Of course. Lock her up!
The call is coming from inside the building.
Checks out.
What did cookie monster ever do to anyone???
It’s always exactly who you think it is.
And I guarantee that guy’s computer is loaded with CP and My Little Pony porn.
Ueah! I mean sure cookie monster has substance abuse issues but he’s not evil. Bert is the evil one.
Hah, I forgot that
https://web.archive.org/web/20000302012226/http://www.fractalcow.com/bert/bert.htm
Your regular reminder that House members and their staffs often give private tours of the Capitol, so this by itself doesn’t mean much.
To arrest or expel Boebert, additional evidence will be needed.
Well expulsion doesn’t require any evidence; just a 2/3 vote of the House.
There are internet rumors, and I stress rumors, that pink hat lady that was giving people directions like she knew the layout of the place was her mom, whom she had given a tour to and was staying with her in DC.
The part about the tour and her mom being in DC have been confirmed by Boebert. She says her mom was in a secure location with staff and not at the capitol. Which does strain belief a bit as her mom is a QAnon nutter and what self respecting QAnon nut is going to go to DC and not attend the party.
2/3 of the House aren’t going to vote to expel her purely because she did something they themselves do all the time: give a Capitol tour.
Just by the law of averages, I wouldn’t be surprised if some anti-Trump Congressman’s staff gave one or more of the rioters a tour of the Capitol in the days leading up to the riot. Not because that Congressman supported the rioters, but just because that rioter knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who could get them on the private tour list.
So like I said, additional evidence is required that speaks to intent (which, based on Boebert’s public actions, may very well be out there.) But giving a tour is not in isolation a smoking gun.
I agree with you. I actually don’t think that 2/3 of the House will vote to expel her for any reason. But unlike an arrest, which requires that an officer have either a warrant issued by a judge or probable cause to believe that a crime was committed, expulsion from Congress requires no evidence, no probable cause, and no procedure except a vote. It can be done for any reason. That said, not counting Confederacy-supporters, it’s only happened twice in the House and once in the Senate.
Yep, we are in violent agreement. You are concentrating on the legal differences - a conviction requires proof of intent, an expulsion vote technically doesn’t - while I am focusing on the practical similarities - which an expulsion vote doesn’t technically require proof of intent, in practice it does. Otherwise, it runs the real risk of blowing up in the House member’s face - they call to expel Boebert, Boebert responds with, “I just did something a bunch of you also did.”
The reason I’m dwelling on this is that the Internet is going through it’s usual “We did it!!!” period of excitement. Which will inevitably be followed by a crash in 12-24 hours - “Why hasn’t Boebert been arrested yet? Why are Dems so incompetent???1” Based on purely this report,* neither the excitement nor the crash are justified.
*There’s also the issue that Cohen’s allegation is vague - he says Boebert gave a tour sometime between the 3rd and the 6th - and Boebert flat-out denies it. (Though what she says is, “I did not give any tours between Jan 3rd and the 6th,” which can be parsed multiple ways.)
So glad they’re the party of law and order.
I’m consistently dismayed that the religious right embraces such an immoral and godless man.
I know what’s going on, but it just astounds me still.
If anyone wants their alarm levels stoked…
I study this stuff for a living, so I exist in a rather strange bubble, but I think there’s a societal sense in which a huge line had been crossed. Even last week, I don’t think it’d fully sunk in that we are now facing the consequence of unchecked right-wing extremism being nurtured over the past several years. This wasn’t anything new that Trump heralded. Yet we have seen Trump and his ilk feed it. The most disturbing trend I’ve seen in the last couple of weeks and months has been the way in which people like Ted Cruz haven’t just radicalized Americans, but mobilized them to action. In mobilizing people to come from across the United States to defend in D.C., this is the kind of thing that Anwar al-Awlaki would envy.
Were you worried when you first heard about the “Save America” march?
There are a lot of informed, smart people out there saying that this was spontaneous. That’s delusional. It shows just how removed we are from any sense of how dangerous this problem is that even a day or two before, people said that this is going to be simply another protest. What more do we need to start taking right-wing extremism seriously? The bombs, the bits of the story that are starting to emerge now about zip-tie guy, and about whether or not there was a plan to take hostages. People are still looking at this with eyes wide shut. I mean, it is truly stunning. Misinformation and disinformation constitutes nothing less than a major public health crisis. I think this is really the consequence of where we are now after the last four years. That’s what I’m very, very worried about right now.
I admit I was wondering why we would want to stop Trump from incriminating himself further.
I totally understand that, but the potential consequences of allowing him to remain unfettered on that platform could be disastrous. I understand why we’re asking this question of what comes next, but we’re going to be dealing with the fallout of what we’ve seen last week for a generation. These kinds of images, like the Confederate flag being paraded through the Capitol building, these images will constitute the fuel for the next generation of white supremacists in this country.
What do you think the Capitol moment means for these extremist groups going forward? What are you seeing in the groups you monitor?
It’s a rallying cry. I have seen chatter that suggests there are credible attempts to coordinate violent protests at each of the state capitals. That makes sense because these groups are spread out. I’m not worried about the people that were caught up in these arrests. I’m not worried about the people that were at the protest. I’m worried about the Timothy McVeighs who are out there now realizing that their time has come. They are radicalized. They are mobilized. They are bereft of direction because their leader for whom they are clearly ready to give their lives has lost the platform that he needs to communicate with them, so now they’re trying to figure out what to do, and it makes them unpredictable. After the IRA tried to kill Margaret Thatcher in 1984 and she survived, they said, “Remember, we only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky always.” That’s where we are right now.
This is a terrible parallel though. Such a poor comparison, that I came away from that blog post distrusting the writer’s motives. Like it wasn’t enough for him to write some cogent and clear thoughts about America today, he wanted to stake an appeal to authority based on his academic background.
Ancient Athens was a city without a standing army, with no law enforcement or government apparatus as we experience them, and no news media or any form of information exchange beyond word of mouth. The only way of organising a response to a national emergency was to stand up in a public space and call on citizens to arm themselves. Which is why his example coup attempts worked. Because an armed band that took control of the Parthenon and the Agora immediately had a monopoly on armed force, on the means of information exchange, and had blocked the only way that the current regime had for organising a response.
To achieve the same results a modern American coup would need majority control of the armed forces, and of law enforcement, control of all media, telecoms and the internet. How ever bad the worst case result of the Capitol riot was, they had no way of managing any of those things. It’s such an inappropriate, silly, comparison that I struggle to believe that they’re making it in good faith.