This still frame from Metropolitan Police Department body worn camera video shows Thomas Webster, in red jacket, at a barricade line at on the west front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. Webster, a Marine Corps veteran and retired New York City Police Department Officer, is accused of assaulting an MPD officer with a flagpole. A number of law enforcement officers were assaulted while attempting to prevent rioters from entering the U.S. Capitol.
This still frame from Metropolitan Police Department body worn camera video shows Thomas Webster, in red jacket, at a barricade line at on the west front of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in Washington. Webster, a Marine Corps veteran and retired New York City Police Department Officer, is accused of assaulting an MPD officer with a flagpole. A number of law enforcement officers were assaulted while attempting to prevent rioters from entering the U.S. Capitol.
Justice came face to face with Thomas Webster, 56, a veteran New York cop who beat a D.C. cop with a Marine flagpole at the Jan. 6, 2021, riot.
I witnessed the courtroom drama. The judge handed down the stiffest sentence yet for a Jan. 6 defendant: 10 years for the first aggressor to break the police line guarding the Capitol.
"I take no pleasure," Judge Amit Mehta spoke from the bench.
"But it was not just one day," Mehta said. "That (darkest) day continues to tear the fabric of this country.
"I still remain shocked every single time I see the 46-second video (of violent rage) ... He was an everyday American. What conditions could have created that?"
Webster addressed Mehta: "The worst part is not jail. It's the shame I have standing here. My kids don't look at me the same way."
The "beautiful family" did not appear by Webster's side as his sentence was meted out.
The Metropolitan police officer Webster knocked to the ground sat in the back row in uniform. Webster turned and declared, "I want to apologize to you, Officer (Noah) Rathbun."
Belated remorse, better than none.
I was inside the Capitol that tragic winter day and saw the siege of our democracy's temple. A heartbreak and an outrage, all in the name of former President Donald Trump.
Will the 45th president ever face a judge? You tell me.
Walking uphill in the Cathedral Heights neighborhood, I passed an English friend's house. I had not seen her since the pandemic. I remembered a small garden party where she served an English elderflower drink. Delightful.
And there she was, walking down to her house.
She invited me in for — was it too much to hope for? — an elderflower cordial to catch up. We said it would be sad when summer cicadas stopped singing.
The Library of Congress puts on the National Book Festival on Labor Day weekend. The crossroads of thousands brings authors, families, readers and C-SPAN, the city chronicler, together in the thousands.
Founded by first lady Laura Bush in 2001, the festival missed two years of live events, in 2020 and 2021. Excited to be back in person.
In line for lattes and macchiatos, I was shoulder to shoulder with a woman I worked with once at the Baltimore Sun. Her voice sounded so familiar it was like time travel. She's now at The Washington Post, covering the White House. Her beau works there as a columnist.
"I just tag along," he said, smiling.
As it happened, she was headed to my hometown, Madison, Wisconsin, to speak at the annual Cap Times Idea Fest. That impressed me greatly.
I suggested the Memorial Union Terrace as a happy place to interview university students on the fall battleground races.
Then I found the author table. David Maraniss signed his magnificent new biography of Jim Thorpe, "Path Lit by Lightning."
"I know this one," he said, meaning me.
We share the same hometown. His father Elliott was editor of The Capital Times.
David's bestseller tells of the legendary athlete's life, colored by the American Indian experience of being trampled upon by government policy for two centuries.
A flash of justice, he told listeners, crossed Thorpe's path. He starred on his Carlisle Indian Industrial School football team in the 1912 game against West Point.
"It was the Indians against the Army," Maraniss said.
The Indians won while "the ghosts of history hovered." Dwight Eisenhower, an Army linebacker, liked to say he tackled Thorpe — once.
The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks happened days after the first Book Festival on the National Mall.
If you think about it, Jan. 6 was even more grave. A foreign plot with 19 guys (15 Saudis) versus a mob of 30,000 Americans waging a war within.
By chance, I ran into more friends from Baltimore at the end of the day. We went out to dinner on the soft summer night.
Our towns are alive again. That felt good. The playwright of "Our Town," Thornton Wilder, was born in Madison.
Cicadas still sing. For now.
Jamie Stiehm is a Creators Syndicate columnist in Washington. She grew up in Madison.
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