DC Unrest Megathread

[Benjamin Frank]

Forgive me because I'm sure this has been discussed already, but I'm not going to go through 167 pages.

I've been reading the book The American Century: A History of the United States since the 1890s by Walter LaFeber, Richard Polenberg and Nancy Woloch, 3rd edition, 1986.  This is a very lively and opinionated textbook, btw, it's not a stodgy textbook at all.

I happened to read this today (pages 398 and 399)

I don't know if anybody wants to discuss this further:

"In 1957 the (Supreme) Court dealt a crippling blow to the Smith Act in Yates vs U.S.  John Marshall Harlan, another Eisenhower appointee, ruled for the majority that the Smith Act's injunctions against conspiring to advocate the forcible overthrow of the government (sedition) applied to the advocacy of concrete actions but not abstract principles. If one did not call for direct revolutionary acts, one could lawfully urge the overthrow of the government. The Yates decision rendered further prosecutions under the Smith Act all but impossible."

I think we're about to find out!

[Benjamin Frank]

https://twitter.com/forecasterenten/status/1349124536868999169

Yes break the echo chamber and contest the space and it will keep dropping.

Yes, and all it took was an act of incitement if not outright sedition by the President in order to do it. 

[Benjamin Frank]

It is looking increasingly like this was an attempted insurrection/sedition that at least some in the White House and Congress were aware of and assisted.

The evidence for this:
1.The FBI person saying something like "this is worse than you think."
2.Donald Trump refusing to call for National Guard backup for something like two hours.

If the people behind this attempted insurrection/sedition are anything like the Montana Freemen of 20 years ago, they have some weird legal ideas.  I suspect the their legal 'logic' was to prevent Congress from confirming the Electoral College vote in the belief that if the vote was not confirmed, Donald Trump would remain President.

Whether the attempt was to kill the people who would conduct this confirmation vote (Mike Pence and the Congressional Democrats) or to take hostages to prevent it from happening, or if different groups had different ideas, obviously I don't know.  But, it is looking more and more like this was a genuine attempted coup with at least some assistance from those in power.

[Benjamin Frank]

When Steve Doocy is the voice of reason...

https://twitter.com/revrrlewis/status/1349328568933896192

What is attacking a federal courthouse ?
May not be democracy but very much the institutions

1.Mayor Ted Wheeler did attempt to prevent the violence without escalating the situation.

2.I'm not aware of any prominent Democrats who incited these riots.  I'm not even aware of any Democrats at all who incited the Portland riots.

Mindless false equivalence.