Oh, Mr. Dickinson, I’m surprised at you. You should know that rebellion is always legal in the first person, such as “our rebellion.” It is only in the third person – “their rebellion” – that it is illegal.
Dr. Benjamin Franklin - 1776
Rubio said, and I quote, that “anybody who committed crimes on January 6th should be prosecuted.” Rubio later said that, if “you entered the Capitol and you committed acts of violence and you were there to hurt people, you should be prosecuted” — but that was after he’d already said the part about “anybody who committed crimes” without limiting it to entering the Capitol and committing violence, and full stop. You can’t bootstrap from the second what he already got right in the first.
So, what is it that you think that he is objecting to? Why do you think that they are censuring Republican members of the Jan 6th committee? Why are they claiming that people are being prosecuted for “legitimate political discourse”?
Do you think that there are people who did not commit crimes that are being prosecuted? That’s the only way that you make any sense here.
Who specifically is being prosecuted that you don’t think should be?
You keep taking them at their word, but you then insist on ignoring their words when they contradict the words that you want to believe.
This, X 100
It’s telling as well that in the Rubio quote above, he certainly does not mention looking at anyone who committed crimes BEFORE Jan 6, specifically those people who planned, aided, encouraged, fomented and supplied the people who stormed the Capitol, and he does not mention investigating the REASON BEHIND the storming of the Capitol - it was not just a random event. What was the PURPOSE behind it?
This is what the committee is looking into , and THIS is what Rubio and others do not want to uncover.
Your assumption only works if you ignore what the Republicans are doing. You must have missed that part.
When the rioters were being arrested and put on trial, I don’t recall any objections from the Republican Party. Maybe there were objections but I’m not aware of any. They had no problem with locking up people who were trespassing, attacking cops, looting, and vandalizing. That’s good. And that fits with Rubio’s statement about prosecuting those who were in the Capitol doing violence.
Now that there is a committee trying to determine what sort of coordination, planning, and support was behind this, suddenly the Republicans want to stop it. Clearly they don’t want to pursue anyone who wasn’t physically there. They do not want to pursue people behind the riots, they only want to pursue those in front of them.
So no, the suggestion that he wants to pursue all who broke the law is false. You are wrong. He clarified the first statement with the second one. When he says they should prosecute those who broke the law, he thinks the only laws broken are from those who were there committing violence. Full stop.
Of course, they’re really making themselves look bad when they are basically preemptively trying to spin the idea that seditious conspiracy is not a crime. That suggests they believe that there is evidence out there implicating some Republicans in those crimes and they want to get ahead of it. We’ll see what happens if these investigations are able to proceed without too many hurdles.
Even Mitch Fucking McConnell is dumping on the RNC for their statement.
I don’t see how you can reach that conclusion.
What this increasingly reminds me of is how the slogan that Black Lives Matter got met with people asking, What, Are You Saying That Only Black Lives Matter? And, of course, the eye-rolling response was, No, We Aren’t Saying That — except, here, the analogy would have to be to an even sillier back-and-forth, with people taking pains to first make a general statement before making a specific one, only to then still get addressed as if uttering a specific means you can’t possibly mean the general statement that you prefaced it with.
That struck me as ridiculous even when folks weren’t bothering to spell out the general statement first; but it seems even more ridiculous if a guy does take the time to do so.
If Rubio hadn’t said that first sentence, I wouldn’t have been able to blithely rule it out upon only hearing the second; I would’ve figured, well, maybe he also takes a more general position; after all, that’d be consistent with the specific he mentioned. As it happens, though, he did take a more general position; instead of just saying a specific sentence that would‘be been consistent with some hypothetical statement that would’ve been more of a generality, he — actually made that more general statement first.
Because of all the facts I laid out. You can choose to ignore them all you want. You are factually wrong.
The Chewbacca Defense attempt on your part, in trying to compare it to BLM, is just ridiculous. Come on now.
Um, no. He wants there to be absolutely no investigation beyond the physical rioters. That is the explicit position of the RNC. Even McConnell isn’t okay with that. Mitch Freaking McConnell.
You’re moving the goalposts. I’m saying that his statement is consistent with that claim. I responded, at that, to someone who said “There seems to be baked into these statements the belief that violence needs to be present for criminality to be present. That is profoundly false!!” — and I’m saying, no, I don’t see that such a belief is baked into these statements. I’m saying I’ve seen folks react to the line about “legitimate political discourse” as if it were meant to describe violently invading the Capitol instead of describing the opposite.
If, when members of the RNC had expressed concern that there are people who were there peacefully protesting have been pulled into this, you’d raised the questions you’re now asking, we’d have discussed the issues; but that never came up, because as far as I can tell my argument has only been about whether they were or weren’t saying X — not whether X was true.
Nope, right where they always were.
And that claim is false, which is why the statement, which is also false, is consistent.
Right, but that would be the Republican who are reacting that way. They are the ones that are claiming that people are being prosecuted for legitimate political discourse.
This is either a straight up lie, or it is making the claim that some or all of the people who are or will be prosecuted were simply engaging in legitimate political discourse.
Maybe this would be easier if you would explain which of those lies you believe. You keep seeming to switch back and forth for cover, picking whichever one is most convenient to your “argument” at that time.
So, simple question, and I don’t see any reason anyone should continue to engage you if you will not or cannot answer this.
Do you believe that there are those who were engaged in legitimate political discourse that are being prosecuted?
See, there’s the problem, I thought that you were defending veracity of the statement. There literally is no other rational reason to defend it. Now that we agree that the statement is a lie, we can move forward.
I just looked up “disingenuous” in the dictionary, and it had a picture of your argument in it.
No; you’re doing it wrong.
Put aside politics for a moment. Say a guy is on trial for murdering two men and one woman, and in court he says, I admit that I killed those two guys, but that was in self-defense; and, having said that, let me add that I’ve never killed a woman. If I see someone hereabouts cite that statement and claim that he just confessed to murdering the woman in question, I’d argue that, no, he didn’t.
That doesn’t mean I’m saying I believe him, and it doesn’t mean I’m saying he’s lying; it means I disagree with those who look at his claim and seem to be getting the claim — uh, dead wrong.
That’s basically the opposite of the quote from Rubio.
Let’s use a better analogy.
“I don’t want any criminals in my store. All those colored people can shop elsewhere.”
Would you argue that those are two separate statements that are unrelated? Would you conclude that the speaker was not saying that non-whites are criminals? Would you state that they aren’t racist at all, but that they simply don’t want people in their store who didn’t break the law? And that they were pointing out that yes, people of color have plenty of places they can shop, in addition to the speaker’s store?
That kind of defense would require crazy mental gymnastics and some massive, massive water-carrying. That’s basically what you’ve done in this thread. It’s the reason why you have been told multiple times, by multiple people, for multiple reasons that you are flat out factually incorrect. It’s not even a matter of opinion, no more than “2+2=4” is a matter of opinion.
A more accurate analogy would be if evidence indicated that the defendant had received several phone calls and a large sum of cash from another guy, and the other guy’s friends objected that he should not be investigated because he was nowhere near the scene of the crime and had never engaged in any physical violence whatsoever and that investigating him would violate his freedom of speech and right to spend his money as he saw fit.
Actually the original argument was whether the GOP was trying to obstruct the investigation of criminal activity surrounding the Jan 6 attack. They did so by saying that the committee was prosecuting those who engaged in legitimate political discourse. Note they didn’t say might be investigating or were in danger of doing so. They were so certain of this abuse of power that they censured those Republicans that participated in it. Indicating that any participation in the investigation was worse even than say Gaetz’s Paedophilia.
This was an out and out lie. There are multiple different ways to interpret what they said, but all those ways are still lies. Either they meant that the people being investigated by the committee for criminal conduct were actually just engaging in political discourse (what seems the most likely interpretation), or that the committee was investigating people that they were not (also possible since they appeared to want to pretend that they were prosecuting people peacefully protesting outside the Capitol). Which lying interpretation they are going to claim they were saying will depend on their audience and how their lies are being called out at the time.
Well, look, if you’re not going to use my analogy, I see little reason to use yours; how about just taking Rubio’s actual statements as the starting point? If you were to ask me — per Rubio’s second statement — whether I believe people who entered the Capitol and committed criminal acts of violence on January 6th should be prosecuted, I’d say uh, yeah; of course. And if you said Never Mind That Bit About Entering The Capitol, And Never Mind Whether The Crimes Were Violent; Should Anybody Who Committed Crimes On January 6th Be Prosecuted? Well, in mere perfect agreement with Rubio’s first statement, I’d say uh, yeah; of course.
And if you said Never Mind That Bit About The 6th; What About Prosecuting People Who Broke The Law, With Or Without Violence, On Other Dates? I’d say uh, yeah; of course.
As far as I can tell, my last answer there would be consistent with the other two. As far as I can tell, Rubio gave those same two answers; since I’d be consistent by giving the third, how can I declare that he wouldn’t? Again, that’s me agreeing with the statement he made, and agreeing with the other statement he made, before (a) making a third statement, for the same reason; and (b) being unable to rule out that he’d make the same statement that I would, and for the same reason…
I stand corrected.
Why don’t have you have the entire quote then?
“Anybody who committed crimes on Jan. 6 should be prosecuted,” Rubio responded. “If you entered the Capitol and you committed acts of violence and you were there to hurt people, you should be prosecuted and they are being prosecuted. But the Jan. 6 commission is not the place to do this. That’s what prosecutors are supposed to do. This commission is a partisan scam.”
Watch the video in that article. watch and listen to what Rubio is saying and how he’s saying it. They are not two separate statements. They are one statement made in the same breath. He is clearly clarifying that he only wants the people who committed political violence to be prosecuted. That they are already being prosecuted. (And yes, the people who were there committing violence are being prosecuted.)
He does not want to go farther. He does not want there to be any investigation beyond that. He has made that as clear as possible. Well, for most people. You still seem confused about this.
He goes on to say that people who weren’t even in Washington on January 6 are being investigated, and they shouldn’t be. Because in his mind, if you weren’t actually there smashing stuff, you are completely in the clear.
How more wrong can you be about this? I will go back to my original metaphor about prosecuting a hitman and not even bothering to worry about who set up the hit. Rubio doesn’t want there to be any investigation of anybody who wasn’t physically there, to him those are the only people who can possibly be guilty of a crime.
Sheesh! 
Eh, your analogy wasn’t even slightly related to the actual facts. Why would anyone use it?
And you still haven’t answered the question as to whether you think that anyone is being prosecuted for engaging in legitimate political discourse. Without the answer to that, you can just keep weaseling around like you have been this whole thread.
Maybe that’s too hard a question to answer, how about this:
Can you explain why Cheney was censured?
You are all talking about talk, we are talking about actions. The actions they have taken demonstrate clearly the lie of their words.
I watched it as it first aired, and I quoted it by copy-and-pasting it from the FACE THE NATION transcript, which places a period at the end of the sentence where he says that anybody who committed crimes on January 6th should be prosecuted. (Later in the interview, they put a period at the end of another sentence of his — when he says he thinks “anyone who committed a crime on January 6th should be prosecuted and if convicted, put in jail.”)
And, well, I agree with that. I can’t not agree with that. And if you went on to ask me about people who committed a crime on January 5th or December 4th or November 3rd or whatever, I’d answer the same way, for the same reason — but, since the interviewer didn’t ask Rubio that question, I honestly can’t rule out the possibility that he’d give the same answer I would, since I just now gave the same answer that he did.