11 of our top columns this week: ICYMI

In today's fast-paced news environment, it can be hard to keep up. For your weekend reading, we've started in-case-you-missed-it compilations of some of the week's top Paste BN Opinion pieces. As always, thanks for reading, and for your feedback.

— Paste BN Opinion editors

1. Congress should impeach Trump again and bar him from holding any future public office

By Austin Sarat

"Congress should now muster its courage and launch a new impeachment inquiry. The president has abused his office again, a “high crime and misdemeanor” for which he was previously impeached. This time, he used the trappings of his office and his presidential power to try to coerce a state’s highest election official to violate his oath and defraud his state’s voters for the personal benefit of Donald Trump."

2. Donald Trump triggers the American carnage he vowed to stop in his inaugural address

By The Editorial Board

"In a divided America, the events that unfolded on Capitol Hill on Wednesday afternoon should unite us all. In a universal sense of national shame and embarrassment. Under President Donald Trump, the United States — historically a beacon of freedom and citadel of liberty — has devolved into a shocking exemplar of dysfunction. Democracies around the world, those established and those fledgling, could only look on in horror at the televised images of a pro-Trump mob storming the august American center of government, crowding its balustrades, smashing windows, flooding into its statuary hall."

3. Death sentence for mentally ill Lisa Montgomery shows failure of justice system

By Frank P. Cervone

"Far too many children in America are victimized each year, their bodies and spirits devastated by sexual violence and trafficking. Lisa Montgomery — a woman the federal government plans to execute on Jan. 12 — was such a child. On Tuesday, her attorneys released the clemency petition that detailed her abuse and asked President Donald Trump to commute her death sentence to life imprisonment. Like many victimsof extreme childhood trauma, Montgomery’s pain and suffering eventually resulted in her own violent act. About 75% of inmates on federal death row have experienced severe childhood trauma."

4. Donald Trump fires the shot that begins the Republican civil war

By Phil Boas

"Donald Trump is the most unconventional president we ever elected, so it comes as no surprise he’s doing something wildly unconventional as he leaves office. He’s starting a civil war. In his own party. This won’t topple our republic, because Trump doesn’t command enough Republican support in state and federal governments to create a real crisis. Democracy is holding fast against his legal and extra-legal attempts to reverse the election."

5. Donald Trump and his supporters are trying to burn down America. But they won't win.

By Suzette Hackney

"Thousands of Trump's foot soldiers clashed with police, vandalized the Capitol and forced their way onto the House and Senate floors. Vice President Mike Pence, who earlier in the day had finally taken a stand against the president's disregard for the Constitution, was forced to flee for his safety. Members of Congress, who were instructed to put on gas masks, hunkered in offices as Trump's delusional supporters roamed the Capitol's hallways. This is Trump's America."

6. I hate federal commissions, but Americans need one to look into the 2020 election

By Jonathan Turley

"I hate federal commissions. I have always hated federal commissions. Federal commissions are Washington’s way of managing scandals. They work like placebos for political fevers, convincing voters that answers and change are on the way. That is why it is so difficult for me to utter these words: We need a federal election commission. Not the one proposed by some Senate Republicans. And not like past placebo commissions. An honest-to-God, no-holds-barred federal commission to look into the 2020 presidential election."

7. Four years later in Georgia, Trump completes his destruction of the Republican Party

By Christian Schneider

"Throughout the campaign, the two Republican incumbents, Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, were locked in a deli-thin race with two strong Democratic opponents, the Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff. But, as Oscar Wilde once wrote, “a burnt child loves the fire,” and Trump rushed back in to Georgia to take a blowtorch to the state’s Senate contests."

8. Trump challenge to Biden win exposes massive democracy flaw. Next time it just might work.

By Chris Truax

"So Trump’s effort to interfere with the Electoral College count is going to fail — this time. Nonetheless, this tawdry episode is dangerous because it provides a blueprint for the next time. And there will be a next time because it’s now clear that under the system of counting Electoral College votes, a party that controls both chambers of Congress can install its candidate as president regardless of the election results if its members have the political will to do so."

9. 'Amen and a-women:' Inane political correctness proves how little Democrats get faith

By Katrina Trinko

"Ending the prayer opening the new session of Congress, Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.) intoned, 'Amen and a-woman.'  So first, let’s do a fact check: 'Amen' has as little to do with men as 'menstruation' does. It originates from Hebrew and means to give assent — and shares nothing with the word 'men' except three letters."  

10. Trump is a danger to his own country. He shouldn't be president for one more minute.

By Tom Nichols

"Instead, I am writing to demand that the Congress of the United States impeach, convict and remove the president of the United States. The violence and chaos that engulfed the Capitol building Wednesday were the direct result of seditious incitement by President Donald Trump, and he must be removed from office for violating his oath to the Constitution and endangering the safety of the American republic." 

11. My son and I were accused, attacked and 'robbed of civil respect'

By Keyon Harrold Sr.

"The day after Christmas, my son and I were walking through the lobby of New York City's Arlo Hotel, when a woman falsely accused him of stealing her cellphone, pulled hotel management into her biased rant and tackled my 14-year-old without provocation. Hotel staff demanded to see my son Keyon Harrold Jr.'s phone. My first thought was to protect him from the verbal and physical attacks we were both facing. I’ve seen comments that ask: 'Why didn't you just give over the cellphone?' The answer is simple: Because my son and I have rights."