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“Power sharing” with the MAGA cult

Published by digby on June 30, 2023

Kevin McCarthy’s not driving the clown car anymore

It’s been an eventful time in both national and international politics what with the attempted Russian coup, the details of which are still not fully understood, and another Supreme Court decision destroying decades of precedent. The weather is insanely hot in parts of the country and so is the presidential primary with candidates trading insults over their weight and vowing to invade Mexico and God only knows where else. It’s hard to keep up.

But it’s important to keep at least one eye on what’s going on in the US House because it’s even crazier than we anticipated. It’s very lucky that the Democrats managed to hold on to the Senate in the last election and President Biden is in the White House because I shudder to think of what would become of this country if these people had a monopoly on power. They have completely gone off the deep end.

First of all, there is the overwhelming obsession with the five years long Hunter Biden which has only accelerated with the announcement of his guilty plea to misdemeanor failure to pay taxes on time and a felony charge of lying on an application for a gun purchase. The fact that he was given probation instead of being immediately marched off to solitary confinement has resulted in shrill remonstrations from the House Republicans about “sweetheart deals” and “preferential treatment”, buttressed by an alleged IRS whistleblower who claims that the upper reaches of the Justice Department interfered in the case. This is disputed by the Trump appointed US Attorney David Weiss who ran the case as well as the Attorney General — both have said that Weiss had the ultimate authority to to dispose of the case however he saw fit.

This is typical of any investigation run by Republicans. They always turn up a “whistleblower” who almost always later turns out to have had an agenda. (To those of you who are old enough to remember, here’s a name for you: Notra Trulock.) I would expect there will be more of them as the investigations crank up.

Weiss and Garland have been called to testify before the House Judiciary Committee chaired by the fair and balanced Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan which should be quite the spectacle. But perhaps the most astonishing consequence of this little contretemps is the fact that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy appears to be seriously endorsing a possible impeachment of the Attorney General over this alleged interference. On Sunday he tweeted:

We need to get to the facts, and that includes reconciling these clear disparities. U.S. Attorney David Weiss must provide answers to the House Judiciary Committee. If the whistleblowers’ allegations are true, this will be a significant part of a larger impeachment inquiry into Merrick Garland’s weaponization of DOJ.

He repeated the same thing again on Monday and apparently Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been strategizing with him about it and expects it to happen. McCarthy can’t stop talking about it:

Keep in mind that this latest threat comes on the heels of the House’s kookiest impeachment related action yet: a proposal by Greene and NY Congresswoman Elise Stefanik to “expunge” Trump’s two impeachments. (I’m not sure how they expect to “expunge” it from the internet, the newspapers and minds of everyone who knows it happened but maybe “Q” or RFK Jr have some ideas.) Stefanik issued a statement saying “it is past time to expunge Democrats’ sham smear against not only President Trump’s name, but against millions of patriots across the country,” McCarthy signed on to that as well.

Meanwhile, a week or so ago we had “LittleBitchgate” when Greene and Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert went at it on the floor over Boebert’s move to force a vote to impeach President Biden on the floor before Greene had a chance to do it. This didn’t go over well with the leadership which seems to want to impeach a few cabinet members before they get to the president so it was referred to committees until the time is ripe.

The question is why McCarthy is suddenly so gung ho when just last October he said “I think the country doesn’t like impeachment used for political purposes at all.” It seems to be related to his sudden loss of control a couple of weeks ago when the Freedom Caucus, smarting from the bipartisan debt ceiling bill negotiated by the Speaker, decided to block all legislation resulting in a so-called “power-sharing” agreement with the Speaker. As with the secret back room deals he made with them in order to get the gavel last January, nobody knows exactly what the terms were this time either but it sure looks as though impeachment was on the menu.

At the same time as all this is going on, you had the Freedom Caucus debating whether to kick Greene out of their group! Axios reported that two sources said there were complaints about he “unprofessional” behavior among other things that were not shared. Evidently, they decided to table the issue for the time being, probably because they were on a natural high from censuring California Democrat Adam Schiff for saying that Trump colluded with Russia (which he did.) This move was spearheaded by Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., the newest showboating rightwinger making a name for herself.

And then there’s House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer who spends day and night doing hits on Fox news. He’s still chasing down the stale Burisma scandal, which continues to lead nowhere but he’s blowing so much smoke that he’s giving the Canadian wildfires a run for their money. His latest helping of hype is that they now believe Biden and his family may have accepted in excess of $40 million from foreigners in exchange for policy favors. No, he cannot show the money nor does he know which policies they are, but he’s working on it:

The Trumpers are getting restless:

It’s all performative Steve? Say it ain’t so!

This is just a partial rundown of the looney-tunes behavior going on day after day in the US House of Representatives under Speaker McCarthy. Aside from all the other preposterous maneuvers he’s endorsing,he won the week’s profile in courage award for the 18th week in a row when he stuck his neck out and said to a reporter that he wasn’t sure if Donald Trump would be the strongest candidate in the general election in 2024 and then immediately groveled like a beaten dog, begging for forgiveness from Dear Leader for uttering the unthinkable.

This is the person who is second in line to the presidency. We must all fervently hope that both President Biden and Vice President Harris remain in good health and stay safe so he can stay where he is and keep doing the important work of the Freedom Caucus and Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

Buttigieg: The man’s good

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 30, 2023

“The only thing that really matters is your ability to do the job”

Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg may have been a little green to occupy the Oval Office when he ran for president in 2020 as the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana. But, damn, he’s poised and quick on his feet. We noticed that again just the other day in his Charleston remarks on Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) trying to claim credit for infrastructure funds she voted against.

The media is determined to make President Biden’s age a 2024 campaign issue and not Donald Trump’s lies, criminality and weight. So when Biden misspoke twice this week in reference to the Russian war against Ukraine and said instead “in Iraq,” it was an “aha” moment the press — especially the right-wing press — pounced on.

Biden has a long history of verbal slips, but suddenly they are evidence for mental slippage. But watch Buttigieg pary CNN’s Kaitlin Collins’ question about Biden’s fitness:

BUTTIGIEG: All I say is I wish you could be in a room with him the way I often am, seeing how he is simultaneously focused on a big picture vision, and very focused on details.

I’ll tell you, we’ve had, for example, meetings on some of the work that we’ve been doing with rail infrastructure, where he winds up drilling in on questions so detailed. We have to go back and set up another meeting or pull in experts from Amtrak to help satisfy the president’s desire for detailed information and his focus on how that connects up into the bigger picture.

Look, this is an administration that has been extraordinarily effective. And, you know, one of — frankly, one of the cases that I made, back when I was running for president in an unusually young age, is that the only thing that really matters is your ability to do the job.

Right now, you have an administration that has delivered the strongest economic growth in terms of job creation of any president in American history, has delivered bipartisan infrastructure legislation, part of what we’re on the road working through right now, delivering great projects in places like Kentucky where I’ll be tomorrow, South Carolina where I was today, in ways that previous presidents, including the last administration said they were going to do but just couldn’t quite make happen, whether we talk about the CHIPS Act, the job creation that’s happening in manufacturing, the breakthrough for veterans that matters so much to my generation of post 9/11 veterans, in terms of dealing with burn pits.

At the end of the day, anybody in any job ought to be judged on the job that they are doing. And in just two and a half years, this administration, under President Biden’s leadership, has delivered more than many presidencies have been able to do in four or even eight years.

Buttigieg could be teaching a class.

The fringe right drift

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 30, 2023

Trumpism a half century in the making

A reference Rick Perlstein makes in “Reaganland” to a Senate speech made during 1978 debates over ratification of the Panama Canal treaty caught my attention recently. Sen. Thomas J. McIntyre (D-N.H.) decries the “ominous change” in American politics represented by “the bully boys of the radical New Right” and their “politics of intimidation.”

Long before the Freedom Caucus, McIntyre called out Conservative Caucus “ideologues” who demand that “we must see every issue as they see it – unless there is something sinister in our motivation.” If you want to see more reactionary acrimony and personal destruction, McIntyre warned his colleagues, “stand aside and be silent.”

It is instructive reading. Nearly a half century ago, movement conservatism in its nascency planted the seeds of Trumpism and MAGA extremism.

“And in the fullness of time,” as the saying goes….

THE CANAL TREATIES AND THE NEW RIGHT

(By Sen. Thomas J. McIntyre, D-N.H.) March 1, 1978 (as they appeared in the Washington Post of March 3 and Senate record of March 7)

I believe the techniques used to exploit the issue of the Panama canal treaties are the most compelling evidence to date that an ominous change is taking place in the very character and direction of American politics.

In his farewell broadcast several months ago, Eric Sevareid warned of the paradoxical rise of “dangerously passionate certainties” in a time of no easy answers.

One could speculate endlessly about the root cause of this development: a generation of disillusion and disenchantment with the lack of integrity and the misuse of power of leaders and institutions; the humbling experience in Vietnam; the unrelenting pressure of unfocused anxieties about national direction and purpose; and the all-too-human inclination to turn in frustration to the slogans and nostrums of a simpler time.

But whatever the cause, I see abundant evidence that these “dangerously passionate certainties” are being cynically fomented, manipulated and targeted in ways that threaten amity, unity and the purposeful course of government in order to advance a radical ideology that is alien to mainstream political thought.

Already we have seen the vigor of the two-party system sapped by this phenomenon. More and more Americans appear unwilling to abide by the essential ethic of the party system-that willingness to tolerate differing views within the party, and to accept the party platform, however unpalatable some at its provisions, in order to advance a general political philosophy.

As a result, the traditional role of the parties is slowly being usurped by a thousand and one passionately committed special-interest, splinter-faction and single-issue constituencies.

I believe in firm and outspoken commitment to principles and convictions. I would readily agree, as someone once said, that there are times when compromise offers little more than an “easy refuge for the irresolute spirit.”

But I would make a distinction between commitment that is rooted in reality – commitment, for example, that recognizes the linkage between problems and the consequences of ignoring that linkage when applying solutions – and commitment that denies reality and is, in truth, but the blind and obsessive pursuit of illusion.

Extremists who deny reality in the pursuit of illusion deny something else, something of fundamental importance in our republic of free men and women. They deny the differences that distinguish one human being from another.

They deny the indisputable fact that each of us is the result of a unique combination of genes and chromosomes, of influence and impressions, of training and of faith. and of the milieu from which we sprang. In short, they deny everything that science and simple observation tell us about human nature and individual capacities and limitations.

By proceeding from the flawed premise that all of us are alike, it is easy for ideologues to conclude that we must see every issue as they see it – unless there is something sinister in our motivation.

And they proceed from that premise with an arrogance born of the conviction that they and they alone have a. corner on patriotism, mortality and God’s own truths, that their values and standards and viewpoints are so unassailable they justify any means, however coarse and brutish, of imposing them on others.

I want to be fair about this. In the particular instance of the canal treaties, I’m talking about the kind of politics practiced by what has come to be known as the New Right. But I want to note that the record of extremists on the ideological left bears a remarkable, and regrettable, similarity.

There have been times when some of us have felt the wrath of the purist left. And. Now – today – many of us are feeling the wrath of the New Right because we will not bow to their threats and vote against ratification of the canal treaties.

Indeed, one element of the New Right – the Conservative Caucus – did not wait for me to announce how I would vote on the treaties. They launched their attack months ago.

Last summer the national director of the Conservative Caucus, Howard Phillips, said conservatives should make “a political sitting duck” of Tom McIntyre over the canal treaties, and the Conservative Caucus could “make it a political impossibility for McIntyre to vote for that treaty.”

On Dec. 4, 1977, the Conservative Caucus o! New Hampshire passed a resolution of censure and served it on me like a subpoena. I was “censured” for a speech I made last September, a speech in which I took neither side on the treaty issue but merely spelled out the pro and con arguments I would have to consider when I made my decision on how to vote.

Not only did the resolution censure me, it “required” me to appear before the Caucus in Wolfeboro, N.H., on Feb. 12, to justify why I should not vote against ratification and/or refute said censure.

Well, I did not go before the Caucus, so I have to assume I was tried in absentia and found guilty of a decision I had not yet made.

Hear the revealing words of Howard Phillips on other occasions: “We organize discontent. We must prove our ability to get revenge on people who go against us. . . . We’ll be after them, if they vote the wrong way. We’re not going to stop after the vote’s past.”

And hear the words of another spokesman for the New Right, Paul Weyrich, director of the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress : “We are different from previous generations of conservatives. We are no longer working to preserve the status quo. We are radicals, working to overturn the present power structure of this country.”

These people are different from traditional conservatives. I know the traditional conservatives of my own state. I have competed with them in the political arena. I have worked with them in behalf of our state. They are people of honor, civility and decency.

The New Right cannot comprehend how people of opposing viewpoints can find common ground and work together. For them, there is no common ground. And this, in my judgment, is the best indication of what they truly are – radicals whose aim is not to compete with honor and decency, not to compromise when necessary to advance the common good, but to annihilate those they see as “enemies.”

And if “conservative” in the title “Conservative Caucus” is an ironic misuse of the word, it is doubly ironic that destiny would link the national chairman of the Conservative Caucus – the governor of New Hampshire – with William Loeb, the publisher of New Hampshire’s largest newspaper and the master practitioner of the politics of threat and vengeance.

In all of this nation, there may not be two more recklessly belligerent public figures than Meldrim Thomson and William Loeb…. I am certainly not sanguine about such powerful and ruthless opposition, but after 16 years of weathering the sustained attacks of Mr. Loeb and his ilk neither am I anguishing over the outcome.  

[But] my political fate is not my concern here today. My concern is the desperate need for people of conscience and good will to stand up and face down the bully boys of the radical New Right before the politics of intimidation does to America what it has tried to do to New Hampshire.

So I say to my colleagues:

If you want to see the reputations of decent people sullied, stand aside and be silent.

If you want to see people of dignity, integrity and self-respect refuse to seek public office for fear of what might be conjured or dredged up to attack them or their families, stand aside and be silent.

If you want to see confidential files rifled informants solicited, universities harassed, “enemy hit lists” drawn up, stand aside and be silent. …

On two occasions in the past several years, we witness dramatic evidence that the American people desperately want to put acrimony and division aside, to heal the wounds, and to come together again as a people.

The first was the brief and shining moment on Independence Day of our Bicentennial celebration, a moment when all at once we were again united in the pride of our heritage, our esteem and affection for one another, our confidence in the future.

The second occurred but a few short weeks ago when the entire nation paused to pay its final respects to that most beloved of Americans, Hubert Humphrey.

In the long run, I am confident that the forces of decency and civility will prevail over the politics of threat and intimidation, just as I am confident that reason and commitment rooted in reality will prevail over extremism in the pursuit of illusion.

But if that does not occur in time to save the treaties – or those of us who support them – then I, for one, will go home to Laconia, N.H., sad to leave this office, but content in heart that I voted in what I truly believed were the best interests of my country.●

“Well at least he wouldn’t be as corrupt as Trump”

Published by digby on June 29, 2023

Nope. DeSantis takes after his mentor in that regard too

Gotta take care of the money men, amirite?

The administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) steered $92 million last year in leftover federal coronavirus stimulus money to a controversial highway interchange project that directly benefits a top political donor, according to state records.

The decision by the Florida Department of Transportation to use money from the 2021 American Rescue Plan for the I-95 interchange at Pioneer Trail Road near Daytona Beach fulfilled a years-long effort by Mori Hosseini, a politically connected housing developer who owns two large tracts of largely forested land abutting the planned interchange. The funding through the DeSantis administration, approved shortly after the governor’s reelection, expedited the project by more than a decade, according to state documents.

Hosseini plans to develop the land — which includes a sensitive watershed once targeted for conservation by the state — into approximately 1,300 dwelling units and 650,000 square feet of nonresidential use, including an outdoor village shopping district. He has called the Woodhaven development, which has already begun construction, his “best project yet” and promised topull out all the stops for its success.

“With or without the interchange, we would have built Woodhaven there, but it certainly helps,” he told the Daytona Beach News Journal in March 2019.

Government documents obtained by The Washington Post through open-records requests show a steady relationship between DeSantis and Hosseini in recent years. The governor’s office occasionally received requests for DeSantis to attend events or support proposals from Hosseini, and DeSantis extended invitations to Hosseini in return for events in Tallahassee.

Hosseini helped DeSantis arrange a round of golf at Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia in 2018, according to the Tampa Bay Times. A year later, Hosseini donated a golf simulator that retails for at least $27,500 to the governor’s mansion, according to records previously obtained by The Post. In the 2022 campaign cycle, companies controlled by Hosseini gave at least $361,000 to political groups that benefited the DeSantis reelection campaign, according to state campaign finance records. Hosseini’s plane has been repeatedly used by DeSantis, according to a Post analysis.

Trump, Clarence, Sam, Ron — all the big wingnuts just happen to have all these rich friends giving them gifts and there’s just no way that affects their policy decisions, right?

Right?

At least somebody’s saying it

Published by digby on June 29, 2023

I hate Christie’s bullying bullshit but he seems to be willing to fight fire with fire and I’m glad to see a GOP bully give Trump some of his own medicine.

A Supreme Court case based on a lie

Published by digby on June 29, 2023

Sure, why not?

This piece from Melissa Gira Grant at TNR is a real head scratcher. How can this have happened? Will it matter at all?

Long before the Supreme Court took up one of the last remaining cases it will decide this session—the 303 Creative v. Elenis case, concerning a Colorado web designer named Lorie Smith who refuses to make websites for same-sex weddings and seeks an exemption from anti-discrimination laws—there was a couple named Stewart and Mike. According to court filings from the plaintiff, Stewart contacted Smith in September 2016 about his wedding to Mike “early next year.” He wrote that they “would love some design work done for our invites, placenames etc. We might also stretch to a website.” Stewart included his phone number, email address, and the URL of his own website—he was a designer too, the site showed.

This week, I decided to call Stewart and ask him about his inquiry.

The Supreme Court is expected to deliver its opinion in a case in which Stewart plays a minor role, a case that could be, as Justice Sonia Sotomayor stated by way of a question at oral argument in December, “the first time in the Court’s history … [that] a commercial business open to the public, serving the public, that it could refuse to serve a customer based on race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation.” It took just a few minutes to reach him. I assumed at least some reporters over the years had contacted him about his website inquiry to 303 Creative—his contact information wasn’t redacted in the filing. But my call, he said, was “the very first time I’ve heard of it.”

Yes, that was his name, phone number, email address, and website on the inquiry form. But he never sent this form, he said, and at the time it was sent, he was married to a woman. “If somebody’s pulled my information, as some kind of supporting information or documentation, somebody’s falsified that,” Stewart explained. (Stewart’s last name is not included in the filing, so we will be referring to him by his first name throughout this story.)

“I wouldn’t want anybody to … make me a wedding website?” he continued, sounding a bit puzzled but good-natured about the whole thing. “I’m married, I have a child—I’m not really sure where that came from? But somebody’s using false information in a Supreme Court filing document.”

Here is what we know—though, to be frank, I do not know what we have learned from this yearslong mystery, other than it looks like Smith and her attorneys have, perhaps unwittingly, invented a gay couple in need of a wedding website in a case in which they argue that same-sex marriages are “false.”

When Smith and her attorneys, the Christian right group Alliance Defending Freedom, or ADF, brought this case for the first time, it was to the United States District Court in Colorado in 2016, and they lost. Smith and ADF filed the case on September 20 of that year, asking the court to enjoin the state anti-discrimination law so that Smith could begin offering her wedding website design services to straight couples only. Up to this point, Smith had never designed any wedding website. (In fact, her website six months prior to the lawsuit being filed in 2016 does not include any of the Christian messaging that it did shortly afterward and today, archived versions of the site show.) The initial lawsuit did not mention the “Stewart” inquiry, which was submitted to Smith’s website on September 21, according to the date-stamp shown in later court filings, indicating that she received it the day after the suit was originally filed.

It is unclear exactly when—or if—the inquiry from “Stewart” was examined and verified in the course of this legal battle. (His phone number was, after all, right there.) In a motion filed by the defense on October 19, 2016, arguing that the case should be dismissed, they state that Smith has received no actual inquiries for services and therefore has suffered no injury. The following month, in its response, ADF did not mention the September 2016 “Stewart” inquiry to refute the defense’s claims. Rather, ADF merely stated that it was not necessary for Smith to have received an inquiry in order to challenge the law over her feared consequences of denying services to a same-sex couple.

Not until February 2017 did ADF include the text of the “Stewart” inquiry and argue its relevance to the case. “Notably, any claim that Lorie will never receive a request to create a custom website celebrating a same-sex ceremony is no longer legitimate because Lorie has received such a request,” the group wrote. “Even though she is not currently in the wedding industry, Lorie received an email inquiry on September 21, 2016.” Smith elaborated in a sworn statement that she “received a request through the ‘contact’ webpage on my website from a person named, ‘Stewart,’ reference number 9741406, to create graphic designs for invitations and other materials for a same-sex wedding (‘same-sex wedding request’).” She added that a “true and accurate copy” of the “same-sex wedding request” would be submitted with the statement. Why it took until possibly February 2017 to introduce the inquiry is not clear.

Whatever value the inquiry had, in September 2017, when the federal court ruled on the case, it seemed to dismiss it. The evidence presented as a whole, the ruling stated, did not allow the court to “determine the imminent likelihood that anyone, much less a same-sex couple, will request Plaintiff’s services.” Of the inquiry itself, the court said it was “too imprecise” and that “assuming it indicates a market for Plaintiff’s services, it is not clear that Stewart and Mike are a same-sex couple (as such names can be used by members of both sexes).”

ADF leapt on this. In response to its defeat, the group put out a press release claiming that “a federal judge ruled that Smith and her studio can’t sue to challenge a portion of Colorado’s Anti-Discrimination Act because a request sent to Smith by a couple, self-identified as ‘Stewart’ and ‘Mike,’ isn’t formal enough to prove that a same-sex couple has asked her to help them celebrate their wedding.” Their later appeal continued the theme, arguing that “according to Social Security Administration (SSA) data, only a nanoscopic number of women have been named Stewart or Mike since 1880. Lorie faces a 16 times greater chance of being struck by lightning than either name being female.”

All that may be true. But speedier, perhaps, than consulting SSA data would have been picking up the phone. According to Stewart, no one did until 2023, when I reached him.

“I’m not really sure where that came from,” he told me of the mysterious 2016 inquiry that used his name, email address, and cell phone number to request a wedding website for a same-sex marriage nearly a decade after he married a woman. He is a designer himself, something of a known quantity in design circles—he’s spoken at conferences and on podcasts, and has a “decent Twitter following,” he said. The design world is small. But not small enough, he said, that he had heard of Lorie Smith—not until her case was already before the Supreme Court, and the design community began discussing its potential fallout.

It didn’t make sense to him, he told me later via text message. Why would a web designer—as the website the inquiry referenced as his own made clear that he was—living in San Francisco, seek to hire someone in another state who has never built a wedding website, let alone a website for a same-sex wedding, to build his wedding website?

I don’t live inside Stewart’s computer—there’s a chance that he’s not telling me the whole story; that this is some elaborate prank he pulled years ago and doesn’t want to confess to now. But if he’s telling the truth—that this request was done completely without his knowledge—I don’t have any answers for him. None of this makes sense to me. And neither Lorie Smith nor ADF have responded to my inquiries. As late as 2020, ADF was maintaining that Stewart’s was a genuine inquiry. Speaking to “requests” for Smith’s services in a filing to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, their attorneys wrote, “Lorie already received one. A prospective customer named ‘Stewart’ contacted Lorie through her webpage, asking about custom graphics and a website to celebrate his wedding to his fiancé, ‘Mike.’”

Maybe it should not be a surprise, though, that this strange fake “request” popped up in a case in which the plaintiff’s main argument rested on the claim that someday, out there, a same-sex couple would want her to design a wedding website. The closest thing Smith had to an actual inquiry—the nonwedding of Stewart and Mike—arrived within 24 hours of her having filed a suit in which said inquiry would be potentially a helpful piece of supporting evidence. The inquiry floats through the filings only later, and still it remains. Despite the district court raising doubts about it representing a genuine inquiry from two men getting married—and the court didn’t even raise the real doubt that the couple does not exist—it is now part of the case history, a bit of fan fiction joining the other phantom gays the case invokes. ADF made no mention of Stewart and Mike specifically in their arguments before the Supreme Court this session, but they don’t need to: Their entire case, after all, is built around the idea of gay people doing something that they have not yet done, nor ever will do.

Despite its flimsiness, the “Stewart” inquiry remains there in the 303 Creative court filings submitted to the Supreme Court, part of a raft of exhibits including mock-ups of websites Smith claims she was prevented from making by Colorado’s law protecting people from discrimination based on sexual orientation. “I disagree with this, in the strongest possible terms,” Stewart told me. “I couldn’t disagree with her stance more.” And while he wants nothing to do with the spotlight of this case, he does want it to be known: He never asked for a website, let alone what may result.

Maybe this Stewart is a liar but it sure doesn’t sound like it. The fact that he was married to a woman at the time is verifiable.

I guess the Supreme Court is now entertaining cases about things that could hypothetically happen in the future. Good to know.

The Mike Pence of Mike Pences

Published by digby on June 29, 2023

Irrelevant guy says what?

He had his chance back in 2016 and he hung in there long enough to get his precious tax cuts. In the process he helped to Now he is nothing.

As Dave Weigel quipped on twitter:

Actually, they hate him with a passion. Even when Trump tried to thank him for being such a good stooge the crowd booed.

Ryan, by the way, is a Fox news board member so he’s not exactly out of the Trump fluffing business even today.

A jackass gets promoted

Published by digby on June 29, 2023

Fox stars live in their own bubble of haters and bullies. And they get rewarded for it. Read this story about Jesse Watters, the latest juvenile Fox POS to get a big new job:

On a Friday morning in April, Fox News talk host Jesse Watters walked onstage to a room stuffed with hundreds of insurance executives and agents. Watters was the featured speaker at a breakfast for the Big “I” Legislative Conference, the signature annual event hosted by the Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America, where he was invited to participate in an interview with the organization’s retiring president, Bob Rusbuldt.

Watters — who Fox News this week promoted to the all-important 8pm hour — began his interview with Rusbuldt at the Renaissance Washington hotel as expected. The gathered audience, which included a healthy contingent of conservatives, was excited to see Watters speak. But matters quickly took a turn, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke to me on the condition of anonymity.

Watters, who has a history of making offensive remarks on Fox News, made a crude comment questioning the gender of Vice President Kamala Harris, the people said. The gross attempt at humor prompted some laughs, but also outrage.

Some executives, many of whom planned to attend a diversity and inclusion luncheon later in the day, squirmed in their seats as a wave of awkwardness washed over the audience. Others walked out of the room and conveyed to the trade association that they were appalled at the behavior exhibited by Watters.

“It was an epic meltdown afterward,” one of the people familiar with the matter told me. “The organization went into damage control.”

The chat between Watters and Rusbuldt, which continued on after the appalling remark, had immediate consequences. Rusbuldt, who was set to officially retire in August, apologized to those gathered at the diversity-focused luncheon later that day. But ultimately it was not enough to quell the outrage. He was later quietly sidelined from most duties at the insurance organization.

John Costello, the chairman of the association, condemned what transpired onstage with Watters: “The association acted quickly and decisively following the incident, and the interview session conducted at our event does not reflect the culture and values of the Big I,” Costello said in a statement. 

When asked for comment on Wednesday, a Fox News spokesperson told me that Watters had “no recollection” of the events.
“In fact, the unscripted Q&A he participated in was well received with executives thanking him profusely afterward, enthusiastically taking photos, and presenting him with an award,” the network spokesperson said. “He was told it was one of the best talks they’ve ever held and never received feedback from the organization or his speaking agent after the event.”

Regardless, the circumstances surrounding the event are representative of a larger phenomena occurring in America today.

On Fox News, and in the larger right-wing media universe, the degrading comments Watters was said to have spewed onstage are par for the course. The audience, which has become increasingly desensitized to the incendiary rhetoric in recent years, eats it up.

In fact, that affection for Watters and the brand of conservatism that he represents, is borne out in the numbers. Watters is one of Fox News’ highest-rated and most visible hosts, and largely why he was promoted this week to the prime time perch previously occupied by Tucker Carlson.

Outside the Fox News bubble, however, Watters and the divisive comments that he peddles for a living are far less popular. In fact, to those outside the right-wing media bubble, questioning the gender of the first female and Black vice president is seen as downright inappropriate and utterly reprehensible. And there are consequences for those who make such remarks.

The events that transpired after Watters’ appearance at the insurance breakfast underscores that split in society. “Jesse got promoted,” the person familiar with the matter said. “Bob essentially got fired.”

It is nothing more than bad manners to behave that way in front of a crowd of strangers. He could save it for his show or his neighborhood Nazi meeting. At an industry confab it’s completely out of line. Not that he cared or, apparently, even noticed.

STFU about Florida

Published by digby on June 29, 2023

Not everyone worships Florida, Governor. In fact, when you’re talking to people outside Florida you might want to keep in mind that they live in states that they are proud of and it sounds like you are saying they live in hellscapes compared to yours.

You no doubt noticed that this came from Trump’s superpac. Ouch.

Ending consideration of race in college admissions

Published by Tom Sullivan on June 29, 2023

SCOTUS rules

Phil Roeder – Flickr: Supreme Court of the United States. The inside of the United States Supreme Court. In the photo are the nine chairs of the Supreme Court Justices. (CC BY 2.0)

“The court holds that Harvard and UNC’s admissions programs violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment,” writes Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog.

Associated Press:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that colleges and universities must stop considering race in admissions, forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.

In a 6-3 decision, the court struck down admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges, respectively.

There’s not enough time to comment on this 237 pg. opinion by Chief Justice Roberts in cases involving affirmative action admissions at Harvard and UNC, but here’s Amy Howe of SCOTUSblog again:

1)The court says that it has “permitted race-based admissions only within the confines of narrow restrictions. University programs must comply with strict scrutiny, they may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and — at some point — they must end.”

2)The Harvard and UNC programs, Roberts writes, “however well intentioned and implemented in good faith,” “fail each of these criteria.”

3)Here’s the end of the Court’s opinion: “nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”

“Sotomayor dissents, joined by Kagan and Jackson as it applies to the Harvard case. Jackson dissents in the UNC case, joined by SOtomayor and Kagan,” Howe writes.

Watch for commentary later. That is all.