Saturday, December 06, 2025

Hegseth helping Chump degrade the country a little more each day

 Let's start with an excerpt from "The Supreme Court Is Failing at Its Most Important Job" by THE NEW YORK TIMES editorial board:

In early November, a conservative Supreme Court justice showed a cleareyed understanding of the threat that President Trump poses to the constitutional order. During an oral argument in a case involving tariffs that Mr. Trump unilaterally imposed by claiming emergency powers, Justice Neil Gorsuch suggested that the move could weaken Congress in an enduring way. “What president’s ever going to give that power back?” he asked.

Justice Gorsuch’s realism in a case involving a signature policy of Mr. Trump’s second term raises the so far elusive prospect that the court may constrain his worst abuses of power. But it’s not clear whether a majority of justices share Justice Gorsuch’s view, since the court has yet to rule in the case. And the comment was noteworthy because it was a rare sign of independence from the conservative wing of the court, highlighting how little the majority has done to rein in a president who has challenged the nation’s laws, norms and balance of powers.

A key test will come on Monday, when the court hears a challenge to Mr. Trump’s power to fire a member of the Federal Trade Commission -- an action that flew in the face of a 90-year-old Supreme Court precedent. The court announced on Friday that it would also hear a challenge, likely in the next few months, to Mr. Trump’s attempt to revoke birthright citizenship, which the 14th Amendment explicitly protects.

Many lower courts have responded heroically to Mr. Trump’s ill-founded efforts to centralize power and weaken democracy. Judges on the district courts and courts of appeal have blocked his policies hundreds of times since he retook office in January. The judges stepped in to prevent the president from cutting off spending that Congress appropriated, dismantling departments it created, firing the heads of federal agencies and deporting people without due process.


Read it in full. The Crooked Court is betraying democracy and the Constitution and even NYT has had it with this nonsense.  These days, if you're not outraged, you're not paying attention.  At MOTHER JONES, Radley Balko explains:


I bring up these figures because, according to multiple reports, Donald Trump is about to order the government to pay him “damages” for the FBI raid on his Mar-a-Lago mansion and for special prosecutor Jack Smith’s two investigations of him—one for stealing, hoarding, and improperly sharing classified documents, and the other for Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. He’s going to pay himself $230 million.

So Trump—who didn’t spend a minute behind bars—about to swindle about 50 percent more than the total amount of money paid to the 97 innocent people who were incarcerated for more than 1,200 years in Texas. Or about 12 percent more than the total paid last year to 957 victims of police brutality in New York City.

Can you imagine any other president attempting to bilk the American people out of $230 million to put in his own pocket?  No, you can't.  Because once upon we had standards in this country.  Now a Convicted Felon is in the White House and a Crooked Court with six crooks coached ahead of their confirmation hearings on how to lie to the Senate and the American people are destroying all that was great about the United States.  We are no longer a country that even aspires to fairness or legality.  They have pulled us into the gutter and will be happy to pull us further into the sewage system because they are trash that should be impeached and removed from the White House and the Supreme Court.  

As part of the destruction of America, we have Pete Hegseth who is in the midst of his transition from TV personality to War Criminal.  Hegseth appears to be on hormone therapy which would explain how he suffers from road rage even when not behind the wheel of a car. Today, he spoke to the press about . . . nothing at all. Robert McCoy (THE NEW REPUBLIC) notes:


Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth went to great lengths Saturday to avoid saying whether the military will release the full, unedited video of its controversial September 2 double-tap strikes on a boat it claims was carrying drugs in the Caribbean.

Thus far, only footage of the first strike has been released to the public. The full unreleased video, however, reportedly goes on to show two survivors clinging to the wreckage, before they were killed by a second strike that legal experts have described as a war crime or murder. 

Democratic lawmakers who viewed the full video of the strikes, which killed 11 people, this week said it was “one of the most troubling things I’ve seen in my time in public service” and that it “confirmed my worst fears about the nature of the Trump administration’s military activities.”

When asked Wednesday if his administration would release footage of the second strike, President Donald Trump’s answer was simple: “Whatever they have, we’d certainly release, no problem.”

His defense secretary was much more evasive.


Can he evade answers for ever?    CBS NEWS notes, "Two people who survived an early September U.S. attack on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean were waving overhead before they were killed in a now-controversial second strike, according to two sources familiar with a video that was shown to lawmakers this week."  Hegseth got an answer to that?  He continues to lose support in Congress.  Steff Danielle Thomas (THE HILL) notes:

 

Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) took his criticism of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a step further Friday, claiming the Pentagon chief’s recent decisions have “ruined his credibility.”

“I’ve been on the record already,” he told Politico’s Dasha Burns, who also hosts “Ceasefire” on C-SPAN. “After Signalgate, I think I’ve seen enough. What I really wanted to see was someone take responsibility -- own to a mistake.”

Joseph Gedeon (GUARDIAN) reports:

Senator Patty Murray, the Democratic vice-chair of the Senate appropriations committee, called for Hegseth’s firing following a bipartisan briefing on the incident on Thursday. “Between overseeing this campaign in the Caribbean, risking US servicemembers’ lives by sharing war plans on Signal, and so much else, it could not be more obvious that Secretary Hegseth is unfit for the role, and it is past time for him to go,” Murray said.

No accountability, not even  coherent lies.  Bernd Debusmann Jr (BBC NEWS) notes the constantly changing storyline the White House attempts to pimp.  The frustration continues to mount.  Articles of Impeachment were introduced on Thursday:

[. . .] Congressman Shri Thanedar wrote Articles of Impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth for Murder and Conspiracy to Murder, and for Reckless and Unlawful Mishandling of Classified Information.

“Pete Hegseth is uniquely unqualified to serve as Secretary of Defense,” said Congressman Thanedar. “Every day he serves in this role, he puts American servicemembers and their families in danger. He gave direct, unlawful orders to kill every single person on a civilian boat from Venezuela, violating the Defense Department’s Law of War Manual.”

“Additionally, his mishandling of classified information, leaking war plans in a Signal chat which included sensitive operations details, including target systems and attack times, has put American lives at risk. He can no longer serve as our Secretary of Defense, which is why I am introducing these articles of impeachment.”

And that's only one of Hegseth's two scandals currently. Joseph Gedeon (GUARDIAN) reports:

Pete Hegseth is facing the most serious crisis of his tenure as defense secretary, engulfed by allegations of war crimes in the Caribbean and a blistering inspector general report accusing him of mishandling classified military intelligence. Yet despite the long list of trouble and as lawmakers from both parties call for his resignation, Hegseth shows no signs of stepping down and still holds Donald Trump’s support.

The twin crises have engulfed the former Fox News personality in separate but overlapping allegations that lawmakers, policy experts and former officials say reveal a pattern of dangerous recklessness at the helm of the Pentagon. Democratic legislators have reignited calls for his ouster after revelations that survivors clinging to wreckage from a September boat strike were deliberately killed in a “double-tap” attack, while a defense department investigation released on Thursday concluded he violated Pentagon policies by sharing sensitive details via the Signal messaging app hours before airstrikes in Yemen.

[. . .]

Compounding Hegseth’s bad week, the defense department inspector general report released on Thursday concluded that he violated Pentagon policies by using Signal to share precise details about upcoming airstrikes in Yemen, including the quantity and strike times of manned US aircraft over hostile territory, approximately two to four hours before the missions were executed on 15 March.

The report determined that Hegseth’s actions “created a risk to operational security that could have resulted in failed US mission objectives and potential harm to US pilots”. The information, which was marked as secret and not to be shared with foreign nationals, was transmitted via Hegseth’s unclassified personal device in group chats with other Trump administration officials. The investigation also found he failed to retain all associated messages, violating federal record-keeping requirements.


The following sites updated:




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