News bits: A criticism of the MSM & law bits

The MSM criticized: It’s time it woke up

Salon makes a very good point in an opinion piece:

Uh, Politico? Biden didn't make Marjorie Taylor Greene 

“the face of the GOP” — Republicans did

Between blaming Democrats for MAGA Republicans and celebrating Trump's babysitter, media keeps coddling GOP

The widespread assumption that only Democrats have any agency or causal influence over American politics." This is famously known as "Murc's Law," named after a commenter at the blog Lawyers, Guns, and Money who noticed years ago the habitual assumption among the punditry that Republican misbehavior can only be caused by Democrats. Do Republicans reject climate science? Must be because Democrats failed to persuade them! Did Republicans pass unpopular tax cuts for the rich? Must be that Democrats didn't do enough to guide them to better choices! Do Republicans keep voting for lunatics and fascists? It must be the fault of Democrats for being mean to them! 

“Biden world once ignored Marjorie Taylor Greene. Now it's making her the face of the GOP,” announces a Thursday headline in Politico. Underneath it, Eugene Daniels and Jonathan Lemire write that the Biden White House has tried to turn Greene “into the poster child of the incoming House GOP majority.”

But of course Biden had nothing to do with that, because Republicans had already done it. Republicans in her district enthusiastically voted her into office. Republicans gave Greene a standing ovation in response to her remarks claiming that school shootings like Parkland and Sandy Hook were “false flags.” Republicans made her one of the top fundraisers in the House. Republican leadership is currently indulging Greene's demands to treat the Jan. 6 insurrectionists as “political prisoners.”

Assuming it isn’t too late, one can only hope that this wakes the MSM up about who is doing what in politics.

Republicans intent to subvert elections

The AP writes on another instance of Republicans messing with elections:

A former elections manager who prosecutors say assisted in a security breach of voting equipment in a Colorado county pleaded guilty on Wednesday under a plea agreement that requires her to testify against her former boss.

Sandra Brown is one of two employees accused of helping Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters allow a copy of a hard drive to be made during an update of election equipment last year in search of proof of the false conspiracy theories spun by former President Donald Trump.

Peters gained national prominence by promoting conspiracy theories about voting machines and lost a bid to become the Republican candidate for Colorado’s secretary of state, who oversees elections, earlier this year. She is charged with three counts of attempting to influence a public servant, criminal impersonation, two counts of conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, one count of identity theft, first-degree official misconduct, violation of duty and failing to comply with the secretary of state.

The intentions of Republicans in power are clear. The radical right will subvert elections and turn them into a farce if they ever get in power. They are following Hungarian president Viktor Orban’s game plan to replace democracy with a kleptocratic tyranny-theocracy. At present, the main thing holding them back is the courts. Frighteningly, the Republicans are poised to knock that barrier down in the pending Moore v. Harper case in the Supreme Court. 

Trump judge slapped down hard for breaking

the law to defend Trump

The NYT writes:

A federal appeals court on Thursday removed a major obstacle to the criminal investigation into former President Donald J. Trump’s hoarding of government documents, ending an outside review of thousands of records the F.B.I. seized from his home and freeing the Justice Department to use them in its inquiry.

The appeals court was sharply critical of the decision in September by Judge Aileen M. Cannon, a Trump appointee who sits in the Southern District of Florida, to intervene in the case. The court said Judge Cannon never had legitimate jurisdiction to order the review or bar investigators from using the files, and that there was no justification for treating Mr. Trump differently from any other target of a search warrant.

“It is indeed extraordinary for a warrant to be executed at the home of a former president — but not in a way that affects our legal analysis or otherwise gives the judiciary license to interfere in an ongoing investigation,” the court wrote.

Limits on when courts can interfere with a criminal investigation “apply no matter who the government is investigating,” it added. “To create a special exception here would defy our nation’s foundational principle that our law applies ‘to all, without regard to numbers, wealth or rank.’”

Separately, one observer commented on the politics of judge ‘Loose’ Cannon’s failed illegal defense of Trump: “Cannon avoided death threats from Trump's minions and managed to stay in Trump’s good graces by bending the law to protect him. I’d say mission accomplished for her...if Trump runs and wins again. Otherwise she lit her entire judicial reputation and future on fire for nothing.”

Court sanctions Kari Lake’s legal team

Law and Crime writes:

An Arizona-based federal judge has ordered sanctions against the legal team assembled by gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) and another plaintiff in a failed lawsuit against winning opponent Katie Hobbs (D) and other defendants from two Arizona county government boards.

The attorneys being sanctioned are not directly named in Thursday’s order, but according to the court docket, Harvard Law School Prof. Alan Dershowitz [a very big gun in the legal profession] is Lake’s lead attorney in the matter. Also on her legal team are co-lead attorneys Andrew D. Parker, Jesse Hersch Kibort, and Joseph Alan Pull of Minneapolis. Further listed as a member of her legal team is attorney Kurt B. Olsen of Washington, D.C.

Parker, Olsen, and Dershowitz signed the original complaint, an amended complaint, and a opposition to a request for sanctions. 

Those attorneys are presumably the ones sanctioned on Thursday for filing a complaint by Lake and Arizona State Representative Mark Finchem (R-11), another plaintiff.

Judge Tuchi ruled that the plaintiffs lacked standing to sue because her claims were “too speculative to establish an injury in fact.” And, even if the plaintiffs did have standing, the judge ruled that the 11th Amendment barred their claims because the core of the dispute arose under state law, not federal law, and therefore did not belong in federal court.

Once again, Republican elites chafe under the restraints that elections impose. Right now, they are testing all avenues to subvert elections and baselessly undermine confidence in them. The courts keep pushing back. But the day is coming when the courts will be probably be taken out of the picture (~90% likelihood; the pending Moore v. Harper case), leaving elections almost entirely up to state legislatures. Once that happens, Republican state legislatures intend and will be free to turn elections into a farce.