New House speaker
The House GOP decided to install a cultist, Mike Johnson. He’s in a second term, so firmly in the bottom 10% of experienced congressmen.
In his younger years, he was a well-respected, successful lawyer. But sometime after 2016, he contracted Giulianitis. Johnson led Donald Trump’s coup attempt, claiming he had tons of election fraud evidence. At Trump’s impeachment trials, he lied. None exists. He swears to vast conspiracies involving compromised voting machines that cost Fox News a load, and 700,000 people illegally voted but no evidence exists. And evidently, they’ve all kept it a secret.
Johnson is pushing his pageant-wagon into his temporary office. It is filled with guns, a ton of IOUs, a thumped-out Bible and a prayer for your machine-gunned young. Any single accused sex offender, enabler, insurrectionist, fake TV producer or gay exorciser in his 220-member clot can demand an ouster and only four votes puts him out.
Johnson cannot square filing suit over Joe Biden’s genuine win while a dozen in his Trump cabal got caught forging documents, creating fake electors and doctoring videos. Not to mention, more are admitting guilt and cutting deals weekly.
GOP lawyers want to change the rule of law. They want to charge anyone who opposes them with zero evidence, but require that individual to produce valid, exculpatory proof although no evidence of violation is presented, since it doesn’t exist.
Our new speaker says he was ordained by God to win. Me, too; I’m ordained by God to write a letter.
R.M. Strongoni
Moscow
Disappointed in Schoesler
Washington state Sen. Mark Schoesler celebrates the ruling against an assault weapons ban because he considers them a legitimate self-defense weapon. I can’t think of any example where AR-15-type rifles were used for self-defense outside of war.
I doubt that protecting oneself from burglars or assault at close range would involve an AR-15. It is a fallacy to cite self-defense. Most, if not all, victims of mass killings are people who were doing their normal activities and they aren’t carrying an AR-15 just in case a mass shooter happens to come by.
The federal assault weapons ban was signed into law in 1994 and withstood multiple constitutional challenges. If that law was renewed, I suspect that there would be a lot fewer mass shootings.
Sen. Schoesler says that only liberals call these assault weapons. Presidents Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan supported the ban of, in their words, “semi-automatic assault weapons.” President George H.W. Bush banned the importation of foreign-made rifles like the AR-15 because “they do not have a legitimate sporting use.” So it’s not just opponents and liberals who characterize them as assault weapons.
I think the key is that some people feel that they need firearms to protect themselves. Then someone can rob them of the guns or the owners themselves can have a mental health crisis and kill a bunch of people. I am disappointed that Sen. Schoesler celebrates a ruling against an assault weapons ban.
Charlotte Omoto
Palouse
