Offering asides, recommended links, blogworthy quotations, and more, In Brief is the Northwest Progressive Institute's microblog of world, national, and local politics.
From Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington: “The FBI and Department of Justice routinely prosecute individuals, including high-level officers like former CIA Director David Petraeus, for misusing classified documents. There are several criminal provisions that may be implicated, depending on the exact contents of the documents.”
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“After the chaos of the first week of the 118th Congress, many Americans wondered: If it took them 15 ballots just to choose a speaker, how could Republicans possibly govern? Now we know. They are going to govern by fantasy and legislate on the basis of fiction,” Dana Milbank writes.
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“Experts say their dominance in the party poses a threat to the country’s democratic principles and jeopardizes the integrity of future votes,” Amy Gardner reports for The Washington Post.
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“The only way out is through. Fear of what Trump and his supports might do cannot and should not stand in the way of what we must do to secure the Constitution from all its enemies, foreign and domestic,” writes Jamelle Bouie.
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“No one stormed into Trump’s home unannounced with guns blazing, awakening him from a sound sleep and scaring him into paralysis,” Robin Givhan points out.
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“The legislation was introduced after the Wall Street Journal reported in September that more than 130 federal judges had violated U.S. law and judicial ethics by overseeing court cases involving companies in which either they or members of their family owned stock,” Time’s Madeleine Carlisle explains.
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“I don’t think the attention should be taken off of those that are causing obstruction, especially those Republican members that were once on board with some of these policies,” the New Mexico senator said.
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“Amid the current crisis, Fiona Hill and other former advisers are connecting President Trump’s pressure campaign on Ukraine to January 6th. And they’re ready to talk,” writes Robert Draper.
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“A brinkman seeing how far he can go, he is too preoccupied with his survival,” writes Tanya Gold in a guest essay for The New York Times.
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“He clearly doesn’t care about being labeled a hypocrite. It just doesn’t bother him. He is brazen about it. That’s one of the cynical sides of Mitch. He doesn’t care. If it’s expedient, he’ll do it,” U.S. Representative John Yarmuth said.
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“Why the halo around an idea that barely worked when it existed? The best way to pass legislation is to win more seats. If you believe in majority rule, forget about making converts: Assemble a majority and start ruling with it,” Jack Shafer writes.
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“The Court finds, based on the totality of the circumstances, that the NRA’s bankruptcy petition was not filed in good faith but instead was filed as an effort to gain an unfair litigation advantage in the New York Attorney General Enforcement Action and as an effort to avoid a regulatory scheme,” Judge Harlin Hale ruled.
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The lawmaker has been charged with misdemeanor counts of first-degree official misconduct and second-degree criminal trespass, according to court documents.
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Take a look at the images that will serve as the photographic representations of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris through the end of their current terms.
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Read a letter from hundreds of legal scholars (including several conservative scholars) calling on the United States Senate to decide whether Trump is guilty or not based on the actual evidence before the Senate.
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CNN has published a look back at the Trump error from its senior fact checker Daniel Dale, who got his start debunking Trump’s 2016 campaign claims.
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“By the time rioters ransacked the Capitol, the machinery of the left had already been primed to respond — prepared by months spent sketching out doomsday scenarios and mapping out responses, by countless hours of training exercises and reams of opinion research,” The New York Times reports.
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“Florida, in some freakish, horrible way, is the Trumpiest of states. This is the logical place for them to come,” Republican strategist Rick Wilson told The Washington Post.
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“He’s neutered without Twitter… Members are starting to wake up to the fact that he’s powerless,” an unnamed Republican congressional aide told the LA Times.
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“Cumulus Media, which employs some of the most popular right-leaning talk-radio hosts in the United States, has told its on-air personalities to stop suggesting that the election was stolen from President Trump — or else face termination,” The Washington Post reports.
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The Los Angeles Times’ Janet Hook assesses the status of the non-transition transition from Joe Biden to Donald Trump, noting that Trump is making more of an effort to stay in power than actually do the job he already has.
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