8193

Gonna pass the House.

8194

Then we get to find out if we have rule of law in this country, or if Congress is just people talking to each other while Republicans do whatever the fuck they want.

I mean, I know what I’m betting on, but it’d be nice to be surprised.

8195

Like.

8196

You can pretty much write off the Democracy Experiment if there are no repercussions for Jan 6.

8197

What happens then?

8198

The woke Left is cancelling Steve Bannon. Typical.

8199

The thought police are at it again.

8200

The House makes a criminal contempt referral to the Justice department. The DOJ decides whether to pursue it. If they do, they’ll indict Bannon, he’ll be arrested, arraigned, etc.

The thing is, it’s open-and-shut. You can’t ignore a subpoena, not legally. If you want to make a claim of privilege, you have to show up and make it. Same with invoking the fifth. Having a reason not to answer some questions isn’t a license to ignore the summons itself.

8201

It’s time to move on after my team did a horrible thing before lest anyone be held accountable.
Also let’s invade Iraq again or something.

8202

I don’t really think Jan. 6 even matters to @JoshL 's point, it could have been jaywalking but if Bannon gets to skip after ignoring a congressional subpoena, then things are slightly worse than I feared.

8203

Well, a whole lot of people have already been allowed to ignore a congressional subpoena, in the last administration (and perhaps before?), without any adverse consequences except some legal expenses they probably didn’t even pay. So it won’t be like crossing the Rubicon. It’s just a question of whether a DOJ run by Democrats will decline to challenge that nascent state of affairs.

8204

I wouldn’t generally associate Rice with Trump supporters… Pretty sure they hate her for a ton of reasons.

8205

Or one reason, she’s intelligent.

8206

That’s not the reason I was thinking of.

8207

Touche, though they were just fine with her when she was in office and able to be tokenized.

8208

I’d love to see her, what I assume is, similar statement about the hundreds of hearings about Benghazi. Does anyone have a link to that handy?

…I’m now being told that no such statement exists.

8209

Well, that was a grave matter of national security. Jan 6 was just a rowdy protest.

This sort of thing regarding Jan 6 scares the crap out of me, honestly. Like @Timex said, I wouldn’t generally lump Rice in with Trumpers or Trumpism but that just makes it worse. The Republicans want to just forget it happened for obvious reasons, but I don’t sense the urgency even from a lot of Democrats (not just speaking of elected officials) I think it warrants.

I feel like there’s a belief – subconscious or not – that a coup couldn’t really happen in this country, so a lot of people just don’t seem to realize how close to the line we came and how shaky our democracy is right now. I would have laughed at myself thinking this as little as 10 years ago, but I really feel like if I live to an average age I’m going to see a full blown constitutional crisis regarding our elections. Whether it’s the Capitol successfully being stormed and Democrat politicians executed or the GOP simply overturning an election via state legislatures I don’t know, but I feel like it’s going to happen. And I really don’t know where things go from there.

8210

That’s a difference between you and me. I expected what happened in 2020 to play out at some point. The part I didn’t expect was for Republicans to fail at it the first time, but I didn’t forecast Trump being that incompetent.

8211

This is also my position.

But I’ve been pretty firmly in the “anyone still a Republican is scum” camp for a while now.
This just reaffirms it. People like Liz Cheney wont be in the party in 2023 anyway, so there isn’t any reason to make exceptions for them anymore.

8212

There will always be plutocrats and warmongers. Generally these days the warmongering is in service of plutocracy, because those sweet sweet government contracts aren’t going to create themselves.