Some quick thoughts on Sam Gyimah's resignation after conversations with various Conservative MPs: 1) the chances of a second referendum are a lot higher than I thought:

Ok I was wrong about theHouse. 2 years of legislative gridlock = not fun. Few bills passing.

Control of the House is useless when it comes to keeping Trump from declassifying all the SpyGate docs. Or stopping an Inspector General from releasing a report.

Trump still gets control of judicial appointments so we can expect another 100 judges over the next two years. This time there’ll be no McCain or Flake playing the Maverick role with their swing vote.

That new margin in the Senate is huge if another Supreme Court seat comes open.

So from the responses I’m getting, people seem to think if Trump declassifies the Spygate stuff now, nothing happens.

Are you under the impression federal prosecutors have to wait until CONGRESS finishes an investigation and makes criminal referrals before the DOJ can act?

There’s a federal grand jury on McCabe right now. Did Congress ever finish it’s investigation and make a referral to the DOJ against him?

No.

BUT INSPECTOR GENERAL HOROWITZ DID. On finishing his McCabe leak report.

Funny how nobody remembers that.

Pretending that voting for Trump or denying climate change or suggesting the solution to every problem is more guns is a legitimate point of view, worthy of respect is not "how America works." It is how it dies.

People in a free society are entitled to any point of view no matter how obviously wrong or outlandish or destructive provided they do not impose their views on others.

But suggesting that something ignorant or divorced from reality warrants the same kind of treatment in public debate as something based in fact or at least credible is absurd and when done on behalf of a society in public media or academic settings it is self-destructive.

We would not grant media coverage or much bandwidth at all to a group that argued that unicorns exist or that there was a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Yet views like denying climate change or basing policy decisions on sweeping, obvious lies, are just as unsound.

Somewhere, somehow, judgments must be made. Some behaviors are wrong and must be condemned. Someone must challenge lies and demand facts. Coddling people who embrace idiocies does not help them no matter how loudly they demand to be coddled.

A number of Trump appointees have tried to burrow into long-term public service jobs. Biden is firing them, which right wing commentators are trying paint as politicization. The reality is that this is correcting a Trump-era pattern of deprofessionalization. 1/

Lets step back to general principles here: political appointees selected on the basis of ideology are expected to resign when a new President comes into power. Career officials stay. For some positions its a little more complex but that is the basic governing logic. 2/

Trump blurred these basic differences between appointees and career staff. He ran out of time in his effort to turn potentially hundreds of thousands of career officials into appointees, and Biden reversed that policy. A good step to protect competence. 3/

Thats the big picture stuff, so lets focus on the specific case. The U.S. Agency for Global Media funds International broadcasters. The most famous is Radio Free Europe. Seven months ago a Trump appointee Michael Pack took over.

Pack engaged in extreme politicization of the agency. He hired people without relevant qualifications, stacked advisory boards with ideologues & conspiracy theorists, called reporters "deep state" & interfered in programming and political reporting to push a pro-Trump slant. 5/

This is supremely clever propaganda. A former PLA senior colonel, Zhou Bo, writes for the once balanced SCMP (what a fall!) about the "inevitable decline of the US" and wonders if it will be peaceful.

"inevitabile decline",
a) the "inevitability" itself is removed from the central focus, that from any challenge or question.
and
b) the old question of whether China's rise (again considered inevitable) will be itself be peaceful is completely ignored.
Interestingly, however,

he also states that "China’s rise so far has been peaceful" - only "so far", mind.
Let's ignore for a moment China's actions against the Filipinos in the South China Sea, its provoking the Japanese SDF in the East China Sea or its initiating a major confrontation along the

disputed boundary with India in 2020. Zhou is signalling that if the US isn't going to be peaceful, don't expect China to be either.
"the Pentagon’s unabated military interventions after the Cold War have reduced the US’ national strength – a point few seem to disagree with now"

No definition provided for "national strength". Just a bald assertion. Accept it, swallow it - as Zhou rushes quickly to the next point
"when a democracy is in decline, it may become vitriolic and violent" - forget that authoritarian states are at all times vitriolic and violent