Congress is getting nervous

The House passes an amendment to the omnibus defense bill in an attempt to inhibit the President's ability to invoke the Insurrection Act:

H. Amdt. 833 (Escobar) to H.R. 6395: To require certification be made to Congress when the President deploys active duty military within the United States during civil unrest by amending the Insurrection Act in Title 10, Chapter 13 of U.S. Code.

Alex Macris delves into the details, which amount to little more than the President will have to tell Congress why he's doing what he's doing, which is hardly a problem. And congressmen aren't the only Swamp creatures getting nervous. So is the neo-trotskian's chief rabbi, Bill Kristol:

Yesterday Barr suggested there were several things he wouldn't do that Trump wanted him to do as AG ranging from appointing special counsels for Hunter Biden or election fraud, to giving a legal ok for seizing voting machines or for various types of Insurrection Act-type moves by the president. Can one be confident Barr's successor as AG, Jeffrey Rosen, will also say no?

I'm told not. I'm told the very ambitious Rosen has pushed on earlier occasions for carrying out Trump's will only to be stopped by Barr. And people who've worked with Rosen say they wouldn't be surprised to see him, as AG, hasten to try to do Trump's will. In the past, Rosen has been allied with some in the White House counsel's office and others elsewhere in the White House who've been for going whole hog for Trump, as a friend put it. They've run up against resistance from Barr but also from WH Counsel Pat Cipollone.

The departure of Cipollone would be a signal, as one person put it, that "all bets are off." I'm also reliably told senior military officials in the Pentagon are more, not less, alarmed than they were a few weeks ago when Mark Esper was fired. The new crew of Trump loyalists in the most senior civilian positions don't seem there only to burnish their resumes, as one person put it. They're trying to figure out, in coordination with people in the White House, "how to make things happen." The senior military obviously retain considerable clout, to say the least. But the discussions they're having among themselves are unprecedented--more sober and weighty than those of 1974 in the weeks before Nixon's resignation. And the difference is that Jim Schlesinger was then Secretary of Defense, committed to checking an unstable and desperate president, not to helping one.

All of these alarms, one hopes and trusts, will come to nothing, or at least to not too much. And the coup, in the end, will fail. But that something more than we've seen so far won't be tried--of that people aren't so confident.

The first thing to look for is what, if anything, happens on Dec. 24.

Cipollone, by the way, is the lawyer who was identified as Patrick Byrne as being the lead surrender monkey among the President's advisors. The media, too, appears to be increasingly nervous:

With Trump's days in office dwindling, QAnon influencers have become increasingly restless and militant, urging him to #crosstherubicon, a reference to Julius Caesar's crossing the Rubicon river after the Roman Senate explicitly told him not to, effectively kick-starting the Roman civil war and Caesar's dictatorship... The "Rubicon" hashtag wasn't new to QAnon followers, who have repeatedly tweeted the phrase in the last week. But the hashtag had minimal success last week until Ron Watkins, who previously ran the message board and QAnon hub 8kun, posted a series of viral tweets Thursday and Friday about Caesar and crossing the Rubicon.

It is amusing to observe how those who think can keep themselves well informed by the mainstream media are always at least a month behind. In any event, the Congressional gambit will fail as long as President Trump refuses to sign it, due to the coming end of the Congressional term.

A pocket veto occurs when Congress adjourns during the 10-day period. The President cannot return the bill to Congress. The President's decision not to sign the legislation is a pocket veto and Congress does not have the opportunity to override.