A quick reaction force
Oath Keepers guy charged with sedition.
Stewart Rhodes, the leader and founder of the far-right Oath Keepers militia, was arrested on Thursday and charged with seditious conspiracy for organizing a wide-ranging plot to storm the Capitol last Jan. 6 and disrupt the certification of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s electoral victory, federal law enforcement officials said.
I think that might be a fairly serious crime.
The arrest of Mr. Rhodes was a major step forward in the sprawling investigation of the Capitol attack and the case marked the first time that prosecutors had filed charges of sedition.
…
The Oath Keepers, along with the Proud Boys, have emerged as the most prominent far-right extremists to have taken part in the assault on the Capitol. Prosecutors have collected reams of evidence against them, including encrypted cellphone chats and recordings of online meetings. They have charged its members not only with forcing their way into the building in a military-style “stack,” but also with stationing an armed “quick reaction force” at a hotel in Virginia to be ready to rush into Washington if needed.
In other words they can’t plausibly claim to have been just protesting, just telling Congress how they felt, just demonstrating their loyalty to the coward Trump. My guess is that a lot of people who were there can plausibly claim that, and that it’s true of some of them, but it’s always appeared that some were organized and not messing around.
Their cover story is that they were there to provide security for people like Roger Stone.
But at least four Oath Keepers who were at the Capitol that day and are cooperating with the government have sworn in court papers that the group intended to breach the building with the goal of obstructing the final certification of the Electoral College vote.
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Mr. Rhodes has been a fixture on the far right almost from the day in 2009 that he announced the creation of the Oath Keepers at a rally in Lexington, Mass., the site of a famous Revolutionary War battle.
At the event, Mr. Rhodes laid out an antigovernment platform for the current and former law enforcement and military personnel who joined his group, saying that his plan was for members to disobey certain illegal orders from officials and instead to uphold their oath to the Constitution.
During the years that President Barack Obama was in office, the Oath Keepers repeatedly inserted themselves into prominent public conflicts, often playing the role of heavily armed vigilantes. In 2014, for instance, they turned up at a cattle ranch in Nevada after its owner, Cliven Bundy, engaged in an armed standoff with federal land management officials.
Of course they did. What cause could be more glorious than helping individuals steal public lands?
But after Mr. Trump took office, Mr. Rhodes and the Oath Keepers pivoted away from their antigovernment views and appeared to embrace the new spirit of nationalism and suspicions of a deep-state conspiracy that had taken root in Washington. Like other far-right groups such as the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers also opposed — often physically — the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by the police in Minneapolis.
See this is where mention of BLM and George Floyd is relevant. When calling JK Rowling names, not so much.
That’s not a pivot. They did not change their views, and they did not suddenly become pro-government. They saw a president (and increasingly a party) who echoed their own views come into power, one that was bent on undermining our more or less democratic system of government, and they lent him their support. The problem with too many on the right* these days is that they don’t see government in terms of administrations that they support or oppose, but rather as regimes that are legitimate and must be defended, or illegitimate and must be overthrown. They don’t care about the government as an abstraction, they care about power, gaining it and using it against their perceived enemies. When they have that power, they use it to undermine democracy; when they lose that power, they find other ways to undermine the government.
*And, yes, some on the left.
I offer the following suggestion: In the US, there needs to be a Constitution Rewrite Competition, with prize for the neatest correct entry being, say, $1 million, plus lifetime supplies of beer, and also of jelly beans.
It would be judged by a single nation-wide referendum; each vote of equal value, and no Electoral College involved.
Worth a try, surely.
The Alabama state constitution is the longest constitution in the world, and there are frequently calls to rewrite it from scratch. I don’t trust the Republican-dominated legislature to rewrite it, and I don’t trust the process to be easily enough understood by the electorate. Perhaps the electorate could vote simply to approve or not, but the details are difficult, and that’s how Alabama got the horrible constitution it currently has, by people being hoodwinked into approving a crappy document. Also, given the people Alabama has elected in recent elections, I don’t know that the state would approve a decent constitution, were one crafted. The US constitution has fewer problems, but would also be politically very difficult to rewrite, for some of the same reasons.
@sackbut –
I think that many of the state constitutions are like that. While the U.S. Constitution is written as a set of guidelines, state constitutions include an outline of the way that the governments are setup but then go on to address very specfic issues. Arizona’s is like that, and part of the issue is the ability to place amendments directly on the ballot. (Which, in the case of education funding, the Legislature chose to ignore one passed into the Constitution.)
@ Omar
There has been a move among the Dominionists to call for a Constiutional Convention and they would rewrite the wrongs of the secularist Supreme Court – Mandate death penalties for homosexuality, mandate school prayer, capital punishment for a host of crimes including blasphemy and abortion.
A post about the dangers of an Article V convention’s dangers:
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/380467-a-convention-of-states-is-the-last-thing-america-needs-right-now
Michael Haubrich #4; “but then go on to address very specfic issues”
Apparently a clause forbidding nuclear power was inserted into the constitution of Hawaii.
Even if I thought nuclear power was a bad idea I would still think such a clause is *NOT* the sort of thing that belongs in a constitution.
Michael:
Went to the link. Such people don’t need a convention. Their perfect constitution is already written, and is that of Saudi Arabia. Maybe it could do them ready-made, after a bit of tinkering round the edges: substitute their favourite flavour of Protestant Christianity for Arabia’s strict Sunni Islam; the electric chair or the gas chamber for heretics rather than messy beheadings, etc.
Oklahoma’s constitution is also like that. At one time, it had a provision against catching whales in Oklahoma waters. Now, Oklahoma does have a lot of lakes and rivers, but none of them actually hold any whales. So I have one of two possible conclusions. (1) the whales were being extincted by too many people catching them, leading to the need for the provision; or (2) the legislators who wrote the constitution simply picked up clauses wholesale from other states and incorporated them.
Since I spent some time during my early college years as a political science major, and I took courses on Oklahoma government, I actually know that (2) is correct. They picked that up from one of the coastal states and didn’t bother to take out such a silly provision. Over the past couple of decades or so, they have been trying to get rid of some of the ludicrous things, and it may be gone by now.