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Anyone with half a brain and a belief in democracy is now piling on Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) today after Hawley became the first Republican U. S. Senator to sign onto Congressman Mo Brooks’ (R-AL) seditious attempt to challenge the slates of legitimately appointed electors from the swing states won by Joe Biden and replace then with phony slates of electors illicitly named by rogue GOP state legislators in those locales. For Brennan, however, like Hawley’s Democratic colleague Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), the actions of the Missouri lawmaker cross the line from dirty politics and malicious intent to out and out sedition with Hawley’s call for the overturn of a legitimately determined election result. When people like Senator Murphy, John Brennan — and the many others who have loudly condemned the partisan hypocrisy and the skullduggery being attempted by Senator Hawley and his partisan counterpart in the House of Representatives, Congressman Brooks — go apoplectic over something that they consider a huge danger to our democracy, the American people should find it worth their while to pay attention. Unless the shameless and treasonous power grab being attempted by Donald Trump and his GOP allies like Hawley and Brooks is stopped definitively and mercilessly, keeping our democracy may be more difficult than any modern American could have imagined, especially when someone like the Missouri Senator, as one Twitter comment said, serves up sedition with a side of grandstanding.

While stopping short of using that legal term for conspiring to the overthrow of the U. S. government, Senator Murphy described Senator Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) announcement that he would be objecting to the certification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral college win in the Senate on January 6 in terms that made it perfectly clear what he thought of his Senate colleague’s ill-considered move. Senator Hawley apparently believes that if a Democrat wins the presidential race, it must be illegitimate by definition, even absent any actual evidence of misbehavior,” Senator Murphy began. While you’re right that Senator Hawley’s efforts here are not going to change the results of the election, Joe Biden is still going to be president, there Senator Hawley’s efforts are not going to change the result of the election, but they pose a grave threat to American democracy, maybe not this year, but two years from now, four years from now, absolutely,” the Connecticut legislator concluded his savage diatribe.

And while many may have described the deposed president thusly in the privacy of their minds or publicly on social media, now, U. N. human rights experts are making that accusation as well due to Trump’s pardon last week of four murderers of Iraqi civilians employed by Blackwater, the mercenary-for-hire company run by the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, Eric Prince. Jelena Aparac, the chair of the U. N. working group on the use of mercenaries, condemned the audacious pardons of Nicholas Slatten — who was convicted of first-degree murder — and Paul Slough, Evan Liberty, and Dustin Heard, each of whom were convicted of voluntary and attempted manslaughter for their part in what has become known as the Nisour Square massacre where they gunned down innocent Iraqi civilians who posed no threat to them. These pardons violate U. S. obligations under international law and more broadly undermine humanitarian law and human rights at a global level,” the U.N. offical continued. General David Petraeus, the commander of U. S. forces in Iraq at the time of the killings, and Ryan Crocker, the former U.S. ambassador to Iraq at the time, described Trump’s pardons as “hugely damaging, an action that tells the world that Americans abroad can commit the most heinous crimes with impunity.

Here’s a selection of important news you probably didn’t hear about today: Given the way that the Trump team has deliberately mismanaged the entire coronavirus crisis from the get-go and actively worked to downplay the disease, it is unsurprising if deeply depressing to learn that the vaccination rollout is dangerously behind schedule, just like testing and contact tracing efforts were earlier in the year. Millions of doses are being held in reserve for the second wave of injections, but given the slow speed of the Trump team vaccination rollout — Senator Ed Markey (D-MASS) today derided it as “Operation Snail Speed” — countless doses could end being wholly wasted thanks to bureaucratic confusion, public suspicion, and lack of cold-freezer infrastructure. Ohio State Study shows that 30% of student athletes have heart damage from COVID-19 infections Researchers examined 24 athletes and found that “30% had cellular heart damage and 15% showed signs of heart inflammation caused by a condition known as myocarditis. The United States’ response to the coronavirus pandemic has been monstrously cruel and driven by greed across the board, but all the elected officials and school administrators who loudly pushed for the college football season to happen have a particularly heavy burden of responsibility now that their need to profit off of unpaid and exploited student-athletes has given them long-term heart damage.