Congress caves

Extremist threat sends the House into recess after tonight

Look, I get the whole thing about January 6.  The Capitol police, the D.C. Metro police, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security – the whole lot of them took a nap in the run-up to Trump’s big rally on the Ellipse, which had been advertised and talked about by Trump himself and right-wing groups at least as far back as mid-December.  So the Capitol cops weren’t ready when Trump’s mob of flag-waving, weapons-bearing loons descended on the Capitol that afternoon and overran the feeble attempt to defend the seat of our government that was in place that day.

The reaction to the massive clusterfuck that took place among law enforcement agencies tasked with defending not just the Capitol but all D.C. landmarks was swift and is ongoing.  There was a Senate hearing yesterday at which FBI Director Christopher Wray did everything he could do to avoid giving straight answers to questions about the intelligence collected by the FBI in advance of the January 6 riot, which was slim and ill-distributed to so-called “partner” law enforcement agencies in Washington.  It was apparent that the FBI had used every one of the seven weeks since January 6 to prepare Wray for his ass-covering lap dance of bureaucratic gobbledegook before the Senate committee.  His testimony was embarrassing.

Today, a follow-up hearing heard testimony from the commander of the D.C. National Guard, Maj. Gen. William J. Walker, about the delays he experienced in getting authorization from the Pentagon to deploy his troops in support of the Capitol police during the insurrection.  It was another painful display of ass covering, followed by testimony from the assistant director of the FBI’s counterterrorism division, and someone described as “performing the duties of the assistant secretary of defense focused on homeland defense and global security.”  You can imagine how that went.  Only the Nichols Brothers could have matched the expert tap-dancing around the issues performed by those two long-time Washington bureaucrats.

All of which is to say that Washington appears to have transformed itself into a gigantic excuse-manufacturing plant about the disaster which occurred on January 6.  In classic D.C. fashion, everyone was guilty of lying down on the job, so no one was guilty.  The amount of finger-pointing by the various agencies responsible for defending the Capitol was at a level that probably sent some of their unprepared representatives to the emergency room for carpal tunnel treatments.  That includes the members of congress themselves, because their own sergeants at arms, both of whom have been fired, were just as involved as the rest of them in the dereliction of duty in advance of and during the attack on the Capitol.

It would be nice to report that the congress has learned a few lessons from all the testimony they’ve heard about what happened on January 6, but the opposite seems to be the case.  Faced with a report of a “possible plot” by the Three Percenters militia group to breach the U.S. Capitol on Thursday, the response of the congress has been to wave a white flag and go into recess until next week.  A vote tomorrow on HR 1 was rescheduled for tonight. Ironically, the bill is a sweeping voting rights and ethics law which touches on virtually every aspect of the electoral process and is intended to fix the kinds of voter suppression tactics exploited by Trump and Republicans last November. By voting tonight, instead of tomorrow, the House deserves kudos for doing its duty in the face of the threat made by extremists.

But they held all their hearings, they authorized the erection of a huge fence around the Capitol building and ordered that it be guarded this time by armed National Guard troops and an enhanced police presence, and  they’ve made sure if they need reinforcements that this time the Pentagon doesn’t drag its feet.  And what do they do?

They fold.  They go into recess for four days and leave all those troops and cops out there along the fence guarding a seat of government that empty and not doing the business of governing on Thursday and Friday.  In effect, they let the stupid fucking Three Percenters win.  They wanted to shut down the government like they did on January 6 for eight hours, only this time they’re shutting down the government for two days.

I know, I know, the threat this time is from a militia group that has said they will come armed and ready to “remove” members of congress from the Capitol.  It’s probably better if members and their staffs aren’t anywhere near Capitol Hill if such an assault were to take place.

I can tell you that the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys and the rest of the violent right-wing antigovernment fringe groups will see this as a victory.  They wanted to shut down the congress, and they did it.

How many times are congressional leaders going to allow these lunatics to shut down the congress just by making a threat?  What’s the purpose of holding hearings so you can be better prepared next time for any kind of assault on the Capitol if you’re going to throw up your hands and surrender before anything even happens?  How long are they going to leave the new fencing and razor wire up around the Capitol?  Are they going to turn the nation’s seat of government into a permanent armed camp just because the FBI picks up some “chatter” on right-wing websites and apps that the militias are thinking about going to Washington?

Leaders of the House and Senate are going to have to get together and make up their minds when and if they’re going to refuse to let these idiots manipulate the way the congress does its business.  The sooner they decide when they’re going to take a stand the better, because the Three Percenters and the rest of them are watching, and they’ll declare victory every time they shut down the congress with their threats.