The Monday hearing of the House Select Committee of Jan. 6 begins soon, and I have a few preliminary comments.

First, I will use this post as the gathering point for any comments submitted, through the final public hearing of this committee which is June 23.  The previous post on this topic is here.

9:04 a.m. CDT, June 13: So the live hearing is delayed; the key witness has an emergency, his wife has gone into labor…the real world enters the virtual.  I’ll publish at this point.  More later.

COMMENTS WELCOME, any time.

*

11:58 a.m. June 13:  Today’s Hearing finally began at 9:47 and adjourned at 11:52 a.m. CDT.  Like before, riveting.  Time very well spent.

These Hearings remain: June 15, 16, 21, and 23

*

4:30 p.m. June 13: Of course, I have no more knowledge of how the Select Committee has structured the content of the remaining four hearings, but my guess is the identified offenders, especially #45, and their advisors, are very nervous – though they would never admit such fear.

The committee has had a year and a half and has access to an immense amount of data, plus witness testimony, from which to choose.

All I have is the opportunity to guess: each upcoming day will be like tightening a vise.  The higher up the target, the more direct the evidence associated with him or her.  It will be evidence he or she will not like in view….

Separately, I did watch part two of the CNN special on Nixon’s fall Sunday night.  It was old news, but especially pertinent now.  The folly of lust for Power was a main theme, as old as history.

As a ‘bonus’, preceding part two was a special on Alex Jones.  Chilling.

2:00 p.m. June 15: This afternoon I took a trip to the post office, and enroute pass by the elementary school attended by one of my grandkids grades 1-5.  (He’s near 23, so this was awhile ago.)

Nonetheless, it was jarring to see a parking lot full of police vehicles and policeman in SWAT gear, and one of those immense combat vehicles.   No, it was no school incident – school is out for the summer.  But it was obvious that these folks were there for area police training, and the choice of place was not random – it was a school.

I drove by there twice more.  There was no good vantage point for a photo; it was raining and I wouldn’t have parked and walk in anyway.  But visualize your own neighborhood school and something similar going on.  It’s come to this in this country: School is a risky place.

10:30 a.m. June 17:  I watched the entire hearing on June 16; the previous days scheduled hearing was postponed.  The next hearing is not officially scheduled, but may be June 21.  The place to check is here.

Every citizen should watch these hearings.  They put “meat on the bones” of the close call with disaster this nation experienced on January 6, 2021, and will experience again, if January 6 was just a trial run.

For me, Michael Luttig, a highly respected apparently very conservative judge, frequently on the short list for Supreme Court, was most riveting, yesterday.

He was very careful in his comments, knowing this was public testimony, and speaking as a judge.  January 6, played out to the desired final conclusion, he said, “would immediately have been plunged into what would have been tantamount to a revolution within a paralyzing constitutional crisis.”    [Postnote June 19: Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American for June 18 is well worth your time today.  Here it is.]

A “foundational truth” of our country is “the Rule of Law”, he said.

For many years I have been part of an organization, now called Citizens for Global Solutions, which has long enshrined the Rule of Law as Judge Luttig suggested.

For our whole history, this has basically worked within our diverse society, and not without occasional very serious problems, which ultimately we worked out (as the Civil War, to name just one such occasion).

In my opinion, what differed in the administration which attempted to pull off January 6 and cancel a free election, was to elevate to the absurd an extreme principal: those who make the rules, rule the Law.   The pretty obvious effort, continuing, was to control the law-making process, and thence the judiciary which interprets the laws made.

2017-21 was the first administration in our history which decreed that only the winners opinion mattered.

There is more.  For someone wanting a little bit more information on the rule of Law, I offer a booklet, published in 1959, by the American Bar Association, as an adjunct to Law Day, first proclaimed in 1958, by President Eisenhower.  The 50 pages are worth your time.  (The 50 pages are in four parts, only because my scanner was misbehaving….)

Law Day Am Bar Assoc 1959; Law Day (2) Am Bar Assoc 1959; Law Day (3) Am Bar Assoc 1959; Law Day (4) Am Bar Assoc 1959

Postnote June 20: This from the Weekly Sift is worth your time.