After the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump on Saturday almost everyone wanted to know, "Whodunnit?" It wasn't just to ensure that the perpetrator(s) were identified and further risks could be countered but to understand what inspired the attack. Satirist Jon Stewart described it aptly in a monologue this week as "reverse ( Read more... )

Two weeks ago the Republican majority in Congress elected "MAGA Mike" Johnson as Speaker of the House. That sobriquet isn't my invention, by the way. It was used first by fellow Republican (and attention-seeking clown) Matt Gaetz in praising his colleague's strong Trumpist credentials in the hours after he was elected speaker. Since then it's been ( Read more... )

It has now been 3 weeks since Rep. Matt Gaetz made a "Motion to Vacate" Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy from office. With help from a small band of hardliner Republicans, Gaetz's motion passed. With no Speaker, the House was plunged into chaos, unable by its rules to work on any official business except holding votes to elect a new speaker. As ( Read more... )

There's been unexpected movement this week in the Georgia state election subversion trial against Donald Trump and 18 of his cronies. Two of those cronies pleaded guilty this week. Sidney Powell, the Trump lawyer who propagated and litigated some of his campaign's wilder claims about massive vote fraud leading up to the January 6 mob attack on the ( Read more... )

After House Republicans ousted Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House last week Tuesday, Congress has been plunged into chaos. By its own rules the House of Representatives is literally not able to act on anything without a Speaker. (There is an Interim Speaker, but the only one thing that person is allowed to do is preside over the process of ( Read more... )

On Monday this week (Aug 14) a grand jury in Georgia handed up an indictment against Donald Trump and 18 co-conspirators on state charges stemming from their attempt to fraudulently overturn the 2020 election. The crimes charged in the document include false statements to statewide officials, false statements to the state legislature, harassment of ( Read more... )

After a federal grand jury on Tuesday afternoon indicted Donald Trump with 4 charges related to subverting the results of 2020 election to remain in power illegally, Trump, one of his lawyers, and his surrogates in politics and conservative media have all predictably resorted to a Free Speech defense. As a matter of the First Amendment, they tell ( Read more... )

Yesterday a federal grand jury indicted former president Donald Trump for illegal efforts to remain in power after losing the 2020 election. In "The Big Lie", as it came to be known, Trump spent months making baseless claims of election fraud which helped incite the mob that attacked the US Capitol building on January 6 to try to stop lawful ( Read more... )

Today Fox News settled a lawsuit from Dominion Voting Systems at the last moment before it went to trial. With jury selection complete, Fox asked for a brief delay and, in a last-ditch, 3-hour negotiation, settled with Dominion for $787 million dollars and change over false claims it aired that Dominion's voting machines rigged the 2020 election ( Read more... )

Representative George Santos, elected to Congress in November after lying about... basically everything... in his qualifications for office, has chosen to step down from the two committees Republican Speaker Kevin McCarthy had assigned him to ( Read more... )