Hartmann Report

Impeachment isn’t just a political strategy; it’s the last defense of our Constitution. Republicans must act now, decisively and unapologetically. If they do, they may yet save America and themselves… Donald Trump and many of the people surrounding him have become explicit threats to what’s left of our democratic republic. And now they’re saying that my (or your) simply saying those words may be enough to get us locked up or otherwise legally, financially, or physically destroyed. In 1964, like Hillary Clinton, I went door-to-door with my dad for Barry Goldwater, and later read both of his autobiographies, Conscience of a Conservative and With No Apologies. There’s no way Goldwater — or any Republican of that era — would tolerate the ways Trump and his toadies are ripping apart our constitutional order and flagrantly violating our laws and traditions. And now he’s trying to pick a Made-For-Fox “News” fight in Portland; if one kid throws a Molotov cocktail, it will become the justification for another massive loss of our constitutional rights of free speech and assembly all across the nation. Cheered on by rightwing media for profit. If Republicans don’t stand up soon and impeach Trump — and demand Vance reflect the traditional values of republican democracy or similarly face impeachment — history will judge them beyond harshly.

Few discoveries are more irritating than those which expose the pedigree of ideas. —Lord Acton To say that Ludwig von Mises and F.A. Hayek were both traumatized and influenced by their respective brushes with Nazism would be an understatement. Mises suffered the indignity of Hitler’s gestapo rummaging through his apartment in March of 1938, seizing 21 boxes of his papers and taking over his apartment. Two years later, Mises fled to the United States, where, ironically, he advocated many of Hitler’s racial ideas and even integrated them into his economic ideology.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — On the Democrat's demand that Trump and the GOP undo their cuts to Obamacare and Medicaid to avoid a government shutdown, Trump's White House is giving them (and us) the middle finger. Literally. — Trump outs Elon Musk for being in the Epstein files, according to Congressman Eric Swalwell. — America goes full banana republic as Trump plays dictator and succeeds in finding a lawyer who'll step into the DOJ and prosecute James Comey. More revenge prosecutions are expected. — Wannabee King Trump threatens to relocate the World Cup from Blue states to Red ones. — Every country that's put its central bank equivalent of our Federal Reserve under political instead of professional control has ended up with rampant inflation and economic disaster. — Moldova is getting a 2016 US election-like treatment from Russia . — Arizona Republican Congressman John Gillette calls for Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal to be hanged. Seriously. — Trump shows — with billions of our tax dollars — how wannabee authoritarians like to stick together. — France has figured out how to deal with corrupt former presidents. Somebody should tell Merrick Garland. — Get ready for your drug prices to jump as much as 100 percent next month. — Geeky Science: Contrary to what Trump and Bob Kennedy told us this week, pregnant women who fail to take Tylenol during pregnancy for fever are putting their unborn children at risk. — Crazy Alert! Is your dentist also trying to scare or hurt you because you're a liberal? This one brags about it! — Hunter in a Farmer's World: Tossing: ADHD's Hidden Signal — Wisdom School: Can Silence Be a Kind of Universal Medicine?

The world has often seen great wars ignited not by inevitability, but by weakness, hesitation, and betrayal. Cowards playing with matches. History shows that one of the biggest risk factors for war is an autocratic leader who fears for his own future. Which is why the kind of pathetic incoherence we saw at the United Nations this week should concern us all. This week’s news brings some alarming data points.

Dark money, foreign payoffs, and dangerous lies are pushing what's left of our government to the edge… If his lips move, he's lying. Or trying to solicit a bribe. Or slandering Democrats. Or, today, taking hostages. Most recently, he's started lying about what congressional Democrats are demanding in exchange for giving the GOP the votes they need in the Senate to keep the government open past October 1. And now, just this morning, they've announced that they're taking hostages. Federal employees will be fired, rather than temporarily furloughed, if there is a government shutdown. But I'll get to that in a moment; it isn't where he started lying, bribe-getting, and slandering Democrats this week.

This is not law and order: it's monarchy enforced by fear and lawsuits… FCC Chairman Carr, wearing a gold pin of Donald Trump's head that eerily resembles an old Mao pin I bought in Beijing in 1988, went after Jimmy Kimmel again just hours before he was back on the air last night. He also mentioned station licenses again, in what seems like a thinly-veiled threat, when he tweeted: "Democrats just keep digging themselves a deeper & deeper hole on Kimmel. They simply can't stand that local TV stations—for the first time in years—stood up to a national programmer & chose to exercise their lawful right to preempt programming. We need to keep empowering local TV stations to serve their communities of license." Meanwhile, Trump's revenge prosecutor is reportedly demanding information on the FBI agent who was first to see the Sandy Hook carnage and testified against Alex Jones. As I lay out in my new book, The Last American President, this is how terror and intimidation work. This is how free speech and the rule of law die. It's how kings rule, not elected presidents of democratic republics. And this is how power enforces obedience: by making an example out of person after person, news outlet after news outlet, comedian after comedian, until the rest of us are too afraid to speak.

Whether bought, brainwashed, or bullied, the six conservative justices have abandoned their oath, and the consequences are tearing our republic apart… Are they afraid Trump will get them killed? Ninety years ago, President Franklin D. Roosevelt fired William E. Humphrey from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Humphrey sued to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the Constitution had never given "illimitable power of removal" to the president and that he couldn't fire Humphrey. The case is called Humphrey's Executor v US, and Humphrey got his job back. The unanimous decision of the Court was clear and explicit.

The past teaches us one truth: when laughter dies, liberty soon follows... We've seen this movie before. Or at least our grandparents did. Dictators can't take a joke. On February 4, 1939 — seven months before their invasion of Poland kicked off World War II — the man with oversight responsibility for German media officially forbade five comedians from ever again performing in public. As the headline in The New York Times explained: "Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime" Their crime, according to Goebbels, was publicly telling "brazen, impertinent, arrogant and tactless" jokes about the Führer.

“A field of battle covered with dead bodies putrefying in the open air is an awful and distressing spectacle, but a nation debased by the love of money and exhibiting all the vices and crimes usually connected with that passion, is a spectacle far more awful, distressing and offensive.” - Letter from Dr. Benjamin Rush to Thomas Jefferson, 1813. The past 3000 years have seen the emergence of several great forces that have shaped the modern world: the nation-state, feudalism, capitalism, democracy, and, most recently, communism and neoliberalism.

The Best of the Rest of the News. — 1,800 Men Went Into Alligator Auschwitz, but when ICE started to shut down the facility, only 600 Came Out. — Did the FCC Chairman break federal law with his “authoritarian” move against ABC? — The Nazis famously required German states to give them the names of Jews; Trump’s FBI appears to be on the verge of compiling a list of Trans people. — Joe McCarthy was a piker — Love Charlie Kirk? Join the Army! — Trump is violating his own executive order. — Cities are pushing back against ICE; here’s what’s happening in Portland. — Geeky Science! Do fatty foods scramble your mind? — Hunter in a Farmer’s World: The Unbearable Weight of Boredom in ADHD — Wisdom School: The Blood Moon’s Invitation