The Authoritarian Left

 From Sally Satel, at Atlantic Monthly, "The Experts Somehow Overlooked Authoritarians on the Left":

No left-wing authoritarians? Are you kidding? Lenin, Mao, Stalin, Castro, Kims? 60s radicals, social justice bullies? @slsatel confirms Keith Stanovich's point that the Myside bias infects everyone, & makes a political monoculture on campus pernicious. https://t.co/ndOpsx5hHG

— Steven Pinker (@sapinker) September 25, 2021

Donald trump’s rise to power generated a flood of media coverage and academic research on authoritarianism—or at least the kind of authoritarianism that exists on the political right. Over the past several years, some researchers have theorized that Trump couldn’t have won in 2016 without support from Americans who deplore political compromise and want leaders to rule with a strong hand. Although right-wing authoritarianism is well documented, social psychologists do not all agree that a leftist version even exists. In February 2020, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology held a symposium called “Is Left-Wing Authoritarianism Real? Evidence on Both Sides of the Debate.”

An ambitious new study on the subject by the Emory University researcher Thomas H. Costello and five colleagues should settle the question. It proposes a rigorous new measure of antidemocratic attitudes on the left. And, by drawing on a survey of 7,258 adults, Costello’s team firmly establishes that such attitudes exist on both sides of the American electorate. (One co-author on the paper, I should note, was Costello’s adviser, the late Scott Lilienfeld—with whom I wrote a 2013 book and numerous articles.) Intriguingly, the researchers found some common traits between left-wing and right-wing authoritarians, including a “preference for social uniformity, prejudice towards different others, willingness to wield group authority to coerce behavior, cognitive rigidity, aggression and punitiveness towards perceived enemies, outsized concern for hierarchy, and moral absolutism.”

Published last month in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the Costello team’s paper is persuasive, to the point that you have to wonder: How could past researchers have overlooked left-wing authoritarianism for so long? “For 70 years, the lore in the social sciences has been that authoritarianism was to be found exclusively on the political right,” the Rutgers University social psychologist Lee Jussim, who wasn’t involved in the new study, told me in an email. In the 1950 book The Authoritarian Personality, an inquiry into the psychological makeup of people strongly drawn to autocratic rule and repressive politics, the German-born scholar Theodor W. Adorno and three other psychologists measured people along dimensions such as conformity to societal norms, rigid thinking, and sexual repression. And they concluded that “the authoritarian type of human”— the kind of person whose enthusiastic support allows someone like Hitler to exercise power—was found only among conservatives. In the mid-1990s, the influential Canadian psychologist Bob Altemeyer described left-wing authoritarianism as “the Loch Ness Monster of political psychology—an occasional shadow, but no monster. ” Subsequently, other psychologists reached the same conclusion.

The Trump era likely deepened psychology’s conventional wisdom that authoritarians are almost always conservatives; the insurrection at the Capitol earlier this year showed the urgency of understanding the phenomenon. And yet calls to de-platform controversial speakers and online campaigns to get people fired for heterodox views suggest that a commitment to open democratic norms is eroding, at least in some quarters, on the left. Much further along the authoritarian continuum, people purporting to be antiracist or antifascist protesters have set fires and committed other acts of violence since the summer of 2020. These acts stop short of, say, the 1970s bombing campaign by the far-left Weather Underground, but surely call the prevailing wisdom into doubt. (Supporters of revolutionary regimes overseas have demonstrated even more clearly that some people on the left try to get their way through intimidation and force.)

But one reason left-wing authoritarianism barely shows up in social-psychology research is that most academic experts in the field are based at institutions where prevailing attitudes are far to the left of society as a whole. Scholars who personally support the left’s social vision—such as redistributing income, countering racism, and more—may simply be slow to identify authoritarianism among people with similar goals.

One doesn’t need to believe that left-wing authoritarians are as numerous or as threatening as their right-wing counterparts to grasp that both phenomena are a problem. While liberals—both inside and outside of academia—may derive some comfort from believing that left-wing authoritarianism doesn’t exist, that fiction ignores a significant source of instability and polarization in our politics and society...

Adorno? What a clown. *Eye-roll.*

Lots more at more at the link.

Jen Psaki (VIDEO)

She's hot but exasperating. 

I've never had a thing for redheads, but she's got it goin' on.

At NYT, "Bully Pulpit No More: Jen Psaki’s Turn at the Lectern":

WASHINGTON — Jen Psaki, President Biden’s press secretary, may be the most prominent spokeswoman in American politics, but political fame hits different in the post-Trump era.

The daily White House briefing, once a highly rated staple of daytime TV, rarely appears anymore on cable news. Sean Spicer and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, two former Trump press secretaries, became B-list celebrities; after nine months on the job, Ms. Psaki has not even rated an impersonation on “Saturday Night Live.”

But a cult of Psaki has proliferated online, where clips of her restrained, if occasionally withering exchanges with reporters have established this once obscure political strategist as an unlikely cultural force. Her retorts earn “yas queen” praise from liberals, while conservatives jeer her attempts at spin, particularly over the past month, when the confluence of the withdrawal from Afghanistan, extreme weather and coronavirus confusion meant the questions were more pointed and the answers more scrutinized.

Ms. Psaki, 42, a veteran communications operative who was twice passed over for the top job under her previous boss, former President Barack Obama, is an unlikely avatar for the smack-down-happy, we-have-no-choice-but-to-stan culture of modern social media. A onetime competitive swimmer who grew up with a Republican father in Greenwich, Conn., she was until this past year barely recognized beyond the Beltway in-crowd, who knew her as a capable technocrat type with deep ties to Democratic leadership.

Now the hashtag #jenpsaki has 139 million views on TikTok, and its pun of a cousin, #psakibomb (the P in Psaki is silent — get it?), has racked up more than 13 million. She posed for Annie Leibovitz in Vogue magazine and answered questions on the N.P.R. show “Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!” Olivia Rodrigo stood next to her for a briefing. Her exchanges with a regular foil, the Fox News correspondent Peter Doocy, often get memed.

As the TikTok user “fabiantiktoks30sclub” put it, in a clip with 65,000 likes: “Yassss queen jen psaki let the clown doocey have it!!”

Another moment caught fire online this month, as Texas was passing a law that effectively banned abortion in the state. A reporter from a Catholic news service pressed Ms. Psaki on why Mr. Biden, a Catholic, supported abortion rights...

Media's Entire Georgia Narrative Is Fraudulent, Not Just The Fabricated Trump Quotes

It's Mollie Hemingway, at the Federalist. 

She's day in and day out, a one-woman wrecking-crew demolishing the endless lies streaming from all the hate-addled (and despicable) leftist media outlets, be they print, broadcast, cable, or whatever. I'm glad she's on our side. 

She's the author, most prominently, of Justice on Trial: The Kavanaugh Confirmation and the Future of the Supreme Court, but also, Trump vs. the Media (Encounter Broadsides Book 51).

Also, my apologies for the light blogging today, but the pace of posting should pick up a bit over the next couple of days, and into the weekend.

Be well. 

This 'Open Letter' Was Produced by Democrat Congressional Aides, But There's No Mention of Party Affiliations or 'Bipartisanship' at the Letter, Which Can Only Be Viewed as Another Lie Leftist-Dems Keep Perpetuating About the Capitol Hill 'Insurrection'

You can read the letter if here, "An Open Letter from Congressional Staff to Senate."

I googled the first five names from the long list of signatories, and they're ALL Democrat congressional staffers. And it's not like you wouldn't know that from just reading the letter, which looks like Pelosi and Schumer just wrote it themselves and stapled on the names from the list of all their "horrified" Dem staffers "cowering" for their lives amid the "right-wing domestic terrorist insurrection" from January 6th.

It's cheap and dishonest. It's agitprop.

These people lie. If they had any standards besides double-standards perhaps folks might believe them, sheesh.

Via Memeorandum, where I spy a blurb from NYT's story about the letter, "More than 370 Democratic aides issued an unusual public appeal, notable because congressional staff members rarely publicly express their own views." 

No matter though, it's just part of the Leftist-Dem-Big Tech-Media Complex's campaign of a massive, nationally-geared gaslighting operation. Don't trust them, ever. 

Biden Invokes Nazi Propagandist Joseph Goebbels to Condemn Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley as 'Part of the Big Lie' of the 'Far-Right's' Election Fraud Conspiracies (VIDEO)

Following-up from previously, "Goebbels and the New American Terror."

At Mediate:

President-elect Joe Biden specifically called out pro-Trump Senators Ted Cruz (TX) and Josh Hawley (MO) for being “part of the big lie” that is Donald Trump’s disinformation campaign to delegitimize the results of the 2020 election, invoking the propaganda tactics of Nazi Joseph Goebbels in his answer.

During a press conference on Friday afternoon, Biden was asked about Cruz and Hawley, who were on the forefront of pushing alleged concerns about widespread election fraud, of which there is no evidence to support. Both senators also joined in the effort to object to the Electoral College results certifying Biden’s victory. That political stunt was interrupted when violent, pro-Trump rioters stormed the Capitol on Wednesday afternoon, resulting in five deaths, including one Capitol Police officer...

Still more. 

And at the video, scroll ahead to about 3:10 minutes for the Goebbels smear. And this is the "unity" the President-Elect is going with, pfft. They're all liars, the whole lot of America's internal enemies, the Leftist-Democrat-Big Tech Party:

Kristen Clarke’s Disastrous Nomination to Head the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division (VIDEO)

 From Joseph Klein, at FrontPage Magazine, "Biden’s Disastrous Pick to Head DOJ Civil Rights Division":

Senate must reject Kristen Clarke’s nomination.

Kristen Clarke, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, is a disastrous choice. Clarke has a long record of making racially charged-comments, going back to her time in college and continuing to this day. She also has spoken out in favor of anti-Semites. Back in college, Clarke led a student group that provided an anti-Semitic professor a platform to spew his vile remarks. Much more recently, Clarke supported an advocate of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. If Clarke’s name is not withdrawn from consideration, the Senate must reject her nomination.

Back in the day when Clarke served as the president of the Black Students Association (BSA) at Harvard, she co-authored a letter to the Harvard Crimson asserting that blacks are born with “superior physical and mental abilities.” It’s all due to the chemical melanin, Clarke claimed, which “endows [b]lacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities -- something which cannot be measured based on Eurocentric standards." The Harvard Crimson editors at the time called for Clarke to resign her position at the BSA unless she was “prepared to retract her statements, and apologize publicly for making them.” The furthest that Clarke was willing to go at that time was stating that "The information [contained in the letter] is not necessarily something we believe.” [Emphasis added] There was no public retraction back then.

Clarke also invited the late Wellesley Professor of Africana Studies Anthony Martin to speak at a 1994 Black Students Association-sponsored event. Clarke’s guest used his time to slander Jews with the accusation that Jews had a “tradition” of persecuting blacks. "There was a Jewish monopoly over Blacks being cursed," Martin said during his address.

Clarke defended the choice of Martin to speak after receiving criticism from the Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel. "Professor Martin is an intelligent, well-versed Black intellectual who bases his information on indisputable fact," Clarke said. The real indisputable fact is that Jews have put their lives on the line in the cause of the black civil rights movement. For example, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman served in 1964 as voting-registration volunteers in Meridian, Mississippi and were murdered by Klansmen.

Now that Clarke is craving for the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights position in the Biden administration, she wants a do-over. In a recent interview, Clarke said that she realizes it was a mistake to invite Martin to speak at Harvard. “Giving someone like him a platform, it’s not something I would do again,” Clarke said, adding that “I unequivocally denounce antisemitism.”

Clarke’s recantation comes way too late. If Democrats had an ounce of intellectual honesty, which they do not, Clarke’s invitation to an anti-Semitic professor to speak at Harvard when she was a student would be reason enough for them to “cancel” Clarke now. After all, Democrats in the Senate were willing to throw Trump nominees’ alleged behavior in college and high school back at them when their nominations were being considered. The worst case involved the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But there were others as well who were targeted by the cancel culture crowd.

In any case, we don’t even have to look back at Clarke’s college days to find proof of her support for radicals who espouse anti-Semitic views. In 2018, for example, Israel denied Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, entry to the country because of his organization’s support for the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Clarke tweeted, “Incredibly disturbed to hear that @VinceWarren was detained and denied entry into Israel on a trip that was carefully and thoughtfully planned out over the course of several months. #CivilRights Lawyers should not be penalized for their work to promote justice.”

As for the letter to the Harvard Crimson Clarke co-authored, claiming that blacks have “superior physical and mental abilities,” Clarke is now saying that it was all a misunderstanding. She claims that the letter was intended as a satirical response to the book The Bell Curve, which posited genetic differences between whites and blacks. Clarke wants us to believe that her letter’s references to melanin as the cause of black superiority “was meant to express an equally absurd point of view — fighting one ridiculous absurd racist theory with another ridiculous absurd theory.” That’s disinformation. At the time when the letter was written, Clarke said that she was uncertain whether the melanin theory of black superiority was true or not. There wasn’t a hint of sarcasm in the letter.

Putting aside her comments about melanin back in college, Clarke certainly shows no uncertainty today in embracing critical race theory, which posits that America is inherently racist. In her capacity as president and executive director of Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Clarke condemned the Trump administration’s decision to remove critical race theory from federal government training programs. "Our nation stands at an inflection point as communities are grappling with the ongoing threat of racism, white supremacy and police violence," Clarke said in a statement. "President Trump's latest federal directive is an attempt to discredit, condemn and silence important conversations happening in communities and workplaces about anti-racism and about our nation's history of white supremacy. By banning government support for these discussions, he sends a dangerous message to the country that racism is a fallacy."

Last year, Clarke denounced what she claims is “systemic racism that pervades every aspect of our lives, especially when it comes to policing and the operation of the criminal justice system of our country.” She supports defunding of the police. “I advocate for defunding policing operations that have made African Americans more vulnerable to police violence and contributed to mass incarceration, while investing more in programs and policies that address critical community needs,” she wrote last June for Newsweek. She called the concerns regarding the violence that broke out last year in the wake of the George Floyd killing a “distraction.”

Clearly, if Clarke were to become Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and have her way, she would push to put the police on trial all over the country. She would also force-feed critical race theory to all federal employees and beyond. She would support the BDS movement as a civil right.

 

The Senate's Coming Impeachment Fiasco

A great piece, from Byron York, "Byron York's Daily Memo":

Remember that the primary purpose of an impeachment trial is to remove the convicted official from office. Here is the description of impeachment from Article II of the Constitution: "The president, vice president and all civil officers of the United States, shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors." The Constitution gives the Senate "the sole power to try all impeachments" and says that "no person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two thirds of the members present." If the official is convicted, the punishment "shall not extend further than to removal from office, and disqualification to hold and enjoy any office of honor, trust or profit under the United States."

But the removal part will be off the table. The Senate trial will not begin until January 20 at the earliest, after President Trump leaves office. So Democrats propose to use impeachment to disqualify Trump from ever holding federal office again, which they say requires only a majority vote in the Senate. But the Constitution clearly requires a conviction before punishment, so two thirds of the Senate would have to convict former President Trump before he could be disqualified.

*****

There are two new polls on the impeachment question. An NBC survey shows the public narrowly divided on the issue, with 50 percent for and 48 percent against. An ABC-Washington Post poll shows a wider spread, with 56 for and 42 percent against. But both polls asked respondents whether they supported removing Trump from office without mentioning that in real life Trump will already be out of office when the impeachment verdict is rendered. This is just a guess, but it seems opinion might change when the public realizes that Democrats are using impeachment against a president who has already left office...

Still more.

And read those polls, especially the one from ABC News. Americans of all partisan persuasions repudiate the violence of the Capitol Hill riot, including 76 percent of Trump supporters.  

And as usual, don't forget all the caveats about media polling, perhaps the biggest one is that their samples are always biased toward the Democrats, and often questions are rigged (push-polling) to get the desired results of making Trump, Republicans, and conservatives look bad. 

]

Goebbels and the New American Terror

Following-up from yesterday, "America's 'Reichstag Fire'."

See Caroline Glick:

What purpose did it serve for President-elect Joe Biden to liken Senators Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) to Adolf Hitler’s top propagandist Joseph Goebbels?

In response to a question about the two Republican lawmakers following remarks on January 8, Biden said, “I was being reminded by a friend of mine…when we’re told [about] Goebbels and the great lie, you keep repeating the lie, repeating the lie.”

Although Biden’s comparison was imperfectly stated, it was clear enough to follow. He was saying that the lawmakers’ efforts to challenge the Electoral College votes from disputed states was a Nazi-like effort.

By speaking this way, Biden did many things at once. First, he whitewashed Goebbels’ barbaric crimes. Goebbels was the chief architect of totalitarianism in Nazi Germany and one of the lead architects of the Holocaust.

In his literary warning about the fragility of freedom and the allure of totalitarianism, 1984, George Orwell demonstrated that total control over a society is achieved through total control over the information its members can see.

Goebbels implemented this in Nazi Germany. As Hitler’s propagandist, Goebbels exerted total control over information. He ensured that Germans would view Hitler as their infallible savior. He conditioned them to view Jews as subhuman vermin, to be exterminated like cockroaches. And he made them believe that all Germans who didn’t accept what they were told were enemies of the people.

Goebbels achieved all of these things by blocking public access to accurate information while inundating the Germans with images and words that repeated and amplified his monstrous lies. Goebbels’ success in controlling information was the necessary precondition for all he and his comrades unleashed on Jews, and on humanity as a whole.

The second thing Biden did by comparing Hawley and Cruz to Goebbels was to whitewash the unspeakable crimes of Nazi Germany. After all, if merely questioning certain election returns is the moral equivalent of Goebbels’ “Big Lie,” then the Big Lie was actually no big deal.

The third thing Biden did by comparing Hawley and Cruz to Goebbels was set them up for what Orwell referred to as “un-personing”—or in today’s culture, “canceling.”

Obviously, if Cruz and Hawley are Goebbels, then all right-thinking people must work to silence them and remove them from positions of influence in the Senate and larger society.

As if on cue, shortly after Biden said what he did, Senate Democrats began debating whether to censure the lawmakers. Senate Republicans, for their part, began discussing the possibility of denying the two members cherished committee assignments. According to Senate officials, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is leaning toward denying the two their subcommittee chairmanships—thereby removing them from the line of seniority.

Outside the Senate chamber, major corporate donors also announced they will cease all political contributions to the two men, and to all 149 federal lawmakers who supported the efforts to challenge election returns from various states. Simon & Schuster canceled its contract to publish Hawley’s forthcoming book about the tyranny of Big Tech.

And this brings us to the fourth thing that Biden did by comparing the two senators to Hitler’s satanic propagandist. Whether one supports or opposes their decision to formally raise questions about the Electoral College vote count, the indisputable fact is that their actions were both legal and widely supported by their constituents. A Rasmussen poll released on January 6 found that 52 percent of politically unaffiliated Americans were less than fully confident about the integrity of the election results. The senators, and their colleagues in both houses who worked with them, noted that they had been flooded by requests from their constituents to question the returns from the states in question—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada.

Cruz and Hawley incited no riots. To the contrary, they tried to channel the concerns of voters the American way—through constitutional, peaceful deliberations in Congress. Cruz, for his part, denounced the January 6 riot in real time, referring to it as “a despicable act of terrorism.”

By conflating the constitutional, democratic behavior of the senators and their colleagues with Goebbels’ crimes, Biden accomplished a fifth goal. He demonized as Nazis these officials’ voters who had urged them to act—and by extension, threw under the bus the shockingly high percentage of Americans who questioned the election returns.

Of course, Biden’s statement wasn’t made in isolation. He spoke after Twitter, Facebook and Instagram had banned Trump from their platforms and begun a purge of the accounts of his supporters—and as other major private sector actors openly called for the “un-personing” of Trump’s advisers and supporters.

Forbes Editor Randall Lane, for instance, announced he would destroy any business that hires Trump’s spokespeople. In his words, “Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists…and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. …Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away!”

The Lincoln Project, an influence outfit run by former Republicans now serving Democrats by demonizing Republicans, announced it was working to have all Trump administration officials blacklisted.

“We are constructing a database of Trump officials and staff that will detail their roles in the Trump administration and track where they are now. …They will be held accountable and not allowed to pretend they were not involved,” the group tweeted.

Deutsche Bank and Signature Bank announced they were closing Trump’s accounts. Payment processors such as PayPal, Shopify and Stripe cut off the Trump campaign and Trump merchandising stores.

These actions are of a piece with earlier actions by financial giants like BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and others that announced last month they will require their clients to hire women and LGBT persons to their corporate boards, adopt approved green policies, and reveal their political contributions, lobbying contacts and trade association memberships as conditions for continuing to receive financial services.

All of these repressive statements and actions provided both the impetus for, and the legitimization of, the coordinated action taken last weekend by tech oligarchs Google, Apple and Amazon to destroy Parler, the free speech social media platform launched two years ago.

As law professor William Jacobson documented on his Legal Insurrection website, there is no evidence to support the tech giants’ implicit claim that Parler was in any way responsible for the Capitol Hill riot. Indeed, as Jacobson showed, it was Facebook, not Parler, that the organizers of the violent events had relied upon to mobilize their supporters.

The reason Google, Apple and Amazon destroyed Parler was not because it had done anything wrong. They destroyed Parler because it did everything right. For years, Big Tech oligarchs brushed off criticism that they operated as monopolies by insisting that everyone remains free to create platforms and compete with them. And as their viewpoint censorship of conservatives became more aggressive in recent years and reached new heights during the 2020 election, demand for alternatives continued to grow.

Parler wasn’t a Trump affiliate. It wasn’t a political instrument. It was simply a free speech platform. It was an alternative. And so it was destroyed. The social media users who wish to leave Twitter and Facebook now have no comparable alternative venue. So they are compelled to remain and live within the platforms’ increasingly repressive rules.

A sense of foreboding and fear now grips millions of Americans—and, indeed, conservatives worldwide. Unless something is done quickly by those who wield power to restore freedom, it is impossible to see a happy end to this story.

Charges Leveled at Men Accused of Assaulting Police With Flag, Fire Extinguisher in Capitol Riot

No surprise. The "authorities" are cracking down. Never forget the Reichstag fire.

At WSJ, "Man carrying Confederate flag in Capitol was also charged":

Federal prosecutors escalated their efforts Thursday to target some of the more brazen violent conduct from last week’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, charging a retired firefighter who they say threw a fire extinguisher at three police officers and another man who allegedly beat a police officer repeatedly with an American flag.

Robert Sanford of Chester, Pa., faces charges including assaulting a police officer after he was allegedly identified as the person who lobbed a fire extinguisher on the west side of the Capitol, at around 2:30 p.m., as the mob crashed past a thin line of Capitol police officers and stormed toward the building on Jan. 6.

Around the same time, a radio dispatch captured by OpenMHZ, a platform that records radio chatter from law enforcement and other agencies, relayed: “There is a 10-33 at the Capitol building. It has been breached,” using a code that signifies an emergency in which an officer needs assistance.

The prosecution’s statement of facts in the case described the fire extinguisher hitting three officers in the head, including one who wasn’t wearing a helmet. Officials said the extinguisher Mr. Sanford allegedly threw isn’t the one that killed Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was also struck in the head with a fire extinguisher during the unrest and died from his wounds, officials said.

William Young, one of the officers who was hit in the incident allegedly involving Mr. Sanford, was evaluated at a hospital and cleared to return to duty, the charging document said. A friend of Mr. Sanford tipped off the FBI to his involvement, the document said, adding that he was around 55 years old and had recently retired from the Chester Fire Department.

Mr. Sanford’ charges include using a deadly weapon in a restricted area, which carries a potential 10-year prison term, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds and obstructing law enforcement.

The charges against Mr. Sanford, who couldn’t immediately be reached for comment, come as prosecutors have filed dozens of cases against the most visible participants in the riot, many of whose efforts were widely broadcast on social media, including one video showing a man beating a police officer with an American flag at the Capitol riot.

An Arkansas man identified in court documents as Peter Stager was charged Thursday with obstructing a law-enforcement officer in connection with that incident. The officer from Washington’s Metropolitan Police Department was guarding an entrance of the U.S. Capitol after 4 p.m., when members of the mob grabbed him, dragged him down a set of stairs, forced him into a prone position and proceeded to forcibly and repeatedly strike him, according to an affidavit from FBI agent Jason Coe.

The document identified the Washington police officer only as B.M., saying it was anonymizing victims and witnesses. The Metropolitan Police Department didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

A confidential informant recognized Mr. Stager from videos posted online in social media and notified the FBI on Tuesday, the documents said. One video, cited in the documents, showed Mr. Stager saying: “Everybody in there is a treasonous traitor. Death is the only remedy for what’s in that building.”

Mr. Stager had told his associate he planned to turn himself in to law enforcement for his actions, the document, signed by U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui, said. A man reached by telephone at a number associated with Mr. Stager had no immediate comment...

Still more. 

America's 'Reichstag Fire'

At Theo's , "Let's be very CLEAR. The Capitol event was America's "Reichstag Fire" and was staged by the Left (Antifa-BLM) to 'seal the steal'."

Frankly, that's the best analogy I can come up with myself. In fact, last night I was reading William Shirer's, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, which has a long section on the both the fire and the political machinations. 

The Nazis were lucky, as apparently there was one actual communist who had entered the building that day to set fires, shortly before Goebbels and Goering's "Brown Shirts" stormed the building with containers of gasoline. Once the fuse was lit, with flames reaching higher than surrounding rooftops, and having their scapegoat, Goebbels and Goering seized the moment, to "never let a crisis go to waste," and initiated the massive crackdown on dissent that culminated in the passage of Hitler's "Enabling Act of 1933." This law literally gave all legislative power to the chancellor's office. The national parliamentary elections held shortly thereafter were completely rigged, with members of opposition parties banned from the building, attacked by Brown Shirt mobs, and in many case, murdered in summary executions after the fact. 

As we're seeing more news that the Capitol riot was planned days in advance, the leftist narrative that Trump "incited" the riot is completely falling apart. 

Know your history, people. The truth is starting to trickle out, and it's going to redound to the everlasting regret of our leftist domestic enemies and literal terrorists (see Portland, Oregon). 

John Eastman Resigns From Chapman University Law School

 At Instapundit, "Well, if you’re a lefty you can be an unrepentant terror-bomber and get a cushy slot at a top university. But if you peacefully speak at a rally for the right, well, you get this: 'Law Prof John Eastman Retires From Chapman ‘Effective Immediately’ Amidst Uproar Over Speaking At Trump Rally Last Wednesday'."

Here's the letter, originally published at the American Mind:

It is with mixed feeling that I announce my retirement from Chapman University today. Apart from prominent visitorships at the University of San Diego and the University of Colorado Boulder, my entire academic career has been as a professor and Dean at the Chapman University Fowler School of Law.

During my tenure as Dean, the law school achieved the highest national ranking it has achieved to date, moving from 163rd to 93rd in that short three-year period between 2007 and 2010. I wish Dean Parlow much success in regaining and surpassing that high water mark.

I have also enjoyed a strong working relationship with the University’s current President, Daniele Struppa, dating to my Deanship when he was serving as the University’s Provost and Chancellor. And I applaud his defense of me in particular and academic freedom more generally in this recent controversy.

But I cannot extend such praise to some of my “colleagues” on the campus or to the few members of the Board of Trustees who have published false, defamatory statements about me without even the courtesy of contacting me beforehand to discuss. The political science faculty, for example, made numerous false statements of fact and law in their diatribe against me. They asserted, for example, that I have made “false claims” about the 2020 presidential election which “have no basis in fact or law and seek to harm the democratic foundations of our constitutional republic.”

Had they bothered to discuss the matter with me, they could have learned that every statement I have made is backed up with documentary and/or expert evidence, and solidly grounded in law. For example, it is a fact that partisan election officials and even partisan-elected judicial officials in numerous states altered or ignored existing state laws in the conduct of the election, the instances of which are well documented in the petition for writ of certiorari I filed in the Supreme Court of the United States on behalf of the President. And it is clearly established law that Article II of the Constitution assigns to the legislatures of the state, not anyone else, the sole, plenary power to determine the “manner” for choosing presidential electors. And it is a fact that numerous legislators wrote to Vice President Pence indicating that their electoral votes were problematic at best because of these illegalities and urging him to delay the electoral count proceedings long enough to allow the legislatures in the contested states time to review whether their electoral slate was legally certified.

By way of example, 21 members of the Pennsylvania Senate, including the powerful President Pro Tem of the Senate, outlined in a January 4 letter the numerous instances of violations of state law by state election officials and even the partisan-elected judiciary in the conduct of Pennsylvania’s election, thereby usurping the sole power that the Legislature has pursuant to Article II of the federal constitution to determine the manner for choosing presidential electors. Because of those illegal actions, the Senators noted “that PA election results should not have been certified,” and asked that the Congress “delay certification of the Electoral College to allow due process as we pursue election integrity in our Commonwealth.” Similar letters were sent from Pennsylvania house members, and from legislators in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Arizona’s included this: “Based upon the clear and convincing nature of the evidence [of illegality and fraud], we respectfully ask that you recognize our desire to reclaim Arizona’s Electoral College Electors and block the use of any Electors from Arizona until such time as the controversy is properly resolved through the pending litigation or a comprehensive forensic audit.”

It is also a fact that a forensic analysis of the one voting machine courts have permitted to be inspected demonstrated not only that the machines are capable of switching votes, but they actually did switch votes in Antrim County, Michigan.

In other words, it is patently untrue that my statements have “no basis in fact or law.”

As for the claim that by raising these issues, I have sought to “harm the democratic foundations of our constitutional republic,” nothing could be further from the truth. As noted above, the Constitution sets out the authority for choosing electors, and that authority was usurped by non-legislative partisans in several states. Legislators in the contested states have quite reasonably asserted that the illegal conduct effected the outcome of the election. If true—and a full forensic audit would confirm whether or not it is true—then the democratic foundations of our constitutional republic were not just harmed but completely subverted by those partisan actors who violated election laws in order to permit the counting of illegal votes. Shining a light on what occurred is the highest defense of the constitutional republic, and such an investigation ought to be welcomed by citizens of all political stripes rather than blocked by those who are acting as though they have something to hide.

The letter signed by 169 members of the Chapman faculty and Board of Trustees is even more scurrilous. It claims, falsely, that I “participated in a riot that incited” last week’s violence at the nation’s Capital. I participated in a peaceful rally of nearly ½ million people, two miles away from the violence that occurred at the capital and which began even before the speeches were finished. And unless simply identifying illegal actions by election officials qualifies as “incitement”—under the law and well- established Supreme Court precedent, it clearly does not—then this charge is really an attempt to shut down the exercise of First Amendment rights. Nor did I “spout lies” about secret folders in the machines—the forensic audit discussed above has identified the suspension files in the software. Neither is there anything “conspiratorial” about simply identifying the available evidence.

I am grateful that not a single one of my colleagues at the Law School signed such a defamatory letter. To my knowledge, not one of the faculty signers has a law degree, and the three members of the Board of Trustees who are lawyers (and hyper-partisan Democrats) are clearly not well-versed in the constitutional questions at issue—either the Article II role of legislatures, or the definition of the “incitement” exception to the First Amendment’s freedom of speech. Nevertheless, these 169 have created such a hostile environment for me that I no longer wish to be a member of the Chapman faculty, and am therefore retiring from my position, effective immediately. I am currently on leave from Chapman while serving as the Visiting Professor of Conservative Thought and Policy at the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization at the University of Colorado Boulder, so my mid-year retirement will not have any impact on my Chapman students. Once that visitorship is concluded, I plan to devote my full-time efforts to the Claremont Institute and its Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, which I direct.

Still more, "Statement from the Office of the President."

The Real Reason Most Republicans Opposed Impeachment

It's Ben Shapiro, at Politico's Playbook, via Memeorandum:

Howdy from Nashville, y’all! I’m BEN SHAPIRO, and I host the conservative podcast and radio show “The Ben Shapiro Show”; I’m also editor emeritus of the Daily Wire, husband to a medical doctor, and father to three children who run me more ragged than the news cycle.

Or at least they used to, before all time was condensed into a political gravitational singularity, where one day is several years long.

So, let’s get to it.

The big news of the day, of course, is the House’s impeachment of President DONALD J. TRUMP for the second time in just over a year. It was a foregone conclusion that the Democratic House would do so — the only question was how many Republicans would vote along with Democrats to impeach Trump over his behavior leading up to and surrounding the Capitol riot.

In the end, 10 did — ranging from Rep. LIZ CHENEY (R-Wyo.), the third-ranking Republican in the House, who called openly and clearly for impeachment; to Rep. FRED UPTON (R-Mich.), who said he’d prefer censure but that he’d settle for impeachment.

The spotlight immediately moved to Senate Majority Leader MITCH MCCONNELL, who now says that he hasn’t made up his mind on impeachment. It seems he’ll leave Republicans to their own devices on the Senate vote when it takes place.

Many in the media seem bewildered that House Republicans didn’t unanimously join Democrats in supporting impeachment (looking at you, Playbook readers in the media) — after all, Republicans were in the building when rioters broke through, seeking to do them grievous physical harm. My Republican sources tell me that opposition to impeachment doesn’t spring from generalized sanguinity over Trump’s behavior: I’ve been receiving calls and texts for more than a week from elected Republicans heartsick over what they saw in the Capitol.

Opposition to impeachment comes from a deep and abiding conservative belief that members of the opposing political tribe want their destruction, not simply to punish Trump for his behavior. Republicans believe that Democrats and the overwhelmingly liberal media see impeachment as an attempt to cudgel them collectively by lumping them in with the Capitol rioters thanks to their support for Trump.

The evidence for that position isn’t difficult to find.

Sen. RON WYDEN (D-Ore.) suggested this week at NBCNews.com that the only way to prevent a repeat of the Capitol riot was endorsement of a full slate of Democratic agenda items. Rep. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-N.Y.) suggested that “Southern states are not red states, they are suppressed states, which means the only way that our country is going to heal is through the actual liberation of Southern states …” And PAUL KRUGMAN of The New York Times placed blame for the Capitol riots on the entire Republican Party infrastructure: “This Putsch Was Decades In The Making.”

Unity looks a lot like “sign onto our agenda, or be lumped in with the Capitol rioters.”

More.

And at the Daily Beast (safe link), "‘Mischief Making’: Politico Boss Defends Handing Playbook Over to Right-Wing Bombthrower Ben Shapiro."

Lincoln Project Co-Founder John Weaver Accused of 'Grooming' Young Men, Offering Jobs for Sex

At Red State, "More 'Grooming for Sex' Allegations Surface Against Lincoln Project Co-Founder John Weaver."

And at the Other McCain, "Far Be It From Me to Repeat Salacious Gossip About RINO Backstabbers, But …"  

Psychological Analysis of the Capitol Riot

From a former colleague of mine, on Facebook:

This morning, I decided to watch Trump’s inaugural speech for the first time. It is the best speech I have ever seen him give. I can see why his followers were enthusiastic about him, as it was the epitome of a populist message. He sounded as though the public’s interest was the only thing that mattered to him. He seemed much more together and credible than that he does today. Too bad it was just rhetoric. It has become patently clear that, true to what is typical with narcissistic tendencies, Trump only cares about himself. Much lower down on the scale of concern are the current Trump loyalists, although they are prone to being thrown overboard whenever they cross him. It’s all so predictable, when you know the features of a narcissistic personality disorder (not to mention an antisocial personality disorder).

*****

To me, a former Republican, who feels that the party left me before I left it, the current Republican party seems to consist of delusional people, such as the QAnon folks; white supremacist groups; haters, who are [the] most scary at all, because they are directionless and have been observed to swing 180 degrees in their targets, but just seek some group to vilify; religious fundamentalists who are essentially one-issue voters and thus willing to sell their souls to the devil in a Faustian bargain in order to protect the unborn; and rational conservatives who wear masks, socially distance, well know that Biden won the election fair-and-square, but still believe that despite his massive character flaws, autocratic bent, and disregard for anyone but himself, Trump is still better for them and the country than those horrid Democrats. I suppose another category would be the ambitious politicians and corporate people who seek personal benefit from backing Trump, and care about little else. Although not Republicans, I would be remiss not to mention Putin, et al. as staunch supporters of Trump. I don't see any heroes here. Did I miss a group of noble Republicans that I missed because of my partisan blinders?

*****

Excuse me, I did miss one group of noble Republicans, those who established The Lincoln Project. They have sought to cajole their fellow Republicans into embracing the traditional values of their party. Out of concern for the survival of our democracy, and a desire to return the Republican party to the respectable values it has traditionally embraced, this group has been tireless in their efforts to bring our national politics back to normal.

"Noble Republicans."

Hardly.  *Shrugs.*

'I won't apologize, for acting outta line. You see the way I am, you leave any time you can, 'cuz ... I'm crazy and I'm hurt. Head on my shoulders. Going ... berserk...'

I'm not leaving Facebook nor Twitter. 

"I'm going to rant like a mofo for the next four years. Won't change a thing, of course, but it gets the aggression out, at least. Better here [Facebook] than elsewhere, wtf?"

'Oh, my goodness. The gloves are completely off now...'

That's Robert Stacy McCain responding to this:

I'm Not Quitting Facebook and Twitter

They can boot me off, but I'm staying on these platforms for the fight:

Gonna quit social media if I’m booted off Facebook and Twitter. The fight is on these platforms, not Parler, Gab, etc., which are mere echo chamber outlets with no power.

See Arlen Williams as well: 

Nikki Richards Speaks Out!

She used to have a blog, like 10 years ago, and I lost contact with her.

But she posted on Facebook yesterday, and, I mean, wow! She's got it! 

Before I completely delete my account from Facebook and most of social mafia, I have something to say. This assault on free speech is disturbing and should terrify EVERYONE. These are the rights our government should be protecting and now they are promoting the silencing of millions. Conservative platforms are being removed and censored, not just the President, but his supporters and those with monetized platforms. This is America, and now my fellow citizens you have only one view that you are being fed by the media. You will be next. Soon your speech will be censored too. The reactivation of my Facebook account was met by community standards violations that were mere articles from conservative sources. The civil rights of millions were taken away the past couple of days and you all are silent. Your rights are next, unless you comply with the left. The exchange of ideas and debate is over. You may despise Trump and his so called rhetoric but now that is the excuse for silencing millions. And ask yourself what your current rhetoric is towards Trump supporters. Are you feeding a tyrannical silencing? The information you are getting from the MSM IS FALSE. You are all on the WRONG SIDE OF THIS FIGHT. PS. Parler is being shut down by the Apple and Google platforms unless they comply with their censorship guidelines. Afraid yet? You should be.

PPS. With a dominant Democratic congress and executive branch, this will only get worse.

 

'There will be all sorts of depredations visited upon us by those who wield all the influence of culture, academia, and state...'

 It's Krakatoa, at AoSHQ, "EMT 1/9/21 - The Stupid Edition":

Don't do stupid things.

Take it from a moron: You know they are stupid, deep down, when you have to tell other people, often relative strangers, all about the stupid thing you really want to do hoping for some validation and fellowship.

At that point, even if that thing wasn't really stupid to begin with , it turned stupid once it left your mouth and hit the ears of people you don't know enough about to be able to trust.

Generally, people that encourage your stupid ideas aren't quality friends.

Stupid things will get you in trouble. Could be small trouble. Could be really big trouble.

I have a friend who does more than his share of stupid things, and since his two closest friends kept trying to talk him out of those things, he cultivated new friends. At his heart he is a prepper. He is far too unhealthy to be any sort of danger, and he acknowledges that.

One of those new friends just got picked up by the state B.I., along with all his computers, guns [and] other assorted stuff. Blowing off steam is one thing.

Using a "free" email service to sending emails that entertain all sorts of vengeance plots is another. Participating in email groups where that sort of thing goes on is stupid.

Following up those emails with in-person meetings of supposed like-minded travelers is running the stupid flag to the top of the pole for everyone to see.

Some of you may know that old poker saying: If you are sitting at the table and you can't figure out who the donkey is, you are the donkey.

Well similar to that is that in any group of 3 people plotting violence, no matter how justified two of those my feel, the third is probably an informant.

It was stupid of my friend to visit with those people a few weeks ago, even if his goal was to talk them down. We tried to talk him out of it, but now I fear he will soon be joining his new friend in trouble with the law, even though his focus is prepping and personal defense.

Things are bad, and they are going to get worse.

There will be all sorts of depredations visited upon us by those who wield all the influence of culture, academia, and state...

Still more.

 

Dueling Protests and Violence at Pacific Beach?

Actually, no. 

Or is that Ngo, as in Andy Ngo, "A mob of antifa assault a small group of conservatives in San Diego, Cal. The black bloc mob is also waving an #antifa flag."

Antifa goons are using the Capitol riot to get him banned from Twitter, which they've been trying to do for years, to say nothing of murdering him.

Also at ABC News 10 San Diego: