Thank you.
I look forward to your coverage.
I’ve got WaPo in one corner, and emptywheel for cogency.

“dishonor and dereliction of duty.”

That’s the worst of it.

There must not be any federal statue for failing to honor your oath of office or for dereliction of duty as commander and chief. Although being the commander of the entire military complex who are held responsible and accountable to the military code of justice which does carry severe consequences for detection of duty. The irony is startling. Seems as if everyone involved knew what the president was doing and what his intent was and that is deny and prevent the peaceful transfer of power.

I was fine watching this streaming on CBS News (the only network news I’ve bothered to program). But in the post-hearing round of commentary I was doing fine until someone started to talk about “Merrick Garland”. My finger instinctively went to the red button at the top of the remote.

EP, in my opinion is undemocratic — ”ultimately the public” gets fucked

“Executive privilege is the constitutional principle that permits the president and high-level executive branch officers to withhold information from Congress, the courts, and ultimately the public. This presidential power is controversial because it is nowhere mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. That fact has led some scholars (Berger 1974; Prakash, 1999) to suggest that executive privilege does not exist and that the congressional power of inquiry is absolute. There is no doubt that presidents and their staffs have secrecy needs and that these decision makers must be able to deliberate in private without fear that every utterance may be made public. But many observers question whether presidents have the right to withhold documents and testimony in the face of congressional investigations or judicial proceedings.” Mark Rozell

Trump spent his entire presidency watching Faux News rather than doing his job as president. But he had a special interest in watching how well his mob was furthering his obsession to obstruct Congress so that he could stay in office under the slightest pretext.

Since Ivana’s very unfortunate accident, his paranoia has likely increased, especially around stairs. And windows.

If Pence was killed or otherwise indisposed, Chuck Grassley would have taken over the role of leading the certification by the joint houses of Congress. Early on Jan 6 Grassley had sent and deleted a tweet indicating he was taking that role. It appears he was in cahoots on doing what Pence refused to do. Disposing of Pence may have led to a successful coup.

Permanently eliminating Pence would have been a needless complication to Trump’s plans with all sorts of unintended consequences. Far easier for the Secret Service to get the VP away from the Capitol for a few hours under the reasonable pretense that it was for his own protection while Trump completed his theft of the election. Afterwards, I can easily imagine Pence going along with the coup once it was a fait accompli. After all, he would get to be VP for another four years, maybe.

I can imagine a lot of GOP Congresspeople and other Trump supporters being more than willing to help with the coup as long as it only involved fake electors, forged documents, procedural delays, spreading The Big Lie, and the intimidation factor of armed militia groups. But a deceased Vice-President, no matter how he met his fate, might have caused some of them to discover their consciences. Of course, a few months from now when we know more about January 6th my comments may sound hopelessly naive.