Last Call For Hearing Aides For America, Con't

The Bigger Than Watergate crimes keep being bigger than Watergate.

A government watchdog accused the U.S. Secret Service of erasing texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, after his office requested them as part of an inquiry into the U.S. Capitol attack, according to a letter sent to lawmakers this week.

Joseph V. Cuffari, head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, wrote to the leaders of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees indicating that the text messages have vanished and that efforts to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack were being hindered.

“The Department notified us that many U.S. Secret Service (USSS) text messages, from January 5 and 6, 2021 were erased as part of a device-replacement program,” he wrote in a letter dated Wednesday and obtained by The Washington Post. The letter was earlier reported on by CNN.

Cuffari emphasized that the erasures came “after” the Office of Inspector General requested copies of the text messages for its own investigation, and signaled that they were part of a pattern of DHS resistance to his inquiries. Staff members are required by law to surrender records so that he can audit the sprawling national security agency, but he said they have “repeatedly” refused to provide them until an attorney reviews them.

“This review led to weeks-long delays in OIG obtaining records and created confusion over whether all records had been produced,” he wrote, and offered to brief the House and Senate committees on the “access issues.”

The Secret Service’s text messages could provide insight into the agency’s actions on the day of the insurrection and possibly those of former president Donald Trump. A former White House official last month told the House select committee investigating the assault on the Capitol that Trump knew his supporters were armed, wanted to lead the mob to the Capitol and physically assailed the senior Secret Service agent who told him he could not.

 

So, three things:

The January 6th Committee has these texts. The OIG for Homeland Security mentions that all the cover-up did was delay his office getting the texts. Whatever incriminating evidence those texts reveal, the January 6th Committee knows about. My guess is that they involve former VP Mike Pence's detail and the plans that day to remove him from the Capitol to "protect" him, meaning he couldn't certify the electoral ballots, throwing the country into chaos.

Number two, if you wanted to know why Trump-appointed Secret Service director James Murray announced his retirement last week, it's because he knew this was coming. There's no way Murray would have survived this story, Biden would have fired him over the weekend. He was told this was coming and given a choice to retire or get canned.

Three, the Service who participated in this coup need to be expelled from the agency. Murray fell on his sword, but the USSS is clearly still rife with Trumpists. All of them need to go, and then face charges of obstructing justice in the investigation.

This all make's next week's prime time hearing more important. I'm going to bet we hear testimony.involving the plot to take Pence.

We'll see.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Indiana, Too

Less than 24 hours after a Columbus, Ohio man was arrested for the rape of a ten-year-old girl who had to go to Indiana to get an abortion, a story the right said was a hoax up until yesterday's arrest, mind you, the same right-wing noise machine is now going after the Indiana doctor who performed the abortion, with the intent of prosecution or vigilante, George Tiller-style execution.

Indiana’s Republican attorney general said on Wednesday that his office planned to investigate the Indiana doctor who helped a 10-year-old rape victim who crossed state lines to have an abortion.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Indianapolis, has told multiple outlets that she provided care to the 10-year-old after a child abuse doctor in Ohio contacted her. The child was six weeks and three days into the pregnancy, Bernard said. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, a wave of state-level abortion restrictions took effect, including in Ohio, a state that bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest.

“We’re gathering the evidence as we speak, and we’re going to fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure if she failed to report. And in Indiana it’s a crime … to intentionally not report,” state Attorney General Todd Rokita said on Fox News on Wednesday night. “This is a child, and there’s a strong public interest in understanding if someone under the age of 16 or under the age of 18 or really any woman is having abortion in our state. And then if a child is being sexually abused, of course parents need to know. Authorities need to know. Public policy experts need to know.”

Abortion in Indiana is banned after 22 weeks of pregnancy, with some exceptions for medical emergencies. There are strict reporting requirements in both Ohio and Indiana for abortions and rape allegations.

 

So, problem number one, Ohio has banned all abortions after six weeks. Indiana hasn't had time to institute a similar law yet, but they will.

Two, Indiana AG Todd Rokita is literally saying that the state has a public interest in every abortion performed in the state. 

Three, Rokita is now going to find a way to put Dr. Barnard in jail.

Four, FOX News all but called on people to take Dr. Bernard out if she's not jailed.

This is how Dr. George Tiller was killed in Kansas more than a decade ago, gunned down in his church congregation while attending services, after Bill O'Reilly went after him for performing abortions. Naming and shaming abortion providing doctors in 2022 is a call for assassination. We know because it's happened before.

It's happening now.

The Kids Are Not Alright, Con't

 Voters under 30 want politicians over 70 gone, all of them, in both parties.

Alexandra Chadwick went to the polls in 2020 with the singular goal of ousting Donald J. Trump. A 22-year-old first time voter, she saw Joseph R. Biden Jr. as more of a safeguard than an inspiring political figure, someone who could stave off threats to abortion access, gun control and climate policy.

Two years later, as the Supreme Court has eroded federal protections on all three, Ms. Chadwick now sees President Biden and other Democratic leaders as lacking both the imagination and willpower to fight back. She points to a generational gap — one she once overlooked but now seems cavernous.

“How are you going to accurately lead your country if your mind is still stuck 50, 60 or 70 years ago?” Ms. Chadwick, a customer service representative in Rialto, Calif., said of the many septuagenarian leaders at the helm of her party. “It’s not the same, and people aren’t the same, and your old ideas aren’t going to work as well anymore.”

While voters across the spectrum express rising doubts about the country’s political leadership, few groups are as united in their discontent as the young.

A survey from The New York Times and Siena College found that just 1 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds strongly approve of the way Mr. Biden is handling his job. And 94 percent of Democrats under 30 said they wanted another candidate to run two years from now. Of all age groups, young voters were most likely to say they wouldn’t vote for either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump in a hypothetical 2024 rematch.

The numbers are a clear warning for Democrats as they struggle to ward off a drubbing in the November midterm elections. Young people, long among the least reliable part of the party’s coalition, marched for gun control, rallied against Mr. Trump and helped fuel a Democratic wave in the 2018 midterm elections. They still side with Democrats on issues that are only rising in prominence.

But four years on, many feel disengaged and deflated, with only 32 percent saying they are “almost certain” to vote in November, according to the poll. Nearly half said they did not think their vote made a difference.

Interviews with these young voters reveal generational tensions driving their frustration. As they have come of age facing racial strife, political conflict, high inflation and a pandemic, they have looked for help from politicians who are more than three times their age.

Those older leaders often talk about upholding institutions and restoring norms, while young voters say they are more interested in results. Many expressed a desire for more sweeping changes like a viable third party and a new crop of younger leaders. They’re eager for innovative action on the problems they stand to inherit, they said, rather than returning to what worked in the past.

“Each member of Congress, every single one of them, has, I’m sure, lived through fairly traumatic times in their lives and also chaos in the country,” said John Della Volpe, who studies young people’s opinions as the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. “But every member of Congress has also seen America at its best. And that is when we’ve all come together. That is something that Gen Z has not had.”

 

When my generation said the same thing 30 years ago, we got Ross Perot. He got 19% of the vote in 1992, and Bill Clinton won with 43% of the vote for Poppy Bush's 37.5%. Famously, none of the candidates managed to get 50%+ in any of the 50 states.

The youngest candidate in touch with voters my age at the time? Clinton, who was 46 back then and appeared on the Arsenio Hall Show with his saxophone.

But I'm looking at this poll and I still see that folks 18-29 want major change, and half of them say there's no reason to vote.

So guess what? If you vote, you may not get what you want, but you'll make a difference. You don't vote, the people who do decide your fate. My answer to these kids is this: you know who does vote and who does get what they want?

People over 70.

Still hasn't occurred to the kids yet. It might after this midterm, I dunno.

We'll see.