PRENOTE: Yesterdays post on the 2023 Minnesota state legislature results.

Tonight 8 p.m. TPT Channel 2 (PBS, Twin Cities).  airs Part Three (last part) of “Living With Hitler”, presumably how the Third Reich ended for the people who temporarily benefitted by its beginning and middle.  I’ve watched the first two parts.  It’s very well worth your time.  It can happen here.

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Most likely, later today in Florida, will come the arraignment of the former President of the United States and I presume his aide as well.  I deliberately write this before anything happens, including possibility of delays, demonstrations, or etc.

This is a very big deal.

Joyce Vance offers an informed review by a veteran prosecutor of the possibilities ahead here.  Her column, Civil Discourse, is very well worth the time it takes to read it.

My personal “tradition”, is a temptation to speculate in advance about what will transpire today and forward.

I will not do that, except to say that I think the matters upcoming will put to the test the very concept of the “Rule of Law” which is the cornerstone of stability in this massive country of ours.  It is too easy to make snap “armchair” judgements.  Joyce and others offer well informed analyses rooted in direct experience.

Here is the indictment as issued by the Department of Justice on June 8, 2023.

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There are a great plenty of other issues on our plate as citizens of this country.

I did a post a few hours ago, about my views of the results of the most recent session of the Minnesota legislature.  You can read it here if you wish.

Ukraine and Haiti and other places remind us that there are other places in our world.

We citizens are our country.  Keep informed and active.

POSTNOTE: About three hours after I published this, I brought in the morning Minneapolis Star Tribune.  The top headline: “Billions in COVID aid stolen, wasted”.  Of course, along the way, efforts to fully fund enforcement agencies like the IRS and law enforcement are fought at every turn.  Yesterday came a proposal, in Congress, to “Defund the Department of Justice”.  On and on.

Pull quote from the STrib article: “Criminals and gangs grabbed the money.  But so did a U.S. soldier in Georgia, the pastors of a defunct church in Texas, a former state lawmaker in Missouri and a roofing contractor in Montana.  All of it led to the greatest grift in U.S. history….”

Criminals are a timeless feature of Humanity.  A key government function is to protect all of us through the rule of law.

POSTNOTE 2: Dahlia Lithwick wrote a troubling but on point column today, published in Slate.  Here.

June 14: Overnight came an excellent discussion of what’s possibly ahead in the legal arena.  Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse, here.  Also, take the time to read Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters From an American, here.

Last night I watched the third and last segment of “Living With Hitler” on PBS.  This segment dealt with the end of the dream of the Third Reich – the near destruction of Germany.  One of the narrators, near the end of the film, at about 40 minutes, said that until the very end many of the German people continued to support Hitler, even when their country had been destroyed.  It should bring pause to us, here.  The nature of human beings does not stop at borders, and did not stop in 1945.  We are very capable of making very bad mistakes, and refusing to own them.