I think about the reports that Trump was excited by the invasion of the capitol because he thought it would derail the count, and it makes me think of a quote from the movie Boondock Saints: "Television. Television is the explanation for this. You see this in bad television."

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.

I'm slightly obsessed with this "#PenceCard" nonsense which is like the Platonic ideal of the current level of Trump election stealing conspiracy theory nonsense.

Here's a thing about the United States: the vice president famously *does nothing*. By design. The job is not like the vice president of marketing or whatever where the guy has a job. Mike Pence is the spare president. He's there in case anything happens to the first one.

In the original formulation under the constitution, the vice president was the runner-up of the presidential race. Nobody ran for it. There was no assumption that it would be an ally of the president; more likely they would be rivals.

They're officially "president of the senate" just to give them something to do to keep them around the capital but they're not a senator and only get to vote if there's a tie, so most of the time that ceremonial role is fobbed off an actual senator.

But this senate presidency that we give the vice president currently has attached to it some purely ceremonial duties in the very perfunctory part of the election process where votes are counted and reported to Congress.

(THREAD) The Whitaker scandal is deepening, as it becomes clear that Sessions' Russia recusal was a coordinated sham and his firing an act of obstruction—and that his replacement is a White House plant inside the Mueller probe. I hope you'll retweet and read on for more details.

1/ From 2014-17 Whitaker worked for World Patent Marketing—which during his tenure defrauded consumers out of $26 million and was successfully prosecuted by the feds. His involvement in the scam confirmed he had loose morals and that the feds would never want to employ him again.

2/ Despite the seeming impossibility of a man with Whitaker's background getting a job at Justice ever again—he'd been found to have used his former title as a US attorney to fraudulently threaten consumers with valid complaints with criminal penalties—Whitaker found an opening.

3/ Within 60 days of parachuting out of World Patent Marketing as it was being fined $26 million by the feds, Whitaker was working for CNN and telling a fellow attorney panelist that his purpose in working for CNN was to get noticed by one man—Donald Trump—and thereby get a job.

4/ Whitaker spent his time at CNN making ludicrous statements about the Mueller probe: there was no obstruction or collusion, he said; Mueller had no authority to look into any aspect of Trump's finances or to subpoena him, he said. All the while, he hoped Trump was watching him.

NEW - on @skynews shortly:
Reliable source tells me Withdrawal Deal text contains

- No unilateral exit from backstop

- Large annexe on level playing field

.... after reporting this on @SkyNews I get a call from a different senior source that this is “spot on” and further that the Attorney General Geoffrey Cox has not pulled his punches in confirming in legal advice there is “no unilateral exit” from backstop ...

... furthermore I’m told (and this chimes with excellent Times splash this morning re Weyand) that the future partnership then takes its starting point as the activated backstop - ie UK-wide customs union-style arrangement and level playing field.

Understand that a ministerial briefing on the draft Withdrawal Agreement meant to drum up support from some trade organisations due tonight has now been postponed

IMP 🚨 INVESTIGATION

India's lockdown was called world's largest, strictest etc. @ BBC, we wanted to know how the govt planned it.

So, what're we looking at?

Govt docs that reveal every department/agency who was consulted by PM Modi before imposing #lockdown.

#Thread

How did we access the docs? Well, for months my colleague Arjun Parmar and I filed RTI applications with the relevant govt depts - State & Centre. Hundreds in fact. We then filed appeals, then filed second appeals..phew!

Background - this day last year, India had less than 600 cases and nine deaths. Some European & Latin American nations (with way higher numbers) had imposed lockdowns.

China, with thousands of deaths and cases by March 2020, never imposed a national lockdown.

One more thing - India started monitoring and preparing it's response to coronavirus from January 8, 2020. It was repeatedly mentioned that none other than PM was personally leading the effort.

Let's start with what we've got now.

India's lockdown was imposed by an @ndmaindia order. Who heads NDMA? Prime Minister.

So we asked NDMA - who all were consulted before lockdown? Also, how many NDMA meetings did the PM attend? Their response.

NIL to both. Yes, NIL.

A central tension in our politics is this we have 1 political party that cares about upholding democracy, whereas the other party's aims can only be achieved thru undermining democracy. This is coupled w/ the fact that 1 party cares about people's well-being & the other does not

These 2 facts lead to a situation in which, in order to both uphold democracy & advance well-being, 1 party is dedicated to a functional gov't & the other party is well-served by a dysfunctional government. Such dysfunction is both instrumental & ideological (anti-government)

And then, of course, we have gerrymandering + a cap on the House of reps, 2 Senators per state, & the electoral college. A set of circumstances that gives massively disproportionate power to the anti-democracy & anti-well-being party.

Taken together, the structural issues in our electoral system, deep ideological divides about government/democracy, & the differential investment in advancing citizens' well-being does leave Democrats at a perpetual disadvantage.

A firefighter who is looking at a burning house & trying to decide whether to concentrate on stopping the fire from spreading or to save a child at the expense of a grandmother is facing a fundamentally different set of choices than the person who lit the fire in the first place