Republican Assault on Democracy and March Towards Fascism

[LFC]

Nov 17, 2021 23:23:47 GMT LFC said:

Jokes about murdering the President, Vice-President, and a colleague were fully approved by virtually every House Republican. This is now where they sit. Imagine if a Democratic Rep had done this about Pence, Trump, and Matt Gaetz.

Gosar doubles down ... then backs up. There's a LOT wrong with this clown.

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), shortly after being censured by the House for posting an anime video of him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), retweeted a post with the video on Thursday before apparently unretweeting it.

The Associated Press, the New York Times and multiple Twitter observers noted that on Thursday evening, Gosar retweeted a post from a right-wing commentator at the Blaze that captioned the video “Really well done. We love @drpaulgosar, don’t we folks?”

The retweet was deleted from the GOP lawmaker’s feed after a couple of hours, per receipts provided by ProPublica.

Gosar’s repost came after he had defended himself during the censure vote by pointing out that he had deleted the video “out of compassion for those who genuinely felt offense.”

“I voluntarily took the cartoon down not because it was itself a threat, but because some thought it was,” the far-right congressman said in his prepared remarks on the House floor. At no point during the speech did he apologize for the video.

[LFC]

There's at least one state level Republican leader who knew about John Eastman's coup plan and said nothing.

John Eastman, the conservative legal scholar who drew up a full scheme to have then-Vice President Mike Pence throw out certain states’ 2020 electoral votes to steal the election for Donald Trump, reportedly took his ideas straight to at least one Republican leader in a state Trump lost.

According to the Arizona Republic’s latest report in its multi-part series on Trumpworld’s efforts to invalidate Joe Biden’s victory in Arizona, Eastman reached out to state House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R) personally on Jan. 4 to pitch a legal theory on how Arizona’s electors ought to be tossed away before Congress certifies the electoral votes on Jan. 6.

Eastman has claimed he was only ever offering hypotheticals and had no intention of overturning the election. But Jan. 4 — the day he spoke to Bowers — was also the day he presented his election-stealing scheme to Pence.

Both reported examples show Eastman pressing Republicans to subvert the election, not simply offering disinterested legal advice.

Bowers reportedly asked Eastman during their talk, “Has this ever been done before?”

The lawyer said no, but told Bowers he ought to do it anyway and let Trump’s legal team deal with whatever litigation might arise from the gambit, the Arizona Republic reported.

But the GOP leader reportedly wasn’t sold.

“It’s never been done in the history of the country, and I’m going to do that in Arizona?” he asked, according to the Arizona Republic. “No.”

Eastman’s reported conversation with Bowers fell on the same day as the attorney’s Oval Office meeting with Pence, during which Eastman laid out his now-infamous memo explaining how the vice president could hijack Congress’ certification process to keep Trump in power. Eastman proposed that Pence throw out electors from the swing states Biden had won, including Arizona, and let the GOP-controlled state legislatures or U.S. House Republicans choose new electors.

[LFC]

McCarthy goes full metal IOKIYAR. There's nothing that a Republican can't do expect, apparently, tell the truth and vote for a bill that helps the nation.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Thursday promised to restore Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) committee assignments if Republicans take back the majority in next year’s midterm elections.

“They’ll have committees,” McCarthy said during a press conference, during which he was asked whether Gosar and Greene could get their seats back if the GOP retakes the majority. “They may have other committee assignments. They may have better committee assignments.”

[goldenvalley]

Nov 18, 2021 22:18:00 GMT LFC said:

McCarthy goes full metal IOKIYAR. There's nothing that a Republican can't do expect, apparently, tell the truth and vote for a bill that helps the nation.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) on Thursday promised to restore Reps. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) committee assignments if Republicans take back the majority in next year’s midterm elections.

“They’ll have committees,” McCarthy said during a press conference, during which he was asked whether Gosar and Greene could get their seats back if the GOP retakes the majority. “They may have other committee assignments. They may have better committee assignments.”

Does McCarthy want to be Trump's VP running mate?  

[LFC]

Nov 18, 2021 22:28:55 GMT goldenvalley said:

Does McCarthy want to be Trump's VP running mate?  

FIFY

[pnwguy]

MTG is a more logical candidate for the 2023 GOP-run House. McCarthy won't be able to stand up to the crazy lunatic wing of the party. The number two will be NRA Barbie, in a show of female leadership.  Then they will not only get rid of metal detectors but REQUIRE that all Republican representatives carry a firearm in the chamber.

Since it appears the Speaker doesn't actually have to be a member of Congress, there have been rumors that the GOP caucus would elect Mango Mussolini himself. But the Speaker job involves REAL WORK, and it's not the Supreme Leader position. So I can't see Dumpster agreeing to it.

[LFC]

Republican fascists are lying to protect their plaid shirts and Gym Jordan is in the forefront. F*** teachers, administrators, and board members who don't follow the party line. They aren't real 'Muricans anyway.

The DOJ announced in October that it would launch a task force aimed at helping local law enforcement track and investigate threats against teachers and school staff. We knew this.

But this week House Republicans released information about a new FBI tracking program reportedly designed to help the DOJ field these threats. The GOP campaign was, seemingly, part of a broader attempt to push a bad faith narrative: that the Biden administration is seeking to intimidate and silence parents and community members who disagree with local school policies.

That framing is, of course, not true or fair.

Last month, the DOJ announced its new focus on threats against local school staff in reaction to the very well-documented uptick in violent attacks and threats against teachers, administrators and school board members who are implementing policies related to COVID-19 mitigation and guidelines for teaching about systemic racism in the classroom (Critical Race Theory). TPM has tracked this closely for several months as we saw it play out in school districts across the country.

Several news outlets reported on the FBI news after House Republicans released it this week — specifically, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) made the information public in a memo to the attorney general after the House Judiciary Committee received a DOJ whistleblower report about the new tracking system.

This is gun statistics all over again. The fact is that Republicans desperately don't WANT the data to come out so they have to smear it as something nefarious.

EDIT: Paywalled so here's the rest of the article.

Essentially, the FBI created a thing called a “threat tag” last month that will now be attached to reports of threats, violence, harassment, etc. against school personnel as the DOJ homes in on addressing and combatting this rise in threats aimed at school officials. Attorney General Merrick Garland suggested that this “tag” would be part of the broader DOJ effort when he sent a memo to the FBI’s criminal and counterterrorism agencies last month.

It’s apparently a pretty standard move for the FBI, as the New York Times explained. The bureau uses “tags” like this one to help share information across FBI offices around the country. It’s similar to what the bureau uses to track things like reports of human trafficking, according to the Times. After news of the tag was released by GOPers this week, the FBI tried to counteract the parental intimidation narrative, saying the tracking system is only designed to help prevent violence and investigate potential threats.

“The creation of a threat tag in no way changes the longstanding requirements for opening an investigation, nor does it represent a shift in how the F.B.I. prioritizes threats,” the FBI said in a statement to the Times. “The F.B.I. has never been in the business of investigating parents who speak out or policing speech at school board meetings, and we are not going to start now.”

But GOPers on the House Judiciary Committee are holding it up as a fodder for their outrage-stoking crusade, claiming the involvement of the FBI’s counterterrorism unit means the Biden DOJ is equating parents with terrorists.

[LFC]

MAGAts, celebrating members of law enforcement who feel that it's OK for them to determine what is and isn't law. Welcome to the building of the GOPstapo.

The MAGA think tank at the vanguard of pro-Trump public intellectuals is recruiting sheriffs with ties to the far right and a dubious devotion to the “rule of law” to be academic “fellows” as part of a new program launched by the conservative institute this week.

The Claremont Institute, a far-right research group that’s home to a number of former Trump administration officials, announced a new crop of eight “sheriffs fellows” selected from across the country on the basis of their “character, aptitude, accomplishments, zeal, and community reputation” to visit Claremont’s California campus and study a syllabus of standard conservative political catechism.

The coursework, Claremont says, is fairly anodyne—lectures on Locke, the Federalist Papers, and English legal history—but the Institute’s choice of students is far more radical. Of the eight fellows announced this week, six have some affiliation with the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA), an organization labeled as an anti-government extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center for its endorsement of the idea that sheriffs can pick and choose which laws to enforce based on their own personal beliefs about what the Constitution allows.

In that spirit, members of Claremont’s first crop of sheriff fellows have vowed not to enforce pandemic restrictions, vaccine mandates, gun laws, and basically any laws they disagree with. For far-right groups like the Claremont Institute, those efforts to sidestep the rule of law and the will of democratically elected governments are a feature, not a bug.

“There are a growing number of groups who are clinging to the idea of the constitutional sheriff as the way to undermine everything from school board elections to attempts to curtail the pandemic restrictions to Biden administration regulations,” says Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights in Washington state. “Claremont is just the most recent example of many of these organizations that are pushing the constitutional sheriff idea as a way to gain power at the local level.”

[LFC]

America's right-wing wealth, funding fascism for fun and profit.

Efforts to overturn the election. Jan. 6 organizers. White supremacist groups. And more than a dozen private and public universities.

They all have one thing in common: They received anonymous funding funneled through a single conservative dark money behemoth.

That’s the news in the latest IRS filing from Donors Trust—a conservative, Koch-aligned nonprofit which does not need to reveal the names of its donors and has been called the “dark money ATM of the right.”

The disclosure, first obtained by CNBC, shows the group channeled major support for entities which fought to overturn President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory and organized the Jan. 6 rallies in Washington, D.C.

Donors Trust also gave more than $2 million to groups linked to white supremacists, including the VDARE Foundation.

Norm Eisen, a government ethics expert and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, analyzed the filing with colleagues and remarked that it was “profoundly concerning for the future of our democracy.”

“The Donors Trust is taking advantage of the dangerous opacity of our tax and related laws and regulations to fund alleged white supremacist and white nationalist associated groups, those who were bad actors in wrongly attempting to spread misinformation about or overturn the legitimate 2020 election results, and even groups that were responsible for the rally that helped trigger the Jan. 6 insurrection,” he told The Daily Beast.

But the same vehicle that quietly fuels white supremacist rhetoric also fanned money out to major educational institutions, including state public schools like the University of Texas, Virginia Tech, Michigan State University, and Florida State University. Leading private colleges like Georgetown, Vanderbilt, and a conservative think tank headquartered at Brown University also drew anonymous support.

At the same time, the fund shipped millions of dollars to right-wing organizations agitating for education reform, including to groups pushing unfounded fears about critical race theory.

The Donors Trust primarily funds right-leaning, libertarian, and free-market advocates. It describes itself as “a charitable savings account”—a go-between that allows wealthy donors to deposit money in lump sums, where it gets invested at tax-free growth. They can later direct contributions at any time while remaining anonymous.

[LFC]

We're moving towards fascism and yes, the world has noticed.

The United States for the first time was added to a list of “backsliding democracies” in a report released Monday by the Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance.

“The United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself, and was knocked down a significant number of steps on the democratic scale,” the International IDEA’s Global State of Democracy 2021 report said.

The study, which analyzed trends from 2020 to 2021, found that more than a quarter of the world’s population now lives in democratically backsliding countries, which International IDEA defines as nations seeing a gradual decline in the quality of their democracy.

“The world is becoming more authoritarian as nondemocratic regimes become even more brazen in their repression and many democratic governments suffer from backsliding by adopting their tactics of restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law, exacerbated by what threatens to become a ‘new normal’ of covid-19 restrictions,” the report found. “The number [of countries] moving in the direction of authoritarianism is three times the number moving toward democracy.”

International IDEA classes countries as democratic (which includes those backsliding), “hybrid,” and authoritarian, the latter two of which it considers to be nondemocratic. It bases its analysis on 50 years of democratic indicators tracked in about 160 countries.

The report found that some of “the most worrying” democratic backsliding happened in some of the world’s largest countries, including Brazil and India. It also highlighted “concerning democratic declines” in the United States and three European Union members: Hungary, Poland and Slovenia.

The report’s U.S. assessment centered on developments during President Donald Trump’s administration. It called Trump’s factually baseless questioning of the legitimacy of the 2020 election results a “historic turning point” that “undermined fundamental trust in the electoral process” and culminated in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Trump’s tactics had “spillover effects, including in Brazil, Mexico, Myanmar and Peru, among others,” the report concluded.

[LFC]

Nov 4, 2021 15:40:46 GMT LFC said:

Being a fascist proponent of The Big Lie is not a handicap for a Republican. Hell, for the primaries it's probably now a requirement.

While that may be true for politicians it's not necessarily true for attorneys.

Pro-Trump Lawyers Must Cough Up Attorneys Fees For Big Lie Lawsuit

More consequences for pro-Trump attorneys who tried to use the courts to steal the election: A federal judge in Colorado ordered lawyers Gary Fielder and Ernest John Walker to fork over nearly $180,000 in attorneys fees to the defendants in their Big Lie lawsuit.

• Their lawsuit was used to “manipulate gullible members of the public and foment public unrest,” the judge wrote.

• The suit was “one enormous conspiracy theory,” the judge said in his previous ruling against the plaintiffs.

• The defendants were Facebook, Dominion Voting Systems, the states of Pennsylvania and Michigan and nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life, an election reform advocacy group.

[LFC]

The plaid shirts continue to be angry and acting like spoiled, bratty children on flights.

A passenger on a Southwest Airlines flight from San Jose, California, to San Diego last April allegedly guzzled their private stash of booze on the plane, sexually assaulted the flight attendant who told them that was prohibited, and then smoked marijuana in the lavatory as the aircraft was making its final descent.

Now, the unnamed traveler—who was arrested at the gate for public intoxication and resisting arrest—is facing a $40,823 fine levied by the Federal Aviation Administration under the “Zero Tolerance” policy the agency launched earlier this year.

The FAA on Tuesday proposed a whopping $161,823 in civil penalties against eight passengers accused of “unruly behavior involving alcohol.” In 2021 alone, the FAA said it has received nearly 300 complaints of “passenger disturbances due to alcohol and intoxication,” and FAA data shows a total of 991 investigations initiated as of Nov. 16, a staggering 441 percent increase over just 183 investigations in all of 2020. There have been more than 5,200 unruly passenger reports filed so far this year, of which 3,798 were mask-related incidents. And although this sort of bad behavior has dipped since hitting record highs in early 2021, “the rate remains too high,” the FAA said in a statement.

And WTF?

The FAA cannot levy criminal charges against offenders, but it can hit them with steep financial penalties. Although the agency has fined badly behaved passengers more than $1 million this year, it is unclear how much, if any, of the fines have been collected to date. In addition to the aforementioned Southwest flier, the new batch of alleged wrongdoers—none of whom have been publicly identified by the FAA—include:

I hope they can at least refer them to the DOJ and have them prosecuted federally. These people need a cooling off period, in prison.

[goldenvalley]

Nov 23, 2021 20:04:35 GMT LFC said:

The plaid shirts continue to be angry and acting like spoiled, bratty children on flights.

I guess it isn't illegal to behave like a child even when you're over 18 or 21.  

[LFC]

The fascists organizing the Jan 6 Republican Insurrection used burner phones to communicate with White House staff and top Trump allies. Nothing to see here, folks.

Jan. 6 Trump Rally Organizers Used Burner Phones To Talk To POTUS’ Inner Circle
Kylie and Amy Kremer, the conservative activists who organized the pre-insurrection Trump rally on the White House Ellipse on Jan. 6, used burner phones to communicate with the then-president’s top goons, according to Hunter Walker in Rolling Stone.

• Said goons allegedly included then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s son, Eric, Eric’s wife Lara, plus Katrina Pierson, a Trump campaign consultant.

• Those burner phones were crucial to planning the rally with Trumpland, a source told the Rolling Stone. Any conversation Kylie Kremer had with the White House or Trump’s family was allegedly through the burners.

[goldenvalley]

Nov 24, 2021 16:25:37 GMT LFC said:

The fascists organizing the Jan 6 Republican Insurrection used burner phones to communicate with White House staff and top Trump allies. Nothing to see here, folks.

Jan. 6 Trump Rally Organizers Used Burner Phones To Talk To POTUS’ Inner Circle
Kylie and Amy Kremer, the conservative activists who organized the pre-insurrection Trump rally on the White House Ellipse on Jan. 6, used burner phones to communicate with the then-president’s top goons, according to Hunter Walker in Rolling Stone.

• Said goons allegedly included then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, Trump’s son, Eric, Eric’s wife Lara, plus Katrina Pierson, a Trump campaign consultant.

• Those burner phones were crucial to planning the rally with Trumpland, a source told the Rolling Stone. Any conversation Kylie Kremer had with the White House or Trump’s family was allegedly through the burners.

It looks like there are a lot of threads for the Select Committee to follow.  

[LFC]

Another Trumpian shitbag goes all in on The Big Lie and adds that to the fruitcake conspiracy theory that the Omicron variant is a Democratic plot. He was also Trump's WH doctor. Yes, that quack of a doctor.

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX), the physician and rear admiral who successfully rode the coattails of MAGA world to land a seat in the House, is spinning up a new Big Lie for the 2022 midterms – and it’s a doozy.

In a weekend tweet ⬇️, Jackson suggested that the Omicron variant is a Democrat-driven hoax to expand mail-in voting and steal the next election. In true Trumpy form, he even coined his own corny acronym for the conspiracy theorizing: the Midterm Election Variant (MEV):

Jackson specifically focused his ire at mail-in ballots, a common sense measure that many states already had in place prior to the pandemic, and one that state legislatures across the country expanded ahead of the 2020 election to ensure safe voting practices during a presidential election year cloaked in rational fears about in-person voting and the possible spread of the virus at the polls.

Construing the emergence of of the Omicron variant as some broader Democratic conspiracy theory to “CHEAT” during the upcoming midterms is unhinged coming from any sitting lawmaker, but especially problematic coming from a health professional.

Keep in mind, this is all coming from the guy who gave a combative press briefing in 2018, marveling at President Trump’s supposed sterling health record.

If you recall, Jackson himself was the subject of criticism during his time as White House physician. He served in that capacity during the Trump and Obama administrations. Trump not only applauded Jackson for taking an unprecedentedly aggressive tone with reporters while briefing the media about his annual physical in 2018, but also liked that Trumpy performance so much that he attempted to get Jackson a promotion in the White House. At the time, Jackson was under scrutiny for a plethora of problematic and medically concerning decisions which were outlined in a DOD inspector general’s report, including drinking on the job, harassing female staffers, prescribing reporters medication and taking Ambien during long flights while on the job.

Jackson, in turn, harnessed that very media criticism to help propel himself to election in the House in 2020. He is the first right-winger so far to seize on public health concerns about the new COVID variant as fodder for the Big Lie come midterms, but these folks rarely operate in an echo chamber.

[goldenvalley]

Tell us Mr Congressmember Dr. Jackson, were you re-elected in November 2020?  How many of your Republican brethren were elected or re-elected to Congress in 2020?  Were any of them from Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan?

[LFC]

The Republican embrace of right-wing domestic terrorists is complete and institutionalized for the 2022 election. They've moved past support of The Big Lie to support of terrorism based on it.

A Texas man who has been charged for his alleged participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection was just approved by the state Republican Party to run for a state House seat during the Republican primaries this spring. He is not alone in this endeavor.

The candidate and accused rioter is named Mark Middleton. A public filing on the Texas secretary of state’s website now lists him as a candidate to run in the state’s March 1 primary, news that was first reported by the Dallas Morning News. He is the first and only Republican so far to challenge sitting Republican Rep. David Spiller to represent the state’s North Texas House district.

We’ve seen other versions of this already. According to a Washington Post tally, at least 13 other Republicans who traveled to D.C. to protest the results of the 2020 election have run for public office in the last year — seven of whom were elected this month — but none of those candidates and/or now-elected officials have been charged in connection to alleged participation in the Capitol attack.

[pnwguy]

This is the iPhone link, but you can find it online for other platforms.

podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-lincoln-project/id1551582052?i=1000543600182

This is a great summary of what the GOP has been doing to make the US an autocracy. Wake the f*ck up, Democrats.

[LFC]

Another hallmark of fascism is the need to get rid of actual expertise in exchange for mouthpieces spouting propaganda.

The former top health official in Kansas says he was forced out of his job due to the Republican-led legislature’s fight with the state’s Democratic governor over COVID-19. “The shameful treatment in the Trump administration of public health leaders, I think, set the stage for having the same thing happen at the state level,” Dr. Lee Norman, who previously served as the head of Kansas’ health department, said in an interview with Kansas News Service. “[Anthony] Fauci was Fauci’d. And to be honest with you, I think I was Fauci’d.” Gov. Laura Kelly said last month Norman had stepped down from the job, calling him “the most consequential” official in the department’s history as the state fought against COVID. In the interview, Norman delivered a stark warning as the state has lost nearly half of its 105 local public health officials. “The brain drain out of public health puts us in peril going forward,” he said.

Hate to break it to you, doc, but "brain drain out of public health" and any number of other public institutions is a Republican goal, not a side effect.

[pnwguy]

Dec 1, 2021 20:34:16 GMT LFC said:

Another hallmark of fascism is the need to get rid of actual expertise in exchange for mouthpieces spouting propaganda.
Hate to break it to you, doc, but "brain drain out of public health" and any number of other public institutions is a Republican goal, not a side effect.

The brain drain out of the Republican party is even faster.  They'll soon need a sign like the ones in amusement parks, with Rep. Boebert's picture that says "You must be below this IQ to ride"

[LFC]

Missouri's Republican governor found a politically advantageous target and falsely accused him of a crime for personal gain. We read this before but now it turns out they were initially going to do the right thing. These people are total trash.

Before blaming the Post-Dispatch, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education was preparing to thank the newspaper for discovering a significant data vulnerability, according to records obtained by the Post-Dispatch through a Sunshine Law request.

In an Oct. 12 email to officials in Gov. Mike Parson’s office, Mallory McGowin, spokeswoman for DESE, sent proposed statements for a press release announcing the data vulnerability the newspaper uncovered.

“We are grateful to the member of the media who brought this to the state’s attention,” said a proposed quote from Education Commissioner Margie Vandeven.

The Parson administration and DESE did not end up using that quote.

The next day, on Oct. 13, the Office of Administration issued a news release calling the Post-Dispatch journalist a “hacker.”

And on Oct. 14, Parson held a news conference to rail against the Post-Dispatch and announce a criminal investigation by the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

“We will not let this crime against Missouri teachers go unpunished,” Parson said at the news conference. “And we refuse to let them be a pawn in the news outlet’s political vendetta. Not only are we going to hold this individual accountable, but we will also be holding accountable all those who aided this individual and the media corporation that employs them.”

The Post-Dispatch reported on the vulnerability the night before, saying a flaw on a DESE website left more than 100,000 Social Security numbers of educators vulnerable to disclosure.

The newspaper didn’t publish its report until after the state moved to protect the vulnerable information.

[goldenvalley]

Dec 3, 2021 18:41:10 GMT LFC said:

Missouri's Republican governor found a politically advantageous target and falsely accused him of a crime for personal gain. We read this before but now it turns out they were initially going to do the right thing. These people are total trash.

Before blaming the Post-Dispatch, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education was preparing to thank the newspaper for discovering a significant data vulnerability, according to records obtained by the Post-Dispatch through a Sunshine Law request.

In an Oct. 12 email to officials in Gov. Mike Parson’s office, Mallory McGowin, spokeswoman for DESE, sent proposed statements for a press release announcing the data vulnerability the newspaper uncovered.

“We are grateful to the member of the media who brought this to the state’s attention,” said a proposed quote from Education Commissioner Margie Vandeven.

The Parson administration and DESE did not end up using that quote.

The next day, on Oct. 13, the Office of Administration issued a news release calling the Post-Dispatch journalist a “hacker.”

And on Oct. 14, Parson held a news conference to rail against the Post-Dispatch and announce a criminal investigation by the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

“We will not let this crime against Missouri teachers go unpunished,” Parson said at the news conference. “And we refuse to let them be a pawn in the news outlet’s political vendetta. Not only are we going to hold this individual accountable, but we will also be holding accountable all those who aided this individual and the media corporation that employs them.”

The Post-Dispatch reported on the vulnerability the night before, saying a flaw on a DESE website left more than 100,000 Social Security numbers of educators vulnerable to disclosure.

The newspaper didn’t publish its report until after the state moved to protect the vulnerable information.

Dang newspapers doing their job makes life tough for politicians.

[LFC]

Another f***ing fascist plaid shirt is handed power which he gleefully and righteously abuses, this time in Wisconsin.

An attorney leading an investigation of the 2020 elections for Wisconsin’s legislative Republicans has threatened to jail the mayors of Wisconsin’s second- and third-largest cities if they don’t meet his demands.

The mayors, for their part, say the attorney is wildly distorting reality, and that their attempts to reach him have gone unanswered.

Michael Gableman, a former state Supreme Court justice who’s leading a partisan review of the last presidential elections, filed petitions for “writ of attachment” against the two mayors in county court this week, accusing the mayors of failing to appear for testimony without explanation. But both mayors say they’ve reached out to Gableman’s office and not heard back.

Gableman’s petitions cite a Wisconsin statute that spells out the conditions under which a judge “may commit the person to close confinement in the county jail” if that person fails produce lawfully required testimony.

“Petitioner respectfully requests that the Waukesha County Circuit Court issue a writ of attachment on the person of Eric Genrich and order the Waukesha County Sheriff to execute such commitment until Eric Genrich has fulfilled her [sic] legal duties in respondent to said subpoena,” the petition reads, incorrectly referring to Genrich, the mayor of Green Bay, using the “her” pronoun.

An identical petition also seeks the sheriff’s action against Satya Rhodes-Conway, the mayor of Madison. PBS Wisconsin published the court documents Thursday.

A lawyer for Green Bay reacted forcefully to the filing — which he characterized as “seeking an order to commit Mayor Genrich into custody at the Waukesha County Jail” — saying that it wasn’t legally enforceable and that the mayor would be pursuing legal sanctions against Gableman.

“Based on our initial review, the Petition is not only lacking in legal merit and built upon a gross distortion of the relevant facts, but it departs so greatly from legal standards that Mayor Genrich intends to serve the Special Counsel with a motion for sanctions,” wrote attorney Jeffrey Mandell, in a letter published by the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

Madison Mayor Rhodes-Conway said in a statement Thursday that the Madison city attorney had reached out to Gableman’s office, but that neither Gableman nor his attorneys had responded — “further underscoring the abject lack of professionalism on Gableman’s team.”

“Attorney Gableman apparently missed the October headlines saying that I was proud of and willing to testify publicly about Madison’s handling of the 2020 election,” Rhodes-Conway said.

The entire mockery of democracy is related to the Arizona faudit, Mr. MyPillow, and Mark Zuckerberg's charity putting up money to help with election administration during a pandemic. Utter nuttery ensued.

[LFC]

This could go under the police thread but I think it fits the pattern of fascism by too many in law enforcement to a tee.

Wright County Sheriff Sean Deringer this week delivered a blistering denunciation of the Minneapolis Police Department after newly unearthed body camera footage showed its officers talking about "hunting" anti-police brutality demonstrators who took to the streets in the wake of the murder of George Floyd last year.

During a public meeting for the Minnesota Board of Peace Officer Standards and Training this week, Deringer addressed the latest scandal plaguing the Minneapolis PD, which he said lacks leadership and accountability from top to bottom.

"I am telling you folks that I was absolutely disgusted watching that," Deringer said, according to local news station KSTP. "And I’ve defended that agency for the very last time."

The sheriff went on to lament that the actions of the Minneapolis police were damaging the reputations of officers throughout the state.

“I am so upset with the lack of leadership," he said. "We are all cast in the same barrel of crap coming out of Minneapolis proper."

Rolling Stone reports that the footage was so damning that the Minneapolis PD called it "antithetical" to the kind of culture it wanted to build.

"The footage of Minneapolis cops allegedly 'hunting' protesters showed cops being directed to target protesters and 'F*ck ‘em up,'" writes Rolling Stone. "The videos captured cops high-fiving after shooting nonviolent protesters with less-lethal impact rounds. Other cops used the same weapons in a manner that resembled a drive-by shooting, firing on people on the street, seemingly unannounced, from an unmarked van."