Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and three other “Sedition Caucus” Republicans held a press conference Tuesday allegedly to decry the conditions at the D.C. jail, which is housing accused suspects awaiting trial for actions during the January 6 Capitol riot. But Greene and her three co-members used the event primarily to further false far-right claims about the insurrection, while wrongly claiming they are being “persecuted” by the government – a talking point Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly used.
“We have a January 6 committee that Nancy Pelosi is leading,” Greene said, falsely. U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) is the chairman. “That is nothing but a political witch hunt on Republicans and Trump supporters all across America, and anyone that was at the Capitol on January 6.”
More than 600 people from more than 40 states have been charged. Only about 75 are currently in jail, and the charges are often far from casual misdemeanor ones. USA Today maintains a massive, daily-updated listing that currently contains information on 672 people.
Here are the charges for a recently-arrested suspect chosen at random:
“What’s happening to these people being held in custody is wrong,” Greene continued. “It’s unconstitutional. It’s a violation of their rights. And it is an abuse that I call on every single member of Congress to start paying attention to. We need investigations. It’s outrageous. The American people are purely upset, disgusted and cannot believe this is happening in our country.”
Greene claimed the defendants are “beaten” by guards and called “white supremacists,” although she did not say by whom. Some of the defendants infamously carried the flag of the treasonous Confederacy into the U.S. Capitol.
She also claimed those in the D.C. jail “are told they have to denounce President Trump” and “are told that their views are the views of cult members.” Many QAnon cult members were at the Capitol during the attack.
Greene said they are being treated “worse than we treat terrorists.”
But Greene also used the event to attack the Black Lives Matter movement and to suggest that those who engaged in the BLM protests over the summer of 2020 should have been jailed, ignoring that state and local police forces have prosecuted the few violent protestors – some of whom have been documented as far right wing instigators. Multiplereports found of the several hundred arrested, most were not “far left extremists,” despite what the right claimed at the time.
Greene concluded by blaming “Congress,” not the defendants, for their actions and current circumstances.
“Congress only cares about itself,” the GOP extremist told reporters. “It clearly demonstrates to the American people, it does not care about your business that got burned down. It doesn’t care about the job you lost. Congress doesn’t care about your city or community that was devastated by violence. They don’t care about you taxpayers that have to pay to fix and mend and and they don’t care about the person that assaulted you looted your store or hurt you in this violence. They don’t care about any of that,” she claimed.
Greene has voted against every measure that would assist the American people.
“They only care about themselves, and they’re willing to use the Department of Justice, the FBI, the prisons, the jails, the guards and any means possible to make sure that you never mess with them again,” she claimed, again falsely.
The House of Representatives easily passed a bill on Tuesday evening to honor the Capitol Police and others who defended the Capitol during the violent assault by a Trumpist mob by awarding them Congressional gold medals. Despite passing with overwhelming bipartisan support, however, the vote was not universal: A dozen Republican members of the House actually voted against the bill.
Those 12 emerge from this vote as a rogues gallery of Congress' worst-of-the-worst. Because, though several hurried out excuses for voting against a bill that did nothing but acknowledge the contributions of police on January 6, the result of the vote was clear: These are people who place the concerns of the insurgents over those of the women and men who were killed or injured defending the nation against an unprecedented assault.
When it came down to it, these 12 Republicans sided with the murderous mob rather than the Capitol Police. So much so that they could not accept a motion of praise for the people who may have saved their lives.
The names of the 12 no-voters are familiar enough that they might as well be called the usual suspects: Andy Biggs, Michael Cloud, Andrew Clyde, Matt Gaetz, Louie Gohmert, Bob Good, Lance Gooden, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Andy Harris, Thomas Massie, John Rose, and Greg Steube.
Some of the 12 came forward with statements that "clarified" their vote. For example, Gohmert didn't like the fact that the the bill honoring the police accurately described the people smashing their way into the Capitol as "armed insurgents." Gohmert did not make it clear whether the objection is that the guns, tasers, bear spray, bats, and spears carried by those invading the Capitol building didn't have enough magazine capacity to really count as weapons, or whether seeking to hang public officials in order to overthrow the government shouldn't count as insurrection. But one way or another, Gohmert was worried that the collection of hostage-seeking jackasses might get their feelings hurt.
Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie expanded on this point. As the Cincinnati Enquirerreports, the Kentucky congressman claimed he was concerned that using the term "insurrection" gave it too much "weight," and this term "could show up in a prosecution." He did not make it clear if this meant he wanted insurgents treated with kid gloves, or if he was concerned that he might be named in such a prosecution.
Calling an insurrection an insurrection was also apparently a line too far for insurrection supporter Andy Harris. He tweeted that he could not support "partisan charged language found in this bill." Language so partisan that the bill had 333 sponsors—over three quarters of the House membership, Republicans included. But then, those others aren't as sensitive as Harris.
And of course, Marjorie Taylor Greene, the new leader of congressional Republicans, could be counted on to provide insight. First, she objected to a phrase describing the Capitol as "a temple of democracy" because … temple. "This Capitol is not a temple," wrote Greene in a Facebook post. "I will not give that a stamp of my approval." Greene will have to wrestle that one out with Thomas Jefferson, who used the phrase after suggesting the Capitol be modeled after the Pantheon in Rome. Then Greene went on to complain that the bill "calls every single person that entered the capitol on Jan. 6 an insurrectionist" (it doesn't, though it could) and fails to call "Antifa or BLM" insurrectionists simply because they didn't invade the Capitol and attempt to overthrow the government.
All of the 12 protested that they would have supported an alternate bill from Gohmert that had language more to their liking. However, as The Washington Post reports, that version did more than omit the "sacrilegious" use of temple and defend the delicate sensibility of white supremacist insurgents; it actually didn't mention the events of January 6 at all.
So these 12 Republicans are perfectly willing to praise the police … theoretically. So long as it doesn't involve the police actually doing anything to their people.
Conservatives are tripping over themselves to paint a halo on the Kentucky clerk who was jailed for trying to keep gay people from getting married in her county. So brave. Ah, America, where you can simultaneously hold the Constitution up as a holy totem and conveniently forget anything in it you don’t like. Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
Last week, I announced to the world if the House and Senate will treat Iran — the Iran treaty as a treaty, I will not run for my congressional seat again. It’s the only thing that I have left that our leadership wants beside my integrity.
And after last week that I spent in Egypt, I feel so compelled to do absolutely everything I can to derail this president’s drastic move towards a nuclear holocaust. I won’t run again if the House voted on my attached resolution and the Senate voted on ratification.
Gohmert further told Breitbartthat “the foolish cowardice of Neville Chamberlain in 1938 will pale by comparison” to the cravenness of congressional Republicans.
In fairness, if nuclear holocaust were to occur, we wouldn’t want to die in Washington, either.
Media Matters has assembled a supercut of Fox News hosts giving Perkins a platform to shill his book and spew his noxious riff on the Christian persecution narrative. Which is hilarious in a mirthless kind of way when you consider that the network accuses the Black Lives Matter movement of being a hate group, while Megyn Kelly and her colleagues continue to wheel out Tony Perkins every time they need an old, sensible-sounding white man to rattle his saber against the dreaded gays.
To Kelly’s credit, she did try (not terribly hard) to nail Perkins down on one point: When you open the door to religious liberty exemptions, and start letting government officials opt out of their sworn duties, where does it end? Would a Muslim clerk be permitted a “religious accommodation”? Do you have to allow interracial marriages if the God of your understanding opposes them?
Perkins did not answer, but merely tried to characterize Davis as a reasonable woman caught under the boot of big, bad liberalism.
“All she wants is to have her name off the license. She is not saying nobody in my office can issue this,” Perkins told Kelly. In fact she saidexactly that.
Kim Davis should rest easy knowing she has a such a sterling moral champion in Tony Perkins on her side. He even gave her his new book when she got released from jail, and promised to include a new chapter about her martyrdom in a subsequent edition.
As an attorney and head honcho at Liberty Counsel — the righteous anti-gay, anti-abortion counterpart to that vile haven of black magic and Baphomet worship, the ACLU — he has defended Davis’ criminal actions, likened her to a Jew living in Nazi Germany, fought to get her released from jail, and become a white knight in the modern conservative Christian theocratic movement, fighting for your right to practice their religion. Staver even had the temerity to threaten the deputy clerks, who opposed Davis by issuing licenses in her absence, with civil action.
The “religious liberty” rhetoric espoused by Staver is designed to give the impression that Christians of conscience are being oppressed, and would much rather turn the other cheek and go on their way. Right Wing Watch has gathered 10 horrible things Staver has said over the years, making it pretty clear that he’s on the warpath, and his views on gay people place him comfortably in the Dark Ages — and hand in hand with presidential candidate Mike Huckabee.
The Tea Party rally on Capitol Hill against the Iran deal was a buffet of bonkers. The event was headlined by Senator Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, who conveyed all the usual bombast (the president is “lawless,” said Cruz; our leaders are “stupid,” said Trump — yawn). But then the erst-governor of Alaska and onetime (we pray) VP candidate Sarah Palin put in an appearance as well — a cartoonish blast of nonsense, hypocrisy, and silliness so bizarre and uninformed even Glenn Beck is embarrassed to have ever supported her.
She accused Obama of implicitly supporting violence against police officers “since he still hasn’t called off the dogs.” By “dogs,” we suppose she means the Justice Department probe into the city of Ferguson, or perhaps the #BlackLivesMatter movement… I don’t know. That’s the magic of Palin: her language is vacuous and loaded at the same time — void of meaning and pregnant with innuendo. (“Who’s our enemy? Youknowwho.”)
Although there to voice her disapproval of the Iran deal, she failed to articulate a single coherent thought against it, opting instead to goad the audience into easy cheers with code words like “Reagan.” (Remember when Reagan actually sold weapons to Iran? Neither does Palin, apparently.)
You know you’ve gone too far when even Glenn Beck washes his hands of you.
“Sarah Palin has become a clown,” he said later. “I’m embarrassed that I was once for Sarah Palin. Honestly — I’m embarrassed.”
At least someone on the right knows how to feel some shame.
At the carnival supporting Kim Davis’ release Tuesday, Huckabee echoed what is now a familiar line among conservatives angling to delegitimize the Obergefell ruling: The Supreme Court, Huckabee said, has no standing to make the law. “Five unelected lawyers,” by which he means the five-Justice majority that ruled prohibitions against same-sex marriages were unconstitutional, do not have the right to make the law. That right is reserved exclusively for elected officials at the local, state, and federal level.
Appearing on radio host Michael Medved’s show, Huckabee elaborated:
The Supreme Court in the same-sex marriage decision made a law and they made it up out of thin air. Therefore, until Congress decides to codify that and give it a statute it’s really not an operative law and that’s why what Kim Davis did was operate under not only the Kentucky Constitution which was the law under which she was elected but she’s operating under the fact that there’s no statute in her state nor at the federal level that authorizes her
In other words, until a legislative body gets around to actually writing a law, we don’t have to follow the Supreme Court ruling. After all, he said, the Dred Scott decision “still remains to this day the ‘law of the land,’ which says that black people aren’t fully human. Does anybody still follow the Dred Scott Supreme Court decision?”
He also believes that the Supreme Court is basically an impotent body that has the capacity to do… well, nothing basically. (He’s in good company. Fellow GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson also believes it’s high time we revoked Marbury vs. Madison, the landmark 1803 decision that established the Supreme Court’s role in judicial review.)
But what a relief to know then that President Huck would have no trouble ignoring the Hobby Lobby decision! And Citizens United! And Shelby County!
In fact, the answer to Huckabee’s ignorance can be found in any middle-school history textbook (outside of Texas, anyway). But since cracking open a book can be such a pain, here’s PolitiFactto save us some time:
[T]he Supreme Court can clearly overrule the other two branches of government. Congress may pass a law and the president can sign it, but the Court can invalidate it.
The Supreme Court, however, only has the ability to interpret laws — not to draft or enforce them. So the president is obligated to enforce the law as determined by the courts, said Katy Harriger, a professor of constitutional law at Wake Forest University.
[… T]he Supreme Court indeed has the power to overrule the other branches through judicial review — the court’s ability to rule that a law passed by Congress and signed by the president is unconstitutional. While there are certainly tools the president and Congress can use to go around a Supreme Court decision it doesn’t like — such as amending the Constitution or selecting justices that support the alternate position — these are difficult to accomplish and usually require years of effort, making them rare. The much more common result is for the executive and legislative branches accept a Supreme Court decision as the final word.
Huckabee may not like this state of affairs, but on balance, we rate his claim Mostly False.
