Scroll down to read our coverage and analysis of last Friday’s Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jacksonville Women’s Health Organization, with Ken Zino commenting on “Power Politics” and Jim McCraw commenting on “Death of Self” in this column.

Scroll further for extensive coverage and analysis on House Select Committee hearings on the January 6 Capitol insurrection, with comments by Ken Zino here on the left. 

We encourage you to continue the conversation, no matter your point-of-view. Go to the comment section at the bottom of this column or email us at editors@thehustings.news.

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Scroll down to read our coverage and analysis of last Friday’s Supreme Court ruling on Dobbs v. Jacksonville Women’s Health Organization, with pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay commenting in “Life & Truth.”

Scroll further for extensive coverage and analysis on House Select Committee hearings on the January 6 Capitol insurrection, with comments by Stephen Macaulay here on the right. 

We encourage you to continue the conversation, no matter your point-of-view. Go to the comment section at the bottom of this column or email us at editors@thehustings.news.

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Power Politics Are What the Mid-Terms Are About

By Ken Zino

The advertising and messages from Democratic candidates and office holders started over the weekend in Michigan. Levin Condemns Supreme Court Reversal of Roe  (https://andylevin.house.gov/media/press-releases/levin-condemns-supreme-court-reversal-roe) was the headline on Friday from Rep. Andy Levin (D-MI). 

The substance was:

“Simply put, this represents a total and blatant violation of human rights and further delegitimatizes the highest court in the land. I refuse to accept a future where my 17-year-old daughter cannot access reproductive health care freely…

“We cannot disentangle the movement to suppress reproductive freedom from the same regressive politics of our national past as they are borne from the same oppressive forces. This is about control by a small group of hyper-conservative, unaccountable justices contravening the will of the public to strip away rights and harm communities en masse,” Levin said.

However, this was farce coming after his yoga tweet. Yes, a tweet – since deleted – saying Levin was using yoga to deal with the Roe decision along with the passage of the bipartisan gun safety bill since they produced “a moment of wildly conflicting emotions” on Friday. His solution -- #AsanasWithAndy where he shares yoga poses.

Does anybody ever see a MAGA hat at yoga?

He represents Bloomfield Hills in Oakland County, in the metropolitan Detroit area, which leans Democratic. In 2016, Hilary Clinton won 343,000 votes, or 52% to Donald J. Trump’s 289,000 votes, for 43% in Oakland County, though Clinton's vote count was about 6,000 short in the county compared with Barrack Obama in 2012. In 2020, Joe Biden took 56.3% of the Oakland County vote, or 433,982.

Compared with Levin, Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was far more grounded last Friday. She filed a lawsuit asking the Michigan Supreme Court to recognize a constitutional right to an abortion under the Due Process Clause of the state’s Constitution. It asks the court to stop enforcement of the Michigan’s 1931 anti-abortion law, which is a nearly absolute criminal ban that Whitmer argues violates the state’s due process clause providing a right to privacy and bodily autonomy. It also violates Michigan’s Equal Protection Clause due to the way the ban denies females equal rights because the law was adopted to reinforce antiquated notions of the proper role for women in society. 

In Michigan, this issue is beyond settled. According to a poll conducted last January by WDIV/Detroit News, 67.3% of Michiganders support Roe and 65.7% support repealing the 1931 trigger ban on abortion. Over 77% believe abortion should be a woman’s decision. A sizeable majority of Michiganders agree that abortion is a decision for a woman to make in consultation with a medical professional she trusts. 

Success here however will likely require years of legal maneuvering and winning elections, the sort of things that Republicans have proven more adept than Democrats. It is a path forward, though.

The backdrop to this election is an entrenched group of voters who increasingly support authoritarianism and will outlast Trump’s political career. Abstract discussions about policy won’t get it done. Perhaps fear will?

If so, then what do the Democrat candidates have to run on? The only possible course is to get Democratic-leaning voters out to vote in the midterms, which now seems plausible. How does the party get non-“elites” on its side to come out and vote? Power is the ability of political groups and/or individuals to insist on their views in opposition, obstruction and hostility to the desires of others.

There’s a lot going on here. Democrats have some issues to work with -- not all of them are the angst of gas prices and inflation. I would feel better, though, if every time I saw a Democratic talking head on TV, he or she didn’t have original art, or a Federal period fireplace in an expensive townhouse, or some other signifier of “out of touch elitism” as the backdrop. 

•••

The Death of the Self

By Jim McCraw

Well, that’s it then. Six people, appointed justices of The Supreme Court Of The United States, four of whom are documented liars, just took away the right to a self from 335 million people in the United States, and, along the way, beat the hell out of the First Amendment, which protects every American citizen’s freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of the assembly and the right to petition the government.

         First, I hasten to remind the reader the First Amendment used to mean freedom from religion, as well as freedom of religion. That is apparently no longer the case. A bunch of right-wing Christians has hijacked the Supreme Court through a long, long campaign and a grifting president, and now the 6-3 conservative majority says they don’t like it when you want an abortion, because they are Christians who believe that ending a pregnancy is wrong and against God’s will.

         It’s time to call bullshit on all of that. The United States is NOT a Christian country, even though conservatives had “In God We Trust” added to our paper currency 65 years ago to fight communism.

This is a free country, a country that has welcomed people from everywhere for 233 years.  When they come here, they bring Shinto, Tao, Buddhist, Islam, Ba’hai, Coptic, Orthodox, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant, and Episcopal religious background with them, among others.  Some Americans have no religion at all. They enjoy freedom FROM religion, and they are surely entitled to that as well.

         It’s my very strong belief that a group six avowed conservative Christian justices cannot and should not chain the entire population to their beliefs about religion, pregnancy, gay marriage, interracial marriage, trans lifestyle, or a dozen other things that trouble many Christian conservatives.

         Every American who survives birth has a self, an inner being who shapes the inner and outer life, whether it’s a gay self or a Catholic self or a trans self, or a woman who wants a career now instead or a baby.  This country is and has been built on self-determination.  

         Those six justices have just told us we are no longer entitled to a self, and that we have to believe what they believe, and do what they do, or we will be punished.

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

By Todd Lassa

(Surprise 1/6 panel hearing scheduled for Tuesday -- Details in The Gray Area.)

The Great Democratic Hope for November is that a majority of American voters -- somewhere around 60% favor some manner of abortion rights according to most polls – turn out for the November midterm elections and surprise the Republican Party, which is counting on flipping the Senate and make Mitch McConnell (R-KY) the majority leader again. It has been considered a given that the GOP will flip the House of Representatives and potentially make Rep. Kevin McCarthy its speaker, though he’s far from the certain choice of congressional Republicans lately. McCarthy has fallen from Trump’s favor yet again, this time for allowing hearings of the House Select committee investigating the January 6 Capitol insurrection to commence without any supporters of the ex-president to counter its testimony.

Evidenced by all the outrage over the Supreme Court’s ruling on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization issued Friday to reverse Roe v. Wade, and Justice Clarence Thomas indicating that gay rights, gay marriage and legal contraception are next, the Democratic National Committee expects voter turnout to be so strong as to repudiate the GOP’s midterm expectations.

Some Democrats now believe that with the overturning of Roe they might have a chance to hold on to the party’s House and Senate majorities – perhaps even gain a few seats. If the party can win two more Senate seats, there’s a chance to do what Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Krysten Sinema (D-AZ) are not willing to do: Get rid of the legislative filibuster and allow Biden’s agenda to go beyond last year’s bipartisan infrastructure plan victory. 

Of course, this all requires the DNC to, er, have a plan. A plan like working diligently on the long game, as the RNC and the Federalist Society have done together since the Reagan administration to make SCOTUS and the federal bench conservative enough to strike down Roe v. Wade, as well as a 108-year-old conceal-carry law in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen last Thursday. Give the DNC, oh, until 2062 to work this out. 

But Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans who turn out in outrage this November will face a much smaller but potentially much stronger group of MAGA hat-wearers. 

Just like last week’s revelatory House Select Committee hearings on the January 6 Capitol insurrection, in which we learned a repeat of Watergate’s Saturday Night Massacre nearly happened again on Sunday, January 3, 2021, the Faith & Freedom Coalition convention feels like ages ago. But that convention in Nashville took place just a weekend earlier, with Trump, of course, the headliner. This is the group of conservative Christians who now repudiate Mike Pence -- chosen six years ago to be Trump’s running mate in order to give Trump credibility with the Christian right --because the former vice president refused to stop the January 6 electoral vote count.

The Faith & Freedom Coalition reveres Trump even more than before, if that’s possible, for the greatest victory of his administration; appointing three Supreme Court justices who would assure the overturning of Roe.

There is little doubt that Democrats plus pro-choice independents and moderate Republicans have the numbers to prevail in the midterms. There is also little doubt that pro-Trump Republicans, fortified by this victory, have the will to make sure that majority will lose once again.

(MON 6/27/22)

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

By Stephen Macaulay

A Google search for “what is life” came back with 15,340,000,000 results.

Clearly a case where there are lots of opinions.

A search for “when does life end” has 7,400,000,000, or about half.

We pretty much know when an organism is no longer alive, whether a goldfish or a grandfather.

We know that when the projectiles ripped through 19 children and two adults in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde County, they died.

Where are all of the supporters of “the right to life” when it comes to addressing the Second Amendment, when it comes to keeping weapons of war out of the hands of people who they wouldn’t trust with their children?

Why does protecting a zygote seem to take precedence over the life of a third grader?

According to analysis of CDC data by Pew Research:

“Nearly eight-in-ten (79%) U.S. murders in 2020 – 19,384 out of 24,576 – involved a firearm. That marked the highest percentage since at least 1968, the earliest year for which the CDC has online records. A little over half (53%) of all suicides in 2020 – 24,292 out of 45,979 – involved a gun. . . .”

And in another analysis Pew found:

“The last year for which the CDC reported a yearly national total for abortions is 2019. The agency says there were 629,898 abortions nationally that year, slightly up from 619,591 in 2018.”

While the number of gun deaths is but a fraction of the number of abortions, one assumes that the abortions were predicated on at least some thought by the participant.

Someone doesn’t decide to be the victim of a murder.

But there are other things to consider in this space.

According to the CDC, “Almost 18 million women have experienced vaginal rape in their lifetime” and “Almost 3 million women in the U.S. experienced RRP [rape-related pregnancy] during their lifetime.”

These women didn’t get to decide. So what happens to them now? What happens to victims of incest? Do they get to decide?

Not if they live in the wrong state. Where’s equal justice?

(e) Abortion presents a profound moral question. The Constitution does not prohibit the citizens of each State from regulating or prohibiting abortion. Roe and Casey arrogated that authority. The Court overrules those decisions and returns that authority to the people and their elected representatives.

ALITO, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which THOMAS, GORSUCH, KAVANAUGH, and BARRETT, JJ., joined. THOMAS, J., and KAVANAUGH, J., filed concurring opinions. ROBERTS, C. J., filed an opinion concurring in the judgment. BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., filed a dissenting opinion.

So here is a moral question for Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett: What responsibility do you take for those who are being murdered by weapons that were unimaginable by the Framers? Did the meaning of “arms” in the 18^th century encompass something like the AR-15 that can handle 30 round magazines? It took about 30 seconds to load a gun in 1791. This isn’t a quibble. This is a deadly serious consideration.

And here’s another moral question, based on statements by U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV),“I trusted Justice Gorsuch and Justice Kavanagh when they testified under oath that they also believed Roe v. Wade was settled legal precedent and I am alarmed they chose to reject the stability the ruling has provided for two generations of Americans,” and Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), “This decision is inconsistent with what Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh said in their testimony and their meetings with me, where they both were insistent on the importance of supporting long-standing precedents that the country has relied upon.”

Is lying under oath acceptable for someone who is trying to get a job on the highest court in the land?

Somehow the Sixth Commandment is something they believe in, but they give the Ninth a pass.

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

By Ken Zino

Ex-president Trump didn’t just put his hand on the scales of justice to steal the election from President Biden, he used the full force of his position –- giving new meaning to bully pulpit –- to uphold his own personal interest. Thursday’s Select Committee hearings concentrated on exposing that during the final weeks of his presidency, Trump became increasingly desperate to cling to power. Trump Justice isn’t blind -- Trump Justice means allowing the ex-president to unleash his blind fury to pursue his own interests against anyone involved in trying to uphold a free and fair election.

Vice Chair Liz Cheney said in her opening: “The President oversaw and personally participated in an effort in multiple states to vilify, threaten and pressure election officials, and to use false allegations to pressure state legislators to change the outcome of the election ... President Trump worked with and directed the Republican National Committee and others to organize an effort to create fake electoral slates, and later to transmit those materially false documents to federal officials, again as part of his planning for January 6th.”

In testimony Thursday, Jeffrey Rosen, who was acting attorney general during the January 6 coup attempt, was in a democracy-threatening meeting in the Oval Office with Trump on January 3. That was three days before the Capitol insurrection failed to stop the transfer of power to the duly elected President Biden – albeit not peacefully. The Lord of Mar-a-Largo in this confrontation was about to replace Rosen with an unqualified, but highly ambitious and ethically bankrupt bureaucrat, Jeffrey Clark, who was ready to support Trump’s fraudulent election claims that numerous DOJ officials starting with former Attorney General Barr said were without merit. Clark has never been in front of a grand jury, although that might be about to change. Clark had never tried a case. Although now he might have a front row seat at the defendant’s table. Barr had resigned on December 23 -- I’m surprised he lasted that long after November 3. 

In those last desperate days Trump wanted the Justice Department to help legitimize his lies by saying the election was corrupt and to appoint a special counsel to investigate ‘election fraud’ and to send a letter to six state legislatures urging them to consider altering the results. All without any evidence. 

Lowlights today include a direct quote from Trump recorded by Rosen in his own hand at the meeting; “Just say it [the election] was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.”

DOJ would not do this -- having told Trump there was no evidence of fraud… that there was no evidence of widespread irregularities that would change the outcome of the election. This was a shamelessly political act by Trump directed to the DOJ, which has no standing whatsoever to get involved with states’ election administration. 

What saved us was a sequel to Watergate’s Saturday Night Massacre, but in this case the threat of mass DOJ resignations stopped Trump from appointing a man whose sole qualification was that he would do whatever Trump wanted.

It is without question and beyond the shadow of any reasonable doubt that it is time for DOJ to do its job by enforcing 18 United States Code 301 – conspiracy to defraud the United States. Trump, Jeffrey Clark, Rudy Giuliani, DOJ lawyer Ken Klukowski, among others still to be named, used deceit, craft and trickery to attempt to stop an official proceeding of the U.S. Government, which is DOJ’s actual client. More will be implicated in what looks like treason. More subpoenas and depositions are coming. Then, let them all, possibly dozens upon dozens, explain such flagrant acts of law-breaking in front of a jury. 

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

By Stephen Macaulay

It must have been quite a scene: Former acting deputy attorney general Richard Donoghue on January 3, standing outside the Oval Office where a meeting was going on regarding Trump’s planned appointment of an attorney who dealt with environmental issues (like that was a concern in the Trump White House) to the position of attorney general of the United States.

It was a Sunday. Donoghue and some of his colleagues had gotten together earlier in the day to discuss the topic. Donoghue was not dressed for “work.”

Donoghue was told to come into the Oval by Trump to join the meeting.

Donoghue recalls he was wearing an Army T-shirt, jeans and muddy boots.

Donoghue had been brought to Washington by Donald Trump.

Donoghue had told Trump that he would not say that the election was corrupt.

Donoghue told Trump that were he to put Jeffrey Clark in the position of attorney general, Donoghue would resign, as would a large group of other people in the Justice Department.

Here was a man, who had served in the 82^nd Airborne, telling the truth, standing up for the truth, standing up for America.

The Army oath:

“I, _____, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God.”

“Support and defend the Constitution.”

“All enemies, foreign and domestic.”

“True faith and allegiance.”

“I will obey the orders of the President of the United States.”

While Donoghue is no longer in the Army, while Donoghue is no longer in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps, he evidently knows what those words mean.

It is sad that the former President of the United States didn’t. And doesn’t.

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

Scroll down to read our coverage and analysis of the first four public hearings of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol, in the center column.

Read commentary by contributing pundits Ken Zino and Jim McCraw in this column. Tweets to @NewsHustings on the opening arguments from the first hearing are in the left and right columns on Page 2. 

We will have analysis and commentary on Thursday’s hearings in this space on Friday.

Join the conversation by writing your comment on this page, or via email to editors@thehustings.news.

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Scroll down to read our coverage and analysis of the first four public hearings of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6^th Attack on the United States Capitol, in the center column.

Read commentary by pundit-at-large Stephen Macaulay in this column. Tweets to @NewsHustings on the opening arguments from the first hearing are in the left and right columns on Page 2. 

We will have analysis and commentary on Thursday’s hearings in this space on Friday.

Join the conversation by writing your comment on this page, or via email to editors@thehustings.news.

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What More Do You Need?

By Jim McCraw

I would like to ask of all those who voted Republican in the 2020 presidential election, what more do you need?  You were lied to, repeatedly, for months, about election fraud that didn’t happen. Lied to not just by the president, but by dozens of his political allies and members of his own family. He lost. Legally, and by a lot, whether in the popular vote or in the Electoral College. He lost. But he was so overcome by ego and power madness that he could not accept the loss, so he invented The Big Lie, and ensnared millions of people in it.

He and his minions tried every legal and extralegal method to get the election overturned. More than 60 cases alleging election fraud were thrown out of court. His own attorney general characterized Trump’s election fraud allegation as “bullshit.”

Then the pressure started on state elections officials to either recount the votes or, if that didn’t work, change the slate of electors. Tuesday, a trio of elected Republican officials from Arizona and Georgia testified that they had been pressured directly by Trump and/or his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, to violate their oaths of office and try to change the outcome in their states.

In recent weeks, we have seen a bipartisan committee of the House investigating the January 6^th Capitol riot show dozens of pieces of incriminating evidence that the sitting president of the United States of America lied to his audience again and again about a stolen election, then, when all other efforts failed to change the outcome of the election, he tried to pressure the vice-president to intervene in the Electoral College process to throw out the results and keep him in power. When Vice President Pence refused, he exhorted an army of his supporters gathered in Washington to overrun the Capitol. Violence and death followed the Big Lie into the building.

For me, that’s all that matters. He did it, we all know he did it, and we will all be either a lot older or dead by the time he is prosecuted for his crime against the American people, the American system, and the Constitution, the single worst crime ever perpetrated by a sitting president. Prosecutions of anyone else resulting from these hearings are gravy.

•••

Trump's Fake Electors, Threats of Violence and Death

By Ken Zino

In what was the most emotional hearing so far, the Select Committee presented a devastating case against ex-President Trump and the intimidation and mob violence that was central to the plan to overthrow President Biden’s legal election. There was and is an ongoing human cost to people who were trying to do the right thing. This includes a stunning number of Republican officials and officeholders who refused to violate their oath of office.  Thank goodness because that is what it is; Goodness. Civic goodness.

Here I yield to Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-WY), who once again put the case against the ex-president clearly. “In other words, the same people who were attempting to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject electoral votes illegally were also simultaneously working to reverse the outcome of the 2020 election at the state level…   

“First, today you will hear about calls made by President Trump to officials of Georgia and other states ... keep in mind what Donald Trump already knew at the time he made those calls -- he had been told over and over again that his stolen election allegations were nonsense…  

“Second, you will hear about a number of threats and efforts to pressure state officials to reverse the election outcome. Donald Trump didn’t care about the threats of violence.  He did not condemn them; he made no effort to stop them; he went forward with his fake allegations anyway.

“This is serious. We cannot let America become a nation of conspiracy theories and thug violence,” Cheney said.

Now, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA): “Federal district judge David Carter, said former President Trump and others likely violated multiple federal laws by engaging in this scheme -- including conspiracy to defraud the United States. You will hear evidence of the former president and his top advisor’s direct involvement in key elements of this plot, or what Judge Carter called a coup in search of a legal theory.”

As I said earlier this despicable mess will need the Justice Department to act. So here we are: Was there a conspiracy to defraud the United States? 

It comes down to a reading of the DOJ manual that says it’s illegal for an individual to disrupt a government function by deceit, craft or trickery. 

The first person to be in indicted for fraud against the United States should be Donald Trump. Others should follow. 

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news

By Stephen Macaulay

So there was the absolute thugishness.

• Arizona House Speaker Russell Bowers getting threats, including his family members, for not breaking the law on Donald Trump’s behalf.
• Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s wife being harassed and his widowed daughter-in-law’s house being broken into, again because Raffensperger wasn’t going to violate his oath to “find” votes for Trump.
• Shaye Freeman Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, both former Georgia election workers, were called out by Trump and Rudy Giuliani for unsubstantiated fouls in the counting of ballots.
• Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson testified that she had protestors outside of her house which led her to think “Are they coming with guns, are they going to attack my house? I’m in here with my kid.”

Really?

This is what Donald Trump and his supporters caused because he lost the election.

The issue of election fraud is not an issue.

Team Trump has presented no evidence. Donald Trump — even before his loss —claimed that it would be a crooked election. Had he won, presumably those claims would have disappeared, just like he said COVID would.

What is going on? Trump had a job. He was fired. But he didn’t want to go. And he has a posse of sycophants who didn’t want to give up their access so they support the fictious “Stop the Steal.”

A consequence of this is that those who find it easier to chant than to think claim that they are “defending democracy” by supporting Trump, even though the fundamental definition of democracy has it that the ones in charge are determined by the majority, not by the loudest.

In the political sphere the term “putting country ahead of party” is often heard. Well, it used to be heard with some frequency.

We are presently in a situation where people are putting a person ahead of everything that they claim to be in favor of: Democracy, rule of law—things that make America great.

What I wonder about is this: where are the Republicans of pre-2016, Republicans who are still, in many cases, still in office? Do they stand for person over country?

Or are they simply worried about keeping their jobs long enough to get the sweet retirement benefits?

These men and women should be ashamed of themselves.

That’s something we don’t hear about anymore either. Shame.

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COMMENTS: editors@thehustings.news