News bits: A GOP Senator got fooled?; Judicial rot watch update; Purging government of pro-democracy sentiment

From the Totally, Totally Wrong Files: MSNBC reports:

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk [the fascist anti-abortion pill Trump judge] has some explaining to do after The Washington Post reported over the weekend that, when he was being considered for the judgeship, he asked a Texas law journal to remove him as the author from a controversial article he had previously submitted criticizing Obama-era protections for abortion and transgender people.

The article was published under the name of his colleagues from the religious conservative legal group he worked for at the time, which offered a strange explanation in response to the Post's questions about the name swap. The group said Kacsmaryk was just a "placeholder" when he submitted the article until the final authors were named.

Lisa Murkowski (R-AL) was one of the 52 senators to confirm the judge who, in an unprecedented ruling earlier this month, attempted to suspend the Food and Drug Administration's 2000 approval of the commonly used abortion pill mifepristone. The Supreme Court has temporarily blocked the ruling (which had been narrowed somewhat by an appeals court) from taking effect at least through Friday.

In light of the Post story on the undisclosed article, Politico reported that Murkowski said in an interview Wednesday:

You want to talk about the ultimate bait and switch? I feel like I got duped. I feel like voted for somebody based on what had been presented to me. And you do this? That is totally, totally wrong.

What is really totally, totally wrong is (i) US Senators being incredibly cynical, stupid and/or naïve, and (ii) Kacsmaryk and other people lying about people lying about Kacsmaryk's authorship of a controversial paper to keep clueless Senators deceived. Despite the deceit, there was plenty of evidence that Kacsmaryk was a fascist. Murkowski is a cynical liar, stupid and/or inexcusably naïve.

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From the Rotting Judiciary Files: HuffPo writes: 

Judge Who Ruled Against Abortion Pill Didn’t Disclose 

Christian Radio Appearances: CNN

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk was required to submit a lengthy report on all of his writings and appearances during his confirmation

The federal judge who suspended the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of an abortion pill failed to disclose two interviews on a Christian radio show where he discussed his extremist views on contraception and gay rights, CNN reported Thursday. Neither were included in paperwork he submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Again, fascist Republican bad faith, ill will and contempt for both ethics and the rule of law are on public display. Like Clarence Thomas, fascist Republican elites hide inconvenient truths, the law and ethics be damned.

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The WaPo writes about a sentiment that now appears to be dominant among fascist Republican politicians. That sentiment is purging from government employees who are competent, experienced employees and loyal to the rule of law, the constitution and civil liberties. Those bureaucrats are to be replaced with incompetent goons loyal to the party and the reigning dictator candidate, Trump at present. That is the same tactic that Viktor Orban used to kill democracy in Hungary in 2010-2012. The WaPo writes:

WEST OLIVE, Mich. — The eight new members of the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners had run for office promising to “thwart tyranny” in their lakeside Michigan community of 300,000 people.

In this case the oppressive force they aimed to thwart was the county government they now ran.

The new commissioners, all Republicans, swore their oaths of office on family Bibles. And then the firings began. Gone was the lawyer who had represented Ottawa County for 40 years. Gone was the county administrator who oversaw a staff of 1,800. To run the health department, they voted to install a service manager from a local HVAC company who had gained prominence as a critic of mask mandates.

As the session entered its fourth hour, Sylvia Rhodea, the board’s new vice chair, put forward a motion to change the motto that sat atop the county’s website and graced its official stationery. “Whereas the vision statement of ‘Where You Belong’ has been used to promote the divisive Marxist ideology of the race, equity movement,” Rhodea said.

Her proposed alternative, she said, sought to unite county residents around America’s “true history” as a “land of systemic opportunity built on the Constitution, Christianity and capitalism.’”

She flipped to her resolution’s final page and leaned closer to the mic. “Now, therefore, let it be resolved that the Ottawa County Board of Commissioners establishes a new county vision statement and motto of ‘Where Freedom Rings.’”

The commission’s lone Democrat gazed out in disbelief.  

In the fall of 2020, the Ottawa County health department learned of a coronavirus outbreak at his daughter’s Christian school and ordered the school’s leaders to comply with the governor’s mask mandate. When they refused, state and county officials chained shut the school’s doors for more than a week and warned parents that continued resistance could bring fines and imprisonment.

Suddenly, Moss realized that those dangerous people that his pastor had been talking about on Sundays were not just in Washington and Lansing, the state capital. They were in West Olive, where the county government was headquartered. “In 2020, I became a threatened parent,” Moss said on the campaign trail. “I was threatened specifically … by Ottawa County.”

Purging government of bureaucrats loyal to democracy and the rule of law is a big part of how Orban killed democracy in Hungary in 2010-2012. The fascist Republican Party is trying to do the same thing wherever it has the power to do so.

Besides fascism, what does the GOP want? Two things. 

One is the fascist GOP wants corrupt brass knuckles capitalism with its intent to take more power and wealth from average people and move it to wealthy and powerful politicians and business elites. 

The other is bigoted, racist Christian nationalist theocracy, where the Constitution and secular are subordinate to God's infallible Christian Sharia law and its intolerant, wealthy White, heterosexual male Christian Taliban culture.

Ottawa County: 

Radicalized by COVID

Q: Is this characterization of the GOP grossly hyperbolic, more wrong than right, or more right than wrong?