Attempted Coup in the United States: Tracking Investigations and Fallout

I don’t imagine the WSJ (which I have no interest in providing a page view) would like my other preferred term either-- a “failed coup attempt.”

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The Associated Press seemed to have forgot that a tool or two might yell out Let’s Go Brandon today

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I can’t see Jeffery Shapiro’s reasoning because WSJ paywall. But WTF? There is no definition of “insurrection” in the US Code. I just searched to double check. It is not a “legal term” like certain legal jargon. There is the statute making it a crime, but not defining the term.

When a term in law is not defined, the first step for lawyers is Black’s Law Dictionary It says insurrection is

A rebellion, or rising of citizens or subjects in resistance to their government. See INSURGENT.Insurrection shall consist in any combined resistance to the lawful authority of the state, with intent to the denial thereof, when the same is manifested, or intended to be manifested, by acts of violence.

The few court cases laying out a definition in jury instructions boil down to that definition.

I think a Trump appointee should keep his mouth shut on the topic of the January 6 insurrection

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The attack on Congress in 1954 by Puerto Rican nationalists lead to convictions for seditious conspiracy in addition to other charges.

That certainly should apply for Jan 6 insurrectionists. Especially the planners.

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Ah, another accurate term.

Ladies and gentlemen, please (don’t) welcome-- The Seditionists!

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Angry Lilo And Stitch GIF

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Historically, Americans have been defenders of democracy and freedom around the world – especially when it's under attack.
This is the same thing Carter said, but it is of course a lie. And it seems like something one might let slide as at least a good aspirational myth, but I think ignoring the truth might be divorcing what's happening from context. Because America has a long history of trampling democracy abroad when business interests prefer fascists, and I don't think it is entirely coincidental that that's what the Republicans are now trying to do at home.
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How is this not a slam dunk and the ex-President and his coconspirators not already facing a judge?

“ per 18 U.S.C. § 2384:

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.”

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  • He claimed that Biden in his earlier speech “used my name” to “try to further divide America.”
  • But Biden didn’t mention Trump’s name once in his speech, instead calling him “the defeated former president.”
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I felt the same when Biden (in his speech) and another D interviewee I heard today talked about how America is a representative democracy and leaders serve the will of the people.
I want us to be that, and often locally we still are, but at state and federal levels…? :grimacing:

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What is being a sociopath?

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I’m not listening to that garbage but seems EmptyG and FlaSexQfender want to re-enact the march on the Capitol. RollingStone is reporting the two ignorant excuses for humans are going to take the “walk”.

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Here’s hoping they have a couple of Apache helicopters in the air this year so that no Capitol Police are in harm’s way.

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“ “Ari Melber is a trial lawyer, right? That is why you gotta get up in his face and refute it. You are trying to give Harvard faculty lounge pivot and ‘reasonable men can disagree.’ No, we are not reasonable men. We are unreasonable. Unreasonable men are men who change history. We are unreasonable. We are not reasonable, this is not some debate.”

They don’t even try to hide it.

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I prefer that to calling them “Sixers.” That’s confusing for people who have used that term for decades to refer to the Philadelphia 76ers. The ones who refer to themselves as Sixers fans shouldn’t have to go around saying, “No, not those Sixers…I meant I want the basketball team to win!” :grimacing:

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“Is it the government’s view that the members of the mob that engaged in the Capitol attack on January 6 were simply trespassers?” Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell asked incredulously in October. “Is general deterrence going to be served by letting rioters who broke into the Capitol, overran the police … broke into the building through windows and doors … resolve their criminal liability through petty offense pleas?”

But for all four defendants Howell has sentenced, she has imposed less jail time than prosecutors sought, saying that government plea deals in most misdemeanor cases are forcing judges to choose whether short jail terms or years of probation pose a stronger deterrent. And her decisions are not unusual, a Washington Post analysis found.

Although the Justice Department has argued generally that higher sentences would deter domestic terrorism, prosecutors so far have not formally asked judges to

Nevertheless, U.S. district judges in Washington have lamented that they are limited by prosecutors’ decisions to let many rioters plead to a “petty offense” of illegally parading inside the Capitol or other misdemeanors, including at least 14 allowed to plead down from felonies. And even among seven felony cases sentenced so far, alongside 67 misdemeanor cases, judges have reduced the government’s proposed sentence in five of them.

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