To reiterate a point I made in passing the other day, if you are opposed to beginning at least an impeachment inquiry, you have to have a better reason than, "Well, it'll never get through the Senate anyway." If you hold that up as a standard, then the House might as well hit the beach for the summer because nothing the Democratic House does is going to get past a Republican Senate as long as Mitch McConnell doesn't give a good goddamn about solving actual problems that the country might have.

For example, the one thing about which Robert Mueller was completely clear on Wednesday was that the Russians ratfcked the 2016 presidential election and that they are in the process of ratfcking the 2020 election and, frankly, any election that they want to ratfck down to a county commission race in Wyoming. Nobody on either side of the big ditch has any doubt about what Mueller said. The very first bill passed by the new House majority was a good government bill that included anti-ratfcking procedures. That bill, you will undoubtedly be shocked to learn, is as dead as Kelsey's nuts in the Senate because Mitch McConnell doesn't give a damn about honest elections. From The Hill:

“At this point I don’t see any likelihood that those bills would get to the floor if we mark them up,” Blunt said. When Durbin asked why that was the case, Blunt said, “I think the majority leader is of the view that this debate reaches no conclusion. And frankly, I think the extreme nature of H.R. 1 from the House makes it even less likely we are going to have that debate.”

So we're just going to stumble into another presidential turkey shoot with a vulnerable system designed to service operating rules set down in 1789 because of what? Judges? Ladyparts? The people who buy McConnell lunch? It didn't take Donald Trump to make this country lose its mind. He was just the person who moves into the house to "take care" of the crazy person and ends up emptying the crazy person's bank account and driving off in the Porsche that's been sitting under a tarp in the garage for 10 years.

Republican Senators Mitch McConnell (L) and Roy Blunt (R) gaze fondly at a president who was elected amid Russian interference. Alex Wong Getty Images

In a related story, something very strange is said to be going on down in an obscure corner of Texas. From CNN:



Billie Winner-Davis' daughter Reality Winner, a US Air Force veteran, was sentenced to prison for more than five years in August 2018 as part of a deal in which she pleaded guilty to leaking a classified NSA document providing details of a 2016 Russian cyberattack on a supplier of US voting software. "They don't want the world to be exposed to the real Reality Winner," Winner-Davis told CNN in a tearful interview at the small home in rural southern Texas where she raised her daughter.

CNN has repeatedly sought permission to interview Winner in federal prison, and recently accompanied Winner-Davis on the seven-hour road trip from her home to visit her daughter at FMC Carswell in Fort Worth, where she is incarcerated, but our team was not permitted to go inside. FMC Carswell's warden has denied CNN's requests, citing the need to maintain the "safety, security, and the orderly management of the facility." Our attempts to speak with the warden over the phone to understand how journalists could address those concerns were unsuccessful.



On Wednesday, the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, a non-profit group, wrote to the warden at FMC Carswell, urging him to reconsider media requests to interview Winner. The RCFP's legal director says she understands that in addition to refusing CNN's requests, the warden has also turned down interview bids by another journalist, Sonia Kennebeck, who has been in touch with Winner in prison via email. She said Winner's case was the "subject of intense public interest" which "has not abated since her sentencing."



They won't let her speak and they won't tell anybody why. This gets my Spidey sense tingling like a million sleigh bells. And all I can remember is that closed meeting that James Comey had with members of Congress back in 2017. People walked out of that like extras from The Exorcist. I think some ice got into the veins of the government that day that has spread now into willing paralysis. It's not the way things are supposed to be.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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