09 July 22
A Steep Decline in Donations and Funding
We are reacting to a substantial drop-off in the number and size of donations. That equates to a significant slashing of RSN’s budget. Yes we have to address that. No choice.
The readership remains strong. That’s a good thing. If a reasonable number of the people coming to RSN donate we will be fine. So far for this month that hasn’t happened.
In earnest.
Marc Ash
Founder, Reader Supported News
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09 July 22
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ALSO SEE: MoveOn Petition Calling for Clarence Thomas
Removal From Supreme Court Gets 1M Signatures
Recent rulings on gun and abortion rights have revealed a conservative majority executing a long-standing agenda of radical right-wing ideas.
The murderer had, predictably, a rapid-fire military-style weapon—of a kind banned in Highland Park, as they surely are for civilians in most parts of the world. But bans are of limited use in a country where guns are so widespread. The question of whether this or that particular gun measure would have stopped this or that particular massacre is increasingly pointless to pursue. It is the totality of gun restrictions weighing on the availability of guns that reduces gun violence. The familiar screams of objections (“It wasn’t an AR-15! It was an AK-47!”) are a sorry sign of the fetishistic intensity of the crisis; no one needs to know exactly what make of gun it is to know that it’s the kind of gun that should never be in the hands of anyone except soldiers. We stop gun violence by stopping guns, and arguing which gun is which is a way of avoiding the necessary solution. The solution is simple: every time we restrict access to instruments of mass killing, we insure the greater safety of our children. Every time we prevent someone from getting their hands on another gun, we are making the country safer. Gun control acts on gun violence as antibiotics act on infections, and as vaccines act on viruses: not infallibly and not every time, but over all with efficacy and tangible consequences.
The massacre comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision, on June 23rd, to make it impossible for New York State to enforce its commonsense measure against the “concealed carry” of handguns. The decision arrived, of course, the day before the Court’s right-wing Justices overturned Roe v. Wade, after a half century. In the two decisions, the conservative Justices showed, of course, a complete lack of the type of minimal consistency that we identify with good-faith jurisprudence. In the first, they affirmed the Court’s right to intervene in democratic decisions made by the States, in defense of a contested constitutional right; in the second, they affirmed the Court’s complete inability to intervene in democratic decisions made by the States, even in the face of a long-settled constitutional right. In one decision, the desire of the people of New York not to have everyone conceal guns in their waistbands has no bearing on gun lovers’ right to pack. In the other, the desire of the people of Mississippi to deprive women of the right to abort their pregnancies is just, well, the people’s choice. A great American once wrote that consistency is the “hobgoblin of little minds,” but for credible judges it’s paramount.
One might deduce that perhaps what the conservatives on the Court want is not conservatism, nor the pursuit of any particular judicial philosophy, but the execution of a long-standing agenda of radical right-wing ideas. Various strenuous efforts have been made to reconcile the inconsistency—the notion, for instance, that the right to own any gun you like is a right found originally in the Constitution, whereas the right to privacy is a phantom right, only recently deduced from it.
The idea is ridiculous: both are as real and as phantom, it now seems, as the conservative majority chooses to make them. The right to individual ownership of guns never existed in anything except the reveries of the N.R.A. until District of Columbia v. Heller, in 2008. Indeed, the Second Amendment decision was drawn against the plain sense of the Constitution’s text, which after all includes the words “well regulated.” The belief, on the other hand, that an overwhelming right to privacy is implicit throughout the Constitution isn’t the least fantastical. That concept has long sat at the heart of democratic life. The idea of privacy is as vital to humankind as the idea of liberty, which it complements. It is the core of what it means to live as a free person in a free society. An overriding conception of privacy is at the heart of the right to contraception, or of the right to marry whom one chooses instead of those whom the State allows. And it is, of course, no accident that Clarence Thomas, in his vituperative opinion on the reversal of Roe, points directly at eliminating those other rights, as well.
The two decisions and their contradictions clearly undercut the credibility of the Court. One long legal study of the question insists legitimacy depends, in part, on the perception that “a Justice should apply her preferred approach consistently across cases, with candor and in good faith.” No reasonable person reading the two decisions can believe they were made in good faith. It is obvious that they were made to suit a fixed political agenda, reasoned backward from the vengeful results. “How does the dissent account for the fact that one of the mass shootings near the top of its list took place in Buffalo? The New York law at issue in this case obviously did not stop that perpetrator,” Alito wrote, in his concurring opinion on the gun case. It’s the kind of argument one might expect from a YouTube commentator—“See, they still have knives in London!”—as though the fact that a law has been broken shows that a law can never work. By this standard, no law could ever accomplish anything.
Alito and Thomas and the rest were not engaged in a disinterested scrutiny of rights and rules. They were not acting in good faith, nor trying to find a consistent line of reasoning. A wiser Court with a more Solomonic temperament might have prudently sacrificed one decision for the other, in an effort to at least appear to be consistent. It might have decided not to issue both decisions in the same week. But it is plain from the tone and attitude of the Court’s conservative majority that the only temperament it wanted to display was a regal one—the right to rule by whim. We do this because we can.
And so several normally moderate and sensible people—including the commentator Dahlia Lithwick—have not hesitated to call this court’s legitimacy into question, and confidence in the Court is at an all-time low. Yet to speak of the Court’s loss of legitimacy, we’re warned, is to risk joining with those who subvert democratic institutions or declare the 2020 election illegitimate.
There is a vast conceptual difference here, however, called basic fact. The truth is that, whereas the 2020 election was inarguably free and fair and democratic, the Supreme Court is—in a straightforward, empirical sense—no longer a representative institution reflecting, more or less, the will of the American people. Instead, thanks to the Electoral College and the Senate, two of the least representative bodies in the federal government, the Court is elevating a minority view to power through a series of undemocratic measures and actions. Three current Justices were appointed by Donald Trump, a man who lost the popular vote in 2016 and now stands exposed as an avowed enemy of the American constitutional order. That the conservative majority he created still demands absolute deference would likely strike the citizens of any other country as bizarre and irrational.
We speak of six, but in truth it’s clear from his quaking dissents that Chief Justice John Roberts lives in fear of being the man on whose watch the Supreme Court loses its legitimacy. He knows perfectly well that the Court’s legitimacy ought to be on the line when it makes radical, anti-democratic decisions, guided by religious fanaticism and sheer bloody-mindedness—that is, the will to get even with your opponents, even in the face of common sense and with people dying in the streets. Yet, although we have had indignation from the President, where has the intensity of passion gone in our politics? The passion felt by people like the Highland Park doctor, who saw the results of unending gun violence, seems drowned out by obsessive proceduralism. Pragmatism is a beautiful thing, but meaningless without principle.
One of the multiple crises of our time is the “crisis of no consequences.” But the only way that John Roberts and the conservative majority will feel that the Court’s legitimacy is on the line is if it is—if they fear the scale and scope of the reaction to their decisions. As people die in the streets in ever greater numbers, and as women’s autonomy grows ever more curtailed, calling out the Court’s legitimacy may be the only way to save it.
In your personal condemnation, don't limit your thinking to solely these 2 decisions.
Look at ALL of their decisions!
The Federalist Follies think it's acceptable to execute an innocent person.
Poor counsel, missed deadlines and improved forensic technology don't matter.
And MARANDA? The waste basket!
A Border Guard shoots and kills an unarmed migrant, no longer matters. After all, they're not WHITE.
So what if you gag on AIR POLLUTION! Big Pulluter KOCH got what they paid for!
The Gun Industry got what it wanted with the rescision of CONCEALED CARRY in New York. Now not only can Dim Wits in TEXAS carried concealed weapons, but the Federalist Follies would risk us all even as Kavanaugh whines about protesters and the Federalist Clowns protest FREE SPEECH and the Right to Assemble outside their homes....BOO HOO! (It's understandable if hours are limited such as in Boston to respect neighbors, but these Dillies are too isolated and insulated from the real world except for the EVANGELICALS they embrace.)
Trump supporters stand on a Capitol Police armored vehicle as others take over the steps of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (photo: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images)
ALSO SEE: Alleged Oath Keeper Accused of
Bringing Explosives to DC on January 6
During a recent Jan. 6 committee hearing, testimony about armed Trump supporters accompanied police radio reports
The chatter included reports of a man with an AR-15 in a tree on Constitution Avenue who was accompanied by two men with pistols on their hips. Another officer radioed, “I’ve got three men walking down the street in fatigues carrying AR-15s, copy, at 14th and Independence.”
The recordings aired during the June 28 hearing in which former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Trump reportedly “was angry that we weren’t letting people through the [metal detectors] with weapons.”
The full picture of how many among the crowd were armed before the riot occurred is unclear, but court records, trial testimony and accounts from police officers and rioters have supplied growing evidence that multiple people brought firearms to Washington for Jan. 6, 2021. Six men were arrested that day for having guns in the vicinity of the U.S. Capitol, and a seventh who arrived after the riot ended was arrested the following day. Despite some instances in which alerts about people with guns turned out to be false alarms, accounts from police officers and rioters indicate that many firearms were spotted on Jan. 6 but were not seized as law enforcement focused more on defending the Capitol than on arresting gun-law violators.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Park Police said the agency investigated “a report of an individual on the Washington Monument grounds in a tree possibly armed with a pistol. USPP officers contacted the individual and it was determined the individual was unarmed.” A spokesman for the D.C. police said there was no indication that any arrests were made or weapons confiscated on the basis of the people cited in radio transmissions played by the committee.
At 15th Street and Independence Avenue the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, a Washington Post reporter watched as a group from Broward County, Fla., was stopped by D.C. police because people in the group were carrying large assault rifles. They said the guns were not loaded and “just a symbol” of their Second Amendment rights. They were briefly detained but released once the guns were handed over to police. Some in the crowd protested that “you can’t suspend a constitutional amendment,” but the interaction occurred before the Capitol was breached and did not turn violent. It is unclear whether the group the reporter encountered was the same reported on the hearing’s radio transmissions or why the men were not arrested when D.C. law prohibits the open carrying of guns.
Federal authorities have said that officers were confiscating weapons illegally brought into the District starting Jan. 5 and encountered people brandishing gun parts in an intimidating manner. The latter category included two men stopped the morning of Jan. 6 who wore slings attached to machine gun barrels while walking along the Mall. The men were not charged because the barrels alone were not firearms, authorities said. It is unclear whether they were part of the group seen by a Post reporter.
U.S. Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, whose pursuit by a mob inside the Capitol was the subject of a viral video, has said that but for police restraint in the use of force, the riot “could have easily been a bloodbath,” a sentiment echoed by several officers on the witness stand in Jan. 6 criminal trials.
Defendants have said as much as well. In video evidence played at his trial, Guy Reffitt of Wylie, Tex., said that as he stood near the front of the mob on the west side of the Capitol, he counted eight firearms carried by five people.
Reffitt said that his count included his .40-caliber pistol and his Texas companion’s .45-caliber handgun, five firearms carried by a couple he met at the Capitol and a .22-caliber weapon carried by a woman who stopped to help him after he was hit with bear spray. Reffitt was found guilty in March of encouraging one of the first surges by the mob to overwhelm police while carrying his semiautomatic handgun in a hip holster.
Of the rioters who approached the Capitol on Jan. 6, four have been charged with taking guns onto the Capitol grounds, and two of those have been convicted. Three other supporters of Donald Trump have been convicted of bringing weapons into D.C. but not to the Capitol. And a New York City man suspected of taking weapons to the Capitol was found to have a cache of guns and ammunition in his Manhattan residence and was sentenced to 3½ years in prison.
Also, at least three other men from outside the D.C. area also were arrested for carrying unregistered guns in the city on Jan. 6, court records show, but it is unclear whether they attended either the Trump rally or the Capitol riot. All three pleaded guilty in D.C. Superior Court and their charges were later dismissed.
At least some were aware of D.C. laws that strictly limit firearm usage and ban the open carrying of guns.
“You aren’t going to do anybody any good rotting in jail,” Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes told his followers in a recorded online meeting in November 2020, according to court documents. “Pepper spray is legal. Tasers are legal, and stun guns are legal. And it doesn’t hurt to have a lead pipe.” An armed group would stay in Virginia “awaiting the President’s orders ... then D.C. gun laws won’t matter,” Rhodes said in the meeting, according to court documents. Attorneys for Rhodes, who has pleaded not guilty to seditious conspiracy and other charges, said he and other defendants staged firearms hoping Trump would invoke the Insurrection Act, transforming the Oath Keepers into a kind of militia to keep Trump in office.
About 825 people have been charged federally in the Jan. 6 riot. Most have been charged with misdemeanor-type trespassing counts. Although only a handful have been charged with firearms violations, at least 121 people have been charged with using or carrying dangerous weapons, and about 20 have been found guilty, a Washington Post database shows. Scores of police officers reported being attacked that day with chemical spray, stun guns, flagpoles and clubs. A Florida man who hurled a fire extinguisher, a plank and a long pole at officers was sentenced to more than five years in prison in December, the longest sentence of any defendant so far.
Last month, Mark Andrew Mazza, 57, of Shelbyville, Ind., pleaded guilty to assaulting an officer with a baton and carrying a pistol without a license. Mazza told authorities that he lost his .45-caliber Taurus revolver loaded with shotgun shells and hollow-point bullets on the Capitol grounds during the mob fighting before entering the Capitol building. He later filed a false police report saying the gun had been stolen in Ohio, court records state.
Both Reffitt and Mazza are awaiting sentencing.
In addition, then-DEA Agent Mark Ibrahim of Orange County, Calif., posed for photos with his DEA badge and a pistol inside his waistband on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, prosecutors have said. Photos seem to show Ibrahim circling the Capitol grounds, and then climbing onto the Peace Monument at First Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, where he recorded a video of himself delivering a monologue, court records state. He has pleaded not guilty to two counts of possessing a dangerous weapon on Capitol grounds. Ibrahim told investigators he did not recall intentionally exposing his weapon, according to court filings. His attorney declined to comment.
Also, Maryland tow truck driver Christopher Alberts was arrested outside the Capitol Visitor Center on Jan. 6 after a D.C. police officer spotted him with a loaded 9mm handgun on his hip as people were leaving the grounds that night, court records show. Alberts also wore a bulletproof vest, carried a backpack and had a full spare magazine of bullets, prosecutors said. He was later indicted on multiple counts of entering restricted grounds and assaulting law enforcement officers, and has pleaded not guilty. Alberts’s attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Three men who identified themselves as Trump supporters but did not enter the Capitol on Jan. 6 also were arrested and convicted of gun charges. Lonnie Leroy Coffman, 70, of Falkville, Ala., marched around the Capitol that morning and then wandered away before the riot. But his unoccupied truck attracted police attention because it was on First Street SE, in the area where pipe bombs had been found outside the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican parties. While U.S. Capitol Police officers were sweeping the area, they spotted a handgun on the passenger seat of Coffman’s red GMC Sierra 1500.
The police said they searched Coffman’s truck and found 11 Mason jars filled with gasoline and Styrofoam, allegedly to create a napalm-type effect for a Molotov cocktail. In addition to the gasoline-filled Mason jars, which had holes in the lids, with rags and lighters nearby, investigators reported finding a 9mm handgun, a rifle, a shotgun, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, large-capacity ammunition-feeding devices, a crossbow with bolts, machetes and camouflage smoke devices. Coffman also was carrying two handguns when he was arrested, authorities said. All the guns were loaded.
Coffman pleaded guilty to possession of unregistered weapons and was sentenced to 46 months in prison, the third-longest term issued to a Jan. 6 defendant so far.
“I don’t think I’ve seen, in all my years as a judge, quite such a collection of weapons,” U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly said. She began serving as a superior court judge in D.C. in 1984 and moved to the federal bench in 1997.
Cleveland G. Meredith Jr., a devoted follower of the radical QAnon ideology, drove toward the nation’s capital from Colorado on Jan. 6 with a rifle, a 9mm handgun, 2,500 rounds of ammunition and high-capacity magazines. In one text message, he told his family he was “gonna collect a … ton of Traitors heads.” But his truck broke down and he didn’t arrive until after the riot had ended. The next day, Meredith texted his family that he was considering “putting a bullet in her [Nancy Pelosi’s] noggin on live TV.” His family called the FBI. Meredith was arrested, pleaded guilty to one count of making felony threats and was sentenced to 28 months in prison.
One Trump supporter was charged in D.C. Superior Court with illegal gun possession. About 6:20 p.m. on Jan. 6, a D.C. police officer was sent to check out a report of a suspicious man in a white van parked on Maryland Avenue, about a block northeast of the Capitol. Grant McHoyt Moore, 65, of Georgia, was inside the van and, according to a police arrest affidavit, “pointed to a red MAGA hat on the dash and said, ‘I’m one of those.’”
Moore told the officer he had a handgun in a backpack on his passenger seat, for which he had a license in Georgia but not the District, the affidavit states. The officer found a loaded Ruger .380 handgun with three extra loaded magazines. Moore was charged in D.C. Superior Court with possession of an unlicensed firearm and unregistered ammunition, and pleaded guilty with a “deferred disposition,” meaning the charge will be dismissed if the defendant remains trouble-free for six months. Moore did so, and the case was dismissed.
Samuel Fisher, 33, of New York City, posted at least one photograph on Facebook of himself at the Capitol on Jan. 6, followed by a photo of himself holding a handgun in front of a flag with a message that read, “Don’t Tread on Trump, Keep America Great,” court records show. On the morning of the riot, Fisher wrote on Facebook, “I got a Vest and My Rifle.” The FBI said agents searched his apartment on New York’s Upper East Side several days after the riot and discovered several weapons, including a modified AR-15 rifle, a ghost gun pistol, a loaded shotgun, and 13 loaded high-capacity magazines. He pleaded guilty in New York to one count of criminal possession of a weapon and was sentenced to 3½ years in prison.
Fisher was not charged with taking a gun to the Capitol. He pleaded guilty to a federal trespassing charge on Wednesday.
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