Eric The Blue

Some philosophers

I follow on Twitter Agnes Callard, a philosophy professor at the University of Chicago with a lively  feed. The other day she retweeted someone who had reproduced the following paragraphs, by the philosopher Jerry Fodor (pictured), with the comment, "I wish I could write like Jerry Fodor." The passage looks to me like a footnote in an actual academic paper Fodor wrote:

⁴I am reading, "What makes Wheaties the breakfast of champions?" as asking "What about Wheaties makes champions of (some, many, so many) Wheaties eaters?" rather than "What about Wheaties makes (some, many, so many) champions eat them?" The latter question invites the reasons that champions give for eating Wheaties; and though these may include reference to properties Wheaties have by virtue of which its eaters become champions, they need not do so. Thus, a plausible answer to the second question which is not plausibly an answer to the first might be: "They taste good."

I am uncertain which of these questions the Wheaties people have in mind when they ask "What makes Wheaties the breakfast of champions?" rhetorically, as, I believe, they are wont to do. Much of their advertising consists of publicizing statements by champions to the effect that they (the champions) do, in fact, eat Wheaties. If, as may be the case, such statements are offered as arguments for the truth of the presupposition of the question on its first reading (viz., that there is something about Wheaties that makes champions of those who eat them), then it would appear that General Mills has either misused the method of differences or committed the fallacy of affirmation of the consequent. 

Philosophy can be made out of anything. Or less. 

With Wheaties I'm familiar, and I've now googled "Jerry Fodor," "method of differences," and "affirmation of the consequent." Fodor was a philosophy professor, or philosopher, whose specialty was "philosophy of mind," including "philosophy of language" and "cognition." I take it he was interested in questions like, "What is going on in your mind (or brain) when you are engaged in what we call 'thinking'?" Sometimes it seems like you are saying words to yourself:

Boy, I really hope the team that plays its home games in the city in which I live wins the tournament.

But that doesn't explain all "thoughts." For example, if someone asked, in something I was reading,

What does a carburetor look like?

I would "think the words"

I have no idea

but someone else, who actually knows what a carburetor looks like, would have some kind of brain activity more accurately represented by a phrase like "formed a mental image" of, in this case, a carburetor: no words, in other words, but a picture instead. These are the kinds of things, it seems, that Fodor thought about, including while reading the panel of a Wheaties box at the breakfast table. 

The "method of differences" refers to a reasoning process sometimes illustrated by a family meal gone bad. If everyone eats everything and everyone gets sick, the culprit is a mystery; but, if one person refrains from eating salad, and she's the only one who doesn't get sick, then logic dictates that suspicion falls upon the salad. But be careful!

Carl Lewis, Lindsey Vonn, and Michael Phelps eat Wheaties for breakfast, whereas Eric Jorgenson prefers frosted miniwheats. Therefore, eating Wheaties for breakfast makes Olympic champions.

The fallacy of affirmation of the consequent is another instance of the slipperiness associated with assigning causes to events. From the truth of a conditional statement 

If there's a power outage after a storm, then the houses will be dark

one should not conclude that the following switcheroo results in more truth:

If the houses are dark, then there's been a storm and the power is out. 

While clicking here and there, from the starting point of "Jerry Fodor," I ended up reading this obituary of the legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin. It's quite long, and I'd bet 97 readers out of a hundred will remember only the anecdote pertaining to an incident from Dworkin's courtship of his eventual wife. He'd been an ace law student and so as a young man got a job clerking for the famous federal appeals court judge Learned Hand. At the start of one of their first dates, Dworkin explained that he had to drop off a document at the home of his boss. Hand, who was then in his 80s, met the young couple at the door and insisted that they step inside. He then spent the next two hours mixing dry martinis and talking brilliantly. As they were leaving, Dworkin's future wife said to him, "If I see more of you, do I get to see more of him?"

Enjoyable, though arguably a better fit in Hand's obituary.

Homework

Whew! This morning's effort at "snow" removal was like using a shovel to empty a swimming pool. I feel like my aged cat, who used to entertain himself by jumping from the floor to the top of the refrigerator but who I now lift onto the bathroom vanity so that he can drink from the running faucet while I brush my teeth.

With steady application, however, I can still help my 7th-grader work through to the solution of a vexing math problem. Word problems in particular cause her to throw her arms in the air and yell, with her expressive face, because I would frown if she used her larynx, "WTF!?"

A man receives income from two investments at simple interest rates of 6½% and 8%, respectively. He has twice as much invested at 6½% as at 8%. If his annual interest from the two investments is $698.25, find how much is invested at each rate.

First, since this is the Minneapolis Public Schools, I think the problem should commence, "A person of unspecified gender mired in end-stage capitalism . . ."—but let's accept it on its own unwoke terms. "Calm down," I say to her, since in my experience that works with women of all ages, "and give thanks that it's simple interest. You just need to change the words into equations."

Look of expressive despair converted to blank disdain, but, with coaxing, she writes down, after a couple false starts:

0.065x + 0.08y = 698.25

And what else do you know? "There's twice as much at 6½%,"  she says. A little light in her eyes now. That look must be why some people stay in education despite the low pay. She writes down

x = 2y

and now knows just what to do:

0.065(2y) + 0.08y = 698.25
0.13y + 0.08y = 698.25
0.21y = 698.25
y = 698.25 ÷ 0.21 = 3325

She's really happy when she punches the last button on her calculator and sees the nice round figure, "3325." That's when you know you're right. If it was fractions of a cent, or even of a dollar, back to the drawing board. But this is math class, not real life, and I remember that moment of tension followed immediately by either despair [3325.4148629713] or satisfaction [3325]. Homework help almost makes me feel young again. I remind her that she needs to say how much is invested at each rate.

y  = 3325 and x = 2y so x = 3325 x 2 = 6650⇒the dude had $6650 at 6½% and $3325 at 8%. 

I make a joke about how "the dude" needs a different financial advisor, but she saved the hardest problem for last and is already on her phone, calling her bff, whom she never sees anymore except on Facetime—for the same reason that school is in her bedroom. I had a little fun with the details of the problem but am impressed that school kids in Minneapolis are learning this stuff in 7th grade. I mean, I'd be surprised if the people Hollywood stars and hedge fund managers hire to take college entrance exams for their kids couldn't do problems like this, but presumably they're not  7th graders. At this rate, she's on her own within a year or two. 

Funniest thing I read today: Women on a dating app switch their political filter to "conservative" in order to find men who offer to send them pics of themselves inside the Capitol on January 6. The women then forward the pics along with their correspondent's dating profile to the FBI. I wonder if the FBI is embarrassed not to have thought to do this itself. More women should work in law enforcement. For some reason, they seem to have a better handle on how stupid these losers are apt to be. 

A squirming dog who's just had his day

I've had one thought about the Trump impeachment that, so far as I know, hasn't been noted by any of the professional commentators. I doubt it's because I don't watch Fox, except occasionally out of curiosity to see what they're talking about after Trump has once again shat the bed. (Violent mob of Trump supporters invades Capitol, killing cop, but there is this English professor at a liberal arts college in Middletown whose views on gender identity are considered odd by many Southern Baptists!)

Anyway, here is my hot analysis:

I'm sure Trump was saving up his newsiest pardons for the last hour, like the grand finale to a fireworks show: Giuliani, his own family members, his own self—the explosion in the night sky was to spell out UNDER MY THUMB! But Mitch McConnell has signaled that conviction in the Senate is possible and he is not himself sure how he'll vote. Trump can still issue the pardons, of course, but now doing so places a few more grams on one side of a nearly balanced scale. Trump's on probation. He can't act with impunity anymore and McConnell is humming, just loud enough for everyone to hear:

It's down to me
The way he talks when he's spoken to
Down to me, the change has come
He's under my thumb.

Delicious, even if you despise McConnell. Like if the Badgers beat Norte Dame: you wish it could have been someone else, but, good enough.

Honor roll

Ten out of 207 Republicans? Maybe if Trump's mob had found Pence and hanged him, like they were chanting about, there would have been a full dozen. 

Well, it does make you curious about the ten, and it's a small enough number to read up on in one night.

Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, has by far the highest profile. She of course is the daughter of Dick Cheney, W's vice president, and is behind only Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise in the House Republican pecking order. She represents the entire state of Wyoming, whose population is less than that of almost all other congressional districts. Trump won Wyoming by 70 to 27 percent. Her statement explaining her vote reads in part:

The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution. 

Her Republican colleagues are already moving to strip her of her leadership role in the House of Representatives.

Adam Kinzinger represents Illinois' 16th congressional district—western exurbs of Chicago and the city of Rockford. The district twice voted for Trump by double-digit margins. He was first elected in 2010 with 57 percent of the vote, and has never received less than that in any of his reelections. He's a former Air Force pilot. Reading through the summary of his political views in Wikipedia, it appears I agree with him about precisely one thing: Trump. On the day after the attack on the Capitol, he called for the president's removal via the 25th Amendment. He was interviewed about his impeachment vote on this evening's PBS News Hour. Judy Woodruff asked whether it had been a hard decision. He answered that it had not. 

John Katko represents New York's 24th congressional district, which stretches along the southern shore of Lake Ontario and includes the city of Syracuse. Biden carried the district, as did Hillary Clinton. The Cook Political Report's PVI for the district is D+3. Katco, a lawyer, was first elected in 2014 after having served as an Assistant US Attorney in Syracuse, where he headed the organized crime division. His reelection race in 2018, which he won by 5 points, was his closest. In 2020 he had a rematch against the same Democratic challenger, Dana Balter, a professor at Syracuse University, and this time he beat her by 10 points. His political views are moderate and, apparently, a good fit for the district: he's opposed to abortion but has been critical of efforts to repeal Obamacare, and he's co-sponsored a bill extending the protections of the Civil Rights Act to LGBT people. He was the first Republican to announce he'd vote to impeach. One of his former interns now works as a Capitol Hill police officer and was admitted to hospital after being severely beaten by the mob on January 6.

Fred Upton's district is Michigan's 6th. It's in the southwest corner of the state, bordered by Lake Michigan on the west and Indiana on the south, biggest town is Kalamazoo. Trump carried the district twice, by 8 points in 2016 and by 4 points in 2020. Upton probably qualifies as a "career politician." He's been in the Congress for almost 30 years and before that worked in the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan administration. He announced his intention to vote for impeachment on Twitter this morning:

Today the President characterized his inflammatory rhetoric at last Wednesday's rally as "totally appropriate," and he expressed no regrets for last week's violent insurrection at the US Capitol. . . . I would have preferred a bipartisan, formal censure rather than a drawn-out impeachment process. I fear this will now interfere with important legislative business and a new Biden Administration. But it is time to say: Enough is enough. . . . I will vote to impeach.

Upton is now the first US representative to have voted for the impeachment of two presidents, Clinton and Trump. 

Jaime Herrera Beutler, 42, is beginning her sixth term representing Washington's 3rd congressional district, which runs along the border with Oregon from the Pacific Ocean to the central part of the state. Trump carried the district twice, by seven points against Clinton and then by four against Biden. She was first elected, with 53 percent of the vote, in 2010 when the seat became open after the Democratic incumbent retired. Redistricting after the 2010 census extended the district somewhat farther east and made it more Republican: in all but one of her reelections (2018), she's won by a double-digit margin, most recently by 13 points. Her statement supporting impeachment may be read here. Although Democrats and the impeachment article itself stress Trump's "incitement" of his supporters at the rally preceding the assault on the Capitol, Herrera Beutler is plainly more distressed by his actions (or inaction) while the attack was in progress and the statement he recorded afterwards in which he said the rioters were "special" and "we love you." 

Funny, when you type the first few letters of these names into Google, the wizards in the ether immediately guess who you're looking for. I bet it was different yesterday. You do have to get to the "d" in "Fred" before getting a list headed by Fred Upton, just ahead of Freddie Mercury, which would probably amuse Fred Upton, unless he doesn't know about Freddie Mercury, a distinct possibility. The remaining five are Dan Newhouse of Washington, Peter Meijer of Michigan, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio (a former Buckeye football player and Indianapolis Colt), Tom Rice of South Carolina, and David Valadao of California. I'm aborting this mission. You can read about them in Wikipedia, or wherever, as well as here: the links are to their Wikipedia bios. Tom Rice is second to Tom Brady among Google's favorite Toms, but I think he could move up were he to say that the Earth is warming and the greenhouse effect is to blame. 

 

Notes on a Chinese curse

The Chinese curse is, "May you live in interesting times."

1. The Twenty-fifth Amendment isn't going to work. It would require Pence to act in concert with a majority of cabinet secretaries—in other words, big dogs, and there are only puppies. This morning, House Democrats tried to introduce a unanimous consent motion calling on Pence to begin implementing Remedy 25, but of course one objection cancels "unanimous," and there are around 200 Republicans, so, mixing metaphors, that plane was never headed to the start of the runway.

2. Impeachment: not enough time to get Trump out early, but conviction, even after his term is up, could carry the enticing penalty of disqualification from ever again holding federal office. From what I can tell, reading hither and thither, mostly here, this involves a two-step verdict in the Senate. First, Trump would have to be convicted on the impeachment article, which requires a two-thirds vote. Only after a conviction could the senators then turn to the question of whether Trump should be disqualified from holding office. The wrinkle is that imposing this penalty requires only a simple majority of voting senators, though it must be preceded by the two-thirds vote to convict. The thing to notice in this regard is that a Republican senator who wanted to stop Trump from being a candidate would have to first vote for conviction. I'm inclined to think, considering the craven instincts on display for four years, that this makes conviction less likely, notwithstanding the crime: the president incited a riot to try and stop the constitutional process of confirming the winner of the election he lost. 

3. Employing a fire extinguisher, the mob bludgeoned to death a police officer inside the United States Capitol—and Republicans are complaining, for example, about the number of followers they've lost on social media sites. Simon and Schuster canceled a book deal with Josh Hawley, the Missouri senator who, with Ted Cruz, has led the effort to throw out the certified election result. This elicited from Hawley a hysterical statement asserting that the First Amendment is in abeyance, as if a private company is obliged to publish his manuscript. By Hawley's logic, if I were to submit this blog post to the editorial page of the New York Times, which then declined to publish it, I'd have a cause for action against the Gray Lady on First Amendment grounds. He's a poor advertisement for whatever law school he attended—Yale, I understand. He knows better? So much the worse for him. Better to be stupid than a preening, self-seeking, manipulative, straight-A reprobate.  

4. It's weird how Democrats have been unable to make government hold Trump to account, but Republicans can't stop the private sector from expressing distaste. I wonder whether our president is more upset about being banned from Twitter or having the PGA pull a big tournament from his Bedminster course. These are the things he cares about. The body count from the public health debacle is going to hit 400,000 before he's out. When did he last allude to it? 

5. To inject a note of bipartisanship, a few Republicans have comported themselves well. Mitt Romney, take a bow:

We gather today due to a selfish man's injured pride and the outrage of his supporters whom he has deliberately misinformed for the past two months and stirred to action this very morning. What happened here today was an insurrection, incited by the President of the United States. 

Farther down the food chain, where the inhabitants are not obliged to estimate political fallout, the incidence of conservatives getting 4 from twice 2 rises modestly. Ed Whelan, the lawyer and conservative operative who last attracted my attention when beclowning himself in the effort to get Kavanaugh confirmed, has contributed to National Review a concise brief for the prosecution:

i. The MAGA attack on the Capitol was an outrage that ought to have every patriotic American seething with anger.

ii. Donald Trump bears grave moral and political responsibility for inciting the attack.

iii. Impeachment and conviction of Trump is an appropriate, and probably necessary, response.

iv. As I have repeatedly observed since the election, Trump's claims of outcome-altering fraud rest on an ever-changing series of ludicrous assertions. It has been sad to see so many people duped by his claims.

6. Attention has been lavished on Trump's hour-long pep talk to his supporters before they were dispatched to march on the Capitol, but how about what he said after they'd erected a gallows on the Capitol grounds, broken into the building, desecrated it, plundered it, shat on the carpets, killed a cop?

This was a fraudulent election, but we can't play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You're very special. You've seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home and go home in peace.

"We love you. You're very special." Wish I could say it's "unbelievable" he'd talk like this. Is it hilarious, or sickening, that he has just enough religious sensibility to imitate a priest giving a benediction? "Go in peace." 

7. It's becoming pretty clear that, while bad, the attack on the Capitol might easily have been far worse. There is footage, shot by a journalist with his cell phone, of a cop luring the mob away from the unguarded corridor leading to the Senate chamber where senators and staff had not yet been evacuated.  According to witnesses, some in the mob were chanting, "Where's Nancy?" while others shouted, "Hang Mike Pence!" They had zip ties and (of course) guns. Hostage taking or a blood bath, or both—averted, but narrowly, and by luck. 

8. Yet there is to it all a large element of buffoonery as well. The guy carrying Pelosi's lectern as he strolled toward a Capitol exit, grinning like a gargoyle at someone taking his picture, turns out to be a stay-at-home dad from the Tampa area. His wife is a medical doctor. So more like what the guys with zip ties would call a "pajama boy" than one of these despairing members of the white working class who will vote for Trump unless he ODs first. A rioter from rural Alabama (pictured above) died of a heart attack during the melee. His family put out a statement describing him as a devoted husband and father, a Trump supporter who loved motorcycles but abjured violence. His Parler posts, however, tell quite a different story: they're ugly, profane, despicable, and at the same time kind of amusingly subliterate. (Maybe the impulse to copy edit his idiocy identifies an "elitist.") The same AP story from which I gleaned the details relating to the deceased Alabama man has an inspired passage that captures, in its inventory of another MAGA guy's possessions and his interrupted itinerary, the odd mixture of depravity and farce:

Also facing federal charges is Cleveland Grover Meredith Jr., a Georgia man who in the wake of the election had protested outside the home of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Trump had publicly blamed for his loss in the state. Meredith drove to Washington last week for the "Save America" rally but arrived late because of a problem with the lights on his trailer, according to court filings that include expletive-laden texts.

[Snip: samples of expletive-laden texts omitted to spare your gentle eyes; the hyperlink to the whole story is above.]

Meredith, who is white, then texted a photo of himself in blackface. "I'm gonna walk around DC FKG with people by yelling 'Allahu ak Bar' randomly."

A participant in the text exchange provided screenshots to the FBI, who tracked Meredith to a Holiday Inn a short walk from the Capitol. They found a compact Tavor X95 assault rifle, a 9 mm Glock 19 handgun and about 100 rounds of ammunition, according to court filings. The agents also seized a stash of THC edibles and a vial of injectable testosterone.

These are the fellahs who get a chubby when Trump complains about "shithole countries" and Mexico "not sending their best." 

Gerrymandering begets political extremism

When the Congress was able to reconvene after Wednesday's insurrection at the Capitol, more than half the Republicans voted to challenge the Electoral College results as certified by the states. But this "more than half" included only 8 of the 52 Republican senators:

Josh Hawley, Missouri
Ted Cruz, Texas
John Kennedy, Louisiana
Cindy Hyde-Smith, Mississippi
Roger Marshall, Kansas
Tommy Tuberville, Alabama
Cynthia Lummis, Wyoming
Rick Scott, Florida

I'm not going to list the House Republicans opposed to democracy, because there are 138 of them—138 of their 211-member caucus. But this does raise the question: why are the House Republicans even nuttier than their colleagues in the Senate? A clue to the answer is to be found in the 8 states represented by the above 8 senators. Trump carried all of them, of course, and he won 6 of the 8 by more than 15 percent of the vote. His average margin in all 8 exceeded 17 percent. Cruz and Scott, from Texas and Florida, where the presidential election was relatively close, both won their seats in 2018 and will not face voters again until 2024. Cruz (and Hawley) plainly have presidential ambitions and are maneuvering for favor with Trump-loving Republican primary voters.

While these 8 states aren't competitive, they are, so to speak, accidentally uncompetitive: their borders were set long ago and are unchanging. Congressional districts, however, are redrawn every 10 years and are designed to be uncompetitive. In a manner of speaking, not just some but most Republican House members are from Alabama. In Ohio, for example, there are 16 congressional districts, 5 of which are represented by Republicans who voted to challenge the certified presidential result. Here, courtesy of the ACLU, are maps of those five districts:

Ohio is not huge in area and has several big and mid-sized cities, in different parts of the state, that are home to lots of Democratic voters: Cleveland, Columbus, Cincinnati, Akron, Dayton, Toledo. This makes it an especial challenge to draw as many safely Republican districts as possible, but obviously they are trying! Several of these maps have "cutouts," which raises the question: what's in the carefully excluded areas? The answer to that question is: Democrats. The map of the first district calls attention to the meticulous excision of Cincinnati, but that's not the only instance. It's about 50 miles from Canton to North Ridgeville, both within the seventh district, but, to travel from one town to the other without leaving the district, you have to drive about 130 miles. What if you  take the direct route? Well, that takes you to Akron and then through the suburbs south of Cleveland—Democratic territory. The eighth district carefully excludes Dayton. Etc.

A corollary of the effort to create Republican districts is that Democrats are sequestered, and concentrated, in the remaining ones: political apartheid, which has the effect of amplifying the most extreme voices. Having meticulously assembled this arrangement Republicans, when it's convenient, bemoan the "rise of partisanship" and piously insist that "all sides must turn down the volume." Last year, a 3-judge panel of the US District Court for the Southern District of Ohio held that Ohio's congressional map was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and ordered that a new one be drawn before this year's election. Ohio Republicans appealed, and five Republican appointees to the Supreme Court held that Congress, but not federal courts, could limit partisan gerrymanders. In other words, the corrupt practice may only be outlawed by its beneficiaries. Just infuriating. 

The Ohio districts that exist for the purpose of holding as many Democratic voters as possible, so that Republicans can represent all the others, are even more outlandish. Here's one that squeezes parts of suburban Cleveland into a district with Toledo, which is a hundred miles from Cleveland; about half way between the cities, the "district" is wide as a road:

PSA

Friends! Give your social media posts more authority than they may deserve by correctly discriminating between "capital" and "capitol." The former refers to a city. The latter refers to a building in that city. So, for example: "The MAGA dude caught a flight to the capital in order to vandalize the Capitol."

I've also been, for around a half hour now, a self-professed expert on the twenty-fifth amendment. It sounds like getting rid of Trump under its section 4 provisions would require Pence to agree with at least half the cabinet heads that their boss is a menace. Call me cynical, but I think this might explain the resignations today of Elaine Chao, the Secretary of Transportation (and Mitch McConnell's wife), and Betsy DeVos, the Secretary of Education. They had less than two weeks to go anyway, and by quitting now they remove the possibility of having to make a call about whether the risk of limping to January 20 with Trump as president is acceptably low. 

The strongest argument against this view is that it would require Chao and DeVos to have concluded that Pence might have the gumption to do what needs to be done. 

 

At the Capitol (and in it)

I rely on the Power Line blog for my window on the right-wing mindset. Today, one of their bloggers, Scott Johnson, somewhat mildly condemned the insurrectionists at the Capitol. The first sentence of his post reads

President Trump seems determined to leave office in a manner that vindicates the vile accusations hurled at him by his opponents over the past four years

which raises the question: Vile? Or proven true? Anyway, I scrolled down to the Comments section. A sampling:

Mr. Johnson, you should be ashamed of yourself. Did you forget, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants"? Apparently you did. I was hoping they'd blow up the capital building, and some of the Congress-critters that populate it, so that maybe, finally, those who would dictate to us might learn that we won't accept being dictated to.

We tried the soapbox, then the ballot box. It was stolen from us. There's one remedy left and if you're squeamish about it then shut your coward mouth. . . .

Gentlemen, what do you think is going on exactly? A little spat among patriots? This is an existential threat to the Republic. Behaving like nice little drones and "accepting" the rape of Lady Liberty, is unconscionable. And if you don't see it in those terms, you are more addicted to the status quo, than you are to freedom.

Antifa has been destroying cities for months. Why this reaction to a few Patriots?

What is stunning is that so-called conservatives are caterwauling about ONE FREAKING EVENT on a SINGLE DAY where some of our own finally made a stand.

After 6 months off Biden's Brownshirts doing worse—furthermore toward the neighbors and private property of poor people and immigrants—I'm a little light on tears to shed for Congresscritters scurrying a la cockroach. It's just a building. It's insured.

Fuck you, Scott . . . .

I have some friends there who texted that they believe it's antifa agitating.

This is just the beginning. Stolen elections have consequences.

And on and on and on and on it goes. It's much more than a basketful, Hillary. 

On MSNBC, Nicole Wallace just said that what happened at the Capitol today "borders on sedition." Biden had deployed the same phrase in his remarks. Here is the applicable federal law (18 USC § 2384):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"Responsible" Republicans are telling the seditionists to go home peacefully. Go home? How about arresting them and prosecuting the shit out of them? (Apologies for the legal jargon.)