First, if you missed Sen. John Fetterman’s reaction to the news of the House impeachment inquiry, here it is.

Yesterday, Bess Levin wrote at Vanity Fair:

Earlier today, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy announced that Republicans will move forward with an official impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, despite the embarrassing fact that, as House Freedom Caucus member Ken Buck told MSNBC on Sunday, they haven’t uncovered a single piece of evidence “linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor.” Also deeply embarrassing? The tantrum Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is now having over not getting the credit she thinks she deserves for calling to impeach Biden first.

Greene—who commemorated 9/11 one day earlier by calling the president’s policies “traitorous” and suggesting states should secede—was apparently triggered by a post from Congressman Matt Gaetz, who wrote, “When @SpeakerMcCarthy makes his announcement in moments, remember that as I pushed him for weeks, [Fox News host Brian Kilmeade] said I was: ‘Speaking into the wind’ on impeachment. Turns out, the wind may be listening!”

That didn’t sit right with Greene, who has been absurdly calling for Biden’s impeachment since he took office in 2021—and she needed to make sure everyone knew that. Taking to the platform formerly known as Twitter, she responded: “Correction my friend. I introduced articles of impeachment against Joe Biden for his corrupt business dealings in Ukraine & China while he was Vice President on his very first day in office. You wouldn’t cosponsor those and I had to drag you kicking and screaming to get you to cosponsor my articles on the border. Who’s really been making the push?”

Yes, it’s always fun when our elected representatives act like preschoolers. Last night Chris Hayes commented on Matt Gaetz, “That guy’s bark to bite ratio is like ten thousand to one.” Greene, too. But how’s it going to work when these people are banging all their pots and pans about their impeachment inquiry while failing to meet the end-of-September appropriations deadline? At some point one would think that even their own voters might notice what wastes of space they are. But I guess there are people who cannot be underestimated, or there would be no Trump supporters.

I understand it’s significant that McCarthy announced the inquiry without taking a vote. It’s likely he wouldn’t have gotten the votes. The entire point of the exercise is to take up space in the news cycles and allow House Freedom Caucus members to publicize insinuations and suspicious about President Biden to hurt his re-election chances. It’s also to please Supreme Leader Trump, who has been pushing the impeachment with House members.

Televised impeachment hearings could also act as counterprogramming to the initial Fulton County, Georgia, RICO trial expected to begin on October 23. However, given the embarrassing mess the Hunter Biden House investigations have been so far, televised House hearings may not have the effect the Freedom Caucus intends.

Most Senate Republicans admit there is no evidence linking President Biden to corruption, and they’d rather the House got serious and passed appropriations bills. Because most Senate Republicans, with a few exceptions, understand that what the House Freedom Caucus is doing is political poison .

But the FCs have already let it be known that getting an impeachment inquiry does not change their nutjob demands for the appropriations bills. Maybe Kevin McCarthy will keep his job — why he wants it is beyond me — but he’s gotten nowhere with trying to keep the problem children from playing with matches.

In other news: Mitt Romney won’t seek another term as senator. Do the Dems have a plausible candidate to run for his seat?

In more other news: Lauren Boebert and date were booted from a theater during a performance of the musical Beetlejuice.

Brian Kitts, director of marketing and communications for Denver Arts and Venues, said the patrons were talking loudly, vaping and using cameras during the performance. They were warned during an intermission, but the behavior continued into the second act, at which point the two were asked to leave.

As they were being escorted from the property, the two people said “stuff like ‘do you know who I am,’ ‘I am on the board,’ (and) ‘I will be contacting the mayor,’” according to a security incident report obtained by The Sun from the city through an open records request.

The incident report said there were “multiple complaints” about the two people during the performance.

No class.

Update: At Pollitico,  A House GOP attempt to advance abortion measure backfires in funding fight. The House is a bleeping mess.

I’m still digesting the Politico story by Heidi Przybyla about the long-standing financial relationship between  Leonard Leo and Ginni Thomas. Here is a bit it:

At the time, the Citizens United ruling was widely expected, as the court had already signaled its intentions. When it came, it upended nearly 100 years of campaign spending restrictions.

The conservative legal movement seized the moment with greater success than any other group, and the consequences have shaped American jurisprudence and politics in dramatic ways.

From those early discussions among [Leonard] Leo, [Ginni] Thomas and [Harlan] Crow would spring a billion-dollar force that has helped remake the judiciary and overturn longstanding legal precedents on abortion, affirmative action and many other issues. It funded legal scholars to devise theories to challenge liberal precedents, helped to elect state attorneys general willing to apply those theories and launched lavish campaigns for conservative judicial nominees who would cite those theories in their rulings from the bench.

The movement’s triumphs are now visible but its engine remains hidden: A billion-dollar network of groups, most of which are registered as tax-exempt charities or social welfare organizations. Taking advantage of gaps in disclosure laws, they shield the identities of most of their donors and some of the recipients of the funds. Among those who’ve been paid by the groups are leading thinkers and individuals with close personal ties to Leo — including a whopping $7 million to a group run by a close friend and his wife. They also include a for-profit business for which Leo himself is chairman and which received tens of millions of dollars from his nonprofit network.

Leo’s role as the central figure in this movement has long been known, culminating in his acquisition last year of what many believe to be the largest political donation in history. Few are aware of the extent to which the movement’s baby steps were taken in concert with Ginni Thomas.

That’s the intro. From there it goes deeper into how Ginni Thomas fits into this. There are many connections between Leonard Leo (and his money), Ginni Thomas, and business before the Supreme Court. Dark money groups funded by Leo, Crow, and other associates appear to have been shovelling a considerable amount of money at Ginni Thomas over the years. Because of lax disclosure laws there is no way to know how much money the Thomases have gotten from these groups, or when, or what was expected of them in return. But it appears that Clarence Thomas might as well be on Leonard Leo’s payroll.

And speaking of malefactors of great wealth, do read Eugene Robinson, Elon Musk shouldn’t be calling the shots on how Ukraine fights (no paywall). Musk, who owns the Starlink satellite internet system on which Ukraine has depended. And he’s been imposing his own judgments about what Ukraine ought not be doing by withholding the service at critical moments. And he’s done this more than once, often after having conversations with Russian officials, including Putin himself. There are no words to describe how wrong this is.

Robinson writes, “an impulsive billionaire, unsure of whether he wants to be a superhero or a Bond villain, should not have been in a position to make that call. No private citizen should be making such unilateral decisions about our national security.” The Pentagon needs to step in and put a stop to this, somehow. Robinson continues,

It’s the anniversary of that day again. Reflect and remember.

In Trump criminal justice news — remember the documents case? The one in Florida? In the past few weeks we’ve all been looking hard at the Georgia and  federal J6 indictments. What’s been happening in Florida?

The answer is, not a whole lot. David Kurtz writes at TPM that Judge Cannon is deliberately slow walking the case.

Welp, we’re coming up on a month since U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued any meaningful orders or rulings in the Mar-a-Lago documents case – and frankly that’s a generous application of the word “meaningful.”

Back on Aug. 17, Cannon did issue an order but it was more notable for kicking the can on the case than actually moving it forward. And since then, very little has happened in the Mar-a-Lago case. If you’re watching closely to see if Cannon is slow-rolling the case to the benefit of Trump, whose entire legal strategy at this point across multiple prosecutions is delay, then the past month is plenty cause for concern.

Here’s what Cannon still hasn’t done:

1. Issued a protective order covering the handling of classified documents in the case.
2. Held Garcia hearings on the potential conflicts of interest facing two of the defense counsel in the case.

But it’s actually even a little worse than that: Cannon hasn’t even scheduled hearings on these matters yet, even though they’ve been pending in one form or another for weeks.

There are more examples of dithering, so read the whole post. The last hearing Judge Cannon held in this case was on July 18, when she denied the government’s motion for a CIPA protective order. She gave Smith and crew a chance to re-up its motion, which they did later in July. Crickets since.

Will Jack Smith let this stand?

In other news: On Friday U.S. District Judge Steve Jones denied Mark Meadows’s bid to move his case from Georgia state court to federal court. Today Meadows appealed the decision to the to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

In that filing, Meadows’ lawyers argued that several aspects of the district court’s order departed from precedent, including failing to credit Meadows’ account of his conduct and duties and raising the burden on Meadows to justify the removal of his case from state court.

I take it this means Judge Jones failed to appreciate that overturning an election in Georgia is a normal duty for a White House chief of staff.

This afternoon, Judge Jones replied to Meadows’ emergency request by ordering Georgia prosecutors to file a brief in response by Tuesday at 12 p.m. ET. So there are more twists and turns ahead.

In more other news: A few days ago I wrote about the PEPFAR program that has been very effective in fighting AIDS in Africa. An unsupported rumor claims that PEPFAR has been funding or encouraging abortions, and now Republicans want to kill it. Some protesters stormed Kevin McCarthy’s office today demanding that PEPFAR be funded. They were arrested, which is what often happens when you get rowdy in government buildings.

But while I agree with their cause, this is an example of stupid protesting. Kevin McCarthy has little control over the House and isn’t going to be swayed by protesters. The protests need to focus on educating the public about how stupid it would be to let PEPFAR lapse. Protests don’t work by yelling at the powers that be. They work by swaying public opinion.

The Congress Critters are returning to Washington and preparing to take up the next battle in the war over funding the government. The adversaries are the House Freedom Caucus versus Everybody Else.

With less than three weeks remaining before government funding runs out on Sept. 30, Congress has not cleared any of its 12 annual appropriations bills, though there has been more progress than in the recent past. Given the rapidly approaching deadline, leaders of both the House and the Senate agree that a temporary stopgap funding measure will be needed to avert a government shutdown beginning Oct. 1. But that usually routine legislation is facing major obstacles in the Republican-led House, making its path to President Biden’s desk unusually fraught.

Members of the House’s far-right Freedom Caucus are pledging to oppose even a temporary measure if it does not cut funding substantially or include new border controls and restrictions on prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump. At the same time, senators of both parties want the stopgap bill to include billions of dollars in new assistance to Ukraine, a demand that House Republicans are resisting. House Democrats want nothing to do with any of the Republican bills, which have also been loaded with conservative social policy riders that have little chance of enactment.

The major obstacle for Mr. McCarthy is that a significant segment of the hard-right members in his ranks are insisting on conditions on the temporary funding measure that could never clear the Democratic-led Senate even as they call for deeper spending cuts in the full-year spending measures that many of their fellow House Republicans will not support. That internal divide and differences over abortion policy and other issues forced Mr. McCarthy to pull funding measures from the floor just before the August recess.

The House Freedom Caucus has about 41 members out of 222 total Republicans, I believe. Yet they appear to be calling the shots in the House, possibly because the remainder of the Republicans aren’t able to pull together a united resistance. And because Kevin McCarthy is a waste of space.

The FCs are loading up appropriations bills with junk riders about  keeping drag shows and critical race theory out of the military. And some House Republicans want to add amendments to appropriations bills that would “prohibit the use of federal funding for the prosecution of any major presidential candidate prior to the upcoming presidential election on November 5th, 2024,” it says here. And we know which presidential candidate would benefit from that.

Because of the very narrow Republican majority, McCarthy needs a united party to pass anything with only Republican votes. He’s not going to get that. And if McCarthy tries to put together a coalition of not-Freedom Caucus Republicans and Democrats to pass a stopgap measure, the FC members will challenge his leadership. They’ve got him by his boy parts.

The funding dynamic is entirely different in the Senate, where Republicans and Democrats on the Appropriations Committee have been working cooperatively to advance spending bills at a higher level than what is being considered in the House. Leaders of the panel have also kept the bills free of the contentious policy riders that are drawing fire in the House.

The Washington Post reports that the Senate is preparing to take the appropriations initiative away from the House.

After being largely on the sidelines during the debt-and-budget battle in the spring, the Senate is ready to take the lead on the fall legislative session on the outline for government funding and supporting critical national security efforts overseas.

Beginning with a simple resolution to keep agencies open, a bipartisan collection of senators wants to add its priorities to that bill. The group essentially is daring the divided House Republicans to oppose it and take the blame for shutting down the government if the Sept. 30 deadline has not been met.

I take it a majority of Senate Republicans want to continue to fund Ukraine, to increase (as always) the defense budget, and to increase disaster aid to parts of the country devastated by storms and fires. Further, in case the government shuts down October 1 because the FCs have gummed up the works, Senate Republicans have vowed that the nation will know that it’s all the fault of the freaking Freedom Caucus.

As a political act, government shutdowns have a long history of backfiring on the party that caused it. So why is the Freedom Caucus so all-fired eager to shut it down? Because they are idiots, that’s why. They are no more capable of imagining the real-world consequences of anything they do than a toad can sing opera,

Back in business. Yay!

The Associated Press is reporting that New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, has suspended legal open and concealed carry of firearms across Albuquerque and the surrounding county for at least 30 days.

The firearms suspension, classified as an emergency public health order, applies to open and concealed carry in most public places, from city sidewalks to urban recreational parks. The restriction is tied to a threshold for violent crime rates currently only met by the metropolitan Albuquerque. Police and licensed security guards are exempt from the temporary ban.

Cue the screaming and outrage from the Right.

Gov. Lujan Grisham cited several recent incidents of gun violence for her decision.

Lujan Grisham referenced several recent shootings in Albuquerque in issuing the order. Among them was a suspected road rage shooting Wednesday outside a minor league baseball stadium that killed 11-year-old Froyland Villegas and critically wounded a woman as their vehicle was peppered with bullets while people left the game.

Last month, 5-year-old Galilea Samaniego was fatally shot while asleep in a motor home. Four teens entered the mobile home community in two stolen vehicles early on Aug. 13 and opened fire on the trailer, according to police. The girl was struck in the head and later died at a hospital.

The governor also cited an August shooting death in Taos County of 13-year-old Amber Archuleta. A 14-year-old boy shot and killed the girl with his father’s gun while they were at his home, authorities said.

“When New Mexicans are afraid to be in crowds, to take their kids to school, to leave a baseball game — when their very right to exist is threatened by the prospect of violence at every turn — something is very wrong,” Lujan Grisham said in a statement.

This was a gutsy move on the governor’s part. I don’t know that gun violence has ever been declared an official public health threat, although the American Medical Association said it was back in 2016. And the violence has gotten worse since. It will be interesting to see if there is less gun violence in Albuquerque over the thirty days. I expect that this will be challenged in court somewhere.

Jonathan Turley, still challenging Alan Dershowitz for the irritating right-wing attorney gadfly award, predicts the governor will be hit with a massive backlash, and that the suspension will increase support for open and concealed carry. I don’t have a feel for politics in New Mexico.

But what if there is no backlash? There is copious polling telling us that a majority of Americans really, truly want more restrictions on guns, not less. What if the governor pays no political penalties at all? Maybe more politicians will get some guts. Maybe the nation will no longer be hostage to the gun fetishists. This is worth watching;

In other news: This is a story about Elon Musk that would be getting more attention.

Overnight we finally got confirmation of something that has long been suspected or hinted at but which none of the players had an interest in confirming. Last September Musk either cut off or refused to activate his Starlink satellite service near the Crimean coast during a surprise Ukrainian drone attack on the Russian Navy at anchor at its Sevastopol naval port.

Ukraine has made extensive use of naval drones. But it at least sounds like this was supposed to be a massed attack that would have done extensive damage to the Russian Navy and the naval port itself and thus seriously degraded Russia’s ability to launch missile attacks against Ukraine. In other words, it doesn’t sound like this was just any attack, though the details are sketchy.

On its face you might say, they’re Musk’s satellites and he’s in charge of who gets to use them and how. But of course it’s not that simple. It’s a good illustration of how Musk’s economic power has crept into domains that are more like the power of a state.

It’s worth reading the whole post, by Josh Marshall at TPM.

My PC is experiencing technical difficulties and is currently unusable. I have a Geek Squad guy coming tomorrow to fix it — fingers crossed — but until then I can’t post much. I am doing this post on a Kindle, and it’s just too  cumbersome. Please feel free to comment on whatever.

Truth Social was launched in 2021 on a foundation of SPACs and PIPEs and other entitites I had never heard of, but I wrote about them at the time. Now this financing apparatus, whatever it is, appears to be about to crumble apart. There’s a news story about it here. Don’t ask me to explain any of this.

Regarding the Georgia indictment, there’s more reporting today on Coffee County, Georgia.

Prosecutors allege that former county Republican Party chair Cathy Latham and former elections supervisor Misty Hampton helped to facilitate employees from a firm hired by Trump attorneys to access and copy sensitive voter data and election software. Surveillance video captured Latham waving the visitors inside, and Hampton in the office as they allegedly accessed the data. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Why Coffee County? It’s a rural county in southern Georgia. Trump won almost 70% of the votes there in 2020, as did David Purdue, running for the U.S. Senate. Both lost statewide, as you might recall. Why were Coffee County’s voting machines so interesting to the Trumpers?

It turns out that there is a history of Coffee County elections being mishandled. The county seat, Douglas, is majority Black, but the rest of the County is mostly White, and county government offices get filled by White people. There is a history of Black voter intimidation and suppression going back years. My guess is that Trumpers may discretely have inquired about voting machines throughout the state, but only the Coffee County officials said, Sure, come on down. Take whatever you want. 

Bill Richardson died. He was a good man. Jimmy Buffett is gone, too.

Worth reading: For All Rudy’s Troubles, There’s Much More Still There by Josh Marshall.

Enjoy the Labor Day weekend. I hope you find plenty of beer and barbeque, or whatever you enjoy on late summer weekends.

Today’s law and crime news — Trump filed a plea of not guilty in the Georgia case. But the far more interesting news is out of New York.

Yesterday Attorney General Letitia James asked a judge to find that Trump had fraudulently overvalued his assets. The judge should do this without bothering with the trial thing, James said. I believe that’s called a “summary judgment.” James alleges that Trump had lied about his assets over a period of several years in order to get loans, and the lies overstated his worth by between $812 million and $2.2 billion each year over the course of a decade.

Trump’s lawyers are asking to get the suit dismissed. They say most of these loans happened too long ago to be litigated now. There is, apparently, some precedent for their argument. If the Trump lawyers prevail, James’s case will be severely limited.

But also yesterday Trump’s deposition to James from last April was unsealed. And it’s a doozy. Among other things, Trump claimed to have averted nuclear war with North Korea.

MR. TRUMP: I was very busy. I was — I considered this the most important job in the world, saving millions of lives. I think you would have nuclear holocaust, if I didn’t deal with North Korea. I think you would have a nuclear war, if I weren’t elected. And I think you might have a nuclear war now, if you want to know the truth.

In other words, while he was POTUS he was too busy saving us all from thermonuclear destruction to be bothered with petty details about the value of assets.

Charles Pierce:

The deposition is a terrific window into what kind of witness El Caudillo del Mar-a-Lago is going to be over the next couple of years, and into what his strategy is going to be in the various courtrooms in which he’ll be engaged. He will attempt to turn them all into facsimiles of his rallies. He will bloviate, prevaricate, denounce, distract, and deplore. Judges are going to need a whip and a chair.

Of course, Kim Jung Un still has all the nuclear capabilities he had when Trump became POTUS, and he is planning to expand them. The BBC reported today that North Korea recently fired two short-range ballistic missiles to simulate nuclear strikes on military targets in South Korea. Kim is just as treacherous as he ever was. Trump accomplished nothing. But you knew that.

I understand Trump is continuing to launch social media screeds against “prosecutors, judges, witnesses, the FBI, DOJ, and the justice system broadly.” Will nothing be done?

In other what the bleep news — Justice Clarence Thomas now is saying he had to accept flights on private jets for security reasons after the Dobbs leak. Seriously.

Here’s some housekeeping.

I haven’t heard any more from our friend gulag, and I’m getting worried again. Although he sounded optimistic when I heard from him last week, he must be having a rough time. If anyone wants his email to send a cheer-up note, just say yes in the comments. I believe I have your email addresses.

Also, thanks so much for your response to the recent mini-fundraiser. I received more than enough to fill in the shortfall, so I won’t nag you any more about it. (Although I won’t object to more donations.)

Update: Proud Boy Joe Biggs Sentenced To 17 Years Over Jan. 6 Plot

Yesterday the Biden Administration released the list of the first ten prescription drugs that will be subject to price negotiation with Medicare. And at the top of the list is Eliquis.

I take Eliquis because I have a history of TIAs, which are temporary strokes caused by blood clots in the brain. Eliquis is supposed to prevent the blood clots. It’s said to be a lot safer than the older drug for that purpose, Warfarin, and I get the impression that the nation’s doctors have been persuaded it’s the best drug available for people with my history.

I was heartened when I heard Eliquis was on the list, because it’s costing me a $47 a month copay with Medicare. The “list price” of the drug, according to Bristol Myers Squibb/Pfizer, is $561 for a 30-day supply. But I’ve run into other sources that say it sometimes retails for around $700-800 a month.

According to this 2022 news story, Eliquis and a similar drug, Xarelto, which also is on the list, have cost the government $46 billion since 2015.

Unfortunately, the reduced, negotiated price of Eliquis won’t go into effect until 2026. And I read recently there are generic versions already approved that are supposed to be released for sale in 2026. So the price would have dropped then, anyway.

From a 2019 news story about the generics:

As Bristol’s best-selling drug before the Celgene merger—even ahead of PD-1 inhibitor Opdivo—the drug delivered $5.9 billion to the company’s top line in the first nine months of 2019. Its 25% year-over-year growth rate during the period also far exceeded Opdivo’s 10%.

As for Pfizer, Eliquis delivered a total of $3.1 billion in the first nine months, mostly in revenue from its Bristol alliance but some via direct sales in smaller markets.

In 2017, 25 generics companies told Bristol that they had filed for FDA approval of their copycats. The pair soon erected a patent wall, launching lawsuits against all those drugmakers.

That August, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office granted Eliquis a key composition of matter patent, extending it from February 2023 to November 2026. Bristol and Pfizer have argued that’s when Eliquis generics can enter.

So, during the Trump Administration, somebody allowed the pharma company to extend the patent three more years so the price gouging could continue.

I am acquainted with someone who somehow missed out on Medicare Part D and is working way past retirement just to pay for Eliquis, she told me.

I’m sure most of you remember when the Bush II Administration got Part D enacted only if price neogiations were prohibited. In Bushie world, this was supposed to make Medicare Part D a better deal for seniors. Right.

The price negotiation thing, once it’s fully into effect, really ought to bring drug prices down to something closer to what they are in other countries (about 80 percent less than what we pay, I understand). But that’s assuming Republicans don’t get control again and cancel it, which they are itching to do.

Piggybacking on the pharmaceutical industry’s strategy, Republicans are working to persuade Americans that the Biden plan will stifle innovation and lead to price controls, several strategists say.

“The price control is a huge departure from where we have been as a country,” said Joel White, a Republican health care strategist. “It gets politicians and bureaucrats right into your medicine cabinet.”

Better that than Big Pharma fatcats raiding my bank account, I say. And this has been another episode of “Why Free Market Capitalism Can’t Be Trusted to Provide Health Care.”

In Other News: Before any more time goes by, do see Biden’s course for U.S. on trade breaks with Clinton and Obama by David Lynch in WaPo.  No paywall. It says Biden is breaking with the old pro-globalization policies in favor of policies that are more protective of U.S. labor.

In More Other News: It’s reported that Mitch McConnell had another “freeze” moment today. Maybe he’s having TIAs. He can afford the bleeping Eliquis.

And So On: A judge rules that Rudy Giuliani is legally liable for defaming Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss.

Worth Reading: Will Bunch, Journalism fails miserably at explaining what is really happening to America.