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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Saul Alinsky is my co-pilot.

Han shot first.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

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Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

The house always wins.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

This is a big f—–g deal.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

Mission Accomplished!

This is how realignments happen…

The willow is too close to the house.

This blog will pay for itself.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

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Adam L Silverman

You are here: Home / Archives for Adam L Silverman

Adam L. Silverman is a consulting national security subject matter expert specializing in low intensity warfare (asymmetric, irregular, and unconventional warfare, revolution, insurgency, terrorism), civil affairs, psychological operations, and cultural considerations for strategy and policy.

He routinely provides operational support to a number of US Army, DOD, and other US Government elements. Dr. Silverman holds a doctorate in political science and criminology from the University of Florida, as well as masters' degrees in comparative religion and international security. Full professional bio available here: https://www.balloon-juice.com/adam-silverman-bio/

Adam Silverman has been a Balloon Juice writer since 2015.

AHEM!!!!! The National Security Agency, As Well As Other US Intelligence Agencies, Are Prohibited From Conducting Electronic and Signals Collection Inside the US. But Not In Russia

by Adam L Silverman|  January 18, 20218:36 pm| 187 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Information Warfare, Open Threads, Russia, Silverman on Security

Parler is back online now by routing 100% of its user traffic through servers located within the Russian Federation.

Raise your hand if you understand the very significant impact this has on the ability to surveil and target insurrectionists who organize on Parler.

— Chris Vickery (@VickerySec) January 18, 2021

There are two interesting takeaways here.

The first is that anyone in the US planning further acts of low intensity warfare and political violence in the US on Parler are now going to be much, much, much, much easier for US intelligence to track. Because Parler’s now being hosted in Russia. MORONS!!!

The second is that this supports the theory that Parler was always a Russian data collection, surveillance, misinformation, and disinformation op to begin with. As this detailed Twitter thread, which I’ll excerpt, seems to suggest:

So let’s talk about Parler. Where did it come from? Founder John Matze met his now wife, Alina Mukhutdinova, in May 15, 2016 in Las Vegas. Alina is from Kazan, Russia. She was on a two week road trip “vacation” across the USA with a friend.

— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020

(This sounds a lot like this USA road trip taken by Anna Bogacheva and Aleksandra Krylova in 2014.) https://t.co/xBBwAoqQXl

— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020

John and Alina were married December 2, 2017 in Kazan, Tatarstan, Russia. They were married in a government facility overseen by Alina’s mother, Gulnara Mukhutdinova, a longtime government functionary. Gulnara’s mother was an “Honored Builder of Russia” in Soviet times.

— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020

John and Alina traveled in Russia and in Europe extensively between December and July 2018. They returned to Vegas and launched Parler with Jared Thomson in August 2018. Almost no one joined between August and December 2018; it was in early alpha stages.

— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020

Now let’s talk money. Parler LLC is owned by two member entities: John Matze and NDMASCENDANT LLC. There is no public record of who comprises NDMASCENDANT LLC. It is a Delaware corporation. The company has not raised any traditional VC rounds that we can see.

— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020

However none of this passes the sniff test: any company aiming to challenge firms at Twitter scale needs a massive supply of funds to hire employees competitively and pay for rapidly scalable computing infrastructure.

— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020

Additionally, flooding the zone with shit noise about the company’s ownership would seem to be a way of deflecting attention away from valid questions about that exact question. Who does own it? Where is the money, tech talent and infrastructure coming from? Follow the money.

— Dave Troy (@davetroy) November 13, 2020

Much more at the Twitter thread. It doesn’t mean that The guy with the Russian wife, whose mother in law  who is a long time Russian government functionary, and who can’t provide a straight answer about his funding is getting his funding from Russia, but that is a question that needs to be answered.

Open thread!

AHEM!!!!! The National Security Agency, As Well As Other US Intelligence Agencies, Are Prohibited From Conducting Electronic and Signals Collection Inside the US. But Not In RussiaPost + Comments (187)

You Have Questions, I Have Answers (You Probably Didn’t Want): NSA General Counsel Edition

by Adam L Silverman|  January 17, 20217:49 pm| 212 Comments

This post is in: America, Biden-Harris 2020, Election 2020, Open Threads, Silverman on Security

Several people have asked me about this unpleasant news:

The NSA is ‘moving forward’ to install Michael Ellis, a former GOP operative, as its top lawyer. TRUMP DECISIONS ARE A FUNDAMENTAL THREAT TO US NATIONAL SECURITY. THIS IS A POLITICAL HACK IN A CAREER POSITION WITH 48 HOURS TO GO. https://t.co/1KmRM1U6zn

— Barry R McCaffrey (@mccaffreyr3) January 17, 2021

From The Washington Post:

The National Security Agency is “moving forward” to install Michael Ellis, a former GOP political operative and White House official, as the agency’s top lawyer, the agency said Sunday.

The announcement came a day after acting defense secretary Christopher C. Miller ordered the NSA director, Gen. Paul Nakasone, to immediately place Ellis in position as the agency’s general counsel.

Ellis probably will start work on Tuesday, the day before the Biden administration takes office, said several individuals.

Although Nakasone is not the hiring authority — the decision is made by the Pentagon general counsel — by tradition the NSA director weighs in on the selection.

“Mr. Ellis accepted his final job offer yesterday afternoon,” the NSA said in a statement Sunday. “NSA is moving forward with his employment.”

The Pentagon declined to comment.

Ellis was selected under pressure from the White House, people familiar with the matter said at the time. The move drew criticism from national security legal experts as an attempt to politicize a career position.

The good news for all of you is because I’ve been both a supervisory GS 15 (on civilian mobilization orders under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act of Title IV) who assisted the senior leadership of my program in managing it, as well as being a supervisory contractor pay graded as a GS 15, I have a certain amount of experiential knowledge in how all of this works including Federal hiring, personnel management, and personnel management flexibilities. The bad news for all of you is you’re unlikely to be happy with my answers.

Ellis will most likely begin in-processing at NSA sometime on Tuesday, as it is the first day the government opens after the long holiday weekend. I said likely, because a whole bunch of things could delay it a couple of days. But just because he’s in-processing, does not mean he’s actually going to be doing any actual work. He’ll be filling out a lot of paperwork, getting a new common access card (CAC card), things like that. At major commands, which NSA sort of is because it is led by a dual hatted four star, they usually do the security clearance indoctrinations once a week. This is because they have lots of people rotating in on a regular basis, so they schedule one group session once or twice a week, which then frees up the security officers to do the rest of their jobs the rest of the week. Usually you cannot be scheduled for that indoctrination until after your CAC card is issued. So it is possible, if not likely, that even if he begins to in-process on Tuesday some time, he won’t be able to be read on to the NSA’s TS/SCI immediately. When I in-processed at SOCOM for my senior fellowship at JSOU it took about three week’s to get me indoctrinated because the SSO, who is actually a really good guy, was being a SSO.*

The person in charge of this – the clearance indoctrination and read on – is the Special Security Officer (SSO). They do not have a sense of humor. Nor do they like anyone telling them what to do. I missed out on a supervisory contract position at a three letter agency in 2016 because the SSO demanded that my Top Secret (TS) clearance be renewed, which it did not need to be because my Sensitive Compartmented Information (SCI) clearance, which is the higher of the two, was active. We went ahead and started the renewal for the TS, a new interim TS was issued within 48 hours, which gave me an active interim TS and an active, fully adjudicated SCI. He still refused to allow me to be read on. Now the requirement was that my TS be fully adjudicated. This was contrary to the law and the regulations, but he wouldn’t budge. My TS was renewed in record time, 11 months, but by then the position had to be filled and the prime on the contract found someone less well qualified.** So the SSO will determine when Ellis gets read on. This is NOT if Ellis gets a clearance. He already has one from being the Deputy White House Counsel for National Security. It is solely about getting him indoctrinated and read on to the NSA’s clearance.

So what can be done? Well… GEN Nakasone can play hard ball, delay things on Tuesday until after President-elect Biden is sworn in on Wednesday, which means Chris Miller is no longer illegally serving as the Acting Secretary of Defense, and then just put his foot back down again and refuse to allow Ellis access to the building until the Biden team sorts everything out.

However, I think what is more likely is that Ellis will begin in-processing on Tuesday or some other time this week and then, because this is a Senior Executive Service (SES) career position, and there are questions about how the search was conducted, he’ll simply be reassigned. By reassigned it means he’ll still be an SES, we’ll still be paying his salary, but he’ll be responsible for providing legal advice to the people who restock the snack bar at the NSA building. SESes get reassigned all the time. They could reassign him to a radar intercept station in Alaska and then it is up to him to either accept the transfer or quit. The other option is they just give him nothing to do. Basically he gets an office and that’s it. They just directly bypass him until they can sort out if there were hiring irregularities and then they either are able to remove him or if they can’t they reassign him or freeze him out until he quits in frustration. This turns his hiring into waste, fraud, and abuse, but it is far better than letting one of Devin Nunes proteges serve as the general counsel for the NSA.

What is not going to happen is this:

Never fear General. Monday is a day off so he starts Tuesday 0900 for In processing briefings up at Fanx. Also there is the small matter of actually passing a REAL full spectrum lifestyle/CI polygraph first soooo they should be able to inform him he’s fired at 12:01 Wednesday. https://t.co/jyKEapphfC

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) January 17, 2021

Ellis already had to pass a fill spectrum lifestyle and counterintelligence (CI) investigation and polygraph when he was awarded his clearance to be the Deputy White House Counsel for National Security. Top Secret clearances are currently good for seven years. There is not, despite what people will tell you, an actual expiration date for SCI clearances, but they are functionally good as long as you are read on to an agency’s, department’s, office’s, bureau’s, and/or command’s sensitive compartmented information clearance or for two years. Why two years? Because the Joint Personnel Adjudication System (JPAS) is programmed to drop an individual’s SCI out of the system after 24 months if they are not listed as active in the system. The only clearance related delays you might see here is the SSO not jumping through his or her grommet to expedite Ellis’s indoctrination session.

Short answer: it’s complicated, but Ellis will become a career SES this week. Whether he actually is ever given anything productive to do other than providing legal guidance to the person who restocks the straws next to the soda machine in the NSA snack bar is the real question. I guarantee that the Biden-Harris DOD and Intel transition teams are aware of this as it has been widely reported and have a plan to ensure that if Ellis does indeed start this week, he’ll be quickly sidelined until they can figure out how to either permanently reassign him were he can’t cause problems or they can vacate the hire.

The bigger problem is we don’t know exactly how many other of these Trump loyalists have been burrowed into the career civil service from political appointments. I’ve seen reporting that indicates at least/approximately five over the past six months. And the most disturbing one, other than Ellis, is a senior political appointee at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) was burrowed into a career SES position there. That person was not identified in the reporting, but whomever it is, that person is going to have to be isolated, reassigned, and/or terminated.

Open thread!

* One of the issues is that the SSO shop at SOCOM demanded paperwork they were not legally entitled to in order to process me for indoctrination. This held things up by just long enough to miss the first possible date for me to be indoctrinated. Then they said it would take at least a week to process this paperwork that they were not legally entitled to, which meant the earliest I could be indoctrinated was during the third week after my arrival. What paperwork did they want? Paperwork that disclosed all relationships with foreign military and/or governmental personnel. Which the paperwork I’d already submitted clearly stated, after you check the box that yes you do have a relationship with foreign military and/or governmental personnel if said relationships are the result of your duties for the US government, then they do not have to be fully disclosed with the additional paperwork. There is then a box to check indicating if this was the result of official duties for the US government, which it was, so I checked it and I then explained this in the box provided to do that by narrative answer. I wound up having to fill out the same form 15 times to account for every foreign officer I either taught, supervised, are was assigned with at USAWC, which pretty much ate most of a day. My favorite part of these was “please provide a physical description”. Because someone from Tampa was going to fly out to Nepal or Kuwait or Israel or Germany or New Zealand or Kenya and try to find them based on my description. My Kenyan Army students are both Masai warriors. So I wrote “Traditional Masai features”. I honestly hope they actually looked these people up, because a former student was, by that time, the Director of Pakistan’s ISI, which made him one of the most powerful people in Central and Southeast Asia.

** In retrospect I probably should have hired a national security lawyer ASAP and let them kick the SSO in the butt to get this resolved in my favor, but by the time it because clear that the SSO was going to hold me up no matter what the law and the regs said, let alone what we submitted to him, the government had to have the position filled and the prime had to find someone else. Which was a real shame as the position description looked like it was written off of my CV, I’d actually done this type of work before in a supervisory capacity, and they’d spent over 6 months, at the point that the prime mentioned it to my boss and he said “I’VE GOT THE GUY WHO WROTE THE MANUAL ON THIS!!!!”, trying to find someone to fill it to no avail.

You Have Questions, I Have Answers (You Probably Didn’t Want): NSA General Counsel EditionPost + Comments (212)

Breaking: Alexei Navalny’s Plane Landed Safely In Russia; He Was Immediately Arrested

by Adam L Silverman|  January 17, 20211:37 pm| 126 Comments

This post is in: Foreign Affairs, Open Threads, Russia, Silverman on Security

Here’s Sky News video of the arrival. There’s a much shorter clip of the arrest as the tram reaches the terminal in the first tweet below the YouTube embed.

🇷🇺 — BREAKING: JUST IN: Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was arrested just moments after landing in Moscow. pic.twitter.com/ET9xXdcPpA

— Belaaz (@TheBelaaz) January 17, 2021

A spokesperson for Alexi Navalny says his location is now unknown and Russian authorities are not sharing any information regarding his whereabouts or why he was detained. https://t.co/UubWTR4er2

— Travis Akers (@travisakers) January 17, 2021

When you think what likely awaits Navalny, these are heartbreaking photos. https://t.co/oxBdcpmRVI

— Ben Judah (@b_judah) January 17, 2021

I don’t have much more to add other than he and his family have real courage to continue to fight this fight.

Open thread!

Breaking: Alexei Navalny’s Plane Landed Safely In Russia; He Was Immediately ArrestedPost + Comments (126)

Operation Lollipop: A Preview Of President-Elect Biden’s Vaccination Plan

by Adam L Silverman|  January 14, 202111:02 pm| 170 Comments

This post is in: America, Biden-Harris 2020, Election 2020, Healthcare, Humorous, Open Threads, Silverman on Security

Operation Lollipop: A Preview Of President-Elect Biden's Vaccination Plan

Tonight President-elect Biden announced that he would be announcing his vaccination plan tomorrow. For your convenience, we here at the Balloon Juice bunker have gotten a copy of the plan, codename Operation Lollipop, and it is our distinct honor and privilege to bring it to you now. Full disclosure: contrary to initial reports, Dave Anderson was not injured in obtaining these plans. Several Bothans, however…

Operation Lollipop

  1. Roll up sleeve.
  2. Person administering the vaccine swabs your upper arm.
  3. Fill syringe with vaccine.
  4. Stick needle in arm. (Special sequel instructions for Governor Ron DeStupid in Florida: ensure that needle is attached to the syringe first!)
  5. Push the motherfucking plunger on that syringe! Do it for God, Mom, Apple Pie, the Bald Eagle, and Randolph Scott!
  6. Remove needle from arm!
  7. Apply Band-Aid.
  8. Roll down sleeve.
  9. Observe patient for 15 minutes to ensure no adverse effects. (Special sequel instructions for Governor Ron DeStupid in Florida: these adverse effects may be indistinguishable from the normal behavior of Floriduh! Man, please refer to a medical professional if necessary.)
  10. Provide vaccinated person with their proof of vaccination.
  11. Issue vaccinated person a lollipop.
  12. Repeat 350 million times.
  13. Declare victory, put on aviator sunglasses, peel out in corvette.

Open thread!

Just to be on the safe side, because it is American and it is 2021:

  • Peter Hastings did not write this post, nor did he author President-elect Biden’s vaccination plan, he did write the episode of Mindy and Buttons for Animaniacs Season 1, Episode 6.
  • This is SATIRE!!!!!

Operation Lollipop: A Preview Of President-Elect Biden’s Vaccination PlanPost + Comments (170)

The Only Thing Worse Than a Neo-Confederate Is a Historically Illiterate Neo-Confederate

by Adam L Silverman|  January 9, 202110:52 pm| 195 Comments

This post is in: America, Civil Rights, Crazification Factor, Domestic Politics, domestic terrorists, Open Threads, Politics, Racial Justice, Silverman on Security

The Only Thing Worse Than a Neo-Confederate Is a Historically Illiterate Neo-Confederate 2

Yesterday some dumbass tied a Confederate flag to the doors of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park in New York City. I’ve tried to find a picture of the flag tied to the doors to confirm my suspicion that the moron who did this is a Confederate navy aficionado.

Regardless, the person who did this is also historically illiterate. The only worse thing than a racist, anti-Semitic neo-Confederate is a historically illiterate one. Unfortunately, there were Jewish Americans who supported the Confederacy.

The Only Thing Worse Than a Neo-Confederate Is a Historically Illiterate Neo-Confederate

The most prominent Jewish Confederate was Judah P. Benjamin, who is pictured above. Benjamin, known as both the brains of the Confederacy and the Dark Prince of the Confederacy – the latter was, at the time it was used to refer to him, an anti-Semitic allusion by the Christian Confederates to Benjamin’s being Jewish – served as the Attorney General, Secretary of War, and Secretary of State of the Confederate States of America. That was after he served as a US Senator from Louisiana. Prior to that he was a Louisiana state legislator, a founder of the Illinois Railroad, and the owner of a plantation and 150 slaves until he sold both the plantation and the slaves in 1850. Benjamin also established and ran the Confederacy’s intelligence service, so in addition to everything else he was the Confederacy’s spymaster. After the Confederacy fell he escaped to England and became a Queen’s Coroner.

The Only Thing Worse Than a Neo-Confederate Is a Historically Illiterate Neo-Confederate 1

Another prominent Jewish Confederate was Raphael J. Moses. pictured above. He served in the Army of Northern Virginia as LTG James Longstreet’s Commissary Officer and held the rank of major. It fell to Major Moses to carry out the last order of the Confederacy: to take $40,000 in gold and silver bullion from the Confederate treasury to feed and provision defeated Confederate soldiers returning home from the war. Over a dozen of Moses’s family members also served in the Confederate military and his great grandfathers on both sides had served in the War of Independence. Moses, like Benjamin, was a plantation owner, though in Georgia. It was there that he was the first person to commercially grow peaches in Georgia.

There were, of course, other Jewish Confederates, as well as a small number of plantation and slave owning Jews in both the US south and in the Caribbean, though they were fortunately few in relation to their Christian counterparts. The definitive work on this topic is Eli Farber’s Jews, Slaves, and the Slave Trade: Setting the Record Straight.

America’s original sin of slavery was, unfortunately, interfaith, ecumenical, and non-denominational. And while the Confederate naval jack has largely become a general symbol of racism, hate, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia because these racists are too stupid to know what flag they’re flying, it is important to remember that while most Jewish Americans aren’t proud of our religious forebears unfortunate associations with the Confederacy and slavery, it doesn’t mean that we’re historically illiterate about it either.

We leave the last word to LTG William Tecumseh Sherman!

WhitePeoplePalooza 2020 Has Ended 3

Open thread

The Only Thing Worse Than a Neo-Confederate Is a Historically Illiterate Neo-ConfederatePost + Comments (195)

BOLO: Can You Help The FBI Identify This Domestic Terrorist?

by Adam L Silverman|  January 8, 202110:38 pm| 350 Comments

This post is in: America, An Unexamined Scandal, Crazification Factor, domestic terrorists, Election 2020, Open Threads, Silverman on Security

Do you know this man?

BOLO: Can You Help The FBI Identify This Domestic Terrorist?

Yesterday, some of the extremist insurrectionists that Trump had mobilized to overthrow the US Congress, the Constitution, and the constitutional order, had the goal of taking the Vice President, the Senate and House leadership, and other members of the Senate and the House and their staff hostage to either coerce them by the threat of force or the application of actual force to overthrow the results of the 2020 presidential election and reinstall Trump as president.

I heard at least 3 different rioters at the Capitol say that they hoped to find Vice President Mike Pence and execute him by hanging him from a Capitol Hill tree as a traitor. It was a common line being repeated. Many more were just talking about how the VP should be executed. https://t.co/fxHREouEWF

— Jim Bourg (@jimbourg) January 8, 2021

That’s what this guy was up to:

WOW: Was there a plan to take hostages? This man is carrying police-style zip-tie handcuffs. And mace(?) pic.twitter.com/np3i1pUc6n

— John Scott-Railton (@jsrailton) January 7, 2021

Neck Gaiter pulled way up over his nose to obscure his face and make it hard to identify him? Check. Black Rifle Coffee Company Ball Cap pulled way down to obscure his face and make it hard to identify him? Check. Tennessee Blue Line Flag patch? Check. Punisher skull superimposed on the American Flag patch? Check. Flex cuffs? Check. Micro-compact semi-automatic pistol or small taser? Check. Replacement magazines in the pouches on the left side of his plate carrier? Check. Mace in the pouch on the right side of his plate carrier? Check. Smartphone in the middle of his plate carrier streaming his involvement in the attempt to overthrow the Congress of the United States, the US Constitution, and the constitutional order? Check!

Well Bloomberg’s tech reporter William Turton got him on video at the Grand Hyatt DC with his mask off:

Pretty chill vibe here in this hotel lobby, as Trump supporters decompress from today’s events. All are violating local mask rules, despite multiple massive signs about the mask rule. pic.twitter.com/R98rwGDgaD

— William Turton (@WilliamTurton) January 7, 2021

Here he is sitting in the same spot in the hotel lobby, talking how how "antifa" (I'm guessing he means me) filmed him https://t.co/lzyHtqbpAN

— William Turton (@WilliamTurton) January 9, 2021

Some intrepid folks made stills:

A few more angles pic.twitter.com/bhPnH3yYsE

— Robert Arthur (@jaunte) January 9, 2021

Here he is on video entering the Capitol with the seeming blessing of the Capitol Police:

Here is another photo of the zip-tie guy and the woman he accompanied up the stairs to the rotunda. pic.twitter.com/WTbdsiE4YV

— The Sparrow Project (@sparrowmedia) January 8, 2021

If you know who this domestic terrorist is, the FBI would like to know:

Details:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Washington Field Office is seeking the public’s assistance in identifying individuals who made unlawful entry into the United States Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

 

Submit a Tip:

Anyone with information regarding these individuals, or anyone who witnessed any unlawful violent actions at the Capitol or near the area, is asked to contact the FBI’s Toll-Free Tipline at 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) to verbally report tips. You may also submit any information, photos, or videos that could be relevant online at fbi.gov/USCapitol. You may also contact your local FBI office or the nearest American Embassy or Consulate.

Field Office: Washington D.C.

Submit an anonymous Tip online

Open thread!

BOLO: Can You Help The FBI Identify This Domestic Terrorist?Post + Comments (350)

Speaker Pelosi and Senator McConnell Are Running Out of Time: The President Must Be Impeached Tonight!

by Adam L Silverman|  January 6, 20216:56 pm| 581 Comments

This post is in: America, Crazification Factor, Domestic Politics, domestic terrorists, Election 2020, Impeachment, Open Threads, Politics, Silverman on Security, War

Things are now moving at their own pace. Events are out of the hands of the decision makers. There is a limited amount of time to get things back under control.

Today, at the instigation of President Trump and his enablers in the House and Senate Republican caucuses, Trump’s supporters engaged in an act of violent, extremist, armed insurrection to overthrow the Congress of the United States of America and the Constitution of the United States.

Early this evening Vice President Pence, after being consulted by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff GEN Milley and the unqualified Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller, authorized the mobilization and deployment of the National Guard to respond to the attack on the US government instigated and fomented by President Trump and his enablers! This is an illegal order! Vice President Pence is not in the chain of command, he has no authority to issue any such order, and, as a result, the US military is now operating outside of constitutional and lawful civilian control.

As I type this time is running out for Speaker Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader McConnell to move to both occupy the high ground and to contact in response to the ongoing events. The revolutionary insurrection that President Trump and his Republican enablers in the House, the Senate, elected Republicans at the state level, and conservative news media has created against the United States is ongoing. As such, Trump needs to be immediately impeached in the House and then the Senate must move to convict and remove him. They need to do it before he decides to up the ante, invoke the Insurrection Act, and declare martial law. We can only imagine what he might try to do with the national security emergency powers he would be granted under such a declaration, but there is no longer the actual time, let alone the political space, to wait around and find out.

If Speaker Pelosi and Senator McConnell do not act now, they will not get the chance to act. It is now or never. Despite the wishes of some, there is no time to wish for Vice President Pence and Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment. America as a self governing democratic-republic is in a moment of gravest danger. Speaker Pelosi and Senator McConnell have to lead now lest the danger consume us all. If they don’t, then, as Samuel Adams said:

This meeting can do nothing more to save this country!

Open thread!

Speaker Pelosi and Senator McConnell Are Running Out of Time: The President Must Be Impeached Tonight!Post + Comments (581)

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