Jesus. I just watched the Ashli Babbitt video that the Washington Post has, and if I'm following the conversation happening, the people at the front of the mob trying to break into the room told the police to leave, offering to "make a path" and saying...

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"Attacking him how? Yelling at him? Yes. Okay, I apologize. Can we move on?"

She's on video running and tackling him. She physically attacked him.

The 22-year-old woman caught on camera allegedly physically attacking a 14-year-old Black teen and falsely accusing him of stealing her phone was arrested in California.

In an exclusive interview, Miya Ponsetto and her lawyer spoke with @GayleKing hours before she was arrested. pic.twitter.com/ezaGkcWZ8j
— CBS This Morning (@CBSThisMorning) January 8, 2021

12 Foot Tall Giant Ale...
@AlexandraErin

LRT: One of the problems with Twitter moderation - and I'm not suggesting this is an innocent cause that is accidentally enabling abuse, but rather that it's a feature, from their point of view - is that the reporting categories available for us do not match up to the rules.

Now, Twitter's actual policy is that wishes or hopes for death or harm are the same as threats. That policy has been in place for years. But there's no report category for hoping someone dies. You can only report it as a threat.

Which gives the moderator, who doesn't spend long on any individual tweet, mental leeway to go, "Well, there's no threat here." and hit the button for "no violation found".

They have a rule that says persistent misgendering or other dehumanizing language is not tolerated, but again - there is no reporting category for that. We have to report it as hate against a group.

So again, the moderator looks at that tweet, briefly in isolation, and sees what, without context, might look neutral or matter of fact. A series of tweets referring to somebody consistently by the same set of pronouns or a statement that somebody is a man or woman.

Alexandra Erin
@AlexandraErin

I haven't been harping on it because it at least contributes to taking it seriously, but this is part of why I shudder every time they call the halls of Congress "sacred" and talk about them being "desecrated".

One of the most significant problems a lot of Democrats and the liberal commentariat have been allowing themselves to be hampered by is an adherence to some sort of notion of the sacrosanct nature of institutions as those institutions are burning down because people won\u2019t act.
— Dr. Sunny Moraine PhD is carrying the fire (@dynamicsymmetry) January 8, 2021

Alexandraah! Erin
@alexandraerin

So let me tell you another reason we need to not back down, not sit down, not be quiet: coward that he is, Donald Trump is at his most dangerous when he feels like he's on top of the world.

The horse race headlines are saying that Donald Trump had his best day as president, and I'm sure he felt it. He just came through a knock-down, drag-out fight and won a battle that people had been telling him to drop for weeks, so right now no one can tell him anything.

If he gets it in his head that maybe he should fire Rosenstein? No one's going to be able to talk him out of it. He might even do it just to extend the high, or see how far he can take it.

When he's afraid and uncertain he'll lash out and that can be dangerous, but his insecurity causes him to both seek approval and fear traps in that state. But when he's invincible, he will indulge his worst impulses freely.

The same people who have been telling him not to mess with the investigation until after the midterms were among those telling him it would be so much easier to just replace Kavanaugh with someone less contentious. And what did they know? Nothing, he thinks. So why listen?

Alexandra Erin
@AlexandraErin

On the subject of the apparent Trump family strategy of keeping Trump in a protective bubble for the next 12 days... Hicks is one of his deftest handlers.

News \u2014 One of President Trump's closest confidants and top aides, Hope Hicks, is discussing resigning before he leaves office, according to two people. She has told people if she does, she would likely leave within the next 48 hours. It's not clear she has made a decision.
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) January 8, 2021