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A right-leaning disgruntled Republican comments on the news of the day and any other thing he damn-well pleases.
Mick Mulvaney |
Almost all of the witnesses appearing before the committee are Republicans. Many showed unbelievable courage in standing up to the President and even did the right thing when their life was threatened. Many Republicans who had even been part of his inner circle could not go along with the Trump delusion that the election was stolen and resigned rather than take part in a coup attempt.
Mick Mulvaney who was a former South Carolina Republican congressman held the job of acting chief of staff to President Trump for more than a year. Prior to that, he had served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Following the January 6th attack on the US Capitol designed to stop Congress from counting the electoral votes, Mulvane resigned. He is quoted as saying, “I called [Secretary of State] Mike Pompeo last night to let him know I was resigning." “I can’t do it. I can’t stay,” he said.
Since then Mick Mulvaney has not said much until this week when he spoke out and said Republicans need to be tuning into the hearings in the wake of the testimony from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
This is a tweet he posted:
A stunning 2 hours:
1)Trump knew the protesters had guns
2)He assaulted his own security team
3)There may be a line from ProudBoys to the WH
4)Top aides asked for pardons
"The significance of last week's Congressional Jan. 6 committee hearings cannot be overstated," he said in an article for the Charlotte Observer. He also said his former boss was damaged goods and he would not vote for him again.
Despite no credible evidence of a stolen election and a mountain of evidence that Trump tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power and attempted to illegally hold on to the presidency, many Republicans remain true believers in Trump's version of reality. Like a religious belief that cannot be dissuaded by logic, many Trumpinistas keep the faith.
There are some people who still believe the moon landing was faked. Some people believe JFK, Marilyn Monrow, and Elvis Presley are together and alive and well in some secret paradise. I am sure some people still believe the earth is flat. Many true believers in Trump world will never change their mind. Mulvaney will simply be dismissed as another "RINO," or part of "the deep state," or maybe he will be dismissed as a "Marxist Fascist."
Others, however, may listen to people like Mick Mulvaney and open their minds to the evidence. I hope so.
For more on Mick Mulvaney's comments regarding the Jan. 6 Committee hearings see this, this, and this.
by Rod Williams, July 8, 2022- Republican Trumpinista nut-job Congressman Marjorie Taylor Greene just keeps on giving. When you think surely she can not get nuttier, she does. On Wednesday she claimed the July 4 mass shooting in a Chicago suburb was part of a liberal plot to push more gun control and suggested gay-rights activists played a role in the scheme.Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Marjorie Taylor Greene was one of just eight House lawmakers to vote against seizing assets from Russian oligarchs. Marjorie Taylor Greene was and maybe still is a Q-anon supporter. She was a regular contributor to a conspiracy website. She has supported almost every right-wing conspiracy theory circulating.
Recently she said Bill Gates wants you to eat fake meat grown in a "peach tree dish." She touts the Pizzagate theory, the Clinton Kill-list, mass shootings as a false flag theory, and 9-11 as an inside job theory. She has advocated executing Democrat politicians. She has equated the Democrat Party with Nazies. She has likened NATO to Nazies. She continues to claim Trump won the election in a landslide and that the election was stolen. Her Covid-19 theory is that Dr. Fauci is criminally liable for helping create the virus as a bio-weapon. She says 2018 California wildfires were ignited by some kind of “space laser." She has also spoken to a White nationalist group that praised Hitler and Putin.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is an in-demand speaker at many Republican fundraiser events, which tells you a lot about the state of the modern Republican Party. In 2021 was the honored guest speaker at Wilson County Republican Party Trump Day Dinner.
By the way, if you criticize Marjorie Taylor Greene, you might be a RINO.
By Jon Styf | The Center Square, Jul 4, 2022 - In 2021, law enforcement in Tennessee seized $16 million worth of cash and $15.8 million was forfeited in court. But according to annual reports from Tennessee's Department of Safety and Homeland Security, departments used just $195,000 of those funds.
Each year since Tennessee law began requiring those disclosures in 2018, similar numbers have appeared.
In 2020, $15 million was seized, $8.4 million was forfeited in the courts but just $1,980 was recorded as being used. In 2019, $12 million was seized, $12 million was forfeited and just more than $300,000 of the proceeds were used.
Civil asset forfeiture is a legal process where law enforcement takes possession of private property if it believes there is probable cause that the property – either cash or a vehicle or anything else of value – was used to commit a crime.
Wes Moster, director of communications for the Department of Safety and Homeland Security, said that no one from the department would do an interview on the topic of civil asset forfeiture and asked for specific questions to be emailed.
Moster, however, did not respond within the first 48 hours to a follow-up email with questions sent by The Center Square, including questions on where the funds went, why some departments such as the 23rd Judicial District Drug Task Force collected far more in seizures than the rest ($1.8M in 2021) and whether the department felt that the current system was working in Tennessee.
In 2020, the 23rd District Task Force seized $760,000 in funds while in 2019 $1.7 million was forfeited in the same district, which includes a section of Interstate 40 near Dickson between Nashville and Memphis.
If property is seized and no arrest is made, law enforcement will issue a Notice of Seizure and a forfeiture warrant hearing will be set.
The problem with that, according to Managing Attorney Lee McGrath of the Institute for Justice, is that his group's report "Policing for Profit" shows the median currency seizure in Tennessee from 2015-19 was $675 and it would cost much more to pay a lawyer to fight for the return of the money than to just let law enforcement keep the funds.
Tennessee also charges a $350 bond to appeal the seizure of funds, the removal of which was discussed in 2020 by the Tennessee Legislature but died in the House after passing the Senate.
This past session, legislation sponsored by Sen. John Stevens, R-Huntingdon, and Rep. Jerry Sexton, R-Bean Station, that would have made the asset forfeiture process part of criminal court instead of civil court died in committee as well.
McGrath worked with Sexton and Stevens on the legislation and has done so with lawsuits and legislation throughout the country.
'Policing for Profit' shows that, in 2017-18, 75% of the civil asset seizure cases in Tennessee go uncontested. The state's report shows that, in 2021, $11.6 million was taken by law enforcement and retained by uncontested default while $2 million was forfeited through a hearing and $1.7 million was forfeited through a settlement while $1.3 million was returned due to settlements and $33,500 was returned after a hearing.
"We wanted to create a system in which the Tennessean must be convicted of a crime as a prerequisite to forfeiture, to losing title, to losing ownership," McGrath said.
Nebraska, Maine, New Mexico and North Carolina have eliminated civil asset forfeiture, making it part of the criminal process where a person must be convicted and then the item must be found to have been an instrument or proceeds involved in a crime to be forfeited. In the Tennessee system, the criminal case for the individual and civil case related to seized property are run separately.
McGrath also explained that local and state agencies can transfer a case to a federal prosecutor and then the local agency can receive a percentage of those funds in what is called equitable sharing.
"It's one thing to regulate state law but if you don't try to address the federal law, your state regulations will be impotent," McGrath said.
McGrath said there are two sets of forfeiture numbers with $147 million forfeited under state law in Tennessee from 2000-19 and $97 million forfeited under federal equitable sharing during that same time frame. McGrath said that he advocated in Tennessee for legislation to "close the back door to federal forfeitures."
Tori Venable, Tennessee State Director of Americans for Prosperity, said that each year her group advocates for civil asset forfeiture reform legislation and every year it is opposed by the Department of Safety and Homeland Security.
"Unfortunately, a lot of the drug task force agencies in our state rely solely upon civil forfeiture to fund their departments," Venable said. "It's not supposed to fund actual law enforcement salaries but because it's a combined federal and state joint task force, that is how they get around it.
"They should not have to rely on violating someone's constitutional rights to fully fund their department."
The paper trail on how that funding works, however, is a mystery according to Venable, because of a "complete lack of accountability and transparency."
"Clearly, the money is going somewhere," she said, noting that some reform has occurred such as legislation that possession of cash alone cannot be the reason for a seizure.
She said that this year's legislation would have exempted less than $200 in cash and vehicles valued at less than $2,000 from seizure to avoid court costs that were higher than the value of the possessions.
McGrath and Venable said that research across the country on civil asset forfeiture has shown that police departments and drug task forces concentrate patrol efforts on arresting and seizing drug money leaving an area instead of drugs entering that area by sitting on a particular side of the highway in a region such as Interstate 40 between Nashville and Memphis.
Venable said that attempts to legislate transparency on which side of a highway law enforcement is patrolling before a seizure has failed.
A 2018 advisory report on civil asset forfeiture in Tennessee recommended that all specific forfeiture data be collected and reported, bonding requirements be removed, court-appointed counsel be available to all, mandatory law enforcement forfeiture training, that forfeited funds go to the state's general fund, that law enforcement not following the rules are prohibited from receiving federal equitable sharing funds and that civil forfeiture be removed for cases with less than $100,000 and instead criminal forfeiture would be used in those cases.
Venable said that the times when issues have come to light with civil asset forfeiture are cases such as a Knox County Sheriff's supervisor using cash and credit cards from a narcotics unit to purchase personal items including $138,000 worth of Apple products between 2011-2018, $13,000 in Yeti coolers and $2,200 for a Google Nest indoor security system.
Former Assistant Chief David Henderson, head of Knox County's Narcotics Unit, was indicted on federal charges of taking seized drug assets and using them for personal use.
by Rod Williams, July 7, 2022- Nashville school officials do not plan to place school resource officers in elementary schools, this amid concern about school safety following the massacre at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas in late May.
In the recently passed Metro budget there was money for a 4% cost-of-living increase for Metro schools employees and additional raises for support staff. To fund the money for MNPS support staff bonuses, the Metro Council took $5 million from Metro's emergency reserves.
Director Adrienne Battle has said gun violence is "not a school problem," but "a society problem." For more on this topic, read this Tennessean article.
by Jonah Goldberg, Jun 24, The Dispatch- ... What is a show trial? The Britannica dictionary has a pretty standard definition: “A trial in a court of law in which the verdict has been decided in advance.” This is a fairly clinical definition. It leaves out the moral horror of how show trials actually work.
... the term became commonplace thanks to the Bolsheviks and the practice was perfected under Stalin. ... it was Stalin who used them for industrial slaughter during the Great Purge, as part of his effort to consolidate his rule by terror. “Death solves all problems,” Stalin liked to say. “No man, no problem.” His henchman, Lavrenty Beria, once declared, “Show me the man and I'll find you the crime.”
Given the sheer magnitude of Stalin’s terror, it’s almost a moral crime to try to summarize the horror of Stalin’s show trials. Evidence was invented. Confessions were extracted by torture and threats against family members. Stalin signed a decree holding that the family members of the accused—including children as young as 12—shared the predetermined guilt of husbands and fathers. The point of the decree was to make it easier to coerce false confessions.
The victims weren’t just potential political rivals of Stalin’s—though they were the first to go—but whole classes of people. ... Anything that suggested independent thought or “bourgeois” tendencies—including stamp collecting—could mark you for prosecution. And since guilt was a foregone conclusion, to be charged was tantamount to being found guilty.
Until recently, this was the kind of stuff people—particularly conservatives—raised on the righteous cause of anti-communism, referred to when they talked about “show trials.”
Now the term “show trial” apparently means something different. ... A show trial in which you are not found guilty is not a show trial. ... Now we’re told that the January 6 hearings are nothing less than a “show trial.” Rep. Scott Perry calls them “Soviet Style Show Trials.” Tucker Carlson strikes a courageous pose refusing to go along with the show trials. And Michael Goodwin thinks the lack of pro-Trump Republican apologists on the committee is proof of a “show trial.”
Now, obviously I agree that show trials are disgusting and “deeply unAmerican” [sic]. But here’s the thing, the January 6 committee isn’t even a trial. It has zero power to punish Donald Trump or even charge him with a crime, never mind execute him. Countless witnesses have refused to cooperate with the hearings, either by invoking the Fifth Amendment or defying subpoenas.
... And at the end of this supposedly heinous show trial, when the committee reaches its (admittedly foregone) conclusion, you know what it will do? Gird your loins, people: It will … release a report. The horror!
If you think “going full Stalin” amounts to releasing a politically inconvenient report, then you either don’t know anything about history, or you think history is a partisan plaything. And if you think finding the truth of what happened, even imperfectly, is un-American, then I guess I’m un-American in your eyes.
... Trump tried to steal an election and, so far, none of these defenders have mounted a serious defense against the charge. Instead, they carp about the lack of Trump defenders on the committee. As far as it goes, it’s a fair complaint. It just doesn’t go very far. Heck, even Donald Trump blames Kevin McCarthy for it. But there’s nothing stopping the carpers from offering a defense on TV or outside the hearing room.
They don’t because they would rather whine about how everything is so unfair to Donald Trump, who—while far from Stalin—is the only person credibly accused of using lies as a pretext to violate the law and the Constitution. (read it all at this link)
Rod's Comment: Well said. I wish I would have said it.
House Districts 61, 63 & 92
Tuesday, July 12
6:00 - 8:00 p.m.
Williamson County Admin
1320 West Main
Seating is Limited
Please RSVP :treasurer@williamsongop.org
by ADAM SHELTON, June 21, 2022, Goldwater Institute - Government bureaucrats have no business stopping qualified professionals from doing their jobs. But that’s exactly what the Tennessee state government’s Board of Law Examiners did to Violaine Panasci, an attorney who was denied admission to the Tennessee Bar because she went to the “wrong” law school. Today, the Goldwater Institute, joined by the Beacon Center of Tennessee and the Southeastern Legal Foundation, filed a brief in the Tennessee Supreme Court in support of Violaine’s constitutional right to earn a living. Violaine Panasci
Violaine is undeniably a highly qualified lawyer: She earned a law degree from the University of Ottawa and an L.L.M. degree from Pace University in New York; she scored in the 90th percentile on the Uniform Bar Exam, far above what any state required for admission; and she’s licensed to practice law in New York. But when Violaine relocated to Tennessee with her significant other, the state’s Board of Law Examiners refused to grant her permission to practice law—despite her impeccable qualifications.
The Board denied her motion for admission because it said her Canadian legal education did not match up with the credit hours required for a U.S. bachelor’s degree and a U.S. Juris Doctor degree. Missing from the Board’s determination was any serious consideration of whether denying Violaine the ability to practice law in Tennessee was necessary to protect the state’s residents.
But Violaine has both a constitutional and a statutory right to earn a living—a right that applies to everyone, even those entering highly regulated fields like the legal profession. And the government can only interfere with that right if it’s necessary to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the people.
Ensuring that lawyers are well educated is an important consideration. But the state cannot do so in a way that arbitrarily excludes individuals who received their legal education in a foreign country. For instance, it cannot require simple equivalency of credit hours, like it did with Violaine. Instead, the state must make an individualized determination that weighs all of an applicant’s credentials and considers the requirements of the state’s Constitution and its Right to Earn a Living Act.
The Tennessee Constitution protects the right to earn a living through a “law of the land” clause, which dates all the way back to 1215 and the Magna Carta. By 1796, when the state adopted its first Constitution, it was well understood that this clause protected the right to earn a living and was broad enough to make government-granted monopolies legally dubious, because they interfered with that right. The state’s Supreme Court recognized this principle well into the 20th century, even going so far as to call it a fundamental right. The brief filed today asserts that the Court should affirm the fundamental status of the right to earn a living and lay out a framework for how licensing agencies should act in accordance with that right in making individualized licensing determinations.
Fortunately, Tennessee’s Right to Earn a Living Act, much like the Arizona Right to Earn a Living Act developed by Goldwater, provides a framework for how licensing agencies should go about making such determinations. The Act reaffirms that Tennesseans have a fundamental right to earn a living and explains that the government cannot interfere with this right unless demonstrably necessary to protect health, safety, or welfare. In this case, Violaine is undoubtedly a qualified attorney, so it’s clear that denying her application to practice law doesn’t protect the people of Tennessee.
Our brief urges the Tennessee Supreme Court to overturn the Board’s decision, to reaffirm that the right to earn a living is a fundamental one protected by the state’s Constitution, and to recognize that the Right to Earn a Living Act provides a framework to ensure that licensing bodies do not arbitrarily infringe on the constitutional right to earn a living.
You can read our brief here, and you can find out more about Goldwater’s Right to Earn a Living Act here.
Adam Shelton is a Staff Attorney at the Goldwater Institute.
Rod's Comment: Too often licensing of professions is nothing more than a ruse to protect those already in a profession from competition or an irrational prejudice to give an advantage to preferred groups. For some licensed professionals, the education requirement lacks logic such as when the skill to do the job may not be related to a particular level of education. Another form of licensing as discrimination is qualification requirements preventing convicted felons from participating in certain trades. In my view, when one has paid their debt to society they should not continue to be punished and prohibited from earning a living. All licensing of professions should be reviewed and those requirements that are simply to protect current practitioners from competition, those that discriminate, and those that give an irrational preference to some individuals should be repealed.
by Washington Examiner | June 29, 2022 - Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s Tuesday testimony ought to ring the death knell for former President Donald Trump’s political career. Trump is unfit to be anywhere near power ever again.
Hutchinson’s resume alone should establish her credibility. The 25-year-old had already worked at the highest levels of conservative Republican politics, including in the offices of Sen. Ted Cruz (TX) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (LA), before becoming a top aide for former Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows. In short, Hutchinson was a conservative Trumpist true believer and a tremendously credible one at that. ... Hutchinson’s testimony confirmed a damning portrayal of Trump as unstable, unmoored, and absolutely heedless of his sworn duty to effectuate a peaceful transition of presidential power. ... Trump is a disgrace. Republicans have far better options to lead the party in 2024. No one should think otherwise, much less support him, ever again. (read more)
Rod' Comment: I agree. I know Trumpinistas are already dismissing The Washington Examiner as a liberal rag. It is not. It has been a major conservative media outlet for a long time. To Trumpinistas it doesn't matter how deep your conservative credentials are and how long you have labored to advance conservative policies, the only thing that matters is, are you loyal to Trump. Loyalty to Trump trumps loyalty to your country. Not loyal to Trump and you are dismissed as a "liberal" or a "RINO."
Should Trump become the 2024 presidential nominee, I will do the unthinkable and for the first time in my life vote for the Democrat presidential nominee. I don't even know who it might be. I don't have to. I am sure I will hate his policies and not like the direction a Democrat president will take our country. However, we cannot risk Trump ever holding office again. If he gets back in office, it may be the last free election we ever have.
I feel betrayed by Trump. In my view, Trump is a traitor to his country. Trump is unfit to be anywhere near power ever again.
Reposted from the District 20 Newsletter:
Metro Council passed our budget on Tuesday. This budget will give a series of raises for schools and metro employees and fund hundreds of new positions across Metro departments. The budget passed on a 31-3 vote.
The budget includes:
Of the 17 amendments submitted, four passed:
by Rod Williams, July 3, 2022 - I consume a lot of news, including local news, from a lot of sources. Since the daily newspaper is only a shadow of what a newspaper used to be, to stay informed one must read various sources. One of those sources I always read is The Nashville Scene. Despite their snarky, elitist, condescending, politically correct, and woke tone, the Scene does, on occasion, give you news you don't get anywhere else. To read the Scene you may need to refer to the Liberal Speak Translation Guide, but it can be worth the effort.
I did not know to what extent Nashville Public Schools were pushing the gay agenda until reading about it in the Scene. The below excerpt is from the June 23rd Gay Pride issue of the Scene in an article titled, Not Too Young to Talk About It. The article reports on several organizations that are enabling sexually confused youth and promoting deviancy among young people, including Metro Nashville Public Schools.
Metro Nashville Public Schools, for example, has made clear its support for LGBTQ students and staff. The MNPS for All campaign is geared toward providing what it calls Safe and Supportive Environments for the district’s LGBTQ community. The district has expanded its Gender and Sexuality Alliance student clubs in middle and high schools, implemented staff training and provided gender support plan templates that schools can use to help properly identify students’ pronouns.
The MNPS board has also shown support for trans students by refusing to change its policy after the state banned trans student-athletes from competing on their own gender’s teams last year. This year’s legislative session produced a new, more specific law that withholds state funds from districts that don’t determine student athletes’ genders based on the student’s sex assigned at birth.
Additionally, the MNPS board unanimously passed a resolution “affirming the physical, mental, emotional support of all students, staff, parents and stakeholders regardless of gender identity, gender expression or sexual orientation.” The district’s website lists resources for LGBTQ students, such as PFLAG, the Trevor Project, the Trans Buddy program, Vanderbilt’s program for LGBTQ health and the Oasis Center’s Just Us program.
To learn more about how MNPS is promoting homosexuality and gender confusion among students, visit this link, LGBTQIA+. MNPS does not hide that they are proselytizing and promoting a gay agenda and in an April 27, 2021 resolution stated, "the District shall continue to advocate for LGBTQ people and issues in school curricula and instructional materials, including in health and sex education, inclusive of materials that portray LGBTQ figures in a positive light; the District shall ensure that the curricula include diverse perspectives, especially LGBTQ people of color and issues specific to communities of color.
Parents of modest means who may not want their child's school curricula and instructional materials to normalize deviancy are unfortunately left with few choices. If one is lucky enough to get into one of the better charter schools they may be able to avoid this indoctrination, but I don't know that. I do not know to what extent charter schools are being forced to promote the agenda. Private school is expensive. Homeschooling may be an option for some families. Homeschooling takes effort but there is more support and good off-the-shelf curriculum available than in years past. When both parents must work, however, homeschooling may not be possible. Moving out of the county may be the best option for families who want to raise their children with traditional moral values.