December 10, 2019

My email to Sen. Grassley

Sent a similar note to Ernst, only thanking her for her military service, and that her colleagues voted to remove Clinton, not her personally.

Dear Senator Grassley:

Thank you for your years of service to Iowa in your various roles in government. However, if you want that legacy to include standing up for the rule of law and the Constitution, you have no choice but to remove Donald J. Trump from the Office of the President when his trial is conducted in the Senate.

The con man in the Oval Office has skirted and flouted the law since his inauguration nearly three years ago. The bribery scandal involving Ukraine and his clear obstruction of Congress — added to the obvious obstruction of justice outlined in the Mueller Report and the emoluments violations charges now finally making their way through U.S. district court — make him a clear and present danger to our republic and our fair system of elections.

Should you choose not to remove President Trump from office, you are sending a loud and clear message to all Iowans that you no longer care about those things we thought mattered — namely the rule of law and the Constitution.

Twenty years ago, you voted to remove President Bill Clinton from office because he lied under oath about an extramarital affair. I will consider it the height of hypocrisy if you don't vote to remove President Trump based on far worse crimes than Clinton committed.

Thank you for your time.

Jeff Browne
Iowa City

August 23, 2019

Faithless electors: Trump's best hope

And it all may happen after Tuesday's ruling.

There have been other threads about this, but it never hurts to remind those who may have missed it the first time.

NY Times story

Electoral College Members Can Defy Voters’ Wishes, Court Rules

In a ruling that kicks at the foundation of how America chooses presidents, a federal appeals court on Tuesday said members of the Electoral College, who cast the actual votes for president, may choose whomever they please regardless of a state’s popular vote.

The ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver said Colorado was out of bounds in 2016 when it canceled the vote of a so-called faithless elector named Michael Baca. Mr. Baca, a Democrat, wrote in the name of John Kasich, a Republican who was Ohio’s governor at the time, even though Hillary Clinton carried Colorado, earning its nine electoral votes. The secretary of state replaced Mr. Baca with another elector who then voted for Mrs. Clinton.

“The text of the Constitution makes clear that states do not have the constitutional authority to interfere with presidential electors who exercise their constitutional right to vote for the president and vice president candidates of their choice,” the court majority wrote in a split ruling by a three-judge panel.

Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor who founded the group that brought the case, Equal Citizens, said it was the first time a federal appeals court had ruled on whether electors could be bound in how they vote. Many states, including Colorado, have laws requiring electors to pledge that they will support the winner of the popular vote. The Constitution is mute on the subject. The appeals court noted that a handful of faithless electors have broken pledges to vote with their state’s majority since the presidential election of 1796.

July 21, 2019

In other swamp news

This is one of those items that would seem like a big deal in any other administration, but it's just part of the daily shitstorm out of this WH:

SENATE
LYNDA BLANCHARD, AMBASSADOR TO SLOVENIA: Voting 54 for and 40 against, the Senate on July 18 confirmed Lynda Blanchard of Montgomery, Ala., as U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Slovenia. Blanchard is co-founder of a real estate investment firm and a non-profit for helping impoverished children in the United States and developing countries, and she is also known for circulating murderous conspiracy theories about Bill and Hillary Clinton on Facebook. A Republican Party donor, she received her ambassadorial nomination in June 2018 after her husband, John, donated more than $500,000 to the Trump inaugural fund, according to NBC News.

A yes vote was to confirm the nominee.

July 15, 2019

Grammar tip when writing about Twitler

If you're trying to describe a single motherfucker who is both a racist and a piece of shit, there are some basic rules to follow:

1) Motherfucker is, indeed, a compound noun, so it is a single word: "motherfucker," as is the gerund/adjective "motherfucking," as in "The president of the United States is a motherfucking racist," or "The president of the United States is a motherfucker."
2) "Racist" can be used as both a noun and an adjective, so its placement in your sentence depends on how you use it: "The motherfucking president is a racist," and "The president is a motherfucking racist" are both correct, as is "The racist president is a motherfucker."
3) "Piece of shit" is different from both "motherfucking" and "racist" because as a compound adjective used before the noun it modifies, it needs hyphenation. As a noun, "piece of shit" needs no extra hyphenation: "The president is a piece of shit" is fine, but you need to write "The piece-of-shit president is a motherfucking racist" with the hyphens indicating its role as an adjective.
4) If you want to use both "piece of shit" as a predicate adjective and "motherfucking" and "racist" as adjectives before the noun, you need a comma to separate what are called "adjectives of equal rank": "The President is a motherfucking, racist piece of shit." (Thanks, Roland99!)

May 25, 2019

Mueller: Volume II, Section III.B.

If you memorize nothing else from the Mueller Report, try out these 24 words on the "no-obstruction" bleaters:

"We concluded that Congress can validly regulate the President's exercise of official duties to prohibit actions motivated by a corrupt intent to obstruct justice." Vol. II, page 169.

Then, of course, all the details where Twitler obstructed justice 10 times.

Later, we get the famous "it also does not exonerate him" line. Put that with the above sentence, and it's pretty fucking simple, even to a mouth-breathing Trumpist, though the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Readability scale puts it at 12.69, so that could be a problem.

Clearly stated: "Drumpf is not above the law, he appears to have obstructed justice, and Congress can do something about it."

If Mueller would simply state those words in front of a camera, we could flip the entire conversation.

May 16, 2019

Award-winning media adviser resigns after censorship, conflict with school principal

From the Student Press Law Center

TEXAS — An adviser at a high school in suburban Houston has left her job after the principal pulled stories, yearbook spreads and repeatedly questioned her judgment.

Katie Moreno, the media adviser at Seven Lakes High School in Katy, Texas, decided to turn in her resignation after detailing months of censorship and after what her students called “bullying” tactics from the school principal, Kerri Finnesand.

There are no robust protections against prior restraint or censorship for student journalists in Texas. Seven Lakes High School’s district policy leaves it up to individual principals to decide how to operate school publications, and this past year, Finnesand decided to enact tighter control.

Finnesand did not respond to a request for comment. The request was forwarded to Justin Graham, general counsel for the school district.

(end clipping)

Texas' legislature is mulling a "New Voices" act that would guarantee public school students' their First Amendment rights.

Here's a link for that.

May 3, 2019

Mueller: The Motion Picture (Casting suggestions needed)

I get this feeling we need someone to produce a feature-length motion picture that dramatizes the Mueller Report, both volumes, no embellishments, just the facts.

Most of the country doesn't read the great reporting done by stellar journalists at the NY Times, the Washington Post and other places that have uncovered almost everything we know about the Mueller report and other investigations into Trump's crimes. Worse, many of those non-readers also believe such great American journalists are purveyors of lies.

So give them what they want — a movie with high production values, but at low cost and released before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3, 2020.

Mueller, of course, will be played by DeNiro. But we need someone less comical than Alec Baldwin to play Dump Sr.

Your ideas?

March 7, 2019

Iowa polls would close earlier in statewide elections under Senate bill

From the Cedar Rapids Gazette

DES MOINES — The polls would close an hour earlier for some Iowa elections, and public universities and other state-owned buildings could not serve as satellite voting locations under legislation being considered by state lawmakers.

Sen. Roby Smith, R-Davenport, said the goal of the bill, Senate Study Bill 1241, is to strengthen state election laws to ensure Iowa elections are “safe and fair.”

SNIP

Among the bill’s provisions:
• Polls would close for all Iowa elections at 8 p.m. Currently, polls remain open for statewide elections until 9 p.m., and for some local elections the polls close at 8 p.m.;
• State-owned buildings, with the exception of county courthouses, could not serve as satellite voting locations.
• Absentee ballots would be required to be received by the auditor by Election Day. Current law allows absentee ballots to be received and counted so long as they were postmarked by the day before Election Day.
• Elections officials would be required to verify signatures on absentee ballots.
• College students would be given a form that would ask whether they plan to live in or outside Iowa upon graduation, and those who indicate they plan to live outside Iowa would be removed from the voter registration list.
• When a local entity asks voters for permission to issue bonds, ballots would be required to include information on potential increases in property taxes.

“We are making sure that elections are fair,” Smith said. “It’s the checks and balances that come with living in a constitutional republic that we have.”