Great read - Slate - "The Uneven Playing Field" (pertinent to the Conyers Franken etc news)

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/12/the_republicans_have_built_an_uneven_playing_field_of_morality.html

Sure, don’t stoop to their level. But let’s acknowledge that the game Republicans are forcing everyone to play insists morality is for losers.

By Dahlia Lithwick

Remember “when they go low, we go high?” Yep. So do I.
I remembered it in the fall of 2016, when Senate Republicans and then-candidate Donald Trump first made it irrevocably clear there would be no hearing for anyone Barack Obama nominated to the Supreme Court, ever, even though Obama had put up a moderate, centrist nominee who was once acceptable to Senate Republicans. I remembered it when Trump won, and we realized that that seat would stay stolen.

I remembered it this week when the Senate passed a tax bill at 2 a.m. that apparently contains a $289 billion error, thanks to the fact that it was drafted in the margins rather than adjudicated through normal congressional standards, as, say, Obamacare was.

And I remember it almost daily now, as John Conyers steps down after 52 years in Congress, amid credible allegations of sexual harassment, and Al Franken is called upon to step down, amid credible allegations of sexual harassment, while Roy Moore continues—with the president’s and the GOP’s overt endorsement—his run for Senate amid credible allegations of sexual abuse of children.

Al Franken, many argue, should now resign. He should resign immediately because there are credible accusers (another emerged Wednesday), and because the behavior alleged is sufficiently abhorrent that there is simply no basis to defend him. In this parade of unilateral disarmament, Trump stays, Conyers goes, Moore stays, Franken goes.

Is this the principled solution? By every metric I can think of, it’s correct. But it’s also wrong. It’s wrong because we no longer inhabit a closed ethical system, in which morality and norm preservation are their own rewards. We live in a broken and corroded system in which unilateral disarmament is going to destroy the very things we want to preserve.

snip - much more to read at the link - long and worth it.

So...what will happen next????

[Cattledog]

1. Third party now looking better all the time.