dajoki
dajoki's JournalA Federal Judge Condemned the "Roberts Court's Assault on Democracy.'' It's About Time
A Federal Judge Condemned the Roberts Courts Assault on Democracy. Its About Time.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/federal-judge-condemns-roberts-courts-assault-on-democracy.html
Nowhere is the problem of asymmetrical rhetorical warfare more apparent than in the federal judiciary. For the past several years, federal judges, notably those appointed by Donald J. Trump, have felt unmoored from any standard judicial conventions of circumspection and restraint, penning screeds about the evils of big government and rants against Planned Parenthood. Most of the judicial branch, though, has declined to engage in this kind of rhetoric. There are norms, after all, and conventions, standards, and protocols. There seems to also be an agreement that conservative judges demonstrate deeply felt passion when they delve into such issues, while everyone else just demonstrates bias if they decide to weigh in. So when Justice Clarence Thomas just last year used a dissent to attack the integrity of a sitting federal judge in the census case, it was mere clever wordsmithing. But when Justice Sonia Sotomayor suggests, as she did recently, that the conservative wing of the high court seems to be privileging the Trump administrations emergency petitions, she is labeledby the president himselfunfit to judge. Its such a long-standing trick, and its so well supported by the conservative outrage machine, that its easy to believe that critiques of fellow judges by conservative judges are legitimate, while such critiques from liberal judges are an affront to the legitimacy of the entire federal judiciary.
This dynamic is why its so astonishing to see progressive judges really go for broke in criticizing conservative bias in the judiciary, as U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman does in criticizing the five conservative justices on the Roberts Supreme Court in an upcoming Harvard Law review article. The article begins, brutally:
By now, it is a truism that Chief Justice John Roberts statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee that a Supreme Court justices role is the passive one of a neutral baseball umpire who [merely] calls the balls and strikes was a masterpiece of disingenuousness. Roberts misleading testimony inevitably comes to mind when one considers the course of decision-making by the Court over which he presides. This is so because the Roberts Court has been anything but passive. Rather, the Courts hard right majority is actively participating in undermining American democracy. Indeed, the Roberts Court has contributed to insuring that the political system in the United States pays little attention to ordinary Americans and responds only to the wishes of a relatively small number of powerful corporations and individuals.
Adelman, who sits in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, goes on to methodically chronicle that which is hardly news to anyone who has observed the rightward turn of the Supreme Court. His article brings into clear relief the courts systemic attack on voting rights for minority and other marginalized communities, by way of striking down a key section of the Voting Rights Act, as well as repeated blessing of voter suppression and decisions not to adjudicate political gerrymandering. He notes that the court privileges the wealthy and corporate interests at the expense of the public. He lays out in detail the rise of the conservative legal movement, starting with the infamous 1971 Lewis Powell memo that served as a right-wing call to arms and tracing its progress through the current well-funded effort to reverse the New Deal in the courts. The article ultimately portrays the slow movement of the Supreme Court to the rightand then the far rightthrough a long line of cases that reversed the Warren courts protections for minority groups and poor and working-class Americans. It shows how the court has undermined unions and boosted corporate interests. The court, he notes, has greatly contributed to income inequality, health care inequality, and the hollowing out of the American middle class.
Adelman ends with this caution:
We are thus in a new and arguably dangerous phase in American history. Democracy is inherently fragile, and it is even more so when government eschews policies that benefit all classes of Americans. We desperately need public officials who will work to revitalize our democratic republic. Unfortunately, the conservative Justices on the Roberts Court are not among them.
<<snip>>
"Mr. Barr could not be trusted." We all knew that, so what will come of this?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/us/politics/mueller-report-barr-judge-walton.html?<<snip>>
Mr. Barr could not be trusted, Judge Reggie B. Walton said, citing inconsistencies between the attorney generals statements about the report when it was secret and its actual contents that turned out to be more damaging to President Trump. Mr. Barrs lack of candor called into question his credibility and, in turn, the departments assurances to the court, Judge Walton said.
The judge ordered the Justice Department to privately show him the portions of the report that were censored in the publicly released version so he could independently verify the justifications for those redactions. The ruling came in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking a full-text version of the report.
The differences between the report and Mr. Barrs description of it cause the court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller report to the contrary, wrote Judge Walton, an appointee of President George W. Bush.
Mr. Barrs public rollout of the Mueller report has been widely criticized. Still, it was striking to see a Republican-appointed federal judge scathingly dissect Mr. Barrs conduct in a formal judicial ruling and declare that the sitting attorney general had so deceived the American people that he could not trust assertions made by a Justice Department under Mr. Barrs control.
<<snip>>
Pissed about Super Tuesday? Suck it up: Beating Trump means supporting the Democratic nominee
Pissed about Super Tuesday? Suck it up: Beating Trump means supporting the Democratic nominee
https://www.salon.com/2020/03/05/pissed-about-super-tuesday-suck-it-up-beating-trump-means-supporting-the-democratic-nominee/
<<snip>>
In a new essay for the New Republic, political scientist and pollster Rachel Bitecofer describes this moment in political history:
https://newrepublic.com/article/156402/hate-ballot
The 2020 election will be a battle of the bases, with nothing less than the country's survival as a functional democracy on the ballot. Partisanship is a hell of a drug especially when it's cut with a heavy dose of existential fear.
There are eight months to Election Day. Much can and will happen that is outside of the ability of the pundits, the pollsters and the commentariat to predict. But one thing is certain. There will be Democratic and independent voters who are upset that their preferred candidate is not the party's presidential nominee. Some of these voters may choose to stay home, to vote for a meaningless third-party candidate or even to support Donald Trump in some ill-conceived protest against the system.
Such impulses are dangerous. Instead, these angry and disaffected Democrats and independents must vote with their heads and not their hearts, must embrace a new maturity, and must abandon childish purity tests that are best suited for halcyon days and a time of "normalcy" than for the nightmarish crisis of the Age of Trump.
Not to support the Democratic nominee whoever that may be is to aid Donald Trump and his authoritarian movement in their quest for a second term.
Moreover, not to vote against Donald Trump is to betray American democracy and the very values that so many disaffected progressives, Democrats and independents claim to embrace. Is the Democratic Party perfect, or even fully functional? Of course not. But to sabotage it now is to embrace darkness.
institutional ability of the press to fully convey the abnormality of this presidency is in doubt
Trumps new attack on Biden exposes his own unfitness
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/03/trumps-new-attack-biden-exposes-his-own-unfitness/
<<snip>>
In this election, the institutional ability of the press to fully convey the abnormality of this presidency is in doubt. As Brian Beutler details, were already seeing a rerun of 2016, which was beset with the press corps failure to clearly demarcate Trumps history of corruption and racism from the lesser sins of Hillary Clinton.
Trumps allies are counting on these failures to resurface. GOP senators are intensifying sham investigations into Biden and his son, in the obvious expectation that if hes the nominee, whatever they purport to find will be treated as legitimate news, casting a pall of corruption over him.
<<snip>>
Such duplicity can't survive appeal
https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1233864178584125440?s=20. "Spare me. That's what I mean. I don't need phony off-the-record after-the-fact friends."
Dem lawmaker drops hammer on GOPers covering their butts by rushing to defend Vindman after Trump fired him
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/02/dem-lawmaker-drops-hammer-on-gopers-covering-their-butts-by-rushing-to-defend-vindman-after-trump-fired-him/
Saying spare me, Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY) trashed the anonymous Republican lawmakers who contacted the New York Times to claim they tried to stop Donald Trump from firing EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland and Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman to make it look like they cared.
Speaking with MSNBC host Kendis Gibson, the New York lawmaker expressed disgust with what he called their cowardice, while reacting to a New York Times report noting the alleged concerns of Republicans over the presidents actions.
I think what youre seeing there is pretty obvious, Maloney stated. Youre seeing vulnerable Republicans, after the fact, try to cover their butts by leaking to the New York Times that they want us all to know they were deeply troubled by this. And even though they took a vote that could have absolutely guaranteed that people like Lt. Col. Vindman would be hurt, would be made to pay the price for their fecklessness, for their cowardice, they want us to know they were troubled by it.
Theyre going to continue to support this president, but they want the New York Times to know they secretly know its wrong, he continued. Spare me. Thats what I mean. I dont need phony off-the-record after-the-fact friends.
The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President*
The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President
How new technologies and techniques pioneered by dictators will shape the 2020 election
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/03/the-2020-disinformation-war/605530/
One day last fall, I sat down to create a new Facebook account. I picked a forgettable name, snapped a profile pic with my face obscured, and clicked Like on the official pages of Donald Trump and his reelection campaign. Facebooks algorithm prodded me to follow Ann Coulter, Fox Business, and a variety of fan pages with names like In Trump We Trust. I complied. I also gave my cellphone number to the Trump campaign, and joined a handful of private Facebook groups for MAGA diehards, one of which required an application that seemed designed to screen out interlopers.
The presidents reelection campaign was then in the midst of a multimillion-dollar ad blitz aimed at shaping Americans understanding of the recently launched impeachment proceedings. Thousands of micro-targeted ads had flooded the internet, portraying Trump as a heroic reformer cracking down on foreign corruption while Democrats plotted a coup. That this narrative bore little resemblance to reality seemed only to accelerate its spread. Right-wing websites amplified every claim. Pro-Trump forums teemed with conspiracy theories. An alternate information ecosystem was taking shape around the biggest news story in the country, and I wanted to see it from the inside.
The story that unfurled in my Facebook feed over the next several weeks was, at times, disorienting. There were days when I would watch, live on TV, an impeachment hearing filled with damning testimony about the presidents conduct, only to look at my phone later and find a slickly edited videoserved up by the Trump campaignthat used out-of-context clips to recast the same testimony as an exoneration. Wait, I caught myself wondering more than once, is that what happened today?
As I swiped at my phone, a stream of pro-Trump propaganda filled the screen: Thats right, the whistleblowers own lawyer said, The coup has started
Swipe. Democrats are doing Putins bidding
Swipe. The only message these radical socialists and extremists will understand is a crushing
Swipe. Only one man can stop this chaos
Swipe, swipe, swipe.
<<snip>>
The Trump campaign is planning to spend more than $1 billion, and it will be aided by a vast coalition of partisan media, outside political groups, and enterprising freelance operatives. These pro-Trump forces are poised to wage what could be the most extensive disinformation campaign in U.S. history. Whether or not it succeeds in reelecting the president, the wreckage it leaves behind could be irreparable.
<<snip>>
John Roberts comes face to face with the mess he made
John Roberts comes face to face with the mess he made
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/23/john-roberts-comes-face-face-with-mess-he-made/
There is justice in John Roberts being forced to preside silently over the impeachment trial of President Trump, hour after hour, day after tedious day.
<<snip>>
Robertss captivity is entirely fitting: He is forced to witness, with his own eyes, the mess he and his colleagues on the Supreme Court have made of the U.S. political system. As representatives of all three branches of government attend this unhappy family reunion, the living consequences of the Roberts Courts decisions, and their corrosive effect on democracy, are plain to see.
Ten years to the day before Trumps impeachment trial began, the Supreme Court released its Citizens United decision, plunging the country into the era of super PACs and unlimited, unregulated, secret campaign money from billionaires and foreign interests. Citizens United, and the resulting rise of the super PAC, led directly to this impeachment. The two Rudy Giuliani associates engaged in key abuses the ouster of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, the attempts to force Ukraines president to announce investigations into Trumps political opponents gained access to Trump by funneling money from a Ukrainian oligarch to the presidents super PAC.
The Roberts Courts decisions led to this moment in indirect ways, as well. The courts 2013 ruling in Shelby County gutted the Voting Rights Act and spurred a new wave of voter suppression. The decision in 2014?s McCutcheon further surrendered campaign finance to the wealthiest. The 2018 Janus decision hobbled the ability of labor unions to counter wealthy donors, while the 2019 Rucho ruling blessed partisan gerrymandering, expanding anti-democratic tendencies.
<<snip>>
Now, we are in a crisis of democratic legitimacy: A president who has plainly abused his office and broken the law, a legislature too paralyzed to do anything about it and a chief justice coming face to face with the system he broke.
Susan Collins Takes Hours to Decide on Lunch Before Ordering Exactly What Mitch McConnell Is Having
Susan Collins Takes Hours to Decide on Lunch Before Ordering Exactly What Mitch McConnell Is Having
https://www.newyorker.com/humor/borowitz-report/susan-collins-takes-hours-to-decide-on-lunch-before-ordering-exactly-what-mitch-mcconnell-is-having?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=onsite-share&utm_brand=the-new-yorker&utm_social-type=earned
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)On the first day of the impeachment trial in the United States Senate, Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine, spent hours trying to decide what she would have for lunch before ultimately ordering exactly what Senator Mitch McConnell was having.
Clutching the Senate takeout menu in her hands, Collins told reporters mid-morning that the decision of what to have for lunch was a matter of serious consideration and that she wanted to review all of the available options before selecting one.
Im deeply troubled and concerned about getting this order right, Collins said. There are many valid choices on this menu and I dont want to give any of them short shrift.
Around 11 A.M., rumors swirled that Collins was leaning toward ordering a quinoa salad, a choice that would have set her apart from the rest of her Republican colleagues in the upper chamber.
By noon, however, Collins emerged from her office to tell reporters that she had ordered the exact same thing that the Senate Majority Leader had chosen, a roast beef sandwich on a roll.
At the end of the day, there was just not enough evidence that ordering anything else would have been better, she said.
According to sources, Collins spent the lunch hour eating her sandwich alone at her desk and trying to determine why everyone hates her.
When was the last time a Republican won a presidential election without the help of dirty tricks
Ronald Reagans October Surprise Plot Was Real After All
https://jacobinmag.com/2020/1/ronald-reagan-october-surprise-carter-iran-hostage-crisis-conspiracy
A batch of quietly released documents confirms what many have long suspected: Ronald Reagans 1980 presidential campaign worked behind the scenes to delay the release of US hostages in Iran, for the benefit of Reagans election campaign. It raises the question: When was the last time a Republican won a presidential election without the help of dirty tricks?
snip//
For those counting, thats now at least four of the last six Republican presidents who have won elections with the assistance of some sort of pre-election skulduggery, including Richard Nixons torpedoing of peace in Vietnam, the George W. Bush campaign shenanigans in Florida and the later use of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, and Donald Trumps boost from Russias hacking of Democratic Party emails (even if that wasnt coordinated) not to mention the use of voter suppression that unites them all. And thats not counting George H. W. Bush getting help from John Majors government in the UK to beat Bill Clinton in 1992.
https://twitter.com/jacobinmag/status/1219938256411774978?s=19
https://twitter.com/jahewittindy/status/1220179033465458688?s=19
https://www.alternet.org/2017/07/gop-fraud-and-treason/amp/?__twitter_impression=true
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