“Today the Justice Department arrested Jack Douglas Teixeira in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention, and transmission of classified national defense information.”
Heather, superb summary of the day’s most important news. Your contrast of how Governor Whitmer and Governor DuhSantis behaved in signing new bills, jumped out at me. Yes, the documents leaker, possibly traitor, was also important, but the juxtaposition of the two polar opposite governors was outstanding. Your indefatigable energy is an inspiration to me on a daily basis. To all of us. Thank you! Have a great weekend.
The line that got me is about Michigan Republicans immediately suing to prevent this bill from taking effect. Will it take their own children being involved in a school invasion to even acknowledge there’s a problem? How much money is the NRA spreading throughout these state legislatures? Someone needs to sit them down in a room locked from outside and force them to watch footage of school shooting after school shooting. Uvalde is a good starting point.
I suspect that those people who are passing these restrictive laws feel confident that they and their loved ones will never be affected by these laws. “ my daughter pregnant and seeking an abortion? Good gracious never. We are good Christian people. “ And as far as they’re kids being vulnerable for a school shooting. I wonder how many of these kids go to a public school.
They are convinced that THEY are safe because God, AND that THEY are the "good guys with the guns" who, because God, will be able to stop the bad guy before he kills more than a few victims - who are not related to them, because God. Theirs is manifestly the form of insanity that is endangering all Americans. And of course their pure daughters will never have an ectopic pregnancy, or have a fetus with a condition incompatible with life or actually die in utero, or otherwise endanger the daughter's mental or physical health or wellbeing, so of course she will never need an abortion, and if their daughter wouldn't need one, no one else may have one.
But.... but.... but god will make everything right! Trust me, it says so right here in the bible which he wrote and put in every hotel room so everybody will know who is really the boss. So there!
Are you kidding? The Biden administration is lying about everything.
First - Turns out American soldiers are fighting along with NATO troops. This is a hot war now.
Even worse we are losing. The Administration and the elite media keep telling you the war is being won. This is becoming Vietnam 2.
This guy is a hero.
If you want to live in a dictatorship feel free, but don't do it in my name. I don't want my government lying to me, especially about something as significant as war with a nuclear power.
Ukraine is a hyper corrupt authoritarian country. Zelensky has jailed political opponents, outlawed religion, and censored media.
Maybe you feel a kinship with Ukraine because that's what you want America to become.
C. Jacobs, wouldn't it be lovely if Matt, MTG, Lauren, Gohmert, Gosar, and the various and sundry clown show GOP packed up and left for the PROC (if they were granted visas, that is). Whatever wrongs this country is guilty of, certainly we've paid for all of them, with interest.
I've seen unhinged comments from him in the past, and assume that he's a troll, either a living contrarian or a bot - maybe Russian or Chinese. If he sees this exchange, he'll probably go on the attack soon. I don't think there's anything to be gained by trying to "reason" with him.
A White Supremacist groomer is more likely. Read Professor Kathleen Belew's book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America.
I don't buy his, "I am against war." Then, why join the Air Force National Guard, and what is the purpose of the guns he is "obsessed with" by all accounts? Clearly he should not have been in "military intelligence," but live and learn.
Neither Snowden nor Teixeira were Intelligence staff. They were in IT (Information Technology). Snowden tried very hard to make the public aware that no one in his position should have had access to the contents of the files on the computer systems he managed.
I am glad you and the press have now clarified this as regards Teixeira. Snowden was effective in making his point. Teixeira is young enough that the frontal lobe would not have fully developed which is part of why his thinking is so unclear. IT is a problem when people are able to access information that they probably should not have clearance for. We were just discussing last night an article published in some independent press last year about how the Intelligence agencies have not treated their IT people well, and do not understand their capabilities fully and they do not have the same chances for advancement as other roles, so they leave for the private sector. Something that needs to change.
Thank you, Linda, I’ve been saying that all day. And my family members, who’ve had security clearances for their jobs, have said Teixeira’s supervisors will be losing their jobs. And thank you, Heather, for putting together mtg’s defense for me, as actually a defense of dt, It makes the fact that she’s on the Homeland Security Committee even more frightening - will she pull a similar stunt? SMH.
James A: What the U.S. is supporting is a fight against a land grab by an anti-democratic thug that threatens post-WW2 rules-based international order. Putin's power grab in Ukraine and the rise of autocrats around the world is a threat to our existing order. The U.S. has been as restrained as possible given this very real threat. But perhaps you want Putin to win? To my mind that goes against everything we have fought for to live in the free world. By the way, people in Russia are JAILED for protesting the war. On the other hand, you can say what you want, however undermining it may be to the interests of our nation.
I hear you. I really do. I understand that you are very concerned, and that this young man's actions are in line with what you think is right. None of us win when we are fighting and killing and being killed, and if the government is sending people to war without clearly letting them know what they are fighting for, that is wrong. Is our government sending our soldiers to fight in this war? We need to know this, if it's true. It should be stated. However, I don't understand why people imagine that everyone should know everything, all the time, and that there is no need for diplomacy. What I am also not understanding is that Vladimir Putin seems to have escaped censure for dishonesty to his people, and for dragging his country and a neighboring country into what looks like an unending war. So much of our image of our country stands on WWII when we stepped in to save the day. Do we look for enemies so we can prove that we are still champions, or are there still forces that seek to destroy what we all value, whom we must fight for the benefit of all? I am not understanding why our laws suddenly don't matter- why it's okay for people to break the laws according to their own notions. I have been to Ukraine briefly to attend a conference, and of course did not see hyper-corruption. What I did see was a country that had a lot of Russian media and many statues of Lenin. I know a lot of Russians, and have been very impressed with both Ukrainian people and Russian people. But you know, we are both Americans, and from our differences of opinions, It would be as difficult to characterize American people on the basis of who we are as it is to characterize others. I know Ukrainians who agree with you. I know Russians who don't. Life is complicated, at least from my point of view. How would you feel if our country invaded Canada? Would it not seem wrong? And what is the alternative to the "elite media" you speak of? Do you still trust Fox news and other outlets who have been lying for years to their listeners?
Lauri, there are plenty of other newsletters you can read. You obviously aren’t a good match reading Dr. Richardson’s and the very large group of people who do read her daily. And respect the news and opinions she shared. Good luck.
Dana, you've roused my curiousity. You seem to be inviting Lauri to leave this board, to go somewhere else, and no longer contribute to this conversation. Why do you think Dr. Richardson's newletter is not a "good match" for her? I see nothing in her post that would warrant such an invitation to leave.
I mean, even the "James A" fellow she's responding to, the one who is offering such contrarian opinions without, sadly, offering any citations, should stick around, in my view. Isn't he one of those who most needs to read this newsletter? I notice generally that in order to find a "conservative" commenter (in quotes because I no longer know what the word means), you have to chase them all the way to Fox or even weirder sites.
I don't blame them for running, since they seem to have a very hard time dealing with contrary opinions, and an even harder time citing sources. But I blame us if we've chased them away from our conversation with incivility simply for disagreeing with us, and I hope that's not the case here.
I’d bet money Putin has one or more goons reading LFAA. His only intent is to know his enemy to defeat his enemy, which is basically anything standing in his way of total domination
Hi, Dana- I have been reading Dr Richardson for as long as she has been posting. I am someone you'd think of as a liberal, but it's important to me to keep questioning. So I listen to all sorts of media and viewpoints, as much as I can stand without too much mental agitation. My comment was directed at the previous commenter. I believe in dialog, so I was responding to what he wrote. In my town we live near people who don't share all of our opinions, and I would not have it any other way. Thank you for caring passionately about this topic. I was talking with my son and his friends who live in Brooklyn and Ojai about current politics and they were surprised that I did not just think what they thought. I said it's because I know all sorts of people. I asked them how many people they knew whose opinions on politics are different than their own, and they looked at each other and said, "None." This does not mean that my own sense of things is compromised but that it is possible to see what others think and understand why. So thank you again for inviting me to read lots of other newsletters, but I will stick with this one too.
Many years ago I was seeing a fellow who lived about an hour’s south of me in an area even more rural than mine. His small town & surrounding areas were populated by ranchers, (then) illegal pot growers, back-to-the-landers, lumberjacks, small business owners, etc.; he LOVED the mix and the fact that they could all be ‘neighborly’ while holding different political views & frequently joined together to help each other out, and in town celebrations, etc.
Lauri, I appreciate your reply very much. Now I’ll read again what you were responding to! Btw, I read Andy Revkin about climate change, a big interest of mine
And durn it, Dana, now I bet you're feeling attacked, instead, which is certainly not what I had in mind. So please respond. If you simply posted in anger, just say , "Oops! Didn't mean to offend!" I've done it many times myself. But if you disagreed with something Lauri included in her post, please expand. She seemed to be drawing a degree of commonality between Americans, Ukrainians, and Russians. Is that what prompted your reponse?
Right now, the biggest enemies we have are right here in our country. This could change with the circumstances though. Domestic terrorists are a growing problem here, and when I think about all of the young White males being groomed to think that the world is only good if it keeps them placed at the top of the hierarchy on this planet, with women and other people whomever is considered non-White at the moment (and it has changed constantly throughout our brief history as a country), below. That they can destroy the planet for my child and grandchildren to come, is a problem that many countries have. It is being turned into an anti-immigrant problem in many places, but it is more insidious than that. Immigrants are not our problem other than we don't give them enough rights in many instances, unless they are in elite jobs, and we don't have enough of them to maintain our economy properly. Cutting back on and getting rid of immigrants is like China's one child policy which favored boys. Now they have a shortage of available women and men will have to go elsewhere to find wives. According to Foreign Affairs we have 5 million unemployed and 10 million available jobs. How would we fix those numbers? They will get worse and worse particularly as more and more of our citizens are going to look abroad as well as here as long as we have these states who are instituting increasingly draconian policies around birthing, birth control and women's health in general.
It's actually not news that there are American military personnel in Ukraine. They have been there to oversee American donated military equipment, to assess how the war is actually going on the ground and the evolving need for supplies from NATO countries. To understand the situation better, donating countries (NATO) need experienced military personnel on the ground, near the fighting. There are hundreds of journalists on the ground. If there is NATO participation in the fighting, that would be discovered by journalists who are not beholden the the Biden administration. Just like they weren't beholden to the voted-out Trump administration..
Another red herring is the argument about censorship. Ukraine was a corrupt country UNTIL Zelenski was elected on an anti-corruption platform. Since then, Zelenski's administration has fought corruption that has included prosecution of Russian-backed actors within the government and within the media. Ukraine is implementing anti-corruotion measures as a precursor to qualifying for NATO membership. You calling that persecution is like calling Trump's indictment persecution. So on that logic, it seems like you believe corrupt strongmen should be left alone because, you know, "freedom".
Biden is quietly doing what Kevin McCarthy spouted, that if he's in power, he won't just give Ukraine a blank check, but wouldn't reduce military aid to Ukraine either.
Is Teixeira a hero? Was he motivated by ideology or by the childish desire to matter in an adult world, showing shiny objects to other childish gamers to gain cred? Is it shocking that allies spy on each other? No. It's been ongoing since countries engage with each other. Should all information be shared in a time of war? No. It undermines a county's investments into the war, wasting resources and risking lives and foreign relations.
In fact, in a democracy, people like you need tools to help put news in context. Teixeira is a fool who will pay for his mistakes. You are a fool for believing he's a hero and for swallowing Russian propaganda without chewing.
Something is fishy about the arrest of a low-level employee of the Air National Guard for releasing classified information. Performing his job, whatever it was, certainly did not require access to such infomation at his job level. A 'need to know' this kind of material only applied to much higher-ups in the intelligence structure of which he apparently was a part. I've been there, albeit over half a century ago. That he is the 'fall guy' may be part of an insidious plot at a higher level. I hope some investigative journalists are thinking similarly.
His job has been reported as an "intel tech" dealing with distributing military intelligence from all over the world. Does that not imply being able to access intel? A lot has been written about his only being 21. The military is made up of young people from their late teens on up and many of them have jobs or missions requiring they be entrusted with great responsibility, including at least some intel. Probably most of them are immature. That's what makes them so attractive to the military. They think they can't die, they've trained themselves on video games, they're idealistic, they're malleable and easily influenced by their comrades. what's not to like in a soldier or sailor or airman?
Information Tech staff should not have access to the CONTENTS of the files on the systems that they manage. Snowden unsuccessfully tried to make policy makers aware of this ongoing security problem.
If his job was 'distributing' intel, that doesn't mean he automatically had access to what he was distributing. Like your USPS person doesn't open the letters they put in your mailbox. And don't YOU have a password to open your email's inbox? C'mon, he is taking the fall for someone higher than him in the intel hierarchy.
I don't know if he's taking the fall, but it's not hard to suspect there are people higher in the chain of command who share this intel with subordinates or who are careless with their intel. I hope that they are not brainwashed right wingers who would undermine our national interests or corrode our institutions, but I'm not sure at this point. We need an independent investigation.
Jack, I think “intelligence” has changed exponentially in the “half a century ago”. The youngest brains are navigating cyberspace while their synapses are still forming. What technology hasn’t changed our reaction to 9/11 likely did. 🤷🏻♀️
I hope we there are Americans in Ukraine providing intelligence, instruction, logistics, etc., but are you saying U.S. troops are fighting there? What’s your source for that info?
I am most curious to know the basis of your startling claim that we here in the US of A live in a dictatorship. I am in no way minimizing the issue of mission creep in Ukraine. All of us must be on guard against that, and the leaked info raises that question legitimately.
Nonetheless, the Pentagon has stated that the 14 members of the American military in Ukraine are attached to the embassy.
And what basis beyond the desk of the chinless racist propagandist Tucker Carlson can one claim Ukraine to be "hyper corrupt ,etc.,.."??
Hi, Daniel. I read and trust The Guardian. Recently there was a column, which could have been biased, of course, stating the US is paying in excess of $400. per barrel of oil sent to Ukraine. Supposedly, Zelensky, among others is profiteering. Recently 10 pols were expelled for corruption at US's demand, but many more remain, the article said.
I, for one, believe the premise that we must hold the fort against Russian aggression, but I also think it could be true that some people are playing two ends against the middle. We shall see. Profiteering in war is not uncommon.
Other than that, James A is clearly a stooge trying to bait us. Best to ignore him.
Thanks for that. I too trust the Guardian and would not be surprised if there is Ukrainian war profiteering, etc., and other problems growing like mushrooms in the fog of war. Doesn't supersede our righteous commitment to Ukraine, as you say
There’s a lot to unpack here and I doubt I’ll get to all of it and I doubt you’ll believe any of it. Trump was seeking to make our Republic an authoritarian dictatorship. American soldiers were sent to train on the equipment. There were MANY retired American soldiers who VOLUNTEERED to go fight in Ukraine. They were not ordered by anyone. They ASKED to go. Ukraine is a democracy. Zelensky was elected president by the people. The irony is you calling Ukraine corrupt... and we have Trump facing several lawsuits both state and federal, Clarence Thomas with a sugar daddy, representatives who don’t live in their districts ... what do you call that?
Authoritarian dictatorship? How can you be so delusional?
Who censored free speech
Threatened to take away your gun
Who wants to tell what car you can drive, what stove you can burn
Who wants to control what your children learn
Who is using the FBI to go after conservatives?
Who is criminalizing political differences?
Who lie about COVID efficacy and use it as a pretext to control
your movement, fire you from your job?
Should I go on?
Ukraine is not a democracy. Zelensky has jailed political opponents, outlawed religion, and shut opposition media. Before the war countries refused to send money to Ukraine because it was so corrupt.
As for the Trump lawsuits....is this a joke. The left is weaponizing the legal system.
The left is going to regret this day. Because it's going to boomerang.
Yes. I am not delusional but suspect you are. The government has not threatened free speech. It’s the only entity prohibited by the constitution. No one has threatened to take away my gun. No one has told me what car I can drive. Or what stove I can use. The GOP wants to tell me what my children can learn. The GOP seems invested in banning books. The only reason the FBI would go after conservatives would be if laws were broken or they posed a threat to public safety. I’m not certain what you are speaking of “criminalizing political differences” … J6? That’s a step beyond differences. COVID is a pandemic that will live with us forever. I follow the science and take my own precautions. You do you.
Ukraine is a democracy. I won’t argue with you further. You won’t change any one here. You won’t improve this forum.
The lawsuits against Trump are not a joke. They are not political. He broke the law. Many times. He knows it.
Nice try. When you can't dispute the facts, change the subject.
Your government is lying to you. Just like they lied about Russian collusion, COVID vaccine, the booster, Censorship, Hunter Biden Laptop, and now the war in Ukraine.
As for Ukraine, any idiot could see its not going well. The Russians are killing 7 Ukrainians for every Russian death, Ukrainian cities have been leveled, and the sanctions have been ineffective.
The same crowd that whiffed on Afghanistan is run this effort? Joe Biden has become the Barney Fife of foreign policy. The Chinese are threatening to go into Taiwan. Are we going to war with China too?
I took a look at your page, James A- there is nothing posted there. And in this thread it is you who have dropped the ball- you keep repeating many disputed ideas, old tired issues that have no bearing on what we are talking about here and did not respond when I invited you to say something about your ideas. Since you read HCR, can you tell us what you find compelling in her carefully presented history-based posts? I see you saying, "Your government," and "you," "you," and "you." And "any idiot." So, what do we have in common? I would guess that it's frustration and fear in the face of increasingly grim reality, and a wish to strengthen what needs to be strong.
Yes or no about what exactly? And "It's either true or it's not true" used to indicate a mark we could all point to. Let me take just one of your questions: did the (media) lie about the Russia hoax? I don't think they did- I really don't see that it's been proven that they lied, other than a red herring episode about the Steele dossier in which mistakes were made and were admitted. But I don't really see why you are asking these questions only of those you are criticizing when it has been proven again and again that lying is not a problem for the right wing- not personally, not professionally, not politically, not ethically. No, for them, lying is just fine as long as one can get away with it or disable discourse through it. The Covid situation is hardly a winner for the right, either, because so much misinformation was spread through their outlets and representatives. Isn't it possible that the pandemic and Covid were a problem for all of us, without there having to be a bad side and a good side? We all made our choices, did what we thought best, and those of us here left to argue survived to tell the tale.
The "facts " that you purport as true don't seem to have any references where they can be checked as truthful. You certainly have a right to your opinion but, that is just what it is unless you can show legitimate sources. I do not agree with your statements, but we live in a FREE country so, you can think whatever you want. Spreading those opinions is different matter. Dr. Richardson backs up EVERYTHING she writes with her sources. I ask you, can you do the same? I don't think so.
Sorry, your statements lack credibility..all of them. They are inflammatory and you are unable or unwilling to look for credible resources that can be fact checked. Without credible references, your statements are opinions. You made the statements, the onus is on you to show how you fact checked them.
Many MAGA Republicans are proposing that we arm teachers: this option is dangerous. There is a big difference between handling a firearm at a range and facing a potential shooter and being able to shoot first. We hold special training in boot camp to learn how to kill the enemy. It takes months of special training to turn a civilian into a combat soldier trained to kill. And, elementary teachers would not be my choice for training combat soldiers. So, any showdown between a crazed killer with an AR-15 and a caring teacher with a handgun will not end well. Lastly, an imbalanced student that has no access to a weapon can overpower his/her armed teacher and take their weapon and do damage. Arming teachers makes no sense.
Paul, spot on! “And, elementary teachers would not be my choice for training combat soldiers.” And I doubt we would find many teachers at any level who will teach in a situation or mandate to have gun in the classroom. You could never have paid me enough to be in a classroom with a weapon. Not ever.
As a parent of two HS TEACHERS, I don't want my children being required to get into a shootout with someone with a semi automatic weapon! Because it is ALWAYS a semiautomatic weapon. And as that one GOP congressman said last week, if someone wants to take you out and doesn't care if they die doing it---well, SORRY, I'm NOT sacrificing my children for the benefit of the GOP and the NRA!!!!!!!
In an ambush, a teacher with a gun is just as vulnerable as anyone else. Cops (with guns, of course) have been shot and killed while eating lunch at Denny's for goodness sake. Cops sat armed to the teeth outside the classroom in Uvalde. The cop running to the recent mass shooting at the bank was shot down. The point is that the mass murderers have the element of surprise, which makes efforts to protect the victims (even armed victims) too late. Civilians should not have these semi-automatic weapons, and access to and regulations on guns should tightly controlled and enforced.
I sure wouldn't like to be one of the terrified students banging on the door of a classroom seeking shelter during a slaughter, knowing that there's an armed maniac coming behind them and a terrified armed middle-aged teacher waiting for them on the other side of the door.
Can any parent actually think that having their child in a classroom with a teacher who is armed and willing to kill at the first sign of trouble is a good thing?
Fortunately, a teacher I had in elementary school days who had extreme loathing toward her charges was armed with nothing more dangerous than chalk, books and erasers, the which she routinely hurled with vigor at students in class who particularly offended her pedagogical sensibilities. She terrified me, and probably many of the others in my class. I cannot begin to imagine what might have happened had she been issued a firearm for classroom use.
"... special training in boot camp to learn how to kill..." And that's just to ignore the psych imprinting done, that's completely incompatible with a teacher's psyche. As well it says nothing of the fallout that actually taking a life does to one. Great, if understated points Paul.
Not to mention the likelihood - given the profiles of many school shooters - that the life the teacher must train to take will be that of a former student.
Since the teacher is female and still alive, she'd have been sued for wrongful death and possibly prosecuted successfully for manslaughter or even murder. Whether it has dawned on districts and the levels of administration above them that they too stand to be sued when a child is shot by a teacher is as yet unclear. I doubt it will serve as an effective defense if districts etc. decline to shoulder the responsibility of training teachers to be shooters.
Without doubt, many here - as I presumed, are fully taking in what I put down. My later point is my Mom's "voice" whispering in my head, "d4n.... you can't unring a bell." I've found that truth learned to be one of those 'absolutes'.
This should be a no-brainer. Can’t imagine anyone being stupid enough to buy this insanity. Well, I can. It’s MAGAts, it’s their willingness to sacrifice our children, and our society for their almighty god, the weapon of death.
Yes. And yet women must live with being forced to be vulnerable. Why not gun owners/purchasers? “Sorry, your vulnerability is god’s plan”. As for arming teachers........ any weapon available to a teacher in a classroom, would back-handedly be available to a student with a distracted teacher. It raises the potential for conflict, not lessen it.
Marj, they love the not yet born. Once they're born, they someone else's responsibility. I had a conversation once with a staunch anti abortionist; I asked him (almost always a him in my world) where his concern for the child was after it was born. His reply "that's the mother's problem". Not an iota of care or concern there.
Actually, I can't help but laugh at the thought that a woman does not have a choice about a pregnancy. Because there was an "accident" she is now forced into involuntary dangerous costly time consuming career wreaking servitude.
I know there is nothing funny about it. It's just so ridiculous and SO insane.
They love fetuses, not children and certainly not mothers or women in general and men who are libs, POC, etc. Once people are born, they are on their own. They are the party of death.
But those that I’ve talked to don’t love children enough to donate bone marrow or part of a liver (which regenerates) to save a life—and they sure don’t want the government to tell them that they have to do it even though both are a lot less harmful to their health than being pregnant.
Many of them don't love children enough to pay even 1-2% more in taxes to ensure those 'precious babies' have health insurance, safe homes and enough to eat after they're born. If that is so, then you know for sure they aren't parting with any of their organs for a child.
"They love all the control hence the abortion ban."
There. Fixed it for you. The abortion bans have nothing to do with loving life, children, or family values, all things that Republicans and Evangelicals would have everyone accept at face value as their motivation for what they do. Neither do the bans have anything to do with "love." The bans are about power over, control, and complete domination of every aspect of the lives of anyone who doesn't think the way they do.
I'm dead tired of it. I'm dead tired of minority rule, too. If I wanted to live in a dictatorial, autocratic, minority-ruled society, I'd have already moved to one. It never occurred to me that the USA would become one.
I willingly will donate a state, such as ---well, I can't think of which one---for these yahoos to run around with their weapons and delusions of macho-ness as long as they stay in those borders and let all peaceful people move elsewhere, paid for by the oligarchs and gun manufacturers.
Elementary teachers stand close to students, sit on the floor, write on easels and blackboards. These are not well accomplished with a gun in one hand. A gun in a pocket or holster might also be bumped or even grabbed by a child.
If you look into a reflective surface or even something such a computer monitor & say " Mad Marjorie " 3 times, she'll appear & spew her toxic venom on you. Mwahahahahahaaaaa ! Not even Beetlejuice or the Candyman want anything to do with her.....
And, she isn't the only one that needs to be removed! How these people continue to get votes to retain their position amazes me. The money....needs to be removed from campaigns. I don't know how that is possible. Advertising and promotion cost lot of money.....even at the lower level of positions.
I worry about the people that vote for people like her. Yes, money in politics is a problem of epic proportions. The Citizens United ruling sent us into a situation of leveling the concept of "government of the people, by the people, for the people." I realize other factors play into this as well. And, I find it difficult to think too long about the type of psyche that votes for the likes of MTG and so many others.
Paul, the best antidote to a bad guy with a gun is to take it away from him or, better yet, prevent him from getting it. Full stop. And the idea of adding to the number of bullets flying around a classroom is simply horrifying.
Teachers will continue to quit in large numbers. People who want to teach do not want to carry guns. We are on a trajectory to have a crisis in lack of teachers and health care providers thanks to the fascists. The insidious ways the extremists on the right have destroyed our quality of life will take decades to heal.
As Dr. Richardson has pointed out many times, the "conservatives" of this country have bitterly fought the entire idea of public education since Reconstruction, if not before. They were a bit quiet after WWII, when the American educational system produced a work/research force that propelled us to incredible riches. But the world seems to have equalized since then, since the rest of the world rightly envied our economic and scientific successes, and emulated us whenever they could.
Now that that boom of advancement has spread around the world, the "conservatives," having learned nothing, are back to their plan to keep books reserved for the Rich only, since they're the only ones to be trusted with all that complicated knowledge stuff (in their view). Unforrtunately for them, during those boom times the modern conservative's predeccessors actually enshrined public education in both state constitutions and in the public's imagination as an imperative good. So they have to kill it with a death by a thousand cuts, instead.
They may succeed, too, by making public school so dangerous, ineffective, and blatantly ideological that nobody wants to go. We go back to the "good ol' days," when on the rich knew how to read and the only means the poor had to change their lives was via violence.
And once something's dead, it's really hard to bring it back to life.
The uneducated or perhaps, the specifically educated, as in “Christian” dogma educated, make the best pawns for authoritarians. None of it is simply coincidence!
Yah. I had the image the other day of those poorly-or-uneducated millions as a huge field of hammers standing on their heads, handles up, waiting to be grabbed by the next dictator who wants to hit someone.
I like your image. I a retired engineer with blacksmithing as a hobby and have taught blacksmithing at a craft school. One thing that is common is to drop a blacksmithing hammer on the floor and as a old man it is a pain to pick up. One trick I learned from another blacksmith is to use your foot to roll the hammer upright so the handle is in the air and much easier to pick up. I only dealing with one hammer and not a field. Thanks.
In my experience, some private schools have blatant ideological agendas which they may or may not make known to their customers. Regarding private schools’ effectiveness, children are screened before admission, and any who do not succeed are encouraged to attend elsewhere. Public schools must accept everyone.
And will kindly Ms. Smith who has been teaching second graders for 40 years pull out her Glock and blow away little Jimmy who is pointing his Dads 22 pistol at her cause he's pissed about his math grade. It's ludicrous. The extremists will say Fire those teachers and hire some with guts but I don't think most parents want that any more than they want school libraries closed.
As a retired early childhood educator, I agree. It is incomprehensible to me that anyone thinks it is a good idea to require a teacher to carry a firearm while in their classroom. There was a time when we were not allowed to keep a bottle of hand sanitizer accessible to children due the risk of them ingesting it. Now, it's okay to carry and keep a gun? As some kids say, "I can't even....". It fills me with rage and despair.
Arming teachers requires the same lunacy as all the other rationalization justifying gun ownership. The gun worshipping mentality is a sickness in the country.
The Republican lawmakers in Tennessee may come to regret the attention they’ve drawn to themselves and their habits of governance.
They are, each of them, going to come to see last Thursday as the very worst day of their lives. Not one of those cockroaches can bear public scrutiny from having the lights turned on, forcing them to scurry to the dark corners from where they emerged.
Thank you Daniel, right now Rhode Island (RI) looks very good with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse leading the way with his detailed Press Release linked by HCR & the Senator's fact filled responses to Lawrence O' Donnell on Thursday's 'Last Word' .
Senator Whitehouse's words in his Press Release were very precise indicating that systemic ethical problems are broader than Thomas' stark violation of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978: ... justices [ plural ] are ensconced in a cacoon of special interests ..." in need of the Senator 's proposed SCERT Act.
Senator Whitehouse has done a long series of speeches on the Senate floor about how The Federalist Society and Leonard Leo, and dark money have waged a decades long campaign to build the corrupt Supreme Court many of us are just beginning to notice. You can find d them all on YouTube.
The DOJ does not need 'ethics' to prosecute Thomas' straightfoward violation of Title1 of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978. [ sorry, syntax scouts should have pulled me over ... how about "brazen violation of Title 1 ..." ? :) ]
Years ago the Act was amended to include ALL three (3) branches of Government including the SCOTUS 9. Thomas' violation continues Today; he needs to get a Lawyer.
The Chief Justice has lost control of our most important Judicial institution. Not very "dark money" is sinking the good ship scotus.
"...Thomas' straightfoward violation of Title1 of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978." Prosecution of that seems to be the most efficient thing to do NOW.
Thanks for the link. "As state Rep. Scott Cepicky (R) told Barrett, “You gotta do what’s right even if you think it might be wrong.”" They should be pissed. They look bad. Dimwits.
Bless the folks persisting at investigative journalism and turning those lights on. If only there were better financial rewards for doing the heavy lifting.
The double-standard here is jaw-dropping ... all in the name of God, no less ... ignoring that the "name of God" cannot be spoken nor defined in a single word ... any god that condones, justifies and empowers such hypocrisy must be "the god of this world" also known as the "Father of the Lie" ... no wonder these self-proclaimed superior people are so .... SCARED ... (Anagram = SACRED - we reap what we sow ....)
{{... oh, thank Jesus, we ain't scared, we got guns!!}}
My fear is that they won't scurry. My fear is that they've become secure in their "righteousness" that they no longer care if they're caught. Many of these Republicans have become so callous that they could be caught raping a sheep and they just say, "So? I'm a sheep-raper and I'm PROUD of it!"
TC—once again you’ve put things so well. I expect that, eventually, TFG will regret turning a spotlight on his “allegedly” crooked business dealings by running for president.
All he had to do was just sit back in 2015 like he did in 2011, and he'd be safe as the the continuing asshole he always was. But no, he figured actually running would "improve the brand," except - unfortunately for him and us - he won.
I will wait and see if any cockroaches get squashed. The Speaker who essentially has his non-resident-in-the-district-he-represents home mortgage paid for by his imaginary commute on his expense account at $313 per day.
So very many lies and so much impropriety from the self righteous right. Sexton's lies and his brazen charging the legislature for per diem travel expenses when he lives in Nashville. Will the Tennessee lawmakers expel him for his lies? For his unconstitutional representation of a community where he does not reside (according to the state constitution he must be a resident of the district he represents)? Thomas has shown nothing but contempt for any who call him out for impropriety - as far back as his confirmation hearings. He showed then who he was, but by playing the victim, and even the proverbial "race card" he has skated by many and sundry violations. His wife is his partner in crime. Discipline these! Hold them to account.
If those who are sworn to uphold the law, and make compliance with law (by others) their profession, fudge very far from strict compliance with the law themselves, why would be expect to see respect for the law from others?
There are of course societies where those who make law make themselves exempt from it, and brutally enforce it only upon others; but that's tyranny.
I can't help wondering what Harlan Crow thinks about hosting his little Supreme Court pet. Crow collects Nazi memorabilia, which would seem to indicate at least White Supremacist tendencies.
He must be laughing up his sleeve, pretending friendship with a black man -- and one in an interracial marriage to boot -- while getting all sorts of benefits whenever he has any interests before the Court.
It is really no different than many SE university alumni rooting for their largely black football teams that didn't want black students in their schools.
Most people assume others are similar to themselves, which is why we here continue to be shocked on the daily. That's also why the GOPers assume everyone else wants to cheat and grift and is their basis for wanting to deny gov't services.
The espionage story is extremely troubling for several reasons.
How could a 21 year old get clearance to handle top secret documents?
How was he able to hand copy and then take photos of them if he was in a secure facility? If you are in a secure facility you cannot have a personal phone with you.
Interviews with two teenage followers of Texiera's on-line cult claim there were people from all over the world, including Russia and Ukraine who were members of the group. The Russian intelligence agency is known to infiltrate gamer groups on platforms like discord because they lure in so many hackers and military and former military.
At the very least there has to be a major review of the security breach. I don't know which is scairer--if Texiera was able to do this on his own, or if he is was aided and abetted by someone higher up in the security apparatus, or is a Russian puppet.
The age of the leakier goes with his seemingly low level of authority. In any very large organization you can pretty much count on some share of bad apples, especially among those not vetted for their patterns of responsibility. If someone with so little authority could get the sorts of documents that have been described, what are well trained spies getting?
In the security services, such as NSA (National Security Agency, aka No Such Agency), those who work in that environment are steeped in secrecy, and become adept at keeping secrets from absolutely everyone else. With that in mind, it's easy to imagine that an employee could see various ways to violate the trust of everyone in authority. They need to have some level of trust, or face being so mired in protocols that no actual work ever gets done. So I doubt that supervisors or management would be held accountable for the misdeeds of a trusted employee.
Hey Dave! You were probably a lot more mature at 19 in 1984 than lots of 21 yr olds today. Also, we have a societal problem with young, lost men whose brains are not finished. He wanted desperately to be a big player in his gaming group.
A guest on MSNBC last night was discussing the increase in access after 9/11. They were also saying this kid did this simply to prove himself in his little group (ego).
And I am sure you went thorough the rigorous vetting process that was in place then and had agents contact family members and acquaintences. I have had family members go through the process. But this kid is creepily immature if he was collecting 14 year olds into his group that should have surfaced. You are right that it shouldn't be about age, but it is about maturity. And the fact that he was meeting with these underage groupies in person is very suspect.
Has anyone heard anything about who this kids supervisors are? How is it that he has enough time alone with such documents? How is it that his online bigotry and utter madness wasn't discovered years ago? Are top secret clearances just given with no further review? So many questions. So many obvious ways this could have been prevented.
Some personnel at the MA Air Guard have been asleep at the switch. Time for serious accountability. And...how many other racist "Christian Libertarians" are in our military and law enforcement ranks? I think we would be terrified to know. It's time for a purge and punishment.
In a sense, this is parallel to parents with "troubled" children having guns floating around a home.
Madame DeFarge and her cohorts during the French Revolution were much better at securing classified information: knitting the secrets into a sweater using a kind of Morse code that made the secret literally invisible except to a person who knew the code and was able to decode it and was given the sweater (which was a very common kind of sweater) was much more secure than printing it on paper for even a semi- literate to read is no way to handle top secrets.
I knitted secrets into a piece of artwork using that method, so I know how easy it is to knit code, yet all but impossible to read it without knowledge of the code. (My Dad was a cryptoanalyst in the Signal Corps in WW2, so codes have always interested me).
I apologize that these details are sketchy, but it is all I know. A few years back, a coworkers son went into the military. He applied to and got into a field in the military where he'd plot out routes for pilots. Being that his parents met in the military, the only advance notice he gave was to tell them that "someone might show up at the door and don't get scared." He knew that they'd think he'd been killed. A few DID show up, unannounced, and they were subjected (sorry, poor word) to an evening of intense questioning. Later, they found out that virtually every aspect of his life, someone who would have known him well had been questioned---even a junior high teacher was questioned! His parents understood that they couldn't get a lot of info out of him as to what his job entailed, but he told them: you know how you can look at stuff with Google Earth? (I think that was the program he said.) If any civilian can do that, IMAGINE what the government can do!
He was probably right around 20 or 21 then. Fine family and fine young man, btw, I have no fears he'd pull a stunt like that.
Doesn’t this highlight how vast the network of intelligence and intelligence contract work is. Trying to vet and police all the activity of tech-savvy employees and their social media presence? If Snowden and Texiera can do it, multiple that times how many more capable doing that, and are doing it more quietly and lucratively.
US military satellites have a reported resolution of 10 cm (4 in). So even one released picture can provide information on the level of capabilities of current hardware and whether they are reaching the resolution limit of the technology.
Here is a structural problem: Access to secret US data -- Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and now Jack Teixeira. We only get a glimpse, but it appears that far people than necessary have access; far more people than necessary creates opportunities that do the country harm. We need a top to bottom review of how secrets are handled and how much of what we consider secret should actually be public knowledge.
Here is another: Without a code of justice, the US Supreme Court creates suspicion about everything. Whether the question is Justice Thomas's ties to a billionaire friend or Chief Justice Roberts' wife's work, the lack of a code of ethics leaves the justices and those who judge them without guidance. We need Congress to impose a code of ethics if the Supremes won't adopt one.
Here is a third: When Donald Trump became president he scrapped the Executive Order that set ethical standards for the executive branch. Joe Biden restored that Executive Order. Ethical standards should not vary according to administration. Here, too, we need Congress to impose a code of ethics for the Executive Branch even though this administration has adopted standards.
Perhaps we, the people need to formulate a clearer, more systematic code of ethics for the whole frickin' enterprise. It's government of, by and for the people, right?
Yes and no. Nobody is perfect, certainly our various heroes among them; but there are genuinely heroic acts, and there are people whose life strategy is overwhelmingly self-serving and predatory (look at Trump) while others make good faith efforts to cultivate compassion and social justice. Many of the US founders displayed jaw-dropping doublethink, and yet the core of the Constitution is egalitarian.
Even prominent Republicans were troubled by Nixon's abuses of power, and some in his administration refused to participate. Yet Nixon's abuses pale in comparison to what we have allowed to become commonplace today; once again compare to Trump or many other salient figures in the once "Party of Lincoln" today.
NOT sharing information is partly what led to 9/11. I would rather we err in favor of more transparency, but it seems the ebb and flow of this problem has existed as long as human governance.
The idea of Congress imposing a strict code of ethics on the Supreme Court, now that's revolutionary, and I for one would be fascinated to witness the aftermath. Congress enacted campaign laws that the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional. In that case, corporations claimed injury and the court infamously ruled that corporations were citizens in order to gut much of that law. What group could/would claim injury that would enable the court to overturn a law imposing strict ethical guidelines on itself? One more question: How many other current Supreme Court justices are squirming a little wondering what chapter in this story Pro Publica will drop next?
I need a lesson on where the “checks and balances” on our Judicial Branch are hiding. They are not easy to identify, that’s for sure. So much for 3 equal branches.
Geez, given Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society and that connection to Harlan Crowe, why not all the Federalist Society justices? But then again, the whole institution (the Supreme Court) is so weird, with its lifetime tenure, the lack of actual rules of conduct. It's like they're elevated to a sort of heavenly stature, even though they're all political beings by the very nature of their being nominated and confirmed by politicians. Love them or hate them, they are members of a strange club, and now it takes only a simple majority of the Senate - another weird club, but whose members were at least elected to time-limited terms - to get in. Sure, the current club is full of Ivy League attorneys and judges, but there's no law regarding qualifications of potential SCOTUS justices. Scary, isn't it?
Heaven forbid Leonard - not 'this' Congress. Standards and removal of 'critters' does need addressing - way overdue. Facing facts though, even the low bar of mutual agreement on the time of day is doubtful.
Possibly doubtful but we do need to find a way back to ethical governance. What are the expectations we should have for elected and appointed people who are paid a salary to represent us?
I read the article you are quoting from. I do not suggest that Jane Sullivan Roberts work raises ethical issues for the Chief Justice, only that the question has been raised and that a code of ethics would make what is ethical and what is not clear.
The Republican legislators in TN also appear to have held a private meeting after their vote to berate their fellow representatives for not voting to expel the white woman.
Except someone - presumably someone in the Republican caucus TAPED the meeting and released the tape to the media.
I'm also going to point out that I find it unlikely that none of his fellow representatives didn't notice that the speaker was filing fraudulent per diem claims for the last few years. So my question becomes - how many other legislators don't actually live in their district and how many others have been lying on their per diem reports?
At this moment, it looks like Republicans in Tennessee have committed political hari kari all because they wanted to punish two black men for being "uppity."
Can you imagine what the Republicans would do if a Democrat submitted more than $40,000 per year for "travel expenses" in commuting to and from the State House? The number, by the way, is derived from new reports that indicate Cameron Sexton, who led to push to expel the "Tennessee Three" from the House, receives a $313 daily allowance for lodging and travel expenses, even on days when the legislature is not in session. Since 2021, he has received more than $92,000 in per diem payments.
And up until this week, he didn't even admit to not living in the district he represents.
Another letter to disturb our sleep and to wake up any Americans who believe we are still a two party system. Your statement: “It makes sense that Trump supporters who are concerned about the former president’s similar behavior will do their best to downplay Teixeira’s case.” Maybe they should worry if the court cases against tfg stack up the facts and indict him. Trump supporters and elected repubs have ignored, downplayed and lied about his criminal and dangerous behavior and possible treason. Yes, those documents at Mar-a-Lago? And it’s not just tfg. We know Heritage and Claremont project and other extreme groups and individuals are running the show, including supplying a list of Supreme Court candidates ready to vote against gun laws, voting laws, women’s right to choose, abortion, even what meds women can take. And what books can line the shelves of public schools. And corporations and wealthy supporters including even the latest revelations of possible payoffs to Justices. Add that to the repub party’s official meetings with Viktor Orban and we should worry about the entire repub party. Democrats need more seats in the House and Senate. This seems like a broken record: Wake Up America.
It’s called Fascism, Heather. Pure fascism. Lying Black Uncle Tom Justice Clarance Thomas is a slave to a Hitler loving white billionaire Nazi Collector of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Fascists rule the GOP, Heather. Putin’s KGB strategy in East Berlin rolled alcoholic Yeltsin and crushed Gorbachev the Soviet liberator that won a Nobel. Trump likes Putin. And he worships dictators all over. MTG is Trump writ small. Louisville mass murders highlight GOP support of gun violence and chaos. The pattern described by HCR is simple: it’s fascism and fascistic white supremacy and white nationalism running amok within the Republican Party establishment. It’s GOP racism. It’s US whites in America fearful of democracy and Blacks voting. Abortion rights activists misread DeSantis. He’s a fascist stripping libraries and indoctrinating the children - much like Hitler following Mussolini. Jews. Blacks, Muslims and Hispanics are targeted by fascist forces worldwide... Trump, DeSantis and their ilk want to lead us to fascism. HCR’s partial list ignores the unifying organization, methods and principles behind fascism. Ignores racial hatred and homophobia. Ignores Black Lives Matter and ignores racism in America, ignores racism in all aspects of society in America.
Totalitarianism depends on intolerance, racism, sexism, ignorance, fear, and silence in education.
Fascists start with the books, libraries, newspapers, magazines, and media. See FOX. Antisemitism is critical. And enabling silence in higher education is critical.
Heather’s observations are accurate. Incomplete.
Fascism and enabling silence on campuses are among the missing topics.
Go for it Professor Richardson. Tie it all together.
Hannah Arendt’s totalitarianism, her banality of evil - circulating the globe - is the place to start.
Don't be so hard on HCR for not sounding loud alarms about galloping fascism. It's not what she's doing (or supposed to be doing). She's documenting. She's a historian, as I see it, writing letters today for us today, yes, but as a historian, for readers 50 years from now.
I think you are right on target. I see the same things happening and agree with your interpretation of them. I'd add that much of the press, eager for eyeballs and clicks, is unwittingly (or sinisterly) complicit in spreading the mass hysteria to advance fascism.
Recently, for example,I wrote a comment on an article about DeSantis .. that he was reminiscent of Mussolini when he talked about his 'surgical precision' approach to 'governance.' Yah, he'd get the trains to run on time. The comment was blocked by the paper's censors!
DeSantis isn't 'enabling' silence in higher education; he's actively enforcing it. Get rid of current college/uni overseers and plant one's puppets. Get rid of tenure. Force 'reevaluation' of faculty frequently ( evaluation by whom???) Interfere with teaching, prescribe a whitewashed history curriculum, deny the existence, let alone rights of, gays, lesbians, transgender, queer people. I shudder when I see how much uncritical attention he's getting.
As a young person, I was obsessed with the question of how Hitler could have happened. The first years of my life and much of my childhood were dominated by the scourge of fascism and Naziism and I wanted to know why. Hannah Arendt provided some insight. Now, furthering our insight, we have “The Devil’s Confession.” More importantly, though, I am witnessing, as a seasoned observer of the world, the emergence and rapid evolution in real time of everything I ever learned about totalitarianism and fascism. I think this is also your experience?
The only hope I have that history may not repeat resides in some young people…the Justins, the Cassidys, the ones still opting to do the Peace Corps and Americorp, the kids who reject going along to get along who listen to their guts and say “There's gotta be a better way.” Thanks to these kids and some beautiful people like Jamie Raskin who persist through it all, there's still some hope. I won't be around to see it, but we got through it before. I need to look for hope. Otherwise what's the point?
CR, THAT’S BS. HRC offers her profoundly accurate daily or nightly summation, a short cut for the lazy that need intellectual babysitting on history, and her specialty is Civil War and what followed and did not follow .. but hear this FACT: fascism is the overarching concern.. and has been since before slavery... another form of fascism... for the COLOR blind historian that cannot see or feel fascism, cannot or will not out it in the readership that may be a practitioner, there is the Seeing Eye Dog ... and there are two... Yale Professor of History Timothy Snyder is most recent, and scholar and U of Chicago (buried at Bard College) Hannah Arendt was the first... either of whom are far, far superior in their expressed grasp of fascism and the meaning of totalitarianism and intolerance... and the BANALITY OF EVIL - the stuff of Hitler, STALIN, and our favourite Southern Confederate Criminals that destroyed the lives of the Negro child and family for a few hundred years and counting ... and could care less... and today we get to our favourite campuses, PICK ONE... that are silent on Trump and Pence and DeSantis and this rogue band of grifting thieves that feed raw meat to the savages the comprise today’s GOP... the color blind, coldly insensitive idiot savant historian that masters fact so well and ignores equally well the intensity of the experience for the savaged... strikes me every time I reflect on it.. This insensitivity is raw. Thucydides was the first and probably the greatest of historian of the classical period.. translated, Pericles Oration to the Dead is worth a second and third read... I am no scholar, not at all, and I find most historians boring story tellers... we are blessed with HRC’s accounts and her nightly connections, past to present, and her nightly summations inspire the memory and moral outrage... but that outrage is for the reader to find, feel and express, it does not flow from the dry accounts offered... we have to get them from the Spielberg movie version. Auschwitz and Andersonville do not translate well in dry fact.
Thank you , Carolyn. You give us a way to be optimistic, to hope, with your beautiful words. “I won't be around to see it, but we got through it before. I need to look for hope. Otherwise what's the point?” We care for the children and grandchildren and the future of this planet. And our work and activism, standing up and speaking out are ways to support Democracy.
HCR won’t tempt or attempt her $50 per year white born again fascist enabling readership. Won’t risk one of them with the truth. But she knows the truth. England’s Neville Chamberlain felt London could get along with Adolf Hitler, Pilot Lindberg and his crowd were Nazi supporters… we had our fascists then and have them now. Rep. Jamie Raskin won’t run again. Cancer threatens. He’s among our best. HCR has not expressed deep knowledge of his sermons. Quotes and fact are not sufficient. Truth that slams is needed. That takes courage. Does Dear Heather exhibit courage? The idiot savant does not confront. He recites the dictionary.
Sandy, upon your recommendation, I did purchase "On Tyranny" and although my stack of books to be read is about as high as I am tall, I was surprised how slim it was and so read it immediately. A lot of TRUTH in a small package! I also admit that some of it made my blood run cold. Other parts, however, warmed my heart--the make eye contact and small talk. (How often I noticed how my late father, who lived to be 93, was marginalized by this ageist society! I make a point to make eye contact and say kind words whenever I can, especially to elderly, because of him. ) What a good graduation gift this book would make to a young person!
I intend to bring it to my next book club meeting. Our book club members each read whatever we choose, bring our choices and discuss them. Many a good book then gets circulated among friends, and I then read books that I otherwise might have passed over.
Miselle, SBL beat me to it…I have both “On Tyranny” books (regular and illustrated); powerful words packed into a slim book! Re “books stacked as high as you are tall” there is a Japanese word for it: “tsundoku”; it means you have/buy more books than you can ever read…boy do I have it bad! And, finally, a song from a now departed great singer-songwriter, John Prine (dang autocorrect changed it to “Prince”!), about becoming “invisible” as we age: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVhA01J0Zsg
I worked with a big Prine fan, so I knew this song! Thanks, I enjoyed listening to it again.
My Dad was very hard of hearing, even with hearing aids. I'd accompany him to any doc appts and pull the staff aside and tell them: if he answers something with an off the wall answer, it is NOT dementia, he didn't understand you. Some were so kind to him, other chose to ignore him and talk to me. I'd pointedly turn to him and say something like "What do YOU think, Dad?" Us 5 "kids" all lived within 5 minutes of him. We'd all connect through him after Mom was gone, calling or visiting daily. If I was the first to call after work and he'd say "I haven't talked to a soul all day" it stung. How lonely that could be! It opened my eyes.
Todays government is going to have to investigate each and every department for corruption and start removing them. You will not get any support from the Magat repugnants because they like the chaos with their main objective to blame the democrats ! They seem to not care about the job of working for the people that voted them in so making the entire government nonfunctional to say the least . The repugnants in congress are not interested in doing their duty to the American people anymore but still hold the deciding votes to oppose any and all laws being proposed! How is that governing for the best of the American people? When will it change ? Are the American people just going to simply accept fascism? Will there be any consequences for those breaking the laws ? It is very demoralizing to see what is happening around you with your rights being removed by the minority and being forced to accept what the right wingers, evangelical, Christian zealots are shoving down the throats of every single person ! More corruption is exposed daily by journalists by the repugnants and thank you very much for them ! The majority of Americans who don't want fascism will have a big fight on their hands ! I hope they are ready for it !
Have been worried about the “entire Repub party” since Newt, and especially since 2000. My worries have come to pass in ways I could not have imagined, sad to say…
Jeri, we all should worry. I don’t understand how so many people can look the other way.Do not Connect the dots, don’t know or care about History. That oft repeated quote, those who ignore History are doomed to repeat it. Paraphrased, Jorge Santayana. I shudder to think that the future generations will pay for the trauma of these times.
Unlike the fine folk who inhabit this Substack, people are stupid and lazy; their reptilian brain stem energized by Limbaugh-enhanced hatred and Kardashian vapidity.
From the time that Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex (I voted for him), there has not been a Republican running for president worthy of my vote. Mostly they were either too rich or too stupid (or both). Recommending again for one of our researchers: Le Monde’s Sunday magazine exposure of the Big Oil Bushes.
You know, I just don’t see a good or decent person in the Republican Party. Not. A. One. There hasn’t been an effective leader on “their” side since Eisenhower and that’s when I was small child. I am ancient now and all I see is so much garbage and filth the GQP’ers have in their arsenal. They are embarrassing our nation, ALL of them!
Me too. Fortunately, most people in other countries don't pay much attention to the daily American news and have no idea how much damage is being done by the party of perversion.
And we didn't learn much from Nixon. Talk about a canary in a coal mine. There it was. A flashing red light, a siren screaming that the GOP was led by crooks. But we didn't listen.
And then, and then we all acquiesced as "nice old Gerry Ford" pardoned the crook so we could "move forward"! Forward to even worse! Talk about a bad precedent!
Ike was far from perfect. But at least had some bones in his spine. And he saw politics and money as a bad combination. He hated Nixon with good reason. But he took a political gamble and it backfired. And he knew it.
Yes, indeed, and President Eisenhower feared SenatorJoseph McCarthy and elevated Richard M. Nixon of Watergate fame, and the tapes that brought him down.
Eisenhower was not a politician. America thought military leadership skills would translate into governing wisdom. Wisely running a multi-faceted country is different than running a business, a platoon, a classroom. American’s care about personality more than wisdom, so we are always struggling with our darker forces and natures. Same Play, Different Actors.
Nonsense. General Eisenhower was a superb politician as a 5 star general and supreme allied commander, leading SHAPE and Columbia University. In 1951 after declining HST asking for the Democrats, IKE became a Republican candidate, a Republican politician, one of 10 candidates for the presidency in that party. He won the primaries, hands down, without bothering to appear in any of them. He became a two term president, a hugely successful politician, defeating the governor of Illinois twice. AES was crushed in 1952 and 1956 by the most powerful Republican ever.
Elections these days are turning into exciting events for me. It's my Super Bowl.....I can't wait to find out how many more Republicans we can kick to the curb. It's just plain lunacy to see what they are doing....thank heaven they are too stupid to see the forest because too many trees are in the way. LOL
I am gobsmacked that an airman in the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard had access to top secret/Codeword Communications Intelligence (COMINT) materials. That he could photograph these (ineptly) and post them on an internet site to ‘impress’ his buddies makes his crime no less horrific.
My first job in the State Department was in the ‘Office of Current Intelligence,’ which was a euphemism for the most secret department that processed NSA COMINT for top government officials. We would process these intercepts, hand carry them to senior State officials, and prepare a highly restricted daily Diplomatic Summary for the White House and a few other TS/Codeword customers. At State we never left this material with anyone, including The Secretary.
Because of the sensitivity of the materials (and the fact that we were spying on many dozen countries—from close allies to enemies—) made security an overriding priority.
The material casually posted by Teixeira is one of the most damaging intelligence catastrophes in American history.
First it relates to operational situation (in contrast to The Pentagon Papers, which were purloined historical documents about our screw up in Vietnam.) It reveals some of our most sensitive intelligence sources:
1) In cyber intelligence, the Russians will see how deeply we have penetrated their cyber systems and can quite easily block our access;
2) From South Korea to Egypt and Ukraine, dozens of countries face public exposure that the United States has been intercepting and decoding their diplomatic and military messages. I believe that our doing this with sensitive UN communications have also been exposed.
3) Sensitive tactical information regarding American policies and day-to-day operations have been revealed both to our enemies and to our allies. Not only is this embarrassing. It also makes our allies reticent to discuss truly confidential matters with us.
Second, I am astonished that an airman at the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard had easy access to this super sensitive material. Why anyone at Otis Air Force Base would receive such intelligence I find mInd boggling.
What has resulted has unfortunate short-term implications. Longer term, it will be more difficult for our allies to trust us, while our enemies will be able to devise cyber counter measures to correct leaks in their cyber systems.
Sadly, because of the vast number of Americans who have access to highly sensitive intelligence materials, such a massive intelligence breach will almost certainly occur soon again. Photos with an iPhone or use of a thumb gizmo will permit us all to read this top secret stuff.
My wonder is if this young airman could so easily purloin ultra sensitive docs, what else is going on ? There are probably many, many others that are doing the same thing more quietly and more adeptly.
MLR I have an image of Russian spies slurping vodka as they peruse American media for the latest highly sensitive intelligence. No need to entrap any Americans, since enough voluntarily publish secret stuff.
Thank you for an informed and sober assessment. This leak could scarcely have come at a worse time. It is another boost to the Great Unraveling. Of course MTG, etc., contribute every day and are “above the law.”
Keith, thank you for such a reasoned assessment from an informed perspective. I would hope that all who gave him access without a security workup will suffer dire consequences.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that it is difficult to find the combination of computer “smarts” and those willing to serve in “today’s army”.
Both parties have done it, but Republicans have become masters at the game of minority rule. You’re right Virginia…it’s about as anti-democracy as can be. Striking down much of the Voting Rights legislation by SCOTUS paved the way for this huge impediment to democracy to infect our country at all levels (local, state & fed). Citizens United (and similar SOTUS rulings going back many years) greased the wheels further.
Historically, both parties have in the past and present used gerrymandering to game the majority. That’s why it’s so hard to get legislation against it. The majority is faked, and you can’t ask them to weaken their position. The same goes for campaign finance - when everyone in politics benefits, it’s impossible to enact legislation against it.
Thanks Heather. We have seen the renegade Republicans, Christian nationalists, and white supremacists go full bore in dismantling democracy and the Republic. Now we are beginning to see that the public is tired of their outstripping rhyme and reason to satisfy their small constituency and Trump, who has inspired all their actions.
We may be able to defeat the legislative assault, but the Supreme Court may prove to be much more difficult, as they too, serve that small party. I don't know what we have beyond impeachment, which is not going to happen with the GOP controlling the House, and public pressure. Clarence Thomas behavior and John Roberts inability to act to rein in the Court may be the wedge we need there.
We have a combination of voter ignorance and a surprising number of people willing to destroy the nation in order to maintain their power over social progress. This overshadows the Civil War in terms of its damage to democracy.
Maybe this is what is necessary to make people take notice.
Roberts immediately got things rolling with the Alito leak but somehow is deciding to slow walk investigations into Thomas. SCOTUS needs to be fumigated.
Well, he got things rolling with the Alito leak, but there never was a conclusion to that investigation. Possibly because it hit too close to home? The highest court in the land, whose corruption has undermined its authority.
From the AG's reported press conference: " ... Teixeira, a 21-year-old employee of the United States Air Force National Guard ...". A stickler might suggest that being a "member" of the ANG would be a more appropriate form of address. Such a military member would have taken the standard oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the US. The presidential oath of office has slightly different wording at this point: " ... to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution ...". The young man is subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and at a possible trial for espionage, I would almost expect a military court rather than civilian. The press coverage of the arrest noted it was the FBI, not military security, doing the job. Jurisdiction aside, the parallels of Airman Teixeira's actions with those of our former president are marked and undeniable--as were their oaths of office. I would dearly hope that equal and appropriate justice would be dispensed to any individuals tried for such deliberate mishandling of highly classified information.
Colonel, I was wondering about that myself. Is he an "employee" of the ANG, or is he an airman assigned to a position with the ANG? I see that he is referred to as "Airman", which implies that he has sworn the oath of a member of the Armed Forces of the US (specifically USAF) whereas a civilian employee would be held to a different oath.
Other stories identified his promotion to the rank of Airman First Class: An Airman First Class is a enlisted airman in the United States Air Force at DoD paygrade E-3. An Airman First Class receives a monthly basic pay salary starting at $2,161 per month, with raises up to $2,436 per month once they have served for over 3 years. Of course he is also an employee, but as you suggest, all employees are not sworn military members--rather civilian employees. Perhaps that is a small difference, but one that could matter in legal affairs.
Heather, superb summary of the day’s most important news. Your contrast of how Governor Whitmer and Governor DuhSantis behaved in signing new bills, jumped out at me. Yes, the documents leaker, possibly traitor, was also important, but the juxtaposition of the two polar opposite governors was outstanding. Your indefatigable energy is an inspiration to me on a daily basis. To all of us. Thank you! Have a great weekend.
The line that got me is about Michigan Republicans immediately suing to prevent this bill from taking effect. Will it take their own children being involved in a school invasion to even acknowledge there’s a problem? How much money is the NRA spreading throughout these state legislatures? Someone needs to sit them down in a room locked from outside and force them to watch footage of school shooting after school shooting. Uvalde is a good starting point.
I suspect that those people who are passing these restrictive laws feel confident that they and their loved ones will never be affected by these laws. “ my daughter pregnant and seeking an abortion? Good gracious never. We are good Christian people. “ And as far as they’re kids being vulnerable for a school shooting. I wonder how many of these kids go to a public school.
They are convinced that THEY are safe because God, AND that THEY are the "good guys with the guns" who, because God, will be able to stop the bad guy before he kills more than a few victims - who are not related to them, because God. Theirs is manifestly the form of insanity that is endangering all Americans. And of course their pure daughters will never have an ectopic pregnancy, or have a fetus with a condition incompatible with life or actually die in utero, or otherwise endanger the daughter's mental or physical health or wellbeing, so of course she will never need an abortion, and if their daughter wouldn't need one, no one else may have one.
But.... but.... but god will make everything right! Trust me, it says so right here in the bible which he wrote and put in every hotel room so everybody will know who is really the boss. So there!
This last one was a private Presbyterian school in Nashville. Think any Republican children there? Highly likely. Think that will change their minds?
I will start with my Michigan Republican state representative. Thanks.
Elisabeth -- Yes! Exactly!
Governor DaSatan, as my nephew and his friends call him.
Traitor?
Are you kidding? The Biden administration is lying about everything.
First - Turns out American soldiers are fighting along with NATO troops. This is a hot war now.
Even worse we are losing. The Administration and the elite media keep telling you the war is being won. This is becoming Vietnam 2.
This guy is a hero.
If you want to live in a dictatorship feel free, but don't do it in my name. I don't want my government lying to me, especially about something as significant as war with a nuclear power.
Ukraine is a hyper corrupt authoritarian country. Zelensky has jailed political opponents, outlawed religion, and censored media.
Maybe you feel a kinship with Ukraine because that's what you want America to become.
I don't.
James A… Next time you try your hand at making a Spam sandwich you might want to
toss in a few well documented facts.
This "intellectual pragmatist" is sending these missives from Moscow or Beijing. Ignore him/her/it.
There is also the possibility that they are being informed by the PROC-controlled Global Times in study sessions with Matt Gaetz.
C. Jacobs, wouldn't it be lovely if Matt, MTG, Lauren, Gohmert, Gosar, and the various and sundry clown show GOP packed up and left for the PROC (if they were granted visas, that is). Whatever wrongs this country is guilty of, certainly we've paid for all of them, with interest.
Lol he’s insane
I've seen unhinged comments from him in the past, and assume that he's a troll, either a living contrarian or a bot - maybe Russian or Chinese. If he sees this exchange, he'll probably go on the attack soon. I don't think there's anything to be gained by trying to "reason" with him.
Ignoring is best with these types
A hero? He's just an obsessed war-gamer kid who wanted to impress his lil pod of players!
A White Supremacist groomer is more likely. Read Professor Kathleen Belew's book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America.
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674286078
I don't buy his, "I am against war." Then, why join the Air Force National Guard, and what is the purpose of the guns he is "obsessed with" by all accounts? Clearly he should not have been in "military intelligence," but live and learn.
Neither Snowden nor Teixeira were Intelligence staff. They were in IT (Information Technology). Snowden tried very hard to make the public aware that no one in his position should have had access to the contents of the files on the computer systems he managed.
I am glad you and the press have now clarified this as regards Teixeira. Snowden was effective in making his point. Teixeira is young enough that the frontal lobe would not have fully developed which is part of why his thinking is so unclear. IT is a problem when people are able to access information that they probably should not have clearance for. We were just discussing last night an article published in some independent press last year about how the Intelligence agencies have not treated their IT people well, and do not understand their capabilities fully and they do not have the same chances for advancement as other roles, so they leave for the private sector. Something that needs to change.
https://www.justsecurity.org/73641/cia-is-losing-its-best-and-brightest-and-not-just-because-of-trump/
Thank you, Linda, I’ve been saying that all day. And my family members, who’ve had security clearances for their jobs, have said Teixeira’s supervisors will be losing their jobs. And thank you, Heather, for putting together mtg’s defense for me, as actually a defense of dt, It makes the fact that she’s on the Homeland Security Committee even more frightening - will she pull a similar stunt? SMH.
It's been perfunctory and apparently still is. Why why why? Who is minding the store?
Being charitable y’know.
James A: What the U.S. is supporting is a fight against a land grab by an anti-democratic thug that threatens post-WW2 rules-based international order. Putin's power grab in Ukraine and the rise of autocrats around the world is a threat to our existing order. The U.S. has been as restrained as possible given this very real threat. But perhaps you want Putin to win? To my mind that goes against everything we have fought for to live in the free world. By the way, people in Russia are JAILED for protesting the war. On the other hand, you can say what you want, however undermining it may be to the interests of our nation.
I hear you. I really do. I understand that you are very concerned, and that this young man's actions are in line with what you think is right. None of us win when we are fighting and killing and being killed, and if the government is sending people to war without clearly letting them know what they are fighting for, that is wrong. Is our government sending our soldiers to fight in this war? We need to know this, if it's true. It should be stated. However, I don't understand why people imagine that everyone should know everything, all the time, and that there is no need for diplomacy. What I am also not understanding is that Vladimir Putin seems to have escaped censure for dishonesty to his people, and for dragging his country and a neighboring country into what looks like an unending war. So much of our image of our country stands on WWII when we stepped in to save the day. Do we look for enemies so we can prove that we are still champions, or are there still forces that seek to destroy what we all value, whom we must fight for the benefit of all? I am not understanding why our laws suddenly don't matter- why it's okay for people to break the laws according to their own notions. I have been to Ukraine briefly to attend a conference, and of course did not see hyper-corruption. What I did see was a country that had a lot of Russian media and many statues of Lenin. I know a lot of Russians, and have been very impressed with both Ukrainian people and Russian people. But you know, we are both Americans, and from our differences of opinions, It would be as difficult to characterize American people on the basis of who we are as it is to characterize others. I know Ukrainians who agree with you. I know Russians who don't. Life is complicated, at least from my point of view. How would you feel if our country invaded Canada? Would it not seem wrong? And what is the alternative to the "elite media" you speak of? Do you still trust Fox news and other outlets who have been lying for years to their listeners?
Lauri, there are plenty of other newsletters you can read. You obviously aren’t a good match reading Dr. Richardson’s and the very large group of people who do read her daily. And respect the news and opinions she shared. Good luck.
Dana, you've roused my curiousity. You seem to be inviting Lauri to leave this board, to go somewhere else, and no longer contribute to this conversation. Why do you think Dr. Richardson's newletter is not a "good match" for her? I see nothing in her post that would warrant such an invitation to leave.
I mean, even the "James A" fellow she's responding to, the one who is offering such contrarian opinions without, sadly, offering any citations, should stick around, in my view. Isn't he one of those who most needs to read this newsletter? I notice generally that in order to find a "conservative" commenter (in quotes because I no longer know what the word means), you have to chase them all the way to Fox or even weirder sites.
I don't blame them for running, since they seem to have a very hard time dealing with contrary opinions, and an even harder time citing sources. But I blame us if we've chased them away from our conversation with incivility simply for disagreeing with us, and I hope that's not the case here.
Dirk, I agree with you.
“You obviously aren’t a good match reading Dr. Richardson’s and the very large group of people who do read her daily”
How is this different from banning books?
The more readers of LFAA, the better, unless you’re Putin, or tffg.
It would be fine if Putin read Letters from an American. He might learn something about how we think. Or that we think.
I’d bet money Putin has one or more goons reading LFAA. His only intent is to know his enemy to defeat his enemy, which is basically anything standing in his way of total domination
Hi, Dana- I have been reading Dr Richardson for as long as she has been posting. I am someone you'd think of as a liberal, but it's important to me to keep questioning. So I listen to all sorts of media and viewpoints, as much as I can stand without too much mental agitation. My comment was directed at the previous commenter. I believe in dialog, so I was responding to what he wrote. In my town we live near people who don't share all of our opinions, and I would not have it any other way. Thank you for caring passionately about this topic. I was talking with my son and his friends who live in Brooklyn and Ojai about current politics and they were surprised that I did not just think what they thought. I said it's because I know all sorts of people. I asked them how many people they knew whose opinions on politics are different than their own, and they looked at each other and said, "None." This does not mean that my own sense of things is compromised but that it is possible to see what others think and understand why. So thank you again for inviting me to read lots of other newsletters, but I will stick with this one too.
Many years ago I was seeing a fellow who lived about an hour’s south of me in an area even more rural than mine. His small town & surrounding areas were populated by ranchers, (then) illegal pot growers, back-to-the-landers, lumberjacks, small business owners, etc.; he LOVED the mix and the fact that they could all be ‘neighborly’ while holding different political views & frequently joined together to help each other out, and in town celebrations, etc.
Lauri, I appreciate your reply very much. Now I’ll read again what you were responding to! Btw, I read Andy Revkin about climate change, a big interest of mine
And durn it, Dana, now I bet you're feeling attacked, instead, which is certainly not what I had in mind. So please respond. If you simply posted in anger, just say , "Oops! Didn't mean to offend!" I've done it many times myself. But if you disagreed with something Lauri included in her post, please expand. She seemed to be drawing a degree of commonality between Americans, Ukrainians, and Russians. Is that what prompted your reponse?
And yet another reason to read Letters from an American. Some really good dialogue from some really good people.
Right now, the biggest enemies we have are right here in our country. This could change with the circumstances though. Domestic terrorists are a growing problem here, and when I think about all of the young White males being groomed to think that the world is only good if it keeps them placed at the top of the hierarchy on this planet, with women and other people whomever is considered non-White at the moment (and it has changed constantly throughout our brief history as a country), below. That they can destroy the planet for my child and grandchildren to come, is a problem that many countries have. It is being turned into an anti-immigrant problem in many places, but it is more insidious than that. Immigrants are not our problem other than we don't give them enough rights in many instances, unless they are in elite jobs, and we don't have enough of them to maintain our economy properly. Cutting back on and getting rid of immigrants is like China's one child policy which favored boys. Now they have a shortage of available women and men will have to go elsewhere to find wives. According to Foreign Affairs we have 5 million unemployed and 10 million available jobs. How would we fix those numbers? They will get worse and worse particularly as more and more of our citizens are going to look abroad as well as here as long as we have these states who are instituting increasingly draconian policies around birthing, birth control and women's health in general.
It's actually not news that there are American military personnel in Ukraine. They have been there to oversee American donated military equipment, to assess how the war is actually going on the ground and the evolving need for supplies from NATO countries. To understand the situation better, donating countries (NATO) need experienced military personnel on the ground, near the fighting. There are hundreds of journalists on the ground. If there is NATO participation in the fighting, that would be discovered by journalists who are not beholden the the Biden administration. Just like they weren't beholden to the voted-out Trump administration..
Another red herring is the argument about censorship. Ukraine was a corrupt country UNTIL Zelenski was elected on an anti-corruption platform. Since then, Zelenski's administration has fought corruption that has included prosecution of Russian-backed actors within the government and within the media. Ukraine is implementing anti-corruotion measures as a precursor to qualifying for NATO membership. You calling that persecution is like calling Trump's indictment persecution. So on that logic, it seems like you believe corrupt strongmen should be left alone because, you know, "freedom".
Biden is quietly doing what Kevin McCarthy spouted, that if he's in power, he won't just give Ukraine a blank check, but wouldn't reduce military aid to Ukraine either.
Is Teixeira a hero? Was he motivated by ideology or by the childish desire to matter in an adult world, showing shiny objects to other childish gamers to gain cred? Is it shocking that allies spy on each other? No. It's been ongoing since countries engage with each other. Should all information be shared in a time of war? No. It undermines a county's investments into the war, wasting resources and risking lives and foreign relations.
In fact, in a democracy, people like you need tools to help put news in context. Teixeira is a fool who will pay for his mistakes. You are a fool for believing he's a hero and for swallowing Russian propaganda without chewing.
Something is fishy about the arrest of a low-level employee of the Air National Guard for releasing classified information. Performing his job, whatever it was, certainly did not require access to such infomation at his job level. A 'need to know' this kind of material only applied to much higher-ups in the intelligence structure of which he apparently was a part. I've been there, albeit over half a century ago. That he is the 'fall guy' may be part of an insidious plot at a higher level. I hope some investigative journalists are thinking similarly.
His job has been reported as an "intel tech" dealing with distributing military intelligence from all over the world. Does that not imply being able to access intel? A lot has been written about his only being 21. The military is made up of young people from their late teens on up and many of them have jobs or missions requiring they be entrusted with great responsibility, including at least some intel. Probably most of them are immature. That's what makes them so attractive to the military. They think they can't die, they've trained themselves on video games, they're idealistic, they're malleable and easily influenced by their comrades. what's not to like in a soldier or sailor or airman?
Information Tech staff should not have access to the CONTENTS of the files on the systems that they manage. Snowden unsuccessfully tried to make policy makers aware of this ongoing security problem.
If his job was 'distributing' intel, that doesn't mean he automatically had access to what he was distributing. Like your USPS person doesn't open the letters they put in your mailbox. And don't YOU have a password to open your email's inbox? C'mon, he is taking the fall for someone higher than him in the intel hierarchy.
I don't know if he's taking the fall, but it's not hard to suspect there are people higher in the chain of command who share this intel with subordinates or who are careless with their intel. I hope that they are not brainwashed right wingers who would undermine our national interests or corrode our institutions, but I'm not sure at this point. We need an independent investigation.
I hope so. My security clearance also expired over half a century ago. You're right, of course. People with higher-level access were likely sloppy.
Is his new best friend named Jared?
Jack, I think “intelligence” has changed exponentially in the “half a century ago”. The youngest brains are navigating cyberspace while their synapses are still forming. What technology hasn’t changed our reaction to 9/11 likely did. 🤷🏻♀️
So anything is hackable?
I’m far from an expert but yes, as I understand it, that is true.
You might get more from the comments of Peterr here than I could, just because my brain is not wired for this.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/04/14/the-investigation-into-jack-teixeira/
He comes across as credible and knowledgeable.
I hope we there are Americans in Ukraine providing intelligence, instruction, logistics, etc., but are you saying U.S. troops are fighting there? What’s your source for that info?
Hi James,
I am most curious to know the basis of your startling claim that we here in the US of A live in a dictatorship. I am in no way minimizing the issue of mission creep in Ukraine. All of us must be on guard against that, and the leaked info raises that question legitimately.
Nonetheless, the Pentagon has stated that the 14 members of the American military in Ukraine are attached to the embassy.
And what basis beyond the desk of the chinless racist propagandist Tucker Carlson can one claim Ukraine to be "hyper corrupt ,etc.,.."??
Hi, Daniel. I read and trust The Guardian. Recently there was a column, which could have been biased, of course, stating the US is paying in excess of $400. per barrel of oil sent to Ukraine. Supposedly, Zelensky, among others is profiteering. Recently 10 pols were expelled for corruption at US's demand, but many more remain, the article said.
I, for one, believe the premise that we must hold the fort against Russian aggression, but I also think it could be true that some people are playing two ends against the middle. We shall see. Profiteering in war is not uncommon.
Other than that, James A is clearly a stooge trying to bait us. Best to ignore him.
Remember Rhett Butler, War Profiteer most glamorous?
Hi Hope!
Thanks for that. I too trust the Guardian and would not be surprised if there is Ukrainian war profiteering, etc., and other problems growing like mushrooms in the fog of war. Doesn't supersede our righteous commitment to Ukraine, as you say
There’s a lot to unpack here and I doubt I’ll get to all of it and I doubt you’ll believe any of it. Trump was seeking to make our Republic an authoritarian dictatorship. American soldiers were sent to train on the equipment. There were MANY retired American soldiers who VOLUNTEERED to go fight in Ukraine. They were not ordered by anyone. They ASKED to go. Ukraine is a democracy. Zelensky was elected president by the people. The irony is you calling Ukraine corrupt... and we have Trump facing several lawsuits both state and federal, Clarence Thomas with a sugar daddy, representatives who don’t live in their districts ... what do you call that?
Authoritarian dictatorship? How can you be so delusional?
Who censored free speech
Threatened to take away your gun
Who wants to tell what car you can drive, what stove you can burn
Who wants to control what your children learn
Who is using the FBI to go after conservatives?
Who is criminalizing political differences?
Who lie about COVID efficacy and use it as a pretext to control
your movement, fire you from your job?
Should I go on?
Ukraine is not a democracy. Zelensky has jailed political opponents, outlawed religion, and shut opposition media. Before the war countries refused to send money to Ukraine because it was so corrupt.
As for the Trump lawsuits....is this a joke. The left is weaponizing the legal system.
The left is going to regret this day. Because it's going to boomerang.
Yes. I am not delusional but suspect you are. The government has not threatened free speech. It’s the only entity prohibited by the constitution. No one has threatened to take away my gun. No one has told me what car I can drive. Or what stove I can use. The GOP wants to tell me what my children can learn. The GOP seems invested in banning books. The only reason the FBI would go after conservatives would be if laws were broken or they posed a threat to public safety. I’m not certain what you are speaking of “criminalizing political differences” … J6? That’s a step beyond differences. COVID is a pandemic that will live with us forever. I follow the science and take my own precautions. You do you.
Ukraine is a democracy. I won’t argue with you further. You won’t change any one here. You won’t improve this forum.
The lawsuits against Trump are not a joke. They are not political. He broke the law. Many times. He knows it.
James, put down the Q-anon remote and come back to reality.
Nice try. When you can't dispute the facts, change the subject.
Your government is lying to you. Just like they lied about Russian collusion, COVID vaccine, the booster, Censorship, Hunter Biden Laptop, and now the war in Ukraine.
As for Ukraine, any idiot could see its not going well. The Russians are killing 7 Ukrainians for every Russian death, Ukrainian cities have been leveled, and the sanctions have been ineffective.
The same crowd that whiffed on Afghanistan is run this effort? Joe Biden has become the Barney Fife of foreign policy. The Chinese are threatening to go into Taiwan. Are we going to war with China too?
Reality is not on your side.
I took a look at your page, James A- there is nothing posted there. And in this thread it is you who have dropped the ball- you keep repeating many disputed ideas, old tired issues that have no bearing on what we are talking about here and did not respond when I invited you to say something about your ideas. Since you read HCR, can you tell us what you find compelling in her carefully presented history-based posts? I see you saying, "Your government," and "you," "you," and "you." And "any idiot." So, what do we have in common? I would guess that it's frustration and fear in the face of increasingly grim reality, and a wish to strengthen what needs to be strong.
Tire issues?
Its either true or not true.
Did the elite media/government lie about the Russia Hoax?
Did they lie about The Steele Dossier?
Did the FBI forge documents to obtain a FISA to spy on Carter Page?
Did the government lie about the efficacy of the COVID vaccine, efficacy
of booster, the harm to children?
Did the elite media lie about The Hunter Biden Laptop? Was the Russian disinformation claim a lie?
Did the government lie about the Ukraine war?
YES OR NO?
Yes or no about what exactly? And "It's either true or it's not true" used to indicate a mark we could all point to. Let me take just one of your questions: did the (media) lie about the Russia hoax? I don't think they did- I really don't see that it's been proven that they lied, other than a red herring episode about the Steele dossier in which mistakes were made and were admitted. But I don't really see why you are asking these questions only of those you are criticizing when it has been proven again and again that lying is not a problem for the right wing- not personally, not professionally, not politically, not ethically. No, for them, lying is just fine as long as one can get away with it or disable discourse through it. The Covid situation is hardly a winner for the right, either, because so much misinformation was spread through their outlets and representatives. Isn't it possible that the pandemic and Covid were a problem for all of us, without there having to be a bad side and a good side? We all made our choices, did what we thought best, and those of us here left to argue survived to tell the tale.
The "facts " that you purport as true don't seem to have any references where they can be checked as truthful. You certainly have a right to your opinion but, that is just what it is unless you can show legitimate sources. I do not agree with your statements, but we live in a FREE country so, you can think whatever you want. Spreading those opinions is different matter. Dr. Richardson backs up EVERYTHING she writes with her sources. I ask you, can you do the same? I don't think so.
Please ignore this troll. He will continue like a broken record otherwise. Thank you Colette.
Thanks Hope.
What are you disputing, please specify?
Sorry, your statements lack credibility..all of them. They are inflammatory and you are unable or unwilling to look for credible resources that can be fact checked. Without credible references, your statements are opinions. You made the statements, the onus is on you to show how you fact checked them.
Not kidding.
Many MAGA Republicans are proposing that we arm teachers: this option is dangerous. There is a big difference between handling a firearm at a range and facing a potential shooter and being able to shoot first. We hold special training in boot camp to learn how to kill the enemy. It takes months of special training to turn a civilian into a combat soldier trained to kill. And, elementary teachers would not be my choice for training combat soldiers. So, any showdown between a crazed killer with an AR-15 and a caring teacher with a handgun will not end well. Lastly, an imbalanced student that has no access to a weapon can overpower his/her armed teacher and take their weapon and do damage. Arming teachers makes no sense.
Paul, spot on! “And, elementary teachers would not be my choice for training combat soldiers.” And I doubt we would find many teachers at any level who will teach in a situation or mandate to have gun in the classroom. You could never have paid me enough to be in a classroom with a weapon. Not ever.
And as a parent I wouldn't want my child in a classroom with the kind of teacher who would agree to carry a gun in the classroom.
As a parent of two HS TEACHERS, I don't want my children being required to get into a shootout with someone with a semi automatic weapon! Because it is ALWAYS a semiautomatic weapon. And as that one GOP congressman said last week, if someone wants to take you out and doesn't care if they die doing it---well, SORRY, I'm NOT sacrificing my children for the benefit of the GOP and the NRA!!!!!!!
Absolutely! My son and daughter-in-law are both HS teachers in Texas...I worry about them every day but I also don’t want them to have to carry guns!
"I'm not sacrificing my children for the benefit of the GOP and the NRA!!!!"
Exactly!
In an ambush, a teacher with a gun is just as vulnerable as anyone else. Cops (with guns, of course) have been shot and killed while eating lunch at Denny's for goodness sake. Cops sat armed to the teeth outside the classroom in Uvalde. The cop running to the recent mass shooting at the bank was shot down. The point is that the mass murderers have the element of surprise, which makes efforts to protect the victims (even armed victims) too late. Civilians should not have these semi-automatic weapons, and access to and regulations on guns should tightly controlled and enforced.
So efforts to arm teachers will just train mass murderers to fire on teachers first.
I sure wouldn't like to be one of the terrified students banging on the door of a classroom seeking shelter during a slaughter, knowing that there's an armed maniac coming behind them and a terrified armed middle-aged teacher waiting for them on the other side of the door.
Can any parent actually think that having their child in a classroom with a teacher who is armed and willing to kill at the first sign of trouble is a good thing?
Fortunately, a teacher I had in elementary school days who had extreme loathing toward her charges was armed with nothing more dangerous than chalk, books and erasers, the which she routinely hurled with vigor at students in class who particularly offended her pedagogical sensibilities. She terrified me, and probably many of the others in my class. I cannot begin to imagine what might have happened had she been issued a firearm for classroom use.
"... special training in boot camp to learn how to kill..." And that's just to ignore the psych imprinting done, that's completely incompatible with a teacher's psyche. As well it says nothing of the fallout that actually taking a life does to one. Great, if understated points Paul.
Not to mention the likelihood - given the profiles of many school shooters - that the life the teacher must train to take will be that of a former student.
The ultimate and un-livable conclusion Quizt. I say this after thirty years in the classroom.
Or even a current student: what if the teacher who was recently shot by her six year old student had been armed? What then?
A Great American Tragedy. Truly heart breaking.
Wow! good point, Vicki! I didn't think of that!
Since the teacher is female and still alive, she'd have been sued for wrongful death and possibly prosecuted successfully for manslaughter or even murder. Whether it has dawned on districts and the levels of administration above them that they too stand to be sued when a child is shot by a teacher is as yet unclear. I doubt it will serve as an effective defense if districts etc. decline to shoulder the responsibility of training teachers to be shooters.
To kill a former student would be very much like killing one’s own child.
Without doubt, many here - as I presumed, are fully taking in what I put down. My later point is my Mom's "voice" whispering in my head, "d4n.... you can't unring a bell." I've found that truth learned to be one of those 'absolutes'.
This should be a no-brainer. Can’t imagine anyone being stupid enough to buy this insanity. Well, I can. It’s MAGAts, it’s their willingness to sacrifice our children, and our society for their almighty god, the weapon of death.
Exactly! Stand up , stand together, say NO guns, NO Magas, Really, if we don’t we’re as insane as they are.
And add, YESBOOKS!
Sanity & MAGAts = type mismatch.
But wait! They love all the children hence the abortion ban.
The only thing they love is control over women, power and money
And, guns!
Yes, and guns!
Yes. And yet women must live with being forced to be vulnerable. Why not gun owners/purchasers? “Sorry, your vulnerability is god’s plan”. As for arming teachers........ any weapon available to a teacher in a classroom, would back-handedly be available to a student with a distracted teacher. It raises the potential for conflict, not lessen it.
I can say with certainly after many years in education that if teachers were armed, students would find a way to get the gun.
Wear a poisoned dentata, let vulnerability screw back.
They hate that women could have a choice! That’s as far as their needs go!
Marj, they love the not yet born. Once they're born, they someone else's responsibility. I had a conversation once with a staunch anti abortionist; I asked him (almost always a him in my world) where his concern for the child was after it was born. His reply "that's the mother's problem". Not an iota of care or concern there.
Actually, I can't help but laugh at the thought that a woman does not have a choice about a pregnancy. Because there was an "accident" she is now forced into involuntary dangerous costly time consuming career wreaking servitude.
I know there is nothing funny about it. It's just so ridiculous and SO insane.
Indeed it is.
They love fetuses, not children and certainly not mothers or women in general and men who are libs, POC, etc. Once people are born, they are on their own. They are the party of death.
Agreed.
That is SO true Michele!
But those that I’ve talked to don’t love children enough to donate bone marrow or part of a liver (which regenerates) to save a life—and they sure don’t want the government to tell them that they have to do it even though both are a lot less harmful to their health than being pregnant.
Many of them don't love children enough to pay even 1-2% more in taxes to ensure those 'precious babies' have health insurance, safe homes and enough to eat after they're born. If that is so, then you know for sure they aren't parting with any of their organs for a child.
"They love all the control hence the abortion ban."
There. Fixed it for you. The abortion bans have nothing to do with loving life, children, or family values, all things that Republicans and Evangelicals would have everyone accept at face value as their motivation for what they do. Neither do the bans have anything to do with "love." The bans are about power over, control, and complete domination of every aspect of the lives of anyone who doesn't think the way they do.
I'm dead tired of it. I'm dead tired of minority rule, too. If I wanted to live in a dictatorial, autocratic, minority-ruled society, I'd have already moved to one. It never occurred to me that the USA would become one.
Actually their god is money, which the NRA and the gun lobby is more than happy to supply!!
I willingly will donate a state, such as ---well, I can't think of which one---for these yahoos to run around with their weapons and delusions of macho-ness as long as they stay in those borders and let all peaceful people move elsewhere, paid for by the oligarchs and gun manufacturers.
The same people who want to arm teachers won't trust those teachers to choose which books the kids should be reading.
My thought exactly!
Elementary teachers stand close to students, sit on the floor, write on easels and blackboards. These are not well accomplished with a gun in one hand. A gun in a pocket or holster might also be bumped or even grabbed by a child.
NOTHING THAT MTG says makes a freaking particle of sense. She needs to stay in a nice padded hotel room at Chateau D'Arkham.
She needs a lifetime residence at Florence Max prison, TBH.
She needs to be removed from Congress! Her oath to the constitution is a joke!
She's completely BUGHOUSE, BS crazy. Beyond reclamation.
I call her Gangrene because she is a festering rotten smelly growth on the body politic.
If you look into a reflective surface or even something such a computer monitor & say " Mad Marjorie " 3 times, she'll appear & spew her toxic venom on you. Mwahahahahahaaaaa ! Not even Beetlejuice or the Candyman want anything to do with her.....
And, she isn't the only one that needs to be removed! How these people continue to get votes to retain their position amazes me. The money....needs to be removed from campaigns. I don't know how that is possible. Advertising and promotion cost lot of money.....even at the lower level of positions.
I worry about the people that vote for people like her. Yes, money in politics is a problem of epic proportions. The Citizens United ruling sent us into a situation of leveling the concept of "government of the people, by the people, for the people." I realize other factors play into this as well. And, I find it difficult to think too long about the type of psyche that votes for the likes of MTG and so many others.
Paul, the best antidote to a bad guy with a gun is to take it away from him or, better yet, prevent him from getting it. Full stop. And the idea of adding to the number of bullets flying around a classroom is simply horrifying.
What Jon says ⬆️⬆️⬆️
Republicans are not known for their understand of psychology, and what it takes to make an effective teacher. They confuse school with prison.
with grossly underpaid teachers who end up babysitting teens who have to be force fed subject matter. At least it was like that in US high school.
It was decades ago, but I recall reading a study that claimed that robbery victims were far more likely to be killed if they pulled a gun.
I read that having a gun in the home for protection is more likely to be used on a family member.
SO seemingly like "road rage"; protection of ego.
Teachers will continue to quit in large numbers. People who want to teach do not want to carry guns. We are on a trajectory to have a crisis in lack of teachers and health care providers thanks to the fascists. The insidious ways the extremists on the right have destroyed our quality of life will take decades to heal.
As Dr. Richardson has pointed out many times, the "conservatives" of this country have bitterly fought the entire idea of public education since Reconstruction, if not before. They were a bit quiet after WWII, when the American educational system produced a work/research force that propelled us to incredible riches. But the world seems to have equalized since then, since the rest of the world rightly envied our economic and scientific successes, and emulated us whenever they could.
Now that that boom of advancement has spread around the world, the "conservatives," having learned nothing, are back to their plan to keep books reserved for the Rich only, since they're the only ones to be trusted with all that complicated knowledge stuff (in their view). Unforrtunately for them, during those boom times the modern conservative's predeccessors actually enshrined public education in both state constitutions and in the public's imagination as an imperative good. So they have to kill it with a death by a thousand cuts, instead.
They may succeed, too, by making public school so dangerous, ineffective, and blatantly ideological that nobody wants to go. We go back to the "good ol' days," when on the rich knew how to read and the only means the poor had to change their lives was via violence.
And once something's dead, it's really hard to bring it back to life.
The uneducated or perhaps, the specifically educated, as in “Christian” dogma educated, make the best pawns for authoritarians. None of it is simply coincidence!
Yah. I had the image the other day of those poorly-or-uneducated millions as a huge field of hammers standing on their heads, handles up, waiting to be grabbed by the next dictator who wants to hit someone.
I like your image. I a retired engineer with blacksmithing as a hobby and have taught blacksmithing at a craft school. One thing that is common is to drop a blacksmithing hammer on the floor and as a old man it is a pain to pick up. One trick I learned from another blacksmith is to use your foot to roll the hammer upright so the handle is in the air and much easier to pick up. I only dealing with one hammer and not a field. Thanks.
💔💔 ouch. You’re image is heartbreakingly on target.
In my experience, some private schools have blatant ideological agendas which they may or may not make known to their customers. Regarding private schools’ effectiveness, children are screened before admission, and any who do not succeed are encouraged to attend elsewhere. Public schools must accept everyone.
More like at least a lifetime, Christy. Depressing.
The desire to arm teachers should be a huge red flag to everyone! It has to be the most ignorant response out there.
And will kindly Ms. Smith who has been teaching second graders for 40 years pull out her Glock and blow away little Jimmy who is pointing his Dads 22 pistol at her cause he's pissed about his math grade. It's ludicrous. The extremists will say Fire those teachers and hire some with guts but I don't think most parents want that any more than they want school libraries closed.
As a retired early childhood educator, I agree. It is incomprehensible to me that anyone thinks it is a good idea to require a teacher to carry a firearm while in their classroom. There was a time when we were not allowed to keep a bottle of hand sanitizer accessible to children due the risk of them ingesting it. Now, it's okay to carry and keep a gun? As some kids say, "I can't even....". It fills me with rage and despair.
Arming teachers requires the same lunacy as all the other rationalization justifying gun ownership. The gun worshipping mentality is a sickness in the country.
May the day come when police again carry no more than pistols! We CAN dream.
Right, they want to arm teachers but don't trust them to do their actual job.
The Republican lawmakers in Tennessee may come to regret the attention they’ve drawn to themselves and their habits of governance.
They are, each of them, going to come to see last Thursday as the very worst day of their lives. Not one of those cockroaches can bear public scrutiny from having the lights turned on, forcing them to scurry to the dark corners from where they emerged.
I'm a Tenneseean & some of the insanity makes me want to claim VT or RI as my birthplace.
Thank you Daniel, right now Rhode Island (RI) looks very good with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse leading the way with his detailed Press Release linked by HCR & the Senator's fact filled responses to Lawrence O' Donnell on Thursday's 'Last Word' .
Senator Whitehouse's words in his Press Release were very precise indicating that systemic ethical problems are broader than Thomas' stark violation of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978: ... justices [ plural ] are ensconced in a cacoon of special interests ..." in need of the Senator 's proposed SCERT Act.
Senator Whitehouse has done a long series of speeches on the Senate floor about how The Federalist Society and Leonard Leo, and dark money have waged a decades long campaign to build the corrupt Supreme Court many of us are just beginning to notice. You can find d them all on YouTube.
Senator Whitehouse is one of my heroes.
My hero too Cheryl! I love this man!
He's really good on the environment too. 😊👍
The GOP : " Ethics ? WTH are they ? ".
The DOJ does not need 'ethics' to prosecute Thomas' straightfoward violation of Title1 of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978. [ sorry, syntax scouts should have pulled me over ... how about "brazen violation of Title 1 ..." ? :) ]
Years ago the Act was amended to include ALL three (3) branches of Government including the SCOTUS 9. Thomas' violation continues Today; he needs to get a Lawyer.
The Chief Justice has lost control of our most important Judicial institution. Not very "dark money" is sinking the good ship scotus.
"...Thomas' straightfoward violation of Title1 of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978." Prosecution of that seems to be the most efficient thing to do NOW.
Most efficient and I wish likely. I would like to be surprised.
Daniel, thank you for being there in TN and for voting!
CAN DO times 1,000 !
You can vote 1,000 times? 😈
Me too and I continue to be further disgusted with the House’s behavior.
I want to have them fight silverback apes on steroids & crack. PPV.
“Tragedy + time = humor.. “ Steve Allen. It’ll pass.
The same with Indiana!
Me too....
Me too.
Cockroaches. That’s the picture in my mind of the whole Republican Party these days. Light is their enemy.
Yeah, and unfortunately such a picture is highly accurate.
The TN GOP are upset with each other. They were made to look bad.
https://jezebel.com/leaked-audio-reveals-tennessee-republicans-are-pissed-a-1850333736
Thanks for the link. "As state Rep. Scott Cepicky (R) told Barrett, “You gotta do what’s right even if you think it might be wrong.”" They should be pissed. They look bad. Dimwits.
That is priceless, MK.
Bless the folks persisting at investigative journalism and turning those lights on. If only there were better financial rewards for doing the heavy lifting.
The double-standard here is jaw-dropping ... all in the name of God, no less ... ignoring that the "name of God" cannot be spoken nor defined in a single word ... any god that condones, justifies and empowers such hypocrisy must be "the god of this world" also known as the "Father of the Lie" ... no wonder these self-proclaimed superior people are so .... SCARED ... (Anagram = SACRED - we reap what we sow ....)
{{... oh, thank Jesus, we ain't scared, we got guns!!}}
My fear is that they won't scurry. My fear is that they've become secure in their "righteousness" that they no longer care if they're caught. Many of these Republicans have become so callous that they could be caught raping a sheep and they just say, "So? I'm a sheep-raper and I'm PROUD of it!"
TC—once again you’ve put things so well. I expect that, eventually, TFG will regret turning a spotlight on his “allegedly” crooked business dealings by running for president.
All he had to do was just sit back in 2015 like he did in 2011, and he'd be safe as the the continuing asshole he always was. But no, he figured actually running would "improve the brand," except - unfortunately for him and us - he won.
Exactly—he reached for the apple and the branch is breaking.
I will wait to see if there is any squashing of the cockroach who essentially has his mortgage paid by his travel expense account.
I will wait and see if any cockroaches get squashed. The Speaker who essentially has his non-resident-in-the-district-he-represents home mortgage paid for by his imaginary commute on his expense account at $313 per day.
I am so loving this piece of the news.
So very many lies and so much impropriety from the self righteous right. Sexton's lies and his brazen charging the legislature for per diem travel expenses when he lives in Nashville. Will the Tennessee lawmakers expel him for his lies? For his unconstitutional representation of a community where he does not reside (according to the state constitution he must be a resident of the district he represents)? Thomas has shown nothing but contempt for any who call him out for impropriety - as far back as his confirmation hearings. He showed then who he was, but by playing the victim, and even the proverbial "race card" he has skated by many and sundry violations. His wife is his partner in crime. Discipline these! Hold them to account.
If those who are sworn to uphold the law, and make compliance with law (by others) their profession, fudge very far from strict compliance with the law themselves, why would be expect to see respect for the law from others?
There are of course societies where those who make law make themselves exempt from it, and brutally enforce it only upon others; but that's tyranny.
That last sentence is chump in a nutshell
It’s almost as if they know they will not be caught. Surprise…. Especially true of Thomas. It’s time,
I can't help wondering what Harlan Crow thinks about hosting his little Supreme Court pet. Crow collects Nazi memorabilia, which would seem to indicate at least White Supremacist tendencies.
He must be laughing up his sleeve, pretending friendship with a black man -- and one in an interracial marriage to boot -- while getting all sorts of benefits whenever he has any interests before the Court.
The whole thing is sickening on so many levels!
It is really no different than many SE university alumni rooting for their largely black football teams that didn't want black students in their schools.
Most people assume others are similar to themselves, which is why we here continue to be shocked on the daily. That's also why the GOPers assume everyone else wants to cheat and grift and is their basis for wanting to deny gov't services.
This is a valid point, becky.
The espionage story is extremely troubling for several reasons.
How could a 21 year old get clearance to handle top secret documents?
How was he able to hand copy and then take photos of them if he was in a secure facility? If you are in a secure facility you cannot have a personal phone with you.
Interviews with two teenage followers of Texiera's on-line cult claim there were people from all over the world, including Russia and Ukraine who were members of the group. The Russian intelligence agency is known to infiltrate gamer groups on platforms like discord because they lure in so many hackers and military and former military.
At the very least there has to be a major review of the security breach. I don't know which is scairer--if Texiera was able to do this on his own, or if he is was aided and abetted by someone higher up in the security apparatus, or is a Russian puppet.
The age of the leakier goes with his seemingly low level of authority. In any very large organization you can pretty much count on some share of bad apples, especially among those not vetted for their patterns of responsibility. If someone with so little authority could get the sorts of documents that have been described, what are well trained spies getting?
Georgia,
I had a Top Secret SCI clearance at age 19 and a half as an cryptologic linguist in 1984. The age aspect isn’t a factor here.
Got it. But who is his boss? And his bosses boss? Heads need to roll.
In the security services, such as NSA (National Security Agency, aka No Such Agency), those who work in that environment are steeped in secrecy, and become adept at keeping secrets from absolutely everyone else. With that in mind, it's easy to imagine that an employee could see various ways to violate the trust of everyone in authority. They need to have some level of trust, or face being so mired in protocols that no actual work ever gets done. So I doubt that supervisors or management would be held accountable for the misdeeds of a trusted employee.
Hey Dave! You were probably a lot more mature at 19 in 1984 than lots of 21 yr olds today. Also, we have a societal problem with young, lost men whose brains are not finished. He wanted desperately to be a big player in his gaming group.
Age: it's Probably meant more As refering to maturity. He wasn't ttried and tested enough.
A guest on MSNBC last night was discussing the increase in access after 9/11. They were also saying this kid did this simply to prove himself in his little group (ego).
Basically, he did what we fear that TFG did.—share sensitive intelligence to impress his friends.
Except that tffg has been doing it for 70 years and with enormously more assistance
And I am sure you went thorough the rigorous vetting process that was in place then and had agents contact family members and acquaintences. I have had family members go through the process. But this kid is creepily immature if he was collecting 14 year olds into his group that should have surfaced. You are right that it shouldn't be about age, but it is about maturity. And the fact that he was meeting with these underage groupies in person is very suspect.
All very good points, Georgia.
Has anyone heard anything about who this kids supervisors are? How is it that he has enough time alone with such documents? How is it that his online bigotry and utter madness wasn't discovered years ago? Are top secret clearances just given with no further review? So many questions. So many obvious ways this could have been prevented.
Some personnel at the MA Air Guard have been asleep at the switch. Time for serious accountability. And...how many other racist "Christian Libertarians" are in our military and law enforcement ranks? I think we would be terrified to know. It's time for a purge and punishment.
In a sense, this is parallel to parents with "troubled" children having guns floating around a home.
I yearn for the day FBI agents, armored vehicle and all, pay a visit to the former POTUS at Mar-a-Lago.
The news last night was saying that investigative journalists were far ahead of the FBI on finding this kid
Yes, I watched that exchange. Chilling!
Madame DeFarge and her cohorts during the French Revolution were much better at securing classified information: knitting the secrets into a sweater using a kind of Morse code that made the secret literally invisible except to a person who knew the code and was able to decode it and was given the sweater (which was a very common kind of sweater) was much more secure than printing it on paper for even a semi- literate to read is no way to handle top secrets.
I knitted secrets into a piece of artwork using that method, so I know how easy it is to knit code, yet all but impossible to read it without knowledge of the code. (My Dad was a cryptoanalyst in the Signal Corps in WW2, so codes have always interested me).
Wow!! Amazing! Background for a great novel.
Agree, would make a wonderful yarn!!!!!
You made me smile today. Love it.
I apologize that these details are sketchy, but it is all I know. A few years back, a coworkers son went into the military. He applied to and got into a field in the military where he'd plot out routes for pilots. Being that his parents met in the military, the only advance notice he gave was to tell them that "someone might show up at the door and don't get scared." He knew that they'd think he'd been killed. A few DID show up, unannounced, and they were subjected (sorry, poor word) to an evening of intense questioning. Later, they found out that virtually every aspect of his life, someone who would have known him well had been questioned---even a junior high teacher was questioned! His parents understood that they couldn't get a lot of info out of him as to what his job entailed, but he told them: you know how you can look at stuff with Google Earth? (I think that was the program he said.) If any civilian can do that, IMAGINE what the government can do!
He was probably right around 20 or 21 then. Fine family and fine young man, btw, I have no fears he'd pull a stunt like that.
Doesn’t this highlight how vast the network of intelligence and intelligence contract work is. Trying to vet and police all the activity of tech-savvy employees and their social media presence? If Snowden and Texiera can do it, multiple that times how many more capable doing that, and are doing it more quietly and lucratively.
US military satellites have a reported resolution of 10 cm (4 in). So even one released picture can provide information on the level of capabilities of current hardware and whether they are reaching the resolution limit of the technology.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonathanocallaghan/2019/09/01/trump-accidentally-revealed-the-amazing-resolution-of-u-s-spy-satellites/?sh=57885e713d89
Here is a structural problem: Access to secret US data -- Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and now Jack Teixeira. We only get a glimpse, but it appears that far people than necessary have access; far more people than necessary creates opportunities that do the country harm. We need a top to bottom review of how secrets are handled and how much of what we consider secret should actually be public knowledge.
Here is another: Without a code of justice, the US Supreme Court creates suspicion about everything. Whether the question is Justice Thomas's ties to a billionaire friend or Chief Justice Roberts' wife's work, the lack of a code of ethics leaves the justices and those who judge them without guidance. We need Congress to impose a code of ethics if the Supremes won't adopt one.
Here is a third: When Donald Trump became president he scrapped the Executive Order that set ethical standards for the executive branch. Joe Biden restored that Executive Order. Ethical standards should not vary according to administration. Here, too, we need Congress to impose a code of ethics for the Executive Branch even though this administration has adopted standards.
Perhaps we, the people need to formulate a clearer, more systematic code of ethics for the whole frickin' enterprise. It's government of, by and for the people, right?
Yes, but how many people actually live by the rules? “Rules for Thee, But not for Me” reigns.
Yes and no. Nobody is perfect, certainly our various heroes among them; but there are genuinely heroic acts, and there are people whose life strategy is overwhelmingly self-serving and predatory (look at Trump) while others make good faith efforts to cultivate compassion and social justice. Many of the US founders displayed jaw-dropping doublethink, and yet the core of the Constitution is egalitarian.
Even prominent Republicans were troubled by Nixon's abuses of power, and some in his administration refused to participate. Yet Nixon's abuses pale in comparison to what we have allowed to become commonplace today; once again compare to Trump or many other salient figures in the once "Party of Lincoln" today.
And (always) follow the money.
There is one non-profit I’ve followed for awhile CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington); see an overview here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_for_Responsibility_and_Ethics_in_Washington Good to know there are those who ARE paying attention!
CREW looks to be highly relevant:
"CREW files civil and criminal complaint against Clarence Thomas "
I expect to support them.
Thanks. I will look them up.
NOT sharing information is partly what led to 9/11. I would rather we err in favor of more transparency, but it seems the ebb and flow of this problem has existed as long as human governance.
The idea of Congress imposing a strict code of ethics on the Supreme Court, now that's revolutionary, and I for one would be fascinated to witness the aftermath. Congress enacted campaign laws that the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional. In that case, corporations claimed injury and the court infamously ruled that corporations were citizens in order to gut much of that law. What group could/would claim injury that would enable the court to overturn a law imposing strict ethical guidelines on itself? One more question: How many other current Supreme Court justices are squirming a little wondering what chapter in this story Pro Publica will drop next?
I need a lesson on where the “checks and balances” on our Judicial Branch are hiding. They are not easy to identify, that’s for sure. So much for 3 equal branches.
Such a good point.
Alito?
Geez, given Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society and that connection to Harlan Crowe, why not all the Federalist Society justices? But then again, the whole institution (the Supreme Court) is so weird, with its lifetime tenure, the lack of actual rules of conduct. It's like they're elevated to a sort of heavenly stature, even though they're all political beings by the very nature of their being nominated and confirmed by politicians. Love them or hate them, they are members of a strange club, and now it takes only a simple majority of the Senate - another weird club, but whose members were at least elected to time-limited terms - to get in. Sure, the current club is full of Ivy League attorneys and judges, but there's no law regarding qualifications of potential SCOTUS justices. Scary, isn't it?
Heaven forbid Leonard - not 'this' Congress. Standards and removal of 'critters' does need addressing - way overdue. Facing facts though, even the low bar of mutual agreement on the time of day is doubtful.
Possibly doubtful but we do need to find a way back to ethical governance. What are the expectations we should have for elected and appointed people who are paid a salary to represent us?
I expect at the very least elected officials are honorable and held to account like you and me.
Marj, I would love to be able to expect this. Right now, hope is all I have.
INDEED
Leonard Lubinsky "Chief Justice Roberts' wife's work"
??
"𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘶𝘨𝘨𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘊𝘩𝘪𝘦𝘧 𝘑𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘑𝘰𝘩𝘯 𝘙𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘴’𝘴 𝘸𝘪𝘧𝘦, 𝘑𝘢𝘯𝘦 𝘚𝘶𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘯 𝘙𝘰𝘣𝘦𝘳𝘵𝘴, 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘴𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘭𝘥𝘯’𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘰𝘸𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘥𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘫𝘰𝘣 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘭𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘭 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳.
S𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘳𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘭𝘢𝘸 𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘮 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘯𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘦𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘢𝘧𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘶𝘴𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘣𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘤𝘩𝘪𝘦𝘧 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤𝘦, 𝘢 𝘮𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘦 𝘷𝘪𝘦𝘸𝘦𝘥 𝘢𝘴 𝘢 𝘴𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘪𝘯 𝘢 𝘴𝘦𝘹𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘯 𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘪𝘴𝘦 𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘯 𝘢 𝘲𝘶𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘮𝘢𝘫𝘰𝘳 𝘭𝘢𝘸-𝘧𝘪𝘳𝘮 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘯𝘦𝘳𝘴.
𝘈𝘴 𝘢 𝘳𝘦𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘳, 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘴𝘵𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘭𝘪𝘤𝘺 𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘤𝘦 2007 𝘩𝘢𝘴 𝘣𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘢𝘷𝘰𝘪𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘯𝘦𝘤𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘩𝘶𝘴𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘨𝘢𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘴 𝘸𝘩𝘰 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘤𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘭𝘺 𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘶𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦 𝘊𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘵."
https://wapo.st/43wODo6 [Gift Link]
I read the article you are quoting from. I do not suggest that Jane Sullivan Roberts work raises ethical issues for the Chief Justice, only that the question has been raised and that a code of ethics would make what is ethical and what is not clear.
The Republican legislators in TN also appear to have held a private meeting after their vote to berate their fellow representatives for not voting to expel the white woman.
Except someone - presumably someone in the Republican caucus TAPED the meeting and released the tape to the media.
I'm also going to point out that I find it unlikely that none of his fellow representatives didn't notice that the speaker was filing fraudulent per diem claims for the last few years. So my question becomes - how many other legislators don't actually live in their district and how many others have been lying on their per diem reports?
At this moment, it looks like Republicans in Tennessee have committed political hari kari all because they wanted to punish two black men for being "uppity."
My question is, why haven’t legislators claiming false expenses been charged and convicted for tax fraud?
Now that they’ve been outed, perhaps (???) they will be. Or at least that their constituents will not re-elect them.
Their Tennessee constituents don’t care about criminality as long as their representatives are vicious white supremacists.
Can you imagine what the Republicans would do if a Democrat submitted more than $40,000 per year for "travel expenses" in commuting to and from the State House? The number, by the way, is derived from new reports that indicate Cameron Sexton, who led to push to expel the "Tennessee Three" from the House, receives a $313 daily allowance for lodging and travel expenses, even on days when the legislature is not in session. Since 2021, he has received more than $92,000 in per diem payments.
And up until this week, he didn't even admit to not living in the district he represents.
Another letter to disturb our sleep and to wake up any Americans who believe we are still a two party system. Your statement: “It makes sense that Trump supporters who are concerned about the former president’s similar behavior will do their best to downplay Teixeira’s case.” Maybe they should worry if the court cases against tfg stack up the facts and indict him. Trump supporters and elected repubs have ignored, downplayed and lied about his criminal and dangerous behavior and possible treason. Yes, those documents at Mar-a-Lago? And it’s not just tfg. We know Heritage and Claremont project and other extreme groups and individuals are running the show, including supplying a list of Supreme Court candidates ready to vote against gun laws, voting laws, women’s right to choose, abortion, even what meds women can take. And what books can line the shelves of public schools. And corporations and wealthy supporters including even the latest revelations of possible payoffs to Justices. Add that to the repub party’s official meetings with Viktor Orban and we should worry about the entire repub party. Democrats need more seats in the House and Senate. This seems like a broken record: Wake Up America.
It’s called Fascism, Heather. Pure fascism. Lying Black Uncle Tom Justice Clarance Thomas is a slave to a Hitler loving white billionaire Nazi Collector of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Fascists rule the GOP, Heather. Putin’s KGB strategy in East Berlin rolled alcoholic Yeltsin and crushed Gorbachev the Soviet liberator that won a Nobel. Trump likes Putin. And he worships dictators all over. MTG is Trump writ small. Louisville mass murders highlight GOP support of gun violence and chaos. The pattern described by HCR is simple: it’s fascism and fascistic white supremacy and white nationalism running amok within the Republican Party establishment. It’s GOP racism. It’s US whites in America fearful of democracy and Blacks voting. Abortion rights activists misread DeSantis. He’s a fascist stripping libraries and indoctrinating the children - much like Hitler following Mussolini. Jews. Blacks, Muslims and Hispanics are targeted by fascist forces worldwide... Trump, DeSantis and their ilk want to lead us to fascism. HCR’s partial list ignores the unifying organization, methods and principles behind fascism. Ignores racial hatred and homophobia. Ignores Black Lives Matter and ignores racism in America, ignores racism in all aspects of society in America.
Totalitarianism depends on intolerance, racism, sexism, ignorance, fear, and silence in education.
Fascists start with the books, libraries, newspapers, magazines, and media. See FOX. Antisemitism is critical. And enabling silence in higher education is critical.
Heather’s observations are accurate. Incomplete.
Fascism and enabling silence on campuses are among the missing topics.
Go for it Professor Richardson. Tie it all together.
Hannah Arendt’s totalitarianism, her banality of evil - circulating the globe - is the place to start.
Don't be so hard on HCR for not sounding loud alarms about galloping fascism. It's not what she's doing (or supposed to be doing). She's documenting. She's a historian, as I see it, writing letters today for us today, yes, but as a historian, for readers 50 years from now.
I think you are right on target. I see the same things happening and agree with your interpretation of them. I'd add that much of the press, eager for eyeballs and clicks, is unwittingly (or sinisterly) complicit in spreading the mass hysteria to advance fascism.
Recently, for example,I wrote a comment on an article about DeSantis .. that he was reminiscent of Mussolini when he talked about his 'surgical precision' approach to 'governance.' Yah, he'd get the trains to run on time. The comment was blocked by the paper's censors!
DeSantis isn't 'enabling' silence in higher education; he's actively enforcing it. Get rid of current college/uni overseers and plant one's puppets. Get rid of tenure. Force 'reevaluation' of faculty frequently ( evaluation by whom???) Interfere with teaching, prescribe a whitewashed history curriculum, deny the existence, let alone rights of, gays, lesbians, transgender, queer people. I shudder when I see how much uncritical attention he's getting.
As a young person, I was obsessed with the question of how Hitler could have happened. The first years of my life and much of my childhood were dominated by the scourge of fascism and Naziism and I wanted to know why. Hannah Arendt provided some insight. Now, furthering our insight, we have “The Devil’s Confession.” More importantly, though, I am witnessing, as a seasoned observer of the world, the emergence and rapid evolution in real time of everything I ever learned about totalitarianism and fascism. I think this is also your experience?
The only hope I have that history may not repeat resides in some young people…the Justins, the Cassidys, the ones still opting to do the Peace Corps and Americorp, the kids who reject going along to get along who listen to their guts and say “There's gotta be a better way.” Thanks to these kids and some beautiful people like Jamie Raskin who persist through it all, there's still some hope. I won't be around to see it, but we got through it before. I need to look for hope. Otherwise what's the point?
Thank you for expressing this so very well Carolyn!
CR, THAT’S BS. HRC offers her profoundly accurate daily or nightly summation, a short cut for the lazy that need intellectual babysitting on history, and her specialty is Civil War and what followed and did not follow .. but hear this FACT: fascism is the overarching concern.. and has been since before slavery... another form of fascism... for the COLOR blind historian that cannot see or feel fascism, cannot or will not out it in the readership that may be a practitioner, there is the Seeing Eye Dog ... and there are two... Yale Professor of History Timothy Snyder is most recent, and scholar and U of Chicago (buried at Bard College) Hannah Arendt was the first... either of whom are far, far superior in their expressed grasp of fascism and the meaning of totalitarianism and intolerance... and the BANALITY OF EVIL - the stuff of Hitler, STALIN, and our favourite Southern Confederate Criminals that destroyed the lives of the Negro child and family for a few hundred years and counting ... and could care less... and today we get to our favourite campuses, PICK ONE... that are silent on Trump and Pence and DeSantis and this rogue band of grifting thieves that feed raw meat to the savages the comprise today’s GOP... the color blind, coldly insensitive idiot savant historian that masters fact so well and ignores equally well the intensity of the experience for the savaged... strikes me every time I reflect on it.. This insensitivity is raw. Thucydides was the first and probably the greatest of historian of the classical period.. translated, Pericles Oration to the Dead is worth a second and third read... I am no scholar, not at all, and I find most historians boring story tellers... we are blessed with HRC’s accounts and her nightly connections, past to present, and her nightly summations inspire the memory and moral outrage... but that outrage is for the reader to find, feel and express, it does not flow from the dry accounts offered... we have to get them from the Spielberg movie version. Auschwitz and Andersonville do not translate well in dry fact.
Thank you , Carolyn. You give us a way to be optimistic, to hope, with your beautiful words. “I won't be around to see it, but we got through it before. I need to look for hope. Otherwise what's the point?” We care for the children and grandchildren and the future of this planet. And our work and activism, standing up and speaking out are ways to support Democracy.
HCR won’t tempt or attempt her $50 per year white born again fascist enabling readership. Won’t risk one of them with the truth. But she knows the truth. England’s Neville Chamberlain felt London could get along with Adolf Hitler, Pilot Lindberg and his crowd were Nazi supporters… we had our fascists then and have them now. Rep. Jamie Raskin won’t run again. Cancer threatens. He’s among our best. HCR has not expressed deep knowledge of his sermons. Quotes and fact are not sufficient. Truth that slams is needed. That takes courage. Does Dear Heather exhibit courage? The idiot savant does not confront. He recites the dictionary.
Hi Sandy! Yes! Anne Applebaum`s exact point...." circulating the globe".
Anne A is the best writing along with Tim Snyder.
Sandy, upon your recommendation, I did purchase "On Tyranny" and although my stack of books to be read is about as high as I am tall, I was surprised how slim it was and so read it immediately. A lot of TRUTH in a small package! I also admit that some of it made my blood run cold. Other parts, however, warmed my heart--the make eye contact and small talk. (How often I noticed how my late father, who lived to be 93, was marginalized by this ageist society! I make a point to make eye contact and say kind words whenever I can, especially to elderly, because of him. ) What a good graduation gift this book would make to a young person!
I intend to bring it to my next book club meeting. Our book club members each read whatever we choose, bring our choices and discuss them. Many a good book then gets circulated among friends, and I then read books that I otherwise might have passed over.
Thanks. The illustrated On Tyranny is a good read for kids of every age.
Here's a free audio version - narrated by the author:
https://archive.org/details/on-tyranny-timothy-snyder
Miselle, SBL beat me to it…I have both “On Tyranny” books (regular and illustrated); powerful words packed into a slim book! Re “books stacked as high as you are tall” there is a Japanese word for it: “tsundoku”; it means you have/buy more books than you can ever read…boy do I have it bad! And, finally, a song from a now departed great singer-songwriter, John Prine (dang autocorrect changed it to “Prince”!), about becoming “invisible” as we age: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVhA01J0Zsg
I worked with a big Prine fan, so I knew this song! Thanks, I enjoyed listening to it again.
My Dad was very hard of hearing, even with hearing aids. I'd accompany him to any doc appts and pull the staff aside and tell them: if he answers something with an off the wall answer, it is NOT dementia, he didn't understand you. Some were so kind to him, other chose to ignore him and talk to me. I'd pointedly turn to him and say something like "What do YOU think, Dad?" Us 5 "kids" all lived within 5 minutes of him. We'd all connect through him after Mom was gone, calling or visiting daily. If I was the first to call after work and he'd say "I haven't talked to a soul all day" it stung. How lonely that could be! It opened my eyes.
Carol—which of her books are you referring to?
Hi Mary,
The Twilight of Democracy, Penguin Press, (Doubleday) 2020.
She is also a regular contributor to The Atlantic. One article that particularly addresses the global spread of anti- democracy is:
"The Bad Guys Are Winning", Anne Applebaum, The Atlantic, December 2021 Issue.
If you search her name and Atlantic articles you will get a list. She has been prolific.
Todays government is going to have to investigate each and every department for corruption and start removing them. You will not get any support from the Magat repugnants because they like the chaos with their main objective to blame the democrats ! They seem to not care about the job of working for the people that voted them in so making the entire government nonfunctional to say the least . The repugnants in congress are not interested in doing their duty to the American people anymore but still hold the deciding votes to oppose any and all laws being proposed! How is that governing for the best of the American people? When will it change ? Are the American people just going to simply accept fascism? Will there be any consequences for those breaking the laws ? It is very demoralizing to see what is happening around you with your rights being removed by the minority and being forced to accept what the right wingers, evangelical, Christian zealots are shoving down the throats of every single person ! More corruption is exposed daily by journalists by the repugnants and thank you very much for them ! The majority of Americans who don't want fascism will have a big fight on their hands ! I hope they are ready for it !
Have been worried about the “entire Repub party” since Newt, and especially since 2000. My worries have come to pass in ways I could not have imagined, sad to say…
Jeri, we all should worry. I don’t understand how so many people can look the other way.Do not Connect the dots, don’t know or care about History. That oft repeated quote, those who ignore History are doomed to repeat it. Paraphrased, Jorge Santayana. I shudder to think that the future generations will pay for the trauma of these times.
Unlike the fine folk who inhabit this Substack, people are stupid and lazy; their reptilian brain stem energized by Limbaugh-enhanced hatred and Kardashian vapidity.
From the time that Eisenhower warned of the military-industrial complex (I voted for him), there has not been a Republican running for president worthy of my vote. Mostly they were either too rich or too stupid (or both). Recommending again for one of our researchers: Le Monde’s Sunday magazine exposure of the Big Oil Bushes.
You know, I just don’t see a good or decent person in the Republican Party. Not. A. One. There hasn’t been an effective leader on “their” side since Eisenhower and that’s when I was small child. I am ancient now and all I see is so much garbage and filth the GQP’ers have in their arsenal. They are embarrassing our nation, ALL of them!
Marlene, you speak for me, too. And all of us who wonder how we can call our government a two party system when only one governs.
Me too. Fortunately, most people in other countries don't pay much attention to the daily American news and have no idea how much damage is being done by the party of perversion.
Nixon didn’t learn much from Ike.
And we didn't learn much from Nixon. Talk about a canary in a coal mine. There it was. A flashing red light, a siren screaming that the GOP was led by crooks. But we didn't listen.
And then, and then we all acquiesced as "nice old Gerry Ford" pardoned the crook so we could "move forward"! Forward to even worse! Talk about a bad precedent!
Ike was far from perfect. But at least had some bones in his spine. And he saw politics and money as a bad combination. He hated Nixon with good reason. But he took a political gamble and it backfired. And he knew it.
Yes, indeed, and President Eisenhower feared SenatorJoseph McCarthy and elevated Richard M. Nixon of Watergate fame, and the tapes that brought him down.
Eisenhower was not a politician. America thought military leadership skills would translate into governing wisdom. Wisely running a multi-faceted country is different than running a business, a platoon, a classroom. American’s care about personality more than wisdom, so we are always struggling with our darker forces and natures. Same Play, Different Actors.
Nonsense. General Eisenhower was a superb politician as a 5 star general and supreme allied commander, leading SHAPE and Columbia University. In 1951 after declining HST asking for the Democrats, IKE became a Republican candidate, a Republican politician, one of 10 candidates for the presidency in that party. He won the primaries, hands down, without bothering to appear in any of them. He became a two term president, a hugely successful politician, defeating the governor of Illinois twice. AES was crushed in 1952 and 1956 by the most powerful Republican ever.
Elections these days are turning into exciting events for me. It's my Super Bowl.....I can't wait to find out how many more Republicans we can kick to the curb. It's just plain lunacy to see what they are doing....thank heaven they are too stupid to see the forest because too many trees are in the way. LOL
Lordy, I hope you are right…
🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹 You made my morning Janis 🌹🌹🌹🌹🌹
I am gobsmacked that an airman in the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard had access to top secret/Codeword Communications Intelligence (COMINT) materials. That he could photograph these (ineptly) and post them on an internet site to ‘impress’ his buddies makes his crime no less horrific.
My first job in the State Department was in the ‘Office of Current Intelligence,’ which was a euphemism for the most secret department that processed NSA COMINT for top government officials. We would process these intercepts, hand carry them to senior State officials, and prepare a highly restricted daily Diplomatic Summary for the White House and a few other TS/Codeword customers. At State we never left this material with anyone, including The Secretary.
Because of the sensitivity of the materials (and the fact that we were spying on many dozen countries—from close allies to enemies—) made security an overriding priority.
The material casually posted by Teixeira is one of the most damaging intelligence catastrophes in American history.
First it relates to operational situation (in contrast to The Pentagon Papers, which were purloined historical documents about our screw up in Vietnam.) It reveals some of our most sensitive intelligence sources:
1) In cyber intelligence, the Russians will see how deeply we have penetrated their cyber systems and can quite easily block our access;
2) From South Korea to Egypt and Ukraine, dozens of countries face public exposure that the United States has been intercepting and decoding their diplomatic and military messages. I believe that our doing this with sensitive UN communications have also been exposed.
3) Sensitive tactical information regarding American policies and day-to-day operations have been revealed both to our enemies and to our allies. Not only is this embarrassing. It also makes our allies reticent to discuss truly confidential matters with us.
Second, I am astonished that an airman at the Massachusetts Air Force National Guard had easy access to this super sensitive material. Why anyone at Otis Air Force Base would receive such intelligence I find mInd boggling.
What has resulted has unfortunate short-term implications. Longer term, it will be more difficult for our allies to trust us, while our enemies will be able to devise cyber counter measures to correct leaks in their cyber systems.
Sadly, because of the vast number of Americans who have access to highly sensitive intelligence materials, such a massive intelligence breach will almost certainly occur soon again. Photos with an iPhone or use of a thumb gizmo will permit us all to read this top secret stuff.
My wonder is if this young airman could so easily purloin ultra sensitive docs, what else is going on ? There are probably many, many others that are doing the same thing more quietly and more adeptly.
MLR I have an image of Russian spies slurping vodka as they peruse American media for the latest highly sensitive intelligence. No need to entrap any Americans, since enough voluntarily publish secret stuff.
You mean like our former twice impeached disgraced ex president?
Thank you for an informed and sober assessment. This leak could scarcely have come at a worse time. It is another boost to the Great Unraveling. Of course MTG, etc., contribute every day and are “above the law.”
Keith, thank you for such a reasoned assessment from an informed perspective. I would hope that all who gave him access without a security workup will suffer dire consequences.
Part of the problem, as I see it, is that it is difficult to find the combination of computer “smarts” and those willing to serve in “today’s army”.
Keith, thanks for posting this "insider assessment" here.
If there were 7 deadly sins of democracy, gerrymandering would be number 1.
Yes, but number 2 competes for the top spot. Dark Money via Citizens United and a Supreme Court OWNED by billionaire "christian libertarians".
But is gerrymandering “Democratic”? It’s an anti-democracy action, done by those working for would-be autocrats.
Both parties have done it, but Republicans have become masters at the game of minority rule. You’re right Virginia…it’s about as anti-democracy as can be. Striking down much of the Voting Rights legislation by SCOTUS paved the way for this huge impediment to democracy to infect our country at all levels (local, state & fed). Citizens United (and similar SOTUS rulings going back many years) greased the wheels further.
Historically, both parties have in the past and present used gerrymandering to game the majority. That’s why it’s so hard to get legislation against it. The majority is faked, and you can’t ask them to weaken their position. The same goes for campaign finance - when everyone in politics benefits, it’s impossible to enact legislation against it.
And yet we must try and try and try again…..to right this wrong.
You misunderstand me. When I say it’s a sin, I mean it is a flaw.
Thanks Heather. We have seen the renegade Republicans, Christian nationalists, and white supremacists go full bore in dismantling democracy and the Republic. Now we are beginning to see that the public is tired of their outstripping rhyme and reason to satisfy their small constituency and Trump, who has inspired all their actions.
We may be able to defeat the legislative assault, but the Supreme Court may prove to be much more difficult, as they too, serve that small party. I don't know what we have beyond impeachment, which is not going to happen with the GOP controlling the House, and public pressure. Clarence Thomas behavior and John Roberts inability to act to rein in the Court may be the wedge we need there.
We have a combination of voter ignorance and a surprising number of people willing to destroy the nation in order to maintain their power over social progress. This overshadows the Civil War in terms of its damage to democracy.
Maybe this is what is necessary to make people take notice.
Roberts immediately got things rolling with the Alito leak but somehow is deciding to slow walk investigations into Thomas. SCOTUS needs to be fumigated.
Well, he got things rolling with the Alito leak, but there never was a conclusion to that investigation. Possibly because it hit too close to home? The highest court in the land, whose corruption has undermined its authority.
Worse, the corruption is undermining SCOTUS' credibility. Increasingly, a collection of hacks.
From the AG's reported press conference: " ... Teixeira, a 21-year-old employee of the United States Air Force National Guard ...". A stickler might suggest that being a "member" of the ANG would be a more appropriate form of address. Such a military member would have taken the standard oath of office to support and defend the Constitution of the US. The presidential oath of office has slightly different wording at this point: " ... to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution ...". The young man is subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), and at a possible trial for espionage, I would almost expect a military court rather than civilian. The press coverage of the arrest noted it was the FBI, not military security, doing the job. Jurisdiction aside, the parallels of Airman Teixeira's actions with those of our former president are marked and undeniable--as were their oaths of office. I would dearly hope that equal and appropriate justice would be dispensed to any individuals tried for such deliberate mishandling of highly classified information.
Bill Stewart
Lt Col, USAF (ret.)
Colonel, I was wondering about that myself. Is he an "employee" of the ANG, or is he an airman assigned to a position with the ANG? I see that he is referred to as "Airman", which implies that he has sworn the oath of a member of the Armed Forces of the US (specifically USAF) whereas a civilian employee would be held to a different oath.
Other stories identified his promotion to the rank of Airman First Class: An Airman First Class is a enlisted airman in the United States Air Force at DoD paygrade E-3. An Airman First Class receives a monthly basic pay salary starting at $2,161 per month, with raises up to $2,436 per month once they have served for over 3 years. Of course he is also an employee, but as you suggest, all employees are not sworn military members--rather civilian employees. Perhaps that is a small difference, but one that could matter in legal affairs.
It is incredulous that this just one days news. Geez!
Right!!!!!