Insane Christmas Photo From GOP Congressman’s Family To Yours

The White Family: The Case For National Action

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) tweeted the above photo on Saturday, with the message: “Merry Christmas! ???? ps. Santa, please bring ammo. ????”

• Massie, a 50-year-old MIT grad, was first elected to Congress in 2012.
• If you want outrage, here’s the outrage.

The Breakdown Of The White Family

The parents who gifted their teen a handgun on Black Friday then allegedly failed to spot the warning signs before he used it to kill four classmates were found early Saturday morning after a short manhunt when they failed to turn themselves in on involuntary manslaughter charges. They were found hiding in an art studio in a warehouse district of Detroit.

A Different Kind Of School Attack

The Marin County parents who triggered an elementary school outbreak when they knowingly sent their COVID-positive child and a sibling to school could face a fine or misdemeanor charges as early as this week.

Superspreader-in-Chief

Must read from the Washington Post on the seven days between President Trump testing positive for COVID and being hospitalized, during which time he exposed an estimated 500 people to the pandemic virus.

Four More Years! Four More Years! Four …

President Trump’s televised interview with Mark Levin is making the rounds.

• Clip #1: I coulda been waaay more corrupt:

• Clip #2: None of this woulda happened if I hadn’t fired Comey:

Bob Dole, 1923-2021

Credit Dole for his valor in WWII, but nostalgia for Dole’s politics and some bygone Washington? Please. Dole endorsed Trump. Full stop. (He did it early, too, in May 2016.)

• I’m not going to draw some overbroad line straight from Dole in his heyday to the Trump era, but we’d do well to look for the seeds of our destruction back then, rather than wax poetic about a Washington that never was.
• Here’s one small glimpse of the rot that existed then and persists now. It’s Dole on Meet The Press over the years, with the jokey journalistic premise that you lie to us and we pretend to believe you. Hilarious, right?

Legislation As Performance Art

What to make of all the GOP legislation flying around about what should and shouldn’t be taught in schools? (It seems to have ramped up after the party scored a win in the Virginia governor’s race dominated by CRT and other crypto-education “issues.”) These efforts are largely performative, intended to stoke fear more than address fears, play to the base, generate media coverage. And it works! So I flag a couple of recent examples with self-awareness that generating attention is partly the point:

• “The Crucial Communism Teaching Act,” with dozens of House GOP co-sponsors, would require teaching the dangers of communism. They held an amusing little press conference in DC last week.
• “An Act Relative to Teachers’ Loyalty” in New Hampshire “seeks to ban public school teachers from promoting any theory that depicts U.S. history or its founding in a negative light.”
• In Iowa, a GOP state senator want to make it a felony for teachers to assign books with LGBTQ+ themes.

Deep Dive

A former KKK leader is running for county commission in Georgia.

Who Is Gonna Fire CNN?

It’s easy to roast Chris Cuomo for being a pompous, ethically compromised anchor bro. But Jeff Zucker didn’t just enable this. It’s exactly what he wanted. Until he didn’t.

Jan. 6 Investigation Updates

John Eastman, who authored a legal memo laying out a scheme to subvert the Electoral College results, will invoke his 5th Amendment rights rather than testify to the Jan. 6 House committee.

Jeffrey Clark, the former Trump DOJ official who was deeply involved in the Big Lie, also plans to plead the 5th, but due to a medical condition the panel has delayed his deposition until Dec. 16.

• Reuters: “Trump Justice ally Clark clashed with colleagues long before election drama”
• Maddow:

HIGH ALERT: UKRAINE

WaPo: “U.S. intelligence has found the Kremlin is planning a multi-front offensive as soon as early next year involving up to 175,000 troops, according to U.S. officials and an intelligence document obtained by The Washington Post.”

NYT: “What’s Driving Putin’s Ukraine Brinkmanship?”

Reuters: “Ukraine marks army day with US hardware and vow to fight off Russia”

TPM: “Making Sense of Russia-Ukraine Based On My Time Reporting In Kyiv”