Impeachment Tuesday again

I watched the stomach-turning video.  I was emotionally manipulated when Jamie Raskin referred to his dead son.  I was impressed by the passion and charisma of Joe Neguse, whose speech put him on the political map like Barack Obama at the 2004 convention.  I was baffled by the defense put forward by Bruce Castor -- Senators are great people, we respect Senators, I grew up dancing to my parents' Everett Dirksen records -- until I heard his second chair David Schoen claiming impeachment is a sin against the Holy Ghost Constitution.  Roger Stone's mouthpiece is still talking to fill up the time until sunset on Friday, when he has to stop defending anti-Semitic fascists because SHABBOS.  Whatever.

Easily bored, I wandered off.  Here's some stuff you won't read in most blogs today:

David Nasaw in The Nation reports that Christopher Hitchens's widow and literary agent are circling the wagons -- how Hitch would hate that cliche -- to prevent "self-appointed" biographer Stephen Phillips from writing a biography of Christopher, urging all their friends and "comrades" to freeze him out.  Nasaw, a biographer and historian of some note, rightly asks if all writers are not self-appointed except  hacks-for-hire.  I ask, is there a better example going of cancel culture, of prior restraint, if you like?  The author of Proximity:  A Novel of the Navy's Elite Bomb Squad seems an odd choice for fleshing out Hitchens's own Hitch-22 but he's a writer trying to make a living.  Christopher would have respected that.

Thinking of buying a place in New Zealand, maybe applying for a second passport?  Admire its inclusive culture and peaceable outlook?  Not so fast.  Rawiri Waititi, MP, was ejected from Parliament for refusing to wear a necktie.  He dressed instead in "Maori business attire," with a greenstone necklace in place of a tie.  Other than the necklace he wore a Western-style suit.  What's the problem?  We've got a clown named Jordan who can't keep his jacket on and the seditious idiot has never been 86'd for that.

Although he has been cited as an expert, along with Kenneth Starr (!) and John Yoo (!!), Alan Dershowitz just told Newsmax he "has no idea" what Trump's lawyers are doing.  On the other hand, he seems to be proud of his former student Jamie Raskin.  

The FBI just picked up Brad Houck in Oklahoma for writing on Parler "Hey Mitch, how are your grandkids doing?"  Seems friendly enough until you also read his death threats to George W. Bush, John Roberts and his children, Chuck Schumer, James Lankford and Lindsey Graham.  Mrs. Houck says he wasn't at the 1/6 terror attack.  Probably at home counting his "thousands of rounds of ammunition."

Joe Biden is bringing back FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps, sort of.  Climate Corps America would hire up to half a million veterans and young people to address environmental problems and make Republican heads explode.  Jeez, next he'll be packing the Court!

Neera Tanden, nominated to head the Office of Management and Budget, chose to apologize for such factual statements as "vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz."  I hope she doesn't plan to run the OMB in so pusillanimous a manner.  Because she's right about Tom Cotton being "a fraud."

Today's blood pressure raiser comes from the Ramsey County Adult Detention Center in St. Paul, Minnesota, where a lawsuit alleges that Derek Chauvin, last seen kneeling on George Floyd's neck while grinning like Widmark in Kiss of Death, is being guarded by white officers only and receiving other kinds of special treatment.  At least he isn't demanding organic catering and a Mexican vacation.  It's not just 1/6 terrorists who are pampered by the courts.

President Biden must feel like he's playing Whack-a-mole:  No sooner does he deal with one Trumpsterfuck than another one pops up.  In defiance of his orders the ICEstapo deported 72 people to Haiti, 22 of them children.  Read the bulletins, guys.  New boss, new policy.

Justice delayed is...I forget, but a hundred-year-old man is being tried as an accessory to murder for his actions at Sachsenhausen from 1942 to 1945.  Last week a 95-year-old woman was charged with being a secretary at Stutthof.  After a while it just becomes pointless.

Speaking of which, Newsmax is kicking Fox's ass when it comes to crazy and vacuuming up all the nipplehead viewers.  They found a guy called Marc Rudov, who says IT is practically the same as the Holocaust, and has come up with something he calls "panoramic Marxism."  He has all kinda views about women and racism which he should have promoted during the last administration, which would have hired him in a sclerotic heartbeat.  Is there a court in exile at Mar a Lago?  Maybe not.

"Panoramic Marxism" and "the clitoral hood."  Hitchens would have loved it.