Open Thread Dec. 18: Is Mueller’s Time Up?

The media has spent the past three days in hysterics because Republicans in Congress keep attacking the legitimacy of Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian attempts to interfere in U.S. elections. Their latest angle is that some people in the FBI don’t like Trump, so any investigation against him is biased and therefore illegitimate.

Let me see if I can put this in terms even an elected Republican can understand: The facts don’t care about anybody’s bias. Indeed, the GOP knows this, so reaction to this leads me to believe what I have suspected from the first — more than just Trump benefitted from the Russian meddling, and top Republicans know it. Not only the presidency but this entire Congress might well be illegitimately elected.

Trump himself is out of it, in total fantasy land — he thinks he’s about to be exonerated. How Republicans can ignore this clearly addled man’s unfitness for his office will be the reason historians point to for the death of the Republican party. Denial is long, but it eventually reaches the see.

Some Democrats are speaking out against the railroading of Al Franken and are urging him to reconsider his resignation. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin ripped into the members who issued statements insisting that Franken resign — only to gather on the Senate floor the next day to watch him announce he was doing just that. “The most hypocritical thing I’ve ever seen done to a human being — and then have enough guts to sit on the floor, watch him give his speech and go over and hug him? That’s hypocrisy at the highest level I’ve ever seen in my life. Made me sick,” Manchin said.

The feminist frenzy looks ready to claim another victim. Pennsylvania state Sen. Daylin Leach, considered the front-runner for the Democratic nomination to run against incumbent Pat Meehan. The Philadelphia Inquirer long story detailing the allegations, which amount to telling sexually suggestive jokes and touching a woman on the arm. This was enough for Gov. Tom Wolf, who has no problem with hanging with the racists in York, to call for his resignation.

Amanda Marcotte, meanwhile, is worried that conservatives want to scuttle the #metoo movement. She also gives away the game when she admits in this piece that men have “too much power,” apparently under the mistaken impression that simply realizing that will make it change. This demonstrates that women have much to learn about power dynamics.