Dan Rather
Dan Rather

Former CBS anchor Dan Rather says the US did a “masterful job of preempting Russian propaganda” in the lead-up to the the invasion of Ukraine and it’s now time for all Americans to take the same approach to Republicans who seek to undermine America’s democracy.

“We can shame them, call out their playbook, now let them know that we see what they will attempt to do, and declare their ‘voter fraud' propaganda what it is—a farce and a lie. Put all Republican officials on the record,” Rather wrote on his June 18 “Steady” blog.

He criticized all those looking away, keeping their heads down, obfuscating, accepting or outright endorsing this autocracy willingly gambling with the future of American democracy.

Rather says the Jan. 6 coup attempt is ongoing. The currents that exploded on that day are still with us and represent “a direct threat to the continuation of the US as a democratic republic.”

He says the Jan. 6 Congressional hearings aren’t just a fact-finding exercise to document history.

The committee members “are firefighters battling a blaze of autocracy and unconstitutional depravity sweeping across the country.”

Rather, 90, remains a national treasure.

Florida’s autocratic governor Ron DeSantis says the Congressional hearings into the January 6, 2021 insurrection are nothing more than Democrats and their media allies “beating a dead horse.”

DeSantis is flat-out wrong.

A poll released June 16 by Navigator Research finds broad support for the hearings.

Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of respondents support the hearings. Only 28 percent oppose the probe, while eight percent are unsure.

More than seven-in-ten (71 percent) respondents oppose the storming of Capitol. That includes 58 percent of Republicans who were polled.

Eighty-four percent of Democrats and 68 percent of Independents oppose the uprising.

DeSantis may be trashing the hearings because he feels they are gaining traction with the public.

Sixty-three percent of the Navigator respondents learned “a lot or something” from the hearings. That number breaks down into Democrats (70 percent), Republicans (59 percent) and Independents (52 percent).

More than 800 people have been criminally charged for participating in the insurrection.

Eighty-seven of them are from Florida, which is the No. 1 home of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, according to George Washington University’s Program on Extremism.

Those seditionists must make Ron proud.

The Texas GOP celebrates “Pride Month.” The Lone Star State’s Republican party on June 18 passed a political platform that declares homosexuality "an abnormal lifestyle choice.”

It also opposes “any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.

The GOP also denied a booth to The Log Cabin Republicans of Houston. That group represents local LGBTQ people.

David Palmer, PR director of the Houston Log Cabin chapter, criticized being shut out at the confab. “This is a political organization, not a church group,” he said of the GOP.

The national Log Cabin organization called the booth denial “narrow-minded” and “politically short-sighted.

That narrow-minded charge applies to most GOP policies.