- Yesterday in the Indiana Statehouse, a South Bend news station had wrapped up the early evening TV report. Very loud chanting was continuing across the way. I asked the reporter if he'd like a quotation about it all from a South Bend resident. The reporter wasn't much interested.#
- He asked, "Who are you?" in the tone that suggests the answer is "a nobody." "We have everything we need," he said, noting the day's report was about senators, not citizens. I suggested that he photograph my quotation for later, and he did. A lukewarm experience for one and all.#
- Driving north from Indianapolis, the signal from the Indiana Statehouse hearing wavered. It appeared that the Senate committee had finished deliberating on the new abortion bill and was voting on whether to send it to the Senate for deliberation and a vote later this week.#
- Some members of the committee voted, and others briefly explained their vote as well as voted. Two members said, roughly, that this is a bad bill and that they hoped it would be improved by amendments later this week during Senate deliberations. One said, roughly, that he'd never voted Yes before on a bad bill with the hope that it would be improved in the next stage. #
- So, two Indiana state senators voted yes on a bill they dislike. The final vote was 7 to 5 in favor of the bill, and so it will go forward to the Senate, and then presumably to the House. Because the Republicans have gerrymandered themselves an unstoppable supermajority in both houses, whatever they pass will almost certainly become law, very likely without compromise with anyone outside the Republican Party.#
- While Indiana certainly leans to the right in its politics, the state did vote for Obama in 2008, and we have often had one Democratic and one Republican senator in Washington. So it's not a severe tilt to the right here. But gerrymandering makes it look otherwise. A few years back, when the discriminatory RFRA law threatened the state's reputation nationwide, the Republicans went back into conference and changed it, softened it. They knew they did not need to consult a single Democratic legislator, and to the best of my memory they did not.#
- So that Hoosier "democracy" where you get away with whatever you can, and GOP state senators vote for a bad bill because in these divisive times you'd have to be brave to vote against your party.#
- At least one of the two said that if the bill wasn't improved in deliberation, to which a single day seems to be scheduled, he'd be voting against it.#
- And inside the building itself, a religious group filled the central spaces of the three main floors with speeches and chanting. Oh, yes, and there was a SWAT team on lookout maybe 60 yards away from the west entrance. Rifle, tripod, scope. I placed a couple of photos of that on Twitter.#
- In World War II history, "a bridge too far" refers to a military plan of attack that was too ambitious. Troops captured a string of bridges but the fifth and final bridge in the plan turned out to be "a bridge too far," meaning "something in a plan that was too difficult."#
- The soldiers charged with the duty of carrying out that plan struggled mightily, sacrificed hugely, but their sacrifices were not enough for the last goal to be achieved. Back then, the phrase "a bridge too far" acknowledged these things.#
- Some of the Jan. 6 attackers on the Capitol, sent home by Trump with his expression of love that afternoon, probably think that they were like the W. W. II soldiers involved in a plan of attack that was too difficult, too far, for that moment in history. The old meaning.#
- Language changes, of course. Nowadays we still hear of something being "a bridge too far" but it tends to refer to ethics. "Yes, I'll withhold data about our product but I won't lie directly to a customer's face. That would be a bridge too far."#
- So, two very different meanings, and they are at risk of blurring. One is about superhuman sacrifice, and the other is about what bad thing one will or will not do for the sake of power or wealth.#
- One way to look at the Republican Party is to ask when, if ever, will they draw the line, saying: Ethically, this goes too far. "Yes, we will look the other way during our own and Trump's excesses," they seem to say. Just a handful now say the Jan. 6 coup was a bridge too far.#
- It's good that some testified in the TV hearings. For them, something about the coup was, ethically, a bridge too far. (If it had succeeded, well, who knows.) But, ethically, bridge after bridge in Trump's time should have been, for them, a bridge too far. But wasn't.#
- Republicans speaking up now, finally, testifying finally, carried out the second meaning, the ignoble meaning. This is why Jeffrey C. Isaac gives Liz Cheney only two cheers in this essay about her work on the Jan. 6 panel, which I am largely paraphrasing in this blog post.#
- Yesterday in the Indiana Statehouse, a South Bend news station had wrapped up the early evening TV report. Very loud chanting was continuing across the way. I asked the reporter if he'd like a quotation about it all from a South Bend resident. The reporter wasn't much interested.#
- He asked, "Who are you?" in the tone that suggests the answer is "a nobody." "We have everything we need," he said, noting the day's report was about senators, not citizens. I suggested that he photograph my quotation for later, and he did. A lukewarm experience for one and all.#
- Driving north from Indianapolis, the signal from the Indiana Statehouse hearing wavered. It appeared that the Senate committee had finished deliberating on the new abortion bill and was voting on whether to send it to the Senate for deliberation and a vote later this week.#
- Some members of the committee voted, and others briefly explained their vote as well as voted. Two members said, roughly, that this is a bad bill and that they hoped it would be improved by amendments later this week during Senate deliberations. One said, roughly, that he'd never voted Yes before on a bad bill with the hope that it would be improved in the next stage. #
- So, two Indiana state senators voted yes on a bill they dislike. The final vote was 7 to 5 in favor of the bill, and so it will go forward to the Senate, and then presumably to the House. Because the Republicans have gerrymandered themselves an unstoppable supermajority in both houses, whatever they pass will almost certainly become law, very likely without compromise with anyone outside the Republican Party.#
- While Indiana certainly leans to the right in its politics, the state did vote for Obama in 2008, and we have often had one Democratic and one Republican senator in Washington. So it's not a severe tilt to the right here. But gerrymandering makes it look otherwise. A few years back, when the discriminatory RFRA law threatened the state's reputation nationwide, the Republicans went back into conference and changed it, softened it. They knew they did not need to consult a single Democratic legislator, and to the best of my memory they did not.#
- So that Hoosier "democracy" where you get away with whatever you can, and GOP state senators vote for a bad bill because in these divisive times you'd have to be brave to vote against your party.#
- At least one of the two said that if the bill wasn't improved in deliberation, to which a single day seems to be scheduled, he'd be voting against it.#
- And inside the building itself, a religious group filled the central spaces of the three main floors with speeches and chanting. Oh, yes, and there was a SWAT team on lookout maybe 60 yards away from the west entrance. Rifle, tripod, scope. I placed a couple of photos of that on Twitter.#
- In World War II history, "a bridge too far" refers to a military plan of attack that was too ambitious. Troops captured a string of bridges but the fifth and final bridge in the plan turned out to be "a bridge too far," meaning "something in a plan that was too difficult."#
- The soldiers charged with the duty of carrying out that plan struggled mightily, sacrificed hugely, but their sacrifices were not enough for the last goal to be achieved. Back then, the phrase "a bridge too far" acknowledged these things.#
- Some of the Jan. 6 attackers on the Capitol, sent home by Trump with his expression of love that afternoon, probably think that they were like the W. W. II soldiers involved in a plan of attack that was too difficult, too far, for that moment in history. The old meaning.#
- Language changes, of course. Nowadays we still hear of something being "a bridge too far" but it tends to refer to ethics. "Yes, I'll withhold data about our product but I won't lie directly to a customer's face. That would be a bridge too far."#
- So, two very different meanings, and they are at risk of blurring. One is about superhuman sacrifice, and the other is about what bad thing one will or will not do for the sake of power or wealth.#
- One way to look at the Republican Party is to ask when, if ever, will they draw the line, saying: Ethically, this goes too far. "Yes, we will look the other way during our own and Trump's excesses," they seem to say. Just a handful now say the Jan. 6 coup was a bridge too far.#
- It's good that some testified in the TV hearings. For them, something about the coup was, ethically, a bridge too far. (If it had succeeded, well, who knows.) But, ethically, bridge after bridge in Trump's time should have been, for them, a bridge too far. But wasn't.#
- Republicans speaking up now, finally, testifying finally, carried out the second meaning, the ignoble meaning. This is why Jeffrey C. Isaac gives Liz Cheney only two cheers in this essay about her work on the Jan. 6 panel, which I am largely paraphrasing in this blog post.#