What the hell happened in politics this week? Esquire's legendary blogger Charlie P. Pierce has answers |
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Let's All Read Jack Smith's Unsealed Election Interference Brief Together |
I am currently wrestling with the proposition that Mike Pence—The Choirboy! God bless you, Doghouse Riley, wherever you are—might be the most consequential vice president in American history. If there is a single serious protagonist in Jack Smith's Big Book Of Trump Crimes, it's the white-haired god-bothering Hoosier. And before you come at me with, "Well, he was only doing his job the right way," bear in mind that he did so in the face of relentless bullying and actual threats of physical violence from the president of the United States, and in the face of the fact that, in that moment, nobody else in the upper levels of the Executive Branch was doing theirs. Almost everybody at Pence's level was up to no good every time they hit speed-dial. My God, the guy wouldn't even get in the limo because he didn't want to be hijacked by Trump-loving Secret Service men. He has the freedom of this shebeen for life, and I don't care who knows it. |
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This is a Very Special edition of our semi-regular weekly survey. Our friends at Bolts Magazine, which tracks all elections, national, state, and local, has presented its 2024 election guide, which is not only a superb tip sheet, but also which contains so much data that you can see patterns in the local and state elections that will undoubtedly affect the national elections. |
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So Satan and Santa fought to a gentle draw. Stylistically, it was an obvious mismatch. Satan is a very slick, very disciplined liar, so well-versed in strategic mendacity that it has become a reflex strong enough for him to pass as a very believable replicant. Santa is not as agile in the debate format. And if you are invested in the performance aspects of politics—if you, for example, work for Axios—that is the most important thing about their confrontation. However, once you clear out the brambles of inconvenient civility that tangled up the stage, you can see plainly that Santa managed to maneuver Satan into several corners of his own devising. |
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Last Tuesday, there was a very interesting hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The committee met to discuss one specific Supreme Court decision: the eternally infamous 6–3 ruling in the case of U.S. v. Trump, through which Chief Justice John Roberts and the carefully manufactured conservative majority declared a sweeping definition of "presidential immunity" in that a president can commit actual crimes in office as long as they can be interpreted as part of his "official duties." The title of the committee hearing was When the President Does It, That Means It's Not Illegal: The Supreme Court's Dangerous Immunity Decision. |
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Major props to Miriam Jordan of The New York Times for some first-class boots-on-the-ground field reporting from Springfield, Ohio, which is still reeling from the insupportable slanders visited upon it by the Republican presidential ticket. Jordan brings us the story of a local merchant who was minding his own business running his truck-parts franchise and employing some of the Haitian population who had arrived in Springfield to be forklift drivers and machine operators or have other factory-type jobs. Then the destructive force of the Trump-Vance demolition company came to town. |
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