Defending democracy worldwide; The poisoning of the federal judiciary; Thinking of an American Taliban

That says it all nicely. Good job nice lady with the naughty words!

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Constant attacks on the courts and our legal system by DJT and his morally rotted, authoritarian Republican Party is intended to poison the rule of law in the minds of as many Americans as possible. What America’s radical right authoritarianism wealth and power movement wants to do is to convince Americans that authoritarian elites alone can fix what is allegedly broken in our legal system. That is yet another gigantic authoritarian lie. 

Bloomberg reports about a new step toward poisoning the federal judiciary that authoritarian senate Republicans are taking:

Republicans Vow to Block Future Biden Judicial Nominees

A coalition of Republican senators has vowed not to support any of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees, effectively blocking the appointment of new district judges in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and other states six months before Election Day.

The 10 Republicans also from Utah, Alabama, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kansas said in an open letter on Friday that they won’t vote to confirm the administration’s political and judicial appointees.

“As a Senate Republican conference, we are unwilling to aid and abet this White House in its project to tear this country apart,” according to the letter that encourages other lawmakers to join in blocking more appointments.

“Joe Biden and his army of partisan hack judges have weaponized our judicial system against his political opponent,” Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) said in a tweet Friday. “Words are not enough. Call on your Senator to join our fight— We will block every single Biden judicial nomination until America votes on November 5th.”

The GOP stance means that Biden’s potential nominees to more than a dozen district vacancies won’t be able to move forward in the chamber.

Senate tradition requires US trial court nominees earn home-state senator support in order to advance to a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. 

The White House condemned the letter as “radical and hyperpartisan” that prioritizes lawmaker interests above the welfare of their constituents.

The “threats” by Republican lawmakers “would harm the American people in the name of politics and proven lies—whether it’s by blocking the appointment of U.S. Attorneys who prosecute criminals, district judges who sentence them, and U.S. Marshals who protect courthouses and track down fugitives,” presidential spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement.

As is usual these days, authoritarian radical right (ARR) Republicans cynically and shamelessly blame Biden and the Democrats with being divisive and partisan hacks. The divisive partisan hack force at work here is DJT and ARR Republican politicians and elites who have publicly states that they want to weaponize the rule of law for partisan purposes. All of their rhetoric and partisan hack behavior is just another gigantic ARR lie designed to further damage our democracy, civil liberties, rule of law, respect for truth and tolerant secular society.

One thing that seems to be broken with our rule of law system is that it is too lenient with elite white collar criminals, traitors, corrupt politicians and the like. Look at how hard it was just to get DJT convicted as the felon we all knew he was. And that scumbag still walks free spreading his divisive lies, slanders and crackpot conspiracy theories in his public drive to kill democracy and establish himself as King for life of a kleptocratic dictatorship, heavily infused with kleptocratic plutocracy and bigoted, intolerant, kleptocratic Christian theocracy run by a bigoted, wealthy White Christian male Taliban.  

Well, at least Biden had the guts to criticize the ARR law-poisoning move and correctly say it is based on damaging hyper-partisan politics and proven lies. By golly, there is still a spark of life in Joe.

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A few thoughts about an intolerant, bigoted, kleptocratic American Christian Taliban: 

One still gets to vote, the other doesn’t?

At the 1/6 coup attempt or was it patriots engaging in

innocent, legitimate political discourse?

Teeth ridiculous?

For the lolcat non-cognoscenti:
A lolcat (pronounced /ˈlɒlkæt/ LOL-kat), or LOLcat, is an image macro of one or more cats. Lolcat images’ idiosyncratic and intentionally grammatically incorrect text is known as lolspeak

Q1: Is there such a thing as an American Christian Taliban, or is it too early to call it out, or is it non-existent?

Q2: If there is such a thing as intentionally grammatically incorrect lolspeak, is there such a thing as an intentionally socially incorrect lolburp? 

Vermont law: Oil companies liable for climate change; The plan to kill democracy

The AP reports:

Vermont becomes 1st state to enact law requiring oil companies 

to pay for damage from climate change

Vermont has become the first state to enact a law requiring fossil fuel companies to pay a share of the damage caused by climate change after the state suffered catastrophic summer flooding and damage from other extreme weather.

Republican Gov. Phil Scott allowed the bill to become law without his signature late Thursday, saying he is very concerned about the costs and outcome of the small state taking on “Big Oil” alone in what will likely be a grueling legal fight. But he acknowledged that he understands something has to be done to address the toll of climate change.

“I understand the desire to seek funding to mitigate the effects of climate change that has hurt our state in so many ways,” Scott, a moderate Republican in the largely blue state of Vermont, wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

“For too long, giant fossil fuel companies have knowingly lit the match of climate disruption without being required to do a thing to put out the fire,” Paul Burns, executive director of the Vermont Public Interest Research Group, said in a statement. “Finally, maybe for the first time anywhere, Vermont is going to hold the companies most responsible for climate-driven floods, fires and heat waves financially accountable for a fair share of the damages they’ve caused.”

Maryland, Massachusetts and New York are considering similar measures.

The American Petroleum Institute, the top lobbying group for the oil and gas industry, has said it’s extremely concerned the legislation “retroactively imposes costs and liability on prior activities that were legal, violates equal protection and due process rights by holding companies responsible for the actions of society at large; and is preempted by federal law.” 

It is about time someone started getting serious about who is going to pay for the human and environmental costs of oil companies taking profits for decades without any social conscience or accountability. No doubt the oil cos. will immediately haul this law into court and attack it until it is either dead and gone, or it is vindicated. Dead and gone is probably the most likely outcome. But, hope still springs eternal.

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John Yoo -- he wants to unleash the dogs of

legal war against Democrats

(Yay! Bring on the lawyers!!)

NY Mag writes about the GOP's plan for any criminal lawsuit against DJT: 

Republicans have long been predicting that criminal charges against Donald Trump would lead to Republicans ginning up charges against Democrats out of pure revenge. The prediction, of course, was designed to legitimate it. And now, inevitably, members of the Republican legal Establishment have moved from predicting this turn of events to advocating for it.

John Yoo, the former Bush administration lawyer (who himself escaped prosecution for his role in constructing legal justifications to torture detainees, many of whom turned out to be held wrongfully in the first place), has an essay in National Review arguing for revenge prosecutions. The imprimatur of Yoo, a Berkeley law professor and fellow at two of the conservative movement’s least-insane think tanks (the American Enterprise Institute and the Hoover Institution), underscores the progression of “lock her up” from wild seriously-not-literally Trump-campaign demagoguery in 2016 to party doctrine in 2024.

“Repairing this breach of constitutional norms will require Republicans to follow the age-old maxim: Do unto others as they have done unto you,” urges Yoo. “In order to prevent the case against Trump from assuming a permanent place in the American political system, Republicans will have to bring charges against Democratic officers, even presidents.”   

The deepest conceptual flaw in Yoo’s demands for legal revenge is his belief that Trump is an innocent victim. “Democrats have crossed a constitutional Rubicon,” he argues. Before now, he claims, opportunities to prosecute presidents abounded but were never taken, out of principle:

Gerald Ford, in a great act of statesmanship, pardoned Richard Nixon even though it doomed his chances in the close 1976 election. Bush did not prosecute Bill Clinton for lying to the Whitewater special counsel, even though Clinton’s Justice Department had conceded that he would become legally liable once he left office. Obama did not attempt to relitigate the difficult policy decisions made during the War on Terror by prosecuting Bush and his aides (of which I was one). Trump did not order the investigation of Hillary Clinton, even though her intentional, illegal diversion of thousands of classified emails to her home computer network was a central theme during his campaign. Nor had local or state prosecutors dared to interfere with the workings of the presidency before.

It is pretty clear where this unwarranted partisan malice is going. Just like Hitler could not be appeased, it is clear that DJT and the authoritarian GOP cannot be appeased. Sometimes history rhymes. It is rhyming right now. 

A silver lining?

But maybe there is a silver lining here. If both main political parties shift to focus on finding lawbreaking in each other, maybe the rule of law will benefit. Maybe it would be a little like legalizing same-sex marriage -- legalization strengthened the institution of marriage. It seems to me that the law is too often not vindicated, especially against elite white collar criminals like DJT. Why not make more use of existing laws?

For example, a gun law that Hunter Biden broke is being (or has been) used to prosecute him, but prosecutions of that gun law are rare. If memory serves, less than ~0.2% (about 1 in 500) of violations of that gun law are prosecuted. Although Hunter's gun law infraction was minor, lasting for just 11 days, Republicans had to find some way to prosecute him for something. That is what they could find, apparently also along with some tax cheating. NBC News reported last year about the gun and tax laws that Hunter broke:

The federal gun charge, which makes it unlawful for a drug addict to possess a weapon, is a rarely used statute that is facing legal challenges and has recently been used as a catch-all charge against white supremacists.

Like the gun charge, the tax charges are rarely brought against first-time offenders and even more rarely result in jail time, Andrew Weissmann, a former FBI general counsel and NBC News contributor, tweeted Tuesday. “This is if anything harsh, not lenient,” he wrote.  

Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor and an NBC News legal analyst, said on MSNBC on Tuesday that the deal Hunter Biden reached was a decent outcome for the president's son, but not the “sweetheart deal” that Trump and his allies have made it out to be.

If a person is serious about vindicating the rule of law, prosecution for violation of unenforced gun and tax laws should be the norm, not a rare exception. What some pro-Trump commentators and political blowhards, e.g., the liar-hypocrite Mitch McConnell, are saying about the felony convictions of DJT in NY state court is that the misdemeanor book-keeping errors that DJT knowingly committed were minor and should never have been prosecuted in the first place. 

Just because a crime is minor, does that morally justify not prosecuting it? In my moral mindset, two wrongs = two wrongs, not a right. Committing the crime is one wrong, not prosecuting it is another. 

As far as I am concerned, I hope that the elite Dems and Repubs bring a tidal wave of prosecutions against each other, including prosecutions by one side for all unfounded prosecutions by the opposing side. It is fair, rational and pro-democracy to actually seriously believe in the rule of law, especially for rich and/or powerful elites. They are the ones who can afford to endlessly game the system to escape justice, just like DJT had successfully done for decades and is still doing in the remaining three criminal lawsuits against him.

Qs: Why are the tax and gun charges are rarely brought against first-time offenders and even more rarely result in jail time? What is the point of having laws if they are rarely enforced, e.g., do they give prosecutors leverage against defendants? Or is Germaine, once again, off his rocker, out to lunch, over the top or otherwise an over-agitated, handsome, young nincompoop?

A distinction without a difference?

Here’s something on the heavy side for a weekend question, and something I think about occasionally: 

Q: Are people who proclaim a religion (e.g., Christians, Jews, Muslims) cult members?  Why/why not?

 

What is a cult, really?  Webster defines it as:

 

• Is calling religion “a cult” just a mean, emotionally-charged claim and not really being fair (objective) about it? 

• What does it take to call/refer to some organization as a cult?  I.e., what are the necessary components for cultism (e.g., distinct leader(s), focal points, specific ideology, mission, etc.)?

• What are the dividing line distinctions between cult/not a cult (e.g., enough/not enough group think to qualify, real versus non-real/non-verifiable claims, etc.)?

• Is being in a cult “shameful?”  If yes, why (e.g., stereotyping, insulting, etc.)?  If not, why not (e.g., has mass appeal, has lofty goals, etc.)?

• If you are religious or have some religious leanings, do you consider yourself a cult member?  Explain your position.

Take some time to think about it in earnest.

by PrimalSoup

The convicted felon pretends to back away from Project 2025; Commentary on the verdict

Hm, guess the verdict 

did come out so well?

Salon writes that the convicted felon (it feels so nice to write that) and kleptocratic dictator wannabe DJT claims he is backing away from Project 2025:

Trump is now trying to downplay Project 2025

Trump’s campaign issued a statement distancing the former president from a plan drawn up by former staffers

Project 2025 (and its auxiliary Trump’s “Agenda 47”) are a plan by right-wing extremists and other authoritarians to end America’s multiracial democracy and to replace it with a White Christian nationalist plutocracy.

A conspiracy is a plan by two or more people operating in private to advance their interests and goals above those of some other person(s) — or in this context the American people. Project 2025 is not a conspiracy. These plans are exhaustively detailed in a book titled “Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise” and are regularly discussed at conferences, in interviews, and in other public forums. Project 2025 and its related plans, like Agenda 47, were not hatched overnight. As author and journalist Anne Nelson and other experts have been extensively documenting, Project 2025 and the other right-wing extremists’ and neofascists' plans to end America’s multiracial democracy have been years and decades in development:

But ignore it at your peril. The massive tome is the latest iteration of a four-decade-long process of crafting right-wing policies to dismantle the federal government, deregulate industry and eliminate consumer protections and public health measures, while installing a regime controlled by fossil fuel interests and the Religious Right. Not coincidentally, the members of its advisory board have been making headlines attacking American institutions at a grassroots level, in preparation for the big takeover—ranging from Moms4Liberty’s assaults on local public schools, to the Koch-founded Institute on Energy Research’s war on climate initiatives.

Project 2025 lays out specifics for hundreds of policy objectives affecting every area of public life. Many of them affect three primary areas: first, the dismantling of environmental regulations, clean energy measures, and climate policy; second, a rollback of civil and political rights for women and LGBTQ populations and the elimination of public health measures; and third, a massive purge of career civil servants and the concentration of power in the Executive branch in the White House, to consolidate an entrenched authoritarian regime.

Public opinion polls and other research have repeatedly shown that a large percentage of the American public remains unaware of the existential danger that Donald Trump and his MAGA movement and the other neofascists and authoritarians represent to the country’s democracy and freedom. It is the responsibility of the Fourth Estate to wake the American people up from their sleepwalking and political zombification. As an institution, the American news media has largely failed in this obligation.  

To awaken from and escape the Age of Trump and this worsening democracy crisis, the American people need more pro-democracy journalism that illuminates, informs, and gives them solutions. Unfortunately, such work is an outlier in American mainstream news media that largely remains ill-equipped to meet the challenges of the Age of Trump, the global democracy crisis, and what comes next with the 2024 election and beyond.

The Salon article is quite long. It points out the few MSM sources that have gone woke, see the threat and call it what it is, i.e., authoritarianism, neofascism, Christofascism, fascism, plutocracy, etc. So far, I am not aware of anyone calling the authoritarian radical right agenda kleptocracy or kleptocratic. However, that is also a key part of what the radical right wealth and power movement is all about. The radical right is not just about setting up a dictatorship-plutocracy-theocracy. It is also very much about accumulating a lot more wealth for the already wealthy people and interests who run our already seriously corrupted government.

Q: Why is the American mainstream news media largely ill-equipped to meet the challenges of the Age of Trump and the global democracy crisis? Media ownership by corrupt corporations and greedy plutocrats? 

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The NYT reports (not paywalled) on the verdict that made DJT a convicted felon:

Live Updates: Trump Lashes Out After Conviction in Misleading Speech

Donald J. Trump, the first U.S. president to become a felon, excoriated prosecutors and the judge in his criminal case and ran through a litany of false statements as he spoke to reporters and a small crowd of vetted supporters at Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan.

In a rambling and misleading 33-minute speech, derided the trial as “rigged” and attacked the judge in his first public comments since a Manhattan jury found him guilty of all 34 felony counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened to derail his 2016 presidential campaign. He also made numerous misleading statements about the case and what took place at the trial.

Mr. Trump, who said he would appeal the verdict, continued to attack people who testified against him in the seven-week trial, specifically his former fixer, Michael D. Cohen, the star witness for the prosecution. He also admitted that he got “very upset” with his lawyers.

Good, he is upset with his lawyers. I hope he fires all of them and refuses to pay them. That would help in the DJT personal chaos department.

The WaPo reports (not paywalled) on an issue that is personally concerning, namely the overall impact of DJT on the rule of law:

Even as Trump is found guilty, his attacks take toll on judicial system

That the hush money trial happened at all is a sign of democracy working, analysts say, but Trump’s all-out offensive dealt a “body blow” to the judiciary

For months, top advisers to Donald Trump expected that he would be convicted by a New York jury on all 34 felony counts. So Trump and his team waged an all-out war against the judicial system before the verdict came in, hoping to blunt the political damage and position him as a martyr.

They sent hundreds of fundraising appeals attacking the prosecutors and the system, raising millions of dollars on false claims. They lined up allies outside the courthouse almost every day to question the fairness of the proceedings. Trump attacked the judge, the judge’s daughter and, finally, even the jury — ordinary, anonymous New Yorkers called to perform their basic civic duty.

But amid the relentless offensive by Trump and his allies on the legal infrastructure holding him accountable, the trial came with a substantial cost, according to those who study democracy, with the ultimate impact likely to be measured in November.

“The judicial system has taken a body blow from Trump’s assaults,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology at Princeton University who studies the rise and fall of constitutional government. Forcing him to sit through the trial, follow orders and listen to evidence against himself meant that “his rage at being controlled by others is going to be directed at trying to bring the whole judicial system down with him.”

Indeed, Trump went on a long diatribe after his conviction was announced. “This was a disgrace,” he said. “This was a rigged trial by a conflicted judge who was corrupt.”

Time will tell how the damage manifests. We can only hope that it will not be crippling, e.g., by getting DJT re-elected, claiming false martyrdom. 

We cannot go back in time and undo to vast damage that Merrick Garland did by delaying any prosecution of DJT for so long. Garland failed miserably. What he did could easily turn out to be too little, too late. This New York state verdict alone may not be sufficient to protect the rule of law.