It is so cool and so fun being the richest guy in the world. And did I mention being cool? I mean, I got to sway an entire election with my money and my influencer stuff. What a gas. It’s like I snap my fingers and presto change-o, my guy wins the whole contest. And now I get to hobnob with all the big shots. That’s a trip, dude. I mean, I can tank any bill or policy just by making a few mildly threatening phone calls or a few tweets, no biggies. And I’m like a total new kid on the block, only I bought the block and everybody on it.
And I’m basically top gun. I got the whole country in the palm of my hand. What a rush, man. I’m having the time of my life. It’s the coolest thing ever.
I cut the little loose thread on the sleeve of my hoodie. It’s a cool morning and I put the sweatshirt on as soon as I got up. I really shouldn’t have bothered, it probably wouldn’t have unravelled and even if it had I’ve got other sweatshirts.
But what, I thought, if I have to make a run for it when they come for me and the sweatshirt I have on is all the bed or blanket I will have for months, or maybe years, of desperate flight. Because maybe they won’t come after people who speak up against them like they insinuate, but maybe they will. Maybe they will be as vindictive and ugly as all the stuff they said in their campaign. And we can’t afford loose threads when we’re racing to outrun fascism.
Maybe this talk is absurd, maybe I’m loonier than they are. How paranoid is it sane to be?
We’re going to need heroes. A whole lot of them. We had some last time, after what happened four years ago. But we’re going to need more this time. Thousands of heroes, maybe millions.
We had Michael Fanone and Aquilino Gonell and Harry Dunn and Caroline Edwards. We had Rusty Bowers and Cassidy Hutchinson. We had Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. We had Brad Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling. We had B.J. Pak and Al Schmidt and Chris Stirewalt. We had Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. We had Mike Pence. Heroes all. There were unsung heroes, too. We don’t know their names. But we’ll need more this time.
We’ll need generals who remain loyal to their oath and the American people, not to one man in an Oval Office. We’ll need soldiers and police officers and government agents who refuse to carry out unlawful orders intended to punish the innocent or violate civil rights. We’ll need lawyers and trial judges and appeals court judges and Supreme Court Justices who follow the law, not the dictates of an oppressive regime. We’ll need scientists and teachers who spread truth, not superstition or prejudice or illusion or fabrication. We’ll need representatives and senators who work for the common good, not special interests or personal gain or the advantage of one party or faction. We’ll need heroes.
We’ll need all fair-minded Americans to step up. Speak up and stand up, to do the right thing, to say no to hate and cruelty and greed and injustice. Heroes all. We need all of us. We all need all of us. We can be heroes. Together we can be.
An Attorney General needs three basic qualities. She or he needs to be a leader. Someone who has the maturity, temperament and expertise to run the world’s foremost law enforcement agency, from preliminary investigation to complex litigation.
She or he needs to be respected. He needs to be respected by his vast workforce, which includes the agents of the FBI, ATF and DEA, Immigration Judges, U.S. Attorneys, subject-matter attorneys in all areas of federal law, Bureau of Prisons, and officers responsible for monitoring sex offenders and preventing Violence Against Women. He needs to be respected by the federal bench, before whom his Department will appear and argue its cases, if the interests of the United States are to be effectively prosecuted or defended. He needs to be respected by opposing parties and opposing counsel. This includes opposing parties who are foreign states and foreign nationals who may be subject to U.S. jurisdiction.
Finally, the Attorney General needs to have personal and professional integrity. Just like a Justice of the Supreme Court, the Attorney General must be beyond reproach in terms of integrity. There must be no trace of bias or personal interest in any of his words or actions. He must serve only the interests of the American people and their Constitution and laws.
Can we say, with a straight face, that the person whom President-elect Trump wants to be our next Attorney General possesses any of these three qualities? Rarely has a negative answer to such a question been so embarrassingly obvious.
Saw my therapist yesterday. She gave me some very important political advice. That guy, the one who’s going to be moving himself and his ego into the White House in January. His whole purpose is to crush our spirits so that we’ll just lie down and give up, and then he can do whatever mischief he wants to do without any resistance. And then he’ll have really won.
But he’s a bully and a coward, and if we stand up to him tall and loud and proud, he will lose his cool and he will be on the defensive and his silly sycophants will start edging away from him and there is no way he will be able to do all those sick, destructive things he talked about doing. And then we will have won, in a way that he, in his moral emptiness, could never understand.
There will always be uneducated, uninformed or easily-misguided voters. But there will not always be a Trump base: sixty million Americans who not only can stomach a racist, misogynist predator but actually like that brand of filth. You see, the guy has a rare talent, he knows how to exploit a certain human character flaw. It’s the rotten part of our soul that loves to hurt others and he exploits it for everything he can get.
We would like to think that our civilized society would discourage those impulses, but in this case civilization has failed. A guy came along who has lived his whole life by those savage tendencies and knows exactly how to awaken them in others. Hence, we have a terrible, terrible specimen of our species as President-elect, a man who would, and will, sell his country to the highest bidder. The “hope” is that, when the next reactionary demagogue comes along, he won’t be quite as talented as this one.
There’s a certain thing in so many of his supporters. It’s way down deep in their gut, they don’t even know it’s there. But it’s there. It’s a mean little sadistic thing. It likes when he talks dirty. It likes when he targets innocent groups. It likes the idea of blaming and punishing someone else for all the problems. It likes being part of a mob and getting a vicarious thrill out of all the venom. It’s an ugly smoldering thing. And without it fascist demagogues would never win elections. And it makes me sick to my stomach.
Fascists and other creeps have a sixth sense. They recognize each other, even in a crowd. Instinctively. They identify through their mutual depravity. They flock together. Vulture-like. It’s really very unnerving.
I suppose on some level we should feel pity for these guys, for the moral emptiness of their souls. But never hesitate to call them out. They have no pity, and we darn well better make sure they have no power.
I don’t know about you but my brain has been on overdrive this entire year because the world is a bloody tinderbox and we are little toothpicks sprinkled on the top of the pile. And sparks are blowing in the wind. And the guy who wants to be President again is lighting one match after another and flicking them in our direction. Muttering something about crowd sizes and witch hunts.
That’s why I’m writing this at 11:30 at night. Does anybody have a recommendation?
Through most of its history the young State of Israel was singled out, scapegoated, and threatened. But its current military policies are reckless and ruthless. In continuing its senseless war in Gaza, human rights violations in the West Bank, and now spreading terror in Lebanon, it is clear that the current leadership of Israel does not want peace, it wants perpetual war.
The attacks upon Hezbollah in Lebanon the past two days by means of remote-controlled explosives planted in pagers and walkie-talkies were nothing short of barbaric. Indescriminately killing and maiming civilians along with its Hezbollah targets, I believe the operation was a War Crime and a Crime Against Humanity, under international law.
As an American Jew, I demand that the U.S. stop all military aid to Israel and double its diplomatic effort to end these conflicts and establish a permanent peace in the region. These wars solve nothing, and every day that they wage on is a day of death, terror, and deepening despair. They’ve shoved Peace into a body bag and the zipper is closing fast.
I can imagine being undecided between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, or between Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. But can you imagine anybody, at this late date, being undecided between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump?
CNN had a focus group, in Erie, Pennsylvania, watching the debate last night. They were all voters who, just prior to the debate, were undecided between the two candidates. After the debate, the majority had made up their minds. But I’m still thunderstruck that anyone could have a problem making up their mind when the choice they’re given is Kamala Harris or Donald Trump for President.
When the CNN reporter interviewed the members of the focus group, it almost seemed like, in the current political climate, they were a unique and different breed of individual. They seemed so unflinchingly moderate, so detached, so unmoved, so unenthusiastic, so ho-hum. I wanted to shake them. But I’m thinking maybe they really are a particular personality type, and can’t help being that way. They just struggle with making up their minds, at least about politics, even very divisive politics. I guess politicians need to find a way to grab the attention of such persons and strike whatever chord inside them that needs to be struck.
Libels and licentious discourses against the state, when they are frequent and open; and in like sort, false news running up and down to the disadvantage of the state, and hastily embraced; are amongst the signs of troubles.
Sir Francis Bacon, Essays (“Of Sedition and Troubles”)
“George, people are starving in East Africa again.”
“It’s okay, AI will make new people and they’ll be better than the ones that are dying. They won’t need food or water, only batteries.”
“Hmmh. But what if those battery-powered people decide to come here because they like the weather better here or because we have cable?”
“That’s fine. We can put them to work doing all the jobs that we don’t want to do. Instead of paying other people to do them.”
“But don’t those people need their jobs to live on?”
“I’m sure AI will think of something.”
“Who decides which jobs are the ones we care about and which are the ones we don’t care about?”
“We do, of course” “Who is We?”
“Us. We. You know, the ones who can afford to pay other people to do the jobs we don’t care about. I mean we care about those jobs. But we don’t want to have to do them ourselves. And we can afford to pay somebody to do them but we’d rather not if we don’t have to. Don’t ask stupid questions.”
“You’re the one that brought up AI and jobs. What if the battery-powered people from other places don’t like us? What if they want our houses or our money or our—kids!” “No problem. Our AI will fight their AI. And our AI will win, because our AI will be working for us. And we’re Us, remember? We always win.” “Well, what if we don’t? What if our AI decides that we’re working for it, not it for us? What if our AI decides it likes the other AI better than it likes us?” “You’re nuts.” “But George, I read an article that said that—”
“Forget that article. AI can give you better articles, ones that only tell you stuff that has nothing to do with the real world. AI can even make you believe that there’s no such thing as AI. Or that AI does exist but it’s your closest and dearest and most intimate friend. Won’t that be nice?”
“You little know the nature of the clique to which he belongs. That they value pleasure fully as much as other men, is quite certain; that they struggle for riches, it were equally impossible to doubt: but that POWER is dearer to them than either, is a truth well known to all . . . [Fanny Trollope, The Vicar of Wrexhill (1837)]
Does Auburn throw a hissy fit and ask for a recount? No.
Does Auburn file 61 frivolous lawsuits? No.
Does Auburn call the Ref and ask him to “find”, um, 15 more points? No.
Does Auburn ask its buddies in the Southeast Conference to just “declare” it the winner, despite no evidence? No.
The Auburn coach and players all shake hands with ‘Bama and wish them good luck in the Orange Bowl. Auburn doesn’t summon a mob of angry armed fans and send them to Tuscaloosa to beat up campus security and steal the Foy-ODK Sportsmanship Trophy.
“I mean that there is a shadow of something colossal and menacing that even now is beginning to fall across the land. Call it the shadow of an oligarchy, if you will; It is the nearest I dare approximate it.” Jack London, The Iron Heel (1907)
I solemnly swear that I will not accept or share irrelevant, self-serving, uncorroborated, isolated, cherry-picked, out-of-context, irrational, false, misleading, hateful or inflammatory statements of any kind. Before relying upon or sharing information, I will make sure that reputable sources corroborate the information. I am familiar with various methods of searching and reviewing all forms of media, government, academic and NGO resources.
I understand that the above sources may vary greatly in terms of potential bias or interest. I know that information sources are not all equally committed to accuracy or truth. I will be mindful of these subjective factors when I evaluate the information they publish. I also understand the difference between fact and opinion.
I therefore swear that I will be a Champion for Truth to the best of my ability, and will hold others to the same standards of honesty and integrity.
Prosecutorial discretion can be a complicated thing. It can get really complicated when the suspect is a person by the name of Donald Trump.
In the wake of Trump’s Impeachment trial, state and federal prosecutors are now in the spotlight. They need to weigh all kinds of factors, including the nature and gravity of the offenses, and various policy considerations. Prosecutors decide whether charges should be filed and what particular charges should be included. Once charges are filed, there are myriad discretionary decisions that will be made about how to conduct the case.
Today, the Senate failed to convict him of the Impeachment charge, but Donald Trump is still suspected of committing a wide range of criminal offenses, from Tax Fraud, to Conspiracy to Interfere with an Election, to Seditious Conspiracy Against the United States, and even aiding and abetting the Murder of a Capitol Hill police officer. So he is still subject to criminal prosecution in the courts, and the crimes themselves are about as serious as serious gets.
Mitigating circumstances? It is hard to imagine that Donald Trump, rich, powerful, Commander-in-Chief, had any mitigating excuses for these crimes that are under investigation.
How about policy considerations. This is where it gets really complicated. At first glance, that is. Prosecutors have the simultaneous duties to enforce the criminal laws and see that justice is done. But they have the inherent discretion to take other factors into account. So, when Donald Trump is the potential criminal defendant, the policy factors they need to take into account have national and international significance. On the one hand, they might worry that trying Donald Trump for serious crimes could cause a violent backlash. They might conclude that prosecuting him would somehow lead to more human suffering than it would prevent.
On the other hand, they must consider what effect it would have if Trump were never held accountable, what would that do to our principle that no one is above the law. How would such impunity affect our democracy, how might it embolden other would-be tyrants? How would it influence the opinions or actions of other nations? If Trump is able to escape justice through his personal status or his connections, could it have possibly devastating effects on our nation’s morale? Our country is already suffering from inequalities based on race, religion, gender, and other social factors.
If Trump evades prosecution and punishment, will he not continue to pose a threat to our democratic political system, and to our national security? Those are concerns which the House Impeachment Managers emphasized zealously.
Can Donald Trump get a fair trial in the criminal courts? That is a policy question that has to be looked at as well. But the Courts provide due process, including procedures for selecting an appropriate venue and a fair jury. He will enjoy all the constitutional rights of any criminal defendant.
Finally, prosecutors can and should consider humanitarian factors. Has the suspect already suffered enough? Is he remorseful, has he demonstrated that he is motivated to atone for his crimes, to repay society for the harm he has done? Is he using his words, actions, or resources to make the world a better, safer place? Did he appear at his Impeachment trial and admit what he had done and show that he has learned from his mistakes? Were there ever questions that deserved a more resounding “No” than these crucial questions in the context of Donald Trump’s behavior?
Prosecutors will have to make their own discretionary choices. We hope that they will exercise their authority wisely. It is not easy being a prosecutor and figuring out what is the right thing to do, in every case. I don’t envy them dealing with the pressure of having to sort out all the positives and negatives of prosecuting Donald Trump. But I think we will see them do the right thing. I think we will see some degree of justice achieved. That is an achievement that all rational Americans should desire and support. And rational thinking is what this country needs right now, more than anything, from all its citizens.
“Mr. Doe, you’re a U.S. Senator and a loyal Trump supporter, is that correct?”
“I stand with the President 100%.”
“And you agree with Mr. Trump that the election was somehow rigged against him?”
“It most certainly was.”
“What would it take to satisfy you that the election was free and fair?”
“Well, there would have to be a full investigation of every allegation of fraud.”
“Well, Sir, state election officials have done those investigations and found no fraud. The U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have also found no fraud. And the Courts have reviewed Mr. Trump’s claims and found no evidence of fraud. So doesn’t that address all your concerns, Senator?”
“No, it doesn’t.”
“I see. So what WOULD satisfy you that the election was free and fair?”
“Well I don’t know, there has to be proof that there wasn’t any hanky-panky going on.”
“What kind of proof?”
“How should I know, I don’t work in the election office. I’m a Senator.”
“So you’re saying that the people running the election are the ones who would know the actual facts.”
“Of course, that’s just basic horse sense.”
“And those officials have all confirmed the accuracy and fairness of the election, correct?”
“They said it, but they could be wrong.”
“All the state and local election officials across the country could be wrong? And you think you and Mr. Trump are right.”
“Yes I do.”
“And that’s based on . . ?”
“I told you, the election was rigged, there was fraud everywhere.”
“Senator, you’re up for re-election in 2022. Why should the people of your state send you back to Washington in two years?”
“The people of my state know I have always done everything humanly possible to improve their lives in every way.”
“Uh-huh. How much Covid relief for families, workers and small businesses are you voting for, Senator?”
“Well, we’ll have to see about that. This Covid thing has been way overblown. Very few people have died, it’s nowhere near as bad as what the . . .”
“Are you all right, Senator?”
“Yeah I just got a little dizzy there. Feels like there’s a weight or something on my chest, all of a sudden.”
“Gee that’s a deep cough you have there, Senator. How long have you had that?”
“Just the last couple hours, I . . .”
“Senator, the video output of your computer is a little blurry, but you don’t look so good. Do you have someone there who could take your temperature?”
“My wife Elaine is here but she’s in bed. She’s had the worst cold all day, can barely breathe.”
“Senator, my network is gonna call 9-1-1 for you. Okay?”
“9-1-1?”
“Yes, you know. One of those public services that you’re always saying will take us down the road to socialism.”
Chuck Redman 