Opinion

Testimony before the House Jan. 6 committee has often been cringeworthy, primarily because what Donald Trump was actively trying to do — his steadfast intent, in the face of all evidence and most of the advice from the approximately sane people around him — is abundantly clear to anyone who has an open mind.

But it gets especially excruciating when we have to hear accounts of Trump getting all hissy and hurt, his tantrums turning to vindictiveness, like an immature, petulant high school student. (Most likely a ninth-grader with emotional problems.)

A common response to the Colorado primary election results this week was to remark that Republican voters rejected the election conspiracists, returned the party to the mainstream, signaled support for the establishment over the fringe.

It’s true that in several high-profile races the most reality-challenged, “team crazy” candidates got beat bad. That’s a relief.

The 2021-2022 Supreme Court term will go down in infamy.

The right-wing majority behaved as if they were kids in a candy store, stuffing their faces with all their favorite goodies knowing there was no one who could stop them and no one who could hold them accountable for having done it. On gun rights, abortion, religion and the environment they took a wrecking ball to the court's precedents and created bold new tests out of thin air. It was a breath-taking exercise of sheer institutional power — and they're just getting started.

The U.S. Supreme Court gave a rare victory today to President Joe Biden in its 5-4 ruling that will allow him to reverse one of the Trump Administration’s most xenophobic policies on the Southern border.

The Court found that the Biden administration “had the authority to reverse a Trump-era initiative that requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while their cases are reviewed in U.S. courts,” the Washington Post reported. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts “said federal immigration law gives the executive discretion: He may return asylum seekers to Mexico but is not required to do so.”

When the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week, the court's conservative supermajority performed a nifty sleight-of-hand, as if dressed in magician's capes rather than judicial robes.

The six conservatives suggested that the court wasn't scrapping a half-century of settled law, but empowering the people to solve the contentious issue of abortion rights themselves, via the political process.

It’s clear the Supreme Court couldn’t care less about history, judicial precedent, basic consistency or common decency.

Rather than follow a coherent judicial philosophy, the rightwing swings wildly from one theory of interpretation to another to suit their political agenda, not legal principles.

Apparently, Brett Kavanaugh made a promise to US Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who says she’s pro-choice, that he would not vote to overturn Roe if appointed to the Supreme Court.

This is getting a lot of attention, because Collins is getting a lot of attention. She said she believed he wouldn’t go there. Then last Friday, he and five other justices went there, stripping half the country of half their social standing and legal status as free and equal citizens.

For two hours Tuesday, former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson calmly, matter-of-factly testified to the commission of high crimes by the former president and by many of those around him.

She told her fellow Americans that Trump had been informed on the morning of Jan. 6 that the mob assembled by his command had armed itself with “knives, guns in the form of pistols and rifles, bear spray, body armor, spears, and flagpoles.” She spoke of efforts within the Trump White House to remove violent language from the president’s speech that day, to prevent incitement, and she told us that Trump had refused to change that language.

I must confess that I've written things in the last two days I never thought I'd write — at least not in a work of nonfiction.

For example: In my most feverish nightmares I never dreamed I'd have to tell people that a former adviser to the president, a decorated retired U.S. Army general with years of service to his country under his belt, would take the Fifth Amendment when asked by a Republican member of Congress, "Do you believe in a peaceful transfer of power?"

Right after the draft of the Roe v. Wade opinion leaked, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, a Democrat, condemned peaceful protests near Supreme Court judges' houses as "reprehensible" and promptly voted to provide more security for Brett McBeer and company. I wasn't surprised that my senator was quicker to protect Sam Alito from candlelight vigils than he was to protect me and my family from Sam Alito. But as a novelist and a woman, I'm furious and terrified Democrats have lost the entire plot, and the American experiment is next, not least because Dems have no idea how to tell a story.

Wannabe tyrants represent only about a quarter to a third of the population, but you wouldn't know it by the behavior of the Democratic Party. Cowering, dithering Dems accept the most ludicrous Fox News framing of every issue from inflation to policing to abortion, perpetually stumped by right-wing mud-slinging. In response to rabid authoritarianism, they hem and haw, shuffle policy papers, babble about "bipartisanship" and attempt to negotiate with GOP grifters who call them pedophiles. And then these same Democrats turn around and blame a handful of progressives, when it's conservatives from both parties who block and shred every scrap of legislation that might make all our lives a little less apocalyptic. And the administration wonders why Biden's approval numbers are tanking?

Rightwing Republicans have since at least the 1960s accused college campuses of indoctrinating students with leftist ideologies. They call for more free speech (read: rightwing speech) in order to combat such indoctrination. And, recently, the calls have been getting louder.

The most visible manifestation of this is Turning Point USA (TPUSA). TPUSA maintains a website called the Professor Watchlist. TPUSA’s list includes academics who are well-known, including Noam Chomsky and Angela Davis. Some are lesser-known. The list also includes lesser-known but vocal academics such as Dr. Anthea Butler, whose authorship of White Evangelical Racism and frequent contributions to MSNBC are tailor-made to catch TPUSA’s eye.

Liz Cheney, the vice chairwoman of the J6 commitment, knows that powerful eyewitness testimony and damning facts won’t necessarily change the minds of Republican voters who believe in Donald Trump.

That’s why, you may have noticed, she has been subtly but firmly appealing to their sense of honor and loyalty, such as it is, and repeatedly reminding them that the witnesses who have testified against the former president are lifelong conservative Republicans.