Supreme Court non-ethics; GOP witch hunts; etc.

An analysis of the ethics situation at the Supreme Court (SC) concludes that ethics are optional. The SC excuses itself from existing ethics regulations and says there is nothing to see here. Balls and Strikes writes:

The Supreme Court Spouses Cannot Stop 

Stomping On Ethical Rakes

Supreme Court justices all fill out mandatory financial disclosures, which include income of their family members. Court spokesperson Patricia McCabe came to the defense of Jane Roberts [wife of chief justice Roberts], pointing to a 2009 advisory opinion stating that judges “need not recuse merely because” their spouse works as a recruiter for firms with business before the Court. But Price points out that because Jane Roberts listed her compensation on these forms as salary, instead of spelling out her commissions, her work posed obvious ethical conflicts for the Chief Justice: The Roberts family could be quietly raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from law firms with regular business before the Court. According to Price, Jane Roberts made millions in commissions. Details about which lawyers she placed where—and the money she made for it—would shed more light about the propriety of the Chief recusing himself from certain cases before the Court.

If Supreme Court justices were bound by the existing code of conduct for federal judges, which requires that spouses divulge the sources of income over $1,000, including commissions, Jane Roberts’s conduct here could have been a violation. But the justices are not formally bound by the code. Previously, John Roberts has asserted that the justices have “no reason” to adopt it for themselves.

But even if Jane Roberts’s work wouldn’t have actually required her husband to recuse, her failure to disclose her income correctly raises questions about why. And right now, the appearance of corruption is just as harmful to a Court that cannot stop itself from stepping on ethical rakes. In his 2021 end-of-the-year report, Chief Justice Roberts noted that the code of conduct requires that “a judge recuse in any matter in which the judge knows of a personal financial interest, no matter how small.” Public confidence in the institution is at an all-time low, and the justices’ unyielding belief that they are above the rules is a major reason why. It would have been so easy for the Robertses to do the right thing here. They simply couldn’t be bothered.

Roberts says there is “no reason” to adopt an ethics conduct code. This is another example of the smug arrogance of the SC. 

Analysis

1. If there is no reason to adopt ethics rules, there is equally no reason not to. Right? Right. That's just common sense. 

2. Roberts knows that public trust in the SC has fallen. He claims that is a bad thing for democracy. He also claims that there is no reason to adopt ethics. Therefore, why not adopt an ethics code that would give the public an actual reason to maybe have some trust? The most likely answer is that there are lots of corrupt and/or partisan political things the SC needs to hide. That's also just common sense.

3. Since Roberts is a Republican in charge of the SC, it is reasonable to believe that his anti-ethics, pro-secrecy, and pro-corruption attitude reflects that of the GOP leadership generally. After all, Republicans in congress and the White House want judges that look and act like them and that carry out the radical right's anti-democracy political agenda. More common sense. 

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The witch hunts begin: The NYT writes on the first subpoenas the radical right GOP House has issued:

Republicans on Friday issued their first subpoenas of the Biden administration since taking control of the House, demanding documents for an investigation into whether the government mistreated parents who were scrutinized after school officials endured threats and harassment over mask mandates and teaching about racism.

Just two days after the Judiciary Committee was organized for the new Congress, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the panel’s chairman, sent subpoenas to Merrick B. Garland, the attorney general, F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray and Miguel A. Cardona, the secretary of education, accusing them of withholding information about whether the government overreached in scrutinizing parents.

It is reasonable to expect that even if the government did not overreach, Republican extremists will find overreach. Then endless impeachments will commence and not end until the GOP gets voted out of power over the House. Obviously there is a big assumption here. That is, assuming it will ever be possible to vote Republicans out of power after they are done rigging elections in their favor. We might find out after the 2024 elections. 

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A commentator commentates on the new and improved House of Representatives:

A CNN poll last week found that about three-quarters of Americans, including nearly half of Republicans, think House Republican leaders aren’t paying enough attention to the country’s most pressing problems.

So this week, GOP leaders set out to rectify the situation. They approved a resolution condemning the Russian Revolution. Of 1917. .... “Congress denounces socialism in all its forms and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States,” the resolution concluded. .... “Socialism is the greatest threat to our economy and freedom and must be defeated,” Rep. Roger Williams (R-Tex.) warned the House on Thursday, calling the fictional menace “alarming and scary.” 

Still awaiting legislative action by the new House majority: a condemnation of Genghis Khan’s Siege of Merv in 1221 and the Roman Sack of Carthage during the Third Punic War.  

This week alone, the new majority used its powers in committee rooms and on the House floor to undermine trust in government on various fronts:

• Falsely claiming that lazy bureaucrats are refusing to go to work, denying Americans their tax refunds, passports and benefits.
• Falsely insinuating that the government is forcing Americans to take coronavirus vaccines that are both deadly and useless.
• Falsely asserting that the Biden administration is in effect killing Americans by encouraging fentanyl smugglers to enter the country across “open borders.”
• Falsely declaring the only Muslim on the House Foreign Affairs Committee a threat to national security and booting her from the panel in a party-line vote.
• And, for extra credit, summoning the ghosts of Stalin and Mao to suggest that the administration promotes an ideology of mass murder.

 

Although socialism is a fictional menace, the alarming and scary radical right GOP is an actual menace. 

So there you have it, fans of functioning government. The GOP knows how to rule with grace, wisdom and efficiency.  . . . . . /s 

Part of the Republican crackpot caucus, 2019

Let’s take a quick tour of the crazies in the House. Their war on critical thinking explains a lot about why the United States is laughed at on the global stage, and why no real solutions to our problems emerge from that broken legislative body.

The Christian nationalist “Jesus, He gets us” propaganda campaign

CONTEXT

Love the sinner, hate the sin is a standard Christian nationalist (CN) lie. The reality is: Hate the sinner and the sin, but lie about it. 

POST

We now get to experience a new, deeper level of propaganda cynicism and shameless lies from the morally rotted CN fundamentalist theocrats who successfully attacked reproductive rights in the famous 2014 Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case.[1] 

This immoral propaganda campaign shows (1) the heavy reliance of CN on dark free speech, especially lies of omission, and (2) CN fear about an documented increasing abandonment of Christian fundamentalism. CN is an enraged, wounded poison-fanged monster with no moral compass. It is openly fighting for power and wealth.

NPR broadcast this 4:30 minute interview:

Key points:

• Claiming that Jesus was an immigrant and thus persecuted hides hypocritical CN propaganda vilifying immigrants [and secularism, civil liberties, democracy, women, non-believers (like me! 😘) and the LGBQT community] 

• CN religious leaders openly attack and vilify liberals and Democrats as evil, but then they turn on a dime and try to coax the evil ones into church attendance 

• This propaganda campaign is funded by a group The Signatry, which operates in as much secrecy as possible to hide the identity of the donors as much as possible

Commentary: CN and the MSM

NPR comments: 

NPR’s Scott Detrow talks with Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana about the “He Gets Us” campaign, which is spending millions to promote Jesus while its funding and overall goal remain unclear.

Once again, the MSM gets it seriously wrong. The funding and overall goal of this propaganda campaign are obvious: Even more power and wealth for the elites running the toxic, theocratic CN political movement. 

Honestly, WTF is wrong with NPR? NPR can’t possibly be stupid enough to not see what is going on here. NPR has reported on the CN movement before, so ignorance cannot be the excuse. Most likely, money is the excuse.

This exemplifies a key reason a person can reasonably accord the MSM a grade of F. The MSM continues with reporting that is unjustifiable and just plain wrong. If we manage somehow to save our democracy, secularism and civil liberties, it will be despite the MSM’s constant failures, not because of its occasional successes.

Q:  Is it rational and justifiable to feel a surge of serious anger at both NPR and the MSM generally, and the CN political movement in view of this news? Or, is anger irrational and/or unwarranted, e.g., because this is just politics, propaganda and news reporting as usual, and/or because I am an atheist and thus a bit of the unworthy scum in the CN’s crosshairs?

Footnote: 

1. Wikipdeia: Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 573 U.S. 682 (2014), is a landmark decision in United States corporate law by the United States Supreme Court allowing privately held for-profit corporations to be exempt from a regulation its owners religiously object to, if there is a less restrictive means of furthering the law's interest, according to the provisions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993.

And then the CN movement howls about harmless, innocent Christians being constantly persecuted and threatened in secular America. Those howls come despite religion-protecting layers of constitution and law, and overwhelming Christian dominance of all of American society. That’s the effective and always popular CN persecution myth. It works like a toxic charm.

The GOP mindset; Is engagement with the radical right futile?; Gun safety laws going extinct

Although the GOP leadership denies it, stupid, blind vengeance against Democrats for imagined wrongs is one of the few core goals of Republican Party leadership thinking. Business Insider comments:

2 House Republicans caught saying Ilhan Omar removal was the ‘stupidest vote in world’ before begging reporters to not tell GOP leadership what they said

Two disillusioned House Republicans unloaded on their vengeful leadership for inadvertently making a hero out of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar by publicly stripping her of a high-profile committee assignment in what one deemed the “stupidest vote in the world.”

From that, another core goal of Republican Party leadership is apparent. One is keeping its members from being honest with the public. That is why the two asked reporters to not report what they said. They made a mistake. It won't happen again.

The GOP leadership stated the reason for booting Omar off the House Foreign Affairs committee was that she was anti-Israel. If that logic applies generally then this can be done by the party controlling the House to any member of congress who disagrees with whatever beliefs are sacred enough to protect from criticism backed by inconvenient facts, truths and reasoning.  

That evinces a key trait of radical right GOP elites (and probably most of the rank and file?). It does not tolerate even listening to dissent. The collective radical right Republican mind is vengeful, firmly closed and staunchly intolerant.

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An exercise in futility?

Is it a waste of time to wade into the radical right politics hive? That thought has been nagging lately. Recently, I dipped a toe in at a BNR politics post that came from a radical right lies, slanders and crackpottery site. I fact checked the story and found it had at least one lie in it. I checked the site, one I had never heard of, and a good portion of the content there relied significantly on lies, slanders and/or crackpottery, some of which was documented. 

I pointed this out in a comment and the BNR (obey) moderator took down my comment, which Disqus marked as spam. I wasted about 45 minutes getting to truth and the effort was rejected without any justification or even an acknowledgement that I had transgressed or what the transgression was. I was just blown off with a condescending, childish insult from the moderator. 

Rigid intolerance and condemnation of inconvenient facts, truths and reasoning like this is not unusual for American radical right online politics. From the rhetoric the radical right propaganda Leviathan and the GOP leadership and elites, they are all on board with the intolerance.

So, is even trying to engage with the radical right mostly a waste of time or not? Are these sites just fringe elements in the GOP, or do they reasonably reflect the party elites and most of the rank and file?

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Gun safety laws continue to fall

After a 2022 Supreme Court decision of gun safety laws, it became apparent that most existing gun laws would be found to be unconstitutional in the next year or two. So far, that belief has held up and it still holds up. Politico writes:

A federal appeals court ruled Thursday that the government can’t stop people who have domestic violence restraining orders against them from owning guns — the latest domino to fall after the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority set new standards for reviewing the nation’s gun laws.

Police in Texas found a rifle and a pistol at the home of a man who was the subject of a civil protective order that banned him from harassing, stalking or threatening his ex-girlfriend and their child. The order also banned him from having guns.

A federal grand jury indicted the man, who pled guilty. He later challenged his indictment, arguing the law that prevented him from owning a gun was unconstitutional. At first, a federal appeals court ruled against him, saying that it was more important for society to keep guns out of the hands of people accused of domestic violence than it was to protect a person’s individual right to own a gun.

But then last year, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a new ruling in a case known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. That case set new standards for interpreting the Second Amendment by saying the government had to justify gun control laws by showing they are “consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.  

Specifically, the court ruled that the federal law was an “outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted” — borrowing a quote from the Bruen decision. 

Once again, the “Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation” test obliterates citizen safety concerns in the name of radical gun ownership rights. Back in the 1700s, the US had little or no historical tradition of firearm regulation. Sooner or later, the historical tradition of firearm regulation test will start killing innocent people. It is just a matter of time.[1]

Footnote: 

1. Domestic violence happens: A pregnant Indiana woman was denied a protective order against her estranged husband 10 days before she was killed in an apparent-murder suicide, WLKY reports. Authorities found the bodies of 36-year-old Julie Yow-Schmidtke and 41-year-old Charles Schmidtke on Dec. 19, 2022 inside their home in Columbus, WishTV.com reports.

July 2022: Weeks after she was denied a protection order, a Michigan woman and her family are dead. A judge denied the order June 27, saying there was insufficient evidence of immediate or irreparable injury. The woman and her family were found dead Sunday, officials said.

People with guns kill a heck of a lot more people than people with knives, clubs, fists or verbal insults.

Abortion wars continue; personal medical data is unsecure with for-profit companies

The radical right's theocracy-charged abortion culture war is not going to go away or calm down. Courthouse News Service writes:

Missouri’s new attorney general, leading a coalition of conservative states, on Wednesday sent a warning letter to pharmacy giants Walgreens and CVS saying that a plan to mail abortion pills is both illegal and unsafe.

The letters are in response to the Biden administration’s changes to federal rules designed to give women seeking an abortion more options in the wake of Roe v. Wade being overturned. The biggest change approved in January allowed women to receive abortion pills through the mail. Previously, they had been required to physically pick them up at pharmacies.

Missouri's Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey, on behalf of 20 states, wrote the states “reject the Biden administration’s bizarre interpretation, and we expect courts will as well.”  

Planned Parenthood of America, when contacted for a reaction, referred to a statement made last month in response to the Biden Administration's rule change claiming Mifepristone is safe and effective.

We will find out if the Christian nationalist Supreme Court agrees. And we might be quite unhappy with what that court decides.

For the record, Mifepristone is safe and effective. If it weren't, the FDA would not have approved it. As usual, radical right Republican elites are bald faced liars.

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Far too often, (i) your personal data just isn't safe, and (ii) the system is rigged to protect companies and leave consumers abused, ripped off, deceived, etc. Here's another example. The NYT writes:

Millions of Americans have used GoodRx, a drug discount app, to search for lower prices on prescriptions like antidepressants, H.I.V. medications and treatments for sexually transmitted diseases at their local drugstores. But U.S. regulators say the app’s coupons and convenience came at a high cost for users: wrongful disclosure of their intimate health information.

On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission accused the app’s developer, GoodRx Holdings, of sharing sensitive personal data on millions of users’ prescription medications and illnesses with companies like Facebook and Google without authorization.

The company’s information-sharing practices, the agency said, violated a federal rule requiring health apps and fitness trackers that collect personal health details to notify consumers of data breaches.

While GoodRx agreed to settle the case, it said it disagreed with the agency’s allegations and admitted no wrongdoing.

Why would GoodRx Holdings give a person's intimate medical information to Facebook, Google and etc. without consumers knowing about it? Obviously because (i) the company doesn't care about consumers' privacy but cares a lot about profit, (ii) Facebook, Google and etc. don't care about consumers' privacy but care a lot about profit, and (iii) the laws, assuming any even exist, and our law enforcement and court systems are rigged to protect companies not caring about consumers. 

The company (GoodRx Holdings and the others) admits no wrongdoing, despite their undeniable wrongdoing. How is this impossibility even possible? Easy. America has a corrupted, broken system of laws, law enforcement, courts and politics for consumers, but a great system for rich and powerful special interests and rich people.

That's brass knuckles (unregulated) capitalism working as usual. Consumers and the public interest get their lumps, while the rich and powerful people and interests get more rich and powerful.

Republican Opacity, etc.

What the current congressional GOP leadership wants to do, eliminate domestic safety net programs and consumer protections is highly unpopular. So, they keep their mouths shut about it. The NYT writes:

At a news conference this month to showcase how Republicans will handle their looming debt ceiling showdown with Democrats, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was asked to explain what specific spending cuts his party would support in exchange for lifting the borrowing cap.

“Exactly what those are, we’re not willing to lay out here today,” Mr. Johnson said, adding that plans would be determined in consultation with House Republicans.

The refrain has been familiar in recent weeks as Republicans have insisted that they want “structural” fiscal changes in exchange for voting to raise the borrowing cap, but they have so far declined to offer a cohesive plan outlining what programs they would cut.

Since the radical right GOP leadership won’t say, one can reasonably speculate that 

(1) at least Medicare, social security, Medicaid, food stamps, all other welfare programs, the IRS, the EPA, the Education Department, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are all slated for total elimination; and 

(2) tax law and business regulations are to be revised to enhance the flow of both power and wealth to wealthy and/or powerful elites, big corporations and Christian groups and businesses. 

That’s just fair and balanced. That assessment is based on decades of government, secularism and safety net hating rhetoric from the radical right. Why not simply believe that they really do want to do what they have been saying they want to do for decades? 

Lest we forget:

“The top 9 most terrifying words in the English Language are: I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.” -- Government hater Ronald Reagan, 1986 (37 years ago)

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Globally, democracy is in fairly bad shape. It is under constant attack by greedy, corrupt authoritarians, plutocrats, theocrats and the like. The Guardian writes about citizen’s assemblies that are being tried in a pro-democracy effort by people in political disagreement to compromise and move forward without hating each other’s guts. TG writes:

Citizens’ assemblies, a phenomenon that is gaining in popularity around the globe, date back to ancient Athens, where legislative panels, courts and councils were chosen via random selection. In a practice known as sortition, Greek citizens over the age of 30 were enlisted to debate governmental matters from city finances to military strategy. More recently, citizens’ assemblies have convened to hammer out solutions to such issues as homelessness in Los Angeles, the allocation of a $5bn budget in Melbourne, Australia, and the longstanding ban on abortion in Ireland.

In 2017, after meeting over the course of five weekends for deliberation, an Irish citizens’ assembly came up with a recommendation to legalize the procedure. Sixty-six per cent of Irish voters later approved the referendum, ending more than four decades of fruitless political debate.

Modern citizens’ assemblies are typically convened by legislative bodies, which work alongside non-profit groups to reach out to large numbers of citizens at random – sending letters like the one Bajwa received in the mail – then sorting the respondents who express interest according to social and economic factors. The result is a group of people who are randomly selected and reflect the demographics of the population as a whole.

Sortition, a word that might evoke the next chapter in the Hunger Games franchise, offers a revived spin on democracy. Instead of leaving the decision-making up to elected officials, citizens’ assemblies can offer a special interests-free alternative to politics as we know it.

This is an interesting development. Given America’s deeply polarized, corrupt and broken two-party system, maybe this offers a helpful component in the battle to save democracy from tyranny, kleptocracy and whatnot.

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A core goal of Christian nationalism is to tamp down civil liberties in an effort to shift power from citizens to church organizations and religious leaders. The Hill writes:

The Republican-controlled House Oversight and Accountability Committee has disbanded the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which focused on issues including voting rights, freedom of assembly and criminal justice reform policies.

In a committee meeting on Tuesday, Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said this doesn’t mean topics related to these issues can’t be brought before the committee.

“Let me be very clear: any topic that’s not mentioned in the subcommittee jurisdiction is reserved for the full committee,” Comer said. “We can have a committee hearing in this committee on basically anything we want.”

Notice Comer’s intentional propaganda. Yes, the remaining full committee certainly can have hearings on civil rights and liberties. But it is reasonable to think that it won’t. Whatever actions that might be taken will be in defense of what the Christian nationalist wing of the GOP has been delivering for years, namely weakening of targeted voting rights and civil liberties such as abortion and same-sex marriage. 

Of course, gun rights will be defended if needed, but that is unlikely to be necessary. The radical right Supreme Court has probably made nearly all existing gun safety laws unconstitutional. That issue probably will not come up. 

Psychology 101?

Let me hit you with this general psychology question:

Do people (the bulk of the masses) need led? 

Merriam-Webster 

Led: a: to guide on a way especially by going in advance; b: to direct on a course or in a direction)

Granted, there are many who are the diligent types, who know how to (and take the time to) verify and evaluate data and make a judgment on such.  But for the general public, is such diligence mostly true or mostly false?

It’s true that life in general gives us personal experiences to build on, and others can’t help but be involved in such experiences.  IOW, “No man is an island; entire of itself.”  But do we, as a people, mostly take our cues from/directions from/are followers of others (e.g., the clergy, the school system, the politicians, celebrity figures, family figures, friends' influence)?  Or, more from ourselves?  Are we mostly followers or leaders?

-If yes, mostly led by others (followers), what percentage of us?  What do you think are the causes (e.g., shifts responsibility, too much work, gullibility, etc.).

-If no, mostly self-directed, self-made (leaders), make your case for that kind of independent thinking.  How does it happen?  What are the “keys?”