Now that round one of the hearings probing the attempted coup d’état at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 has concluded, here is what we have learned…and some impressions:

1. It is striking that the witnesses that testified before the committee were almost all Republicans. That alone should depoliticize the enterprise.
2. Sadly, the MAGA-verse is not watching or listening, so it is unlikely that any hard-core minds will change.
3. Donald Trump’s criminality makes Richard Nixon’s depredations seem like minor infractions. Trump abused his office to an unprecedented extent. Thanks to him, people died. He is without question the arch-criminal of all of American history.
4. The hearings have thus far exceeded expectations and established a prima facie case for indicting and convicting the criminal ex-president. The vision of him shackled in an orange jumpsuit became much sharper.
5. Trump merits having the full force of the law brought down on his head. However, there is a caveat. While there is little question that he is guilty beyond any doubt of high treason, indicting him for his many crimes carries with it a very high risk. All it would take is for one juror to deny the government a conviction. In that case, Trump would undoubtedly claim vindication, just as he did after the damning Mueller Report and two impeachment trials, and exploit this latest escape from justice to rile up his base and return to the White House, a horror beyond imagining. Once there, a second Trump term would be the end of America as we know it.
6. The best outcome might be something less than a full-blown criminal procedure. Applying Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits those who had “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same [United States], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof” from serving in the government. This humiliation might satisfy the demand for accountability without running the risk of a less than guilty trial verdict.
7. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Trump criminal investigation being conducte4 by Fulton County Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis, is far ahead of whatever investigation the Justice Department is doing. Moreover, Georgia law regarding Trump’s criminal conduct is far more flexible than federal law. In addition, the Georgia case appears to be a slam-dunk since its core evidence is the recording of Trump’s coercive phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State in which he intimidates, threatens and pleads with his listeners to “find” him just enough votes to reverse the election result. If anything, the evidence uncovered by the Jan. 6 Committee makes Georgia’s case even stronger.
8. The so-called “heroes” of the hearings–former White House staffers who testified as to Trump’s efforts to prevent the peaceful transfer of power that for 200-plus years stood as the hallmark of American democracy–are not heroes at all. Instead of keeping quiet about Trump’s criminality for 18 months, true heroes would have come forward at the time of Trump’s criminal conspiracy and gone public, warning us of the threat.
9. Liz Cheney deserves our admiration for her willingness to sacrifice a promising political career in the interests of preserving democracy and the rule of law. She is a true profile in courage, alas one of the only Republican counterweights offsetting the craven cowards who lead her party.
10. Speaking of craven cowards, perhaps the most sublime moment of the hearings was the slow-motion video of Sen. Josh Hawley, he of the raised fist pump intended to rile up the rioters, running for his life, tail between his legs, when the insurrectionists got too close for comfort. Amazing that someone without a spine could run that fast.
11. It is difficult for normal people to understand how sick Trump is psychologically. Even more bizarre is that his pathology is so attractive to his devotees. His behavior shows that he is a sociopath and a malignant narcissist immune to any moral high ground.

 
The January 6 Committee is far from done with its investigation. Stay tuned for additional revelations that further our demand for justice and accountability.
 
Dick Hermann
July 30, 2022

Back in 2010, the Republican Party gave notice that it was willing to nominate congressional candidates who had abandoned any connection to reality and sanity. Its U.S. Senate candidates included:

• Richard Mourdock (Indiana), who (1) said that rape, while horrible, “is something that God intended to happen;” and (2) questioned the constitutionality of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security because they were not expressly mentioned in the Constitution by the framers (Antonin Scalia, the original originalist, must have been smiing);

• Sharron Angle (Nevada), who claimed that (1) Sharia Law (the Koran’s legal prescriptions and proscriptions) was flourishing in Dearborn, Michigan (not true) and Frankford, Texas (a town that did not exist), (2) the 9/11 terrorist hijackers entered the U.S. through the porous US-Canadian border (they did not), and (3) global warming was a fraud (how’s your heat dome doing, Nevadans?).

 
Which brings us to…

• Christine O’Donnell (Delaware), who (1) described AIDS education as “a platform for the homosexual community to recruit adolescents;” and (2) as an alleged lapsed witch, spent the bulk of her campaign denying that she was still dropping toads into boiling cauldrons and flying around on a broom.

 
These were all Tea Party-endorsed candidates about whom the pundits concluded that their tea had been spiked by something stronger. At the time, these displays of lunacy were thought to be anomalies, something like political temporary insanity. Having learned that baying at the moon was not a winning political strategy (the wingnuts all lost to relatively sane Democrats), it was assumed that the GOP had learned its lesson and would regress back to the mean (you can take that expression in any number of ways).
 
Not so fast.
 
The 2022 lineup of Republican congressional wannabes is not merely a replay of 2010, but an orders of magnitude expansion. The roster of Republican crazies goes beyond the more than 100 aspirants whose campaigns are grounded on Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from him through massive fraud, for which not a shred of evidence exists. They represent just one cohort of curious candidates. There are, in addition, a slew of folks both already nominated standard bearers and primary competitors whose views on various topics are, shall we say…out there. They include:

• Derrick Van Orden (Wisconsin), who followed up rioting at the U.S. Capitol (and lying about being there) by (1) going off against a teenage library staffer over a gay-pride display; and (2) saying that Covid-19 contact tracing was no different than “what the KGB used to do in the Soviet Union and the Stasi used to do in East Germany.”

• Herschel Walker (Georgia), who, in attempting to catch up to Trump’s 30,758 documented lies while president, lies about (1) his academic career, (2) his failed business ventures, (3) the number of children he fathered out of wedlock, and (4) expresses stunning ignorance when talking about climate change (e.g., the US and China exchanging air) and (5) is incoherent whenever he dares open his mouth.

• Joe Kent (Washington), who (1) demands that perennial GOP whipping boy, George Soros, be treated like a mafia don and prohibited from organized political activity in the US; (2) claimed COVID-19 is a China-designed “vehicle” to suppress U.S. freedoms; and (3) said the FBI incited protesters to attack the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

• Reba Sherrill (Florida), a QAnon groupie who (1) claimed that Democratic elites harvest the drug, adenochrome, from children, torturing them and drinking their blood; and (2) asserts that Dems are also trafficking children for sex.

 
And this time around, these characters are only the tip of the insanity iceberg. At least 33 additional Republicans running for the House or Senate are QAnon conspiracy theorists. No need to even mention sitting members of Congress running for re-election, knuckle-draggers such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert, Andy Biggs, Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar, whose four siblings call their brother unhinged and have endorsed his opponent.
 
So the logical conclusion that the GOP would never make the same mistake again was delusional. After all, this is the same outfit that nominated the king of crazy for president and may well anoint him for a repeat performance in 2024, assuming he is not behind bars or confined to a padded cell. Despite the lessons of 2010, Republicans 12 years later still think the nation craves craziness.
 
This would all be just goofy fun stuff if it were not such a serious indicator of the depraved depths to which the Republican Party has sunk and how unserious it is about the business of governing.
 
Dick Hermann
July 22, 2022

​As this is being written, President Biden is in Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage to genuflect before Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), a murderous dictator. This marks a low point in his presidency and in American diplomatic practice. Figuratively kissing the Saudi autocrat’s ring and literally fist-bumping his blood-drenched hand is cynical and beneath contempt. When he ran for president in 2020, Biden quite accurately called Saudi Arabia a “pariah.” Now he rushes to Jeddah in a desperate, disgraceful and dishonorable attempt to keep the oil flowing in hopes of lowering gas prices and thus gaining a few votes in the upcoming mid-term elections.
 
By crawling through the sand to pay deferential tribute to MBS, Biden is essentially saying to the crown prince: “All is forgiven–your ordering the murder and dismemberment of U.S. citizen and Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi; your subjugation of women; your imprisoning women whose offense was demonstrating for the right to drive cars; your hundreds of beheadings of political dissidents, and your brutal war in Yemen in which your armies have slaughtered tens of thousands of civilians in what the UN calls the “worst humanitarian crisis in the world”–that’s all water over the dam. We just want to be friends.”
 
Here are a few excerpts from Saudi high school textbooks approved by MBS’s government:

• “Jihad for the sake of God is the pinnacle of Islam,”
• “The Hour will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Muslims will kill them until the Jews will hide behind the rocks and the trees. The rocks and the trees will say:’O Muslim, O servant of God, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him’.”
• “Hitting [your wife] is only permitted when necessary.”

These passages only scratch the surface. Saudi school textbooks are full of this kind of incendiary language. Are these really the kinds of people with whom an American president should break bread?
 
It is hard to accept that Joe Biden may be just another craven politician.
 
I expected more of Biden, much more. Especially once he soundly routed Donald Trump (his most important accomplishment). He came into office as the anti-Trump, presumably determined to right the innumerable wrongs his predecessor perpetrated during his dreadful term. Moreover, I anticipated that, in stark contrast to Trump, Biden would preside over a presidency imbued with integrity and a strong commitment to human rights. Groveling before a fiend like MBS belies that. That is Trumpian behavior.
 
MBS is jumping for joy at the message the photo ops associated with the president’s visit convey now that Biden has elevated him to respected status. Consorting with people like this is the wrong message for the United States to broadcast to the world. Crawling on one’s knees before a homicidal tyrant is not a good look.
 
Dick Hermann
July 16, 2022

​Newly-minted Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson probably wishes she had been sworn into the Witness Protection Program instead of the Supreme Court after observing the carnage the Court visited upon the American people this term. Given her relative youth, as well as the ages of most of her ultra-conservative Court colleagues, she can look forward to a very long career of frustration mired in composing stirring (if unproductive) dissents. Sorry, Justice Jackson. It’s too late for second thoughts.
 
While my heart goes out to her, I feel oh so much worse for the American people. If the just-completed Supreme Court term is any indication, we are in for some very dark times ahead. The Court that for the first time in our history took away a constitutional right, tore down the barrier between church and state, put more guns on the street and closed its eyes to the existential threat of climate change, now wants to go even further down the road to right-wing bliss. Seemingly intent on deconstructing American democracy, the Court just signaled that it will hear a case next term that challenges state courts’ authority over elections. The plaintiffs, red state attorneys general, want to wrest this power away from the courts and give it to state legislatures instead. This way, they would be able to do what Trump attempted after the 2020 election and thwart the will of the people. Any election dispute, no matter how bogus or far-fetched, would be decided by legislators. They could use this power to send sham slates of electors to Congress instead of the ones chosen by voters. The radical right would thus be legally authorized to steal a presidential election.
 
There is nothing that the three remaining rational Supreme Court justices—Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson—could do to prevent their autocracy-inclined colleagues from subverting the electoral process by which we choose presidents. The six hard-right Justices, consisting of two whose legitimacy is questionable given that their seats were stolen by Mitch McConnell, two others credibly accused of sexual harassment and assault, the always angry Samuel Alito, and a newly-neutered Chief Justice, will likely have their way, regardless of the popular will.
 
Only Congress can rein in an out-of-control Supreme Court. That would require a Democratic House majority and either at least 60 Democratic senators or a simple Democratic majority willing to suspend the filibuster in order to limit the Court’s appellate jurisdiction. Article III of the Constitution permits this. The time has come to get it done.
 
Absent congressional action to rein in the Court, the demolition of American democracy will continue.
 
Dick Hermann
July 8, 2022

​The democratic (small “d”) notion of majority rule is now dead in the United States. The Founding Fathers who crafted the Constitution weren’t exactly fond of majority rule, fearing that the “rabble,” if granted universal suffrage, might elect someone hell-bent on autocracy. So instead, they devised the antediluvian practice of intermediating an Electoral College between the voters and the election of a president. Five times this has resulted in the popular vote loser taking office. Moreover, the last time this happened, in 2016, the Law of Unintended Consequences went haywire and gave us someone hell-bent on autocracy.
 
But the Framers didn’t stop there in their quest to protect the minority. They also gave us the U.S. Senate, the most anti-democratic and unrepresentative body in the Western world, where states with more cows than people are accorded up to 60 times the legislative authority of our most heavily populated state.
 
This misbegotten minority rule monstrosity has taken its abuse of the will of the majority several steps beyond common sense, inventing the filibuster, yet a further deviation from democratic principles. The filibuster guarantees that a simple majority can never get anything done. Thus, good legislation designed to improve American lives languishes in a Dante-esque Hell while the minority gloats.
 
Moreover, the U.S. Senate lends itself to malicious manipulation by an ethically challenged leader intent on stealing Supreme Court appointments at every opportunity. Mitch McConnell did this twice: (1) first arguing that a president cannot be allowed to appoint a Justice in an election year, which subjected Merrick Garland to the indignity of floundering in limbo for eight months with nary a hearing on his nomination; (2) next by ramming the eleventh hour Barrett nomination through the Senate a week before a presidential election. McConnell’s hypocrisy is unprecedented and unbounded.
 
Which brings us to the Extreme (formerly Supreme) Court. Six ultra-conservative justices have plunged the Third Branch down a rabbit hole of reaction and reduced the institution to just another political tool exploitable by the minority Republican cult determined to take America back to the Dark Ages and dismantling our democracy (such as it is). In less than a week, the Court (1) for the first time wrested away a constitutional right, (2) put even more guns on the street at a time when mass shootings are at epidemic levels, (3) eviscerated the boundaries between religion and the state, (4) yanked away the hard-won rights granted Oklahoma Native Americans just a few years ago, and (5) indulged in climate change denial worthy of the most brazen Republican deniers. The aggregate consequence of three of these pronouncements, wildly out of sync with popular opinion, is that many more people will die of back-alley abortions, gun violence and polluted air.
 
Blame for this tragic turn of events does not rest solely with a criminal former president, a devious Mitch McConnell, an odious Clarence and Ginni Thomas or any of the other fossils who comprise the pantheon of right-wing villains. It also lies squarely with Democrats. When Barack Obama became president, he dumped Howard Dean as chair of the Democratic National Committee. This was a gargantuan mistake. Dean had focused his time, attention, energy and resources on building up the Democratic Party at the state and local levels. Obama, however, did not care about anything down-ballot, preferring to focus his full attention and donor dollars solely on his own re-election. The consequence was that more than 1,000 state legislative seats flipped from Democrat to Republican during Obama’s eight years in the White House. Those same legislators today control gerrymandering that skews their state legislative and congressional delegations disproportionately in favor of Republicans and the power to enact laws that suppress Democratic votes, put more guns in the hands of dangerous people, advance an extremist “pro-life” agenda (which becomes a pro-death agenda after birth), and take other steps to make America a global outlier and medieval sinkhole.
 
Similarly, while Republicans concentrated tremendous energy and resources in taking control of the courts, Democrats twiddled their thumbs, never taking the threat seriously. Consequently, Republicans now enjoy a 50-year head start when it comes to court packing.
 
Massive street protests against the Extreme Court’s epidemic of horrible recent decisions on abortion, guns, religion, minority rights and the environment are fine if you want to go home feeling good about venting. However, they do nothing to change the equation. The only way to effect change and stop the Republican regression into the Dark Ages is at the ballot box. Dems must use the power of the vote…before Republicans completely take that away too.
 
Dick Hermann
July 2, 2022