Amy Barrett Lights Trump’s Election Theft Fire

 

-by Harvey Wasserman

Team Trump’s latest Court coup has lit the fire on his 2020 coup d’etat. With Amy Barrett joining her John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh co-conspirators, The Donald is set to steal the election. They all did it before in Bush vs Gore.

With Barrett, three of the seated Supremes were direct conspirators in the 2000 Bush v. Gore decision that gave George W. Bush the White House despite his losing the popular vote.

As of right now, with the all-but-certain compliance of Supremes Neil Gorsuch and Samuel Alito, and with the agreement of enough Republican-held state legislatures, there is no legal barrier to Trump’s second term, no matter what the voters say.

In real terms, the only practical wall against such a coup might be a massive anti-Trump national vote-- but it would have to be overwhelming enough to make his would-be dictatorship politically unsustainable.

As for the Constitutional path, the road has been cleared. The calculation is simple.

Under the original Constitution, the power to choose electors to the Electoral College that chooses the President rests with the state legislatures. In fact, in diminishing numbers, they did that from the 1789 selection of George Washington to the popular election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 (who won the presidency in a four-way race with less than 40% of the vote).

By then the rise of grassroots democratic sentiment had redefined the young nation. The choice of electors was transferred to popular state-by-state votes, to which the legislatures deferred. But they never formally surrendered.

A gumbo of customs and laws includes the 1887 Electoral Choice Act and the 12th, 14th, 20th and 25th Amendments. Armies of lawyers, scholars, high-paid advisors and dirty tricksters (hired to create chaos) have struggled to find consensus. Any number will give you a “definitive” answer.

But, as in Bush v. Gore, confusion and contention are Trump’s ultimate allies. He can win merely by denying clarity and thereby getting the final word to his Supreme Court.

It goes like this:

Biden is highly likely to win an overwhelming popular majority.

In anticipation, Trump has been screaming since 2016 that this election will be a fraud. His “trifecta” of stripped voter rolls, subverted early voting and vote by mail, and a flipped electronic vote count has been set to guarantee just that.

How deeply he can cut into the final tally of the massive public rejection coming at him remains to be seen. No matter how it goes, he will be kicking and screaming that it is fraudulent.

From there, his bar is very low. He only needs to throw enough swing states into chaos to deny Biden the needed 270 electoral votes. He does that through state legislatures ready to step in and trash the public will.

That stage was set in 2010, when a team of Koch Brother Tricksters used limitless dark money to take gerrymandered state legislatures deep into the Republican swamp. Majorities and super-majorities emerged in 29 states, including Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Arizona, Kansas, Nebraska, Montana, Iowa, Kentucky and others.

With the least excuse, any or all could cite “fraud” and “irregularities” while trashing the popular vote and appointing Electoral College delegations for Trump.

There are many complications between that and the coronation. You can Google endless legal tracts on most of them. But for Trump, just getting it to the Supreme Court means game over.

Until the ram-rodded appointment of Barrett, there seemed a glimmer that John Roberts might jump ship, deadlocking the Court at 4-4.

But Roberts, Kavanaugh and Barrett all did legal work for Bush v. Gore in Florida 2000. Clarence Thomas actually voted for it. And extreme conservatives Samuel Alito and Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch are unlikely to flinch.

So where does that leave the popular will?

If a Biden landslide is big enough, Trump could run short of states to steal. Claiming overridable chaos in tight races may be do-able in Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin.

But as Barak Obama showed in 2008 and 2012, there are limits. Even in an absurd, obsolete, thoroughly corrupted electoral system like America 2020, there are numbers beyond which Trump (who went bankrupt four times) may be unable to tread.

And thus the outcome of this election can be simply summarized: If Trump loses by big enough margins in more states than he can get his vassal legislatures to steal short of 270, his clear path to dictatorship becomes impassible.

If such an election can be fairly tabulated while denying the Supreme Court the final word, he loses.

But to do that, millions of citizens must be reinstated to the voter rolls; their ballots must be protected one-by-one at thousands of tables within the local election boards; the electronic scanning machines that will tally the votes must be saved from hacking.

None of this is rocket science. We have (hopefully) learned some hard lessons since Florida 2000.

But this coming week demands the absolute focus of everyone and anyone who cares about living in a democracy, or on a sustainable planet.






History Professor and author Harvey Wasserman co-convenes the Grassroots Emergency Election Protection Coalition. His People’s Spiral of US History awaits Trump’s departure at Solartopia.

Trump Is An Illegitimate President And Everything He Has Done In Office Must Be Undone-- Starting On Day One With The Removal Of Coney Barrett

 

Has Trump's Damnatio Memoriae Already Begun?

Amy Coney Island Baby will be an illegitimate Supreme Court justice since the Republicans broke the Senate rules to ram through a hasty confirmation [and by an illegitimate president]. The rules are clear, there can be no report from the Judiciary Committee without at least two members of the opposition party present. None were present. Biden and the new Congress absolutely must remove her the first day they take over. The confirmation process was tainted. The fascists must not be allowed to get aways with this.

But Mike Lofgren, a former Republican congressional staffer for John Kasich in the House and later the chief analyst for military spending on the Senate Budget Committee, argues in a piece for Common Dreams that Congress "must wipe the slate" by "rescind[ing] all acts signed by Trump, all of his executive orders, and all of his appointments to federal positions," including judicial appointments. He wrote that the new government the voters are empowering must prepare a plan, and the sooner the better, to address the long-term damage that Trump and his paladins have caused, "steps that go far beyond holding one man and a few of his campaign aids and appointees legally accountable (although I certainly endorse prosecuting their potential crimes)... [I]t is a time to start planning the immense job of clearing away the rubble and achieving something like public sanity. Yet a magic return to the post-Cold War status quo of a fossilized 'normalcy' that disguises festering social dysfunction is neither possible nor desirable." That status quo ante of fossilized normalcy, of course, has always been the very heart and soul of Biden's candidacy.

What Lofgren argues is that Trump was an illegitimate president, from day one, and that the Biden Adminsitration "must patiently and persuasively make every effort to demonstrate to the public that the process by which Donald Trump became president was tainted, and not sweep the unpleasant facts under the rug, as the Obama administration did with the lies and crimes of his predecessor’s invasion of Iraq." Underlying all that must come next is the point that "if the election process itself was tainted, then all of Trump’s subsequent acts in office must logically be poisoned according to a reading of the legal doctrine of “unjust enrichment”-- if Trump’s policies remain, he would still be imposing the burden of his tainted election upon the American people while continuing to benefit his co-conspirators and donors. Whether foreign interference shifted enough votes to change the [2016] election result is, besides being impossible to establish beyond doubt, irrelevant: the law does not give 'attempted' bank robbery a mulligan as compared to successful heists. The goal must be to wipe the slate clean of acts and policies of the Trump regime that by their very nature are illegitimate, as they are based not on consent of the governed but foreign interference and illegal trickery."

Dynasties throughout history have retrospectively declared as an interregnum those periods ruled over by a usurper, and the interloper’s acts and decrees were considered illegitimate.

The same applied even to more democratically determined governments. There were several European parliamentary countries that were occupied for years by Nazi Germany. After the war, these reconstructed democracies realized that, in addition to purging their systems of wartime collaborators and their policies, things could not return to the status quo of the 1930s. The slate had to be wiped clean for society to move forward.

Trump’s removal from office is only the first step. A new administration and a fresh Congress must wipe the slate in much the same manner that the Romans used damnatio memoriae (the condemnation of memory) to literally erase the record of a traitor or a usurper by removing any trace or mention of the evil doer. While it is hardly practical for an updated version to make someone an “un-person,” in that sense, the spirit of undoing their acts should be employed, both as a transition to better governance, and to serve as an admonition to those who would rule America as dictators.

A new Congress should pass a law of repeal covering the period of Trump’s regime since January 20, 2017 at noon; it would rescind all acts signed by Trump, all of his executive orders, and all of his appointments to federal positions. Congress would also specify that all government documents referring to Trump or his administration clearly carry the denotation that the period was a legal interregnum without constitutional legitimacy. This practice would follow the example of Germany’s Federal Archives; even archived official photographs from the Nazi era all contain a disclaimer warning that the original captions supplied with the photos may be “erroneous,” “biased,” or "politically extreme.”

Is this feasible? Can Congress undo judicial appointments without a formal impeachment and trial of each incumbent? Yes, Congress has the constitutional power to reorganize the judiciary; removing all of Trump’s judicial appointees would be the temporary use of such reorganizational power.

Would this seize up the functioning of government? No worse than Trump and congressional Republicans have already done. Trump’s administration has had an unprecedented number of vacancies in senior positions, and many agencies have limped along with acting directors for much of his term.

Congress, with Republicans backstopped by Trump obstructing any worthwhile initiatives, has been less productive than any Congress in living memory; it is hard to think of any law of much significance it passed other than the GOP’s beloved tax giveaway to the rich.

Doubtless, there will be exceptions to blanket nullification, but a new Congress must specifically exempt them. Likewise, it is impossible to unspend money already spent in appropriations bills, but any legislative riders attached to those bills can certainly be rescinded.

This kind of nullification will of course raise difficult issues, such as how to deal with White House and agency records generated when Trump occupied the Oval Office. Correcting the suppression of data, or in some cases its potential falsification in agencies like NASA, the EPA, or the CDC under Trump appointees, will be a matter of concern for Congress and the executive branch for years to come. The National Archives will have its work cut out for it, categorizing executive branch records, and separating the genuine from the spurious, so that an accurate history of the Trump years can be written.

Trump had his own lame version of Damnatio Memoriae

Some will object that this is not the American way, which traditionally ascribes good faith to political adversaries and lets bygones be bygones. But the old way of doing things too often degenerated into mutual backscratching and the urge to forget inconvenient facts (a syndrome that is part of what Gore Vidal called “The United States of Amnesia”). It is part of what got us to this sorry present state: too many people refused to take Donald Trump seriously, considering him either a harmless jackass or someone who when handed power would magically grow in maturity.

Others may think that a thirst for justice too readily descends into vengeance-seeking, and might compare it to regime change in banana republics. But after Watergate, the norm has been to avoid justice entirely, such that blatantly criminal acts like Iran-Contra and the Bush administration’s unconscionable lying when it committed unprovoked aggression evoke a yawn from the Great and the Good. Does Trump’s deliberate sabotage of public health measures leading to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths (when he was fully conscious from an early date of coronavirus’s danger) now merit the same treatment? When will our political establishment ever draw the line about illegal conduct by the powerful?

Denmark now, as it was 75 years ago, is an example of an enlightened and humane country, with mild criminal laws and a remarkable level of social trust. But after enduring five years of brutal occupation in World War II, thousands of collaborators were purged and 46 of the worst were executed. The least we can do is undo Trump’s misdeeds and foster a sense of national shame that too many of us took self-government for granted, while a surprising number actively tried to subvert it.

Damnatio memoriae is already playing out in towns across the Old Confederacy, including Virginia, where I live. Just up the road in Alexandria, a Confederate memorial has sat for decades, smack in the middle of the town’s main thoroughfare. Or it did until one day in June, when it vanished.

"That's A Little Unusual"

 

Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) presented a must-watch civics seminar during the Amy Coney Island Baby confirmation hearings. It was a little less than half an hour long but it really should be watched by every American, especially those wondering what all the noise is about around Coney Island Baby's nomination.

An antiquated seniority system among Senate Democrats puked up an incompetent and senile Dianne Feinstein as the completely ineffective leader of the Democratic efforts to derail ACB. Instead Feinstein, exposing Chuck Schumer as the anti-reform Senate leader he is. Whitehouse of Dick Durbin should have been leading the effort.

I had just returned to the U.S. from living almost 4 years abroad when I first heard of Dianne Feinstein. She was a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors at the time-- a putative Democrat, but in reality the conservative Republican in all but name on that body. Harvey Milk was also a member and we were close enough friends for him to rail against her after nearly every meeting. Anyway, long story short, Feinstein is conservative and corrupt and I never voted for he when she ran for supervisor, nor for mayor-- I supported Jello Biafra-- nor for governor, nor for senator. Last time she ran I worked to try to elect progressive state Senator Kevin de León, who took 5,093,942 votes to her 6,019,422 (which included many Republicans, since there was no one from their own party in the general election). She won 18 counties-- including most of the big ones-- to de León's 40 counties (including Riverside, San Bernardino, Fresno and Kern). There was plenty of monkey business from the Democratic Party establishment on her behalf but she was reelected. But that shouldn't mean a doddering fool should be placed in an important position simply because of seniority.

The Washington Post reported Feinstein's remarks as the hearing wrapped up: "This has been one of the best set of hearings that I’ve participated in. It leaves one with a lot of hopes, a lot of questions and even some ideas perhaps of good bipartisan legislation we can put together." She then thanked Lindsey Graham and walked across the room-- maskless-- and hugged him, also maskless.

“It’s time for Sen. Feinstein to step down from her leadership position on the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, said in a statement. “If she won’t, her colleagues need to intervene.”

His organization, which opposes conservative judicial nominees, accused the senator of undermining liberals’ calls for a filibuster and court reform, “straight through to thanking Republicans” for what it called “the most egregious partisan power grab” in the high court’s modern history.

...That she praised Graham’s oversight of the process, and then got up and hugged him, was simply the final provocation for many liberals.

“That she can say this about this ongoing travesty,” said Jon Lovett, a former aide to President Barack Obama and co-host of Pod Save America, “is another sad statement about how poorly represented we are by Dianne Feinstein.”

...[I]n recent years, the 87-year-old senator has often gotten more attention for her gaffes. Last year, she was panned on Saturday Night Live for a now-infamous interaction in which she dismissed a group of schoolchildren asking her to advocate for the Green New Deal.





In 2018, during the Senate confirmation hearings for Brett M. Kavanaugh, she drew intense scrutiny for waiting weeks to publicize sexual assault accusations against him from Christine Blasey Ford. The California Democratic Party denied her its endorsement that year, though she easily beat back a more liberal challenger.

Even before the Senate took up another nomination this month, Democrats expressed concerns that Feinstein-- the oldest lawmaker in her chamber and the second-oldest in Congress-- had grown too disengaged to fight the GOP tooth-and-nail over the future of Ginsburg’s seat.

Republicans, too, denounced Feinstein, seizing on comments she made about Barrett’s religious “dogma” during the judge’s confirmation proceedings for the 7th District U.S. Court of Appeals.

...[M]any observers on the left gave her failing marks. She did not, for example, put up much of a battle against Graham when the committee was not at quorum, they pointed out.

“I don’t care that Feinstein and Graham are friends,” wrote Susan Hennessey, executive editor of the Lawfare blog. “I care that Feinstein catastrophically mismanaged the hearings, was outwitted without realizing it, and did a grave disservice to the public.”

Others slammed Feinstein for offering positive praise to Graham as he is locked in a tight race against Jaime Harrison, a former South Carolina Democratic Party chair who has shattered fundraising records in recent months.

Many began floating ideas for ways to force her out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, especially if the Democrats take the White House: Vote her out. Replace her with Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) Appoint her to a Cabinet position. Send her to Paris!vv Or, as the comedian Billy Eichner said: “Time to retire.”

And, by the way, ProgressivePunch has given Feinstein's voting record a solid "F," only 13 Democrats voting against progressive roll calls more frequently-- none of them in safe blue seats the way she is. Please watch White House's tutorial and imagine what might have happened if Schumer had appointed him ranking member instead of Feinstein.

Greasing the Bench

 

-by Skip Kaltenheuser

John Grisham, meister of legal thrillers, must look at the Dark Money flying about Supreme Court nominees and think, “You stinking thieves, give me my book plots back!”

In a logical world, in a sane US Senate resistant to corruption, Senators would give the bum's rush to nominees to the Supreme Court who are being promoted with millions, tens of millions, in dark money. Dark money, funding not readily traced to the actual donors, slithering through a labyrinth of shell corporations, donor trusts and 501(c)(4) organizations. And slithering around Senators voting on judicial nominee confirmations, not just for the Supreme Court but all Federal judges, whispering rewards and threats when they’re up for re-election. Dark Money groups like the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, flowing into groups like the Federalist Society, which Trump brags picks his judges, and the closely connected Judicial Crisis Network.

During Neil Gorsuch’s confirmation hearings for the Supremes, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), asked Gorsuch who his angels were who provided seven million dollars to first deny Obama nominee Merrick Garland and then later drop ten million promoting Gorsuch to the bench. Gorsuch’s reply was that if Whitehouse wanted to know who they were, he should ask them. As if Gorsuch had no idea. And no idea of exactly what his hooded benefactors want from courts. In backing Brett Kavanaugh, one dark donation alone provided seventeen million. Many millions are now swirling to promote Amy Coney Barrett. Not to play down the importance of issues like reproductive rights, or the emphasis on preserving even the most meager opportunities for medical coverage, but it’s not hot-button issues that attract the incognito Big Money to such legal eagles of the Ayn Rand brotherhood. It’s their pro-corporate, anti-regulatory, anti-labor and anti-consumer histories. It’s their willingness to pay close attention to the Amicus briefs from the Big Money’s minions. It’s about suppressing the vote, rigging democracy with gerrymandering, etc.... It’s about insulating industries like fossil fuels, and their Wall Street investors, from accountability for the myriad pollution they knowingly cause. It’s about protecting the interests of those at the top.

And when the banks start making wholesale property grabs again, it’ll be about ushering them along as they ride roughshod over people, as the floodgates open for those tumbling into a fractured, pro-creditor bankruptcy system, peppered with self-serving “trustees”. Wait and see.

Redefining The Supreme Court by Nancy Ohanian

As Tom Neuburger recently detailed, Barrett has rung one alarm bell after another that she will be a grim reaper of the rights and protections of workers when they conflict with the Big Money, and injured consumers have little to rejoice about. In her brief time on the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit Barrett quickly joined the ilk of judges who are black-robed crowbars for prying wide the wealth gap via a legal assembly line of pro-corporate decisions.

David Sirota recently revealed an important case coming before the Supreme Court involving state and municipal government lawsuits against Shell Oil, for which Barrett’s father was a lawyer for decades. Oil companies want the Court to require climate cases be heard in the more corporate-friendly federal courts. Asked about climate change during her hearings, Barrett’s reply was that she does not have “firm views”, “...I’m not really in a position to offer any kind of informed opinion on what I think causes global warming.” How convenient. Isn’t that special? Cue the Church Lady.





During Barrett’s confirmation hearings, Senator Whitehouse schooled the Senate with this riveting presentation. Some of it drew from this 29 page treatise he published in the Harvard Law School Journal on Legislation. Both are worth the time. Whitehouse revealed 80 cases at the Supreme Court involving an identifiable Republican donor. Astoundingly, damningly, all were decided in the right-wing’s favor in 5-4 decisions. Many whittle down the concept of civil juries. Because why would fat cats suffer standing before a jury not of their board members? Eighty five-four partisan decisions. People with track records of defying odds like that wouldn’t be allowed through the door of a casino. What the hell are they doing on the Supreme Court?

But Whitehouse is moving the right direction, pushing reforms such as disclosure of big donors to groups that run political advertisements supporting or opposing judicial nominations. He seeks to add a few teeth to the Federal Election Campaign Act to cover judicial nominations and to report spending to the Federal Election Commission, (which could use any dentures it can get).

More generally, Democrats are also having their rolls in the hay with Dark Money. If doing things for principled reasons, why should their benefactors be secret? It’s a gutless position, and chips away at the moral high ground smart Democrats should lay claim to. No reason to go down that road unless you’re a Washington grifter and/or peddler of influence, unless you don’t want your motivations for giving or collecting money laid bare. Don’t Democrats realize voters would take note if they made a point of eschewing money from the shadows? Probably. But that’s not the road to riches. Look at the establishment alarm at Bernie's independence from the Big Money. Can’t have that. Society will crumble.

At the creation of the United States, elites were not in short supply but giant, powerful corporations weren’t a thing. Small corporations were created to develop infrastructure, but were tightly controlled by local political authorities. Now, corporate behemoths stride the land, including those connected to international corporations, often as US subsidiaries, even of foreign banks. Some are out of central casting for movies about dystopian futures. Much of political Washington floats on money these corporate interests pour in through ever more inventive ways to those addicted to it, tapping for fresh veins like junkies. Plenty of good people in Washington, but the city is increasingly a magnet for those who will do anything for money, for whom rationalization is an art form. Sooner or later they’re very well-connected. One doesn’t go up against one, on many issues one goes up against large swaths of them, including party leaders talking out of both sides of their mouths.

In 2010, Pam and Russ Martens, of the must-read site Wall Street on Parade, showed that Charles Koch of Koch Industries, for which fossil fuels are central, is joined at the hip with Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund. The Martens explored the money behind a race-baiting, Islamophobic film on DVDs circulated through major newspapers and direct mail as the 2008 election approached. Back then they wrote, “...the far right has assembled a $6 billion interlinked machine of think-tanks, lobbyists, PACs, astroturf front groups, media sycophants, endowed professorships, state-based political fronts and now even their own centralized headhunter; all to throw us off the scent that the real threat to the poor and middle class in America is corporate domination."

It’s impressive, how so few people could persist in causing so much harm, from the climate or to our judiciary.

“When you find hypocrisy in the daylight, look for the power in the shadows,” said Whitehouse. From his paper’s conclusion: “...Enormous effort has been put by large and powerful interests into a fifty-year project to capture the courts. These interests seek to maintain, and indeed further entrench, the corporate-friendly outcomes into which they have invested hundreds of millions of dollars...Dark money is a plague anywhere in ourpolitical system. Citizens deprived of knowing the identities of political forces are deprived of power, treated as pawns to be pushed around by anon-ymous money and message. Dark money encourages bad behavior, creatingthe “tsunami of slime” that has washed into our political discourse. Dark money corrupts and distorts politics. Bad as all that is, dark money around courts is even worse. The chances of corruption and scandal explode. The very notion that courts can be captured undercuts the credibility upon which courts depend. It is surprising that the Judiciary has not come to its own defense in these matters… As Justice Brandeis also said, 'If we desire respect for the law we must first make the law respectable.'”

And the influence diseases run rampant in the States

The purchase of the courts isn’t only about the Supremes or even the rest of the Federal judiciary. State courts are where the action is for the vast majority of Americans, and also where many Federal judges began. Citizens United revved up the ability to capture elected judges, or Governors who appoint them, by well-heeled business interests and their lawyers. Allow me to slip in this essay I did for Barron’s over six years ago. As with most tales of political influence, things only get worse.

IN CITIZENS UNITED V. FEC, FIVE JUSTICES of the U.S. Supreme Court found that the First Amendment protection of free speech prohibited Congress from banning political advocacy by organizations, including pushing for the election or defeat of candidates. Tightly blindfolded, Justice Anthony Kennedy concluded, “Independent expenditures, including those made by corporations, do not give rise to corruption or the appearance of corruption.” Justice Kennedy should observe what’s happening to state courts.

Citizens United was a campaign finance accelerant, and not just in federal races. It threatens the integrity of state courts, which hear 95% of the nation’s cases.

At the state level, a majority of judges and justices stand in some form of election. These elections are the minor leagues of U.S. politics, even more vulnerable to the power of money than elections for Congress and state legislatures. Donors who try to buy laws and lawmakers are interested in buying the interpretation of the laws, as well.

A poll conducted by 20/20 Insight last year found that nine of 10 American voters believe both direct contributions and inde- pendent spending affect courtroom decisions. Earlier polls have consistently shown citizens losing confidence in the courts. Other polls show sizable cohorts of state judges and justices believing decisions are affected.

It’s not just past contributors calling the tunes. It’s anticipation of getting contributions in the future, perhaps in a run for a higher court, as well as the chilling fear of being attacked by well-financed opponents. Though big majorities of judges say they want fixes for the campaign finance arms race, more of them are playing the game. Influence mischief was under way long before Citizens United, but a report from the Brennan Center for Justice, the National Institute on Money in State Politics, and Jus- tice at Stake shows the 2010 Citizens United ruling’s rising impact on judicial races.

There was a 50% rise over the prior record, of 2003-2004, in independent spending by interest groups in state Supreme Court races in 2011-2012. Spending that was not controlled by candidates or their campaign committees was 27% of total campaign spending, not counting spending by the political parties. More than a third of all funds spent on state supreme court races came from seven special-interest groups and three state political parties. Television ads backing candidates for high courts took a huge leap—over a quarter funded by special interests, much of it attack ads involving hot button issues and wild distortions of controversial rulings.

You might think that a judge should recuse himself if a party to a case contributed to the judge or spent money on supportive election materials, and 92% of the people responding to a Justice at Stake/Brennan Center for Justice poll would agree with you. But the grounds for a judge’s recusal are judged by the judge.

The U.S. Supreme Court took a half-step toward a higher standard in a case from the West Virginia Supreme Court. Anticipating an important case against A.T. Massey Coal Co., Massey’s CEO flooded money into ads attacking an incumbent justice, who lost the election. The winning beneficiary of the Massey money refused to recuse himself when the case reached the state Supreme Court. A majority opinion in 2009 by Justice Kennedy said that while not every litigant contribution requires recusal, “extreme facts” can create a “probability of bias” violating due process. On rehearing, the West Virginia court determined the case should have been filed in Virginia.

Throughout the land, significant campaign contributions haven’t generated many recusals. In some states, including Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, half of the cases before the highest court involved litigants who contributed to justices. John Grisham needn’t fear running short of plots based on reality.

Joanna Shepherd, an economist and professor at Emory University School of Law, wrote a study for the American Constitution Society examining the relationship between campaign contributions and state Supreme Court decisions in 2010-12. After excluding cases in which two businesses squared off against each other, Shepherd found strong patterns: The more contributions justices garner from business interests, the more likely their decisions will favor those interests.

Donor disclosure offers little solace. Dark money often travels through layers of obscurity, including through Super PACs and through 501(c)(4) “social welfare” organizations that needn’t disclose their donors. Anyway, voters show limited interest or limited ability to sort out conflicts of campaign interest. There are over 50 judges on a ballot in Harris County (Houston), Texas; such elections tend to be straight partisan votes.

However one comes down on whether the First Amendment sanctions unlimited spending on campaigns, judicial elections are different. And if judicial elections aren’t different, judges ought to be. States should insist that judges recuse themselves in cases involving their contributors and their campaign supporters. That would ease the arms race.

To thwart independent expenditures and dark money, the states should move from elections toward merit-based appointments. Insulate the process from politics, using a diverse, professional selection committee.

A U.S. Supreme Court justice discussed the loss of confidence in the courts in a 1999 interview on Frontline: “We weren’t talking about this 30 years ago because we didn’t have money in elections. Money in elections presents us with a tremendous challenge, a tremendous problem, and we are remiss if we don’t at once address it and correct it...if an attorney gives money to a judge with the expectation that the judge will rule...in his client’s interest.... It’s corrosive of judicial independence.” Justice Anthony Kennedy might review these words before writing his next campaign-finance decision. They’re his.

Give judges gavels; take away their tin cups.

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

It's pretty stunning to some people that a nominee to the Supreme Court or any court would evade a question by saying they "don't recall." It was a tactic used in the Watergate hearings and led to perjury charges in a case or two. More recently such suspect individuals as Jeff Sessions and Scooter Libby have said they "don't recall" during Congressional hearings, but a nominee to the Supreme Court? At a confirmation hearing? The Kavanaugh Circus wasn't far enough?

What Amy Coney Barrett did crosses a line even in corrupt Washington quarters. It's the kind of thing accused criminals resort to, not court nominees, unless they are the kind of judges that might as well be wearing a "For Sale" sign. In that sense, perhaps we should thank Back Alley Amy for making it clear as to what kind of Supreme Court "justice" she wants to be.

People in my generation first became aware of that slimy loophole back in those aforementioned Watergate hearings when Richard Nixon's tapes revealed him advising a fellow criminal that, when encountering an incriminating question, they could "always say you don't recall." When Amy Coney Barrett chose to take that approach to answering a question from Senator Kamala Harris at her confirmation hearing Tuesday, the question was whether or not Barrett had heard or seen Trump make comments about wanting a justice who would vote to end the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare. Barrett's answer, "I don't recall hearing about or seeing such statements" was legal but also beyond the pale. You'd have to have been literally, not just figuratively, living under a rock to have missed Trump's multiple statements about the matter. Barrett also might as well have been a mobster taking the 5th and saying "I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may incriminate me" or asserted Attorney-Client privilege and just said that Trump is her client, which, for all intents and purposes, he is, right up to representing him in any future election or tax evasion cases. But, make no mistake, Amy Coney Barrett is officially adopting a mobster lifestyle. In that, she is no different than anyone who has willingly entered the orbit of Donald Trump, his party, and his whole crime family. She tainted herself the moment she sat down with him. She has now officially signed up with gangsters and grifters, and embraces those for whom such things as racism, having anti-choice, anti-LGBTQ, anti-voting rights, and anti-healthcare views, and making excuses for domestic terrorists are not, to say the least, deal breakers when it comes to support or voting. Amy Coney Barrett is a perversion, a perversion of alleged American ideals, and a would-be perversion of justice.

Amy Coney Barrett, Liar and Climate Denier, Disqualifies Herself for Any Position Involving Factual Evaluation

 

by Thomas Neuburger

It couldn't be more simple. When Notre Dame Law professor and Trump Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett was asked at her Senate hearing about climate change (one of the few times senators questioned her on this subject), she had this to say:

“I don’t think I am competent to opine on what causes global warming or not.”

Every human on the planet is "competent to opine" on what causes global warming. Every human on the planet knows what causes global warming. We are causing global warming, and we will drive most of our children off of the planet and to their graves if we don't start addressing it in a meaningful and effective way. 

Here's her full quote, courtesy of this piece by David Sirota and Andrew Perez:

“I don’t think I am competent to opine on what causes global warming or not. I don’t think that my views on global warming or climate change are relevant to the job I would do as a judge, nor do I feel like I have views that are informed enough and I haven’t studied scientific data. I’m not really in a position to offer any kind of informed opinion on what I think causes global warming.”

All of this is disqualifying on its face — not just her denialism, but this as well:

I don’t think that my views on global warming or climate change are relevant to the job I would do as a judge.

If confirmed before the election, she could help decide a landmark case involving a fossil fuel firm, Shell Oil, for which her father worked as a long-time lawyer:

Less than two weeks before the confirmation hearings, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by Royal Dutch Shell and other oil giants that are being sued by cities and states for the climate damage those companies created. Shell and the others are asking justices to allow the case to be heard in federal court.

In 2018, Inside Climate News reported that “internal company documents uncovered by a Dutch news organization show that the oil giant Shell had a deep understanding, dating at least to the 1980s, of the science and risks of global warming caused by fossil fuel emissions.” 

Barrett’s father, Michael, has written that “most of my legal career was spent as an attorney with Shell in New Orleans.”

Her "views on global warming" will be "relevant to the job" she does almost immediately, and hundreds of times more as well in the 40 years she could reasonably expect to serve.

Again, a liar, disqualified by her own testimony from any judicial position involving evaluation based on facts.

Laughing On the Way to the Gallows

Twitter had fun with her answer, though the consequences of it — a climate denier on the Court — will be no fun at all. Bill McKibben's quip is above. Here are a few others:

Sunrise Movement: "I have read things about gravity. I would not say I have firm views on it ... this answer is disqualifying."

Chris Andrea Robert: "Is the Earth flat or round? I've read things, I would not say I have firm views on it."

Gallows humor. Graveyard jests. Grinning on the way to the needle and the rope. 

As Eric Holthaus wrote, "It’s ... a sign of a complete failure of our democracy – to be confirming a climate denier to a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court during a moment when urgent climate action is an existential priority."

Notre Dame Helps Trump Put a Climate Denier on the Court

And a complete failure of the University of Notre Dame as well, which appears, both institutionally and from its Law School, to fully support her nomination.  

Barrett certainly has the support of it president, Fr. John Jenkins (Barrett is "a person of the utmost integrity who, as a jurist, acts first and foremost in accord with the law"), and the Dean of its Law School (she's "an absolutely brilliant legal scholar and jurist [and] one of the most thoughtful, open-minded...people I have ever met"). 

In 2017, when she was nominated to the 7th District Court, she had 100% support of its Law School faculty. A 2020 letter signed by 88 faculty members requested that she "halt the nomination process until after Election Day," but no faculty members of the Law School signed on.

This tells you more about Fr. Jenkins, the makeup of its Law School, and, frankly, Notre Dame in general, than it does about Amy Coney Barrett, who doesn't have the guts to say word one about the greatest challenge facing our species — and her children — in the 40 years she'll sit permanently on the Court.

A Complete Failure of Democracy

Speaking as a graduate of the university in question myself, I'm beyond appalled — and appalled by the Democrats' lack of response at the hearing as well. 

Where are their cries that in 2020 a climate denier is unqualified to sit on any federal bench, much less the Supreme Court? And where is the first question from the Democrats about the pending Shell Oil case?

Holthaus is right: this is a failure of our democracy. The consequences will be great, and God help Amy Coney Barrett if her God is just.

 

The Social Justice Criticism of Amy Coney Barrett Hides All of the Rest of What's Wrong with Her Nomination

Donald Trump's next gift to the nation, strong pro-corporate Supreme Court Justice nominee Amy Coney Barrett

by Thomas Neuburger

It's difficult not to be cynical about the Democratic Party these days. Their leaders talk like Donald Trump is the worst threat to America since Hitler, then grant his almost every wish — except the wish he floated recently about giving money to struggling Americans. That wish was withheld so he "wouldn't gain an electoral advantage" by giving money to some without also giving money to others on Nancy Pelosi's wish list — these people, for example — or so I hear.

But their lack of struggle against the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett is concerning. First they appeared to give up — "Faced with a moment with apocalyptic implications, leading Democrats fall somewhere on a spectrum that runs from oblivious to resigned. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) wants to appeal to the GOP’s 'sense of decency' and Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) is complaining about procedural maneuvers that could delay the confirmation process," write David Segal and Zephyr Teachout in the NY Daily News.

Then, under pressure from progressives and others, they promised to "do something" — "Let me be clear," announced Chuck Schumer to his caucus, "if Leader McConnell and Senate Republicans move forward with this, then nothing is off the table for next year" — but they still didn't specify what or when, unless Schumer's "next year" is a promise of surrender this year.

This lack of struggle against Barrett's nomination is a problem for many reasons. One is the effect she will have on the nation's social justice agenda, currently under heavy conservative attack. An Internet search turns up any number of links related to Barrett's likely views on abortion, gay rights, and the Court's recent attempts to craft a "religious freedom" exception to any of the country's laws. (I truly hope, if this exception becomes widely recognized, that progressives take full disruptive advantage of it.)

But as bad as her rulings on justice issues will likely be — and they are likely to be very bad — the most sweeping changes will be those directly affecting the economy and nation's hundreds of millions of working people, almost every single person in the country, in other words.

As a foretaste, consider this recent ruling authored by Barrett from the bench of the 7th U.S. District Court:

Amy Coney Barrett wrote the 7th Circuit opinion last month siding with Grubhub to say drivers cannot press for minimum wage and overtime pay as a class action, they must use arbitration agreements, a decision that limits gig workers across the country. https://t.co/WG5DOaQk9g

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) September 25, 2020

The case for dismissal turns on a technicality that could have been decided either way, and it's just the tip of the iceberg in Barrett's rulings. It's also a perfect example of what will soon come from John Roberts' newly reconstituted, very corporate-friendly Court majority. 

Roberts himself is the perfect "business friendly" justice for the Right to have installed on the bench. Barrett will be his perfect complement. A new report looked at Barrett's rulings and found that "Judge Amy Coney Barrett has faced at least fifty-five cases in which citizens took on corporate entities in front of her court and 76% of the time she sided with the corporations. She clearly sided with people in just 11 of these identified cases." (The report lists each case.)

A Common Dreams write-up of the report found these troubling examples:

• Barrett ruled in favor of a major pharma company over a woman who was forced to get a hysterectomy following a faulty IUD.
• Barrett voted against rehearing a case one judge said upheld the “Separate But Equal” doctrine on racial segregation.
• Barrett ruled that protections against age discrimination for employees do not also extend to job applicants.

Barrett will, in short, look for any reason, however razor-thin, to deny workers relief from the predations of corporate America. As David Sirota wrote recently in the Guardian:

Only a month before Barrett was nominated to the high court by Donald Trump, she delivered a ruling that could help corporations avoid paying overtime to gig workers. That ruling followed her other rulings limiting the enforcement of age-discrimination laws, restricting the government’s power to punish companies that mislead consumers and curtailing consumers’ rights against predatory debt collectors.

The UCLA law professor Adam Winkler said that if Barrett is confirmed, the consequences could reverberate for decades. “This would really push the court over the top ... You would have a very strong 6-3 conservative majority. And unlike previous times where conservatives had most of the seats on the court, none of the conservatives on [this] court really swing liberal on business or corporate power issues."

The nation was already near to breaking before the pandemic. Economic pain and its secondary effects — despair, addiction, suicide — haunt the mass of American workers and arguably led to the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

Now, in 2020, their backs and spirit will surely be broken through by the millions of lost jobs, most permanently, and the brave new post-Covid economy, an economy where Jeff Bezos can add $87 billion to his fortune and two-laptop professionals can work at home, while those who deliver food to them ... starve.

As Amy Coney Barrett's GrubHub ruling shows, her elevation to the bench will mean none of our working class "heroes" will get an ounce of economic relief if it has to come from the pocket of a billionaire.

The cries for social justice, important as they are, are drowning out the equally important cries for economic justice and relief. Is it "all hands on deck" time, Ms. Pelosi? Mr. Schumer? It soon will be for those to whom the Democratic Party is selling itself as salvation. I think if the Party wants to avoid growing a massive audience for the next Donald Trump — the better smarter one, a Trump who actually wants to rule, and can — they should heed those cries as well.

As Sirota says, if Democrats don't pursue a "this is a hill to die on" strategy (my phrase), "the court could become a corporate star chamber for the rest of our lives – which is exactly what business interests want."

I pity the fool (to coin a phrase) that has to live in the nation they will create.

  

Midnight Meme Of The Day!

 

by Noah

Donald J. Biohazard just had to hold another one of his patented Super-Spreader events to proudly present the latest Republican manifestation of their anti-health care, anti-women, and anti-voting rights stances. He couldn't help himself. He couldn't miss an opportunity to expose people, even those who support him, to a life threatening virus. Since then, the number of attendees who are testing positive for COVID-19 is growing by the day. but, that was nowhere near enough for the Dear Leader of the Republican Death Cult! He did his little joyride. He did his pathetic and defiant Evita impersonation from the White House balcony (See Thursday's Midnight Meme) and he demanded that Congress halt all discussions about any COVID-19 aid bills that would save families, jobs, businesses, and lives. No, instead, while he and his Death Cult Party are pushing an effort before the Supreme Court that is meant to end Obamacare and remove health care from at least 25 million Americans, he wants the $enate to work on nothing but confirming his Back Alley Amy so she can vote against Obamacare, overturn Roe Vs. Wade, and steal the election and make his dream of being "President For Life" come true. No, he doesn't see any irony in that title.

The Coathanger Lady's Judiciary Committee confirmation hearings are still scheduled to begin on Monday, even with Death Cult committee members Thom Tillis (North Carolina) and Mike Lee (Utah) having tested positive, As of this writing, they expect to be out of quarantine in time; maybe in time to infect some of the over 80 years old $enators on the committee like Chuck Grassley (Iowa), Diane Feinstein (California), and Patrick Leahy (Vermont).

Can the sale of blood red MAGA coathangers on the Trump and Republican merch sites be far behind? It's who they are.

How Extreme Is Speaking In Tongues Handmaid Amy Coney Island? She Belongs On The Bench As Much As Trump Belongs In The Oval Office

Before dawn on Wednesday, Frank Schaeffer, the world's leading expert on the sociology (and pathology) of evangelism, was up and tweeting. "It wasn't enough for Trump to nominate a pro-life Catholic to the Court," he wrote. "He had to pick a Catholic who is also a part of and leader in, an extremist protestant-style Pentecostal cult of domination and control that even most evangelicals find crazy. Amy Coney Barrett: Nutcase." Yep... a nut case who is better suited to be a minister in a fringe religious cult than a judge on any kind of a court of law, let alone the U.S. Supreme Court. It makes sense that the worst president in history would pick the worst judicial nominees in history. And Coney Island is the worst yet.

On Tuesday, the Christian Science Monitor published a deep dive into Coney Island by Henry Glass, who began by explaining the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, an arm of the ADF, the Alliance Defending Freedom, which aims to train Christian lawyers to "foster legal systems that fully protect our God-given rights." Glass noted that "The program’s student and teacher alumni now include dozens of law clerks, a U.S. senator, and at least six federal judges-- most notably Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who could soon become the youngest member of the U.S Supreme Court. The reach of the ADF and other conservative Christian legal organizations is further still. If Judge Barrett is confirmed, it would represent a culmination of decades-long efforts by the conservative Christian legal movement to move from the periphery of the legal world into the mainstream. And it is coming at the same time that fewer Americans-- just 65%-- identify themselves as Christian."

The ADF is one of several richly funded conservative Christian legal organizations (CCLOs) that constitute that movement, training lawyers, arguing-- and winning-- high-profile religious liberty cases in the courts, and increasing their influence on policy and politics. That movement is now reaching maturity, and law in the U.S. is thus poised to shift-- starting perhaps as soon as the Supreme Court term that began this week-- substantially toward favoring religious liberty over all other rights, legal experts say.

Indeed, among the movement’s stated goals is the protection of free exercise of religion as a fundamental right above all others. Such a shift in the law could prompt the diminishment of other rights, such as abortion access and same-sex marriage. CCLO attorneys, for their part, say that they just want to ensure that courts give religious beliefs the respect and protection they deserve.

“True tolerance, where people of different views and faiths can peacefully coexist-- that is ultimately what we’re advocating for,” says Matt Sharp, senior counsel for the ADF.

Judge Barrett, a former professor at Notre Dame Law School whom President Donald Trump appointed to the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017, is expected to begin her confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court next week. A devout Roman Catholic, she has no direct affiliations with any CCLOs, and in her brief time on the 7th Circuit she has not developed a deep record on religious liberty or other rights, like abortion and same-sex marriage, with which it has often conflicted.

If confirmed, she would join a conservative high court that has been incrementally expanding free exercise protections along with other rights that conservative Christians see as limiting their religious freedom.

CCLOs began to form around this issue decades ago, says Jordan Sekulow, executive director of another leading Christian legal organization, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ). The establishment clause in the First Amendment, which prohibits the establishment of religion by Congress, “had basically eaten the free exercise of religion away.”

“It shouldn’t be more important than any other First Amendment right, but it was trampled on,” he adds. “And I wouldn’t say it’s come back.”

...The conservative religious movement began in the late 1970s and ’80s as a reaction to what it saw as an erosion of traditional family values and government intrusion on religion-- most notably to end racial segregation in Christian schools. But groups like Jerry Falwell Sr.’s Moral Majority still struggled to break into Washington’s elite circles.

“They’ve been outsiders to the mainstream of the conservative legal movement,” says Joshua Wilson, a political scientist at the University of Denver who studies the Christian conservative movement.

So, he adds, “they developed their own institutions and resources to make a parallel conservative Christian movement.”

Conservative legal groups like the ADF, ACLJ, the Becket Fund, the First Liberty Institute, and the Thomas More Society were all formed in the 1990s.

Most of these groups are tax-exempt 501(c)3 nonprofits, and thus not required to publicly identify donors. But they are well funded, with the ADF raising almost $61 million, the ACLJ almost $23 million, and the Becket Fund almost $7 million, according to their most recent 12-month tax-filing period. (For comparison, Lambda Legal, a national nonprofit that advocates for LGBTQ rights, raised just over $17 million in the 12 months of its most recent tax filing.)

And unlike their common opponents on the left, conservative Christian legal groups have always focused entirely on religious liberty issues.

“They have a longing for what religious liberty protections were before 1990,” says Katherine Franke, a professor at Columbia Law School and founder-director of the school’s Law, Rights and Religion Project.

“They’re trying to have the courts reread the Constitution in a way that elevates religious liberty rights over all other individual rights, as well as the public interest.”

“Positive change”

Some of the Supreme Court’s more conservative justices agree. This week, in a short opinion declining to hear a case related to same-sex marriage, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito criticized Obergefell v. Hodges, the court’s 2015 ruling legalizing same-sex marriage, as having “ruinous consequences for religious liberty” by “choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right.”

The court’s recent grappling with religious liberty claims has focused primarily on two issues: religious institutions’ ability to access state funding, and religious individuals’ ability to exercise their beliefs around sexual norms in public life and in their private business.

For the most part, the court has narrowly favored religious liberty. Religious institutions and businesses have been granted exemptions from contraception mandates. Religious schools have been given access to state funding. A state has been rebuked for punishing a Christian cake shop owner for refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding.

Many of these cases have been pushed by CCLOs.

Of the 11 cases it has been lead counsel for at the Supreme Court, the Becket Fund has won nine. The ADF had more Supreme Court wins in First Amendment cases than any other litigant between 2013 and 2017, according to Empirical SCOTUS. In every religious liberty case the court hears, there are usually friend-of-the-court briefs filed by CCLOs.

The hundreds of mostly young, conservative federal judges appointed by President Trump-- not least Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh-- have certainly helped in that regard, say lawyers for conservative Christian groups.

“We’ve seen a lot of positive change on the courts,” says Michael Berry, general counsel for the First Liberty Institute. “By and large the president [has a strong] record of nominating originalist, constitutionalist judges.”

And among the more than 200 judges the Senate has confirmed are six who are alumni of conservative Christian legal organizations. Those six include Kyle Duncan, a 5th Circuit Court of Appeals judge who was general counsel for the Becket Fund, and  Lawrence VanDyke, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge who was a Blackstone fellow and listed by the ADF as an “allied attorney.”

Judge Barrett’s short tenure on the 7th Circuit hasn’t brought any rulings from her on issues like abortion, marriage equality, or free exercise rights. But she is a popular nominee for social conservatives, and if confirmed would likely align with the court’s most conservative justices.

...If you ask CCLO attorneys what the “end” is, most say it’s for the free exercise of religion to have the protection and deference of a fundamental right.





In a landmark 1990 opinion, the late Justice Antonin Scalia explained why courts have chosen to not do that.

The case, Employment Division v. Smith, concerned whether it was unconstitutional to deny state unemployment benefits to two Native American men for ingesting peyote, a controlled substance, as part of their religious ceremonies.

But obligating someone to obey a law only when it coincides with their religious beliefs, wrote Justice Scalia, “permit[s] him, by virtue of his beliefs, ‘to become a law unto himself.’”

The case this term concerns a Catholic agency being banned from the city of Philadelphia’s foster program because it refuses to license same-sex couples. The court-- which by the scheduled Nov. 4 oral argument may include a newly appointed Justice Barrett-- could overturn Scalia’s opinion in Smith. As a result, it could be much easier for religious objectors to gain exemptions from laws.

“Some religious exemptions are appropriate and necessary,” says Professor Franke, the Columbia Law School scholar. But “they need to be given sparingly, or else we really undermine democracy itself.”

Special protection for religious liberty is especially needed now “to ensure that those viewed as ‘out of step’ [with social and cultural change] are not effectively expelled from society,” writes Catholic Archbishop Jerome Listecki of Milwaukee in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the case.

“That anticipated time is already here,” he adds, quoting Justice Alito’s dissent in Obergefell that those with “out of step” views “will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.”

Persecution of Christians is a major concern for CCLOs and jurists like Justice Alito. In one concurrence last term, he compared the anti-Catholic animus that motivated 18th-century laws banning public funding for religious schools to the racial animus that motivated Jim Crow laws. He illustrated the point with a political cartoon from the time depicting Catholic priests as crocodiles slithering toward schoolchildren.

The court struck down that state ban, continuing a trend of slowly but steadily strengthening free exercise protections. This term that pace of change could accelerate-- especially if Judge Barrett is confirmed.

Washington Post reporters Emma Brown, Jon Swaine and Michelle Boorstein wrote that while Trump's Coney Island Baby "has faced questions about how her Catholic faith might influence her jurisprudence, she has not spoken publicly about her involvement in People of Praise, a small Christian group founded in the 1970s and based in South Bend, Indiana." She admits she has served on the board of a network of private Christian schools affiliated with the group. "The organization, however, has declined to confirm that she is a member. In recent years, it removed from its website editions of a People of Praise magazine-- first those that included her name and photograph and then all archives of the magazine itself." Her role in the super-secretive, extremist organization, for all her efforts to hide it, is starting to seep out now that Trump is trying to push her onto the Supreme Court. In 2010 "she held the title of handmaid,' a leadership position for women in the community."

She comes from a territory where reigious bigots feel they are being persecuted if they can't use their "religious beliefs" to justify breaking the law and persecuting and oppressing minorities. Amy Coney Bigot is the very definition of someone who doesn't belong on the bench.

[W]hile in law school, Barrett lived at the South Bend home of People of Praise’s influential co-founder Kevin Ranaghan and his wife, Dorothy, who together helped establish the group’s male-dominated hierarchy and view of gender roles. The group was one of many to grow out of the charismatic Christian movement, which sought a more intense and communal religious experience by embracing such practices as shared living, faith healing and speaking in tongues.

Barrett’s ties to the group, which has conservative stances on the role of women in society and other social issues, did not come to light until after she was questioned by senators considering her nomination to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit in 2017. Senators are preparing to question her next week over her nomination to the high court.

...People of Praise was established in 1971 by Ranaghan and Paul DeCelles, then young academics at the University of Notre Dame. It was formed as a “covenant community,” in which members looking for close community promise to abide by a common agreement.

While People of Praise is open to all Christians, the vast majority are Catholic, like Barrett. At the time the group was founded, many denominations-- including the Catholic Church-- looked warily at groups that adopted different practices and created insular, separate communities. That wariness has largely subsided.

...The community was led by men, who taught members to run their families according to their interpretation of biblical views of gender roles, according to former members and group documents.

“Women were homemakers; they were there to support their husbands,” one former member said in an interview. “My dad was the head of the household and the decision-maker.”

A person who was raised in the community said she was instructed by elders not to “emasculate” her male peers by getting the better of them in conversation. “I was made aware of the difference from a young age,” the person said. “I was aware that it would have been better if I had been born a boy.”

...A 1986 community handbook obtained by The Post said each member is “personally accountable to God for his or her decisions,” but also emphasized “obedience to authority and submission to headship.”

Members are typically assigned a “head” to give them spiritual leadership and guidance on life matters such as buying a car or finding a romantic partner. Younger men and women are led by older members of the same sex, according to former members, but husbands typically take over as “heads” for their wives following marriage.

Men’s “headship” of their wives, and the male-dominated governance of the community, has been the basis of accusations from some critics of Barrett that People of Praise is built on the sexist expectation that women defer to men.

The summer 2015 issue of People of Praise’s magazine, Vine & Branches, featured an article titled “Holiness in Marriage,” which it said was based on a talk given to women in the community in the 1980s by Jeanne DeCelles, wife of co-founder Paul DeCelles.

“Make it a joy for him to head you,” Jeanne DeCelles said, according to the article. “It is important for you to verbalize your commitment to submission... Tell him what you think about things, make your input, but let him make the decisions, and support them once they are made.”

Connolly said every People of Praise member is responsible for his or her own decisions. “In the People of Praise we live by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which recognizes that men and women share a fundamental equality as bearers of God’s image and sons and daughters of God,” he said. “We value independent thinking, and teach it in our schools.”

...John Fea, a prominent historian of U.S. religion at Messiah University, said Barrett would be the first Supreme Court justice to come from a charismatic Christian background.

Fea said he believes it is fair for senators to ask Barrett how she views the blending of her small, insular community and a job judging for a nation. But he said People of Praise’s belief in distinct gender roles is similar to what is lived and preached across much of America today, in faiths as different as Catholicism, the Southern Baptist Convention and orthodox Islam and Judaism.

He said that believing men should be the spiritual leaders of the family does not mean that women cannot be professionally ambitious. “Everything about Amy Coney Barrett’s career contradicts the idea that women in People of Praise can’t have careers or be successful,” he said.

...Since its earliest days, some People of Praise members have lived in communal homes or lodged with elders before marrying. Former members said this was a way for older members to show a model of family life. Over the years, multiple members stayed at the Ranaghans’ nine-bedroom house in South Bend, often while studying at Notre Dame and after graduating, former members said.

Barrett lived with the Ranaghans when she was a Notre Dame law student, according to a person who knew her at the time.

“Let’s just say it was one of the better experiences of our life. She is just a gem. But I don’t feel comfortable talking right now,” Dorothy Ranaghan told The Guardian, which first reported the fact that Barrett lived with the Ranaghans on Tuesday.

Kevin Ranaghan, a theology scholar and teacher, was already a major figure in charismatic Catholicism, speaking internationally and hosting prayer events at Notre Dame that drew hundreds and sometimes thousands of people in the movement’s early years.

Dorothy Ranaghan, a former high school religion teacher, co-wrote two books on charismatic Christianity with her husband in the years around People of Praise’s founding.

She lamented the impact of modern feminism in a 1991 essay that said “the basic differences between men and women should be respected and given cultural expression” and promoted the traditional roles of husbands as decision-makers and wives as homemakers, even as women pursue professional ambitions.

“The wife for her part is called to submit to her husband, not as a slave, but as a companion,” Ranaghan wrote, while stressing that there was “no room here for domination, oppression or of thinking of her as less than a full and free human person.” The Post obtained a copy of the essay from a former People of Praise member.

The essay also criticized a magazine for Girl Scout leaders as presenting an “overly aggressive idealization of girls and women.”

After Barrett graduated from law school in 1997, she worked in D.C. as an intern and then as a judicial clerk, according to biographical details she has submitted to the Senate.

Meanwhile, her future husband, Jesse Barrett-- whose family also had long ties to People of Praise, according to an obituary he wrote for his grandfather-- remained in South Bend to finish law school. In a court record for a February 1998 speeding offense, Jesse Barrett’s address is listed as the Ranaghans’ home.

Jesse graduated in 1999 and married Amy later that year.

...Barrett did not mention her membership in People of Praise in response to questions from the Senate about groups with which she has been affiliated, either that year or in conjunction with her current nomination.

Numerous references to Barrett and her family that previously appeared on People of Praise’s official website have since disappeared from the site, according to a Post review of versions of the site that are hosted by the Internet Archive.

Links to at least 10 issues of Vine & Branches that included mentions of Barrett or members of her family were removed from the site during the first half of 2017, the review found. On May 8, 2017, Barrett was nominated by Trump to serve as a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

In one of the removed issues, from May 2006, Barrett was pictured at the group’s 2006 Leaders Conference for Women in South Bend. An accompanying article described the gathering as “three days of talks, sharings and conversations, all of which revealed the explosive power of love.”

Other issues of the magazine that disappeared from the site included announcements of the births of some of Barrett’s children and articles that mentioned relatives of Barrett and her husband, Jesse.

The section of the People of Praise website that for years featured a gallery of links to full issues of the magazine dating back 14 years was removed from the site altogether soon after Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death last month, the archives show.

Connolly said the changes to the website were made “after discussions with members and nonmembers raised privacy concerns with the heightened media attention.”

Did President Super-Spreader Doom Anyone Before They Forced Him To Go To The Hospital?

 

We'll get to the Bedminster crime scene in a moment. First, though, on Sunday Trump or a stunt double got in an SUV and drove around the hospital waving at the Proud Boys and other fascists camped out there. He was locked up in the truck so unable to spread the disease to anyone. But let's go back a week, to Saturday, Sept 26, to what CNN reported was "a triumphant event unveiling the worst president in history's new Supreme Court nominee, dangerous right-wing lunatic Amy Coney Island. "Their first stop was a small room in the White House basement."

After providing their names, phone numbers and dates of birth, each was taken one-by-one by a staff member from the White House Medical Office to a smaller room nearby. The door was shut, and out came the swab.

One swirl in the right nostril, one swirl in the left. As their names were written on a paper sleeve to contain the sample, they were told: "No news is good news."

So began what is now believed by many White House officials to be a nexus for contagion that resulted Friday in the positive tests of at least seven attendees, including the President himself, who is hospitalized in Maryland.

It is not known how or when Trump caught the infection that resulted in a positive test unveiled after midnight on Friday. But the string of people who attended last Saturday's event-- where few guests wore masks and social distancing was absent-- was growing.

On Friday, Republican Sens. Mike Lee and Thom Tillis both said they had tested positive. They sat three seats apart in the second row during the ceremony, separated by other senators.

The President's former counselor Kellyanne Conway said she, too, had become infected. She was seated directly behind the first lady.

The president of Notre Dame, where Trump's nominee Amy Coney Barrett teaches, was also diagnosed with coronavirus. He sat three seats away from Conway-- right behind the nominees' young children.

That is in addition to the President, the first lady and senior adviser Hope Hicks, all of whom tested positive last week.

Others who are close to the White House but did not attend Saturday's event also announced positive tests, including Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, who had spent time with the President at the end of last week, and Trump's campaign manager Bill Stepien, who participated in mask-less debate preparatory sessions at the White House last weekend. So did former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who also helped Trump prepare for the debate.

On Saturday, Sen. Ron Johnson became the third Republican senator after Lee and Tillis to test positive-- but he did not attend the ceremony on Saturday. Three members of the White House press corps also tested positive, according to the White House Correspondents Association.

The ceremony in the Rose Garden-- and Trump's Supreme Court nomination more broadly-- were once viewed as the President's best last chance to supplant coronavirus as this election's dominant theme. Instead, the tightly packed ceremony became the best illustration to date of the White House's own mismanagement of the crisis, including shrugging off best health practices and openly flouting the mitigation recommendations offered by his own government.

...The [testing] system the White House uses, the Abbott Laboratories rapid test, has a higher false negative rate than other diagnostic tools that sometimes take longer to produce results.

And even those who test negative still have the potential to spread the disease. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says asymptomatic contacts who test negative should still self-quarantine for 14 days from their last exposure to someone with Covid-19. People who are asymptomatic or who have not yet developed symptoms are able to transmit the virus.

Symptoms can appear within two to 14 days of exposure; symptoms most often develop with four to five days, and early mild symptoms can become more serious.

So when the White House advised Jenkins and other guests it was safe to remove their masks, it stood in direct opposition to public health advice that has been offered to Americans for months.

So, too, did the close quarters defy recommendations for social distancing. Before guests headed to the Rose Garden, some attended gatherings inside the White House reception rooms where social distancing was not practiced-- including with hugs and handshakes.

Seats for guests in the Rose Garden did not appear spaced apart the recommended six feet. And throughout the ceremony, only a very small number of attendees were seen wearing masks-- including a woman wearing a full plastic face shield.

...Top administration officials, including Attorney General William Barr and Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist who is the latest addition to the White House coronavirus task force, were also seen without masks, shaking hands and interacting closely with other attendees.

Lee, the Utah Republican who tested positive last week, was seen speaking to another guest with his mask in his hand.

...The Rose Garden ceremony was not unique in Trump's schedule. None of the events he attended in the days before or after required masks, and all relied on the testing plan the White House officials have repeatedly insisted would protect the President from catching coronavirus.

At events in Florida, Georgia, Washington and Virginia the Friday before the announcement, Trump interacted with mask-less officials and donors, most of whom had been tested but who nonetheless could still have been contagious.

The day after, Trump participated in debate preparatory sessions inside the White House Map Room with Stepien, Conway and others, including Christie and his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.

It remains unclear how many more guests from the Rose Garden might test positive, and a number-- including Barr and some other members of Trump's family-- said Friday they had negative results.

Yes, yes, most Americans would like to see McConnell catch COVID and die. Unfortunately, he wasn't at the infamous Bedminster super-spreader event after Trump already knew he was positive and spreading contagion. There about 200 paying customers-- rich Republicans-- and it will be interesting to see how many get sick. The White House is claiming Trump didn't know he was contagious when he was posing for pictures with the wealthy donors. That's probably false but what he did absolutely know is that Hope Hicks was infected and that he had been physically close to her. The White House cut the number of staffers going to Bedminster once they realized that it would be a disease-spreading event.

The Regime has now given the New Jersey Department of Health a list of 206 of the assholes (many from out of state) who paid to catch COVID from Trump. The White House is contacting the rich Republicans and the department is contacting staffers and other non-rich people who might have been there and recommending "that they self-monitor for symptoms and quarantine if they were in close contact with the president and his staff."

COVID Tour by Chip Proser

Ticket prices began at $2,800 a head, went to $35,000 to attend "a VIP round table," $50,000 to get a picture of yourself with Señor Trumpanzee and $250,000 to prove that you are criminally insane and a danger to America, hopefully soon residing in a cemetery.

Bedminster is in the northwest corner of Somerset County, bordering on Hunterdon and Morris counties. Yesterday, Somerset County reported 15 new cases bringing the county total to 5,981. Hunterdon reported 6 new cases (for a total of 1,442) and Morris reported 19 new cases bringing their total to 8,130.

Before Trump spent time raking in the big bucks and spreading COVID, New Jersey officials expressed alarm that he was setting up a super-spreader event in their state. Even Republican officials stayed away from the event-- except right-wing goon Joe Piscopo. Gov. Murphy warned that the fundraiser was a regional event and so it had the potential to spread the virus beyond New Jersey. Somerset County Democratic Chair Peg Schaffer: "This morning we wake up to learn that Trump was infected with COVID-19 while glad-handing his supporters in Bedminster. While this is completely irresponsible behavior for anyone, for the President of the United States to risk the health and lives of his own supporters, their families, their neighbors and the workers and wait staff at his club is unfathomably selfish."