Joyce Vance

This column is from Joyce Vance, an MSNBC contributor. 

Trump's obstruction of justice criminal referral matters. And prosecutors know it.

People don’t just obstruct justice in a vacuum. They obstruct to conceal other crimes.

Dec. 27, 2022, 2:23 PM CST

By Joyce Vance, MSNBC Opinion Columnist

Joyce White Vance is an MSNBC columnist and NBC News and MSNBC legal analyst. She is a law professor at the University of Alabama School of Law and a former U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Alabama.

After 18 months of work, weeks of anticipation and several days of delays, the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrectionfinally released its massive report on Dec. 22. The pages and pages of evidence, exposition and witness statements offer a very in-depth look at the Capitol violence, and former President Donald Trump’s role in it. The report also highlights a major theme of Trump’s tenure in the White House: obstruction of justice.

While not quite as high-end of a crime as inciting insurrection, obstruction of justice is a key pain point for the justice system. It’s no wonder that Trump allies have been trying for years to dismiss obstruction as too insignificant for prosecutors. That perception must change.

As early as 2018, Trump’s buddies began to undermine the idea that obstruction of justice was a crime. As public allegations against Trump became more serious, Rush Limbaugh famously complainedthat obstruction was just a “process crime,” a cry that others subsequently took up as well. Michael Anton, former spokesman for Trump’s National Security Council, complained about special counsel Robert Mueller’s pursuit of  a “process” crime on Fox News that November.

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Lawyers know that getting the process right is important to winning a case, even if process issues themselves are often viewed annoyances. But Limbaugh was not a prosecutor. And to prosecutors, obstruction of justice is serious business, a matter of substance, not process. The range of potential crimes, and different ways justice can be obstructed, are expansive — for good reason.

Even former President Richard Nixon, for all of his sins, did not want to be accused of obstruction justice. In his famous, “I am not a crook” speech, he contended, “in all my years of public life, I’ve never obstructed justice.”

If people who commit crimes take the subsequent step of trying to cover them up, a series of provisions in the federal criminal code permit prosecutors to indict, under the umbrella of obstruction. There are statutes prohibiting people who buy off witnesses, ship them out of town to keep them from testifying, or harm them. These statutes also address people who tamper with or destroy evidence or try to interfere with an investigation being conducted by the legislative or executive branch. Attempting to obstruct, even if unsuccessful, is a crime.208

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So, the notion that obstruction is, merely, an unimportant “process crime” runs contrary to foundational notions in our legal system. And yet dismissing it in that offhand fashion is very Trumpian. If you cannot legitimately deny something, argue it’s not important.

Special counsel Robert Mueller laid out 10 instances of obstruction by Trump in a 2019 report, at least five of which I believe should have been prosecutable, including Trump firing FBI director James Comey, trying to fire Mueller and trying to ensure his White House counsel lied about trying to fire Mueller. We don’t know why Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice did not proceed against Trump for those allegations, as Mueller had made it clear that once out of office, Trump could be prosecuted. Perhaps Garland and others harbored a misplaced hope that after leaving office, Trump would retreat from public life and democracy would be best served by permitting him to do so. But in hindsight, it’s clear that allowing Trump to get away with obstruction only emboldens him.

Now, the House committee has laid out a clear case for indicting Trump on obstruction charges connected to Jan. 6. His alleged crime, obstructing an official proceeding, fits the publicly known evidence in an eerily precise fashion, almost as though the crime was designed for his conduct. Trump wanted to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s electoral college victory and took a series of steps up to and including demanding that his vice president, Mike Pence, interfere with the proceedings before watching and doing nothing for 187 minutes as the mob he had summoned overran the Capitol and prevented the certification of the vote from taking place. It is, as they say, in the heartland of the crime.

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Obstruction is also part of Trump’s conduct that is under investigation at Mar-a-Lago. Prosecutors are investigating whether Trump may have violated the Espionage Act and mishandled classified documents. That happened after the former president’s office claimed Trump had previously turned over all documents bearing classification markings. Obstruction seems to be a consistent presence in Trumpworld.

Fifth. Fifth. Fifth. Trump allies answered the Jan. 6 committee questions with the same chorus — at least those who showed up pursuant to their subpoenas. When asked about issues like whether they spoke with Trump in the days ahead of the insurrection (Stone), whether they worked for the Justice Department (Clark) and whether they believed in the peaceful transfer of power (Flynn), their non-answers were the same. Everyone has a constitutional right to decline to testify when a truthful answer might incriminate them. But law enforcement investigations shouldn’t end when a witness invokes this right; if anything, it should spur them on to additional investigation.

And evidence is emerging that at least one Jan. 6 witness, Cassidy Hutchinson, was counseled to have a bad memory, groomed to potentially obstruct in ways that wouldn’t be easily recognizable or prosecutable, had she not had a turn of conscience and decided to cooperate. As the committee releases additional transcripts, it is clear that while Hutchinson ultimately decided to come clean, the same may not be true for all witnesses.

People don’t just obstruct justice in a vacuum. They obstruct to conceal other crimes. Here, the possible crimes include inciting to obstruct a congressional proceeding because Donald Trump wanted to stay in power after the voters told him no. That’s not just a “process crime.” And DOJ would do well to take up the mantle the Jan. 6 committee has handed them and hold Trump (and his friends) accountable. 

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Nature's Extremes

Learning to live with them

DAN RATHER AND ELLIOT KIRSCHNER DEC 27 Nature, by its very nature, is unpredictable. This immutable truth has always shaped the tenuous relationship between our species and our environment. We are part of nature and thus are vulnerable to its capriciousness and extremes — droughts, floods, storms, diseases, and attacks from wild beasts. While our modern way of life means most of us are protected from the wild beast part, for all of our technology and science, the other elements of nature remain very much present.  And, let us not dodge the fact that our actions are making many natural extremes worse through climate change.  Winter is a time when the dangers of nature are readily on the mind. We have just witnessed brutal and deadly storms sweep the nation, especially in Western New York. It takes a lot to overwhelm a place like Buffalo. Fierce winter storms are to Buffalo and surrounding areas what hurricanes are to Florida, Texas, and the Gulf Coast: expected. People there are accustomed to extreme winter weather but now are dealing with a blizzard of historic proportions and the tragedy of dozens of deaths and mass dislocation. More snow has arrived, and our thoughts are with those who are suffering. Meanwhile, in the West, the prayers are for more precipitation. The region's years-long drought has led to longer summer fire seasons and fights over how to share dwindling resources like the once mighty Colorado River. A life-giving force to several states, it is now shrinking at a rapid rate, putting agriculture and drinking water for millions of people at risk, not to mention causing widespread damage to ecosystems.  The disruptions of nature can have cascading effects in the short term, too. This holiday week has seen thousands of flight cancellations. These invariably result from a mixture of weather and human fallibility. We try to build systems that anticipate disarray, but sometimes nature’s interference is too severe to overcome, and sometimes we have been too limited in our thinking to anticipate all that could go wrong. Often it is a combination of both.  Just because we don’t want to think about nature’s destructiveness doesn’t make it go away.  Take the deadly COVID pandemic, which has disrupted life around the planet for years. Even as we crave a return to normalcy, the virus rages, still sending people to hospitals and premature deaths. In China, where they bought time with draconian measures, the lack of preparation for what would happen after the lockdowns — like vaccinating the elderly and stockpiling medicines — is leading to a humanitarian disaster. We don’t know how bad it is, because China is not forthcoming. Mass deaths and disease could add more fuel to the social unrest rising in that nation. Back in this country, the politicization around COVID vaccines has metastasized into greater vaccine hesitancy, especially among those who identify as Republican. The Washington Post just ran a disturbing article on the rise in cases of measles and chickenpox as more parents choose not to vaccinate their children. What makes this trend particularly heartbreaking is that vaccines are among humankind’s most successful tools for mitigating nature’s attacks on our health and longevity.  In vaccines, however, we can also find an example of a hopeful path forward. Vaccines use our own immune system by marshaling our natural defenses. This makes them just as much a part of nature as the viruses they protect against. And now, in one of the greatest breakthroughs in our fight against cancer, scientists and doctors are finding ways to harness our own immune systems there as well. We should not think of nature as good or bad. It both gives life and takes it. We can, however, learn from nature to protect ourselves and our planet. We can find ways to deploy the tools of nature to grow crops more efficiently, to protect our water supplies, and to produce energy more cleanly.  We can also find in nature important lessons in humility and a reminder that for all our vaunted wisdom and power to control our environments, we ultimately have our limits. We cannot only build walls, real or symbolic, to keep the ravages of nature at bay. We must build bridges, with each other and with our greater connections with the natural world. In social relationships we can find resilience. We can check in on each other and offer assistance. And by living in greater harmony with nature, we can build a more sustainable and equitable future.  Right now, the effort must be on helping those contending with the dangers nature is throwing at us. But we can also work to understand nature better, through investments in scientific research. And we can find ways to incorporate a healthy respect for nature into our policies at the local, national, and global levels.  Since we are part of nature, there is no other choice. Note: If you are not already a member of the Steady community, please consider subscribing. And we always appreciate you sharing our content with others and leaving your thoughts in the comments. Upgrade to paid Leave a comment Share Original.

COP15

Well, it is SOMETHING, but we should be well on our way by now.

7 reasons our planet might not be doomed after all

Surprise! This environmental story is actually not depressing.

By Benji Jones@BenjiSJones  Updated Dec 20, 2022, 12:38pm EST

Benji Jones is a senior environmental reporter at Vox, covering biodiversity loss and climate change. Before joining Vox, he was a senior energy reporter at Insider. Benji previously worked as a wildlife researcher.

MONTREAL — On a busy street downtown is a life-size ice sculpture of a polar bear. It’s melting, revealing a fearsome-looking bronze skeleton underneath. Designed by artist Mark Coreth, the display is not a decoration but a warning: Climate change is killing wildlife like polar bears, which depend on sea ice.

Gloomy messages like this appeared all over Montreal in the last two weeks, as officials from more than 190 countries met in the city for a conference known as COP15. It’s the UN’s big meeting on biodiversity, where governments hashed out a historic plan to halt the decline of ecosystems. At the venue itself, not far from the melting bear, a 20-foot-tall Jenga tower was meant to signify the risk of ecosystem collapse; pull one block out and the whole tower crumbles. 

These displays are a bit bleak, and they’re rooted in reality. Scientists estimate that around 1 million species are at risk of extinction, some within decades, and populations of major animal groups, including birds and fish, have declined on average by nearly 70 percent in the last half-century. A new study, appearing in the journal Science Advances, found through modeling that the planet could lose as much as 10 percent of its plant and animal species by 2050.

But while it’s hard to ignore the warning signs, there are plenty of reasons to still have hope for our planet’s future — starting with what happened at COP15. In Montreal, I asked roughly a dozen experts, from Western scientists to Indigenous leaders, about what’s inspiring them. 

1) People are finally talking about biodiversity

The term “biodiversity” isn’t perfect. And like much of the jargon in the environmental movement, it tries to encapsulate too much — in this case, the world’s species, the ecosystems they’re a part of, and the diversity of genetic material they contain. 

But more and more, people are talking about this word, and that’s a good thing in itself, said Masha Kalinina, a senior officer for international conservation at the Pew Charitable Trusts. “The fact that we’re having a conversation about the environment as a whole, and not just climate, is a huge success story,” she said.

Delegates are also calling COP15 — which brought together more than 17,000 people and officials from 190 countries — the biggest and most important meeting for biodiversity, ever. “Nature has never been higher on the political or corporate agenda,” Marco Lambertini, director general of WWF International, said at a press conference last month.

One reason is that people are starting to understand that what harms nature also harms humans. 

2) There’s more recognition that what’s good for wildlife is good for us

It can be hard to convince everyone to care about animals like birds, said Amanda Rodewald, senior director of the Center for Avian Population Studies at Cornell’s Laboratory of Ornithology. If that was her objective, she “would not feel particularly optimistic,” she told me. “However, when we look at what needs to be done for birds, it’s the same things we need to be doing for human health and well-being,” she said. 

Restoring wetlands in coastal New York, for example, benefits the threatened saltmarsh sparrow, but it can also minimize the damage to homes and buildings during storms, Rodewald said. Regrowing coral reefs around Miami and the Florida Keys can also protect beach-side towns from severe hurricane impacts. Meanwhile, many scientists point out that protecting forests reduces the risk that zoonotic diseases will spill over into human populations. 

The bottom line: Even people who couldn’t care less about wildlife can be motivated to help restore nature, Rodewald says, because it benefits them. (That’s the idea behind “nature-based solutions,” an increasingly popular buzzword, which often describes how nature can provide solutions to human problems.)

“Our well-being has always been aligned with conservation,” Rodewald said.

3) There are more tools than ever to track plants and animals

The primary goal of COP15 was to get countries that are party to the Convention on Biological Diversity, a UN treaty, to agree to more than 20 environmental targets. But even if they do, they then have to measure success or failure.

One way to do that is to figure out whether the number of animals or plants in a given area is increasing or decreasing over time. And to that end, scientists have developed several newtechnologies to count species, especially over large areas.

Popular among them is a tool called eDNA, or environmental DNA. It allows scientists to detect bits of an animal’s genome in small samples of water, as well as in soil and air. To figure out how wildlife is changing in, say, a pond or river, researchers can now simply collect a small amount of water from one year to the next and analyze it for wildlife DNA — instead of having to physically collect different species across a wide area. 

There are also emerging AI technologies to detect birds, frogs, whales, and other animals simply by listening to sounds in the environment, kind of like Shazam for wildlife. Plus, researchers are increasingly using imaging devices on satellites and in airplanes to monitor how forests are changing over time, such as in areas prone to wildfires and illegal cattle ranching. 

4) Many species and ecosystems are actually recovering 

Most major wildlife stories of the last decade were about animals in decline — 23 species declared extinct in the US, one-fifth of reptiles under threat, big boats killing whale sharks— but there are a number of species that are starting to recover, according to Caleb McClennen, president of the nonprofit group Rare. 

“There are some species that have been declining our whole lifetime and we’re finally hearing that these populations are beginning to come back,” he told me. 

Tigers are a good example, he said. In the last decade or so, India and Nepal have doubled their wild tiger population. River otters have returned to parts of the Midwestern United States. There are some lesser-known species, like the Saint Lucia parrot, that have recovered, too, McClennen said. (The California condor, American alligator, and humpback whales are other examples of species that have recovered to an extent.)

“We don’t emphasize enough that there are success stories out there,” he said. 

Many ecosystems, more broadly, are recovering, too. A report published last week, for example, found that, across 18 countries, 14 million hectares (about 35 million acres) of land, roughly the size of Greece, are being restored. A new website, called Restor, is also building a repository of restoration projects around the world. (One of my favorite examples of restoration is in Florida, where scientists are planting corals to bring back reefs, in part by hacking coral sex.)

5) Financial institutes are paying attention — and understanding that declining ecosystems hurt their investments

Roughly half of the world’s total economic output is dependent on ecosystems and wildlife in some way, according to the World Economic Forum. Insects pollinate commercial crops, wetlands purify water, and natural services like these help drive economic growth. So what happens as nature declines?

That’s a question that major financial institutes are finally asking. With a large presence at COP15, banks, hedge funds, and other investors are beginning to push their companies to measure “nature-based risks” — how, say, the collapse of some insect populations might affect a company that sells insect-pollinated foods.

Meanwhile, governments, private investors, and foundations are funneling more money into conservation than ever before. The EU, for example, said it will put 7 billion euros (about $7.4 billion) toward international biodiversity conservation between 2021 and 2027. Other major economies including Japan and the Netherlands also announced substantial international funding commitments at COP15. 

Nonprofits that work on protecting nature are also attracting more money, as more foundations — such as the Bezos Earth Fund — begin to fund conservation, according to Brian O’Donnell, who leads an advocacy group called the Campaign for Nature. Foundations that haven’t historically funded environmental issues are now “starting to recognize how important biodiversity is,” he said. “We’re seeing huge opportunities in philanthropic support.”

6) Indigenous people and local communities are finally getting the spotlight

A statistic that comes up over and over again at COP15 is that Indigenous people protect 80 percent of the world’s remaining biodiversity. 

It’s a stunning data point that underpins a major shift in the environmental movement. Historically, some Indigenous groups were kicked off of their land by environmentalists who saw nature as a pristine wilderness, absent of human life. Now, however, most environmental advocates acknowledge that Indigenous groups are often the best conservationists — and that nature and people can coexist.

A key agenda item at COP15 was figuring out to what extent Indigenous territories and lands governed by local communities — who have a deep connection to their land — count toward conservation goals. “You have a recognition globally about a new paradigm for conservation,” O’Donnell said. “It’s a partnership between Indigenous peoples, donors, NGOs, and governments. That gives me hope.”

7) More than 190 countries agreed on a landmark deal to help save nature

But perhaps the largest reason for hope is that, in the final days of the COP15 conference, more than 190 countries adopted a global deal to halt the decline of species and ecosystems. It commits them to 23 targets including 30 by 30, a goal to conserve at least 30 percent of the world’s land and oceans within the decade.

he deal, known as the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, also commits rich countries to pay developing nations $30 billion a year by 2030 for conservation — a tripling of existing aid. The funding pledge is part of a broader financing commitment of $200 billion a year by 2030. 

(You can learn more about the landmark deal here.)

The agreement is not legally binding like the Paris climate accord (which seeks to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius). It also leaves out a handful of numeric targets that environmental advocates say are essential for stemming the unprecedented rates of extinction. Yet the deal is still historic, according to Brian O’Donnell, director of the research and advocacy group Campaign for Nature. 

“I am still kind of taking this all in,” O’Donnell, a key force behind the 30 by 30 pledge, told me in Montreal right after the agreement was adopted. “It seemed impossible just a couple of years ago — and now we have a global agreement.”

Update, December 20, 12:30 pm ET: This story was originally published on December 18 and has been updated with details about the global deal reached at COP15.

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"Open Borders" myth

It does sure seem coincidental that whenever Democrats are up for re-election or in the midterms, suddenly there is a surge of migrants at our southern border. Turns out it's not just coincidental. Is there no depth too low for the GOP to stoop?

The Dirty Game Republicans are Playing with Desperate People’s Lives

Who on Earth would want to send thousands of desperate people to our Southern border just in time for every midterm facing a Democratic president? Who would be that crass and cynical?

THOM HARTMANN DEC 20, 2022 Just a month ago we finished President Biden’s first midterm election and, as predictably as the sun rises in the east, right around election time and for the months afterward a wave of refugees and immigrants have shown up at our southern border. This happens every two years when a Democratic President is in office. And finally the US news media seems to be getting a clue as to why. More about that in a moment. Notwithstanding Fox “News” hysteria about a “caravan” of immigrants heading for the border during Obama’s last year as president, in the months leading up to the 2016 election, by that time, as Politico noted: “In fiscal year 2017, the last year of the Obama administration and the first of Trump’s, 303,916 migrants were arrested by the Border Patrol. This was the lowest level in more than three decades.” The last big “surge” was two years earlier, five months before President Obama’s second 2014 midterm elections. You may remember when the southern border was suddenly overwhelmed by an unexpected wave of immigrants and refugees and it was all over the news with apprehensions at 220,000, up from just 96,000 the non-election year before. The crush of people “somebody” had sent to the United States was so intense Obama had to declare it an “urgent humanitarian situation,” thus enabling him to mobilize more resources to block or deal with the seemingly-unending stream of desperate humanity. The same thing happened, mysteriously, during Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign; the severity of the border crisis during that election year led to President Obama taking executive actions that included creating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and an expansion of provisional waivers. Who sent them and why do they so conveniently and predictably arrive just in time for elections (and echo for a few months afterwards)? During Obama’s first midterm election, the fall and winter of 2010, another “sudden wave” of immigrants provoked Arizona to put into law the notorious “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act.”  It famously allowed Arizona police to stop and even arrest people they suspected may look like “illegal immigrants,” and required police to investigate the immigration status of all persons detained. It was so odious that four of its major provisions were declared unconstitutional two years later by fellow Republicans on the US Supreme Court. The wave of immigrants who hit our border in 1998, Bill Clinton’s last midterm election, was so severe that he initiated the Border Safety Initiative (BSI) and cut a joint-cooperation deal with Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo.  Four years earlier, the surge that showed up for the 1994 midterm election caused Clinton to produce and implement the first Border Patrol Strategic Plan. Who on Earth would want to send desperate thousands of people to our Southern border just in time for every midterm facing a Democratic president? Who would be that crass and cynical? ABC host and reporter Martha Raddatz interviewed Texas Governor Greg Abbott last weekend. As if on cue, he insisted the sudden tsunami of immigrants and refugees on his state’s southern border was all Biden’s fault.  But — finally, after decades! — a reporter had heard enough Republican bullshit about immigration and the border. (video at link below) “You talk about the border wall, you talk about open borders,” Raddatz said to Abbott, “but I don’t think I've ever heard President Biden say, ‘we have an open border, come on over.’ “But people I have heard say it are you, are former President Trump, Ron DeSantis; that message reverberates in Mexico and beyond. So they doget the message that it is an ‘open border,’ and smugglers use all those kinds of statements.” Bingo. Whenever there’s a Democrat in the White House, literally hundreds of Republican politicians step up to the microphone or tell their local newspapers and radio stations about how the president has suddenly “opened up America’s southern border!!!” It’s a lie, but they amplify it as hard as they can.  Those news stories and press releases make their way via social media and the internet to desperate people in Venezuela, Central America, and Mexico. Impoverished people there aren’t knowledgeable enough about American politics to see the message for the cynical political ploy it is, so they abandon home and family to begin the dangerous and often deadly trek to the US. Democrats don’t say our borders are open, and, as far as I can tell, never have. In March of 2021 the rightwing Washington Examiner newspaper went on a search for Democrats proclaiming that we’d “opened!” the southern border in the first months of Joe Biden’s presidency. They found nothing. Well, they found that both Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema had called the situation on our southern border “a crisis,” as well as a Democratic congresswoman from Michigan who was merely acknowledging the surge of immigrants. And a single Democratic mayor in Texas who also said it was a crisis. That’s it. But literally hundreds of Republican politicians, just like they do every two years, have spent the past few months proclaiming to every despairing potential refugee south of our border that the door is wide open. Just google “open border” and “congressman,” “congresswoman,” or “senator” and you’ll get a list too long to print. At the top of that list just from the past few months, of course, you’ll find the most contemptible Republican demagogues: — Ted Cruz wants everybody south of our border to know that the “Biden Open Border Policy [is] A Very Craven Political Decision”; — Rick Scott wants everybody to know that “Americans Don’t Want [Biden’s] Open Borders”; — Marco Rubio says there’s “Nothing Compassionate About Biden’s Open Border Policies”; — Rand Paul is so extreme he tells us Senator Rubio “is the one for an open border”; — Josh Hawley says “Biden’s Open Border Policy Has Created a Moral Crisis”; — Tom Cotton “Insists the Border is Wide Open”; — Ron Johnson wants the world to know that “Our National Security is at Risk Because Democrats have Turned Border Security into a Partisan Issue”; — Marjorie Taylor Greene “BLASTS Open Border Hypocrites”; — Mo Brooks opposes “Socialist Democrats’ Open Border Policies for Helping Kill Americans”; — Lauren Boebert says the “Root Cause” of the open border crisis “is in the White House”; — Matt Gaetz “revealed a complex and deceitful agenda by Joe Biden’s Democrat administration to evade our Southern Border law enforcement”; — Gym Jordan says “Biden’s Deliberate Support of Illegal Immigration Could Lead to Impeachment”; — Kevin McCarthy says the Biden Administration has “Utterly Failed” to secure the “open border”; — Elise Stefanik proclaims “Biden’s Open Border Policies have been a Complete Disaster.” — Tom Cole’s website features “Biden’s Open Border America”;   — Bob Goode brags about introducing legislation named the “Close Biden’s Open Border Act”; — John Rose “Calls Out Biden’s Open Border Policies”; — Paul Gosar claims Biden is “Destroying America with His Open Border Policies”; — Roger Williams complains about the “Democrats’ Open Border Problem”; — Tom Cole wants the world to know that Biden’s “open border policies have given the green light to migrants and bad actors from around the world…”; — Gus Bilirakis “Denounces Dangerous Open Border Policies on the House Floor”; The list goes on and on.  Democrats, on the other hand, only want people coming into the country legally and have tried to deal with the issue responsibly. That’s why they don’t shout so loud it can be heard in Venezuela that the US border is “open.” Most, in fact, refuse to even use the phrase, because it’s a naked political lie. Every two years, this misanthropic Republican crew provokes a crisis on America’s southern border because it plays into their narrative that Democrats are encouraging more Brown people — “soon-to-be Democrat voters” they call them on rightwing hate radio — to come to the USA to “replace” good upstanding white people. Lest you think this biennial Republican rhetoric isn’t a cynical political ploy but is, instead, a good-faith effort to identify and fix a problem, look at the vote recently on legislation that would update our immigration system and fund a more effective border patrol. Only five Republicans could bring themselves to say “yes” to doing something about this situation. Republicans are playing a dirty game with people’s lives. Somebody needs to ask these degenerate political SOBs: “What it would take for you to leave your home with all your possessions in a small bag and travel a thousand miles on foot risking rape, robbery, kidnapping, torture, and the murder of yourself and your family members?” There’s not a single Republican in Congress with half the courage of these men, women, and children who have risked everything — including their own lives — to answer the “Open Borders!!!” call the GOP puts out every two years just to score political points against Democratic presidents.  Thank G-d for Martha Raddatz. Hopefully more reporters will start asking Republicans why they hang out the welcome sign every two years and then blame Democrats when desperate people answer their call.

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