This morning the GAO announced its finding that, by withholding military aid to Ukraine against the appropriation passed by Congress, Trump violated federal law.  In issuing it’s opinion, the GAO said, “OMB withheld funds for a policy reason, which is not permitted under the Impoundment Control Act.”

Cue the noise machine, which has already started.

Virginia governor Ralph Northam has declared a state of emergency in advance of a planned open carry rally in Richmond on Monday, Martin Luther King Day.  You’ll recall that the Dems took the statehouse and governor’s mansion in November, and are planning to enact common sense gun safety laws after finally ousting NRA shills who had previously controlled Virginia for years.  The response to this news by gun nuts was predictable – threaten legislators with violence if they dared do that as well as whipping up a huge rally with thousands of gun toting weirdos bussed in from all over the country galvanized by wild conspiracy theories about gun confiscations. Northam is trying to prevent the nonsense that happened at Charlottesville in 2017 when the “Unite the Right” rally turned into a melee including several so-called “militias” (they’re not) parading around playing Army dress up and confusing an already chaotic scened that resulted in one death and dozens of injuries when a white supremacist, so incensed at anti-racist demonstrators that he plowed his car into a crowd of them.

In my interactions with gun nuts I’ve always found one consistency – the level of their obsession with their “God given gun rights” is directly coordinated with their lack of qualifications to get near a firearm including criminality.  AND, these people just don’t have the common sense to understand that threatening a legislator’s or their family’s lives with gun violence is not a good way to make their case that they should be allowed to parade around in public toting an assault weapon with a loaded 30 round magazine.  It’s like trying to negotiate with a cornered badger.  There’s just no upside in even trying.

Much to Trump Brown Noser Greg Abbott’s consternation, a federal judge just blocked Trump’s cruel, idiotic and illegal executive order to keep immigrants from resettling in states or communities without prior approval of those jurisdictions.  In his order, the Maryland judge said that the order “does not appear to serve the overall public interest.”  He went further, saying,

…the order gives states and local governments “the power to veto where refugees may be resettled — in the face of clear statutory text and structure, purpose Congressional intent, executive practice, judicial holdings and Congressional doctrine to the contrary.”

The argument placed before the judge was about the Refuge Act of 1980, and argued that Trump was trying to circumvent the federal law by implementing a state by state ban.  The judge agreed:

“The objectives of this Act are to provide a permanent and systematic procedure for the admission to this country of refugees of special humanitarian concern to the United States, and to provide comprehensive and uniform provisions for the effective resettlement and absorption of those refugees who are admitted.”

One more for the good guys.

Holy crap, y’all, they did a slideshow of the document dump from hell.

And if that’s not enough entertainment for the day, you’ve also got the whole Kevin McCarthy scrapbook montage.

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Anybody want to bet that  Matt Gaetz took the photo?

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

UPDATE:  Wait! Wait! There’s more ….

Republicans efforts to stymie the Senate impeachment trial continued this week with Senate rules committee Roy Blunt announcing that access by the press will be severely restricted during proceedings and even excluded completely at times.  Blunt lied that these restrictions are the same as during the Clinton trial, but they’re not.  This is simply a continuing effort by Trump enablers to make a mockery of these proceedings including even trying to dismiss the charges before a trial even happens, keeping witnesses and documents out of evidence, and coordinating directly with Trump’s goons in the WH.  Cutting out the press?

It’s shameful, but not at all surprising.

Okay, I’ve watched 45 minutes of the debate and I can tell you one damn thing — I could happily support any one of those candidates over Donald Trump.

I am also impressed with CNN for keeping this roadshow on track and running.  And the candidates for staying on message.