markpkessinger
markpkessinger's JournalThe Supreme Court's Very Selective Originalism and Federalism
They're "originalists" or "textualists," until they're faced with a ruling from a state supreme court, written specifically from a textualist standpoint, that commands a political result they don't like.
They're "federalists," all in favor of state's rights, until they're faced with a state that makes a presidential eligibility determination that is contrary to their desired political result.
As an institution, the current SC deserves nothing but contempt!
Rabbi Jay Michaelson: "Elise Stefanik's Calculated Demagoguery on Antisemitism and Free Speech"
https://www.thedailybeast.com/elise-stefaniks-calculated-demagoguery-on-antisemitism-and-free-speech?ref=scrollThis is some of the best commentary I've seen anywhere on this subject!
For that matter, I’ve heard countless Jews say that there is no such thing as the Palestinian people over the years (indeed, former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir said so). Is that a “call for genocide”? It’s certainly in the neighborhood.
I’ve heard right-wing Israelis call for “transfer” of Palestinian populations out of the West Bank. In the last month, I’ve heard them call for Palestinians to be pushed out of Gaza. Calls for genocide? Again, maybe, maybe not—subject to interpretation and context.
[ . . . . ]
What I find most personally repellant about this whole spectacle is how it exploits the trauma and pain that the Jewish community is still feeling (while utterly ignoring the trauma and pain that Palestinians are experiencing).
Foreign Affairs: Israel's Failed Bombing Campaign in Gaza
Superb article from Foreign Affairs magazine:
Collective Punishment Won’t Defeat Hamas
By Robert A. Pape
December 6, 2023
Since October 7, Israel has invaded northern Gaza with some 40,000 combat troops and pummeled the small area with one of the most intense bombing campaigns in history. Nearly two million people have fled their homes as a result. More than 15,000 civilians (including some 6,000 children and 5,000 women) have been killed in the attacks, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health, and the U.S. State Department has suggested that the true toll may be even higher. Israel has bombed hospitals and ambulances and wrecked about half of northern Gaza’s buildings. It has cut off virtually all water, food deliveries, and electricity generation for Gaza’s 2.2 million inhabitants. By any definition, this campaign counts as a massive act of collective punishment against civilians.
Even now, as Israeli forces push deeper into southern Gaza, the exact purpose of Israel’s approach is far from clear. Although Israeli leaders claim to be targeting Hamas alone, the evident lack of discrimination raises real questions about what the government is actually up to. Is Israel’s eagerness to shatter Gaza a product of the same incompetence that led to the massive failure of the Israeli military to counter Hamas’s attack on October 7, the plans for which ended up in the hands of Israeli military and intelligence officials more than a year earlier? Is wrecking northern Gaza and now southern Gaza a prelude to sending the territory’s entire population to Egypt, as proposed in a “concept paper” produced by the Israeli Intelligence Ministry?
Whatever the ultimate goal, Israel’s collective devastation of Gaza raises deep moral problems. But even judged purely in strategic terms, Israel’s approach is doomed to failure—and indeed, it is already failing. Mass civilian punishment has not convinced Gaza’s residents to stop supporting Hamas. To the contrary, it has only heightened resentment among Palestinians. Nor has the campaign succeeded in dismantling the group ostensibly being targeted. Fifty-plus days of war show that while Israel can demolish Gaza, it cannot destroy Hamas. In fact, the group may be stronger now than it was before.
Israel is hardly the first country to err by placing excessive faith in the coercive magic of airpower. History shows that the large-scale bombing of civilian areas almost never achieves its objectives. Israel would have been better off had it heeded these lessons and responded to the October 7 attack with surgical strikes against Hamas’s leaders and fighters in lieu of the indiscriminate bombing campaign it has chosen. But it is not too late to shift course and adopt a viable alternative strategy for achieving lasting security, an approach that would drive a political wedge between Hamas and the Palestinians rather than bringing them closer together: take meaningful, unilateral steps toward a two-state solution.
Washington Post Op-Ed by the King of Jordan: "A two-state solution would be a victory for our common humanity"
< . . . . >
I cannot but believe that Palestinians and Israelis want the same things. They are not monsters; they do not cherish misery and death. Like Israelis, Palestinians have a right to lives of dignity, security and respect, in an independent, sovereign and viable state.
Yet for almost 20 years, Israel’s unilateral actions have undermined the peace process and flouted the Oslo accords, which promised the two-state solution of peace and security for both sides. Instead, step by step, and against international law, the Palestinian territories have been divided into small, disconnected enclaves. Israel has tripled its “settlements” on land that the accords recognized would be part of the Palestinian state. Jerusalemites have been pushed out of their homes. Muslim and Christian holy sites have been attacked and worshipers harassed. And now, 60 percent of Gaza’s besieged population of 2.3 million Palestinians has been displaced.
< . . . . >
Are there any realistic alternatives to a two-state solution? It is hard to imagine any. A one-state solution would force Israel’s identity to accommodate competing national identities. A no-state solution would deny Palestinian rights and dignity. < . . . . >
https://wapo.st/3MMjNBh
[NOTE: There is much more to this op-ed than I was able to excerpt in four paragraphs. I urge folks to read the original at the link provided -- it's a "gift" link, so there's no paywall.]
For all of the outcry over Rep. Tlaib's use of the phrase, "from the river to the sea" . . .
. . . It is worth noting that the phrase, or at least the concept, does not originate with Hamas or even with the Palestinians. It originated with Netanyahu's own Likud Party, the original, founding platform of which states in pertinent part:
See https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform-of-the-likud-party
Scam Debt Collector Call
Today, I got a call from the 430 area code, from a debt collector claiming they were trying to collect money they said I owed SprintPCS "from the early 2000s," for a little over $1,000! I told them I had no recollection of such a debt, and that even if I did, they were well over a decade beyond the statute of limitations for a debt collection, and could thus go straight to hell!
Here's the list of Democrats who voted against expelling George Santos
Some of these are real surprises to me, and I'd really appreciate an explanation (as I suspect many others would as well)!
Rep. Colin Allred (Texas)
Rep. Jake Auchincloss (Mass.)
Rep. Ed Case (Hawaii)
Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (Mo.)
Rep. Henry Cuellar (Texas)
Rep. Sharice Davids (Kan.)
Rep. Chris Deluzio (Penn.)
Rep. Lizzie Fletcher (Texas)
Rep. Jared Golden (Maine)
Rep. Jim Himes (Conn.)
Rep. Steven Horsford (Nev.)
Rep. Jeff Jackson (N.C.)
Rep. Hank Johnson (Ga.)
Rep. Rick Larsen (Wash.)
Rep. Susie Lee (Nev.)
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (Calif.)
Rep. Seth Magaziner (R.I.)
Rep. Morgan McGarvey (Ky.)
Rep. Rob Menendez (N.J.)
Rep. Gwen Moore (Wis.)
Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (Wash.)
Rep. Katie Porter (Calif.)
Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.)
Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (Md.)
Rep. Brad Schneider (Ill.)
Rep. Kim Schrier (Wash.)
Rep. Bobby Scott (Va.)
Rep. Elissa Slotkin (Mich.)
Rep. Mark Takano (Calif.)
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (Mich.)
Rep. Nikema Williams (Ga.)
Source: https://thehill.com/homenews/house/4288745-31-democrats-vote-keep-santos-congress/
31 Democrats voted Nay on a vote to expel George Santos; 15 voted Present . . . .
. . . With friends like these . . . . need I finish that sentence?
Inside Biden's 'Hug Bibi' Strategy, by Franklin Foer
This article by Franklin Foer in The Atlantic is the best explanation I've seen anywhere of Biden's approach to Israel, and the thinking behind it!by Franklin Foer
[ . . . . ]
Biden’s visit isn’t simply a dramatic gesture of solidarity born of his deeply felt Zionism. It is a strategic mission, an expression of his highly psychological approach to foreign policy—and of the insights into the Israeli psyche he’s gleaned through his many visits to the country and from his long relationship with that nation’s political elite.
[ . . . . ]
This was a strategy built on an understanding of Israeli anxiety. The nation, historically encircled by enemies, desperately craves the affirmation of American friendship at its moments of peril. It needs to feel loved and secure when it fears for its existence. Instead of hectoring Israel, Biden wanted to bank emotional capital. He wanted Netanyahu to understand his own belief in Israel’s right to self-defense; and he wanted to show the Israeli public his steadfastness. Then, over the course of the conflict, he planned on drawing down the trust he had deposited, by guiding Netanyahu to the most prudent course of action.
During the 11 days of the 2021 conflict, Biden kept calling Netanyahu. As with the current war, Netanyahu’s strategic objectives weren’t entirely clear. Some in the Israeli military told their American counterparts that a ground invasion of Gaza was a live option. The risks of that weren’t hard to see. But instead of lecturing Netanyahu, Biden conducted the calls in the spirit of a Socratic dialogue. He would ask questions that forced Netanyahu to articulate his goals: How will this end? And how will you know when you’ve restored deterrence?
Biden had learned from the failures of the Obama administration. By adapting a more confrontational stance with Netanyahu, that administration may have pleased allies and domestic groups critical of Netanyahu, but it stoked Israeli insecurities. Instead of curtailing settlements or rushing to the peace table, the Israelis rebelled against the pressure. In fact, Biden personally suffered from this approach. When he visited the Jewish state in 2010, the Netanyahu government humiliated him by announcing the expansion of new housing in East Jerusalem. Rather than aborting his trip, which many back in Washington advised, Biden met up with Netanyahu and embraced him, saying, “This is a mess. How do we make it better?”
The calls to blacklist members of certain Harvard student groups
How ever misguided or wrong we may think the views of the Harvard student groups who have issued statements that appear to be supportive of Hamas, we should be equally appalled at calls to blacklist these students. I have frankly been stunned by the apparent casual acceptance of calls to blacklist the students on the part of the mainstream, and even some of the left-leaning, media.
These are, for the most part, young people whose geopolitical views are still being formed, and those views will evolve and change any number of times over the course of their lives. It is particularly, sadly ironic that these calls for blacklisting should come as part of an effort to support the Jewish community, given that our country's earlier forays into the practice had an especially adverse impact on the Jewish left in this country.
Blacklisting is an abandonment of the important, but difficult and necessary, act of moral suasion in favor of [im]moral moral coercion. It never works, and over time, it punishes people for views the may no longer adhere to.
By all means, when they make abhorrent statements, call them out. But do so in a way that draws them into a dialogue about why their views are so abhorrent. Certainly all moderates, liberals and progressives should be unequivocal in their denunciations of the practice, regardless of whom the blacklisting is directed towards.
And on top of everything else, blacklisting these students plays right into one of the right's favorite talking points about the left (i.e., that the left is out to censor views with which it disagrees).
I would have thought that we had learned by now one of the chief lessons of the McCarthy era, namely, that certain tactics, such as blacklisting, are beyond the pale irrespective of how righteous the cause they may purport to serve. I guess not.
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