<[Event "Herb Healy Memorial"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1984.01.01"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Motta, Arthur"]
[ECO "A52"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Vermont Open"]
[Site "S Burlington VT"]
[Date "1993.10.22"]
[EventDate "1993"]
[Round "1"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "McGrath, William"]
[ECO "B00"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "92nd US Open"]
[Site "Los Angeles CA"]
[Date "1991.08.??"]
[EventDate "1991"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Fredrich, Tristan"]
[Black "Brooks, Michael A"]
[ECO "C99"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<Greed does not become you, O my brother>:

<[Event "6th Monadnock Marathon"] [Site "Jaffrey NH"]
[Date "1983.10.29"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "5"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Tempesta, John"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "D00"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<Former Representative Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican, trolled Representative Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican and an ally to former President Donald Trump, on Saturday after she deleted a post she made about the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

Cheney was a vocal critic of Trump in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Following his lost [sic] to Joe Biden, Trump made repeated claims that the election was stolen from him via widespread voter fraud, with no evidence being found to back up his accusations. In the wake of Trump's claims, a violent mob of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., on January 6 in an attempt to stop Congress from certifying the election results.

After the riot, Cheney's criticisms of the former president grew. She was one of only 10 House Republicans to vote to impeach Trump for incitement of insurrection in the days following the Capitol riot. Trump was later acquitted by the Senate. Cheney ended up losing her seat as the House Republican Conference chair, the third-ranking position among GOP members in Congress, in May 2021, and then her position as representative for Wyoming's at-large district in the 2022 midterm election.

On Tuesday, Cheney posted a now-removed statement from Stefanik who took over Cheney's position as House Republican Conference chair after the riot.

On X, formerly Twitter, the former congresswoman wrote alongside the statement: "This is what ⁦⁦@EliseStefanik said, in a rare moment of honesty, about the January 6 attack on our Capitol. One day she will have to explain how and why she morphed into a total crackpot. History, and our children, deserve to know."

Stefanik's statement from January 6, 2021, mirrored what several Republicans initially said in the wake of the attack, until they changed positions.

"I fully condemn the dangerous violence and destruction that occurred today at the United States Capitol," Stefanik wrote, who called the violence that day "absolutely unacceptable and anti-American."

In a follow-up post on Saturday, Cheney posted to X a screenshot of Stefanik's removed statement and wrote: "I'm told that, in response to my prior tweet, @EliseStefanik deleted her 1/6/21 statement — that those who stormed the Capitol 'must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.' Here is Elise's statement again. Feel free to share. #nomorecrackpots."

Alex DeGrasse, senior adviser to Stefanik, told Newsweek via email on Saturday: "On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Liz Cheney is spending her Saturday morning having a mental breakdown looking at archives of years old press releases. Liz is lashing out as usual because she hates that the American people sent her packing and she will never hold any elected office again."

He added: "Congresswoman Stefanik's official website for the 118th Congress includes all press releases and news for the current Congress. Press releases and media from the previous Congresses are available on multiple official social media channels."....>

Such a <good> little ass-licker.

<....Newsweek reached out to Cheney's faculty email for the University of Virginia's Center for Politics for comment.

Stefanik, who assumed office in 2015, used to be seen as a moderate, but has recently been making headlines for her conservative views and being a loyal supporter of Trump. Stefanik has even been floated as a possible vice presidential candidate if Trump, who is the GOP frontrunner in the 2024 presidential election, won the Republican nomination.

Appearing on NBC's Meet the Press earlier this month, Stefanik called the DOJ's probe into those involved in the riot "baseless witch hunt investigations" and called those already convicted and jailed for their actions surrounding the riot "hostages."

Earlier this month, on the third anniversary of January 6, the DOJ announced that over 1,265 defendants have been charged in connection to the riot and that 749 defendants have been sentenced.

Meanwhile, Stefanik's language on Meet the Press has been used by the former president. At a campaign rally in Houston, Texas, in November Trump said of the jailed rioters, "I call them the J6 hostages. Not prisoners." He also called the hearings of the House select committee that investigated the events surrounding January 6 a "witch hunt" during an event in Nashville, Tennessee in June 2022.

The January 6 committee, which Cheney and only one other Republican, then-Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, recommended that the DOJ bring criminal charges onto Trump for his actions surrounding the riot.

<House Republicans in swing districts are already sensitive about being associated with former President Donald Trump, and many are hoping to avoid having to mention him altogether, as Democratic strategists are aiming to do ahead of the November election.

According to Politico, Democrats hoping to retake the majority in the House of Representatives are tying freshman Republican lawmakers running for reelection in competitive districts to Trump. This has resulted in some GOP representatives distancing themselves from the former president.

"I’m just not getting into it anytime soon," said Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-New York), who narrowly won his 2022 election with 49.9% of the vote after new district lines were drawn. Rep. Anthony D'Esposito (R-New York) has also not yet backed Trump, and would only commit to backing the Republican Party's eventual nominee when pressed.

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-New York), who likewise eked out a close win in a newly redrawn district, has gone further in his efforts to extricate himself from Trump. In November, Lawler told constituents that he "personally would like to see Nikki Haley as our nominee," calling her "clear-eyed" and "articulate."

Republicans arguably only won the majority in the House of Representatives with the help of New York Republicans like D'Esposito, Molinaro and Lawler. And after disgraced former Rep. George Santos (R-New York) was expelled last year for ethics violations, his district has been rated a "toss-up" by Cook Political Report. If Democrats flip control of those seats, it would put them back in charge of the House of Representatives next year given Republicans' current narrow majority.

In December, New York's high court threw out the congressional maps that resulted in Republicans like Lawler and Molinaro winning narrow victories. Now, the Democratic-controlled legislature will redraw district lines to be used in 2024, making it likelier that the new maps will be favorable to Democratic candidates. Democrats hope that by tying Republicans to Trump, GOP lawmakers in New York and elsewhere will be less appealing to independent and moderate voters.

"These candidates across the country are going to have to answer for every insane thing Trump says," Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC spokesman CJ Warnke told Politico.>

<The current Supreme Court has staked out two portentous positions. The court has made a point of returning power to the legislative branch from the executive branch, and of returning power to the states from the federal government. Both moves have been contentious, and we are beginning to see that while each move has an upside, there’s a also downside that had previously been unforeseen. We’re seeing that play out in Texas right now.

The Supreme Court case most associated with the first move — reinforcing the power of the legislative branch vis a vis the executive — was West Virginia v. EPA, and there is an important new case pending that is liable to go in the same direction. The court has argued that the agencies of the executive branch are not free to make important policy decisions and regulations without explicit legislative approval. While on the one hand, I’d argue that this is an overdue correction by the Supreme Court, we have begun to see the unforeseen problem is that the executive branch might decide to simply ignore the rulings entirely.

President Joe Biden’s dismissal of federal student loan debt, despite the Supreme Court ruling blocking the same, is a harbinger of the real threat here. In a context where there is a divided Congress, what power is there to enforce this ruling of the judicial branch against the executive branch? None, apparently. There appears to be absolutely nothing stopping the executive branch from plowing ahead in the face of Supreme Court opposition.

This is not just a problem of what policies may or may not be executed. This is a problem of whether the checks and balances provided for by the U.S. Constitution continue to operate as they were meant to do. Has the constitutional check on executive power by the judicial branch just fallen in front of our eyes? If so, that’s a deep and dangerous crack in the American political system.

The second Supreme Court trend — that of returning power to the states — was, of course, the thrust of the crucial Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. The Supreme Court reasoned there was no constitutionally determined right to abortion, and therefore the right to legislate on abortion was a power reserved to state governments. In the wake of that decision, we have seen state-by-state changes to abortion law, providing a stark patchwork of bans and expansions of the right to abortion among the various states.

But now Texas has raised the stakes and called the Supreme Court on this very issue of states’ rights, potentially opening up an even deeper crack in the American political system— one that unless resolved might have grave implications for the future of the country....>

<....Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has three times called on Biden to uphold the U.S. Constitution, specifically Article 4, Section 4, which states plainly that “The United States shall protect each of them (i.e., the states) against invasion.”

Abbott asserts that with illegal crossings averaging from 7,000 to 12,000 every single day, and with a sizable additional number of “gotaways” (those not formally processed and thus not included in official statistics), that the state of Texas is being invaded, literally. And he asserts that the federal government is doing nothing to stop the invasion and nothing to ensure federal immigration law is being enforced. Twenty-five governors are backing him in this position.

Abbott has taken several steps, each increasing in intensity. First, he has bussed [sic] about 80,000 illegal immigrants to self-proclaimed sanctuary cities, including Chicago and New York City. Second, he has begun to build a Texas border wall a few miles at a time. Third, he has signed into law legislation that makes illegal entry into Texas a state crime, enabling Texas police to arrest migrants entering the country illegally. Fourth, he has mobilized the Texas National Guard and sent them to the border to maintain that state boundary, authorizing them to set up razor wire and other physical barriers to entry.

So was the Supreme Court supportive of this return of power to a state government? Actually not, which is quite revealing. The Supreme Court, taking the position that the federal government is the highest authority with regards to border security, told Texas it could not prevent the U.S. government’s Border Patrol from accessing the Texas border or conducting activities such as cutting the razor wire that Texas had put in place.

Citing Article 4, Section 4, of the Constitution, Texas is now ignoring the Supreme Court’s opinion. Again, while the substantive immigration issues at hand are important, what is arguably even more important is that the balance of power between the states and the federal government has become unstable, with a state defying the federal government by defying the Supreme Court, just as we have seen that the federal executive branch is defying the legislative branch by defying the Supreme Court.

One bright spot is that this month the Texas Supreme Court refused to put a Texas independence referendum on the state ballot, so at least for the moment, Texas is not planning to secede. And yet the conflict over the southern border is, I would argue, dangerously fanning these very flames. The Biden administration is now contemplating the brinkmanship move of ordering the federalization of the Texas National Guard, risking the guard’s rebellion should it continue to obey Abbott’s orders.

Surely unintentionally, the Supreme Court has in both instances critically destabilized the government of the United States. This Supreme Court has chosen to open Pandora’s box. Maybe that was needful, but it is also perilous.>

<[Event "Civilized Swiss #8"] [Site "Framingham Mass"]
[Date "1989.05.21"]
[EventDate "1989"]
[Round "2.2"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Dean, Lawrence"]
[ECO "C77"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?" ]

<[Event "Boylston Thanksgiving Open"] [Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1983.11.25"]
[EventDate "1983"]
[Round "2"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Fang, Joseph"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "E30"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]