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Jordan highlighted the Select Committee’s double standards in issuing partisan subpoenas exclusively to Republican lawmakers as opposed to Democrats, who are responsible for adequate security at the Capitol. While the Select Committee was ostensibly established to probe the Capitol security failures, Thompson has explicitly refused an inquiry into Pelosi’s culpability as the partisan probe absent of Republican appointees remains focused on retribution against political dissidents. //
Pelosi stands credibly accused of unilaterally delaying the National Guard’s preemptive deployment six times preceding the riot that day a year ago, but the speaker also ignored issues raised in a single hearing from the House Oversight Committee held a year and a half in advance.
https://thefederalist.com/2021/12/16/nancy-pelosi-owns-january-6/
“It is telling that the Select Committee has chosen only to target Republican Members with demands for testimony about January 6,” Jordan wrote Sunday. “I am aware of no effort by the Select Committee to solicit testimony from Speaker Pelosi, House Administration Chair Zoe Lofgren, or any other Democrat Members with responsibility for or oversight of the security posture at the Capitol complex on January 6.” //
Since its inception, the committee, born out of ashes of a failed congressional commission, has focused on punishing political dissidents as opposed to probing the Capitol riot with a legitimate legislative purpose. With no investigation into the security failures that led to several hours of turmoil, the committee has sought to conflate a peaceful White House protest with the violence that erupted at the Capitol before President Donald Trump had finished speaking.
In the process, the committee run by the same bad actors who perpetrated the Democrats’ prior hoaxes have fabricated evidence again, again, again, and again.
https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/19/failed-impeachment-saga-was-an-embarrassment-for-democrats/
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is fighting to preserve her right to trade stocks despite the blatant conflict of interest, and it’s obvious why: She and her husband have done well under the rules as they stand. Very well.
As The Post’s Lydia Moynihan and Theo Wayt report, the speaker — whose estimated worth tops $100 million — and hubby Paul Pelosi have amassed as much as $30 million from Big Tech stock trades, even as she’s supposed to be regulating that industry.
From 2007 to 2020, the speaker and her spouse raked in between $5.6 million and $30.4 million (the rules don’t even require exact disclosure) from just five Big Tech firms: Facebook, Google, Amazon, Apple and Microsoft.
Never mind that the companies’ fortunes depend on laws Congress may or may not pass. As The Post has also noted, for example, Pelosi has been stalling legislation to ban Internet firms from favoring their own products in search results. Maybe it’s a coincidence she and her husband have also bet on Google, but it sure makes you wonder.
Remember, too, lawmakers are privy to info the public doesn’t see, so they may have an edge when trading stocks. (Perhaps that explains why the Pelosis have generally outperformed the market so nicely?)
Letting pols trade individual stocks, rather than investing only in index funds, raises such questions as whether they “have access to insider information” or if their trades will “impact policy-making,” warns the Revolving Door Project’s Jeff Hauser. //
It’s a strong argument for banning stock trades by lawmakers and their families altogether. Let them place their holdings in a mutual fund or blind trust. That’s smarter investing in any case (unless you, unfairly, have inside info). And if they don’t like it, well, consider it the cost of representing voters in Congress.
If you haven’t checked the weather recently in Washington DC, the nation’s capital is currently getting a healthy dose of snow. Some places have already gotten 6 inches, and there’s more coming as the day drags on. //
It’s very likely the federal government will shut down for the rest of the week.
So why do I care so much about the weather in DC? Because this snowfall could throw a big wrench into the Democrat plan to “commemorate” January 6th at the Capitol Building. As RedState has reported, multiple events are planned with CNN hosting. Those include a speech by the President of the United States.
Will all that happen if no one can drive to get to the Capitol? No doubt, CNN will do in-studio coverage regardless, but some of the politicians who were set to speak could be stuck doing Zoom hits instead of getting their visual on the Capitol steps. Further, it won’t be much of a commemoration if no one else can even show up for the live event. Lastly, if the next bout of snow arrives even a few hours earlier on Thursday than expected (currently forecast for the afternoon), it could disrupt things even more.
I know others think January 6th was like 9/11 on steroids, but I find this entire thing incredibly humorous. The first major snowfall of the year just so happens to cause major headaches for Democrats as they hope to make political hay? You love to see it.
The Wall Street Journal’s Kim Strassel points out how Manchin could torture Schumer and get his way next.
What ought to worry Mr. Schumer is that the West Virginian votes to proceed with the bill and modify it to his liking. The budget-reconciliation process allows a simple majority to pass legislation, but it comes with a price: unlimited amendments. Despite Democrats’ efforts to claim just “one senator” stands against their bill, the actual number is 51—Mr. Manchin and the 50 Republicans. Imagine what fun that majority could have in a vote-a-rama.
Mr. Manchin could craft amendments striking entire entitlements from the bill, amendments barring climate programs, amendments gutting the bill’s tax hikes.
At the end of the day, senators care more about protecting themselves and their colleagues from unpredictable, inconvenient floor votes than they do about passing legislation. //
Official Washington’s conventional wisdom about the Senate filibuster is a fairy tale. It is utterly unmoored from the choices being made by individual senators, party caucuses, and the body as a whole. Every person who has ever told you that the mean, nasty, outdated legislative filibuster is the source of Senate gridlock and the obstacle to common-sense legislating in Congress has either swallowed, or is peddling, a lie. //
The mistake everyone makes is looking at Senate inaction and asking, “How can we change Senate rules so it can start legislating again?” The better question is, “Why did the Senate stop legislating in the first place?”
The answer isn’t “gridlock,” any more than “a car” drove through that parade in Wisconsin. Somewhere along the way, senators’ behavior changed. It’s not a coincidence this happened along the same timeline as the polarization of the parties over the last 30 years. Partisan filibusters were harder, and bipartisan legislating easier when the Senate had dozens of conservative-leaning Democrats and liberal-leaning Republicans.
Before moving inside the chamber, let’s take stock of an important but easily overlooked point: Senate Democrats as a group are much farther left than they were in, say, 1990, and Senate Republicans are more uniformly conservative.
Because pundits and people who read them tend to be consistent ideologues themselves, this kind of polarization seems normal, even enlightened. But all it really means is that both parties in the Senate have drifted away from—abandoned, even—the middle of the country.
The public didn’t lurch left or right. Senate rules didn’t change. Congress is simply less representative of the American people than it used to be. Pew’s well-worn ideological scatter chart from the 2016 election exit polls illustrates the point below. //
Nuking the filibuster to establish a majoritarian Senate, in the context of our actual country, would only empower out-of-touch, unpopular, ideological extremists to unilaterally impose their outré elite values on a public that dislikes them. Constitutionally speaking, in the morality play of congressional politics today, the filibuster is the good guy. It’s not the hero we deserve, but the one we need, stopping Republicans from gutting social programs and Democrats from banning guns or red meat. //
Contrary to beltway shorthand, passing bills through the Senate doesn’t require bipartisan compromise. It just requires compromise, full stop. There’s a difference. Sixty-vote majorities could be found on almost any issue, any week of any year, through an open amendment process on the Senate floor. Heck, they could call up a blank bill for floor consideration, and let every Senator offer whatever amendment he or she wanted, and before too long, a final bill that could get 60 votes would emerge.
Both parties know this, and refuse to do it. Why? Because an open amendment process—“the wild west,” they call it—would force senators to take amendment votes that would, quelle horreur, lay bare their actual beliefs and policy priorities to their constituents.
That’s it. That’s the whole story of Senate “gridlock.” Not the filibuster, not cloture, not grandstanding, not Donald Trump or “norms,” or “obstruction” or any other nonsense you’ve been told.
At the end of the day, senators care more about protecting themselves and their colleagues from unpredictable, inconvenient floor votes than they do about passing legislation. This, and no other reason, is why both parties now legislate via secret negotiations, followed by an obnoxious, rigged floor process (“filling the tree”) that blocks all amendments except the ones mutually agreed to by the party leaders.
Remember, the amendments this process blocks are not the ones that wouldn’t pass, but the ones that would. Most Democratic senators don’t want to have to vote on popular Republican amendments to, say, curb immigration or protect gun rights. Likewise, most GOP senators don’t want to have to defend a vote against a higher minimum wage or increased spending for children’s health care.
All kinds of bills and amendments could get 60 votes in the Senate today. The problem is, they would be the wrong 60 votes—majorities representing the public as such instead of their party. When the dust settled, lots of incumbents on both sides would invite dangerous primary or general election challengers next time they faced the voters. //
Ultimately, Senate majorities do not see gridlock as a frustrating, inferior alternative to passing legislation. They see it as a superior alternative to the transparency and accountability that comes with discharging their constitutional responsibilities.
Not convinced? When was the last time you saw a Senate majority of either party really put their shoulder to the wheel to break a partisan filibuster? I don’t mean whining to cable news or talk radio. I mean work: staying in session all night, for days on end, forcing late night attendance, including the sick old men, the cancellation of weekend plans, missing piano recitals and family weddings? Never.
If Senate majorities really want to pass legislation, they could, anytime, through a combination of compromise, transparency, and the exertion of physical energy. This approach has not been tried and found wanting, but found inconvenient and left untried. //
The vast majority of federal policies today rendered untouchable by the Senate’s 60-vote cloture threshold was written between the 1930s and 1960s when even Republicans were proud liberals. Are three years of Roe-lite or some half-baked Green New Deal ramp-up really worth giving President Ron DeSantis, House Speaker Jim Jordan, and Senate Majority Leader Ted Cruz free-rein to rewrite the Great Society and New Deal, the APA, the NLRB, NEPA, civil service, education, and immigration law in one swing?
They would decentralize and defund dozens of power centers within the progressive movement. The left has unimaginably more to lose from a majoritarian Senate than the right. //
At any given moment, both parties are advancing, on different issues, popular and unpopular ideas. The way the Senate is designed to work is, the popular ideas get creatively cobbled together and passed as consensus compromises. And the unpopular ideas are discarded as slogans for the performance artists in the House.
The only reason this doesn’t happen today is that senators’ real, if unstated, top priorities are personal convenience and partisan positioning. Passing major legislation is a distant second or third. What we see on C-Span2 every day is the majority applying minimal-to-modest effort to pass legislation, and maximal effort to protect their seats and undermine the other side.
The Senate’s rules do not stop it from legislating. It’s the senators themselves, entitled and vain, cowering in the shadows behind the one thing in Washington with the courage to stand up for all of us, simultaneously against the mob and the elite. The filibuster isn’t our hero. It’s a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A dark knight.
A rule to carry with you in Washington is nearly everything someone in power claims is too complicated to explain actually isn’t complicated at all. They just don’t want to tell you why.
You can’t have a superhero without a nemesis, and the beloved A-10 Thunderbolt II attack plane, which has saved the bacon of countless ground troops over its 45-year career, is no exception. The thing is, the A-10’s nemesis is the Air Force itself, and a new report reveals how hard the service has been working behind the scenes to starve the aircraft of replacement parts over the past 14 years. //
The goal of this starvation campaign is to convince Congress that the A-10 is old, difficult to maintain, and not worth the upkeep, according to report released on Monday from the Project On Government Oversight, a non-profit watchdog group. This sabotage effort goes against the wishes of Congress, which aims to keep the extremely effective A-10 in business.
“Congress has included several provisions in federal law to prevent A-10 retirements,” the report said. “Yet sources have told the Project On Government Oversight (POGO) that, despite these provisions, Air Force leaders have pursued a de facto retirement of the fleet through a starvation campaign.” //
These shortages and the wing shortage have the same root cause: the Air Force not renewing contracts with suppliers. Making things worse, the report said the Air Force has also tried to shut down A-10 maintenance facilities at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, which is one of three Air Force maintenance depots that perform the most intensive repair and rehabilitation work on military aircraft.
Though Congress stepped in to save the facilities, the combination of grounded aircraft; parts shortages; and the threat of depot closure has scared many experienced maintainers to find new jobs, the report read. Though the Air Force needs to send 57 A-10s through the Hill facility every year, right now it can handle only 31 a year, the report said. //
The A-10 instability is also costing the Air Force the institutional knowledge of close air support specialists who have done nothing but support ground troops for the past 20 years, the report argued. Many A-10 pilots say they would leave the service if the ‘Hog was retired, the report said, and the art of close air support doesn’t just teach itself. In fact, in World War II, Korea and Vietnam, ground troops suffered a great deal while pilots re-learned the art lost to post-war military downsizing. //
Why does the Air Force seem to hate the A-10 so much? Many experts say it is part of the branch’s efforts to replace the jet with the multirole F-35 Lightning II and the F-15EX Eagle II, which the service argues can also perform close air support. But many members of Congress, including former military aviators, say the F-35 can’t hold a candle to the A-10 in the close air support business. The Air Force also argues that the slow-moving A-10, while great against Taliban insurgents wielding low-tech AK-47s and RPGs, would not survive against higher-tech anti-aircraft fire.
The Project On Government Oversight pushed back on this argument, saying it assumes Warthogs would fly deep into enemy territory, outside the help of friendly ground troops. But that’s not what A-10s do, the report said. Instead, ground and air units like the A-10 are meant to support each other, and ground troops would suppress enemy air defenses “as a matter of routine,” the report said, citing 2001 Marine Corps guidance on the suppression of enemy air defenses.
Instead of replacing the A-10 with the subpar F-35 as a close air support platform, the Air Force needs to focus on creating a replacement for the A-10, the report argued. It took only seven years to whip up the A-10, the report said, so why not crank out a new design before the A-10’s lifespan ends in the 2030s. To do so otherwise could come at great cost for ground troops, the report argued.
For the first time since Thomas Jefferson, Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited nonsensical and irrelevant ad hominem attacks to be both spoken on the floor of the House and to be entered into the permanent congressional record. Sadly, her invitation was eagerly accepted. Freshman Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., called President Trump “a white supremacist president,” and “white supremacist-in-chief,” while Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., called him “racist-in-chief.” //
“Fighting words” are ad hominem. They attack the person without addressing the argument. //
Oral arguments began on Feb. 22, 1971, with Chief Justice Warren Burger instructing Cohen’s lawyer, Melville Nimmer, that the offensive word in question need not be uttered in the hallowed halls of the Supreme Court. Seconds later, in his opening argument, Nimmer said, “What this young man did was to walk through a courthouse corridor wearing a jacket on which were inscribed the words, ‘F— the Draft.’” Presumably, this was the first time in history that such a vile word was uttered in that setting.
For his open defiance of the chief justice, Nimmer was not cited for contempt of court. Rather, he walked away with a 5-4 ruling that overturned 180 years of First Amendment jurisprudence. As Justice John Harlan famously wrote for the majority: “while the particular four-letter word being litigated here is perhaps more distasteful than most others of its genre, it is nevertheless often true that one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” //
Were this the only sad consequence of Cohen v. California, it would be bad enough. But things have devolved further still. In 1977, Cohen was cited as a reason to permit Nazis to chant Jewish insults and carry the swastika through Skokie, Illinois — a community of Holocaust survivors.
In 1978, the Federal Communications Commission lost its ability to keep obscenities off the air; and in 1986 public schools lost their authority to prevent students from screaming “F— you,” in the halls of education. In 1992 the court unanimously struck down long-standing prohibitions against the Ku Klux Klan’s cross-burning threats.
Beginning in the mid-’90s, the advent of so-called “hate speech laws” closed the circle. Now certain ideas cannot be expressed without public penalty. Florists, bakers, clerks, and printers have been devastated by lost business, government fines, and legal costs just for expressing the idea that the words “male” and “female” are not interchangeable. Meanwhile, the law permits them to be assailed with nonsensical words like, “hater,” “bigot,” and “Nazi.”
Such words do not serve as a “step to the truth.” Rather, they are meant to insult and incite economic and social violence against their targets.
It’s been a half-century since the Warren court poisoned popular discourse, there yet remain public places that prohibit the ad hominem and the obscene. For instance, rules in the U.S. House of Representatives dating back to Thomas Jefferson require members to “Avoid characterizing another Member’s personal intent or motives and discussing personalities,” and to “Refrain from speaking disrespectfully of the Speaker, other Members, the President or Vice President.” //
Unfortunately, however, those very rules are now under assault. The House Committee on Rules met on Jan. 12, 2021, and adopted an ad hoc rule change providing “that the prohibition against personality in debate with respect to references to the President shall not apply during consideration of H. Res. 21 or any special order of business providing for the consideration of H. Res. 24.”
Thus, rules against ad hominem attacks on President Donald J. Trump were suspended during floor debates on Vice President Pence’s invocation of the 25 Amendment (H. Res. 21), and the motion to impeach President Trump (H. Res. 24).
Thanks to Pelosi, the language of the school-yard bully has now entered our highest deliberative body. As Cohen led to the cancel culture in the public square, so name-calling on the House floor led immediately to the suppression of unfavored ideas in Congress. Within hours, eight senators and 139 representatives who had followed congressional decorum in calling for an investigation of election fraud suddenly found themselves threatened with censure and expulsion merely for expressing the idea.
In 1942, Justice Murphy asserted, as a matter of timeless common sense, that the First Amendment protects the expression and defense of every idea as a valuable step towards discovering the truth. Now, only 80 years later, the case is reversed. Nonsensical, vile, and intentionally injurious words are fully protected speech while the expression of certain ideas — even in the kindest possible terms — is strictly forbidden. Instead of protecting true free speech, we’ve crushed the speech that matters most: the articulation and testing of the truth.
Senate Democrats intend to erode as many barriers around the reconciliation process as possible.
By Seton Motley | Jan 27, 2021 8:27 AM ET
I appreciate Senator Ted Cruz’s effort – and his many other efforts – but his bill ending endless Congressional terms isn’t a solution.
I am loathe to question Senator Cruz on Constitutional questions – but his bill raises Constitutional questions. We had to amend the Constitution to term-limit presidents. I would imagine we’d need to do the same thing to do the same thing to Congressmen.
And it almost certainly isn’t a practical solution. How many members of Congress will vote to limit their time as members of Congress?
Meanwhile, term limits just turn more elected officials more rapidly into more lobbyists.
And term limits accidentally, massively over-empower residual Hill staffers – who aren’t elected and aren’t term limited.
All of which is demonstrably worse than what we have now.
To solve the problems – we must address the actual problems. Implementing term limits doesn’t do that.
In the House – that means ending gerrymandering. For the Senate – we must repeal the Seventeenth Amendment.
In the House:
Gerrymandering?:
“(A) practice intended to establish an unfair political advantage for a particular party or group by manipulating district boundaries….
“Two principal tactics are used in gerrymandering.
“‘Cracking’ (i.e. diluting the voting power of the opposing party’s supporters across many districts).
“And ‘packing’ (concentrating the opposing party’s voting power in one district to reduce their voting power in other districts).”
Gerrymandering is government officials choosing us – rather than us choosing them. //
Term limits replace old Nancy Pelosis with…young Nancy Pelosis. Because 80+% of Congressional districts are gerrymandered to an overwhelming Democrat or Republican advantage. //
In the Senate:
Seventeenth Amendment?:
“(E)stablished the direct election of United States senators in each state. The amendment supersedes Article I, §3, Clauses 1 and 2 of the Constitution, under which senators were elected by state legislatures.”
We must return to the pre-Seventeenth Amendment status quo. Because it served as a massive check on federal spending – and myriad other overreaches. //
Term limits is a top-down, DC-centered “fix” – to problems caused by top-down, DC-centered “fixes.” That actually fixes nothing. And actually makes things worse.
The real solution is to fix the actual, original problems.
End gerrymandering – and repeal the Seventeenth Amendment.
And restore the proper accountability, roles and responsibilities of government at every level.
Here are seven key moments that occurred before and after lawmakers were forced to suspend their debate of evidence of voter fraud and other election irregularities and shelter in place. //
- Cruz Offers ‘Door Number 3’
Also before the rioters breached the Capitol, Cruz made the case for naming an Electoral Commission as a “credible, impartial body to hear the evidence” as part of an emergency 10-day audit of six disputed states. //
After the 1876 presidential election, Congress appointed an Electoral Commission to decide the dispute between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden.
The panel was made up of five House members, five senators, and five Supreme Court justices. The commission decided four disputed states–South Carolina, Florida, Louisiana, and Oregon–in favor of Hayes.
Tuesday, Colorado Republican Lauren Boebert took to the floor of the House to excoriate Joe Biden and to put words into the Congressional Record that one never thought one would read.
Here’s her floor speech.
Madam speaker i want to begin this evening by thanking my democrat colleagues for their outstanding work and encouraging millions of Americans to celebrate their second amendment rights by purchasing their first, second, or even 100th firearm.
From the Left’s riots and cities across America to Biden’s threats to strip away our basic constitutional rights. Democrats are single-handedly responsible for the sale of tens of millions of firearms.
Bravo.
Well done and I hear that the interest has begun to pique when it comes to the sale of F-15s now.
I have some questions for these freedom haters. When are you going to call on the chief executive, the basement dweller, to hold his own son accountable for his gun crimes?
Hunter Biden lied on a federal firearms application which is punishable by up to 10 years and a $250,000 fine of which ten percent will not be going to the big guy. Rules for thee but not for my crackhead Parmesan smoking gun criminal son. What about the disposal of Hunter Biden’s gun in a back alley dumpster? And why was the Secret Service involved in locating this firearm? Can you just imagine for half a second if Donald Trump Jr was involved in firearms crimes and his dad ordered the Secret Service to cover it up? That’s just the start of the hypocrisy. Biden will call widely purchased firearms weapons of war but then he’ll tell you that you need an F-15 or a nuke to keep the federal government in check. He will target so-called merchants of death but celebrate the 600 abortion clinics across America.
This regime will encourage riots, defund the police and try to take away American’s right to self-defense. Madam Speaker, the American people are not on board with the Biden regime’s hypocritical gun grabbing. Instead they are buying guns at a record rate. So my colleagues from the other side, they can keep running their mouths and we will keep adding to our arsenals.
Thank you gentlemen. I yield back.
Republican Sen. Ron Johnson is pressuring Capitol Police to answer questions about Jan. 6 and why they weren’t prepared to stop people from entering the building.
Fauci reversed course. Now we’ve gone from “the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology” to “there’s no way of guaranteeing” that it happened, and what’s more, than we, the American people, paid for it.
The conceit of the Congress on issues like this is always amusing. The Department of Justice has hundreds — maybe more than a thousand — criminal investigations underway, using all the investigatory powers given to the FBI and federal grand juries. They have access to more than 15,000 hours of video surveillance footage taken by government surveillance systems in and around the Capitol. They have subpoenaed various forms of communication between persons involved in the January 6 happenings, including social media communications and emails.
Yet a commission consisting of 10 members of Congress and a couple of dozen staff members are needed to reach a definitive conclusion about what took place?
Comedy gold.
“The FAMs are now taking agents off of regularly scheduled “high risk” flights to put them on flights with members of Congress, that in most cases have their own armed federal security details onboard already. It has become akin to a type of extremely expensive concierge service for Congressional members.”
Members of Congress are supposed to be serving us, but with this, they’re taking away protection that’s actually needed elsewhere for Americans. The marshals aren’t supposed to be servants or security for Congress. This has the potential of putting national security at risk.
We now know that on April 1 last year, the U.S. had 331.5 million residents, an increase from 2010 of only 7.4 percent, second smallest in the Census’ 230-year history to the 7.3 percent of the 1930 Great Depression decade.
This time, think aging population, delays in marrying and having children, and slower immigration.
What we also know now is more good news for Republicans. Six states will gain a total of seven additional House seats and electoral votes, most in Republican areas. Seven states, mostly Democratic and in the Rust Belt, will lose House seats and, thus, electoral votes.
Gainers are Florida, Montana, which regains the seat it lost three decades ago, North Carolina, Oregon, and two new seats go to Texas. That’s the result of about four million new residents, many of them financial refugees from California. Such historical internal migration to the Sun Belt continues but has slowed.
It depends which party t are from whether or not they are approved
McConnell then began to lay out how Republicans will respond if the filibuster is eliminated. Via Daily Wire:
“They are arguing for a radically less stable and less consensus-driven system of government. Forget about enduring laws with broad support. Nothing in federal law would ever be settled.
“Does anyone really believe the American people were voting for an entirely new system of government by electing Joe Biden to the White House and a 50-50 Senate?
“This is 50-50 Senate. There was no mandate to completely transform America by the American people on November 3.” //
McConnell said the notion that the filibuster is the only thing that stands in the way of Democrats ramming through their entire agenda is false.
“So, let me say this very clearly for all 99 of my colleagues: Nobody serving in this chamber can even begin to imagine what a completely scorched-earth Senate would look like.
“None of us have served one minute in a Senate that was completely drained of comity and consent. This is an institution that requires unanimous consent to turn the lights on before noon.”
Given the 50-50 split, McConnell reminded Democrats that the vice president does not break ties in determining a quorum.
“I want our colleagues to imagine a world where every single task, every one of them, requires a physical quorum. […] Everything that Democratic Senates did to Presidents Bush and Trump… everything the Republican Senate did to President Obama… would be child’s play compared to the disaster that Democrats would create for their own priorities if they break the Senate.” //
McConnell listed the following, as noted by The Daily Wire:
Nationwide right-to-work for working Americans.
Defunding Planned Parenthood and sanctuary cities on day one.
A whole new era of domestic energy production.
Sweeping new protections for conscience and the right to life of the unborn.
Concealed-carry reciprocity in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Massive hardening of security on our southern border.
Tough talk. Would he follow through?
What gives Congress the right to think they can control me or you? What makes Congress think that they need to “protect” me or you?
Finally, why does government assume that they are even capable of controlling or protecting anyone?
If this pandemic has proven anything, it’s that government intervention and overreach creates more train wrecks and problems than it ever solves. Government’s draconian interference through deceptive legislation and lawsuits serve to blow up the very foundations that make us productive, safe, and free, leaving human shrapnel in the wake.