoler, was right — but there is an important corollary to his famous Rule of Five, one powerfully at work in the current Supreme Court. That is the Rule of Six. A five-justice majority is inherently fragile. It necessitates compromise and discourages overreach. Five justices tend to proceed with baby steps.

    A six-justice majority is a different animal. A six-justice majority, such as the one now firmly in control, is the judicial equivalent of the monarchy’s “heir and a spare.” The pathways to victory are enlarged. The overall impact is far greater than the single-digit difference suggests.

    On the current court, each conservative justice enjoys the prospect of being able to corral four colleagues, if not all five, in support of his or her beliefs, point of view or pet projects, whether that is outlawing affirmative action, ending constitutional protection for abortion, exalting religious liberty over all other rights or restraining the power of government agencies.

    A six-justice majority is emboldened rather than hesitant; so, too, are the conservative advocates who appear before it. Such a court doesn’t need to trim its sails, hedge its language or abide by legal niceties if it seems more convenient to dispense with them.

    A conservative justice wary of providing a fifth vote for a controversial position can take comfort in the thought that now there are six; there is strength in that number. Meantime, a court with a six-justice majority is one in which the justices on the other side of the ideological spectrum are effectively consigned to a perpetual minority. They craft dissents that may serve as rebukes for the ages but do little to achieve change in the present. The most they can manage is damage control, and that only rarely.
     
    That is the reality — exhilarating for conservatives, chilling for liberals — as the court, with a membership that has not been this conservative since the 1930s, embarks on what could be its most consequential term in decades. The October 2021 term is the first with six conservatives in place from Day One; the newest, Amy Coney Barrett, was not confirmed until several weeks into the court’s previous term, and the first year for any justice tends to be a time of settling in.

    Now, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who occupies what passes for this court’s center, holds the reins but is no longer firmly in control of his horses. Some of his most conservative justices are champing at the bit. Sometimes he can curb them, but not always; sometimes he is delighted to head in the same direction. And if any five agree, they can go galloping off anywhere they choose. If Roberts isn’t with them, the court’s most conservative member, Justice Clarence Thomas, has the power to assign the majority opinion or write it himself.

    “The difference between six and five is exponential,” said Mike Davis, president of the Article III Project, which worked to confirm conservative judges during the Trump years. “With five justices to the chief’s right, they no longer need to compromise with the chief to win. And this means it is much more likely that the court is going to get to the conservative result most of the time.”

    [This is a very lengthy piece and YOU NEED TO GET ACCESS TO IT AND READ IT]

    And with that, back to the salt mines.

  23. Supreme Court Narrows Abortion Provider ‘Heartbeat Act’ Case (lawandcrime.com)

    The Supreme Court of the United States on Friday morning ruled that abortion providers can sue certain Texas officials over a restrictive anti-abortion law. The Texas law, known by its legislative moniker S.B. 8 or as the dubiously named “Heartbeat Act,” allows private individuals to sue abortion providers and others connected with abortion services if a pregnant person’s pregnancy is terminated after embryonic cardiac activity is detectable in a medical situation. That point occurs generally around six weeks into pregnancy.
    By allowing for private civil lawsuits, but not enforcement by state actors themselves, the hotly-contested law was designed to skirt attempts by abortion providers to challenge it.
    […]
    The court held as follows: First, the cases by the abortion providers against Penny Clarkston (a state-court clerk) and Austin Jackson (a state court judge) should be dismissed under the doctrine of sovereign immunity — in other words, that states are generally immune from such lawsuits under the 11th Amendment. Second, the case against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) should also be dismissed he basically had no cognizable enforcement power under the law. Third, the case against Mark Lee Dickson, the director of Right to Life East Texas, should also be dismissed because Dickson said he had no intent to file S.B. 8 lawsuits against abortion providers.
    Fourth, however, the court said cases against Stephen Carlton, Katherine Thomas, Allison Benz, and Cecile Young could continue. “Each of these individuals is an executive licensing official who may or must take enforcement actions against the petitioners if they violate the terms of Texas’s Health and Safety Code, including S.B. 8,” the court held. “Accordingly,” the majority continued, “sovereign immunity does not bar the petitioners’ suit against these named defendants at the motion to dismiss stage.”
    The decision is unlikely to grant much comfort to the pro-choice camp. Though “eight Members of the Court agree sovereign immunity does not bar the petitioners from bringing this pre-enforcement challenge in federal court,” the majority noted that “everyone acknowledges that other pre-enforcement challenges may be possible in state court as well.”

    [continues]

  24. “Shock Troops”  ??? 
    The army of Florida ???
     
    Sounds like a bad movie from the late 1920’s. 
    Let’s call it , “The Night of the Long Knives”. 

  25. The SA was instrumental in the Nazi’s rise to power yet played a diminished role during the Second World War. The Brownshirts are infamous for their operation outside of the law and their violent intimidation of Germany’s leftists and Jewish population.
    However, it was the SA’s thuggish vigilantism, independence from the regular army (which caused hostility between the two), and anti-capitalist sentiments of its leader, Ernst Röhm, that ultimately caused its undoing.

    Let’s cast Bannon in the role of Ernst Röhm. 
     

  27. Michael Nesmith, Monkees Singer-Songwriter, Dead at 78
    “With infinite love we announce that Michael Nesmith has passed away this morning in his home, surrounded by family, peacefully and of natural causes,” his family said in a statement

    Michael Nesmith, Monkees Singer-Songwriter, Dead at 78


     
    He was rather wealthy before fame, his mother invented “White-Out” at her kitchen table. 
    Remember that stuff ? 

  29. Bink
    Everybody is arming (well except for a few liberal college types), However, the only children practicing war are in my world. Right wing children stroke their guns and fanaticize about war, none have heard a bullet hit close by.
    Where as over here too many of us know the sound, oh and it ain’t like in the movies.
    Unfortunately in my world they stroke their guns and think about shooting someone from over on 12th street. And the boys over on 12th street are more than willing to play along.
    If they ever find a common enemy so they join forces, look out. 
    Jack

  31. i hear you, Jack, but street gangs don’t control over half the government 

    …and like i said the other day, we can’t get guns off the streets and simultaneously flood the market with them. Grampy’s guns become gang guns

  33. 2,600-Year-Old Leather Armor Found In China Was Made By Neo-Assyrians
     

    An international team of archaeologists and historians has completed an extensive analysis of a rare leather armor waistcoat recovered from the grave of an ancient horse-riding soldier in Northwest China. Amazingly, the researchers have concluded that the leather armor wasn’t manufactured locally but had actually been made by a craftsman from the Neo-Assyrian Empire in far-off Mesopotamia. Since the Neo-Assyrian Empire ruled the region of modern-day Iraq, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Egypt from 911 to 609 BC, this rare armor must be at least 2,600 years old.

    https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/leather-armor-0016168

  35. OM / My ex-BF’s mom went to high school with Nesmith. The yearbook pics were fun.

    https://www.npr.org/2021/12/10/622582336/mike-nesmith-obituary

    “.. Nesmith turned more towards production, founding the Pacific Arts Corporation to manage his music and television projects, including, in 1979, a show called PopClips, which combined music videos with commentary from a “veejay,” which later became one of the models for MTV.“

    “Pacific Arts became a pioneer in the field of home video, before a legal dispute with PBS forced Nesmith to shut it down in the early 1990s; there was a blizzard of suits and countersuits over the home video rights to properties like Masterpiece Theater and Ken Burns’ The Civil War, and a jury sided with Nesmith, awarding him more than $40 million in damages. “It’s like finding your grandmother stealing your stereo,” he told the BBC at the time. “You’re happy to get your stereo back, but it’s sad to find out your grandmother is a thief.”

    Interesting guy.

  36. Hitler had a vision of a greater Germany , and followers  to kiss his ass , Trump is just looking for toadies to kiss his ass. 
    I’m not saying this will be anything easy , it won’t . 
     

    ‘January 6 Was Practice.’ The Atlantic Publishes Special Issue on American Democracy in Crisis.

    Cover story by Barton Gellman on a Republican Party still in thrall to Donald Trump—and better positioned to subvert the next election than it was the last

     
    https://www.theatlantic.com/press-releases/archive/2021/12/atlantic-special-issue-american-democracy-crisis/620913/
     

  37. Craig –
    You’re gonna need to stop making pasta sauce , and start speaking  and  writing again . 
     
    We all didn’t end up here because of your cooking skills  , but your  expertise , insights,  and thoughts. 
     
    Colorado Bob 

  38. Blue –
    Thanks for that one,  about Mike   I had know idea.  Watch that movie , he forecast so much  in it .  
    He was a lot more than Day Dream Believer , written by Neil Diamond and his hit song sausage factory.

  40. How a ‘mass movement’ based on election lies is threatening American democracy ……………
    Watch Barton Gellman on the NewsHour last night

    https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-a-mass-movement-based-on-election-lies-is-threatening-american-democracy

    Barton Gellman, “The Atlantic”: I mean that January 6 was not an isolated event, that it was part of a coherent plan and conspiracy to overthrow the results of the last election that went on for considerable time before and after January 6, and that Republican operatives working on Trump’s behalf are now methodically looking around at all the places where Trump’s first plot failed, and looking to reinforce them, looking to remove obstacles that prevented Trump from succeeding last time.

  48. There are 21 million people out of 333,000,000  that believe violence can over turn an election. 
    Covid is busy thinning that herd as I type. 
     
    I am sick of guys who need double lung transplants  because they didn’t get 2 simple shots. 
     
    Fuck Em’ ! Let him  die. Give the lungs to a smoker.  
    We are all here because  of shots.  The greatest  killer of all is gone , because we all got “shots”. 
     

  53. so this is probably like the way some of those goper pols who’ve tucked tail have been threatened.  no wonder some are quitting critterville and going home.

    Publicist linked to Kanye West pushed election worker to confess to Trump’s fraud claims: Reuters | TheHill

    […]

    According a report from Reuters on Friday, Trevian Kutti arrived at Ruby Freeman’s home on Jan. 4 and informed her that she was sent by a “high-profile individual” with an urgent message. Kutti then proceeded to tell the 62-year-old, who had served as a temporary election worker, that she needed to confirm Trump’s fraud allegations or people would descend on her home within two days and she would be jailed.

    […]

    “I cannot say what specifically will take place,” Kutti was heard telling Freeman in a recording captured by the officer’s bodycam. “I just know that it will disrupt your freedom,” she said, “and the freedom of one or more of your family members.”

    […]

    The day after the meeting, an FBI agent contacted Freeman and warned her to leave her home due to safety concerns.

    The next day, Jan. 6, the same day that a mob of Trump supports stormed the Capitol in an attempt to prevent the certification of the Electoral College vote, a crowd of Trump supporters arrived at her home with bullhorns, Reuters reported.

  58. Living in a sea of greed , clearly the rich need more. 
    I know ! 
    Make babies  into rocket fuel !  
    But first , give them  a hand gun. 
     
    If they shoot their way out of the 1st grade , send them to congress. 
     
    Now that is Good Government. 

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