Former U.S. Senate Majority leader Tom Daschle is among over 140 former political, military, diplomatic, and intelligence leaders calling on Congress to convene an independent commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection in Washington D.C.. Daschle and his colleagues recognize that the hundreds of racist, cop-killing criminals who disrupted our Constitutional government were part of a much larger, well-planned domestic terrorism movement that may be influenced by our foreign enemies:
The events of January 6th exposed severe vulnerabilities in the nation’s preparedness for preventing and responding to domestic terrorist attacks. The immediate security failings that permitted a lethal breach of the Capitol Complex by armed extremists raise serious questions and demand immediate solutions.
But January 6th was also the result of complex national security threats. These include coordinated disinformation campaigns, nontransparent financing of extremist networks, potential foreign influences, and white supremacist violent extremism, which the Department of Homeland Security identified in an October 2020 report as among “the most persistent and lethal threat[s] in the Homeland.” As FBI Director Christopher Wray testified to you recently, “January 6th was not an isolated event. The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now and it’s not going away anytime soon.” Understanding how these forces culminated in an attack on the infrastructure of our democracy is critical to preventing future attacks [Tom Daschle et al., “Letter from Former Senior National Security Officials Calling on Congress to Create a Bipartisan 1/6 Commission,” Medium.com, 2021.04.07].
Daschle and his compatriots invoke the 9/11 Commission as a model of cross-branch, cross-party cooperation. They say an independent commission can focus its attention on identifying the security lapses that allowed the insurrectionists to breach the Capitol and proposing policy responses to prevent further terrorist attacks. Failing to convene such a panel and act on its findings and recommendations, say these experts, “will leave the Capitol, and the nation, vulnerable to future attacks.”
Congress and President George W. Bush didn’t empanel the 9/11 Commission until late 2002, but within two months of al-Qaeda’s thwarted attack on the United States Capitol and their successful attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Congress passed the far-reaching Patriot Act on bipartisan votes of 357–66 and 98–1 and the United States bombed and invaded Afghanistan. Three months after the Capitol insurrection, with another deadly terrorist attack on the Capitol just last week, Congress has enacted no comparable response. Evidently when darker-skinned non-Christians bloody America’s nose, we go to war on terrorism. But when our own white Christians commit a more egregious assault not just on the Capitol but on the founding bonds of our civil society, we are not as quick to take action.
Listen to Daschle and the experts, Congress: empanel an independent commission to investigate the Capitol insurrection and propose the actions we must take to protect our inclusive Constitutional government from the authoritarian apartheidist jihadis among us.
Badly needed investigation, for sure. But just watch the machinations of the GOP to change the picture of what we all seen with our own eyes, and “slow-walk” any progress on putting up a commission.
“Among speakers at RNC donor retreat in Palm Beach this weekend: Trump, Lindsey Graham, Ron Johnson, Marco Rubio, Tom Cotton, Steve Daines, Todd Young, Rick Scott, Ron DeSantis, Kristi Noem, Kevin McCarthy, Tom Emmer, Mike Pompeo, Kellyanne Conway and others.”
Dangerous people
Lesli, now I understand why Governor Noem got her vaccination; if I were going to be in that crowd and be “one of the cool kids without a mask,” I’d be sure my shots were up to date too.
It turns out that one of the Republican extremists that Noem campaigned for in Wisconsin last election cycle was one Derrick Van Orden, who challenged Rep. Ron Kind. Van Orden ended up obeying Dear Leader’s orders, being one of the kooks who showed up in Washington, D.C., on January 6. So far, Van Orden hasn’t been charged with any insurrectionist violence, and he claims to have not participated in the Capitol melee. He was also listed in a lawsuit that was brought against Wisconsin to take away the votes of Wisconsinites, and hand the electoral votes over to Trump. In the fashion we expect from cowards, he claims he was placed on the lawsuit in error. Like Covid Kristi, Van Orden seems to like the spotlight, but when the poop hits the fan, he tends to hide, dissemble and turn tail. The guy, however, is certifiably nuts, which explains Noem’s kinship with this clown, and why she wasted her time and South Dakota taxpayers’ money flying to LaCrosse to participate in his campaign events.