The judgment of history.

December 19, 2022

          On Monday, December 19, 2022, Americans will witness history in the making. A congressional committee will recommend that the DOJ pursue criminal proceedings against a former president for engaging in insurrection to stop the peaceful transfer of power. The recommendation will be based on an exhaustive, transparent, bipartisan investigation that unfolded in public. Republicans boycotted the committee after GOP leadership unsuccessfully attempted to appoint participants in the insurrection to the body investigating their crimes.

          The criminal referrals should not be cause for celebration or feelings of vindication. Rather, they should be a cause for hope and increased resolve that our experiment in democracy will endure despite the actions of faithless servants and aspiring tyrants. The United States of America is bigger than Trump and his skulk of cowards. It will outlast them, hold them to account, and subject them to the judgment of history.

The criminal referrals and findings of the January 6th Committee are critical steps in setting the record straight for future generations. The names of the insurrectionists will be memorized by schoolchildren learning about dark passages in our nation’s history: Benedict Arnold, Aaron Burr, Jefferson Davis, Donald Trump, Jim Jordan, Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, . . . .

          Sadly, the insurrection continues to this day as the GOP seeks to shield members of its party who remain in Congress after they betrayed the Constitution. No Republican member of Congress agreed to appear before the Committee to provide crucial evidence in one of the most important investigations in our history. The recalcitrant members of Congress continue to violate their oaths every minute they obfuscate, impede, and distort the work of the Committee. They deserve to be expelled from Congress. Indeed, the Committee may recommend discipline or criminal referrals for members who failed to comply with lawful subpoenas issued by the Committee, The Week, Schiff says Jan. 6 committee deciding ‘appropriate remedy’ for uncooperative GOP lawmakers.

          In a depraved act of supreme disrespect and partisanship, a “shadow” committee of Republicans will issue a “counter-report” to the official report of the January 6th Committee. That report will seek to lay blame for security lapses at the Capitol for the insurrection. See Axios, Scoop: GOP shadow committee re-emerges for Jan. 6 report. The response by law enforcement and intelligence agencies is a legitimate area of investigation—and will be covered in the January 6th Committee’s report. But the point of the “shadow committee’s” separate report is to confuse and dilute media coverage of the findings in the J6 Report. Sadly, many members of the media will give “equal time” to a “PR stunt” by insurrectionists and the serious and sober effort by the J6 Committee to understand the root cause of the insurrection.

          Trump is acting like a wounded and cornered animal. He is lashing out on his vanity media platform, resorting to the language of incitement that ignited the insurrection. See HuffPo, Donald Trump Evokes Jan. 6 Insurrection, Tells Backers It’s Time To ‘Deal With’ FBI, DOJ “Thugs”. It is doubtful that any other president in American history will ever be credibly accused of insurrection by a congressional committee. Trump is entering a league of one.

          The political backlash against the Committee and its members will be savage. Kevin McCarthy has vowed to remove Adam Schiff from the House Intelligence Committee in retribution. Republican leaders of all stripes will lie, distort, and deflect. The tired refrain of “What about Hillary’s emails?” pales in comparison to charges of insurrection, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress, and conspiracy to defraud the United States (i.e., the fake electors scheme).

          For those who care about defending democracy, the vote of the Committee on December 19, 2022, will be momentous. To the extent you can, ignore the noise and focus on the rare achievement that is the sign of a functioning democracy—an effort to hold a former leader to account for his crimes in office. Whatever happens, the judgment of the January 6th Committee will be inscribed in stone as the official history of the unsuccessful insurrection that culminated in the events of January 6th, 2021.

Elon Musk, Chaos Monkey.

          In the tech world, a “chaos monkey” is a software tool that intentionally disables components of a software platform to determine how resilient the system is to random outages. The term refers to the following metaphor:

Imagine a monkey entering a ‘data center,’ these ‘farms’ of servers that host all the critical functions of our online activities. The monkey randomly rips cables, [and] destroys devices. . .  The challenge for IT managers is to design the information system they are responsible for to work despite these monkeys. . . . [N]o one knows when they will arrive or what they will destroy.

          Elon Musk’s activity on Twitter over the last 72 hours has been equivalent to a “chaos monkey.” It is unclear whether Twitter will survive his bizarre management style and apparent loss of emotional control. Events are unfolding so quickly that I cannot find an up-to-date recounting of the chaos over the weekend. But if you want a high-level review, check out The Guardian, Musk sets up Twitter poll asking if he should step down as head.

          Yes! You read The Guardian headline correctly: Musk is asking if he should step down. At the moment, 56% of Twitter users voted for Musk to step away from Twitter, which prompted Musk to tweet,

No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor.

          Musk’s tweet suggests that he will either remain in the job despite his promise to quit if users voted for him to leave or that he will shut down the platform. It is a wild ride at Twitter. That’s what happens to a software platform when you unleash a chaos monkey in the executive suite.

North Carolina Supreme Court invalidates voter ID laws and state election map.

          You may have seen headlines about two decisions by the North Carolina Supreme Court invalidating a voter ID law and a map for the North Carolina Senate. See UPI News, North Carolina Supreme Court strikes down voter ID law, Senate redistricting. Some of you may wonder how those rulings relate to issues on appeal before the US Supreme Court in the case of Moore v. Harper. Recall that Moore v. Harper addresses whether the North Carolina state supreme court can invalidate actions by the North Carolina legislature regarding the time, place, and manner of elections for members of Congress.

          The short answer is that, in general, the two North Carolina supreme court decisions (noted above) invalidated state election regulations under the state constitution. So, for example, the NC supreme court invalidated the boundary lines for state senate districts set by the state legislature as violating Article I, section 19 of the North Carolina Constitution.

          But the situation is more complicated regarding the voter ID laws. The NC supreme court can invalidate voter ID laws for state elections on the ground that such law violate the North Carolina Constitution. But what happens when a ballot contains both state and US congressional candidates? Can the state supreme court overrule the voter ID requirement that relates to the “time, place, and manner” of congressional elections? That is the question before the US Supreme Court in Moore v. Harper.

          The two rulings come just weeks before the current term of the North Carolina supreme court ends. The court’s current composition is 4-3, with “Democratic” justices in the majority. Next year, the NC supreme court will have a 5-2 Republican majority—proving once again that every race on the ballot matters. We should expect Republicans in North Carolina to find a way to bring these issues back before the NC supreme court to overrule the two cases decided this month.

          When that happens, the Republican justices on the NC supreme court will be following in the footsteps of the US Supreme Court by bending the law to achieve partisan goals. And that is why the US Supreme Court is suffering from a crisis of legitimacy. The only solution is to expand the US Supreme Court when we next have the opportunity to do so.

“Information Warriors.”

          As we move toward 2024, it will be our ongoing task to speak the truth in the face of disinformation efforts by the GOP designed to confuse and mislead Americans. I was on a holiday party zoom with a group of Heather Cox Richardson’s fans and supporters who call themselves “Heather’s Herd.” (A fun time was had by all!) One of the participants used a phrase that she had recently heard in a presentation on voting. She said that going into 2024, we all needed to be “information warriors.”

          That phrase resonated with me because it describes our role as active participants in the competition for truth in the media. I understand that some may be hesitant to use the word “warrior,” but let’s not lose sight of the import of the phrase. It is not enough to educate ourselves about the issues. Our knowledge is useless if it resides only within us. We must find a way to share what we know with others. We can do so at the dinner table, market, school, church gatherings, in letters to the editor, on social media, and more.

          One of my resolutions for the coming year is to present reliable sources of information that will help readers challenge disinformation. In that spirit, I recommend an Editorial by the Washington Post that discusses Ron DeSantis’s renewed war on the Covid vaccine. See WaPo, Vaccines saved lives. DeSantis threatens that progress. Because the editorial is behind a paywall, I excerpt some of the relevant facts below:

 Vaccines work. A mathematical model, based on country-level data, found they directly saved some 15.5 million lives worldwide in the first year they were available, and millions more indirectly. The speed with which mRNA vaccines reached people was a spectacular scientific achievement, given the history of vaccine development.

Adults who received the latest booster shots cut their risk of having to visit an emergency room or being hospitalized by 50 percent or more, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday.

Professor Peter Hotez . . . has pointed out that some 200,000 Americans “needlessly lost their lives in the last half of 2021 and into early 2022 because they refused a coronavirus vaccine during our terrible delta wave.”

          Several times a month, I receive emails that follow a pattern: “I am surprised that a smart fellow like you has fallen for the Big Pharma effort to conceal the effectiveness of ivermectin in curing Covid.” As I tell the people who email me these statements, (a) there are NO well-designed scientific studies that show ivermectin is effective in preventing or curing Covid, and (b) many of the poorly designed studies that purport to show that ivermectin is effective have been withdrawn because of allegations of fraud and/or data manipulation. See BBC News, Ivermectin: How false science created a Covid’ miracle’ drug - BBC News. Per the BBC,

[M]ore than a third of 26 major trials of the drug for use on Covid have serious errors or signs of potential fraud. None of the rest shows convincing evidence of ivermectin’s effectiveness. . . . [A] group investigating the [ivermectin] studies said they had not found “a single clinical trial” claiming to show that ivermectin prevented Covid deaths that did not contain “either obvious signs of fabrication or errors so critical they invalidate the study”.

          So, as Ron DeSantis ramps up his politically motivated attack on mRNA vaccines, expect to hear his supporters promote false claims about “alternative” treatments that “Big Pharma” is allegedly suppressing. Those claims are not true. The reason so many ivermectin studies resort to fraud is that the drug does not work in treating Covid—no matter what your uncle’s best friend’s barber says.

          As we head into the Ron DeSantis disinformation blitzkrieg, we need to re-educate ourselves about the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines. Do not give in to exhaustion or frustration. The life you save may be that of a loved one, a co-worker, or a complete stranger. Tell a friend!

Concluding Thoughts.

          Sigh. Joe Manchin is making ambivalent noises about his “independent viewpoint”—a vague threat to leave the Democratic Party. Nothing is easy. His feelings are bruised because his pet project to fast-track permitting of new energy projects was voted down in the Senate last week. Opposition came mainly from the GOP, although seven Republicans voted in favor of his proposal. Nine Democrats and Bernie Sanders voted against it. See The Hill, Senate rejects Manchin’s energy permitting amendment to defense bill.

          As Ian Fleming wrote, “Worry is a dividend paid to disaster before it is due.”  No need to worry at the moment about Manchin becoming an “independent” like Sinema. And if he does, his change in status will not likely affect the balance of power in the Senate. But, “Come on, Joe! It’s the holiday season! Can you give us a break for one minute??”

          Over the weekend, I mentioned that one item on my Christmas wish list was Trump fleeing to Saudi Arabia. Another is that Congress will stop with the gamesmanship and pass an omnibus spending bill this week. We cannot afford to kick this can into the next session of Congress—when the new speaker may be one of the following: Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Newt Gingrich, Donald Trump, or “Q.”

          To everyone celebrating Hanukkah this week, Jill and I wish you and your family a happy Hanukkah filled with peace and light!

          Talk to you tomorrow!