Merrick Garland Needs to Be Thanked for His Service and Shown the Door
Charles Pierce Esquire
Attorney General Merrick Garland. (photo: Susan Walsh/Press Pool)
He is not equipped to use all the tools god gave the Department of Justice to thwart the genuine threat to the Republic that is El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago, and the dangerous political climate he has created.
He is not equipped to use all the tools god gave the Department of Justice to thwart the genuine threat to the Republic that is El Caudillo del Mar-A-Lago, and the dangerous political climate he has created. The former president* should have been charged federally with insurrection literally years ago. (Hell, during Thursday's oral arguments in the Supreme Court concerning the former president*'s eligibility under the 14th Amendment, even Justice Brett Kavanaugh wondered why he hadn't been so charged, and Kavanaugh used to work for Ken Starr, if we're talking about using all the DOJ's tools at your disposal.) The DOJ should have gone hammer-and-tongs after all the members of Congress who had the slightest connection with the insurrection. Somebody higher than the bear spray crowd should have been arrested and held until trial. Some of the expensive loafers should have been confiscated during the booking process rather than all those duckboots.
As diligent as Jack Smith has been, and god save the good work, he shouldn't have been necessary. This business didn't need a special counsel. It needed the Attorney General and the FBI right from jump. It should have been the very first item on Garland's plate when he walked in the door. And he's spent nearly four years faffing around until Republican congresscritters, some of whom had very curious connections to the events of that day, feel free to call the thugs and vandals, "political prisoners," and we've even come to arguing over whether or not the violence of that day constituted an "insurrection." Mother of god, the former president* is even money to be the next president, and the only real obstacle in his way seems to be whether or not his coronary arteries will do good service.
Thursday was the end for me. Appointing a Republican hack like Robert Hur to "investigate" the non-crimes of the president was bad enough, but then to allow Hur to pile on a political hit piece about the president's memory, thereby normalizing one of the former president*'s attack lines on DOJ stationery, is not admirably fair-minded, it's constitutionally suicidal. God save us from the fair-minded. They'll kill the country and wonder how they did it.
Meanwhile, on the other side of things, the ratfcking of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia continues apace. You may have noticed that prosecutor Fani Willis has taken some hits over her personal life. Well, it seems that the hits are coming from the members of the very conspiracy she's been investigating. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
A full court press is underway in the Georgia Senate to punish Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. And it has the blessing of Lt. Gov Burt Jones, a Donald Trump ally and Republican legislative leader who could face charges for his conduct following the 2020 election. Jones is using his considerable political influence as president of the state Senate to allow separate legislative probes that scrutinize how Willis is handling a backlog of criminal cases and spending taxpayer dollars to oversee what he derides as a “circus” prosecution. For a high-profile politician who could still face criminal charges, the lieutenant governor is unusually vocal in his criticism of Willis and her election interference case against the former president and 14 remaining co-defendants.
Do tell.
As a state senator, Jones was among 16 Republican activists who signed documents in December 2020 asserting they were duly elected presidential electors from Georgia, where multiple vote counts had shown Joe Biden had won against Trump, and he was sent a target letter in July 2022 with other GOP electors warning of possible charges. Jones filed a motion not long afterward seeking to block Willis from bringing charges against him because she had hosted a fundraiser for Charlie Bailey, who had gone on to run against Jones as a Democrat, and a Fulton County judge disqualified Willis and her office from investigating him further.
The guy was an actual fake elector, which was the very heart of the national scheme to steal the election through some phony legislative sleight-of-hand. In fact, the person who first exposed Willis's affair with prosecutor Nathan Wade, was a guy named Michael Roman, who is actually one of the defendants under indictment for running the Georgia end of the scheme. Charge Jones immediately and revoke Roman's bail. How long, o Lord, how long?
Weekly Non-WWOZ Pick To Click: The website of the mighty 'OZ was down at this writing so, instead, I bring you a tribute to the site of the big, noisy football game this coming Sunday from a singer whom I feel is very special.
Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archive: We have Mardi Gras and, in Ashbourne in Derbyshire, for Shrove Tuesday, from 1963, they have...this. I believe any sport where the shopkeeper's have to board up the windows as part of the pre-game needs an adjustment in the rules, and perhaps electroshock for the athletes. History is so cool.
Good god, don't give him ideas.
Discovery Corner: Hey, look what we found! From Smithsonian:
The blacksmith’s workshop—or “smithy”—was found during a dig in Oxfordshire by the excavation company DigVentures. Radiocarbon dating suggests it was likely active between 770 and 515 B.C.E., near the beginning of Britain’s Iron Age. Researchers tell the Guardian’s Dalya Alberge they are “completely blown away” by the site’s age and contents. “This is a rare glimpse of a master craftsperson at work from such a pivotal point in time—the arrival of ironworking in Britain,” says DigVentures archaeologist Maiya Pina-Dacier.
No evidence of a spreading chestnut tree was found, but I suspect this guy invented that Shrove Tuesday ballgame.
Hey, ABC. Is it a good day for dinosaur news? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!
Over 166 million years after its time roaming the Earth, scientists announced the discovery of a winged dinosaur skeleton that was found on the Isle of Skye. In findings published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology on Feb. 5, researchers discovered the remains of a single pterosaur, named Ceoptera evansae, that's believed to have lived 166 to 168 million years ago during the Middle Jurassic period...In the findings, researchers say Ceoptera evansae hails from a group of pterosaurs known as Darwinoptera, which were believed to mainly live in China, where the species' fossils have been discovered before.
This guy may have been the Lucky Lindy of pterosaurs. All the way from China to Scotland. I hope they gave him a parade. We should, because he lived then to make us happy now.
I'll be back on Monday for whatever fresh hell awaits. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line. Wear the damn mask. Take the damn shots, especially the boosters, and especially the most recent boosters. And spare a moment for the people of Israel and of Gaza, the people of Ukraine, of Lewiston in Maine, and of the earthquake zones in Iraq, Turkey, Morocco, and Colombia, and in the flood zone in Libya, and the flood zones on the Horn of Africa, and in the English midlands, and in Texas and Louisiana, and in California and in the storm-battered south of Georgia, and in Kenya, and in the flood zones surrounding this very keyboard, and in the fire zones in Australia, and in Lahaina, where they're still trying to recover their lives, and under the volcano in Iceland, and for the traumatized folks in Austin and at UNLV, and in Perry, Iowa, and especially for our fellow citizens in the LGBTQ+ community, who deserve so much better from their country than they've been getting.
