Will Bunch/Philadelphia Inquirer:
Break up the Secret Service and send its people to jail for the Jan. 6 cover-up
The Secret Service's missing Jan. 6 texts must be really bad, because agency higher-ups look to have committed a criminal cover-up to hide them.
Look, I know it’s now past the point of cliché to keep comparing the momentum-gaining Jan 6 investigation in the House to the 1972-74 Watergate scandal that started 50 long years ago. But as a teen Watergate geek watching today’s crisis just as intensely, there is a highly Nixonian feel to the bombshell disclosure of what looks to all the world — despite the agency’s protestations — like a massive cover-up. Both scandals started with felonies in plain sight — a campaign bugging operation, an attempted coup — but also provided a key to opening up the much deeper rot infesting the American government.
Without even knowing the content of the text messages that were destroyed, blamed on a technology-transfer snafu — under pressure from the House investigators, the agency has found a grand total of one communication from those two days — I’m here to tell you that the Secret Service scandal matters, a lot.
Jamelle Bouie/NY Times:
There’s a Reason Trump Could Try to Overturn the Results of the 2020 Election
Even with the provisions of this bill in place, the Electoral College provides any number of opportunities for mischief.
The fact that an entire national election can turn on a few thousand votes in a handful of states is a powerful incentive to restrict the votes of your opponents and meddle with the process all the way down to the precinct level. The fact that the loser of the national popular vote can become the winner of a national election is an additional incentive to subvert the voting process and impede access to the ballot box. And the fact that a legislature could, before the election itself, simply allocate electors to the candidate of its choice without any input from the public is an ongoing and ever-present threat to electoral democracy.
David Weigel/WaPo:
On the campaign trail, many Republicans talk of violence
In both swing states and safe seats, GOP candidates say that liberals hate them personally and may turn rioters or a police state on people who disobey them
On Tuesday, [Michael] Peroutka easily dispatched a more moderate Republican to win the nomination. State Del. Dan Cox, who won Donald Trump’s endorsement after supporting the former president’s effort to subvert the 2020 election, also dispatched a Republican endorsed by the state’s popular governor, Larry Hogan.
Both candidates described a country that was not merely in trouble, but being destroyed by leaders who despise most Americans — effectively part of a civil war. In both swing states and safe seats, many Republicans say that liberals hate them personally and may turn rioters or a police state on people who disobey them.
Referring to the coronavirus and 2020 protests over police brutality, Cox told supporters at a rally last month, “We were told 14 days to bend the curve, and yet antifa was allowed to burn our police cars in the streets.” He continued: “Do you really think, with what we’re seeing — with the riots that have happened — that we should not have something to defend our families with? This is why we have the Second Amendment.”
AP:
Thursday's Jan. 6 hearing draws over 17 million viewers
An estimated 17.7 million viewers watched Thursday night's hearing of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.
The Nielsen Company said that is second to the 20 million who saw the first committee hearing on June 9, the only other one of the eight sessions held in prime time.
Ten networks aired this past week's hearing live, down from the 11 that showed the June 9 session. The conservative network Newsmax dropped out this time.
…
Timothy Snyder/Twitter:
Putin's rule is weakening.
We now regularly hear now from people aside from Putin (for example former prime minister and president Dmitri Medvedev) about the meaning of the war, the catastrophic consequences that await Ukraine and the West, and so forth. This is a sign that Putin is losing control. 1/
Usually the news coverage of such pronouncements focuses on their content. It is tempting to get caught up in the Russian fear propaganda. But the real story is that people aside from Putin now feel authorized to make such proclamations. Before the war there was less of this 2/
The doom propaganda serves a couple of purposes. On the surface, it shows loyalty to Putin. At a time when Russia is losing, the best hope is to convince the West that Russia is somehow unstoppable (which it isn't – like the U.S., its history is littered with defeat in war). 3/
At the same time, the doom propaganda is rhetorical preparation for a power struggle after Putin falls. 4/
NY Times:
After Recent Turmoil, the Race for Texas Governor Is Tightening
A series of tragedies and challenges have soured the mood of Texans and made the governor’s race perhaps the most competitive since the 1990s.
One of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. The revival of a 1920s ban on abortion. The country’s worst episode of migrant death in recent memory. And an electrical grid, which failed during bitter cold, now straining under soaring heat.
The unrelenting succession of death and difficulty facing Texans over the last two months has soured them on the direction of the state, hurting Gov. Greg Abbott and making the race for governor perhaps the most competitive since Democrats last held that office in the 1990s.
Polls have shown a tightening, single-digit contest between Mr. Abbott, the two-term incumbent, and his ubiquitous Democratic challenger, the former congressman Beto O’Rourke. Mr. O’Rourke is now raising more campaign cash than Mr. Abbott — $27.6 million to $24.9 million in the last filing — in a race that is likely to be among the most expensive of 2022.
A surprising column from Sam Ashworth-Hayes/The Spectator (conservative publication):
There’s nothing conservative about climate change
Now, I will admit that 125,000 years ago hippopotamuses, lions, and elephants happily roamed the landscape which would eventually become London. But surely not even the most ardent advocate of a return to a bygone era would recommend reverting to a time before Homo Sapiens managed to make Britain inhabitable by killing off all the irritating megafauna.
The resigned attitude towards climate change won't do for a party that calls itself conservative
Being relaxed about the runway at RAF Brize Norton melting, as it was reported to have done on Monday, is fundamentally unconservative. To love England is to love its weather, as frustrating, changeable, grey, and damp as it can be: if nothing else, it’s a vital habitat for the critically endangered medium-pace swing bowler, unable to survive in the harsh conditions of southern test pitches.
Jamie Dupree/AJC:
After abortion defeat, Democrats in Congress try to play offense
For years, Democrats have been routinely put on the defensive by Republicans over hot-button social issues commonly referred to by the phrase “God, gays and guns.”
But in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling that overturned the Roe v. Wade decision on abortion, Democrats on Capitol Hill have tried to flip that familiar script — and instead be the more aggressive party.
Amid worries that a conservative Supreme Court might overturn other landmark rulings on issues such as same-sex marriage and contraception — something specifically raised by Justice Clarence Thomas — House Democrats decided to force votes on those matters and put GOP lawmakers on the record.
And about time.