<After three hours of oral arguments at the Supreme Court on Wednesday, only one thing is certain: If the justices want to blow up federal elections, they will have nothing to hide behind—not history, not logic, and certainly not the Constitution. The three lawyers defending democracy methodically dismantled the “independent state legislature” theory from every conceivable angle, debunking each myth, misreading, and misrepresentation deployed to prop it up. They bested the conservative justices who tried to corner them, identifying faulty reasoning and bogus history with devastating precision.

Those of us who’ve been ringing the alarm over this dangerous theory—and who’ve been disgusted by the campaign to drag it from the far-right fringe all the way to the Supreme Court—can take solace knowing that these capable lawyers exposed it as an utter fraud. This idea was at the center of Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, so it was a relief to hear five justices sound deeply skeptical that it has any basis in the Constitution. It is far too early to celebrate the demise of the independent state legislature theory, since four justices have already endorsed it. But the skepticism it faced at arguments suggests that democracy has a fighting chance of survival.

If Wednesday’s case, Moore v. Harper, is new to you, prepare to be startled by how ridiculous it is. The petitioners are Republican leaders of the North Carolina Legislature. They are angry that the North Carolina Supreme Court struck down the congressional map that they drew after the 2020 census—which was, objectively, an extreme partisan gerrymander. The court found that the map violated various provisions of the North Carolina Constitution, including a guarantee that “all elections shall be free.” There was nothing unusual about this decision: It is a bedrock principle of federalism that state courts have final authority over the meaning of state constitutions. Other courts, including the Supreme Courts of Florida and Pennsylvania, issued similar decisions invalidating congressional districts, and SCOTUS did not get involved.

But North Carolina Republicans decided to use this case to achieve a broader GOP ambition: the revival of a long-discredited doctrine known as the independent state legislature theory, or ISLT. This theory rests on the Constitution’s elections clause, which says the “times, places, and manner” of federal elections “shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” It posits that this clause frees the state legislature from restraints imposed by the state constitution when regulating federal elections. Specifically, it would prevent state courts from enforcing those restraints when the legislature passes a law that violates them. The usual checks and balances of state lawmaking do not apply, the ISLT claims, because the U.S. Constitution gives power over the “manner” of these elections to the state legislature exclusively.

That’s the argument that the Supreme Court considered, and rejected, in Bush v. Gore. (A young Bush lawyer named Brett Kavanaugh was especially enamored of it.) It’s the argument that Trump deployed when he tried to nullify millions of votes in 2020. And it’s the argument that Ginni Thomas, wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, relied upon when lobbying state legislators to appoint “alternate electors” who would support Trump. And to be fair, it has some superficial appeal: Its proponents like to say that “legislature means legislature,” and that’s the end of it.

But it’s really not, for at least four reasons. First, when the Constitution was written, in 1787, legislature meant more than the specific body of elected representatives who pass laws. The word encompasses the entire power that makes laws—which is why, for instance, a governor can veto a congressional map. Second, even if legislature meant a specific political body, there’s no indication that the Framers intended to cut out the rest of state government, letting representatives flout all the usual rules of lawmaking. State legislatures have always been understood as creatures of their state constitutions, with no special power to bypass the charter that created them. Third, since the start of the republic, state courts have imposed limits on election laws passed by the legislature—a tradition that casts doubt on the hypothesis that the elections clause contains some secret, sweeping limit on their authority. Fourth, even if these three propositions are dead wrong, there’s still no clear, consistent standards that federal courts could use to determine when state courts misinterpret state election law. If the Supreme Court did adopt the ISLT, it would be flooded with disputes over election procedures, with no principled test to decide each case.....>

<....The justices pressed these issues through arguments on Wednesday. But before turning to them, it’s worth reiterating the cross-ideological consensus that the ISLT is bunk. A number of conservative legal luminaries filed briefs in Moore v. Harper opposing it, including Thomas Griffith, a former judge appointed by George W. Bush; J. Michael Luttig, a former judge appointed by George H.W. Bush; Steven Calabresi, a co-founder of the Federalist Society; Ben Ginsberg, a renowned GOP election lawyer; and Charles Fried, Ronald Reagan’s solicitor general. In an unprecedented move, the chief justices of all 50 states’ Supreme Courts urged SCOTUS not to adopt the theory for fear of confusion and mayhem at every level of the judiciary.

This outpouring of opposition can be attributed, in part, to Trump’s effort to use the ISLT in service of a coup. Reasonable Republicans recognize a reality described by Neal Katyal, who argued that “the blast radius” from ISLT “would sow elections chaos,” “invalidating 50 different state constitutions” and countless statutes empowering state courts to regulate elections. Katyal was in top form on Wednesday, playing both advocate and historian. The ISLT, he explained, is refuted by 233 years of history, “rejected by the Articles of Confederation, rejected by the early state constitutions, rejected by the founding practice,” and repudiated by the Supreme Court’s precedents. To accept the theory, he told the justices, “you’d have to ignore the text, history, and structure of our federal Constitution as well as nearly every state constitution today.”

Barrett sounded audibly skeptical throughout Wednesday’s arguments.

Katyal faced intense pushback from Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Samuel Alito, three fanatical believers in the ISLT, but he did not yield. He corrected Gorsuch’s bad history when the justice accused him of defending Virginia’s three-fifths clause. (“It’s a nice smear,” Katyal quipped.) He pushed back hard against Alito’s efforts to malign the North Carolina Supreme Court as an out-of-control partisan usurper, explaining that it sought to impose only “ordinary checks and balances.” And he soothed Justice Brett Kavanaugh by assuring him that there could be some “federal judicial review” here, just under a “sky-high standard” of deference to state courts.

Don Verrilli, also opposing the ISLT, did a commendable job conveying the ahistorical nature of the doctrine. He explained that the Founders’ fear of state legislatures’ manipulating elections could be traced back to the English bill of rights, “which was about the manipulation of electoral processes so that the Parliament would be in the king’s pocket, essentially.” This originalist argument infuriated Alito, who asked sarcastically if “anybody ever thought that the English bill of rights had anything to do with” partisan gerrymandering. (Not how originalism works!) Alito continued to slander the North Carolina Supreme Court by mischaracterizing its precedents, but Verrilli deftly corrected his mistakes. You could actually hear Alito rhythmically thumping the bench, which he tends to do when he tries and fails to pin down counsel....>

What happens, though, if another thoroughly unprincipled operator has a go?

<....Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar then tied up loose ends, mostly reassuring Chief Justice John Roberts that SCOTUS could reject the ISLT without relinquishing all power over state election disputes. By the time Prelogar approached the podium, the arguments were pointing toward a rough consensus: In rare, extreme cases, a state Supreme Court might misinterpret an election law so egregiously, so indefensibly, that SCOTUS could intervene. In most situations, though, state courts still get final say over the manner of federal elections.

The real debate is exactly how much deference SCOTUS should give to state courts: Should the deference be “sky high”? “Incredibly high”? Limited to cases when state courts jettison “reasonable interpretive principles” or “impermissibly distort, beyond any fair reading, the state law”? The answer matters a great deal, because it will mean the difference between maintaining a judicial check on state legislatures and handing legislators the power to rig elections.

In the end, Moore v. Harper probably comes down to Justice Amy Coney Barrett. Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh have all endorsed the ISLT in the past. Roberts, along with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson, clearly has no desire to revive it. So Moore is in Barrett’s hands, and it serves as the ultimate test of her self-proclaimed originalism.

So it was noteworthy that Barrett sounded audibly skeptical throughout Wednesday’s arguments. She was pretty tough on David Thompson, who represented North Carolina’s GOP legislative leaders, suggesting that his “formalistic test” was an unworkable stab at “trying to deal with our precedent,” which cut against him. Thompson tried to draw a line between “substantive and procedural,” but Barrett wasn’t buying it: “As a former civil procedure teacher, I can tell you that is a hard line to draw and a hard line to teach students in that context as well.” She also pointedly noted that Thompson’s standards for implementing the ISLT were not “more manageable” than the North Carolina Supreme Court’s standards for measuring gerrymanders. It was a polite way of calling Thompson a hypocrite.

Barrett’s questions for Katyal, Verrilli, and Prelogar were much more sympathetic. The justice essentially asked Katyal how the court should write a decision rejecting the ISLT. And she strongly implied to Verrilli that SCOTUS did not even have jurisdiction to hear the case. Overall, Barrett sounded eager to end Moore v. Harper with a whimper.

Which is what any honest originalist would be obligated to do. Scholars of American legal history, particularly in the founding era, have lined up in this case to explain why the ISLT is totally foreign to the laws and traditions of this nation. They have presented overwhelming evidence to support their position, evidence that is not remotely countered by the other side. There are so many political factors in this case. It is haunted by the ghosts of Bush v. Gore and Trump’s coup—both confirmation that the ISLT can be manipulated for scurrilous ends. But the promise of originalism is that it lets judges cut through these extralegal considerations and cling to the original public meaning of the Constitution. Moore v. Harper is one of the rare cases in which that meaning is crystal clear. If Barrett doesn’t let politics interfere, she can turn this awful case into originalism’s shining moment.>

This continual manipulation in this forum has got to stop.>

<The final count is in: Republicans will hold a slim 222–213 majority in the House of Representatives, giving whoever lands the terrible job of speaker a four-seat cushion on any floor vote. That’s the exact margin that outgoing Speaker Nancy Pelosi has worked her formidable magic with for two years. Pelosi, however, had two things that her Republican counterpart will not: a caucus full of mostly sane team players, and a policy agenda less radioactive than graphite from an exploded nuclear reactor.

It’s not as if this is a new problem for the GOP. But previously, when House Republicans held majorities over for the past decade-plus, their near-total dysfunction was papered over by margins large enough to do frequent end runs around hard-liners. Starting in 2015, that group coalesced as the Freedom Caucus, an assemblage of several dozen zealots that today reads like a who’s who of the dimmest bulbs ever to serve in Congress, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, and Lauren Boebert. This year’s crop, though, is a newer, even loopier iteration of the incorrigible knuckleheads who repeatedly paralyzed the American government through budget standoffs during the Obama administration and would’ve happily sent the country over the cliff by defaulting on the country’s debt rather than raise the borrowing limit.

A number of Freedom Caucusers have already said they won’t vote for Kevin McCarthy as speaker unless he agrees to a ludicrous set of hostage-taking demands that would deprive him of significant power. But for the sake of argument, let’s say McCarthy manages to create a set of parameters acceptable to 218 people in his caucus and becomes speaker. He will still face two really consequential problems in terms of avoiding one of the most chaotic House terms in American history.

One is that McCarthy himself is talking like a Freedom Caucuser. He’s the one who first publicly floated the idea of using the debt ceiling to force social spending cuts, and he’s out there right now yapping about investigating Google and Facebook for their role in “suppressing” the Hunter Biden story in October 2020. To lead effectively, he’s going to need to be the person who tries to shut down the Freedom Caucus’ brand of toxic nonsense. Instead, while he is not yet calling for setting aside the Constitution because of some 2-year-old content moderation decisions on a private media network, he looks more like the loonies’ ringleader.

The Freedom Caucus’ demands won’t end with idle chatter. Its members will likely demand hearings and then impeachment proceedings based on Hunter Biden’s purported laptop material, an issue Republicans have now spent many years trying to get a justifiably indifferent general public to care about, with zero success. Because there are likely at least four Republicans in the House who understand that it’s a terrible idea to impeach the president over an inscrutable, decade-old scandal that no one even pretends involved a crime, they won’t have the votes to do it anyway.

Making Obama-era material from the president’s son’s computer the centerpiece of the House GOP’s agenda would be bad enough if that were all they were promising to do. But the only other thing they seem eager to talk about is gutting Social Security and Medicare. And that’s the second big problem, for which McCarthy himself is as responsible as anyone.

Republicans seem incapable of resisting the urge to publicly threaten Social Security anytime they reach even the warning track of power. This is especially puzzling since they will utterly lack the power to gut the program over the next two years, they haven’t come close to doing it even when they’ve held Congress and the presidency this century, and they are surely aware that cutting or privatizing Social Security polls only marginally better than police abolition.....>

<....Remember that GOP leaders and their media mouthpieces just spent the past two years hanging the politically damaging phrase Defund the Police around Democrats after a handful of them briefly embraced the concept during the George Floyd protests in the summer of 2020. While some cities did reduce their police budgets after 2020, many of those same cities increased their police spending the following year. If anything, most Democrats in competitive races last month spent their campaigns promising to lavish cops with enough scratch to last them through the end of the century. For better or worse, Democrats are people who can read polls and act on them.

Can Republicans? Nonpartisan polling suggests that just 28 percent of voters want a lengthy investigation of Hunter Biden’s computer. Neither Social Security nor Medicare figured prominently in the 2022 election, and both remain broadly popular. There is also more to public policy than popularism. Without these programs, millions of seniors would be plunged into a nightmare of poverty and desperation. Privatization would leave retired Americans vulnerable to the inevitable pyramid schemes and junk fees and hedge fund disasters that often befall other investors. Slashing benefits would have a more immediate, and catastrophic, effect.

There’s a reason Social Security is talked about as the “third rail” of American politics, an evocative phrase coined by Kirk O’Donnell, an aide to Reagan-era Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Republicans, though, seem to have misunderstood the underlying metaphor all along. For them, cutting the flagship New Deal program is more like a third rail of cocaine, and they want to hit it again and again.

Over the years, GOP leaders have done more of this drug than the young London finance sociopaths on HBO’s Industry, and every single time it has left them in the same state: bereft of policy achievements, no closer to moving the public opinion status quo than before they started, and covered with political bruises. It’s the kind of repetitive self-harm behavior that makes you wonder what the motivation for it could possibly be.

Many of us are old enough to remember when George W. Bush, fresh off his narrow win over John Kerry in 2004, promised entitlement reform because he had been given a “mandate” by the voters to do so. Yet voters were taken aback, because the GOP’s only real messages that year had been promising to ban gay marriage everywhere including the moon, and that Democrats were objectively pro–Osama Bin Laden. Despite investing time and political capital in privatizing Social Security, Republicans cut bait on that plan almost immediately and never seriously revisited it, even after winning a trifecta in 2016. By that time, they were much too busy trying, and failing, to repeal the Affordable Care Act a thousand times.

New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait once memorably described the GOP as “a machine committed relentlessly to the singular goal of cutting taxes for the rich.” Today, the GOP’s most committed upward-wealth redistributors still occupy most of the important party leadership positions in Congress, but they now manage an uneasy alliance with MAGA performance artists obsessed with the Laptop, anti-woke culture warriors who are gleefully driving a wave of hatred and violence against LGBTQ Americans, and a growing contingent of antisemitic and dark-web weirdos who get invited to dine with former President Donald Trump.

That’s not just unworkable in the long term. It’s also a coalition that seems designed to turn the House of Representatives into Kevin McCarthy’s—and our—worst nightmare.>

<Former president Donald Trump kicked off his Friday morning by lashing out at the Department of Justice over the government documents the FBI was compelled to confiscate from his Mar-a-Lago resort that has led to an investigation over obstruction of justice and possible violations of the Espionage Act.

Last week the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ordered the special master review of the stolen documents be shut down, with CBS now reporting, "The outside review of documents seized by the FBI from former President Donald Trump's Florida resort will officially come to a close, as a ruling from a federal appeals court panel ordering its end took effect Thursday without an appeal from Trump," and then adding, "Late Thursday afternoon, the 11th Circuit's clerk sent a letter to the federal district court in Miami noting that the mandate had taken effect, capping the monthslong legal battle stemming from Trump's request for the special master to vet the records."

That likely prompted a meltdown by the former president who fired off a series of posts on Friday morning.

"WHAT IS GOING ON WITH THE FBI & 'JUSTICE' DEPARTMENT? THEY SEEM TO BE TOTALLY OUT OF CONTROL! THERE IS, RIGHT NOW, A 'WEAPONIZATION' OF JUSTICE THE LIKES OF WHICH OUR COUNTRY HAS NEVER SEEN BEFORE. THE TWITTER AND FACEBOOK SCANDAL HAS ALREADY PROVEN TO BE, WITH THE POSSIBLE EXCEPTION OF SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN,THEIR MOST SINISTER ACT IN HISTORY. EVEN THE RINOS & THE WEAK ARE OPENLY ADMITTING THAT THE 2020 ELECTION WAS RIGGED, BUT IN A DARKER WAY THAN EVER THOUGHT POSSIBLE. SO MANY LIVES DESTROYED!" he began.

He then praised new Twitter owner Elon Musk, writing, "ELON: The Twitter releases are a revelation in that they show, in a very powerful fashion, the FBI and 'Justice' illegally colluding, proving conclusively, in one more very powerful way, that the 2020 Presidential Election was Rigged & Stolen. What everyone is REALLY waiting to see, however, is the Twitter information and thought process leading up to the time of the so-called 'Election,' and ultimately the 'Deplatforming' of the President of the United States. Big moment in history. Thank you!"

What followed was his attack on the DOJ and his demand that he get the disputed documents back immediately.

"Under the Presidential Records Act and the very well established Clinton Socks Case, the raid of Mar-a-Lago by the FBI, and the taking of documents and many other items, was ILLEGAL. Everything should be returned, at once!" he insisted.>

<The San Diego Padres were determined to find a star player to take their money this offseason and they found one late Wednesday night: Xander Bogaerts is heading to America's Finest City on an 11-year, $280 million contract. San Diego made runs at Aaron Judge and Trea Turner earlier this offseason, but were turned down.

Bogaerts is the second homegrown star to leave the Boston Red Sox within the last three years and he joins Mookie Betts in the NL West. The Red Sox at least traded Betts and got something in return, though it wasn't a whole lot given what we know now. For Bogaerts, they'll receive just a compensation draft pick after the fourth round because they exceeded the competitive balance tax threshold in 2022. It isn't much.

The Red Sox were said to be in talks with Bogaerts as recently as Wednesday afternoon, though their offer was nowhere close to what the Padres put on the table. From the Boston Globe:

According to a major league source, the Sox had an offer on the table for six years at roughly $27 million per year, with a slightly higher average annual value than the roughly $25.5 million per year that Bogaerts received from the Padres. Still, even with some belief in Bogaerts' camp that the Sox might raise their offer, the gap in the number of guaranteed seasons was so enormous that the separation between the offers was decisive.

That is an unserious offer. I'm not sure how you could see the contracts Judge (nine years, $360 million) and Turner (11 years, $300 million) received and think six years will get it done. Bogaerts opted out of the final three years and $60 million remaining on his contract to become a free agent and earlier this year the New York Post reported Boston's extension offer was just one additional year and $30 million. Again, an unserious offer. These offers were almost designed to be rejected.

The Red Sox did land Japanese outfielder Masataka Yoshida with a five-year contract Wednesday and they've imported three relievers in recent weeks (Kenley Jansen, Chris Martin, Joely Rodríguez), otherwise the story of their offseason has been "we tried." They were in the mix for several notable players who wound up going elsewhere. To wit:

1B Jose Abreu: The Red Sox reportedly identified Abreu as their top first base target, yet they only offered three years in the "low- to mid-$40 million range," according to the Boston Globe. Abreu received three years and $59.5 million from the Houston Astros.

RHP Zach Eflin: Boston negotiated a three-year deal worth $40 million with Eflin, but he gave his hometown-ish Tampa Bay Rays the opportunity to match and instead signed with Tampa, according to the Boston Globe. Eflin used the Red Sox to get a larger deal from the Rays (!). Woof.

LHP Andrew Heaney: Offered north of $30 million by the Red Sox, according to MassLive.com, but he instead took a two-year deal worth $25 million with the Texas Rangers.

RHP Tommy Kahnle: The Red Sox made Kahnle an offer that "was very close" to the two-year, $11.5 million contract he took to return to the New York Yankees, reports MassLive.com....>

<....The Red Sox at least made competitive offers for Eflin, Heaney, and Kahnle. The Abreu offer and especially the Bogaerts offer were nowhere close to competitive, however. If you make a good offer and lose a free agent to another team, fine, it happens. That's how the hot stove works. But to have it happen again and again, in addition to making your top targets -- Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom said re-signing Bogaerts was his top priority in October -- low-ball offers, suggests there are larger problems.

What those other problems are, I'm not sure. Maybe Bloom & Co. have repeatedly misread the market. Maybe ownership isn't all that committed to winning. Maybe free agents have identified Boston as a place they don't want to play. I don't know what's wrong here, exactly, but it feels like something is out of whack. The Red Sox are one of the sport's marquee franchises and they should be a powerhouse. Instead core players are leaving and free agent targets keep going elsewhere.

Landing Yoshida and various relievers is good progress for a Red Sox team that lost 84 games and finished in last place in baseball's most competitive division this past season. They still have so much more work ahead of them though. They need at least one more starting pitcher (ideally two) and they also need to replace Bogaerts on the middle infield. The still unsigned Carlos Correa is very close to manager Alex Cora from their time with the Astros, but do we expect the Red Sox to make Correa a winning offer in this market given their offseason to date? Maybe it happens, sure. I'll need to see it to believe.

Then there's Rafael Devers, who is a year away from free agency. As of October a large gap existed between his asking price (north of $300 million) and the team's extension offer (around $200 million), according to the New York Post. That gap can be bridged and there's time to bridge it, but Betts is a Dodger and Bogaerts is a Padre. What reason do we have to believe this front office -- this ownership group -- will do what it takes to keep Devers in Boston? They haven't earned the benefit of the doubt.

It's sort of remarkable the Red Sox landed Jansen and Yoshida on Wednesday and still managed to have a bad day because their franchise shortstop agreed to a deal with another team. It was only four years ago that the Red Sox won the World Series and had one of the most enviable cores in the sport. Now just about all those core players are wearing other uniforms while Boston tries to climb out of the AL East cellar. It's been a rough offseason to date for Bloom & Co., and Wednesday was their worst day yet.>

<With a successful prosecution of the Trump Organization in the books, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is giving every indication his office may go after Donald Trump on new charges, according to former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade.

During an appearance on MSNBC's "The Katie Phang Show," the former prosecutor said the successful prosecution of the former president's signature company that led to guilty verdicts on 17 felony charges may open the door to more investigations and criminal charges now that Trump's company has been on the receiving end of a major court loss.

According to host Phang and McQuade, Bragg all but announced more charges in his comments about the recent guilty verdicts.

"Let's talk about the Trump Organization -- found guilty by all 17 counts. he was disappointed but will appeal but he always says that, blah, blah, blah," Phang explained. "Alvin Bragg says his investigation it's still ongoing and he sees the Trump Organization case, quote, 'one chapter in the book for what his team is working on.' What does this conviction of the Trump Organization, the company itself, say to you?"

"I think it says that Donald Trump is not impervious to prosecution and he once famously said he could stand in the middle of 5th Ave. and shoot someone and it and it won't make a difference. I think that this shows that that is not true, that there is accountability even for Donald Trump," the legal analyst replied.

"Although this was his organization, not him individually as a defendant, there was evidence that Donald Trump himself was involved in writing checks and approving the memos that were involved in this tax scheme," she elaborated. "Donald Trump sanctioned tax fraud -- that is what the evidence showed."

"It was interesting to hear Alvin Bragg say that," she suggested. "It sounds like he is feeling emboldened to take the next step and see whether or not they can prove other kinds of business fraud, including charges against Donald Trump himself.">

<What should a political party do when one of their elected members to Congress is making comments that sound awfully traitorous? That’s the question the Republican Party should be grappling with right now in the aftermath of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia saying this weekend that, if she had organized the January 6, 2021, riots, the insurrectionists would have won.

“I gotta tell you something: If Steve Bannon and I had organized that, we would have won,” she reportedly told the New York Young Republican Club. “Not to mention, it would have been armed.”

It’s hard to overstate how offensive and scary this is. In a statement to CNN on Monday, Greene said she was being sarcastic and, as she has done previously, denied any involvement in the January 6 riot.

“My comments were making fun of Joe Biden and the Democrats, who have continuously made me a political target since January 6th,” she said.

Her statement is nonsensical to the point that one has to wonder whether Greene knows what the word “sarcastic” means. Her comments were not making fun of Biden or the Democrats; they were making a mockery of the country.

The January 6 insurrection was an attempt to violently overthrow the government and overturn the results of a free and fair American election. Close to 1,000 of the participants have since been indicted, and many have been convicted of serious crimes. Four people died that day, and five officers died in the days and weeks that followed, while more than 100 law enforcement officers were injured.

Members of Congress — Greene’s colleagues — wound up running for their lives, hiding from the mobbing criminals who broke into the Capitol and explicitly threatened the lives of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and then-Vice President Mike Pence.

It’s time for Greene to go.

Removing a member of Congress from office is not a decision that a party should take lightly. She was, after all, duly elected by her constituents. But a requirement of serving in elected office is defending the Constitution of the United States.

In a few weeks, Greene will even lay her hand on a Bible and pledge to “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.”

How can she truly swear that oath when she is cheering on domestic enemies?

This is not the first time the United States has been forced to grapple with enemies from within. Tellingly, some of the January 6 rioters flew not just the US flag but also the traitorous Confederate banner — the flag of earlier enemies of the nation, who were, thankfully, defeated. No right-thinking person should want another bloody war that splits this country apart. But unfortunately, too many people on the political right want just that....>

<....At the same Young Republican gala where Greene spoke, the group’s president, Gavin Wax, reportedly told the audience, “We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets.”

He then added, “This is the only language the left understands. The language of pure and unadulterated power.”

This is truly terrifying stuff. It’s one thing to wage war at the ballot box, but quite another to encourage battle “in the streets.” This kind of rhetoric, coupled with Greene’s comments, is especially troubling considering that some members of the January 6 crowd were indeed armed and dangerous. As devastating as that day was, it could have been far, far worse.

That a Republican member of Congress suggests that she not only wanted that insurrection to be more violent, but she believes that the insurrectionists should have won — should have overturned an election by force — demonstrates just how dangerous and deranged some members of the GOP have become.

It’s up to the party now to get its act together. Republicans have long flirted with right-wing extremism, and former President Donald Trump opened up the floodgates, helping to reshape a portion of the GOP into a party of conspiracy theorists, racists, antisemites, gun nuts and election deniers.

Many members of the party, at best, held their noses and, at worst, embraced these deplorables because the election wins were coming in. But now they’re reaping what they sowed: a party that, up to the highest levels, is populated by people who put power over country —- and who are now straightforwardly saying that they wouldn’t just be happy to see American democracy burn, they’d be on the front lines.

This is not a matter of simple political disagreement, such as a debate over appropriate taxation rates or how best to structure our immigration laws. It’s not even a deep divide in values and morals, such as whether abortion should be legal or how to balance anti-discrimination laws with religious freedoms. This is the kind of fundamental question that transcends partisanship. It’s one of fidelity to the nation itself, and to the once-radical idea of America as a representative and pluralistic democracy.

Greene’s comments are among the most anti-American ever uttered by an elected official in my lifetime. They are nothing less than someone happy to foment insurrection and undermine this country’s most basic democratic traditions in an effort to install the losing candidate just because she shares his ideology.

They are the words of a woman who will, on January 3, be lying when she places her hand on a Bible and swears that she is loyal to the Constitution.

If the Republican Party has any shred of dignity left, and any vanishing claim to patriotism and devotion to the United States, it needs to act and make Greene the pariah any enemy of the state should be.>

<Every poster on this website is weaker than Anand, including the narcissistic perfidious.>

< That certainly makes you an orange haired hypocrite.

Piss off free loader. Had you bothered to open the link, you'd notice the contrasting hairstyles.>

<The Boston Red Sox continue to neglect both the roster and one of the game's most engaged fan bases by doing not much of genuine importance this offseason. This lack of investment on the part of the team's high command continues a trend that dates back to at least the early 2020 trade that sent homegrown superstar and possible future Hall of Famer Mookie Betts to the Dodgers – a trade that thus far from the Boston standpoint looks like a disaster on a generational scale.

That was prelude to the departure of homegrown superstar No. 2 Xander Bogaerts, who earlier this offseason inked a $280 million pact with the Padres. Reportedly, the Red Sox in their discussions with Bogaerts wound up roughly $100 million shy of the Padres' final figure. In no sense of the term is that a competitive offer. Understandably, the fearful attention of Red Sox fans is now on third baseman Rafael Devers, one of the best young hitters in franchise history who's slated for free agency following the 2023 season. Boston has vast resources and can afford to sign any player they choose, but the commitment from ownership seems to be woefully lacking. The suspicion is that such a lack of desire on the part of ownership and the frankly ham-fisted way the front office has gone about engaging Betts and Bogaerts will lead to Devers' departure. As backdrop to all of this is the Red Sox's failure to sign most of their (quite modest) winter targets. They had designs on Jose Abreu, Zach Eflin, Andrew Heaney, and Tommy Kahnle but lost out on each and every one of them. The front office, however, did go to the trouble of leaking "we lost" stories about those mostly C-tier free agents.

On Tuesday at the introductory press conference of new Red Sox closer Kenley Jansen, team president and CEO Sam Kennedy was asked about the recent lack of effort on the part of ownership and the front office, and his answers ranged from inscrutable to "suggestive of an alternate reality." Chris Cotillo of MassLive.com has them all, but a couple bear highlighting. Regarding the loss of Bogaerts, Kennedy said:

"I try not to look back. You can really harm yourself and harm your plan and harm decision-making if you get too caught up in regrets in the past or any type of fear of the future. I don't engage in any of those two activities. I don't focus on regrets of the past and I don't worry about the things I can't control in the future. What we're trying to do in the moment is make the right decisions for the Boston Red Sox. That's the job. It comes with painful, difficult decisions along the way."

This is basically a deflection couched in the parlance of the life coach, which means it amounts to a non-answer. As for how the loss of Bogaerts will inform the team's approach to re-signing Devers, Kennedy had this to say:

"We'll keep doing what I said we're going to do, which is making the right decisions."

This is basically a deflection couched in the parlance of the delusionist. Obviously, it's foolish to expect candor from C-suite types, but the lack of accountability on display does not suggest much is going to change in Boston, at least right away.

Yes, the bar for making the postseason is lower than it's ever been, and the more balanced schedule of 2023 and beyond means that the Red Sox may not take as many intra-divisional lumps in the tough AL East. However, the larger reality is that this was a non-competitive Boston roster in 2022, and Chaim Bloom and team owners have methodically made it worse this offseason. >

This front office's decisions are a f***ing joke.

<Although House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) has publicly remained confident about his chances of becoming the next Speaker of the Republican-led House of Representatives, he struck a more worried note during an interview with right-wing talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Friday.

As relayed by CNN's Manu Raju, McCarthy acknowledged that he hasn't been able to persuade the five Republicans who have vowed to block his long-sought speakership bid to change their minds.

"Well, we’re still continuing to talk, but they have not moved," he said.

McCarthy then outlined the serious consequences for House Republicans should they get themselves into a protracted leadership battle.

"It would delay everything, getting committees up and running, being able to do the things that... need to get done," McCarthy said.

He also said it would damage public trust if Republicans spent the first weeks of their new majority slinging nonstop mud at one another.

"People look at us and believe, 'Are you ready to be the majority if this is what’s happening?'" he said. "How can you pass the big bills? How can you change the course of history? How can you secure the border? How can you become energy independent?... It’s all in jeopardy."

Even though McCarthy has gone out of his way to get the support of even far-right lawmakers in his party, such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), he still has a hardcore group refusing to support him, including Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ).>

<Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Texas, falsely accused Rep. Katie Porter, D-Calif., of saying that "pedophilia isn't a crime" when Porter actually said that LGBTQ people have been wrongly branded on social media as "groomers" and "pedophiles."

Porter was speaking with Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, about the group's latest report, which analyzed "the 500 most viewed, most influential tweets that identified LGBTQ people as so-called 'groomers.'"

"The 'groomer' narrative is an age-old lie to position LGBTQ+ people as a threat to kids," Porter said. "And what it does is deny them access to public spaces, it stokes fear, and can even stoke violence."

She went on to ask why Twitter allows posts calling LGBTQ+ people "groomers" according to its own hateful content policy to which Robinson responded that while Twitter and Facebook have community guidelines in place, the platforms also need to hold users accountable to those guidelines.

The Human Rights Campaign's report revealed that anti-LGBTQ+ content was largely driven by a small group of extremist politicians and their allies.

"OK groomer" back on Twitter: Anti-LGBTQ hate gets even uglier after Colorado Springs Just ten people drove 66% of impressions for the 500 most viewed hateful "grooming" tweets — including Gov. Ron DeSantis's press secretary Christina Pushaw, extremist members of Congress like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and pro-Trump activists like "Libs of TikTok" founder Chaya Raichik.

The report found that posts from the 10 people alone reached more than 48 million views, and the top 500 most influential "grooming" tweets altogether were seen 72 million times.

"[T]his allegation of 'groomer' and of 'pedophile,' it is alleging that a person is criminal somehow, and engaged in criminal acts, merely because of their identity, their sexual orientation, their gender identity," Porter said. "So this is clearly prohibited under Twitter's content. Yet you found hundreds of these posts on the platform."

She did not say that pedophilia isn't a crime, but the congresswoman's remarks were inaccurately portrayed in tweets by Jackson and Libs of TikTok.

"Rep Katie Porter (D) says pedophilia isn't a crime – it's an identity," the account falsely tweeted alongside a video, which omitted Porter's full comments.

A context box appeared below the false tweet with Twitter's Community Notes identifying that the clip had been taken out of context and misrepresented what Porter actually said.

Jackson further amplified the falsehood and tweeted: "Katie Porter just said that pedophilia isn't a crime, she said it's an 'identity.' THIS IS THE EMBODIMENT OF EVIL! The sad thing is that this woman isn't the only VILE person pushing for pedophilia normalization. This is what progressives believe!"

Twitter's content box also appeared under his tweet, stating that "Katie Porter did not say this."

The purpose of the hearing was to listen to survivors of the Club Q Shooting and activists testifying on anti-LGBTQ violence, who said that hateful right-wing rhetoric was a contributing factor to the shooting.

"For years, cynical politicians and greedy grifters have joined forces with right-wing extremists to pour gasoline on anti-LGBTQ hysteria and terrorize our community," said Brandon Wolf, who survived the 2016 shooting at Orlando's Pulse nightclub. "My own governor Ron DeSantis, has trafficked in that bigotry to feed his insatiable political ambition and propel himself toward the White House. we have been smeared and defamed. Hundreds of bills have been filed in order to erase us. Powerful figures have insisted that the greatest threats this country face are a teacher with they/them pronouns or someone in a wig reading Red Fish, Blue Fish and all along we warned that these short-sighted political maneuvers would come with a human cost, but they have continued anyway.">

< Mr. So made the same pawn mistake on both sides of the board that blew up any chance of drawing the game. It's spelled out clear as day in the game notes. That makes nok chess stupid not to see that; nok did not bother trying to see it because nok couldn't give a damn about chess. nok just picks bones w/his vulture pals.

This is the garbage we keep getting when CGs administrator ignores the problem children making nothing but useless trash posts. Clean-up was needed Dec 15 but the stalker was ignored as is too often the case. Now the useless Troll will waste away the weekend here and there and everywhere without contributing anything worthwhile.

It couldn't be more clear who contributes worthwhile information here and who does not.>

From elsewhere, another example:

<Instead of voraciously playing politics, that's something that an editor could work on to improve the website.>

Sez he who injects <his> politics onto game pages, time and again, in contradistinction to making more than the occasional flyby over the Rogovian miasma; guess the going gets a little too hot by his lights when he cannot forcibly impose his ideas on others.

Tough turkey, <fredthebore>: try as you might, you will never be allowed on this page.

Capisce, <kudzu, spawn of satan>?

<<fredthebore: <jn> Has this site become so toxic that we've lost a large number of members for good?>

YES>

With you being a major contributor.

Yo, <fredthebore>: recall your unwarranted criticism which consisted of what you deemed 'lazy and rather effortless' analysis? The excerpt above fits your description to perfection.

<FTB Remembers...
Texas billionaire businessman Mr. Ross Perot was sooo right. "That giant sucking sound" was American jobs leaving the states for cheaper labor in foreign countries. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was terrible for the United States of America. Lots of small factories that used to be in small American towns that gladly supplied local labor in a dependent partnership, took advantage of NAFTA, packed up and left the country leaving small town workers high and dry. There goes the local economy. If people can't work, they don't have money to spend, and shops close up without retail sales.

"Globalism" is the main foreign policy approach of the Democrat [sic] Party today, putting America second to aid the world's economy, yet the world's economy has gone into the crapper for decades now. Why would we essentially put the needs of other countries ahead of America? A healthy American economy aides [sic] the world; an unhealthy economy certainly does not.

Clinton and Bush Sr. both supported the NAFTA disaster. (Bush did not have an economic plan, so he signed on to Clinton's plan and got beat for re-election, losing votes to third-party Independent candidate businessman Ross Perot who said NAFTA was bad, Bad, BAD! Yes, NAFTA helped to usher in the era of Slick Willie, even though his numerous sexual misdeeds, ill-gotten financial gains, and outright lies were well known before his first election. 12-year mistress Gennifer Flowers was well-known at the time, but voters went with a fresh politician anyway, and continue to do so in the new millennium.)

Politicians from both major parties wanted to be able to take credit for doing something. Sometimes it's better to do nothing than something (that is wrong), especially when it comes to the federal government. (I say leave the free market alone and it will adjust via supply and demand because motivated entrepreneurs want to make a dollar again and again.) The more the federal government takes on, the more they screw up. The federal government is not about doing what's right or best for the American people, it's about lying to stay in power and get rich off wasteful, lavish government spending, excessive government contracts way over cost, kickbacks and political favors.

Perhaps little is worse than our bloated Veteran's [sic] Administration, a red tape bureaucracy that kills off our soldiers who served faithfully while they wait days, weeks, months for medical care that was promised to them. People think they want the government to take charge of our health care via Obamacare? No, HELL NO! Government operated health care will be a clusterflub of gigantic proportions and we'll loose [sic] our privacy once our health records are stored in government data bases, only to be leaked at a later date. Government leaks of all kinds of material have become the norm during the Obama administration; the feds cannot control themselves. The less the federal government operates, the better... especially matters the private sector can address through free competition in the marketplace. Citizens of the United States already have the best health care in the world. Why let the government ruin that? Because the Democrat [sic] party wants complete control of the people's choices, and taking over health care is one sure way to do that. If government can run health care, government can then run the people any which way it wishes....>

<....Moscow fell on even worse economic times in the 1980s and 1990s. Communism is forced labor, not motivating, very unproductive. Communism controls the choices of it's [sic] people. They are not free to choose. The government chooses for them. Sound familiar? (Fredthebear showed mercy to the Chekhover variation in this collection because it usually entails a Bb5 pin.)

Along came American government watchdog Ron Paul. The misleading mainstream media does not like Mr. Paul because he speaks his mind. Mr. Paul refuses to support American wars and be politically correct so he's given little publicity; not many people are exposed to Ron Paul's message. His warnings are crystal clear about the downward spiral America is headed and how our reckless FEDERAL GOVERNMENT IS THE PROBLEM -- adding to the crisis instead of resolving it. Perhaps his son, Kentucky Senator Rand Paul, a true freedom fighter for personal rights and responsible government spending, will be elected president one day.

Although most of America does not listen, in large part because the complicit national media propaganda deliberately screens out those who speak out against the liberal socialist "progressive" agenda of bigger government, open (non-existent) borders, higher taxes-spending-restrictions and lower, deviant social morays, we thank you Mr. Perot and Mr. Paul for trying to do what is best for America. We should have listened to your warnings.

This has been the Rossolimo Attack on harmful federal government regulatory oversight -- stripping individuals and states of the freedom to choose as the federal government chooses for them -- and outrageously reckless, wasteful spending for $21 TRILLION dollars of national debt?!?!? Why do American voters allow the federal government to be this shamefully glutinous [sic] and blatantly irresponsible -- spending money we do not have, money we cannot pay back?!? Why is the red tape neglect of the Veterans Administration killing more of our soldiers than enemy combatants do?!?!?

I say protect the border because it's a border (Do you close the doors to your home or is it an open house free-for-all?), dump NAFTA and bring our jobs back home! The Canal Attack takes place along the southern Texas, Arizona and California borders. Don't ask about New Mexico.

* Sometimes we even go to the site owner's forum if we really want to get people involved who have the actual power to make site-wide decisions on topics of wider import: chessgames.com chessforum