Congress

The invasion of Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021 represented the rise and fall of pro-Trump anti-governmental activism in a matter of hours. Its sensational success ensured its immediate collapse as the power of law enforcement came down on its head. Anyone involved must have experienced emotional whiplash. At the time, as millions of us watched on social media, there were smiles, and pranks, and a sense of deranged pageantry. “I can’t believe we’re doing this,” seemed to be the mood, perhaps accompanied in some cases by, “What can we do next?” Soon, many of the participants had an answer as they were booked into extended spells in jail. One year on, the organizations involved in the “Stop the Steal” rally and the subsequent rioting are in pieces.

Cockburn is eagerly anticipating a number of clashes in the 2022 midterm elections in under a year's time. Chief among them is the battle Congresswoman Liz Cheney faces with Trump-backed challenger Harriet Hageman to hold onto Wyoming's sole seat in the House of Representatives. So how is the incumbent presenting herself to her voters? Cheney has sought to bolster her reputation as "the Last Honest Republican in Washington," by periodically challenging former president Donald Trump in TV appearances with NBC, CBS and Fox News's friendlier faces — Bret Baier and freshly departed Sunday host Chris Wallace. But most significantly, she has raised her national profile through her role as vice chair of the January 6 committee, upon which she and Adam Kinzinger are the only two Republicans.

The idea that what happened at the Capitol of January 6 was an “insurrection” was always a ridiculous and malevolent exaggeration. The passage of time has exposed that politically motivated lie and sent the rats scurrying for alternative explanations. Right on cue, we find a hobbyhorse leftist taking to the pages of the Washington Post — Jeff Bezos’s onshore publicity organ for the Democratic Party — to warn us against calling the protest at the Capitol an “insurrection.” The memo to Scribes and Pharisees has gone out. It’s no longer an “insurrection.” It’s been rebaptized a “sinister” act of “vigilantism.

Last night was Liz Cheney’s breakout moment. As Cheney read the various text messages from various Fox News luminaries and Donald Trump Jr. to former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, she milked the moment, lingering over memorable phrases such as "he’s got to condemn this shit ASAP." And yet Sonny boy's plea was ignored. The old man reveled in the feculent mayhem. Once seen as a neoconservative ogress, Cheney has now achieved full redemption, morphing into the darling of the mainstream media for her refusal to dismiss the mob on January 6 as a bunch of tourists who had accidentally strayed into the Capitol. This is Cheney’s High Noon.

Just in time for the holidays, lawmakers will soon approve another increase to the country’s debt limit, perhaps by as much as $2.5 trillion. And like so many of us this time of year, Uncle Sam will continue running up his credit card, spending money on things he can’t afford and often doesn’t really need. That said, there’s little doubt that the coming debt ceiling hike is a necessary (if self-serving) gift from our nation’s capital. After all, legislators from both parties have already authorized trillions in spending, knowing full well the country’s dismal fiscal situation.

The long slog towards government regulation of social media is snaking its way towards reality. The House and Senate hold hearings this week on bills enacting rules on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and YouTube. Many of these proposals revolve around Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a rather innocuous 1996 law protecting online platforms from civil liability for hosting and moderating third-party content. Section 230 includes language praising “the vibrant and competitive free market” existing for the internet and tech companies, without state or federal government rules. It’s all about to change twenty-five years later, with both major parties seeking to get their pound of ideological flesh from Big Tech.

John Eastman, a former member of Donald Trump’s legal team, has just declined, through his attorney, to cooperate with the congressional inquiry into the events of January 6, 2021 at the Capitol. I think he was right to do so, for several reasons. In the first place, the congressional inquiry would be better named a congressional vendetta. Its composition is heavily weighted towards Democrats. The committee includes no “ranking members” of the opposition as the rules stipulate, hence the frequent invocation of the “Star Chamber” in descriptions of the inquiry. It is less an investigation than an inquisition.

Yes, yes, I know Congress has a lot to worry about these days. But have you seen the anime edit videos? Over now to Crazytown's favorite son, Congressman Paul Gosar, who this week found himself on the butt end of a censure hearing. His crime? He had retweeted an anime video that depicted a likeness of himself killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with a sword before also attacking Joe Biden. This was, according to the scrupulously nonpartisan Nancy Pelosi, an "emergency," worthy of a criminal probe, and possibly a threat to the republic as we know it. We're 100 words in and already you may be thinking: what in God's name is wrong with the United States Congress? If so, be assured that this is a perfectly healthy rumination and one you should keep repeating on a near-constant basis.

Few things are inevitable in Congress, but passing massive spending during a time of record deficits is probably one of them. Late Friday night, the House agreed to changes made by their Senate colleagues, sending a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package to President Joe Biden’s desk after months of debate. Despite much palace intrigue and handwringing, our leaders managed to do what they do best: authorize spending a lot more of our money. The vote was mostly along party lines, with a baker’s dozen Republicans crossing the aisle in support of the package — much to the chagrin of their conservative colleagues. With contentious midterms closing in, some Republicans wanted to tout their adeptness at bringing home the bacon to more moderate districts.

For months, Democratic negotiations over Joe Biden’s twin spending bills were stuck in a cycle of infighting that felt it would never end: the unstoppable force of progressive overexcitement up against the immovable object of moderate resistance. That deadlock was finally broken late on Friday night, when the House passed an infrastructure bill worth $550 billion in new spending. The breakthrough came after a head-spinning day on the Hill (a day that progressive congressman Mark Pocan described as a “clusterfuck”).

Tuesday was a very bad night for the Democratic Party. They lost the Virginia governorship and House of Delegates, almost lost the New Jersey governorship, and lost several local school board seats in crucial electoral states such as Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Colorado. Blue states that kept schools closed or mostly shuttered for the duration of the pandemic now play host to legions of angry, fed-up parents. Nationally, Joe Biden’s approval ratings are crashing harder than Hunter Biden after a stint at the Chateau Marmont, and his domestic agenda is stalled in Congress, thanks to two Democratic senators who clearly saw the writing on the wall and the red wave coming: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.

Heavens to Betsy! It seems that Tucker Carlson has gone full truther. Or, if you prefer, disinformer about the tawdry events of January 6, when a motley crew of Trump supporters and Oath Keepers, who often appear to be one and the same, somehow took it into their heads not simply to protest the outcome of the presidential election but to storm the Winter Palace. The trials of the perpetrators are ongoing. A House committee, which includes Liz Cheney as well as Adam Kinzinger, is investigating. And most Republican politicians, at least the ones with their eyes on regaining a congressional majority, are trying to put the episode firmly in the rear-view mirror. Not Tucker.

It seems strange, but just two decades ago the United States government had a balanced budget. Bill Clinton had run for president as a new type of Democrat, calling for an end to the deficits that had so bedeviled George H.W. Bush. Thanks in large part to pressure from Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress, he pulled it off. Clinton trimmed military spending and signed into law a package of tax increases. This cued haunted house noises in the parlors of center-right think tanks, but Biden also approved more conservative-friendly measures like domestic spending cuts and welfare reform. This bipartisan approach, in conjunction with a galloping economy, led to the unthinkable: budget surpluses for four fiscal years in a row.

The United States Congress is divided on pretty much everything these days. But there is one agenda item that traditionally brings lawmakers together: the defense budget. Usually Pentagon funding amounts to a pro-forma love-fest with a result — higher military spending — that is basically baked in. The defense budgeting process is usually like a boring movie, where the conclusion is foreseen about 10 minutes into the flick. Last week, the House of Representatives passed its own version of the National Defense Authorization Act by a resounding 316-113 vote. It's a mammoth 1,362-page bill that piled an additional $25 billion onto what President Joe Biden had submitted in his own $753 billion budget request.

Rep. Matt Gaetz is requesting a meeting with Israel's ambassador to the US, Gilad Erdan, to discuss the alleged extortion plot of the Gaetz family, according to a letter obtained by The Spectator. As previously reported, days before news broke that the FBI was investigating the Florida congressman for sex trafficking allegations, Jake Novak at the Israeli consulate in New York told Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams about the probe. 'I come as a friend to Israel. Supporting the US-Israel relationship is very important to me and to my constituents,' Gaetz writes in the letter. 'Jake Novak is the Broadcast Media Relations Director at Israel's Consulate in New York.