Yesterday was Constitution Day, the 244th anniversary of the U.S. Constitution ratification, and many people wish the Republicans would read the document they claim to follow. For example, the youngest representative in the U.S. House, North Carolina’s 26-year-old Madison Cawthorn, ranted on Newsmax against the possibility of restricting air travel in the U.S. for those who are unvaccinated. He called it “a constitutional violation because you have a constitutionally predictive right to free restricted travel within the United States of America.” MSNBC’s Brian Williams responded:
“Perhaps you are wondering as we did, who’s going to tell him? We checked the constitution, no mention that we could find of airlines, increase legroom, tray tables, carry on bags, peanuts, none of it.”
Cawthorn wants the government to control private business, long opposed by the GOP.
Encouraging insurrectionists, 26-year-old Cawthorn admires Hitler and called for “bloodshed” earlier this month in reference to the September 18 white supremacist rally in at the U.S. Capitol. Still lying about DDT being the real U.S. president because of an evidence-free “stolen” election, Cawthorn also claims his governor Roy Cooper lost the election although Cooper defeated his opponent by 250,000 votes. Insurrectionists arrested in the January 6 attack on the Capitol are “political prisoners,” according to Cawthorn, and he plans to “try and bust them out.” The transcript of his remarks.
Today, far-right Matt Braynard, a former campaigner for Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) in 2016, organized the rally, “Justice for J6,” to protest treatment of over 600 insurrectionists, 63 of them in jail, who the group calls “political prisoners.” These are the people who broke into the U.S. Capitol on January 6 and attacked lawmakers and law enforcement, wounding and killing them, in an effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election, thus keeping DDT in the White House. This group is part of a large number of Republicans who think the insurrectionists on the right didn’t harm a large number of people at the Capitol and didn’t vandalized the place while calling the atttackers “tourists.” In 2017, Braynard created a one-issue literary magazine, glorifying a far-right ultranationist Japanese 17-year-old who assassinated a legislator and chair of the Japan Socialist Party at a televised election debate, Braynard compared the killer, Otoya Yamaghuchi (left with samauri sword), to George Washington.
Despite DDT’s strong support for the rally to defend the charged January 6 “being persecuted so unfairly,” the event brought only about 450 people to Washington. Unlike “J6,” today’s rally had a high level of security and no current lawmakers present to encourage the participants to violent action. Because of the arrests regarding January 6, many people were afraid of another performance; those who wanted violence would have been disappointed because the leader pushed a non-violent protest. Hundreds of officers from eight agencies were present, and the congressional halls were almost completely deserted. Long line of trucks parked along Third Street served as security baricades. DDT wasn’t there to deliver rants encouraging the small group to attack the Capitol. People on the far-right called the event a “trap,” accusing the government of luring them to Washington for arrest.
DDT’s legislative supporters found the rally an embarrassment, avoiding it in speech and participation although a few far-right 2022 candidates handpicked by DDT came to speak. Even Rep. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who gave a fist pump to the January 6 crowd, didn’t attend. Republicans struggle with DDT’s leadership: they want him to turn on the base, but he alienates the general electorate when he does.
The current time is particularly bad for the GOP because of the revelations in Robert Costa and Bob Woodward’s book Peril, describing the debacle of DDT’s last days in the White House. Details in that book have taken the media away from President Joe Biden’s struggle with evacuating Afghanistan last month. California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s overwhelming win thus far—63.5 percent to retain him with 85 percent of the vote counted—has caused more problemsfor DDT supporters, especially because of the strong similarity between DDT’s policies and those of the losing candidate, Larry Elder. Newsom partially won because he made the election about DDT.
Author Jason Miciak wrote a humorous description of the rally for Political Flare under the title, “The ‘Justice for J16’ Rally Was a Complete and Total Failure, With Cops Outnumbering Protestors”:
“We suppose that it’s just not as much fun if you cannot ransack the Capitol, threaten to hang various people, wear horns, and break windows to get in. Without any of that stuff, well, you’re not much more than a BLM protest, peacefully asking for a redress of grievances. What white person wants to do that?”
A Supreme Court justice used the day before Constitutional Day to lambast the Supreme Court, saying:
“The court was thought to be the least dangerous branch, and we may have become the most dangerous.”
He continued:
“When we [go beyond longstanding limitations], and we begin to venture into political, legislative or executive branch lanes and resolving things that are better left to those branches—where people actually have some input and some opportunity to participate in the electoral process as to who those leaders are. Those of us, particularly in the federal judiciary with lifetime appointments, are asking for trouble.”
Thomas, a Catholic, was among the majority in retaining the Texas vigilante law against abortion until it could be legislated and has called on the overturn of Roe v. Wade, extending abortion rights. Legal experts and political commentators are criticizing Thomas for blasting courts when they do exactly what he does. Keith Boykin, a CNN commentator whose law degree comes from Harvard, said:
“Clarence Thomas didn’t seem too worried about ‘destroying our institutions’ when he cast the deciding vote to make Bush president in 2000 or to gut the Voting Rights Act in 2013 or when he sat silently from 2017-2021 as Trump trashed our institutions.”
Thomas’ personal political actions includes speaking at the far-right Heritage Foundation and using Supreme Court facilities to meet with the Foundation’s staff and interns. His activist wife, Ginni Thomas, praised the demonstrators for Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) on January 6 who later attacked the U.S. Capitol in their attempt to overturn Joe Biden’s electoral votes.
Calling himself an originalist or “textualist,” Thomas keeps trying to persuade he follows the exact wording of the Founding Fathers but says oral arguments “almost never” changed his mind.
Another justice might be in trouble this week when FBI Director Christopher Wray testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee about what Charles Pierce calls the “shake-and-bake investigation” by the FBI into Christine Blasey Ford’s accusations against Brett Kavanaugh during his confirmation in 2018. The FBI cover-up is an 11-year-old Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) that the FBI said limited their abilities in the investigation. The FBI claimed the MOU blocked them from further investigation without specific directions from the White House.
According to an examination by The Guardian of the 2010 MOU, signed by then AG Eric Holder and then White House counsel Robert Bauer, doesn’t make this restriction. DDT’s White House did not have control over process parameters on any investigation. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) has been birddogging unresolved issues surrounding Kavanaugh’s confirmation, including the magical disappearance of his heavy personal debts.
The Kavanaugh hearing comes this coming week after four Olympic gymnasts testified before the same committee about how the FBI ignored their information about sexual abuse by former USA Gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar. A 2012 Summer Games gold medalist McKayla Maroney said:
“[The FBI] allowed a child molester to go free for more than a year and this inaction directly allowed Nassar’s abuse to continue. What is the point of reporting abuse if our own FBI agents are going to take it upon themselves to bury that report in a drawer?”
The four young women testified that FBI not only ignored their allegations in 2015 but also lied about their testimony and covered up the evidence. A few months before the 2016 election, former Director James Comey was busy announcing a new investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails. In 2018, Nassar was convicted on multiple counts of sexual abuse of minors and was sentenced to a federal penitentiary for the rest of his life. [U.S. gymnasts: Aly Raisman, Simone Biles, McKayla Maroney, and Maggie Nichols – Saul Loeb, AP]