News chunk & bits: An analysis of insurrection arguments; AI lawyering is coming; Etc.

The Nation published an excellent legal analysis that concludes the USSC will leave DJT on the ballot in all states and the vote will probably be 9-0, or maybe 8-1 with Sotomayor dissenting. One point that all the Repubs and two of the three Dems raised is the prospect of some states blithely tossing Biden off the ballot and some seriously tossing DJT off the ballot for actual insurrection, leaving the presidential election a disaster. The Nation eviscerated that argument like this: 

Still, it was only when Jason Murray, the lawyer representing the effort to keep Trump off the ballot, rose to argue that the justices really started tipping their hands. Roberts, along with justices Samuel Alito, alleged attempted rapist Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, all asked Murray why one state—Colorado—should be allowed to decide who gets to be on the ballot for, essentially, the rest of the country.  

Murray had a credible answer for this, one that usually wins in conservative circles: states’ rights. 

[But Kagan] (like Roberts and Alito) kept hammering on hypotheticals, in which one state would exclude Trump while other states would exclude “other” candidates, and we’d be left in a situation where each state would have entirely different ballots for the presidential election.

Murray, again, had a basically credible answer to this. He said that we had to trust states to apply their own laws faithfully. He pointed out that insurrection was pretty rare and it was unlikely that states would cynically use the standard for political means. Now, I think we all know that Murray’s hopes and dreams are flatly wrong, given that we’ve all seen what red-state governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis are capable of. But as a legal proposition, the court shouldn’t be deciding cases based on what it thinks bad-faith politicians will do with its decisions. At the very least, if bad-faith political maneuvers are a thing the court now cares about, it might try applying that standard to its voting rights and gerrymandering decisions first, instead of only suddenly becoming concerned about this when an insurrectionist runs for president.

That argument resonates strongly with me because of the phrase “bad-faith political maneuvers.” It is bad baith and ill-will that characterizes the thinking and behavior of America’s authoritarian radical right wealth and power movement. 

I think the author of this article, Elie Mystal, correctly analyzed the outcome of the insurrection lawsuit. DJT will stay on the ballot in 2024. Mystal ends her analysis like this, echoing Snowflake’s reasoning:

I’ve said repeatedly that there is no way in hell the Supreme Court would allow the likely Republican nominee to be stricken from the ballot. I’ve said repeatedly that courts and judges simply do not have the strength and courage to end Trump’s presidential campaign as a matter of law. I’ve said repeatedly that the only way to be rid of him is to defeat him at the ballot box, again, and beat back his forces who will try to steal the election, again.

Those warnings still hold after the court’s oral arguments. Once again, the law is not coming to save us. According to the Supreme Court, “states’ rights” exist only to make it harder for people to vote, not harder for insurrectionists to rule.

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Such Science published an article about the use of AI to do routine lawyering tasks:

New study shows that AI can lead to cost reductions 

of 99.97% for some routine legal tasks

The goal was to see whether AI can match, or even surpass, the work of junior lawyers in both quality and efficiency.

And the TL;DR answer is that yes, it can.

The study, called “Better Call GPT, Comparing Large Language Models Against Lawyers,” was written by a team of researchers from Onit’s AI Center of Excellence in Auckland, New Zealand (Onit is a company that provides software and advice for legal, compliance, and other corporate departments).

The paper was published on January 24 on arXiv, a directory of preprints that have not yet been peer-reviewed, maintained by Cornell University.

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Rolling Stone reports that a Christian nationalist Hobby Lobby billionaire family will be advertising for God in the Superbowl on Sunday:

This Evangelical Billionaire Family Wants to 

Convert You on Super Bowl Sunday

The Super Bowl will once again feature ads promoting Jesus, thanks in large part to the billionaire family that leads Hobby Lobby.

He Gets Us, the billion-dollar campaign to further raise Jesus’ profile, will be back at the big game this year to spread the good word. According to Greg Miller, a spokesman for the campaign, a 60-second spot will appear in the first quarter of the matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and San Francisco 49ers, followed by a 15-second spot in the second half of the CBS and Univision broadcasts. Both ads “will emphasize loving our neighbors like Jesus did, encouraging people to respect and serve each other,” Miller says.  

The motivation behind the He Gets Us campaign, according to Green, is a desire to reshape public perception of Christians: “What we’re known as, as Christians, we’re known as haters,” he said in a podcast interview last year. “We’re beginning to be known as haters — we hate this group, we hate that group. But we’re not. We are people that have the very, very best love story ever written, and we need to tell that love story. So, our idea is, let’s tell the story. As a Christian, you should love everybody. Jesus loved everybody.”

The atheist peanut gallery had some interesting things to say about this. Apparently some do not fully believe the bit about Christians loving all people:

1. Friendly reminder: the Hobby Lobby CEO knowingly financially supported Islamic terrorists in the Middle East by buying looted antiquities. Hobby Lobby lawyers told him that the antiquities were very likely to be looted. He didn’t care. Then he lied on import forms for some of them. [Here is an AP article about the looted antiquities]

2. Anyone without his money would be in jail for what he did.

3. It’s no surprise this right wing fake-Christian broke the commandment about lying for stolen antiquities.

4. Exactly, I hate it when people use the “no true Scotsman” bullshit because it lets Christians off the hook. Of course not all Christians are like that, but most of them have seemed to turn a blind eye to all of the horrible shit that’s done in the name of Christianity. They should be calling out other Christians when they are being terrible people.

What does the discontented right actually want? How to talk to the rank & file right?

Some people argue that the left needs to be more respectful of the complaints and demands of voters on the right. That sounds reasonable in theory. What about in practice? Who are the right anyway? How are they defined? Gallup poll data as of Dec. 1, 2023 indicated that Biden and DJT were basically tied in approval ratings at about 41% favorable. If that data is reasonably accurate, about 59% of Americans feel that both are unfavorable.

The now radicalized and authoritarian Republican Party no longer puts out policy platforms, so one cannot get a feel for current policy priorities there. Recent polling suggested that the top priority for Republicans is border control. But since Republican voters elected Republican politicians who just killed any chance for border control legislation, it is impossible to reconcile what the rank and file voters claim they want with who they vote for. 

Other items on the Republican list of things that need to be done seem to be getting inflation under control, improving the economy generally, the high cost of health care, deregulating businesses, eliminating the socialist deep state and putting Christianity back into government and society. Like with border control and immigration, there is significant disconnect between Republican opinion about abortion and the politicians they vote for. Recent poll data indicates that 66% of Republicans favor abortion rights with some restrictions, but the politicians they elect tend to pass laws that restrict abortions more than what the rank and file seem too actually want.

There is a fair number of policy ideas that most Dems and most Repubs claim they support. That makes it hard to understand exactly what the right is so vexed about not getting. When policies that a majority of Dems and Repubs support are not implemented, it is usually (~85% of the time?) Repub politicians backed by special interest lobbyists and money who block what the people claim to want. What policies? These for example:

About 61% of Repubs want an official declaration that the US is a Christian nation, but after that, it gets messy as to what that would mean. The messages the Repubs give off are conflicting: Most Republicans Say Christian Nationalism Is Unconstitutional — But Still Support It:

source

Given the overlap in what both most Dems and Repubs claim to want, one has to ask why they don’t get those things. Corruption of politics by special interest money, opposition by rigid Christian and capitalist ideology and constant divisive, infuriating dark free speech seems to be the top impediments.

As far as I can tell, there are two main groups of Repubs. The elites and the rank and file. The elites have the power and are calling the shots. They have to use dark free speech to deceive the rank and file into belief that they want what the ranks and file wants. 

What messaging should the left be offering to the rank and file right and center? Should the US be declared a Christian nation with the Bible controlling the law and overriding the will of the people? What is the will of the people in this point? The will of the elites running the Christian nationalist wealth and power movement is crystal clear -- it wants bigoted Christian Sharia law run by bigoted, corrupt Christian Taliban elites. Meanwhile, 54% of Americans have never even heard of Christian nationalism.

What the rank and file right wants looks to me to be sometimes incoherent and sometimes significantly overlapping with what most Dems want. I do know what the radical right authoritarian elites want, i.e., much more opacity, power and money, with a lot less transparency, social burden (consumer protection laws, etc.) and environmental burden (anti-pollution laws, etc.).

Maybe the best message the left can offer to the rank and file center and right is a respectful ask for them to consider who is blocking progress on the things they want. For example, who blocked the border control bill that most Repub elites and rank and file claimed they wanted? Or, should the left respectfully tell the right that they both want lots of overlapping things and please tell the left how to deal with the politicians that Repub voters put in office? 

Given the cynical bad faith and ill-will that Repub elites operate with, is it even possible for anyone to talk rationally with them? If not, who should rank and file Repubs be talking to?

The October surprise came in February! Biden’s memory problem

Everyone is reporting about Special Prosecutor Robert Hur’s investigation of US government documents that Biden had illegally kept. Biden co-operated with the investigation and turned documents over immediately. The radical right is viciously attacking Biden because the report indicated that Biden's memory was seriously bad. The DoJ has decided no to prosecute Biden for “willfully” keeping the documents. Keep the word willfully in mind. The WaPo reports (full article here not behind paywall):

Special counsel Robert K. Hur’s report, while concluding that criminal charges were not merited for Biden’s careless handling of classified documents, painted a devastating portrait of an 81-year-old president whose age has become a central issue in his reelection campaign, saying his memory was “significantly limited” and that he had “limited precision and recall.” One reason prosecutors concluded they would have trouble pursuing a case was that a jury might see Biden as an appealing — if forgetful — senior citizen.

“At trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” the prosecutors wrote in their report released Thursday. “Based on our direct interactions with and observations of him, he is someone for whom many jurors will want to identify reasonable doubt. It would be difficult to convince a jury that they should convict him — by then a former president well into his eighties — of a serious felony that requires a mental state of willfulness.”

The AP reports:

A special counsel report released Thursday found evidence that President Joe Biden willfully retained and shared highly classified information when he was a private citizen, including about military and foreign policy in Afghanistan, but concluded that criminal charges were not warranted.  

Despite abundant differences between the cases, Trump immediately seized on the special counsel report to portray himself as a victim of a “two-tiered system of justice.”

Yet even as Hur found evidence that Biden willfully held onto and shared with a ghostwriter highly classified information, the special counsel devoted much of his report to explaining why he did not believe the evidence met the standard for criminal charges, including a high probability that the Justice Department would not be able to prove Biden’s intent beyond a reasonable doubt, citing among other things an advanced age that they said made him forgetful and the possibility of “innocent explanations” for the records that they could not refute.

In other words, Biden’s bad memory saved him from being prosecuted. Biden apparently committed at least one felony but that could not be proved in court. The level of intent for willfulness would probably not be provable, so the DoJ decided not to prosecute. 

The irony of all of this is beyond stupendous. On the one hand, this report could cost Biden the election. He will be ripped to pieces by radical right authoritarian media, politicians and blowhards. But on the other hand, (i) Trump was far worse about his stolen documents crimes, (ii) he claims his memory is just fine, and (iii) once in the White House, he will terminate the stolen documents lawsuit against him. In other words, the felon Biden loses the election and avoids a having a criminal record, but the quadruple felon Trump wins the election and also avoids a having a criminal record.

Time will tell how serious this is for Biden’s candidacy, and for democracy and the rule of law in America. Right now, it looks moderately bad for Joe.

Qs: 

1. Is the rule of law an essentially contested concept? (I think it is)

2. Is bad memory Biden better than kleptocrat dictator Trump? 

3. Is this a political hack job by Hur to damage Biden as much as possible (shades of Comey dumping on Hillary in 2016)?

News bits: American CN theocracy; Vapor wins minds; Fact check update

The Friendly Atheist reports about something that has been a cherished Christian nationalist goal for years, namely Christian supremacy: 

Republicans in Arizona have introduced a bill that would ban Satanic displays in public spaces. It comes months after a Satanic display in the Iowa Capitol sent conservatives reeling, leading one man to vandalize it. (Just last week, he was charged with a hate crime.)

Titled the “Reject Escalating Satanism by Preserving Essential Core Traditions (RESPECT) Act,” SB 1279 would alter the law by adding the following line to three different parts of the state statute: 

SATANIC MEMORIALS, STATUES, ALTARS OR DISPLAYS OR ANY OTHER METHOD OF REPRESENTING OR HONORING SATAN MAY NOT BE DISPLAYED ON PUBLIC PROPERTY IN THIS STATE.

The bill was introduced by Sen. Jake Hoffman, a first-term senator and former member of the State House most (in)famous for being one of Arizona’s fake electors back in 2020 [i.e., he is a traitor].

Bills like this, though, aren’t introduced because there’s any chance of them passing. They’re introduced to placate conservative Christians who fantasize about living in a theocracy. They’re a reminder that Christians like Hoffman believe they’re superior to people who don’t share their faith, and they intend to use the government to codify that belief into law—or at least send that message.

We all knew this day was coming. One day one of these laws will pass and lawsuits will challenge this up to the USSC. At that point, the USSC could go full-blown Christian Taliban theocratic and establish Christiniaty as the supreme religion in the land. At present, that prospect looks to be at least 6 years off in the future, assuming it ever comes. After all, short of an outright declaration of supremacy, there are ways to make Christianity the supreme religious bigot in America. 

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An article The Hill published discusses the candidacy of RFK Jr. for president:

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is poised to be a spoiler in the 2024 presidential election. In a poll conducted late last year, he was supported by 22 percent of respondents and a greater number of independent voters than either President Biden or former President Trump. In January, Gallup reported that 52 percent of Americans view him favorably, a higher percentage than either Biden (41 percent) or Trump (42 percent) received.

These results no doubt reflect the popularity of the Kennedy name and dissatisfaction with the likely nominees of the major parties; ....

Kennedy has declared, without evidence, that government officials knew that vaccines cause autism but “knowingly allowed the pharmaceutical industry to poison an entire generation of American children”; vaccines are “the only medical product that is not safety-tested prior to licensure”; chemicals in the water supply are “drugging” children and influencing transgender identity; Wi-Fi and 5G cause cancer; HIV is not the true and only cause of AIDS; more school shootings happened following the widespread use of Prozac and other anti-depressant drugs; COVID vaccines contain microchips to keep track of individuals and are “the deadliest vaccines ever made”; the COVID virus is “targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people and the people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese.”

Early on, he stated that anyone who wanted to close the U.S. border with Mexico was “probably a xenophobe and maybe a racist.” More recently, in a conversation that involved Elon Musk, he promised to “try to formulate policies that will seal the border permanently.”

The article goes on at length with other examples of RFK lies and blither. He is a QAnon-level conspiracy crackpot, but despite that millions of Americans see him favorably. The question is who might be spoil the election for, DJT or Biden? That is not so clear. 

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PolitiFact reports about something most Americans probably already knew:

We published our 1,000th rated fact-check of Donald Trump.

In classic Trump fashion, he claimed in his New Hampshire primary victory speech Jan. 23 that Democrats used the COVID-19 pandemic to "cheat" in the 2020 presidential election. Unsurprisingly to our regular readers, his claim was Pants on Fire.  

American fact-checkers have never encountered a politician who shares Trump’s disregard for factual accuracy. 

Hot pants Don -- he is on fire!

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The New Republic reports about the extreme partisan cynicism that killed a border deal they all wanted:

Shocker: Republicans Admit in Private That They Killed a Good Deal

Democratic Senator Michael Bennet says GOP colleagues have privately confessed that the now-dead immigration deal was the toughest one they’d ever get

In an extraordinary spectacle, virtually all Senate Republicans joined together Wednesday to block a bipartisan bill that would have given Republicans much of what they wanted on border security. Why? Because Donald Trump told them to.

The bad faith and ill-will that authoritarian radical Repubs operate in could not be much clearer. But, some sources are reporting that Putin is happy with this outcome. Killing the border deal also killed US military support for Ukraine. In the coming weeks, Ukraine is expected to weaken and then begin a slow collapse as it runs out of military supplies and personnel. Russian vengeance will be brutal. It will be a genocide on a par with what the Nazis pulled off in the 1940s.

News bit & some thoughts

Larry Motuz mentioned this 8 minute news video about Project 2025 and how Steve Bannon characterizes what the effort intends. In short, Project 2025 is reasonably described as an effort to replace professional, mostly honest and competent, bureaucrats in the executive branch with corrupt radical right bigots loyal to Trump and his rule. They will not be loyal to the Constitution, the rule of law or civil liberties. Trump will determine what is Constitutional, legal and a civil liberty. The anti-democratic, authoritarian intent behind Project 2025 cannot be much clearer. 

I am not sure if posting content like this is more harmful than helpful. By now, most people at DP are aware of the authoritarian radical right situation and Project 2025. Polling currently indicates that most people are either aware of the bigoted authoritarian threat and fear it (most Dems), or they are mostly unaware, don't know about it, don't care, deny it or support it (most Repubs). 

What do you think, mostly helpful, mostly harmful or ambiguous? Too repetitive or not repeated enough? 

Heads up...

Getting ready to listen to the arguments in the Supreme Court this morning, regarding whether or not Trump should be allowed on the Colorado ballot.

What do you think?  Yes, No, I don’t know, Other.

Does the 14 Amendment, Section 3 apply to him? Make your argument(s).