140 thoughts on “Joint Session of Congress to Confirm Electoral Vote: Open Thread”

    1. Let us all take a moment of silence for the death of the right wing nostrum that violent protests are the exclusive domain of the left in general and Black Lives Matter specifically. *bows head*Report

      1. I’m kinda glad, in an odd way, that this is happening. Federal officials need it driven home that hyperbolic and inflammatory rhetoric can and will come back to bite them in their literal ass.Report

      2. I personally think we will all be sad to see it go. The right wing version of this has always had the potential to be far more dangerous if it ever got a mass movement behind it. Trump and the conservatives own this through and through and I hope quite a few end up in prison after this.

        But I never want to hear any BS about the voices of the unheard ever again.Report

      1. Um no they aren’t. Pepper spraying the police back when they pepper spray you, storming the capitol and shooting at the officers in the House chambers is anything but peaceful.

        And no, no one on the left did anything close to that in the BLM protests.Report

        1. Nope that didn’t. You’re 100% correct. No improvised mortars. No Molotov cocktails. No burning and looting. No bicycle locks. No home made shields. No laser lights in eyes, none of that. It was all peaceful. IT’s NOTHING like what’s going on now by the other side. Not at all.Report

              2. Honestly, fuck the booklicking swine who try to play BSDI. Those who entered the capital include numerous outspoken white nationalists and outright Nazis: https://www.thedailybeast.com/meet-the-far-right-qanon-and-white-supremacist-goons-at-the-capitol-in-washington-dc

                We know who these people are, at least many of them. Quite of few of them were livestreaming and live-tweeting their antics. It is no mystery who these people are, what they believe, what they want.

                Protesting police violence against black people is literally the opposite of an incompetent fascist coup attempt. If you cannot distinguish those things, then your mind is broken.Report

              3. There is always some fun both-sidesing to be done:

                Report

              4. Honestly, if a bunch of fash dipshits broke into the capital on any random Saturday and smashed stuff up, I would of course condemn them — for being fash dipshits. That said, this isn’t about property damage. It’s about a literal coup whose stated goals was to overturn a democratic election.

                People can try to BSDI that, but that reveals what they are.Report

              5. “People can try to BSDI that, but that reveals what they are.”

                Yep, those are people that see violence as violence, regardless of the political orientation of the one committing the violence–they also especially notice the hypocrites who endorse/support one side’s political violence while loudly protesting the other side’s violence.Report

              6. A whole bunch of us condemned the violence around the BLM marches. And we pointed out it was the same crowd as today.

                But let’s be clear -‘these people weren’t looting a Target.Report

              7. Sure, they overthrew a legally elected government and installed an autocrat.

                But let me ask you- were any windows broken?

                No? Ok, carry on.Report

              9. Really a legall elected gov’t was overthrown? Really? Seems the gov’t is still very much in control and operations. The congress accepted the electoral count….Wow…what a disruption!Report

              12. Fair enough. I gave him a charitable reading and assumed he meant they tried to do those things.

                It’s worth noting that there were several different “tribes” in that group. A few were high profile online fash, such as Nick Fuentes and Baked Alaska. They were just there for the livestream. A few were genuine members of white power groups. They are genuinely dangerous and unpredictable. Honestly, if any of those trapped AOC in a corner, they would have killed her. (If you don’t believe that, then you don’t understand these people.)

                Most, however, were QAnon dipshits.

                I read a joke on Twitter about the QAnon dipshits that I found insightful. After they stormed the capital, they were waiting for the cutscene where Trump won the election. In other words, they had no real plan other than “take the capital,” after which Q magic would take hold and Trump would win.

                Yes, it’s idiotic. Nevertheless, this was an attempted coup. Their stated goals were clear. They weren’t at all bashful about what they intended to do there. They wanted to “take the capital” and stop the certification of the election, cuz then the cutscene would give it to Trump.Report

              13. ” In other words, they had no real plan other than “take the capital,” ”

                That’s only the vague outlines of a coup, and that’s a generous use of the word coup, if what you posted was actually the case. More like a bunch of idiots venting their unfocused rage.Report

            2. As has been tirelessly pointed out here none of that was done by BLM or leftist protestors.

              I’m aware that you have asserted this many times before, but that doesn’t constitute evidence. Where are you getting this ridiculous idea?Report

              1. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/22/who-caused-violence-protests-its-not-antifa/

                https://time.com/5886348/report-peaceful-protests/

                https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/08/10/fact-checking-claim-about-deaths-damage-from-black-lives-matter-protests/113878088/

                https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity-suburbs-health-racial-injustice-7edf9027af1878283f3818d96c54f748

                “Research from the University of Washington indicates that this disparity stems from political orientation and biased media framing (Washington Post, 24 August 2020), such as disproportionate coverage of violent demonstrations (Business Insider, 11 June 2020; Poynter, 25 June 2020).” https://acleddata.com/2020/09/03/demonstrations-political-violence-in-america-new-data-for-summer-2020/

                https://www.opb.org/article/2021/01/06/portland-oregon-protest-capitol-washington/Report

  4. Now we can see that their love of the confederate flag wasn’t about heritage; it was about treason. Jesus Christ, these traitors.Report

    1. The House needs to impeach and the Senate needs to remove Trump now. We all know that the Republicans won’t do the right thing. Senator Hawley apparently fist greeted the protestors today.Report

        1. Or, equally bad:
          Make the point that any attempt by the people to install a democratically elected government will be met with violence and chaos.

          This is playing out in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Oregon, and wherever the people dare to remove Republicans from power.Report

        2. That’s an idealistic goal, not an end game. An end game requires an actual method by which the goal is realized. They only way that Trump stays in power is if the government we have is dissolved.

          I don’t see a couple hundred right wing nuts getting that to happen.Report

      2. This is a mob that uncritically believes that the Vice President can just arbitrarily decide to overturn the election. It is an attempted coup, even if it is an idiotic and impotent coup.Report

            1. Yes, and part of “working the system” is to “work the refs”; That is, to intimidate and cow the guardians of the system to where they are hesitant to confront you and enforce the rules.

              Notice how timid the police here were, how hesitant the enforcers are even now.

              Fear works. Intimidation works.

              Unless someone stands up to say it doesn’t.Report

        2. I didn’t say it wasn’t a coup, just that it has no end game. You can’t just take over a building and declare yourself in charge. The organs of the state have to acknowledge the new authority.

          I don’t see that happening.Report

          1. I agree with Oscar. It’s fine to call it a coup… but its not a coup. Or, another way, it’s exactly the quality of coup one would expect from DJT.

            The legal ramifications for some of those folks? Ouch, the law doesn’t distinguish between stupid and smart coups.Report

              1. Sure, I think this is impeachable or 25th worthy… but as we note downthread, I’m not sure congress is capable of procedurally carrying out an impeachment in 14-days.

                I’m curious if the constitution specifies whether the an impeachment process that is started must terminate if the person is no longer in office? Like if they resign? Or whether the impeachment could continue and skip (or affirm) removal and continue to the disqualification for future office stage?Report

      3. The endgame is to keep Trump in power. It might be poorly planned or not even planned at all. They might be a morons missing a few steps and getting mocked and with inadequate means for success but this is not behavior that should be tolerated in any democracy. The primary keystone of democracy is a peaceful transition of power. A side loses, takes its lumps, and tries again at the next election.

        This is not what happened here. Trump is having a dementia addled temper tantrum and he was aided and abetted by cynical elites looking to increase their power and who happen to hate the opposition anyway and see it as illegitimate. As much as Democrats grumbled about 2000, 2004, and 2016, we did not storm the Capitol.Report

      4. A coup of what, though? There is no end game here.

        The end game is for Trump to retain the presidency. That’s the coup attempt. Perhaps you’re thinking “oh, hey, he can’t do that, it’s against the law!” Being against the law is part of the definition of a coup. Maybe you’re thinking “sure, but he’ll never get away with it”. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t attempting it.Report

        1. An end game requires a viable path to victory. It’s not the goal, it’s the strategy.

          For example, we didn’t really have an end game for invading Iraq a second time.

          Earlier this year, Mali had a coup, and were able to get the government to dissolve, they had an end game. There was some kind of path by which they were able to remove the existing power structure by force.

          In the US, that isn’t really possible without decapitating both the federal government and a large percentage of the state governments. Kill everyone in the House and Senate and the states will just fill the vacancies and move on as soon as the military puts down the rebellion.

          An end game requires having control of the military, and the federal bureaucracy, and a large number of state governments (enough to hold a majority). Or it requires killing all the same and being able to move into the power vacuum.

          Storming the Hill and delaying the counting, even if you hold the Hill and delay the count until January 20th doesn’t keep Trump in office after Noon. At noon, his presidency ends, and Pelosi steps into the role of POTUS until the count can be finished. And this is important because the federal bureaucracy, and the Military, will, at noon, stop obeying orders from Trump, because his orders will no longer have the force of law.

          It was a coup attempt, but the fools had no end game, just an idealistic goal (maybe, because it looks like they mostly just wanted to break/steal shit and pose for selfies).Report

      1. I mean, I’m pretty sure a bunch of ‘Back the Blue’ types are also going to learn some things today at the hands of the DMV’s finest. Maybe we can all take this as an opportunity to be educated. Probably not but weirder things have happened.Report

    2. My 16-yo daughter surprised me after I pointed her to the news… she said, “Now Pence should invoke the 25th… I wonder if he has the cabinet support” I can’t say that we’ve discussed the 25th ever? Certainly not in the past couple of years since it wasn’t topical.

      I have to agree… if he has the support, he should do it… if he doesn’t, he should publicly propose it and make it the Cabinet’s problem.Report

          1. Sure… I’m in favor of de-lawyerfying the process anyway. But realistically even the most simple gears of congress don’t turn anywhere near fast enough.Report

            1. its not that hard. The lone article could be two or three sentences with the transcript of his call on Saturday pasted into it. a good intern could crank it out in about ten minutes.Report

              1. Eh… there are things that need doing, notices posted, documents exchanged, meetings scheduled, etc. etc. I’m not saying it’s impossible, just that I don’t know how feasible it is to work within the parliamentary framework and the rules of the House/Senate.Report

              2. My assumption is that they treat this as a critical emergency and forgo the normal procedures. I’m aware that congress has rules, but congress can also bypass their own procedures if they see fit. Who would tell them not to? The president cannot. The courts cannot.

                They would have to adhere to the constitution, but the constitution says very little about the exact procedure, except that the chief justice presides. I guess it would depend on the degree the chief justice was willing to fast track the proceeding.Report

              3. Yeah, I don’t know (in the genuine don’t know kinda way)… even suspending procedures requires procedures. And the Senate has their own… and there are procedures that govern how the two houses interact with each other.

                Maybe our resident parliamentarian Mr. Cain could shed some light on this…Report

      2. These 16-year-olds…I have one, too, and he constantly surprises me with what he knows. “I watched a video on YouTube” doesn’t always have to mean garbage.Report

        1. Yeah, we preferred it when we knew exactly what she didn’t know.

          Of course on Twitter I said she was 3… I have a brand to maintain, you know.Report

      3. Pence should be talking about the 25th Amendment, Pelosi should file articles of impeachment, McConnell should be signaling that those articles will have a floor vote immediately without debate. All that. And more! But we’ll end up getting what we deserve.Report

        1. For impeachment, the constitution requires a senate trial overseen by the chief justice. The senate can certainly relax their own rules, but they cannot ignore the constitution.

          Now, if they can convince the chief justice to move immediately to a floor vote, then awesome, but does that seem likely?Report

  8. Twitter hasn’t disabled President Buchanan’s account, but they’ve disabled being able to comment or retweet on at least one of his tweets.Report

  9. Oh, how nice of the police. I go do something else for 30 minutes, and come back and the police are very slowly getting people to move off the steps.

    That’s normal police behavior at riots.Report

    2. This is when consistency pays off. For a year we’ve been told that there’s a difference between protestors and rioters. Fine. If people are outside the building, let’s call them protestors, and have the police de-escalate and disperse them. If people break in, let’s call them rioters and have the police shoot them. Non-lethal outside, lethal inside. Anyone have a problem with that?Report

      2. They forced their way past static barriers into locations that they clearly weren’t allowed. Not with any sort of pressure of a mob being shoved by the police behind them (Which is common), but just…deciding to move them and go past.

        If that sort of behavior is ‘officially’ still a protest…okay. If the line we are drawing is ‘smashing windows and entering buildings’ is the ‘riot’ threshold, and as long as you stay outside, it’s a protest and you’re a protestor…I am okay with us deciding that is the formal line.

        But, of course, it’s not going to be. For one thing, it makes almost _no one_ during the BLM protests ‘rioters’, not even some people I was willing to classify under that.

        As soon as it’s the left protesting, it will be back to ‘crowds jeering at police’ are a ‘riot’.Report

              1. Stopped dead in its tracks by the Republican controlled Senate. That party needs to be burnt to the ground, the earth beneath it salted, and the ashes scattered to the four winds. They’ve now become the party of insurrection.Report

            2. Two separate agencies. Capitol Police are federal officers under the direction of the Sergeant at Arms. Unfortunately, they are too used to enabling protestors because their bosses are all about political optics.

              DC Metro PD would be happy to have quelled this but they have no jurisdiction on the capitol grounds absent an invitation by the Capitol Police.Report

              3. Facts still coming out obviously but I suspect this is one of those things where 15 seconds of recording is misleading. I’ve seen other longer video posted showing that lots of people were already passed. It’s possible the removal was to keep the barriers from being used as weapons.Report

              5. once again – DC as a city has NO jurisdiction over much of the ground within its borders. Even had Mayor Bowser requested additional federal law enforcement presence she would have had no authority to send them to the Capitol. I know this isn’t how the rest of the world works, but DC isn’t the rest of the world.

                Hell, the FBI has a Uniformed Police Division who’s main jobs are guarding the Hoover Building (a building full of fully trained law enforcement officers) and the FBI facilities at Quantico. They work across the street from the Justice Department Police who guard the DoJ but are not the same agency. The Secret Service Uniformed Division guards embassies from the outside. There’s a U.S. Mint Police and a Government Printing Office Police, and a U.S. Post Office Police. Amtrak has police at Union Station who have no jurisdiction across the street at the Capitol.Report

              6. I’m aware of how it works. I used to be a federal employee at a legislative branch office that had its own small police force which has since been subsumed into the Capitol Police. I know that she does not oversee Capitol Police or US Park Police.

                However if you think the dynamic between the mayor and federal law enforcement agencies over the last 6 months hasn’t played into the lack of force at the scene you have not been paying attention. The continuing request since June has been for a minimal federal law enforcement presence in the city. Again, obviously there are reasons for that, but if people are wondering why the militarized federal police response wasn’t there yesterday it is in part because they have been repeatedly asked not to be at the scene of protests by the District political authorities.Report

              8. Subsequent videos from inside definitely showed more resistance being offered by the various police than it looked like from initial videos showing only the outside.

                What I’m most confused by is the Capitol Police’s response. You’d think they’d have some command that immediately triggered a procedure to lock down the building. Maybe I’m overestimating the force or how things work at the Capitol building (I lived in DMV for 2 years and visited most of the major sites but never really did more than walk around the Capitol), but I’d think they’d have some line somewhere along the perimeter and as soon as a group crosses it, someone yells “LOCKDOWN!” and doors slam shut and lock and the officers assume positions to secure all the entrances and exits.

                Even if Bowser wanted a reduced presence on the streets and around the building, I imagine the Capitol police would do whatever they normally do starting at the entry points to the building.

                FWIW, most of the videos I saw of the outside seemed to feature Metro PD, at least as far as I could tell from their unis.Report

              9. I think it’s a bad combination of factors
                To Oscar’s point above there are understandable reasons for Bowser’s position after what happened over the summer. However local news is also saying that she asked for help from the surrounding counties in MD and VA but then failed to tell them where she needed them to be. Allegedly there were PG county cops close by standing around waiting for orders and didn’t get them until things were already out of control (reports are early so obviously this may be incorrect or not the whole truth).

                I also think Capitol Police’s tendency towards de-escalation and poor preparedness for how far these people were willing to go played into it. That plus the optics of heavily armed federal police in DC from over the summer were really bad and I think law enforcement is for the first time starting to understand that. The appropriate show of force that stops violence rather than provoking it is a fine line that American law enforcement appears to be universally bad at.

                Anyway the lion’s share of responsibility of course goes to Trump and the a-holes who did this. Still I think it illustrates the really hard road we have to walk for good police reform. Preferences for a light hand and overwhelming force don’t seem to be reached in a rational way but rather in a post hoc, outcome based way.Report

              14. From what I’ve read, communication problems were prevalent and that likely contributed to the lack of coordination.

                To be clear, I did not want to see these people mowed down by gunfire. While watching on TV, my girlfriend kept remarking about the scenes of the jackholes galavanting around the Senate (or was it the House?) floor. My response was that as ugly an image as that was, those bodies laying bleeding on the ground was an even uglier one. I did NOT want to see a violent response from the police, especially once it seemed pretty apparent that the threat these jamokes posed was largely symbolic. I think if they actually made it onto the floor while the Congresspeople were in session, they’d have acted like streakers at a sporting event; I don’t think they’d have pulled together the “people’s court” from Dark Knight Rises.

                Maybe I’m underselling these folks. I don’t mean to. What they did was horrific on any number of levels. But my read on watching them was that they were also cowards with no real plan who seemed surprised more than anything they actually made it inside. The classic squirrel-in-the-hand.

                So, if we give the benefit of the doubt to the officers on the ground that they did an appropriate threat assessment, they may have decided that giving ground while they regrouped and reorganized was the appropriate tactic. I’d rather they do that than just start blasting folks.

                HOWEVER, there is a lot of room between giving ground and blasting. Like, where was the organizied wall of cops we saw this summer, with their arms linked or shields forming an unbroken wall? On the outside at least, these guys looked a little Keystone-y. And if this was anywhere else in the country, maybe I’d forgive that. But this was the Capitol. And the two groups (Metro PD and Capitol Police) most familiar with the building. So again I’m wondering how they didn’t have an automatic go-response for such a moment?

                I mean, as a teacher we know exactly what to do when that fire bell rings. How do these guys not know exactly what to do once a mob reaches the top of the stairs?Report

              16. Sarcasm but this is kind of what I’m getting at above. I don’t buy the general ‘we’re the real victims here’ story the police are fond of spinning but these issues aren’t simple.Report

              17. Right… I’m personally a little surprised that the ROE for the Capital don’t have a red-line (I’m guessing the White House when the POTUS is present is a little different) where force becomes lethal.

                But then… absent those sorts of lock-down and response training, we’re getting the result we want: low casualties, dispersed mob, and temporary disruption.

                We certainly could treat the capital (and other places) as no-go zones… but there probably would have been a few dead folks on the Whitehouse lawn over the summer.

                So… a weird combination of having a policy that worked, and not really liking that that is our policy after the fact. Or so it seems.Report

              18. Agreed and like Kazzy said about his conversations with his girlfriend, there’s a price to that too. Like, this was pretty bad looking. How much worse looking would it be if 10 or 20 people were shot in the entry way?Report

              19. I joked elsewhere that it was nice to see the cops not escalate the situation. Which was probably only half joking. I’d rather the result that happened yesterday than seeing the halls of Congress littered with bodies.

                But yesterday wasn’t de-escalation. It was retreat. Which, given the circumstances, also doesn’t seem like the right approach.Report

              20. One of the video clips repeated frequently showed the mob easily breaking out windows and climbing through. The place is not built to be secured against a large mob short of killing/disabling that mob.

                On a day that’s supposed to be mostly a ceremonial part of the peaceful transfer of power, would you have deployed a large number of LEO in riot gear? I’ll bet Pelosi/McConnell were very much opposed to that.Report

              21. I guess that is part of my surprise. Like, why aren’t the windows bulletproof?

                I would not have wanted to see a large number of LEO in riot gear. As I said above, I think what happened was not the worst case scenario* so I’m okay with it happening if the other available alternatives were all worse. I’m just surprised there didn’t seem to be a better alternative. But, again, maybe I’m misunderstanding how the Capitol and it’s police force function.

                Interestingly, the White House isn’t necessarily as secure as many seem to think. Sure, walk around the fence and you’ll see snipers on the roof and I always wondered if the rustling in the bushes was the wind or super secret agents hiding there. But folks have gotten up and over the fence before. At least one guy landed a plane on the lawn. And a couple of reality TV asshats managed to crash an event there. I imagine some of that is because of on-the-ground, real-time threat assessment (e.g., “The guy on the fence is wearing Tivas… we can probably hold our fire as we approach.”) and much of it is by design… we don’t want bullets flying everytime something seems a little bit scary. I just figured that once the mob hit the door, some sort of defense protocol kicks in. Like, they couldn’t full closed a gate to limit their access to the buildling?

                * I also want to point out that, at least among my small-ish circle of mostly liberal people, those who were pointing out the disparate responses to this protest and summer protests were NOT calling for the same response, but simply pointing out the difference. I think that is an important point to make.Report

          2. I don’t think that’s the police _doing_ it, the only barrier I can see moved is by the guy on the right, but it is the police just literally standing there.

            However…there already are people past the barrier at that point.Report

        2. I was comparing this to the Portland Federal Building, not the BLM protests and riots. I’m inclined to say that states can show more mercy if they choose to, but an act of violence on federal property puts one’s life in forfeit.

          As for BLM, would you be ok with my “de-escalate and disperse” formula? If so, we might be able to find some common ground. I can accept “jeering” at police falling under the definition of protest if you’ll grant that any assault on police elevates the situation to a riot.Report

          1. I don’t know what formula you are talking about, but ‘disperse’ is often code for ‘force protests into tight confinement and then arrest them because they don’t fit’.

            Same with ‘assaulting the police’. A lot of that is ‘Police positioned themselves to be touched by protestors’ and other parts are ‘struggled after the police painfully slammed them to the ground and yanked their arms behind them’.

            It is _very_ easy to invent thresholds that the police literally ignore for protests on the right, and then deliberately set up ways to force protestors on the left to violate them.

            Likewise, if you mean an actual act of violence _committed by a specific person_ should result in the arrest of that person, yes. But one person throwing a birkc, or even one person breaking the window of the Capitol building, does not damn the entire thing, or mean everyone there can be arrested.

            That is more ‘obvious trespass’, in that the people very clearly were not supposed even be there, much less _go inside_…and while the people on the steps perhaps have a possible excuse of not knowing they weren’t allowed there, maybe they showed up late and the barriers were down…People have a much harder time defending ‘climbing into a building through a window’.Report

      2. He also said four times that the election had been stolen from him, that he loves the terrorists* and thinks they’re “special people.”

        What he said was “Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop. Don’t. Stop.” The dude packs a metric shit-ton of doubletalk in a 62-second message and if he is impeached and removed from office today, it will still be long overdue.

        * …I use that word because “domestic terrorists” is exactly what they are. See 18 U.S.C. § 2331(5).Report

    1. Because less than an hour after McConnell gave this speech, Trump supporters, who had gathered for a “Stop the Steal” rally, stormed the US Capitol — breaching not only the Capitol complex but also making their way onto the same floor of the Senate where McConnell had spoken.
      And where did they get the idea? At least in part from Trump himself — during an appearance earlier on Wednesday.
      “We’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women,” he told the crowd. “And we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

      Report

  12. Is Rachel Maddow just stupid? Her, and all of MSNBC, seems very baffled as to why there haven’t been more arrests. That’s been a common refrain all day on MSNBC…where are the police, and why aren’t they arresting people?

    It’s like they have some sort of mind control to keep from drawing the very very obvious conclusion these are Not the Sort of People that the police go after.Report

  13. The rioter who broke into Capitol and was apparently shot by police, and was taken to the hospital, has just died.

    Hey, um, completely unrelated question: Is breaking into a Capitol a felony?

    I mean, I’ve been just calling it trespassing, but…I suspect that it could, indeed, be a felony.

    You do know what someone dying due to a felony you commit means? Even if that person was on ‘your side’ and shot by the police?

    Uh…so…Report

    1. In many states, yeah, where you’re going is reasonable. Generally, though, murder is not a federal crime. Nor does DC have jurisdiction within the Capitol. So… unfortunately complicated. Might come down to whether Garland is willing to pursue terrorism charges.Report

        1. Precedent seems to indicate that it’s possible to pardon a class of person.

          Acting pursuant to the grant of authority in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution of the United States, I, Jimmy Carter, President of the United States, do hereby grant a full, complete and unconditional pardon to: (1) all persons who may
          have committed any offense beween August 4, 1964 and March 28, 1973 in violation
          of the Military Selective Service Act or any rule or regulation promulgated there-under; and (2) all persons heretofore convicted, irrespective of the date of conviction, of any offense committed beween August 4, 1964 and March 28, 1973 in violation of
          the Military Selective Service Act, or any rule or regulation promulgated thereunder,
          restoring to them full political, civil and other rights.

          Looks like blanket pardons have been done before.Report

      2. Huh?

        There’s not a different jurisdiction of the Capitol vs. the rest of DC. There are a few different…well, call them police precincts, and areas that only certain police operation.

        But they aren’t really different ‘jurisdictions’. It’s all just DC.Report

        1. Not true. Much of the district is under federal meaning charging has to be done by a US attorney. DC as a. It’s has a separate police department no attorney general for all other things. DC as a city has no jurisdiction on federal property including the US. Capitol.Report

    1. So I thought this was a misunderstanding, but apparently it’s _Pence_ who got the DC National Guard operating. Somehow.

      Like…so…it honestly sounds like we just have a bit of a soft coup, where the National Guard decided to take order from Pence to restore order, apparently ignoring Trump’s order to stand down.

      Holy shit.Report

  15. Trump is tweeting that this is only happening because his, and I quote, “sacred landslide” is being taken away from him.Report

      1. I’m pretty sure that the holy hand grenade is more real. It was used against the black beast of caerbannog. At least there is some possible world in which it happened

        Any landslide by trump would be necessarily profane. “Trump’s sacred landslide” is logically incoherent.Report

    2. Twitter has now started deleting his tweets and are threatening to shut down his Twitter account.

      Apparently ‘Operating as a communication method for a coup’ has…started causing them some consternation about…legal liability. (Which is kinda hilarious considering what Trump has tried to do with Section 230.)

      Incidentally, I have a comment in moderation, above this, but let me repeat: Pence is apparently the reason we got the DC National Guard involved.

      Um…so…Pence is giving orders to the National Guard, eh?Report

      1. The explanation I saw online said something to the effect of Pence is not operating as “Vice-President” but as “President of the Senate” in his discussions with the Pentagon.

        I don’t know if that’s splitting hairs or making an interesting distinction or what.Report

  16. Times headline: MOB INCITED BY TRUMP STORMS CAPITOL. Do you know what kind of country sees headlines about its President inciting mobs?Report

    1. The UN discussed tonight a motion to send peacekeeping troops to America’s capital, as the outgoing President incited mobs to swarm the capital in an attempted coup to overthrow the newly elected administration, and in the ungovernable tribal region of Pennsylvania the regions assembly refused to seat a legally elected legislator.

      While some historians and experts of imperialism blamed the collapsing government on endemic economic anxiety and a detached elite, others noted that ethnic tensions between the supporters and opponents of the apartheid regime have long been the source of conflict.

      In other related developments, Medicines Sans Frontieres is considering a request to send emergency vaccine to the hard hit rural areas such as North Dakota where local governments have collapsed in the face of the pandemic, and superstition and ignorance prevent the use of modern hygiene methods, particularly by adherents of the apocalyptic Qanon cult.

      In the UN Security Council, concerns were raised about the need for regime change in the dangerously unstable nuclear-armed rogue nation. Report

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