By the metrics prosecutors use to gauge cases having to do with the unauthorized removal of documents containing national defense information, no one historical analog seems to have the unique combination of factors that Trump brought to Mar-a-Lago.
Continue reading “What Past Cases Of Mishandling Classified Info Can Tell Us About The Mar-a-Lago Scandal”The Gas Bogey in Nevada
Close elections can come down to highly contingent factors. In Georgia Republicans are suffering the completely predictable results of their own cynical decision to back Herschel Walker’s absurd campaign. But something else may be afoot in Nevada.
This has been a pretty close race all year, with a very thin margin for the incumbent, Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto. But just over the last couple weeks Adam Laxalt has moved into the thinnest of leads. These are very, very small differences. It might be noise. It might be the general ebbing of the summer-long Democratic surge. Maybe Laxalt is just running a strong campaign. But there’s something else I want to point out. Where I live in New York, gas prices have been fairly stable recently. Still highish, but way down off the spring highs.
Continue reading “The Gas Bogey in Nevada”First Docs On Air DeSantis
The Miami Herald has gotten the first state documents from Gov. DeSantis’s migrant shipment operation. You can see its report here. The actual documents are here and here.
I’m going through the documents now. Want to join me? Tell me what you find by email. Two things have jumped out at me so far. One is that the contract seemed to put the state on the line for pretty top dollar to spend on flights. $325,000 to fly 8 people. I don’t book a lot of private jets but isn’t that a lot? The State of Florida paid $615,000 just for the Vineyard flights. So just for 40-some people. That’s a huge amount of money.
And then there’s something else.
Continue reading “First Docs On Air DeSantis”Solving the Problems
In the wake of Herschel Walker firing his political director today, news comes that Russia has fired the commander of its Eastern Military District, Colonel-General Alexander Chaiko, over recent battlefield losses in Ukraine.
This is Your Brain on Fox News
For you researchers, social scientists and humans generally out there, here’s an interesting journal article in Nature which seeks to measure the impact of Fox News on people’s openness to and uptake of vaccinations. You won’t be surprised to learn that watching Fox doesn’t encourage people to get vaccinated. The key finding is this: “Overall, an additional weekly hour of Fox News viewership for the average household accounts for a reduction of 0.35–0.76 weekly full vaccinations per 100 people during May and June 2021.”
I’m not great at evaluating study methodology and the merits of the structure of a study. I’d be curious what others with more expertise on this front make of the methodology. But my read suggests it’s a pretty sophisticated effort, going to fairly great lengths to disaggregate what is just anti-vax conservatives watching Fox News versus Fox having a specific and quantifiable impact. Check it out.
Walker Fires Political Director As Campaign Suffocates From Abortion Scandal
There, that ought to do it.
Continue reading “Walker Fires Political Director As Campaign Suffocates From Abortion Scandal”How To Think About Biden’s ‘Huge Step’ Towards Ending The War On Cannabis
When President Joe Biden unveiled his surprise bundle of marijuana reforms Thursday, it rocked the world of experts who specialize in drug policy.
Continue reading “How To Think About Biden’s ‘Huge Step’ Towards Ending The War On Cannabis”The Keystone in The Arch
There are various stories about how Pennsylvania became the “Keystone State.” The truth seems to be mostly hidden in the mists of time. There are a number of contending theories. But it’s not clear which has the real origin of the label. Most of these center on Pennsylvania’s literal centrality in the early United States. It was the keystone (the top-most stone) in the arch which spanned from the New England to the Southern colonies, the keystone of the union. Or it was the necessary keystone in the process of building sentiment in favor of the federal constitution of 1787. But it’s one of the later stories I want to focus on. In the Jacksonian Era — 1820s through the 1840s — Pennsylvania was often referred to as the “Keystone in the Democratic arch,” the sectional coalition made up of — using the jargon of the age — “the working men of the North and the planters of the South.” Let’s state with some understatement that the described coalition and language is rather dated. But the more I look at the numbers in the final stretch, Pennsylvania is the cornerstone. It remains the Keystone in 2022, albeit for other reasons and with a very different coalition.
Let me walk you through it.
Continue reading “The Keystone in The Arch”DOJ Election Threats Unit Indicts Iowa Man For Threatening To Hang Arizona Official
The Justice Department announced on Thursday night the arrest of an Iowa man who prosecutors allege had sent death threats to an election official in Maricopa County, Arizona.
According to the indictment, 64-year-old Mark A. Rissi of Hiawatha, Iowa, allegedly sent two voicemails to Maricopa County Supervisor Clint Hickman calling for him to be hanged.
“We’re going to hang you,” Rissi allegedly said in a voicemail sent to Hickman in late September 2021. He’d also allegedly called Hickman a “stupid lying Commie” and said that the election official was going to die.
In another voicemail allegedly sent in early December of that year, Rissi allegedly told Hickman: “Do your job” or “you will hang with those [expletive] in the end. We will see to it. Torches and pitchforks. That’s your future, [expletive].” He then accused Hickman of having evidence proving “conspirators” deleted data from the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors computer system, prosecutors allege.
Maricopa County, Arizona’s largest county, was the site of a highly publicized election audit in 2021 after the former president claimed the area was rife with voter fraud.
Hickman serves as chairman of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. Trump reached out to him twice after the election to persuade him to investigate the county further, but Hickman reportedly let the calls go to voicemail.
On Thursday, Hickman said in a statement that Rissi’s voicemails were “chilling”.
“This wasn’t a prank call. This wasn’t protected speech. This was a serious threat to me and my family,” he said.
A Republican and self-proclaimed Trump voter, Hickman has faced a wave of death threats since the election for refusing to fold under pressure from Trump and his allies to find more votes for the former president.
“I’ve received numerous threats over the past two years,” his Thursday statement said. “My colleagues on the Board have as well. The Recorder. And worst of all, county elections staff doing their job honorably are getting calls and emails threatening violence, calling them traitors. It’s despicable.”
Since Trump claimed that he actually won several key districts back in 2020, election officials and poll workers have become targets of death threats from his supporters, prompting state and federal responses to provide extra protections for the group.
Rissi’s case was overseen by the Justice Department’s Election Threats Task Force, a collaborative effort by several divisions within the department and FBI offices across the country to investigate the influx of threats against election officials and poll workers in recent years. The initiative was launched by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco in June 2021.
“I’m grateful to the Department of Justice and the FBI for taking this case seriously and making an arrest,” Hickman said in his statement, “and I’m pleased the U.S. Attorney General has set up a task force to address increased threats of violence to election workers and elected officials.”
Rissi was indicted on two counts of making threatening interstate communications and one count of making a threatening phone call.
Georgia GOP Lt Guv Blames Trump For Roping Republicans Into Herschel Walker Disaster
Georgia Lieutenant Gov. Geoff Duncan (R) thinks a certain former president is to blame for the ever-growing possibility that the GOP loses the Georgia Senate race for Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D-GA) seat thanks to nominee Herschel Walker’s burgeoning scandal over an abortion he paid for.
Continue reading “Georgia GOP Lt Guv Blames Trump For Roping Republicans Into Herschel Walker Disaster”