An insurrection in the Capitol

 

As I write this, a violent mob has invaded the U.S. Capitol and send the Congress of the United States fleeing for safety, prevented from performing its constitutional duty of counting the Electoral College ballots proclaiming Joe Biden the winner of November's election.  It has been necessary for Federal agents to draw weapons against a violent mob breaking windows and destroying property, and for tear gas to be used in the Capitol's rotunda.

This predictably violent demonstration is taking place at the instigation of the President of the United States. This is an act of insurrection. It is a violent assault on the Constitution and on our very system of government. And it is happening at the behest of Donald Trump. He is the one responsible for this seditious gathering. The violence ultimately is on him.

Either the Trump movement or our government system will die because of what is going on today in Washington. They cannot both survive. And the time has passed when talk of letting Donald Trump pass into history could have any meaning. That he will not go quietly into obscurity is beside the point. That the very Senate whose members fled for safety today in the face of a Trumpist mob lacked the courage and the integrity to convict him on impeachment charges of which he was clearly guilty, and that the Vice-President and the Cabinet lack the courage and the integrity to remove him from office under the 25th Amendment, only underscore the conclusion that Donald Trump must face justice when he leaves office in a few weeks.

Belatedly, after playing the toady the first time Trump was impeached, writers at the National Review call for impeaching him a second time for his phone call with Georgia's Secretary of State recorded on tape. He tried to coerce the Secretary into committing vote fraud to "flip" his state's electoral votes. Those with the power to do so lack the courage, and frankly, the time. And today's events supersede that call.

Those involved in today's insurrection need to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And that includes Donald John Trump. We have never before had a president who instigated a violent assault on the Congress of the United States in an attempt to prevent it from performing an act it was required by the Constitution itself to perform. This is not merely one more violation of his oath of office.  He needs to be tried not only for his many acts of official corruption but for fostering a literal insurrection, a violent assault on Congress aiming to overturn the result of a fair and legal election.