Donald Trump

By Mitchell Zimmerman | ( Otherwords.org) – Trump White House insider and January 6 Committee witness Cassidy Hutchinson provided startling and compelling evidence that Donald Trump deliberately set out to incite an insurrection at the Capitol. Before giving his inflammatory speech, Hutchinson testified, Trump was told his supporters were armed with guns, knives, spears, and […]

Donald Trump

How the Trump Supreme Court became King George III, Depriving us of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Declaration of independence begins with the famous words, crafted by Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure […]

Authoritarianism

Great Car Fight Movie Scenes Reminiscent of Trump’s attack on Agent Bobby Engel on Jan. 6

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Cassidy Hutchinson testified on Tuesday that Trump grew violent in the presidential limousine, nicknamed the beast, toward a member of his Secret Service detail. Trump had orchestrated the attack on the Capitol by the Oath Keeper and Proud Boys white nationalist militias and had promised them he would lead them […]

Donald Trump

The emerging Paramilitary Wing of the Republican Party

Minnesota Reformer

by J. Patrick Coolican, Minnesota Reformer | – It’s campaign season, which means Republican candidates for office wielding weapons and threatening to use them. Here’s U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, looking like an extra in a straight-to-DVD Western. COME AND TAKE IT pic.twitter.com/kwFrT61stF — Rep. Lauren Boebert (@RepBoebert) February 25, 2022 J.R. Majewski, a Republican candidate […]

Domestic Terrorism

Did Trump try to Get VP Mike Pence Killed?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – The Jan. 6 Committee revealed on Thursday that Trump knew that the Capitol had been breached by his Oath Keeper and Proud Boy black shirts when he sent his tweet at 2:24 p.m. saying, “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our […]

Congress

A Distinctly Native Criminal Class: Was Rep. Loudermilk Part of the Jan. 6 Insurrection? How many in Congress Were?

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – There are 435 representatives in the House, and you and I have not heard of most of them. In some instances this anonymity means that they have their noses to the grindstone, quietly representing their districts. In other instances they are involved in shady dealings and shun the spotlight lest […]

Donald Trump

Why the Oath Keepers looks an Awful lot like al-Qaeda and Trump is its Usama Bin Laden

Juan Cole

Revised. Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Although the Congressional inquiry into the Jan. 6 insurrection is releasing new information about the ties between the White House and the insurrectionists, that the attack on the Capitol that day was a well-planned paramilitary operation was clear from Department of Justice indictments already released. Below, I revisit one […]

Conspiracy Theories

What did the President Know and When did He Know it? Trump’s 7-Part Plan and the Insurrection

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – When the news of the burglary at the Democratic campaign headquarters in the Watergate building broke, it wasn’t initially clear that President Tricky Dick Nixon had ordered it. (He did, twice. Yes.) So for those too young to remember that dreary scandal, the question of “What did the president know […]

Civil Rights

The Empire’s New Clothes: The Veneer of Accountability Is Wearing Thin in Twenty-First-Century America

Karen J. Greenberg

( Tomdispatch.com ) – If you watched TV in the 1960s and 1970s as I did, you would undoubtedly have come away with the idea that this country’s courts, law enforcement agencies, and the laws they aimed to honor added up to a system in which justice was always served. In those years, for instance, […]