20 years ago they called me a Neanderthal when I led the fight against the state income tax. So I’ve been a proud member of the #NeanderthalCaucus since 2000! pic.twitter.com/mP3V3ecbSy

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) March 5, 2021

“With Merrick Garland poised to be confirmed as attorney general as early as next week, one of the first major questions he is likely to encounter is what to do about Rudy Giuliani. A federal probe into the overseas and business dealings of the former New York City mayor and close ally of former President Donald Trump stalled last year over a dispute over investigative tactics as Trump unsuccessfully sought reelection and amid Giuliani’s prominent role in subsequently disputing the results of the contest on Trump’s behalf. But the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan has since returned to the question of bringing a criminal case against Giuliani, focusing at least in part on whether he broke U.S. lobbying laws by failing to register as a foreign agent related to his work, according to one current and one former law enforcement official familiar with the inquiry. The officials weren’t authorized to discuss the ongoing case and spoke on the condition of anonymity.”

“The arrival of a new leadership team in Washington is likely to guarantee a fresh look at the investigation. No matter how it unfolds, the probe ensures that a Justice Department looking to move forward after a tumultuous four years will nonetheless have to confront unresolved, and politically charged, questions from the Trump era – not to mention calls from some Democrats to investigate Trump himself. The full scope of the investigation is unclear, but it at least partly involves Giuliani’s Ukraine dealings, the officials said” – AP.

“The Three Percenters movement has gained representation in the Wyoming Legislature – at least symbolically. A photograph resurfaced this week of freshman Rep. Marshall Burt, L-Green River, that shows a tattoo on his left forearm – the Roman numeral ‘III’ surrounded by 13 stars, above the year 1776. The symbol is commonly associated with a far-right, anti-government movement and the popularization of militia groups. In a written statement this week, Burt said he is not involved in any militia groups, and got the tattoo because he enjoyed the symbolism of what it stood for. “I got the tattoo because the American Revolution symbolism appealed to me, and to me it represents my solid commitment to the Second and Tenth Amendment,’ Burt wrote. ‘I have never been a member of a militia group, and I think we have much bigger issues to address, like reducing wasteful spending and getting patients and veterans access to treatments, rather than to dwell on something as minor as a tattoo'” WyoFile.com reports.

“The tattoo’s symbol – which closely resembles a Betsy Ross flag – is associated with a loosely organized anti-government movement known as the Three Percenters, which has been growing in influence within American conservative politics. The name comes from the debunked claim that only 3% of colonists fought against the British during the Revolutionary War but ‘achieved liberty for everybody,’ according to a policy brief by the Anti-Defamation League. A number of militia groups and anti-government activists have adopted the symbol.”

Washington Post: “A political appointee of President Donald Trump has been arrested on charges that he stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 and assaulted an officer with a weapon, marking the first arrest of a Trump administration official in connection with the insurrection. Federico Guillermo Klein, a former State Department official, made an initial appearance by teleconference on Friday in Washington, where prosecutors said they would seek to jail him pending trial at a hearing next Wednesday. Klein did not enter a plea. However, he asked the judge at the end of the brief hearing, ‘I wonder if there’s a place where I can stay in detention where I don’t have cockroaches crawling over me while I attempt to sleep….I mean, I really haven’t slept all that much, your honor. It would be nice if I could sleep in a place where there were not cockroaches everywhere.'”

I still like Dr. Seuss, so I decided to read Green Eggs and Ham.

RT if you still like him too! pic.twitter.com/2pbRbSiJD6

— Kevin McCarthy (@SpeakerMcCarthy) March 6, 2021

• Trump getting a vaccine in secret for a virus he claims is a hoax is the perfect microcosm of Trumpism.
• Tucker Carlson is like cotton candy for the alt-right:  it’ll give you a rush as you consume it.  It’s got no substance.  And you feel like crap afterward.  Plus, if that’s all you get, it’ll kill you.
• I’m happy we have a president whose metric for success is the number of people vaccinated, not the number of people who attend a rally.
• So-called liberals who are crying that “Biden abandoned us!” and “Democrats are going down in ‘22” because the national $15 minimum wage didn’t get included in the American Rescue Plan need to remember that Biden doesn’t control the rules of the Senate and that if Senate Democrats ignored the ruling of the Parliamentarian, they’d be setting the Senate up for chaos in the future.  The GOP would not follow *any* rules in the Senate, citing Democrats’ dismissal of the ruling.  And if you think not voting in 2022 (or voting 3rd party or for Republicans) is the answer, you’ll have no one to blame but yourself for the post-Trump resurrection of the GOP you’ve enabled.  
  Read More ▶ “Random thoughts Friday, Volume IX”

Washington Post: “A federal judge chided the self-identified ‘QAnon Shaman,’ who was part of the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, for appearing in a ’60 Minutes Plus’ interview without permission. During a detention hearing Friday, U.S. Judge Royce C. Lamberth questioned whether Jacob Chansley appeared in the interview that aired Thursday without the required clearance from the U.S. Marshals Service, the detention facility or the judge. The judge also questioned whether Chansley’s attorney, Albert Watkins, was deceitful in skirting proper authorization to appear on the show.”

“In what was billed as Chansley’s first interview since his arrest, he said that his actions were ‘not an attack on this country’ and that he does not regret being loyal to former president Donald Trump. Chansley became one of the most distinct individuals arrested in the riot, photographed flexing near the vice president’s chair in the Senate while shirtless and wearing a headdress and face paint. Watkins said he did make ‘independent arrangements’ with ’60 Minutes Plus’ but denied conducting ‘subterfuge.’ He said he assumed his client would be allowed to be captured on camera from his office. A decision about Chansley’s detention is still pending.”

https://youtu.be/RQjaekwWm8g

Frozen food trust fund heir and Andy Rooney’s living Dorian Gray portrait Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked, “You ever wonder” why all those QAnon folks you see in jail look basically harmless after they’ve been arrested for attack the nation’s Capitol?  “Maybe they got the wrong ideas.  Maybe they’re kinda confused,” Carlson whines.  “But they’re all kinda gentle people.”  (Except when they’re attacking the Capitol and assaulting police officers.)  “They’re all waving American flags [when they’re not beating cops with them].  They all like the country [but not the Constitution or the citizens].”

Democrats united around a proposal to extend a federal supplemental unemployment payment, a point that West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin reportedly objected to, paving the way for the American Rescue Act bill to move forward with a united Democratic caucus, NBC reports.

After hours of discussions with both Republicans and Democrats, Manchun reportedly agreed to a Democratic proposal that would allow for an extension of a federal unemployment increase of $300 per week through mid-September, as opposed to the $400 weekly payment that would end in August.

Manchin also agreed with a plan that would make the first $10,000 of annual unemployment to be tax-free, lowering the level from $12,000 that was originally in the bill.

The effort to reignite the ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment hit a large bump in the road as a federal judge ruled that the bill has passed the deadline for inclusion in the Constitution, NBC News reports.

Originally passed in 1972, the ERA made it through Congress with overwhelming support, but when it came to getting the required 38 states to ratify the amendment, only 35 states passed the bill by the stated deadline of passage, March 1979.  Four states ultimately rescinded their endorsement of the ERA.

However, since 1979, Nevada, Illinois and Virginia have passed the bill.  When Virginia passed the ERA in 2020, giving the amendment the required 38 states, hopes rose that the ERA could be ratified into the Constitution even though it was years passed the established deadline. 

Madison.com has the story.

CNN: “As Donald Trump plotted his Conservative Political Action Conference appearance last week, and a broader, more-robust plan to return to politics as an omnipresent disruptor, one person was conspicuously absent from the confab. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was notably not on the list of advisers assisting the former President. Kushner, who previously served as chief adviser-cum-micromanager with far-reaching responsibilities and had virtual carte blanche, has tapped out, say several people who worked closely with Kushner at the White House or are familiar with his thinking and told CNN on background in order to maintain relationships.”

“‘Right now, he’s just checked out of politics,’ says one person, echoing the mindset of Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, who is so over the political bubble she has told friends and colleagues of late to not utter anything to do with Washington. Given Trump’s election loss and current out-of-power position, Kushner’s absence from the aftermath follows a pattern critics have previously pointed out: being present for the wins and MIA from the losses. A person with close ties to Kushner told CNN that Trump’s son-in-law is enjoying ‘some much needed time with his family,’ and his retreat is unrelated to the ebb and flow of the former President’s popularity. Two of the people who spoke to CNN say Kushner’s relationship with Trump, son-in-law or no, has been fractured since Trump’s reelection loss. Trump, they say, has at times in the last several weeks expressed to those close to him that he faults Kushner for losing.”

California Democratic Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren released a report Friday detailing all the social media posts from members of Congress who encouraged violence or resistance to the results of the November 2020 election, discovering that all 120 members who made claims of election fraud all voted to refuse certification of the states’ slates of electors on January 6th.

Lofgren’s purpose in doing the research was to memorialize and catalogue the malfeasance conducted by her fellow members of Congress, all members of the GOP.  Taken from Twitter, Facebook and Parler, the posts generally propagate The Big Lie promoted by Donald Trump that he actually won the November vote, despite the certification by all states that Democrat Joe Biden won both the national popular vote and the Electoral College.

The report lists the social media posts from November 3, 2020 through the January 6th domestic terrorist attacks on the Capitol.  It includes posts from 120 Republicans from 33 states and runs more than 2,000 pages.

Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott took a strong stand that the Biden Administration’s immigration policy was going to lead to widespread coronavirus infections, making the rounds on cable news networks Thursday lambasting the plan to revoke Trump-era rules, but Abbott failed to mention that the reason the federal government isn’t funding coronavirus testing for migrants is that the paperwork is sitting on his desk in Austin unsigned, CNN reports.

The Department of Homeland Security set aside funding to pay for county health departments in Texas to test migrants coming across the border for coronavirus.  It also provided monies for testing migrants already living in Texas communities, but in order to disperse the money, the governor, Greg Abbott himself, must sign off on the funding.  Abbott has failed to do so.

After having that inconvenient fact pointed out to him, Abbott attempted to blame the Biden Administration for his state’s inability to follow through on the policy, claiming that it wasn’t a public health issue, but a border security issue.

Wall Street Journal: “The presidential-election results left the impression that mail-in voting increased turnout and propelled President Biden to victory. But the reality is that voting by mail didn’t do either, Stanford researchers say in a new paper based on the latest data. That finding is notable because mail-in voting has become a controversial topic as many state legislatures debate restricting its use in future elections. But much of the debate around voting by mail misunderstands the actual impact of the policy, according to the paper. In states where voting by mail was a new option, many voters used it. Turnout was high in 2020, but it didn’t increase significantly more in states that expanded voting by mail versus other states, the researchers found.”

“‘I think both sides are massively overestimating the effect that vote by mail has on participation,’ said Andrew Hall, one of the paper’s authors, though it could affect unusually close races, like the presidential race in Georgia. For example: In Texas, 65-year-olds turned out at nearly the same rate as 64-year-olds, ‘even though 65-year-olds voted absentee at much higher rates than 64-year-olds because they could do so without having to provide an excuse,’ according to the paper. Some political scientists differ on how to read the results. Emory University’s Alan Abramowitz concludes that the ‘dramatic increase’ in 2020 absentee voting contributed to increased turnout, but he agrees that ‘increased absentee voting did not favor Joe Biden’s candidacy.’ Republicans in more than 30 state legislatures have proposed legislation to put new restrictions on absentee voting this year, with some moving toward passage quickly in swing states like Georgia.”

Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has failed to expand the state’s eligibility requirements for received coronavirus vaccine doses even as federal mass vaccination sites around the state sit idle with ample supplies, the Miami Herald reports.

Accused last week of setting up state vaccination sites to benefit political donors and Republican faithful, DeSantis is slow-walking expansion of those eligible to get vaccines even as many as more than half of the elderly population in some counties has already been inoculated.

In Miami-Dade County, for example, 57% of those over 65 have received at least one dose of one of the available vaccines, but as of Wednesday, more than 20,000 doses, designated as “first doses,” were unallocated and sitting in warehouses.  Miami-Dade County went heavily for Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 and for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum in 2018.

“Our border is now totally out of control thanks to the disastrous leadership of Joe Biden. Our great Border Patrol and ICE agents have been disrespected, demeaned, and mocked by the Biden Administration. A mass incursion into the country by people who should not be here is happening on an hourly basis, getting worse by the minute. Many have criminal records, and many others have and are spreading covid. Interior enforcement has been shut down – criminals that were once promptly removed by our Administration are now being released back onto the street to commit heinous and violent crimes. ICE officers are desperate to remove these convicted criminals, but Biden won’t let them. The spiraling tsunami at the border is overwhelming local communities, depleting budgets, crowding hospitals, and taking jobs from legal American workers. When I left office, we had achieved the most secure border in our country’s history. Under Biden, it will soon be worse, more dangerous, and more out of control than ever before. He has violated his oath of office to uphold our Constitution and enforce our laws.”

https://youtu.be/QtG4TZgdHm0

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki once again slapped down an ambiguous and falsely-premised question, this time from Weijia Chiang of CBS News, who started with the trite, “Some Americans are saying…” before being asked by Psaki “Who are the Americans?”  Chiang said she was citing a statement from a Florida man named… (checking notes)… “Donald Trump.”

“We don’t take our advice or counsel from former president Trump on immigration policy,” Psaki stated, “which was not only inhumane but ineffective over the last four years.  We’re going to chart our own path forward, and that includes treating children with humanity and respect and ensuring they’re safe when they cross our borders.”