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Opinion: The Catholic Church’s Complicity In NOM-Regnerus’s Anti-Gay Hate Speech

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We have been reporting on an invalid sociological study on gay parenting carried out by researcher Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas, Austin.

Regnerus’s known total of $785,000 for the study was arranged by The Witherspoon Institute and The Bradley Foundation, where Robert P. George – (head of the anti-gay-rights, scientifically disreputable, so-called National Organization for Marriage) – holds positions of authority. Witherspoon president Luis Tellez is a NOM board member. NOM’s Robert George is a long-time Catholic Church co-conspirator in the Church’s ages-long, Unholy War Against Gays. He is a current Board member of The Catholic League, whose motormouth president Bill Donohue has a long and shameful history of verbal gay bashing.

The Regnerus study currently is being used as an anti-gay-rights political weapon in the 2012 elections. With its toxic connections to the so-called National Organization for Marriage, the Catholic Church of course has been using the invalid Regnerus study as a political weapon against LGBT-Americans — who against their wills are obliged to subsidize one of the very worst of their relentless and ruthless oppressors worldwide — the tax-exempt Catholic Church — with their hard-earned tax dollars.

Clarity still is needed as to the real source of the funding for the Regnerus study. Sure, the Witherspoon Institute gave a known minimal total of of $695,000, and the Bradley Foundation a known minimal total of $90,000, but where exactly did they find those big bucks? Could the Church possibly have been involved in getting that money to Witherspoon and/or the Bradley Foundation?  Witherspoon so far has refused to cooperate with Freedom of Information Act requests from multiple reporters for its Regnerus study-related communications.

Like NOM, and like Regnerus’s study, the Catholic Church is scientifically disreputable. When science has seemed  to contradict Catholic dogma, the Church often has lashed out maliciously at scientists and those who advance science and have faith in it. In its Unholy War Against Gays, the Church has used gay-bashing lingo from scientifically disreputable organizations like NARTH, and individual, scientifically disreputable figures like Paul Cameron. To understand how ridiculous, unscientific and out of touch with reality the Catholic Church is on all matters pertaining to human sexuality — not only on homosexuality — consider that the Catholic Catechism calls masturbation “an intrinsically and gravely disordered action.” A long, loud Bronx cheer please. Hard though it may be for some to grasp, the religious dogma simply does not match the science of human sexuality. Sperm are not holy, there are far more than enough sperm to go around; no sane person need worry about “wasting” sperm. We are reminded of the joke: Why does the Pope wear a bathing suit into the shower? He doesn’t want to look down on the unemployed. The Church’s obnoxious, science-bashing stupidity is implicit in the dogma of “papal infallibility,” which apparently holds that the Pope, not science, understands sexuality generally, homosexuality in particular, and has a right, based on the Pope’s anti-scientific gay bashing, to meddle in politics and civil laws around the world with a goal of maintaining and/or redoubling sexual orientation apartheid.

Ludicrous, duplicitous claims from Catholic Church and NOM officials that they “love” gay people are properly understood in the context of those two parties’ large-scale psychological domestic-and-political violence against LGBTers. It is characteristic of abusers to make fake declarations of “love” for their victims. That is not love, and nobody should be fooled by the deliberately disingenuous abusers.

For background information on the thick-as-thieves relationship between 1) the anti-gay-rights Catholic Church, and 2) the anti-gay-rights, so-called National Organization for Marriage, go here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here.

Notice that that last link is to a NOM Blog post reporting on Ratzinger’s appointment of Bishop Salvatore Cordileone as Archbishop of San Francisco. The NOM Blog post headline is  Bishop Cordileone, “Godfather of Prop 8”, Promoted to Abp. of San Francisco.

Thus we see that NOM is tone deaf to Italian-Americans who object to jokey, knee-jerk references to people of Italian heritage as being heads of organized crime mobs, yet at the same time, “Godfather” certainly is fitting for the Catholic Church’s political gay-basher Cordileone. On the one hand, NOM should not have referred to him as the “Godfather of Prop 8.” On the other hand — (Mr. Cordileone) — if 1) the Catholic Church of Rome’s 2)  Unholy-War-Against-GaysMob- Shoe fits you — (and that anti-gay-rights patented Catholic Church Mob Footwear certainly does fit Cordileone) — then you are accurately described as wearing it.

That the NOM-leaders-financed, invalid Regnerus study is deliberately misleading and defamatory of gays is beyond all question.  An amicus brief filed by eight major professional associations including the American Medical Association was filed specifically to define exactly what — in an ACP brief relying on the Regnerus study — misrepresented the Regnerus study, but the brief also went on to define what in the Regnerus study itself disqualifies it from being taken seriously as science. Neither NOM nor Catholic Church officials have ever seriously engaged with the rationally-articulated, science-based dismissals of the Regnerus study as science. Naturally, the verified science goes in one Catholic Church ear and out the other, as the Church races full steam ahead with its illicit political propagandizing and gay bashing based on the invalid Regnerus study.

We never should have been forced into the position of having to defend against defamation in the form of a bogus sociological study that makes no valid comparison between its test group and its control group, and still less should we have been forced into anti-defamation action by such a study funded by persons aspiring to yoke us with their gay-bashing religious dogma via our civil laws. These monsters’ actions in defaming us on the not-very-well-disguised background basis of their theocracy-based bigotry go against the letter and the spirit of the Constitution of the United States.

A few stomach-churning examples of the Church using Regnerus as a weapon against gays and gay rights will suffice.

Even as the Church fights tooth-and-nail against proposed laws to lift the statutes of limitations on the prosecution of child rape — and let us say that again, for emphasis, because it is true — the Catholic Church in the United States (and elsewhere) fights tooth-and-nail against proposed laws to lift the statutes of limitations on the prosecution of child rape — Cordileone had the towering nerve to address the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops on June 14, 2012, and to tell them that the Regnerus study indicates that: “The protection of marriage as the union of one man and one woman is a work of justice and is foundational to the good of all, especially for those most vulnerable among us, our children.”

One verifiable, real-world phenomenon Cordileone’s gay-bashing propaganda leaves out of account, is that the number of children in foster care in recent decades has declined, thanks to responsible gay parents adopting children who were neglected, abused and/or abandoned by their irresponsible heterosexual parents. With its characteristic mean-spiritedness against gays, the Catholic Church is actively seeking to strengthen the stigma and the legal discrimination against those gay-headed families and their children. Cordileone outright lies about the Regnerus study, where he says that it is “one of the first studies on this topic to have a comprehensive and scientifically respectable approach.” His deliberately misleading statement about the discipline of the scientific study of gay parenting is despicable and beneath all contempt, and therefore, characteristic of Catholic Church officials’ lying, demonizing pronouncements against gay human beings. That, actually, as happens, is one of the reasons that Mussolini and the Vatican got along so well together. The Regnerus study does not — as Cordileone disingenuously alleges — have a “comprehensive and scientifically respectable approach.”  Had the Regnerus study been “comprehensive,” it would have surveyed — you know — actual children of gay parents. A gay parenting study like Regnerus’s that does not survey gay parents or their children can not in any sense be called “comprehensive.” The Godfather of Prop 8 is, as turns out, a shameless bullshit artist. Not a single scientist of good repute and without a conflict of interest in commenting on the Regnerus study has supported the Regnerus study as scientifically valid. Beyond the aforementioned AMA amicus brief, and as first reported here on TNCRM, a group of over 200 Ph.D.s and M.D.s signed a letter to the journal that published Regnerus, expressing concern over the study’s lack of intellectual integrity as well as over the suspicious circumstances of the study’s publication.

In response to the scientific debunking of the Regnerus study, the Regnerus study’s supporters pump out yet more bunk. A Baylor Institute for the Studies of Religion letter published in support of Regnerus bears the profoundly misleading title of A Social Scientific Response to the Regnerus Controversy. The Baylor letter contains deliberate subterfuges to dismiss as irrelevant the criticisms of the Regnerus study’s most glaring and obnoxious failings — including that it makes no valid comparison between its test group and its control group — yet these gay-bashing bigots have the nerve to call their anti-gay-rights propaganda a “social scientific response.” Most if not all of the signers of the Baylor letter have conflicts of interest in signing and publicizing it. The lead signer, for example, is Baylor ISR Director Byron Johnson; he also is a Senior Fellow of The Witherspoon Institute, which funded the Regnerus study and which is heavily promoting it in anti-gay-rights political contexts. This reporter sent Johnson an e-mail asking him to acknowledge on the record his conflict of interest in signing the Baylor letter without disclosing his connection to the Regnerus study’s funding and anti-gay-rights political promotions. Johnson did not provide the courtesy of a reply.

Before I highlight a second main Catholic Church use of the Regnerus study as a political weapon in the Church’s Unholy War Against Gays, please take a look at some additional Church-Regnerus-NOM, anti-gay-rights propaganda, by seeing here, here, and then here in French, and here in Spanish — (in a publication called La Espada Catolica, The Catholic Sword — they’re apparently pining for the good old days of The Crusades, when they slaughtered Jews and Muslims all across Europe and the Middle East) —  and then here in German, and then here in Portuguese, and then here in Dutch and then here in Italian. The NOM-heads-funded Regnerus anti-gay defamation has spread all around the world, a veritable contagion of gay-bashing lies.

NOM and the Catholic Church both are seemingly very worried about the P.R. fall-out from their dishonorable connections to the invalid and defamatory Regnerus study. It is hardly a surprise that NOM’s Maggie Gallagher, a pathological anti-gay liar and professional anti-gay hate speech propagandist responds to science-based debunkings of the Regnerus study with yet more of her filthy, gay-bashing lies.

It also is hardly surprising that the disreputable Catholic League President Bill Donohue is sweating the science-based criticism of the Regnerus study. Best-selling author Anne Rice called Donohue out by name when she filmed a video announcing that she was leaving the Catholic Church, in no small measure because of the Church’s gay bashing and political gay bashing. Donohue demonstrated what low-down, hypocritical stuff he is made of, when he and his co-conspirator Timothy Dolan took to Dolan’s blog, trashed a 16-year-old girl who alleged sexual abuse at the hands of a priest, and called the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests a “phony victims group.” If SNAP is a “phony victims group,” as Dolan and Donohue want the world to believe, then why, when SNAP was involved in Church child rape victims’ advocacy in the Los Angeles Diocese, did the Church settle with the victims for $660 million?

These vile, powerful Catholic adult males who abuse their power to trash a 16-year-old girl in public have no moral standing to carry out their Unholy War Against Gays. Yet, in response to my allegations of scientific and scholarly misconduct against Mark Regnerus –presented to the University of Texas at Austin — Donohue sent an ad hominem attack against me to UT President William Powers. Dohonue discloses to UT President Powers that Robert George is on the Board of the Catholic League, yet he does not fess up about George’s connections to the funding of the Regnerus study; Donohue’s disclosure is thus a non-disclosure disclosure and an attempted misrepresentation of facts relevant to the Regnerus matter. In the letter, Donohue alleges that he is a trained sociologist, yet he makes no attempted scientific justification for Regnerus’s failure to make a valid comparison between his study’s test group and control group. A student in any Sociology 101 class would get an F for insisting that inappropriate test-group, control group comparisons are valid.

In his cowardly, dishonest and contemptible letter, Donohue scoffed at my having characterized a letter sent by the Archbishop Dolan to President Obama as threatening. Dolan’s letter to President Obama, meanwhile, which Donohue actually attached to his own letter to Powers — (as though the Dolan letter proves that Dolan made no threat to Obama) — warned President Obama that if he continued on the road to equality, he would “precipitate a national conflict between Church and State of enormous proportions and to the detriment of both institutions.”

If that is not a threat, what is it? Does Donohue maybe believe that the President of the University of Texas at Austin can not identify a Catholic Church threat when he sees one in print?

In his letter, Donohue further mislabels as “scurrilous” my past statement that Robert George has “a long history of telling dehumanizing lies about gay people.” Meanwhile, Robert George has said that homosexuality is “beneath the dignity of human beings as free and rational creatures.” He has argued to the Supreme Court of the United States that it should be possible to throw gay people into prison and to fine them for their intimacy. His NOM colleague William Duncan held a symposium session at Liberty University titled Homosexuals or Homo Sapiens; Who Deserves Protect Class Status? There are mountains of additional similar, verifiable “dehumanizing lies” that have been told by Robert George and his NOM co-conspirators in their foaming-at-the-mouth, Unholy War Against Gays.

George & Co. very literally say that gay people are not human, but Donohue wants UT President Powers to believe that it is “scurrilous” for me to report that Robert George has a long history of telling dehumanizing lies against gay people. Has Donohue even checked a dictionary lately for the meaning of “scurrilous”?

Donohue also lies outright in his letter to UT President Powers, where he says that “the “Fortnight for Freedom” events that were organized by the bishops had absolutely nothing to do with same-sex marriage;” Donohue is mistaking Powers for a fool, and assuming that he has no fact-checking capabilities.

My original letter to UT’s President Powers complained of the Regnerus study’s NOM-linked funders using the Regnerus study as a cudgel against gays in the bishops’ “Fortnight for Freedom” events. The justification for my mentioning that, was and remains a justified suspicion that Regnerus could be politically in collusion with his study’s funders. Whereas Donohue tells powers that the “Fortnight for Freedom” had “absolutely nothing to do with same-sex marriage, the documented truth is that in association with the “Fortnight for Freedom,” the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops published a letter to its website that is one long hateful screed against marriage equality for gay couples. Demeaningly, the USCCB anti-gay screed forcefully deplores the fact that when equality becomes law, “same-sex sexual relationships must be treated as if they were marriage.” Though the USCCB screed demands that same-sex marriage be outlawed in order to protect “religious freedom,” the hateful screed is written in willful ignorance that whole Christian churches ordain out, married gay and lesbian ministers, and that those churches’ religious freedoms require for marriage equality to be our civil law. The screed is just absolutely shameless, lying anti-gay hate speech from the US Conference of Catholic Bishops, and then Donohue adds insult to injury by sending an ad hominem attack letter against me to UT President Powers in which he outright lies about the Church’s “Fortnight for Freedom,” which did in fact include heaping servings of political gay bashing.

With its blood-soaked history of persecutions of sexual and other minorities, you might suppose that the Church would have the sense to stop the persecutions, yet the Church knows no shame. With the Catholic Church’s “infallible” leader Ratzinger implicated in the unconscionable actions of shifting child rapist priests between parishes without notifying parishioners of the danger, the Church appears to believe that by scapegoating gays, it will succeed in distracting world attention from its malfeasance. Donohue is himself guilty of that brand of scapegoating of homosexuals; it is one of the reasons that Anne Rice called Donohue out by name. As is his wont when the Church is accurately criticized, Donohue retaliated against Anne by attempting to smear her, instead of apologizing for all of the Church’s wrongs inflicted on the innocent. When the Howell, Michigan, Catholic public school student Daniel Glowacki verbally gay bashed in his classroom on Spirit Day, NOM-linked attorneys of The Thomas More Law Center — (whose logo is a Catholic sword against a cross, and whose motto is “Battle Ready to Defend America“) — came to Glowacki’s defense, and NOM made a video with Glowacki as yet another of its vehicles for begging for gay-bashing blood money.  Ask yourselves, why has that organization named itself for Thomas More, who as Chancellor had some of his victims burned at the stake for the “crime” of translating the Bible into English? Why is its motto a war-mongering one, and its logo a Catholic sword with a cross?  Are they not yet satisfied with their floods of anti-gay hate speech and the anti-gay-hate crimes that stem from the social attitudes at least in part occasioned by that hate speech?

Name so much as one — just one! — major gay rights organization that has a similarly violence-drenched logo and motto. Those are NOM’s anti-gay-rights Thomas More attorneys with their hate-and-war-mongering ways, and NOM’s head honchos at The Witherspoon Institute arranged for the funding of the invalid Regnerus study. The war that the Catholic Church and NOM wage unjustifiably against totally innocent gay people, is fought by the Church and by NOM as a dirty, dirty, dirty war, which those bellicose anti-gay parties wage without any sense of restraint or decency.

The Catholic Church has never adequately acknowledged its complicity in the mass slaughters of Jews and others throughout the ages. After telling its “flock” for nearly two thousand years that all Jews had to be held accountable for the death of Jesus, the Church had its “infallible” Popeexonerate” the Jews!  Mass slaughters of Jews in the Crusades, umpteen Catholic human rights abuses of Jews in the Spanish Inquisition, with the Vatican having a branch called The Holy Office of the Inquisition, the Achtung! Sieg Heil! Old World Catholic Church charm of its Reichskonkordat political treaty with Hitler, plus the fact that the Vatican wished Adolph Hitler a happy birthday every year he was in power – the party in need of “exoneration” would hardly be the Jews.

The Church has yet even to settle with its victims in matters where it is irrefutably documented as being in collusion with Nazi war criminals. Vatican officials who helped known Nazi war criminals to evade justice through the ratlines to South America accepted assets stolen from Jewish as well as from gay Holocaust victims in payment for their criminal services. Yes; to assist a known war criminal to evade justice is in itself a crime. To accept fenced assets stolen from Holocaust victims to carry out the separate crime of helping war criminals to evade justice actually and truly is an additional, monstrous crime. Accepting fenced goods in payment for services is a crime. Catholic Church officials are guilty of those monstrous crimes.

Do not hold your breath, expecting the Church to acknowledge its complicity in getting gay Holocaust victims deported to be tortured and killed in concentration camps. Throughout Europe, there stand memorials to gay Holocaust victims, yet instead of acknowledging its role in those gay Holocaust victims’ tortures and murders, the Catholic Church picks up its  blood-stained sword of cutting-and-stabbing, anti-gay defamation — including the scientifically invalid Regnerus study – and very aggressively, selfishly and pitilessly wields it in repugnant, morally bankrupt attempts to skewer gay human beings and their rights along with them.

A Change.org petition asks IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman to investigate the Catholic Church for apparent violations of laws applicable to tax-exempt organizations such as the Catholic Church. The full text of the petition is extremely enlightening, and includes this: “The Church in every state very actively criticizes President Obama’s every LGBT initiative, naming him while condemning him, in ways that very evidently are negative endorsements of his candidacy, forbidden under 501(c)(3)-related law.” To sign the petition, go here.

New York City-based novelist and freelance writer Scott Rose’s LGBT-interest by-line has appeared on Advocate.com, PoliticusUSA.com, The New York Blade, Queerty.com, Girlfriends and in numerous additional venues. Among his other interests are the arts, boating and yachting, wine and food, travel, poker and dogs. His “Mr. David Cooper’s Happy Suicide” is about a New York City advertising executive assigned to a condom account.

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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

Former GOP Lawmaker Trashes Rep. Clay Higgins for ‘Cosplay Ridiculousness That Actually Could Spark Violence’

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Appearing on MSNBC early Saturday morning, former Rep. Denver Riggleman (R-VA) lashed out at a fellow Republican who responded to Donald Trump’s latest indictment with what appears to be a call for another insurrection.

After the announcement that the former president will be formally indicted by the Department of Justice in Florida next week, Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) fired off a tweet stating: “President Trump said he has been summoned to appear at the Federal Courthouse in Miami on Tuesday, at 3 PM. This is a perimeter probe from the oppressors. Hold. rPOTUS has this. Buckle up. 1/50K know your bridges. Rock steady calm. That is all.”

Agreeing with militia expert Jeff Sharlet, who wrote, “This isn’t a metaphor. This isn’t slow civil war. This is a congressman calling for the real thing. I think this is scary as hell,” Riggleman piled on.

Speaking with MSNBC host Katie Phang, he stated, “I know Clay, I’ve served with him back in 2019 to 2021. This is so irresponsible.”

“But it’s also almost a cosplay ridiculousness that actually could spark violence with people that maybe are too ignorant to understand, or absolutely understand what a Clay Higgins is putting out there,” he suggested.

“I think at this point, he probably needs to retract that or delete it, and to apologize for such ridiculous language,” he continued. “Because it makes real military individuals almost cringe. It’s so cringeworthy that I do believe that we have to have a point in this country where their saying rise up against this hyperbolic bulls–t.”

“I think, for me as a former military person, it’s embarrassing to see somebody, especially an elected representative, it’s just embarrassing to see somebody tweet something like that, ” he added.

Watch below or at the link:

 

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OPINION

‘We Are Not Going to Stand for It’: McCarthy Defends Trump – Vows to Use Jim Jordan’s Committee to Target Attorney General

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The Republican Speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, barely hours after the U.S. Dept. of Justice unsealed a 49-page, 37-felony count criminal indictment charging Donald Trump with violations of seven federal laws, decided to double-down on his defense of the ex-president by threatening to target the Attorney General of the United States and declaring House Republicans “are not going to stand for” the criminal prosecution of the ex-president.

McCarthy went on Fox News Friday afternoon, saying “this judgment is wrong by this DOJ. That they treated President Trump differently than they treat others. And it didn’t have to be this way. This is going to disrupt this nation because it goes to the core of equal justice for all – which is not being seen today and we are not going to stand for it.”

McCarthy, a California Republican who cobbled together a tenuous pact with far-right extremists to win his speakership on the 15th try, is incorrect on the facts.

RELATED: DOJ Unseals 37-Count Trump Criminal Indictment – Legal Expert Calls It ‘Egregious’ and ‘Devastating’ (Full Text)

The Dept. of Justice does not pass judgment, the courts – in this case a jury, does. The Dept. of Justice did not treat Trump “differently,” except to give him multiple opportunities over an approximately two-year period to return national secrets he allegedly unlawfully removed, retained, and refused to return, even after being served with a subpoena and a search warrant.

What McCarthy does not do is claim Trump’s actions were legal or reasonable, because the damning indictment makes clear they are not.

Later, McCarthy took to Twitter to effectively declare he would target the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, who – for nearly a quarter century – served as a federal appeals court judge and chief judge before being nominated to serve at Main Justice.

(Garland was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2016 but then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to allow the confirmation to move process forward.)

“Many officials, from Secretary Hillary Clinton to then-Senator Joe Biden, handled classified info after their time in office & were never charged,” tweeted the Speaker, not just wrongly, but grossly and dishonestly characterizing the allegations against Trump.

“Now Biden’s leading political opponent is indicted—a double standard that must be investigated,” he again dishonestly declared.

READ MORE: ‘Fail’: Critics Blast Youngkin for Claim Trump Is a Victim of ‘Politically Motivated Actions’ Just Like ‘Parents in Virginia’

President Joe Biden had nothing to do with the decision of the Special Counsel to ask a Florida grand jury for an indictment. Nor was the President even told before Trump was indicted – like every American, President Biden learned of the Trump indictment through news reports. Attorney General Garland did not sign off on the decision to ask a grand jury for an indictment.

McCarthy, meanwhile, vowed House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan and the House Republicans “will get answers.”

“Merrick Garland: the American people elected us to conduct oversight of you. We will fulfill that obligation,” he declared.

McCarthy made those remarks atop a Friday letter from Jordan to Garland that begins: “The Biden Department of Justice is reportedly about to indict a former president and President Biden’s chief rival in the upcoming presidential election.”

“According to reports, the Department will indict President Donald Trump, despite declining to indict former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for her mishandling of classified information and failing to indict President Biden for his mishandling of classified information.” (The letter does not mention former Vice President Mike Pence, who is not being charged for his mishandling of classified information.”

On Thursday a defiant and angry McCarthy, after Trump was indicted, wrote: “Today is indeed a dark day for the United States of America.”

“It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him,” he said, which is egregiously false – Biden did not indict Trump, nor did his Attorney General or even Special Counsel; a grand jury of Florida citizens did.

“Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades,” McCarthy charged, which is a legitimate claim and there is a current federal investigation underway. The difference is Biden did not take the documents, did not know they were among his papers, and immediately upon learning they were, contacted the National Archives to arrange their return.

Donald Trump, we now know, according to the indictment, packed some of the boxes himself, not only refused to return the documents but hid them from the Dept. of Justice and National Archives, lied about them, and kept them at times in public areas of his Florida resort and residence.

“I, and every American who believes in the rule of law,” McCarthy wrong declared, “stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.”

READ MORE: SCOTUS ‘Surprise’ Voting Rights Decision Could – and Did – Have Big Implications for Democrats, Legal Experts Say

In response to McCarthy’s remarks, U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) posted a photo from the DOJ’s indictment of Trump.

“These are the secrets that protect our troops. And Kevin McCarthy thinks it’s perfectly OK that Donald Trump stole and stored them like this,” he charged.

Watch the video and see Rep. Swalwell’s tweet above or at this link.

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RIGHT WING EXTREMISM

‘Fail’: Critics Blast Youngkin for Claim Trump Is a Victim of ‘Politically Motivated Actions’ Just Like ‘Parents in Virginia’

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Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin, a possible 2024 presidential candidate, is under fire after remarks he made Friday morning defending Donald Trump after the ex-president was indicted on what has now been revealed to be 37 federal felony counts related to the Dept. of Justice’s criminal probe into his handling of hundreds of classified and top secret documents.

Youngkin Friday suggested that the prosecution of Donald Trump, which includes Espionage Act charges, conspiracy charges, and obstruction of justice charges among others, was just like the alleged prosecution of parents.

Gov. Youngkin, often wrongly portrayed in the media as a moderate Republican, may have been attempting to invoke the false yet viral far-right claim that Attorney General Merrick Garland was investigating and prosecuting parents for merely speaking at school board meetings. That claim came about after Garland issued a letter asking the Bureau to come up with strategies to address violence and violent threats directed at school board members. Some who have promoted that erroneous claim, including Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, have falsely claimed Garland called ordinary parents “terrorists.”

On Friday, Youngkin tweeted about the Trump indictment, saying, “These charges are unprecedented and it’s a sad day for our country, especially in light of what clearly appears to be a two-tiered justice system where some are selectively prosecuted, and others are not.”

“Parents in Virginia know firsthand what it’s like to be targeted by politically motivated actions,” he added.

“Regardless of your party, this undermines faith in our judicial system at exactly the time when we should be working to restore that trust,” Youngkin concluded, remarks that themselves could undermine faith in our judicial system.

Days before his election, Youngkin also promoted the false Garland claim, even after the Attorney General that same day explained to the Senate Judiciary Committee his letter directed the FBI to investigate not ordinary parents, but people who were organizing attacks on school board members.

Candidate Youngkin appeared on Fox News in October 0f 2021 (video below) and falsely told Tucker Carlson, “What happened today was, of course, Merrick Garland doubled down. He said, ‘No, I’m absolutely maintaining my position that the DOJ and the FBI should be investigating parents.’ Parents who are trying to stand up for their children when there’s been a sexual assault in a school bathroom. We have a board of education and in Loudoun County that tried to hide it from parents, hide it from hiding from the public, and they move this child into another school and then that child again committed another sexual assault.”

READ MORE: DOJ Unseals 37-Count Trump Criminal Indictment – Legal Expert Calls It ‘Egregious’ and ‘Devastating’ (Full Text)

Youngkin made education and “parents’ rights” a campaign issue when he ran in 2021. His opponent, Democrat Terry McAuliffe, during a debate said, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” While experts claim it didn’t swing the election for Youngkin, it at least established him nationally as focused on education and “parental rights,” a mantle Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis quickly co-opted.

The Washington Post, alternatively, on Friday focused on Youngkin’s “two-tiered justice” remarks, reporting: “Youngkin’s suggestion that a rich White man — he didn’t actually name Trump — had been victimized by a ‘two-tiered justice system’ drew fierce pushback, with many critics noting the governor’s opposition to the notion that racial and ethnic minorities face systemic racism. The Republican won the governorship on a promise to purge ‘critical race theory’ from K-12 classrooms, though it was not part of any curriculum. Once in office, Youngkin launched a tip line for parents to report on teachers discussing ‘inherently divisive’ concepts in schools.”

Youngkin, who technically is a “populist conservative” but swings far-right on social issues, was quickly chastised for his tweet.

“You know what you are saying is wrong and incendiary. Shame on you,” declared former CIA officer John Sipher. “These charges stemmed from a grand [jury] of Florida citizens. Trump will have access to a Fair process. But instead you spread information to anger and confuse people. You are stoking misinformation and violence.”

READ MORE: SCOTUS ‘Surprise’ Voting Rights Decision Could – and Did – Have Big Implications for Democrats, Legal Experts Say

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes took a different approach, mocking the Virginia Republican.

“It’s the pivot to ‘Parents in Virginia…’ in the third sentence that elevates this to art,” he wrote.

“The moderate, genial suburban dad in a fleece vest suggests that the only way to restore confidence in the justice system is to place Trump above the law,” wrote The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, also mocking Youngkin.

“Youngkin is pro-Trump, as usual–even though Virginia voted heavily AGAINST Trump in both 2016 and 2020. When it comes to Donald Trump, Liz Cheney has more courage in her pinky than Youngkin does in his whole body,” observed Larry Sabato, the well-known professor of politics, political analyst, and founder and director of University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

The vice president of research for the liberal super PAC American Bridge 21st Century, Liz Charboneau, called Youngkin’s tweet an “especially stupid statement when a large portion of your state has a security clearance, handles classified documents, and has never been charged under the espionage act.”

Conservative Mona Charen, a syndicated columnist and Policy Editor at The Bulwark: “So here’s our answer as to whether Youngkin is a man of character. Fail.”

The Lincoln Project’s Michelle Kinney tweeted, “Youngkin twisting himself into pretzel to weave a vaguebook repudiation of Trump indictment and his weirdo anti vaxx anti trans ‘parents rights’ obsession into one tweet. It reads like Veep dialogue.”

Historian, professor, Holocaust expert Dr. Waitman Wade Beorn tweeted, “Hey dude, the Pentagon is literally in your state. Maybe stop in and have a chat…”

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