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Month: June 2022

That EPA ruling

It’s bad. And we knew it was coming.

I’m outsourcing this issue to the environment writer I respect the most, David Roberts:

All right, I’m just getting to my computer & reading around, but it sounds like the SCOTUS EPA ruling is about as good (“good”) as could have been hoped for. EPA authority over CO2 remains intact. Regulations just have to be “inside the fenceline.” Of the options that’s about the narrowest one that was on the table.

Nonetheless, it’s worth emphasizing: “major questions” doctrine, which Roberts leans on to strike down the (never-implemented) CPP, is bullshit. Utter Calvinball bullshit. Imagined into being. Rectally extracted.

Kagan’s dissent makes the point fiercely: Congress has been delegating “big” things to agencies from the time of the nation’s founding. There’s no hint in the constitution or in history that it intended to confine agencies to “minor” questions. It’s absolutely made up.

The vagueness of “major questions” is the point: it allows conservative judges to rule against any program they don’t like. There’s no test for major, no metric, no definition — it’s just old-conservative-guy vibes. “Eh … feels major.”

Needless to say, the court’s radicals (as evidenced in their concurrence) are champing at this bit to apply this vibes-based test to all kinds of other agency actions. The doctrine itself may end up doing huge damage. But on this case, at least, it could have been much worse.

BTW, if you want more on the legal background and the questions at play, listen to this pod:

https://www.volts.wtf/p/volts-podcast-jack-lienke-and-kirti#details

OK, a couple of notes. In my OP, I said SCOTUS ruled against all “outside-the-fenceline” regs. That’s not quite right. The truth is more complicated & technical & ill-suited for a tweet — suffice to say, EPA still has a little room to maneuver here.

More generally: this is almost too obvious to be worth saying, but it’s rich for conservatives to cry “that’s a job for Congress!” even as gerrymandering, the rural bias of the Senate, & the filibuster have empowered them to render Congress useless.

They are pretending to favor the popular will (not, gasp, “bureaucrats”), but at the same time they have effectively insulated Congress from the popular will & handed it over to minority control. It’s all a fucking game meant to make governing impossible.

Oh! Final final note: the vagueness of the decision — the utter obscurity of what regs Roberts will deem acceptable — ensures more lawsuits. *Whatever* EPA comes up w/ will be delayed, dragged back into court, and very possibly Calviball’d all over again, wasting years.

Kagan very specifically called out the majority’s Calvinball:

Originally tweeted by David Roberts (@drvolts) on June 30, 2022.

Even Worse than Desantis

Ken Paxton, destroyer of lives

I wrote below about Ron Desantis’ latest horror. It’s worse than I had imagined. But take a look at this:

Shortly after the Supreme Court struck down the fundamental right to an abortion, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) appeared to express support for Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion that the high court could review other precedents that may be deemed “demonstrably erroneous,” including those affecting the LGBTQ community.

One of the cases mentioned by Thomas was Lawrence v. Texas, which prevents states from banning intimate same-sex relationships. The landmark 2003 ruling struck down a 1973 Texas law that criminalized the act of sodomy. But as Roe v. Wade was overturned, Paxton said he would defend the state’s defunct sodomy law if the Supreme Court were to follow Thomas’s remarks and eventually revisits Lawrence.

“I mean, there’s all kinds of issues here, but certainly the Supreme Court has stepped into issues that I don’t think there’s any constitutional provision dealing with,” Paxton said in a Friday interview with NewsNation anchor Leland Vittert. “They were legislative issues, and this is one of those issues, and there may be more. So it would depend on the issue and dependent on what state law had said at the time.”

When asked whether the Texas legislature would pass a similar sodomy law and if Paxton would defend it and bring it to the Supreme Court, the Republican attorney general, who is running for reelection in November, suggested he would be comfortable supporting a law outlawing intimate same-sex relationships.

“Yeah, look, my job is to defend state law, and I’ll continue to do that,” Paxton said to Vittert. “That is my job under the Constitution, and I’m certainly willing and able to do that.”

He wouldn’t just be “comfortable” doing it. It’s clear he would be eager to do it.

They are coming for LGBT rights, there is just no doubt about it.

BTW: Paxton has been under indictment for months. Texas Republicans apparently think that’s a qualification for office because he was just renominated for the seat. They are affirmatively approving of criminals to lead them.

About that indoctrination

Trump 2.0 trolls the country

I just can’t believe what an asshole Ron DeSantis is. He’s clearly running for president on the MAGA line, trying to ramp up the culture war to unprecedented levels to prove to the Trump Cultists that he’s and even bigger asshole than their Dear Leader, dedicated to owning the libs with great enthusiasm. He’s also replicating the worst totalitarian states in history with indoctrination of school children in historical lies and designating non-gender conforming children as a class of untermenschen to be shunned and degraded. He is a monster.

I almost can’t believe what I’m seeing:

Under a new civics program launched by Gov. DeSantis, the Florida DoE is partnering with Hillsdale College to offer professional training to public K-12 teachers. Here is what teachers were shown last week about:

1. The Founders’ opposition to slavery;

2. The argument for Originalism (note: no alternative interpretive theories were discussed);

3. The political, moral, and social need for religion;

4. The Founder’s support for religious institutions.

According to attendees, the principal focus was on Christianity. Says one, “There was this Christian nationalism philosophy that was just baked into everything that was there.”

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/education/article262941378.html#storylink=cpy

The training session was voluntary. However, attendees were given a $3000 bonus, payable out of leftover CARES funding that DeSantis declined to spend on COVID.

https://www.heraldtribune.com/story/news/politics/state/2021/07/13/new-civics-program-florida-includes-teacher-bonuses-governor-ron-desantis/7950884002/

He’s using COVID money for this!

I went to public school a long time ago, long before anyone was “woke” about much of anything, and I wasn’t taught this bullshit. This is scary.

But that’s not all:

Meanwhile, Orange County’s legal team has introduced guidelines for how public schools should implement HB 1557 (aka the Don’t Say Gay Act). Among the new rules for teachers in that county:

1. No more rainbow clothing or photographs of same-sex partners;

https://www.wftv.com/news/local/teachers-voice-concerns-after-orange-county-previews-dont-say-gay-impact-classrooms/R6VGDIOC2RFURLBUVT6TVWPDGA/

2. No more Safe Space stickers. Also, teachers must out gay students to their parents (because parental rights are absolute), but teachers must use a student’s birth pronouns regardless of parental desires (because parental rights are unimportant).

A spokesman for Orange County acknowledges that some of these interpretations of HB 1557 are extreme, but explains that staff need to “err on the side of caution” because the law is so vague and the penalties so severe.

Finally, in Leon County, the school board just approved new guidelines that require (and I fucking swear this is real) schools to let parents know whether any student using a locker room or attending an overnight trip is “open about their gender identity.”

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/22074439-the-leon-county-school-districts-lgbtq-inclusive-guide-with-amendments

At the school board meeting, one parent pointed out that pretty much everyone, trans and non-trans alike, is open about their gender identity, so this policy would seem to require a continuous stream of parental notifications.

But I think we all know better.

This is Florida on June 30th, one day before HB 1557 goes into effect. 2.8 million students are enrolled in that state’s public schools. Expect much, much more along these lines.

Link to the Leon County story.

https://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/education/2022/06/29/leon-county-school-board-approves-lgbtq-guide-dont-say-gay-moms-for-liberty-parental-rights/7765205001/

Originally tweeted by Jeffrey Sachs (@JeffreyASachs) on June 30, 2022.

This is what they want to do in the whole country.

I need a drink.

You knew he’d go after her, right?

Add her to the list of women he’s called a liar

How many women has he called lying bitches now? How many has he slammed for having “bad things about her?” Literally dozens of them.

We don’t yet know what they are going to testify to. But assuming they are the good little lackeys they appear to be, it means they need to be as far away from Joe Biden as possible. They cannot be trusted with his life.

The Rogue Supreme Court’s Threat to Democracy

This one’s bad folks. Very, very bad.

During the court cases leading up to the 2020 election I noted this interest among the right wingers on the court in the Independent State Legislature Doctrine, which had been waved at in Bush v Gore by Rhehquist and Scalia. It’s happening, people:

The Supreme Court’s announcement on Thursday that it will hear Moore v. Harper, a case that could concentrate an unprecedented amount of power in gerrymandered state legislatures, should alarm anyone who cares about democracy.

The case is perhaps the gravest threat to American democracy since the January 6 attack. It seeks to reinstate gerrymandered congressional maps that were struck down by North Carolina’s highest court because they “subordinated traditional neutral redistricting criteria in favor of extreme partisan advantage” for the Republican Party.

The plaintiffs argue that the state supreme court didn’t have the authority to strike down these maps, and rest their claim on legal arguments that would fundamentally alter how congressional and presidential elections are conducted.

Moore involves the “independent state legislature doctrine,” a theory that the Supreme Court has rejected many times over the course of more than a century — but that started to gain steam after Republican appointees gained a supermajority on the Supreme Court at the end of the Trump administration.

Under the strongest form of this doctrine, all state constitutional provisions that constrain state lawmakers’ ability to skew federal elections would cease to function. State courts would lose their power to strike down anti-democratic state laws, such as a gerrymander that violates the state constitution or a law that tosses out ballots for arbitrary reasons. And state governors, who ordinarily have the power to veto new state election laws, would lose that power.

As Justice Neil Gorsuch described this approach in a 2020 concurring opinion in a case concerning the deadline for casting mail-in ballots in Wisconsin, “the Constitution provides that state legislatures — not federal judges, not state judges, not state governors, not other state officials — bear primary responsibility for setting election rules.”

Four justices — Gorsuch, plus Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Brett Kavanaugh — have all endorsed some version of this independent state legislature doctrine. Meanwhile, four other justices, the three liberal justices plus Chief Justice John Roberts, have signaled that they will not overrule the Court’s many precedents rejecting this doctrine.

That most likely leaves the fate of American democracy in the hands of Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee who typically votes with Republicans in election cases.

This said, it is unclear whether this Supreme Court would implement the most extreme version of this doctrine — with a rigid rule that a state supreme court can never strike down a state election law, or that a state governor can never veto an election bill — or a less extreme one.

Last March, the Moore case appeared on the Court’s “shadow docket.” Although a majority of the Court voted to temporarily turn the case away — with Kavanaugh explaining that he voted to do so because the case arrived at the Court at the wrong time — Alito wrote a dissenting opinion saying that he would have immediately reinstated North Carolina’s gerrymandered maps. His opinion also suggests that he wants to give himself and his fellow justices maximal flexibility to overrule state court decisions that he does not like.

So under Alito’s approach, pro-democracy state constitutional provisions might not cease to function altogether, they would only cease to function when Alito and four of his fellow Republican colleagues wish to suspend them.

Needless to say, the stakes in Moore are exceedingly high. The Court’s decision in Moore could potentially neutralize many states’ efforts to combat partisan gerrymandering. And in key swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — where Republicans control the state legislature and Democrats control either the governor’s mansion, the state supreme court, or both — Moore could give the Republican Party unlimited control over how federal elections are conducted.

The independent state legislature doctrine, briefly explained

The independent state legislature doctrine derives from a deceptively simple reading of the Constitution, which states that “the times, places and manner of holding elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.” A separate provision says that presidential elections shall also be conducted in a way determined by the state “Legislature.”

One way to read these provisions — the way that Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh have suggested it should be read — is to say that only the body of representatives that is often described as a state’s “legislative branch” can set election rules. And that the executive branch (including the governor) and the judicial branch (including the state supreme court) may be cut out of this process entirely.

But the Supreme Court has repeatedly rejected this theory. The issue first arose in Davis v. Hildebrant (1916), which upheld a provision of the Ohio constitution permitting the people of the state to veto state election laws via a popular referendum.

Davis reasoned that the word “legislature,” as it is used by the relevant provisions of the Constitution, does not refer exclusively to the elected body of representatives who make up the state’s legislative branch. Instead, it refers more broadly to any individual or body that possesses some part of the power to make laws within a state — what the Court referred to as the “legislative power.”

Davis explained that, under Ohio’s constitution, “the referendum was treated as part of the legislative power,” and thus “should be held and treated to be the state legislative power for the purpose of creating congressional districts by law.”

This is the only reading of the relevant US constitutional provisions that makes sense because, as legal scholars (and brothers) Vikram David Amar and Akhil Reed Amar explain in a recent paper, “state people and state constitutions are masters of state legislatures,” and not the other way around.

That is, each state has the power to define, through its constitution, which body or group of bodies possesses the “legislative power” — the power to make laws. A state constitution can assign that power entirely to a body of elected representatives, but it can also give part of that power to the state governor, the state courts, to a redistricting commission, or to the people themselves through ballot initiatives and referendums.

Indeed, this is exactly how most state governments work. State constitutions — like the federal Constitution — typically permit the state’s chief executive to veto election laws. And they typically give state courts the power to resolve conflicts about how to interpret the state constitution and existing state election laws.

As the Amars write, “since the Revolution, every state legislature has been defined and circumscribed, both procedurally (e.g., What counts as a quorum? Is the governor involved in legislation?) and substantively (e.g., What rights must the legislature respect?) by its state constitution.”

The Court’s holding in Davis has been upheld many times since that decision was handed down. Most recently, in Arizona State Legislature v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission (2015), the Court upheld Arizona’s decision to use a bipartisan commission to draw congressional maps. In that case, the Court explained that “our precedent teaches that redistricting is a legislative function, to be performed in accordance with the State’s prescriptions for lawmaking, which may include the referendum and the Governor’s veto.”

The Court’s decision to hear the Moore case is very odd

Since four justices have already called for cases like Davis and Arizona State Legislature to be overruled or significantly altered, it’s not surprising that the Court decided to hear a case that could potentially do so — under the Supreme Court’s rules, four votes are needed to place a case on the Court’s docket of cases that receive full briefing and oral argument.

But it is surprising that the Court thought Moore was an appropriate vehicle to hear an independent state legislature doctrine case. That’s because, even if you accept Gorsuch’s theory that the state legislature and not the state judiciary bears “primary responsibility for setting election rules,” the North Carolina legislature explicitly authorized its state’s courts to hear gerrymandering lawsuits.

In other words, even if the independent state legislature doctrine is valid, North Carolina’s courts are still allowed to decide gerrymandering cases because the state legislature told them to do so.

North Carolina law provides that lawsuits challenging “any act of the General Assembly that apportions or redistricts State legislative or congressional districts” may be filed “in the Superior Court of Wake County and shall be heard and determined by a three‑judge panel.” This court’s decision may then be appealed to the state supreme court.

Indeed, North Carolina’s laws — again, laws that were written by the state legislature — provide detailed instructions on how state courts should behave when they determine that a legislative map is illegal. One statute requires state courts to “find with specificity all facts supporting” its conclusion that a map is illegal. Another provides that, after a state court strikes down a redistricting plan, it may not “impose its own substitute plan unless the court first gives the General Assembly a period of time to remedy any defects identified by the court.”

In its eagerness to hear an independent state legislature doctrine case, in other words, the Supreme Court appears to have taken up a case where there is no legitimate legal conflict. Even if state legislatures have exclusive authority to shape a state’s election law, the North Carolina state legislature used this authority to explicitly empower state courts to strike down gerrymandered maps.

And yet, it’s hard to imagine why the Court would agree to hear this case unless it is at least considering rolling back decisions like Davis and Arizona State Legislature.

If they do this we are in deep, deep shit. And I mean even deeper shit than we already are. This one could literally end our democracy as we’ve known it. The Democrats have got to grasp just how serious this is.

Burn in hell, y’all

First, forced birth. Now, Goodbye California.

Italy’s River Po is drying up. .samuele Gallini/samuele400@gmail.com

NOTE: Server update this morning is playing hell with posting on time.

California grows 13 percent of U.S. food, right? Nah, says SCOTUS.

Civilization-killing drought?

LA Times:

Unprecedented dryness across the western United States is meeting with increasingly warm temperatures to create climate conditions so extreme that the landscape of California could permanently and profoundly change, a growing number of scientists say.

The Golden State’s great drying has already begun to reduce snowpack, worsen wildfires and dry out soils, and researchers say that trend will likely continue, along with the widespread loss of trees and other significant shifts.

Some say what’s in store for the state could be akin to the conditions that drove people thousands of years ago to abandon thriving cities in the Southwest and other arid parts of the world as severe drought contributed to crop failures and the crumbling of social norms.

But unlike in those ancient civilizations, California’s current transformation is being accelerated by carbon emissions and human-caused climate change, which is creating not only longer and more severe droughts, but also hotter ones. It’s a process known as aridification, and many say it’s here to stay.

Also, Italy’s Po River supplies water to 40% of Italy’s crops. It’s drying up:

The drought — the worst since 1952 — is having unprecedented effects: drinking water is being rationed in 125 municipalities across the region and crop irrigation threatened in the most densely populated and intensively farmed area of the country. Lake Maggiore is close to its lowest level since 1946.

The Po River, Italy’s longest, stretches from the Alps in the northwest to the Adriatic Sea in the east. It’s not only the lack of rainfall that is a problem. ESA says high temperatures and a lack of snow in the mountains that feed the river are also worsening the situation.

The Po Valley is a key agricultural area in Italy, producing around 40% of the country’s food, including wheat, rice and tomatoes.

Farmers are struggling to keep crops irrigated, according to the ESA, and many towns in the valley have been asked to ration water.

Metastatic capitalism is killing the planet. Whatevs, says SCOTUS.

UPDATE: Just dropping this here.

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“Greater certainty” Trump faces conspiracy charge?

Hutchinson testimony links White House to Oath Keepers, Proud Boys

Secure Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, in the basement of the U.S. Capitol

NOTE: Server update this morning is playing hell with posting on time.

Much covfefe over the Trump/Secret Service/SUV incident that Cassidy Hutchinson tesified that White House deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato related to her on Jan. 6. Lost in the shiny-shiny Trumpers are using to smear her Tuesday testimony before the House Jan. 6 committee is what it reveals the Secret Service knew that morning.

Marcy Wheeler is on it: “they got warnings about plans to occupy buildings in DC and, implicitly, warnings about Proud Boy involvement.”

Plus, Hutchinson’s testimony links Trump to the coup plotters and the militias.

Cheney: US Secret Service was looking at similar information and watching the planned demonstrations. In fact, their Intelligence Division sent several emails to White House personnel, like Deputy Chief of Staff Tony Ornato and the head of the President’s protective detail Robert Engel, including certain materials listing events like those on the screen.

Cheney: The White House continued to receive updates about planned demonstrations, including information regarding the Proud Boys organizing and planning to attend events on January 6. Although Ms. Hutchinson has no detailed knowledge of any planning involving the Proud Boys for January 6, she did note this:

Hutchinson: I recall hearing the word[s], “Oath Keeper,” hearing the word[s], “Proud Boys,” closer to the planning of the January 6 rally when Mr. Giuliani would be around.

Ornato and Chief of Staff Mark Meadows had had a conversation about possible violence on Jan. 6. Ornato knew some among the Trump rally crowd remained outside the controlled area to avoid the metal detectors. Texts displayed by the committee confirm that.

Wheeler continues:

Importantly, Cheney mentioned something about this text exchange that doesn’t appear in the texts shown on the screen: a discussion between the two of them — Hutchinson and Ornato — about an “OTR,” an “off the record” movement to get Trump to the Capitol. The Committee appears to be withholding precisely what those texts say — involving Trump personally, and so colorably covered under Executive Privilege.

That may not be the only thing the Committee withheld from its presentation: note in my transcription above that Cheney doesn’t say Ornato and Engel received the warnings that were flashed on the screen. She says they received, “certain materials listing events like those on the screen.” [my emphasis] Particularly given the reports that the Committee met in a secure facility in advance of this hearing, that phrasing could allow for other records, records too sensitive to show publicly, tying the Proud Boys to plans to occupy buildings on January 6.

On reports that the Jan. 6 committee met in the SCIF before the hearing:

Rep. Jamie Raskin, (D-Md.), the committee’s constitutional scholar, was asked whether there was a classified national security angle the panel was wrangling with.  

“No comment,” he said.

Moments later, another commission member, Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fl.), was also asked about a Tuesday morning meeting the panel was said to have held in a Secure Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF, in the basement of the U.S. Capitol grounds. Murphy also refused to answer.

Wheeler bullet-points facts that point to what the committee has yet to explore publicly:

  • Both Engel and Ornato had warnings of plans to occupy buildings
  • Hutchinson linked Rudy Giuliani in advance of the attack to both militias that attacked the Capitol
  • Ornato discussed these warnings in advance with Mark Meadows, who pushed Hutchinson away twice during the early moments of the attack
  • In spite of foreknowledge of a plan to occupy buildings and the involvement of militias, Ornato nevertheless continued to plan to take Trump to the Capitol

Readers do not need reminding that multiple Oath Keepers have pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy over the Jan. 6 attack; still others have been indicted on that charge. Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio and four others drew new indictments this month of seditious conspiracy and other charges related to Jan. 6. (New Zealand on Thursday designated the Proud Boys a terrorist organization.)

Glenn Kirschner, a former assistant U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, calls Hutchinson’s testimony “a bit of a game-changer” by revealing that Trump knew the crowd for his rally came armed.

CBC:

Hutchinson’s testimony also lends support to both the conspiracy to obstruct congressional proceedings charge, and seditious conspiracy, Kirschner said.

“He’s probably bought himself a greater certainty that he will be criminally charged,” Kirschner said.

Danya Perry, a former deputy attorney general for the State of New York and former assistant United States attorney for the Southern District of New York,  says she agrees Hutchinson really “moved the ball” on a potential charge of seditious conspiracy.

[…]

She asks, rhetorically: Were his actions “qualitatively or substantively” different from those of the Proud Boys or OathKeepers?

“I think, what we saw, they’re of a kind.”

If the committee produces more evidence of coordination between the White House, the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, “greater certainty” could turn into an actual indictment. TBD.

About half of Americans (48%) already believe Trump should face charges and 20% “don’t know enough to have an opinion.” Yet.

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“Is McCarthy a worm through and through?”

Yes

In the last few minutes of today’s January 6 committee hearing, Representative Liz Cheney presented evidence of possible witness intimidation. Several witnesses, she reported, had received messages from shadowy persons purportedly close to former President Donald Trump that implicitly warned of consequences to follow if those witnesses told the truth about his conduct.

That is one sort of attempted cover-up. The most effective cover-up of the January 6 conspiracy is not the one being organized in the shadows but the one taking place in broad daylight.

Everybody in any way connected to the investigation anticipates that if Republicans win control of the House of Representatives in November, these hearings will be shut down. Congressional Republicans who took the other side against Trump have lost their political careers: Liz Cheney is now a pariah within a party that has a place for Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar. The hearings happened only because the Democrats held a majority in the House, and the hearings will continue only so long as that majority remains in place.

So the United States has arrived at a bizarre and terrifying predicament. On the ballot in November’s elections is not just the usual stuff of politics—inflation and taxes, infrastructure and national defense—but also this supreme question: Should Americans know the full truth about the former president’s attempt to overturn by violence an election he lost?

The Republicans do not have to be the cover-up party. That’s a choice. In fact, the story of the hearings has been the courage and integrity of many individual Republicans, culminating most spectacularly with the heroic testimony of the former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson. But as an institution, the party has, to date, made a pro-Trump cover-up its policy. This policy of protecting the ex-president involves excusing the worst political crime in the history of the presidency—what looks more and more like a fully planned attempt to hold on to the highest office in the land, first by fraud, then by force. A coup d’état.

One of the things we’ve learned about his administration is that Donald Trump did not get much value from his true believers. They usually turned out to be too crazy, too crooked, or too stupid to gain and exercise power for him. He got most value from the weak and the supine who could wield some power more or less competently. House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy is on record and on audio condemning Trump’s coup at the time that it happened. Since then, he has shriveled into the enabling role he has played over the past 18 months…

Is there any of that last flicker of decency and independence alive in the Republican who may soon lead the House majority? Or is McCarthy a worm through and through?

Again, yes. The idea that anyone expects Kevin McCarthy to do the right thing is naive to the point of stupidity. That piece is by David Frum and he’s not stupid.

Republicans are the cover-up party — and much worse than that. They believe they benefit from Trump’s assault on democracy. They are accomplices. Expecting them to have an epiphany at this point is, well … stupid.

A River in Egypt

A trip down memory lane

Our topic: US Secret Service “denials”

On Jan 3: @maggieNYT reports major scoop: Pence chief of staff Marc Short told VP’s lead USSS agent Trump was going to turn publicly against Pence and there could be a security risk to Pence because of it.

US Secret Service seems to get defensive (mistakenly) thinking this was a criticism of them.

@SecretSvcSpox responds publicly to a tweet by @MilesTaylorUSA issuing what appears to be a denial, until you look more closely at the wording. …

“[T]he Secret Service had no knowledge of that conversation.”

“Had.” Not “has.”
Did he mean had none at the time but very well might have knowledge of it now?

Also “had no knowledge of that conversation” almost admits there was a conversation.

On June 16, January 6 Select Committee plays videotaped testimony of Marc Short. His testimony directly matches New York Times’ reporting.

On [top]:
NYT Haberman’s reporting.

On [bottom]:
Short’s testimony.

Raises credibility concerns re USSS statement.
<end>

Originally tweeted by Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) on June 29, 2022.

The Secret Service has a problem and has had one for some time. A couple of Biden’s detail got arrested for drunkenness just last month. What the hell is going on with that agency?

Originalamism

It’s easy when you don’t know history

This piece in Politico is very interesting. This is just the intro. I’d recommend reading it all.

“Originalism has been the reigning constitutional theory of legal conservatives since the election of Ronald Reagan,” a contributor to the National Review wrote recently, with glowing approval. The theory, which views jurisprudence as frozen in time, flatly rejects the idea of the Constitution as a a living and evolving document and instead demands that we interpret its provisions exactly as the framers intended.

This week, what was once a fringe intellectual concept, confined to conservative legal circles, achieved its ultimate ascendance. In a decision that purports to rely on deep historic knowledge of the founding generation’s views on gun control, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court knocked down a New York State law limiting the concealed carry of firearms. Drafted by Justice Clarence Thomas, the decision applies a strict originalist frame to conclude that “[o]nly if a firearm regulation is consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s unqualified command.’”

Thomas’ decision, endorsed by his five Republican-appointed colleagues, builds on the court’s earlier, originalist decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which located in the Second Amendment an individual constitutional right to own firearms.

There’s just one problem. Both decisions get the history wrong.

There is ample reason to disagree with originalism as a legal philosophy. Should a 21st century society really interpret its Constitution by the standards of 1787 — an era before the introduction of semi-automatic weaponry, steam power, penicillin, automobiles, trains, electric lights and indoor plumbing? In some ways, though, that’s a pointless debate at the moment. With originalists holding six of the Supreme Court’s nine seats, we’re all living in an originalist world.

The functional problem with originalism is that it requires a very, very firm grasp of history — a grasp that none of the nine justices, and certainly few of their 20-something law clerks, freshly minted from J.D. programs, possess.

It’s difficult to become an expert in American political, legal or social history. It’s quite easy, though, to cherry-pick historical examples that prop up an end in search of a rationale — which is precisely what the Supreme Court majority did this week, twice.

Their opinions indicate they are getting their historical worldview from Professors Hannity and Carlson.