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Aug 12, 2021Liked by Robert B. Hubbell

Excellent reminder that we must get our younger folk to run for the local and state offices that so impact our daily lives. It may seem small, or dull BUT it is the foundation of how we operate as a democracy. The best of us has to participate and engage in discussion of issues and planning of action. Ben Franklin would organize all of us.

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Thanks, Carole. I appreciate your feedback, and I hope you will run for something!

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Younger folk, not 73, have to run. I am working on my thirty and forty-year-old children.

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Aug 12, 2021Liked by Robert B. Hubbell

For four years under sessions and then especially under Barr, the Trump administration worked to politicize the DOJ. I have said for sometime now that Garland knows what he is doing and yes this is a sensitive issue. The first person the Rosen spoke to when it was clear he could was IG Horowitz. You want to change the focus of the administration off the legislation front and replace it with prosecutorial headlines. That obviously is not what Garland or the Biden administration want. I would only request that the newsletter tone down its drumbeat of attacks on Garland. I believe he is trying to rebuild the department and at the same time insure that if there has been misconduct by employees of DOJ it will be brought out. Horowitz did a very solid job of uncovering DOJ misconduct at the beginning of the Mueller investigation.

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Hi, Tom. Thanks for you note. I disagree with your viewpoint. The attempted coup extended beyond the DOJ. Horowitz has no authority to investigate Trump or others outside the DOJ for criminal conspiracy to overthrow the government. Here is a sincere question: Since Horowitz can't investigate anyone outside the DOJ, whose job is it do that? I also disagree that we must set aside attempts to hold Trump accountable for a coup in order to pass legislation. If we do nothing to hold Trump accountable for attempting to overthrow the 2020 elections, he will be the leading candidate for the GOP nomination in 2024. Time is of the essence.

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Whatever you do do NOT tone down your attacks on Garland and the people who want to sweep what the GOP and tRump did to this country. If this is not dealt with, as you say, the next time around we may not even get a little bump back from the precipice of fascism.

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Your description of the GOP as increasingly “feral” is pitch-perfect. Thank you for focussing on positives in spite of the incessant second guessing of Manichin, the suicidal vociferousness of the anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers, and the slow seep of poison from the noisy members of the fascist fan club into the body politic. I agree that the best antidote is politic al and social engagement, action-based advocacy, and unflinching devotion to democratic principles. Your columns are a boon in these seemingly dark days.

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We need to fight the perception that whites are threatened, when they are not. The census data will show a decline in whites only because the Census Bureau uses the most restrictive possible definition of whites and the most expansive possible definition of non-whites. Anyone who might identify as white and something else (and that's a lot of people!) gets defined only as the something else. This choice is pernicious and inaccurate. See https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/06/myth-majority-minority-america/619190/

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It may be that it the Attorney General is not doing his job in turning to Inspector General Michael Horowitz to investigate the Trump coup. It might be appropriate for Horowitz to investigate the Justice Department's role in the attempted coup. I'll add -- Michael Horowitz is a thoughtful man and a person of integrity.

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Hi, Leonard. By all accounts, Horowitz is a good and competent man. It is certainly appropriate for Horowitz to investigate whether the DOJ's role in the coup. My point is that an internal investigation by Horowitz is not a substitute for a criminal investigation by the DOJ--of Trump, of the DOJ, of Trump's attorneys, and others over which the IG has no authority to investigate.

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