Today is Thursday, January 13, 2022. Today a watershed moment related to the abhorrent January insurrection incited by an orange-haired autocrat occurred when the Justice Department announced the first sedition charges against an odious organization called the Oath Keepers and its leader, Stewart Rhodes. This is a far-right organization that took part in the events on that day. Many of the defendants were already facing charges for storming the Capitol building and deny wrongdoing, just as Matt Gaetz denied any wrongdoing in the encircling probe into his alleged multifaceted transgressions against underage girls. This new indictment raises the stakes more significantly and now publicizes new details about the organization’s alleged plans for violence and mayhem. This breaking news is reported on in a CNN online article by Marshall Cohen entitled “Takeaways from the landmark sedition indictment against the Oath Keepers and why DOJ acted now.”

This sedition charge against 11 members of the group known as the Oath Keepers seems to highlight the case that, though there were many rioters who had no plan in attacking the Capitol – that it was just an impromptu thing to them – this serious charge indicates that there were some within the mob that essentially planned for all-out war if they didn’t get their way.

The leader of this homegrown terrorist group, Rhodes, is quoted as telling his supporters that they should prepare for a “bloody” operation and that they would need to “fight” in a “war.”

The potential for worsening violence on that day is illustrated in what prosecutors detailed how the Oath Keepers stockpiled weapons at a nearby hotel in Virginia, just in case they needed to deploy a “quick reaction force” into DC.

In the charging document, documents point out that one defendant, Joshua James, received a message from a friend, saying, “I have friends not far from DC with a lot of weapons and ammo if you get into trouble.”

It’s well known, according to the surveillance on the leader of the group, that Rhodes amassed a load of weapons and other gear on his way to Washington, D.C., before the infamous date of January 6. Rhodes allegedly bought a rifle, a magazine, and other firearms equipment, including sights, mounts, triggers, slings, and an optic plate. Rhodes was on the grounds of the Capitol but hasn’t been accused of entering the site, but he has reportedly “directed” his supporters to do so.

Today’s indictments signal that the Oath Keepers aimed for more than disruption of Congress; it desired to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Dumpf to his successor, Joe Biden. As you would expect, after the insurrection, the group gathered to celebrate the results of their nefarious actions. One of the defendants said, “We aren’t quitting!! We are reloading!! on an online chat line after January 6.

In the language of the indictment, the extent of the sedition charge states, “Rhodes and certain coconspirators . . . planned to stop the lawful transfer of presidential power by January 20, 2021, which included multiple ways to deploy force.”

A more burning question with this landmark indictment is this: Could Rhodes have information that implicates anyone else higher up? Could Rhodes cut a deal then with the government by becoming a willing witness, if he has a juicy story to tell of higher-up involvement of lawmakers or even the sitting president, perhaps? Only time will tell.

The one-eyed leader of the Oath Keepers (he lost an eye due to some accidental discharge of a firearm, so what would you expect from such a proponent of armed conflict), Stewart Rhodes, was arrested today in Little Elm, Texas, where he was domiciled.

Delivering a disappointing blow to President Biden’s vaccine and testing requirement for large businesses, the highly contentious and right-leaning Supreme Court struck down the Commander-in-Chief’s mandate aimed for large businesses, despite the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic. One little ray of sunlight is that the Court allowed a vaccine mandate for certain health care workers to go into effect nationwide.

This dispiriting decision by the Supreme Court today is reported on by Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter, for my online CNN smartphone app in “Supreme Court blocks nationwide vaccine and testing mandate for large businesses, allows health care worker vaccine mandate to take effect.” This ruling is a huge hit to Biden’s attempts to use the power of the federal government to combat the COVID-19 pandemic.

Acknowledging his disappointment over the ruling, President Biden said, “I am disappointed that the Supreme Court has chosen to block commonsense life-saving requirements for employees at large businesses that were grounded squarely in both science and the law.”

It is now up to the States and individual employers to determine whether to make their workplaces as safe as possible for workers and whether their enterprises will be safe for consumers during the pandemic by requiring employees to take the simple and effective step of getting inoculated.

As you would expect, the three liberal jurists, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissented – with a blistering statement. In brief (no pun intended), the three justices wrote, “Today, we are not wise. In the face of a still-raging pandemic, this Court tells the agency charged [the Occupational Safety and Health Administration] with protecting worker safety that it may not do so in all the workplaces needed. As disease and death continue to mount, this Court tells the agency that it cannot respond in the most effective way possible.”

“The rule would impact some 80 million individuals and requires employers with 100 or more employees to ensure that their employees are fully vaccinated or undergo regular testing and wear a face covering at work.”

The Biden administration defended this regulation and argued that the nation is facing a pandemic “that is sickening and killing thousands of workers around the country” and that any delay in implementing the requirement to get a vaccine or submit to regular testing “will result in unnecessary illness, hospitalizations, and death.” So true!

So here the newly constituted Supreme Court just dealt a death blow to ending the pandemic more quickly with their absurd ruling – against science and commonsense measures designed to hasten the end to the health care emergency in this country. That means more and more people will be hospitalized and even die from COVID-19. I’m sure Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is turning in her grave over this most antithetical commonsense decision made by her colleagues on the bench.

Segueing to the late liberal justice who died in 2020, I have to say that I did go to the Ruth Bader Ginsburg exhibit at the New York Historical Society, on the West Side. I was quite impressed with the comprehensive exhibition. It covered her life and career in photos, artifacts, and videos.

Upon eating about her storied career, I was quite chagrined to think of the current Supreme Court, which, sadly, has been shaped in the image of the former president, who succeeded in nominating three Supreme Court justices before his disastrous term was up. Truly unprecedented for such a dishonorable man to have such influence on the highest court in the land! Something has to be done to right the imbalance that is evident in the makeup of the Court during this most contentious times. Biden could nominate one jurist only if the oldest judge decides to retire during his administration, and that is Stephen Breyer, and he’s already indicated that he’s not retiring anytime soon. So we’re back to Square 1 then! One other proposal put forward involves making the tenure of a Supreme Court judge subject to term limits and not making it a lifetime appointment. This sounds appealing to me; since the most far-right choices of the last demagogue are still very young and could serve for decades on the Court.

I must have spent almost three hours at the museum, which is advertised as the city’s oldest museum. There was an interesting display on the working methods of the nonfiction author Robert A. Caro who has made it his life’s work writing about Robert Moses and Lyndon Baines Johnson. This exhibit was on the second floor.

Surprisingly, I abandoned having lunch to feast on the knowledge contained in the first-floor exhibit on the trailblazing associate justice from Brooklyn. Reading about how she stood out as a woman in academia, I was struck more by the fifty-year-plus loving relationship she had with her husband Marty who was a bulwark in her professional wife’s life. He supported his wife’s legal career over everything else and championed her all the way. Ginsburg was definitely a strong advocate for gender equality and women’s rights and won significant major cases supporting these causes. One little criticism that can be lodged against her, though, is her decision not to retire before pancreatic cancer claimed her life while still serving on the Supreme Court, which created the vacancy and the nomination of the Odious One’s last appointment, Amy Coney (Island) Barrett, who was rushed through to confirmation by the more odious “Bitch” McConnell.

After coursing through the museum, I walked to Broadway and 81st Street, where I browsed through Westsider Rare & Used Books. I almost bought J.R. Moehringer’s 2005 memoir called The Tender Bar, which is now a film on Amazon Prime. Instead, I purchased Andrew Shaffer’s Literary Rogues which is brimming with personal anecdotes about many literary figures such as Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Dorothy Parker, Hunter S. Thompson, and Bret Easton Ellis. To me, the lives of these literally giants is just as fascinating to read about as the lives of rock stars or actors.

That’s when I decided to take the 1 train on 79th Street back to the E on 7th Avenue. This time there were more passengers on the two trains that I had to ride. In fact, I couldn’t even sit down this time.

Oh, the cheesecake is quite good, despite my leaving out, accidentally, one ingredient: flour. This is the first time I’ve done this, so I’m very ashamed of myself. There wasn’t that much flour to be used anyway, so this would have bulked up the cake if I had indeed used it.

Have a good Friday.

Stay safe and be well.