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In the Romney excerpt @mckaycoppins Paul Ryan, already out as speaker, calls Romney and lobbies him not to vote to convict Trump in 1st impeachment trial — for all the self serving cynical reasons that you might imagine. https://t.co/Kl8qwjpbTX — Susan Glasser (@sbg1) September 13, 2023 Yep: Shortly before 2 p.m. on the day of the vote, Romney left his office and walked to the Capitol, where he waited in his hideaway for his turn to speak. Minutes before going on the floor, he received an unexpected call on his cellphone. It was Paul Ryan. Romney and his team had kept a tight lid on how he planned to vote, but somehow his former running mate had gotten word that he was about to detonate his political career. Romney had been less judgmental of Ryan’s acquiescence to Trump than he’d been of most other Republicans’. He believed Ryan was a sincere guy who’d simply misjudged Trump. And yet, here was Ryan on the phone, making the same arguments Romney had heard from some of his more calculating colleagues.
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Low rating cable channel, Sky News Australia, has pledged that it’s hosts will walk backwards around Australia this month to encourage the Nation to vote no at the upcoming referendum. ”Australians will be inspired to see some of the countries... Read More ›
My interview with @RepMattGaetz last night. On not having the votes but threatening countless attempts to oust McCarthy anyway "I’m going to do it over and over again until it works" pic.twitter.com/BJeOtgvHDG — Abby D. Phillip (@abbydphillip) September 13, 2023 That was a good interview by Phillips. Gaetz thinks he’s going to best McCarthy. And he will make his life miserable. But who does he think will take MyKevin’s place?
Unencumbered by a fierce legal battle, Mitchell remains one of the most influential people in the movement that’s undermining American democracy.
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Good to know According to the DC Circuit, congressional reps can foment coups and there’s nothing anyone can do about it: A top House conservative’s conversations with allies in Congress and the Trump White House about overturning the 2020 election are off-limits to special counsel Jack Smith, an appeals court ruled in a newly unsealed court opinion. A three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that prosecutors’ effort to access the cellphone communications of Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) with colleagues and executive branch officials violated his immunity under the Constitution’s Speech or Debate clause, which shields members of Congress from legal proceedings connected to their official duties. “While elections are political events, a Member’s deliberation about whether to certify a presidential election or how to assess information relevant to legislation about federal election procedures are textbook legislative acts,” Judge Neomi Rao wrote in the opinion issued last week. The decision breaks new ground in a decadeslong tug-of-war between Congress and the executive branch.
A chilling laboratory of authoritarianism I thought this piece by Don Moynihan was one of the best analyses I’ve seen of the attack on democracy we’re seeing in Wisconsin. It’s long but if you have time, read the whole thing. You’ll understand what’s happening in Wisconsin but also where the Republicans are headed nationally. This is who they are now: “DEMOCRACY IS A SYSTEM IN WHICH parties lose elections,” according to the political scientist Adam Przeworski. By that measure Wisconsin is not really a democracy. Sure, the Republican Party of Wisconsin routinely is defeated in statewide elections. Indeed, since 2018, they have lost fourteen of seventeen such races. But can they be said to really lose when they refuse to accept their defeat and instead use power accrued by undemocratic means to minimize or even reverse those losses? In this, Wisconsin was the pre-Trump canary in the coal mine, alerting us to the undemocratic depths to which the GOP would descend. The state’s Republicans then became bolder following Trump’s Big Lie example.
In May 1971, I published a full-page letter in The Australian addressed ‘To Those Who Shape Australia’s Destiny’. It was signed by 730 Australian scientists including Sir Mark Oliphant and Sir Macfarlane Burnett. The letter concluded with these words: “For biological and ecological reasons civilisation based on the present western technology cannot survive much longer. Continue reading »
An innocent invitation to a conference could turn into a nightmare. Next month I shall be on my way to an Australian Studies conference in Beijing, but already I am nervous about my travel plans because of recent stories about the attitude of Australian spy agencies to information exchanges with China. Friends, if I fail Continue reading »
Prior to his most recent overseas trip to Jakarta, Manila, and New Delhi, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been abroad a dozen times. Not bad for a government that’s been in office for just on eighteen months. The next few months will see him flying off again for half a dozen more summits, head to head meetings Continue reading »
It is time for government to get the suits back under control and manage the economy for the benefit of us all. When my brain was switching to idle on my recent break, I thought of two central questions. First, for whose benefit is the economy being run – a handful of company executives at Continue reading »
Without reform, Australia’s schooling system threatens to create a lost generation of young people. Teddy is a Kamilaroi university student who dreams of making a difference to educational outcomes of First Nation peoples. Growing up in regional New South Wales was fraught with challenges related to disadvantage for Teddy, but the amazing teachers who supported Continue reading »
By chance, US president Biden’s goodwill visit to Vietnam’s communist government in Hanoi came just 50 years after the notorious 1972 Christmas bombings. These bombings saw more than 200 American B-52s flying 730 sorties and dropping over 20,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam over a period of 12 days in December 1972. The aim: Continue reading »
The American diplomatic starship, USS Exceptionalism, fell to earth at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in New Delhi. Thankfully for the world, India, that is Bharat, successfully landed its earthbound diplomacy. Only a few weeks ago, during the BRICS Leaders Summit, the Global South and its Eurasian partners had stood to applaud Prime Minister Modi because Continue reading »
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Vladimir Putin could barely contain his excitement Tuesday while discussing Donald Trump, telling a forum in Vladivostok that the criminal cases against the former president are “good” for Russia and that the Kremlin took delight in Trump’s claim he’d swiftly force an end to Moscow’s war against Ukraine. “As for the persecution of Trump… for us, what is happening in these conditions, in my opinion, is good, because it shows the whole rottenness of the American political system, which cannot claim to teach others about democracy,” Putin said, echoing the former American president’s own oft-repeated claim that “what’s happening with Trump is a persecution of a political rival for political motives.” The man who is responsible for trying to kill his rival with poison and then locking him up in a prison camp for life says what? Trump’s response: Hmmm. I’d guess he didn’t really think that through. (But when does he ever think anything through?) But I’m sure Putin doesn’t care.
“U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert was escorted out of a Sunday night performance of the ‘Beetlejuice’ musical in downtown Denver, accused by venue officials of vaping, singing, recording and ‘causing a disturbance’ during the performance.” — The Denver Post
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(The curtain rises on the Buell Theatre, Denver. We see the AUDIENCE on stage, settling in for a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice.”)
AUDIENCE
It’s a splendid night for a musical
An escape that’s non-pharmaceutical
You won’t see a frown
When the theater lights go down
We’re waiting in our seats politely
Looking forward to the show excitedly
Hey, look, there’s our rep in DC
And she’s shouting, “Hey, y’all, look at me!”
Eh, let her have her fun
The show hasn’t yet begun
Once the actors start their work
She’ll probably stop acting like a jerk