I sat in on Bret Baier's Fox News Sunday interview with Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) for Sunday School. Most of the time, the two circled around each other, with Coons wanting to talk about January 6ht and Baier doing everything he could to avoid it.
Baier was interested in talking about security for Supreme Court justices, particularly whether protestors outside justices' homes should be arrested, under a title in the federal code. Coons, who co-sponsored a bill to address the issue, didn't say yes or no, but he did say
we need to make sure that all appropriate actions are being taken to ensure the safety of members of our federal judiciary, including Supreme Court justices.
Here's what happened next.
Baier: Okay, so don't arrest the protesters based on the title, I got it. That's what you're saying. The president this --
Coons: Bret, let's be clear. I didn't say don't arrest protesters. I'm simply saying that all appropriate action should be taken to ensure the safety of the Supreme Court justices. And I'm not going to say this protester or that protester ought to be arrested. I just think that that's a judgment call to be made by law enforcement, not by a senator on a Sunday show.
Boy, I miss Chris Wallace - how about you?
For your Extra Credit I sat in on two of Dana Bash's interviews on CNN. The first was with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a member of the January 6th Committee. When asked if president Trump should be indicted,
Raskin pointed out that "respect by politicians for the independence of the law enforcement function" was one of the things that was "crushed" during the Trump years, and he wasn't going to participate in that. He also noted that Merrick Garland is a constituent, and
I don't browbeat my constituents. I think that he knows, his staff knows, the US attorneys know what's at stake here. They know the importance of it. But I think they're rightfully paying close attention to precedent and history, as well as the facts of this case.
The other interview was with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Ortiz (D-NY). Bash noted AOC's support of State Sen. Alessandra Biaggi against Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Many folks think that's a bad idea, including President Obama's campaign manager, Jim Messina, who said "if we lost the House, it's because of dumb stuff like this."
AOC's response to that criticism?
when we are able to elect representatives that excite the Democratic base, that excite young people, that excite a multiclass, multiracial coalition, then that puts us in an even better position to win in November. I think, right now, there are a lot of voters at home that have quite a bit of anxiety about the enthusiasm right now in terms of turnout for the Democratic Party. And I think one of the best things that we can do is elect people with a proven record of being able to excite a base and turn it out.
If, as seems likely, the Ds lose the House in November, people might want to remember this interview.
Baier's interview with Sen. Coons prompted an item in last week's Wondering on Wednesday. The folks at Fox are not only concerned about SCOTUS security, they're also focusing outrage on media coverage of the assassination plot against Justice Kavanaugh, and how different they insist it would have been if one of the liberal justices had been targeted.
That got me wondering how the network covered the 'workup' on Justice Sonia Sotomayor the FBI found when investigating Roy Den Hollander, the man who killed the son of a federal judge in New Jersey a while back in 2020.
Would you be surprised that I found only one article about that threat, which is the same number of articles as there were about Justice Sotomayor's children's book, and about her mangled pronunciation of the vice president's name? You shouldn't be.
I reposted a Sidebar from 2017 as a #tbt post. Coming after Rep. Steve Scalise was shot at the baseball practice, the post focused on how words matter - except, of course, when they don't.
This hand-wringing about the words we use and how we use them, would not be occurring to this degree had the gunman not targeted members of Congress. It does not occur, as I noted in my post, when extreme words about abortion lead to murder.
I gave several other examples of where hands were not wrung. It seems we care, deeply, about the words people use, when we care deeply about whatever it is we're talking about. Otherwise? Not so much.
Thursday was the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in; I took the opportunity to point out the many similarities between that scandal and Trump's current scandal. For example,
- Nixon's secretary, Rosemary Woods, destroyed White House documents; Donald Trump has allegedly destroyed White House documents.
- Nixon had the 'plumbers'; Trump was full of crap with his ideas of a stolen election.
- Nixon was overwhelmingly re-elected after the scandal; Trump continues to maintain that he overwhelmingly won an election he overwhelmingly lost.
There were several more in the post.
I struggled a bit with some of the good week/bad week list-making in the TGIF entry. A story about John Hinckley and redemption was one; here's another.
The EU "gave its blessing" for Ukraine to become a candidate to join it. That's just the first step - becoming a member can take years, as the article pointed out - and there's no guarantee.
...there are 35 "chapters of the acquis" setting out standards to meet in areas from judicial policy and financial services to food safety...talks have been stalled for years with Turkey, a candidate since 1999.
If nothing else, it's a symbolic step for the Ukrainians, still caught in the very ugly war with Russia, but it's hard not wondering how much of a Ukraine will be left to try and meet the onerous requirements. Does that make this news, like the Hinckley story, a candidate for both lists?
What list did you end up on last week? Drop a comment or a message if you want.
I'll be back later.
