I don't care if Ernst and Collins met with Hegseth's accuser. I DO care how they vote for Hegseth. If they roll over, knowing what we all know, then they have no self-respect nor respect for the office or women in general. They will come up for re-election at some point. I hope they both do the right thing. Them as well as other Republican Senators. We know the truth. Hegseth is not suited for the job, does not have the experience. The Secretary of Defense is an important job for the national security of our nation. Giving it to someone so unqualified is egregious and everyone knows it.
Watching MSNBC now and have been listening and reading. It appears that Rs are going to roll over and play dead and vote for a completely unqualified "man" to take over the DOD. Can we impeach the entire R Senate NOW? Absolutely none of them have the brains or the balls to determine the path the country will take for the next 4 years if they confirm Hegseth.
1) I know this is the smallest of points, but reread what Trump posted about the Smith report: “he ends up writing yet another “Report” based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was”. He’s saying that the report was based on “illegally destroyed and deleted information” that “showed how totally innocent I was”. But if the “destroyed” evidence showed how “innocent” Trump was and the report was based on that evidence, shouldn’t the report have said that Trump was innocent? If it didn’t, then, according to Trump, it couldn’t have been based on the “destroyed” evidence.
I guess this is just another case, where the Trumplicants know what Trump meant and don’t care that what he actually said contradicts that.
2) Perhaps Biden spoke too harshly when he characterized his son’s prosecution as a “miscarriage of justice” since that term is usually reserved for those wrongfully convicted. But unless what Kim Wehle and others have said is way off the mark, Biden’s characterization has the ring of truth. For it’s hard to believe that Hunter Biden would have been prosecuted if his last name wasn’t Biden.
"no other president has maliciously smeared the Department of Justice for selfish personal reasons?"—it’s hard to argue with as a point of principle.
Aside from the fact it was never a point argued with principle, trump introduced this as a political tactic and we are worse off... sad that Biden then continued the trend, however much the scale differs it's not a positive outcome....
No thanks from here for Weiss' public service. After his lengthy investigation, he comes up with crap indictments based on obscure legal provisions. The idea that prosecutions (and court opinions) are blind to the status of the person investigated is in ruins right now.
"Something in the air is poisoning us against one another."
Yeah, I have no idea what! Not a clue! What could possibly be poisoning our discourse? Where do people get harmful ideas like "let's burn California to the ground and it will be a good thing"? Where? Who could possibly be the culprit? Can we blame women or minorities yet?
Flames on the side of my face these days ....
How are we supposed to solve problems when we won't admit what they are?
In 2016, we were a nation with some cynicism about the direction our country was headed and the competence of our leaders. Then came Trump. Now, in 2025, many still have their doubts about the capabilities of Americas leaders, but we also feature 100 million plus citizens who want the dishonest, indecent, incompetent, degenerate, buffoon to be their leader and they also want a legion of similarly ethically challenged people to his top lieutenants. Lack of character is no longer a question mark, it seals the deal.
The moral abyss is now our destination, and we are well on our way.
RE: Ernst's and Collins' refusal to meet with Hegseth's accuser
No surprise or mystery here. Fully self-aware that they as women themselves are only too willing to be a tool in service to a known serial sexual abuser and adjudicated rapist, neither have the metaphorical balls to stand face to face with another abuser's victim and look her in the eye. Which in the case of Collins can perhaps be partially attributed to disconnected-from-the-real-world ignorance and stupidity.
But, as a victim of sexual assault herself, in Ernst's case it's hard for me not to see it as no more than plain cowardice in the face of having to ultimately see *herself* in the face of another victim of sexual assault and then having to deny the reality of it in order to serve the interests of the misogynistic lout that's going to screw us all.
I'd say shame on both of these women. But it's obvious that neither of them has any.
Hunter Biden: Paid his back taxes with interest and fines, bought a gun and never even fired it. Lied about a drug problem and never would have been prosecuted to the extent he was if he wasn't the son of the President.
Donald Trump: Decided he was a god that could do whatever he wanted, SCOTUS said: Yeah.
"Getting back to a place of social stability first requires us to survive Trump’s triumphant return. But that won’t be enough. Something in the air is poisoning us against one another; if we can’t figure out how to fix it, what comes next could be even worse."
Mr. Egger, it is not "Something in the air," it is lies from Trump, Republicans, MAGA (and, sadly, corporate and billionaire-owned) media and certain courts who are poisoning our discourse. Speaker Mike Johnson, who touts his Christian faith as his guiding principle repeated lies blaming the LA area fires on California Democrats, is discussing tying disaster relief to raising the debt ceiling and forcing Democratic-run states to adopt Republican policies - using tragedy and suffering as political leverage. I must have missed Sunday school during that Bible lesson.
Leaving aside the nakedly unconstitutional SCOTUS immunity decision, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, Justice Neil Gorsuch lied that Kennedy's prayers were private so blatantly that Justice Sonya Sotomayor included a photo in her dissent showing Kennedy surrounded by dozens of players from both teams and fans while he conducted his "private" prayers. Don't believe your lying eyes. In Sackett v. EPA, noted liberal squish Justice Brett Kavanaugh called out his Republican-appointed colleagues for literally changing the meaning of the word "adjacent" to mean "adjoining," straight out the Newspeak dictionary, but don't take my word for it: "Put simply, the Court’s atextual test—rewriting “adjacent” to mean “adjoining”—will produce real-world consequences for the waters of the United States and will generate regulatory uncertainty. I would stick to the text." (p. 14 of Kavanaugh's "concurrence" - the ruling for the Sacketts was unanimous but the majority overreach was not). Saying self-appointed textualists' ruling is "atextual" is the biggest bench slap you can apply. How many people have either never heard of these lies from the highest court in the land, or simply forgotten them in the torrent of lies and scandals? Too many.
I know it is exhausting and demoralizing to have to constantly refute the firehose of lies coming from Trump and his minions, but that is the task before us. What we cannot do is allow them and the legacy media to normalize and "both sides" us into submission. Already we see the campaign lies falling apart. Prices won't come down, the war in Ukraine won't end on day one (his special envoy said 100 days and Trump recently said 6 months), and Elon admits he can't find $2 trillion in cuts. Trump insists that no one will feel any of the proposed cuts even though they target Obamacare, Medicaid, food stamps and the Inflation Reduction Act green energy programs. Right, and the Chinese and Canadians will pay the tariffs...
How do we fix it? By taking off the gloves. Call lies lies, every time. Oppose all of their bad nominees and policies. Remind Americans of their broken promises. Don't help or save them when they are mired in internal battles. Expose the pain inflicted by their policies and failures. Show Trump's declining mental state. When you feel sick and tired of it all, think of Alexei Navalny or the Ukrainians in trenches, because, if they get their way, that's where we'll be.
Since the topic is whining, and since the issues are ethics, trust and how in the heck we got to where we are -- concluding that we are all on our own -- it seems appropriate to remind the geezers here of Blood Simple's opening monologue. Here the futility of complaint is set in the contrast between the theory of cooperation under socialism and the downright screw you prevailing in Texas. Note the nod to the President, which I'd long forgotten.
Please repeat this: Trump can and should be impeached and removed from office based on the contents of the Smith Report. Do not acquiesce to the notion that winning the election somehow immunizes him. Congress and the Senate are still on the hook for responding to Smith’s work with action.
Andrew, in my 70+ years of life, I have had many “leaders” who have shaped my view of living, of the world: girl/boy scout leaders, sport coaches, parish priests, teachers/professors, local police, bosses and eventually city, state and federal leaders. Although within those early ranks, I can’t speak of their honesty, I still learned from them and it shaped my beliefs for life. But in today’s world, I have a real fear of what is to come. Obviously we have to live with the next four (hopefully not more) years somehow. But in that time, I hope for more honest leaders to come forth, talk and listen to the people. I know they exist, but we will need them to help us heal and go forward. Thank you for your truths.
There are many people with a history of insisting on the importance of good character in any leadership role who turned around and said that character is irrelevant to the highest office in the land, or they redefined it in an effort to fit an amoral sociopath into their new definition.
Part of their definition is "promotes policies we like." But Trump apologists have also - at least implicitly - turned his indifference to rules and ethics into a political virtue, while castigating everyone who has the temerity to point out that their political hero lacks a conscience.
The valorization of moral impunity as some kind of patriotic courage will have bad cultural consequences for a long time - but that realty is denied by people who claim to care deeply about the moral tone of the culture.
These developments clearly demonstrate that we will never return to civility and normality in governance until the left threatens these same measures against the right. The next time the left is in power, they must run the same playbook. This will induce panic on the right and the immediate need for protections "from the government" for private entities and federal career employees. If the left does not have the fortitude to play the game that they have been drawn into, then the political corruption will only escalate to the detriment of us all.
susPool - I cannot agree that a return to 'civility and normality' will never be called for, the question is when and under what circumstances.
As long as the US is run more or less as a democratic republic, there will be changes of party and a regular churn of policies, so there will always be disagreements. Acting like knuckleheads just because our opponents have done so is more likely to cause politics to degenerate into an eternal mud-wrestling contest (i.e. more so than it has already).
After and few more years of that, people will forget there was ever such a thing as substantive disagreement, policy debate, or truly bipartisan legislating; constant name-calling and political grandstanding might induce even the best-intentioned among us to despair of politics and decide to get rid of the whole, costly, inefficient system of elections and checks & balances, and just anoint the most likely strongman as King or Fuhrer or whathaveyou.
No thanks. I'd prefer to see our Representatives fight each other with words, and fight clean and hard. Let's steer clear of Nixonian Dirty Tricks and leave that sort of bad behavior to Trump and his minions. And I do agree with a previous commenter who urged impeaching Trump -- on Jan 21 if possible.
Trump intends to insure there will never be another election that could possibly remove his side from power. President Vance and his Kitchen Cabinet are likely to be no better.
That is the natural consequence of this particular syllogism. And people simply dont believe it yet.
Ultimately, the supreme courts ruling has made every election from now on about which dictator you prefer. Eventually the GOP will do something catastrophic (or external factors will intervene) and the left will get a go. They need to recognize the name of the game now. The paradigm has shifted.
Collins proves to be spineless again. Ernst is a particularly sad case. Shame on them both. As a woman, I expect women in power to at least try to do the right thing for women. We have less voice at the top and need them. These two just shrugged and gave up. They’d rather be cowards and senators than brave, ethical and potentially retired. Nice priorities you have there.
I don't care if Ernst and Collins met with Hegseth's accuser. I DO care how they vote for Hegseth. If they roll over, knowing what we all know, then they have no self-respect nor respect for the office or women in general. They will come up for re-election at some point. I hope they both do the right thing. Them as well as other Republican Senators. We know the truth. Hegseth is not suited for the job, does not have the experience. The Secretary of Defense is an important job for the national security of our nation. Giving it to someone so unqualified is egregious and everyone knows it.
Watching MSNBC now and have been listening and reading. It appears that Rs are going to roll over and play dead and vote for a completely unqualified "man" to take over the DOD. Can we impeach the entire R Senate NOW? Absolutely none of them have the brains or the balls to determine the path the country will take for the next 4 years if they confirm Hegseth.
A few comments...
1) I know this is the smallest of points, but reread what Trump posted about the Smith report: “he ends up writing yet another “Report” based on information that the Unselect Committee of Political Hacks and Thugs ILLEGALLY DESTROYED AND DELETED, because it showed how totally innocent I was”. He’s saying that the report was based on “illegally destroyed and deleted information” that “showed how totally innocent I was”. But if the “destroyed” evidence showed how “innocent” Trump was and the report was based on that evidence, shouldn’t the report have said that Trump was innocent? If it didn’t, then, according to Trump, it couldn’t have been based on the “destroyed” evidence.
I guess this is just another case, where the Trumplicants know what Trump meant and don’t care that what he actually said contradicts that.
2) Perhaps Biden spoke too harshly when he characterized his son’s prosecution as a “miscarriage of justice” since that term is usually reserved for those wrongfully convicted. But unless what Kim Wehle and others have said is way off the mark, Biden’s characterization has the ring of truth. For it’s hard to believe that Hunter Biden would have been prosecuted if his last name wasn’t Biden.
"no other president has maliciously smeared the Department of Justice for selfish personal reasons?"—it’s hard to argue with as a point of principle.
Aside from the fact it was never a point argued with principle, trump introduced this as a political tactic and we are worse off... sad that Biden then continued the trend, however much the scale differs it's not a positive outcome....
No thanks from here for Weiss' public service. After his lengthy investigation, he comes up with crap indictments based on obscure legal provisions. The idea that prosecutions (and court opinions) are blind to the status of the person investigated is in ruins right now.
Good quote from Yeats!
"Something in the air is poisoning us against one another."
Yeah, I have no idea what! Not a clue! What could possibly be poisoning our discourse? Where do people get harmful ideas like "let's burn California to the ground and it will be a good thing"? Where? Who could possibly be the culprit? Can we blame women or minorities yet?
Flames on the side of my face these days ....
How are we supposed to solve problems when we won't admit what they are?
In 2016, we were a nation with some cynicism about the direction our country was headed and the competence of our leaders. Then came Trump. Now, in 2025, many still have their doubts about the capabilities of Americas leaders, but we also feature 100 million plus citizens who want the dishonest, indecent, incompetent, degenerate, buffoon to be their leader and they also want a legion of similarly ethically challenged people to his top lieutenants. Lack of character is no longer a question mark, it seals the deal.
The moral abyss is now our destination, and we are well on our way.
RE: Ernst's and Collins' refusal to meet with Hegseth's accuser
No surprise or mystery here. Fully self-aware that they as women themselves are only too willing to be a tool in service to a known serial sexual abuser and adjudicated rapist, neither have the metaphorical balls to stand face to face with another abuser's victim and look her in the eye. Which in the case of Collins can perhaps be partially attributed to disconnected-from-the-real-world ignorance and stupidity.
But, as a victim of sexual assault herself, in Ernst's case it's hard for me not to see it as no more than plain cowardice in the face of having to ultimately see *herself* in the face of another victim of sexual assault and then having to deny the reality of it in order to serve the interests of the misogynistic lout that's going to screw us all.
I'd say shame on both of these women. But it's obvious that neither of them has any.
Hunter Biden: Paid his back taxes with interest and fines, bought a gun and never even fired it. Lied about a drug problem and never would have been prosecuted to the extent he was if he wasn't the son of the President.
Donald Trump: Decided he was a god that could do whatever he wanted, SCOTUS said: Yeah.
Talk about two tier justice.
"Getting back to a place of social stability first requires us to survive Trump’s triumphant return. But that won’t be enough. Something in the air is poisoning us against one another; if we can’t figure out how to fix it, what comes next could be even worse."
Mr. Egger, it is not "Something in the air," it is lies from Trump, Republicans, MAGA (and, sadly, corporate and billionaire-owned) media and certain courts who are poisoning our discourse. Speaker Mike Johnson, who touts his Christian faith as his guiding principle repeated lies blaming the LA area fires on California Democrats, is discussing tying disaster relief to raising the debt ceiling and forcing Democratic-run states to adopt Republican policies - using tragedy and suffering as political leverage. I must have missed Sunday school during that Bible lesson.
Leaving aside the nakedly unconstitutional SCOTUS immunity decision, in Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, Justice Neil Gorsuch lied that Kennedy's prayers were private so blatantly that Justice Sonya Sotomayor included a photo in her dissent showing Kennedy surrounded by dozens of players from both teams and fans while he conducted his "private" prayers. Don't believe your lying eyes. In Sackett v. EPA, noted liberal squish Justice Brett Kavanaugh called out his Republican-appointed colleagues for literally changing the meaning of the word "adjacent" to mean "adjoining," straight out the Newspeak dictionary, but don't take my word for it: "Put simply, the Court’s atextual test—rewriting “adjacent” to mean “adjoining”—will produce real-world consequences for the waters of the United States and will generate regulatory uncertainty. I would stick to the text." (p. 14 of Kavanaugh's "concurrence" - the ruling for the Sacketts was unanimous but the majority overreach was not). Saying self-appointed textualists' ruling is "atextual" is the biggest bench slap you can apply. How many people have either never heard of these lies from the highest court in the land, or simply forgotten them in the torrent of lies and scandals? Too many.
I know it is exhausting and demoralizing to have to constantly refute the firehose of lies coming from Trump and his minions, but that is the task before us. What we cannot do is allow them and the legacy media to normalize and "both sides" us into submission. Already we see the campaign lies falling apart. Prices won't come down, the war in Ukraine won't end on day one (his special envoy said 100 days and Trump recently said 6 months), and Elon admits he can't find $2 trillion in cuts. Trump insists that no one will feel any of the proposed cuts even though they target Obamacare, Medicaid, food stamps and the Inflation Reduction Act green energy programs. Right, and the Chinese and Canadians will pay the tariffs...
How do we fix it? By taking off the gloves. Call lies lies, every time. Oppose all of their bad nominees and policies. Remind Americans of their broken promises. Don't help or save them when they are mired in internal battles. Expose the pain inflicted by their policies and failures. Show Trump's declining mental state. When you feel sick and tired of it all, think of Alexei Navalny or the Ukrainians in trenches, because, if they get their way, that's where we'll be.
Bill Kristol: Your literary allusions are alway apposite and illuminating - none more so than Yeats today. Keep 'em coming.
Since the topic is whining, and since the issues are ethics, trust and how in the heck we got to where we are -- concluding that we are all on our own -- it seems appropriate to remind the geezers here of Blood Simple's opening monologue. Here the futility of complaint is set in the contrast between the theory of cooperation under socialism and the downright screw you prevailing in Texas. Note the nod to the President, which I'd long forgotten.
The world is full of complainers.
But the fact is, nothing comes with
a guarantee. I don't care if you're
the Pope of Rome, President of the
United States, or even Man of the
Year--something can always go wrong.
And go ahead, complain, tell your
problems to your neighbor, ask for
help--watch him fly. Now in Russia,
they got it mapped out so that
everyone pulls for everyone else--
that's the theory, anyway. But what
I know about is Texas...
And down here... you're on your own.
Ah, the Coen brothers. Their work was always greater than the sum of the parts. Hope they get back together now and then.
Please repeat this: Trump can and should be impeached and removed from office based on the contents of the Smith Report. Do not acquiesce to the notion that winning the election somehow immunizes him. Congress and the Senate are still on the hook for responding to Smith’s work with action.
The word you seek in your lede is "gantlet," not "gauntlet."
YAY - somebody else noticed it!
The dictionary says that gantlet is just an alternative spelling of gauntlet, which is the word that is defined.
Andrew, in my 70+ years of life, I have had many “leaders” who have shaped my view of living, of the world: girl/boy scout leaders, sport coaches, parish priests, teachers/professors, local police, bosses and eventually city, state and federal leaders. Although within those early ranks, I can’t speak of their honesty, I still learned from them and it shaped my beliefs for life. But in today’s world, I have a real fear of what is to come. Obviously we have to live with the next four (hopefully not more) years somehow. But in that time, I hope for more honest leaders to come forth, talk and listen to the people. I know they exist, but we will need them to help us heal and go forward. Thank you for your truths.
There are many people with a history of insisting on the importance of good character in any leadership role who turned around and said that character is irrelevant to the highest office in the land, or they redefined it in an effort to fit an amoral sociopath into their new definition.
Part of their definition is "promotes policies we like." But Trump apologists have also - at least implicitly - turned his indifference to rules and ethics into a political virtue, while castigating everyone who has the temerity to point out that their political hero lacks a conscience.
The valorization of moral impunity as some kind of patriotic courage will have bad cultural consequences for a long time - but that realty is denied by people who claim to care deeply about the moral tone of the culture.
I love your prose and wish I'd come up with your precis of what ails our current political system.
(Also, btw, there's a typo in your final phrase; I am sure "reality" is what you meant)
These developments clearly demonstrate that we will never return to civility and normality in governance until the left threatens these same measures against the right. The next time the left is in power, they must run the same playbook. This will induce panic on the right and the immediate need for protections "from the government" for private entities and federal career employees. If the left does not have the fortitude to play the game that they have been drawn into, then the political corruption will only escalate to the detriment of us all.
susPool - I cannot agree that a return to 'civility and normality' will never be called for, the question is when and under what circumstances.
As long as the US is run more or less as a democratic republic, there will be changes of party and a regular churn of policies, so there will always be disagreements. Acting like knuckleheads just because our opponents have done so is more likely to cause politics to degenerate into an eternal mud-wrestling contest (i.e. more so than it has already).
After and few more years of that, people will forget there was ever such a thing as substantive disagreement, policy debate, or truly bipartisan legislating; constant name-calling and political grandstanding might induce even the best-intentioned among us to despair of politics and decide to get rid of the whole, costly, inefficient system of elections and checks & balances, and just anoint the most likely strongman as King or Fuhrer or whathaveyou.
No thanks. I'd prefer to see our Representatives fight each other with words, and fight clean and hard. Let's steer clear of Nixonian Dirty Tricks and leave that sort of bad behavior to Trump and his minions. And I do agree with a previous commenter who urged impeaching Trump -- on Jan 21 if possible.
Trump intends to insure there will never be another election that could possibly remove his side from power. President Vance and his Kitchen Cabinet are likely to be no better.
That is the natural consequence of this particular syllogism. And people simply dont believe it yet.
Ultimately, the supreme courts ruling has made every election from now on about which dictator you prefer. Eventually the GOP will do something catastrophic (or external factors will intervene) and the left will get a go. They need to recognize the name of the game now. The paradigm has shifted.
Collins proves to be spineless again. Ernst is a particularly sad case. Shame on them both. As a woman, I expect women in power to at least try to do the right thing for women. We have less voice at the top and need them. These two just shrugged and gave up. They’d rather be cowards and senators than brave, ethical and potentially retired. Nice priorities you have there.