Reading archive 2021-05-07

Liz Cheney Has Only Herself to Blame: The representative from Wyoming is taking a stand against an authoritarian streak in the Republican Party that she helped cultivate. - "The Times reported that Republican leadership, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, hoped that “after surviving [a] February vote of no confidence, Ms. Cheney, as an elected leader, would make like the rest of the party and simply move on.” This is a ridiculous claim; the Republican Party has not moved on at all. The falsehood that the 2020 election was rigged against Trump has become the justification for voter-suppression laws in Republican-controlled states across the country. A majority of Republicans voted against certifying the election even after the Capitol riot; fully 60 percent of Republicans believe that the election was stolen.

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"Even a lifelong conservative Republican like Cheney becomes The Enemy if she is willing to uphold essential democratic rights—such as the opposition’s right to govern if it wins the most electoral votes—above the whims of King Trump. Cheney’s brave stand looks likely to cost her the leadership position she holds, and has left her isolated within the caucus, one of the few Republicans who have chosen their vow to the Constitution over their loyalty to the party. Yet the party’s rejection of the rule of law is also an extension of a political logic that Cheney herself has cultivated for years. 

"During the Obama administration, Cheney was a Fox News regular who, as was the fashion at the time, insisted that the president was secretly sympathetic to jihadists. She enthusiastically defended the use of torture, dismissed the constitutional right to due process as an inconvenience, and amplified the Obama-era campaign to portray American Muslims as a national-security threat."

Accused Capitol rioter had ‘Foxitis,’ his attorney says: He ‘started believing what was being fed to him’

China says out-of-control space rocket booster probably won’t cause any harm

An Australian mom was convicted of killing her 4 babies. Scientists say she’s innocent.

‘She didn’t deserve to die the way she did,’ says family of cult leader found dead and mummified

Opinion: This is why MAGA nativists are in a panic

Inside the housing showdown in D.C.’s Ivy City, where kids have no place to play

Only a few hundred California condors live in the wild, but about 20 teamed up to trash one woman’s deck

Pennsylvania man admits he voted for Trump with his dead mom’s name: ‘I listened to too much propaganda’