Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Motherfucker. It's only a word. It's a word! The horror! Motherfucker! A word! Oh! I feel so unclean at hearing that word! She said a bad word!

No! Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib spoke truth to power. THAT is what the rightwing snowflakes of both parties and their media suck-ups are so upset about. She's a threat to their willful detachment from reality, their incongruous and perverse Pleasantville 1962 view of life. They are scared of a word! They are scared of what the use of a word connotes! It has the ring of truth. It clangs loudly with head-shattering presence, as if right above the heads of the offended. It's a word that echoes in their emptiness. It has the ring of real people, real humans, humans with working brains, standing up to the archaic status quo and calling bullshit on those who fight to maintain it and all its real corruption. The unthinking robotic mindless Joe Manchins of the Washington world worry where it could end. THAT'S what begets a motherfucker like $enator Joe Manchin (D-WV) going on FOX "News" and, in his best Sarah Huckabee Sanders impersonation, saying:

I am so sorry. I want to apologize to all Americans, any sitting congressperson, there's 535 of us there, 100 senators, and 435 congresspeople. We should have better manners than that, I assure you.

Fuck you, motherfucker! Fuck you, you goddamn motherfucking piece of shit scumbag in a fucking suit! You who voted to put the likes Brett Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court! You suddenly know something about morals and decency? Fuck You, Motherfucker! If there were any decency left in this world, I would have the chance to say that to your fat brainless, dead-eyed face just before I put my fist clean through it. Who the fuck are you, Joe Manchin, or any of you assholes, to think you can speak for me on this matter? "Apologize to all Americas" my ass, Motherfucker. Motherfucker is just a word and you don't like the lack of respect in connotes and the can of worms it opens up. You Washington assclowns think people should be all polite and nice to you just because you have a title and wear a tie. Fuck you! You who are one 100th of a body that backs death in every form every day and you smile and shake hands while doing it. You know what? There are no words that fit your kind. Motherfucker just isn't enough.

Oh, and Joe, here's your boy in 2011:

STAT: Get Someone To Read The First Amendment To Señor Trumpanzee

As we saw Sunday evening, the new poll from NBC and the Wall Street Journal found that 62% of voters believe Trump lies about the Mueller investigation, up significantly from last summer when voters were asked the same question. As the poll was being released by the two news outlets, Trump was howling about how unfairly he's being treated. Never having read the Constitution he'd superficially pledged to uphold, the doofus was whining about how what he decides is "unfair news coverage," by Saturday Night Live should be "tested in courts." The screw-pot seems to have actually cracked up. And yet... when we polled Twitter over the weekend, just 12% of respondents predicted Trump would be in a mental institution by 2021.

People often confuse his severe mental health issues-- not to mention lack of intelligence-- with his cunning and self-obsession. And then there's his colossal ignorance. I know he's heard of the First Amendment, but I wonder if he knows what it means. It's fairly simple but he has an extremely short attention span and hates to read. I doubt any judge, even one of the ignoramuses he appoints, would doubt a Saturday Night Live sketch is protected speech.

On the other hand, media doesn't have a license to break laws and it certainly appears that a major newspaper did exactly that during the wo16 election cycle, carefully and consciously trying to rig the election for one candidate while damaging his opponents. Sunday the New York Times' Jim Rutenburg broke a fascinating piece on huge media conglomerate that was then a firm Trump ally: More Powerful Than a Russian Troll Army: The National Enquirer. “The most powerful print publication in America," wrote Rutenberg, "might just be the National Enquirer. It functioned as a dirty-tricks shop for Donald J. Trump in 2016, which would have been the stuff of farce-- the ultimate tabloid backs the ultimate tabloid candidate-- if it hadn’t accomplished its goal.”

The Enquirer’s power was fueled by its covers. For the better part of the campaign season, Enquirer front pages blared sensational headlines about Mr. Trump’s rivals from eye-level racks at supermarket checkout lanes across America. This stroke-of-genius distribution apparatus was dreamed up by the man who made The Enquirer the nation’s biggest gossip rag: its previous owner, Generoso Pope Jr.

The Enquirer’s racks, under the current chief, David J. Pecker, were given over to the Trump campaign. This was a political gift even more valuable than the $150,000 that The Enquirer paid in a “catch-and-kill” deal with the former Playboy model Karen McDougal for her story of an affair with Mr. Trump.

Wondering what The Enquirer’s covers were worth to the Trump campaign, I called Regis Maher, a co-founder of Do It Outdoors, the national mobile and digital billboard company. He said a campaign with that level of national prominence would cost $2.5 million to $3 million a month.

“It’s such a powerful placement,” Mr. Maher said. “Everybody’s gotta go to the grocery store.”

With the news last week that The Enquirer had admitted to federal prosecutors that it made the catch-and-kill payment to influence the election, it’s worth stepping back and appreciating the unlikely role played by the supermarket tabloid and its parent company, American Media Inc., in electing the 45th president of the United States.

Now that federal prosecutors have cleared away some of the fog that shrouded the 2016 campaign, it’s easy to see that The Enquirer was more than just a publication that puffed up Mr. Trump while going after his rivals.

It was the real-world embodiment of the fantasy online world of trolls, Russian and domestic, who polluted the political discourse. From its perches at Publix and Safeway, it was often doing the same job as Alex Jones, of the conspiracy site Infowars, and the more strident Trump campaign surrogates on Twitter and Facebook.

The Enquirer spread false stories about Hillary Clinton-- illnesses concealed, child prostitution, bribery, treason. Each cover trumpeting these tales was arguably more powerful than a tweet from an account with millions of followers.

It’s a shame it went this route, because The Enquirer was built to cover Mr. Trump’s wild ride. If it had only stuck with its original mission-- digging up dirt on the rich and famous, without a care for the rules of traditional journalism-- it would have had the tabloid story of a lifetime.

Instead, it refused to unlock its vault of Trump tips and stories as it promoted him as America’s savior. Actually, make that the world’s. As one Enquirer report in early 2016 had it-- from “a source close to Donald’’-- even President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia wanted him to win the White House.

“It was like a double whammy,” Jennifer Palmieri, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign communications director, told me. “They could have been covering all of Trump’s misdeeds. But, instead, not only were they not reporting on that, they were a pipeline from dark-net conspiracy theories to grocery-store lines.”

With its online cohorts, American Media Inc. helped build a distortion machine that so polluted election news cycles that, for its more receptive audiences, Mrs. Clinton not only deserved to lose the White House, she deserved time in the big house.

Before making her its main target, the machine chewed up Senator Ted Cruz. It ran unsubstantiated allegations of extramarital affairs against him at a time when he was proving himself Mr. Trump’s most stubborn Republican challenger.

The only person quoted by name in the affairs piece was Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump, who was quoted as saying, “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” (Mr. Stone, who communicated with top campaign officials through the election, is under investigation by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.)

One passage in the Cruz story caught my eye. Citing a report in Radar Online-- a gossip outlet also owned by A.M.I.-- The Enquirer claimed that “an individual purporting to be a representative of the hacker group Anonymous posted a disturbing Twitter video that threatens to expose ‘very dirty secrets,’ including information about Ted ‘visiting prostitutes.’”

Here’s an odd thing. Radar attributed the provenance of this supposed Anonymous video to an obscure Twitter handle with only a few thousand followers that has since gone dormant. A review of the account’s activity found tweets and retweets of anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant messages relating to Europe, as well as a critique of the United States policy on Libya linked to a video from RT, the Russian state-financed cable network.

It makes you wonder if the inquiring mind of Mr. Mueller would like to know more about The Enquirer than he has let on. (Federal prosecutors in New York have led the investigation of A.M.I.)

Once Mr. Cruz was out of the way, two people familiar with A.M.I.’s operation told me, the company pulled up files on the Clintons that it had collected over decades-- some two dozen cardboard boxes filled with promising material.

A.M.I. began a painstaking effort to sort through the old clips and tips concerning “pay-for-play” deals, rumors of affairs and Vince Foster conspiracy theories. But as the campaign wore on, The Enquirer’s covers favored stories similar to those coursing through Infowars, Russian trolldom and, increasingly, your uncle’s Facebook feed.

According to one headline, Hillary was “Corrupt! Racist! Criminal!” In another, she was “Eating Herself To Death!”

The Enquirer also reported-- make that “reported”-- that she had suffered “three strokes,” had “liver damage from booze,” and was prone to “violent rages.”

A couple of weeks before Election Day, as Russian bots pushed a narrative into Facebook of a “Clinton body count,” an Enquirer cover line screamed: “Hillary Hitman Tells All.”

The false narratives built to a frenzy that included an appearance by the A.M.I. chief content officer Dylan Howard on Infowars and a cover promising that Mrs. Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin were “Going to Jail” for “Treason! Influence Peddling! Bribery!”

Inside were the unsubstantiated claims that Mrs. Clinton had “covered up a child sex scandal”-- which echoed the “Pizzagate” conspiracy-- and that her relationship with Ms. Abedin had “lesbian undercurrents.”

For those who were seeing the same bilge online, The Enquirer’s headlines and stories may have increased their doubts about the Democratic nominee. For those seeing such stuff for the first time, right next to the gum and candy, the false coverage may have been revelatory.

Placement on nationwide checkout lines was perhaps Mr. Pecker’s greatest gift to Mr. Trump, and it’s something that he inherited from Mr. Pope.

Watching his circulation plateau as his readers moved to the suburbs in the 1960s, Mr. Pope struck a deal with major grocery chains: He would build new racks to put magazines at eye level near the cash registers, arguing that more sales for him meant more profit for them, too.

“It gave us complete exposure, saturation, whatever you want to call it,” his son Paul David Pope told me on Friday.

As the younger Mr. Pope’s history of the family business, The Deeds of My Fathers, shows, The Enquirer was known to pull off an occasional “catch-and-kill” deal in the old days, including one involving Senator Edward M. Kennedy in a bid for access to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. But the tabloid usually raised hackles not because the stories it published were false, but because of its methods. This was a publication so hungry for celebrity dope that it sneaked a reporter-- disguised as a priest-- into Bing Crosby’s funeral.

“I am sure my father’s intention with his media empire was not to be used after his passing as an outlet for fake news,” the younger Mr. Pope said.

I asked a friend of mine, a renowned attorney if the Enquirer is protected by the First Amendment or if they could be held accountable for, in effect, spending millions of dollars, towards Trump's presidential run. He thought about it for a couple of days and said it's very complicated. "A simple, and simplistic, answer is that what The Enquirer did with Cohen is exactly the same as what Cohen did with The Enquirer, for which he was found guilty of felony. Under that analysis, the First Amendment is irrelevant.

A more nuanced analysis would have to consider these issues:

• Under Citizens United, you can do anything you want to influence an election, as long as you don’t coordinate with the candidate or the campaign. Cohen clearly coordinated with the campaign. It’s not clear whether The Enquirer did, unless you want to impute Cohen’s connections to The Enquirer.
• In my opinion, the Enquirer doesn’t have a freedom of speech argument, because it was suppressing speech. That being said, The Enquirer not only has a freedom of speech argument, but also a freedom of the press argument. Cohen is not “the press,” so it’s possible that Cohen doing it could be illegal, but The Enquirer doing it might not. (Same thing with Assange, by the way.)
• On this subject, it’s clear that endorsements are not illegal contributions to a campaign. It’s not really clear where you draw the line on that. (In Florida, there is a statute drawing the line.) I think that it would be hard to equate a mistress payoff to an endorsement, but I’m sure Giuliani would try.
• FECA governs “anything of value made [or spent] by any person for the purpose of influencing any election for Federal office.” The underlying argument, which Giuliani has made ad nauseum, is that if the motivation was to keep Melania from bludgeoning Trump to death in his sleep (on those rare occasions when they were in the same room at night), then that’s not an election expenditure. I think that it’s obvious that The Enquirer was trying to influence the election, but a jury might or might not agree.

Grayson Leads Huge Bipartisan Effort To Strengthen Freedom Of The Press

On Wednesday the House passed an important amendment to the Fiscal Year 2016 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations Bill (H.R. 2578). Alan Grayson wrote it and led the fight to pass it so that the federal government would no longer be allowed to harass journalists with the intention of forcing them to reveal their sources. It passed with huge bipartisan support, 245-182. Although 71 Republicans voted with Grayson and the Democrats, these were the 11 Democrats who crossed the aisle and voted with the anti-democracy GOP leadership:

• Gerry Connolly (New Dem-VA)
• Jim Costa (Blue Dog-CA)
• Rubén Hinojosa (TX)
• Ron Kind (New Dem-WI)
• Dan Lipinski (Blue Dog-IL)
• Raul Ruiz (CA)
• Adam Schiff (New Dem-CA)
• Bobby Scott (VA)
• Brad Sherman (CA)
• Albio Sires (NJ)
• Adam Smith (New Dem-WA)

Grayson: "Freedom of the press is a cornerstone of our democracy. Threatening journalists with prosecution to force them to reveal their sources undermines that freedom. Thomas Jefferson said, 'Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.' I'm glad that my colleagues on both sides of the aisle voted today to protect the Constitution. Confidential sources have helped reporters bring to light scandals and misdeeds that otherwise would have remained hidden. From Watergate to the Pentagon Papers to the abuses of prisoners in the War on Terror, the media has held those in power answerable for their actions. This amendment protects those journalists who are working to keep Americans informed."

Although several California Republicans-- Doug LaMalfa, Tom McClintock, Dana Rohrabacher-- backed Grayson's amendment and voted for it, right-wing extremist Steve Knight (CA-25) refused. The progressive Democrat running against him, Lou Vince, a former LAPD officer and ex-marine, was furious. "Steve Knight," he told us today, "likes to point to the Bill of Rights only when it fits his political agenda. The freedom of the press is a cornerstone of American democracy. If Knight truly valued liberty as he claims to, he would have voted in favor of this bipartisan measure."

Grayson's exact wording:

None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to compel a person to testify about information or sources that the person states in a motion to quash the subpoena that he has obtained as a journalist or reporter and that he regards as confidential.

Schumer would rather get journalists to focus on the twisted lies he's been planting about Grayson with compliant journalists, one of whom is whining that Grayson cursed at him. Never mind that Grayson just got legislation passed that would protect professional journalists from tyranny in the most profound sense; just remember that Grayson responded badly when a journalist accused him of whichever planted lie Schumer and the Patrick Murphy campaign camp were planting that week.

Grayson will be announcing his run for the open U.S. Senate seat Marco Rubio is abandoning. If you'd like to see the Senate upgraded with a brilliant, stalwart progressive fighter-- rather than downgraded with the addition of another Wall Street hack who votes with the GOP (Patrick Murphy)-- please contribute what you feel comfortable giving to Grayson's campaign fund.


Grayson's Been Busy... Legislating

Thursday he wrote and passed 4 amendments to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development Appropriations Act, the most of any Member of Congress of either party. All 4 amendments were agreed to overwhelmingly in bipartisan voice votes. His first amendment will increase funding for housing for the elderly by $2,500,000 and reduce funding for policy development and research by a similar amount. The second one increases funding for fair housing and equal opportunity by $150,000. The third prohibits the use of funds to enter into contracts with entities [like defense contractors] who have been convicted of fraud. And his final amendment "prohibits the use of funds to make incentive payments pursuant to 48 CFR 16.4 to contractors for contracts that are behind schedule under the terms of the contract as prescribed by 48 CFR 52.211 or over the contract amount indicated in Standard Form 33, box 20."

Republican Party Spokesmodel Claims The First Amendment Protects Christians Only

I finally stopped following the demented Twitter ravings of GOP Hate Talk Radio host Bryan Fischer and… my life is more relaxed and productive without all that satanic hatred and bigotry spewing out of him. One thing about Fischer, though… whatever extremist, anti-social nonsense he's spouting now, will become official Republican Party doctrine in a relatively short time. Today's trash-talk is tomorrow's party platform-- first in Texas and then in even normal states' Republican Parties. Friday he was reminding he followers that the far right position is that the First Amendment was written only for Christians. This Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Three of the biggest states of the original 13-- New York, Virginia and Massachusetts-- refused to ratify the Constitution without an enforceable Bill of Rights. James Madison wrote 20, which eventually became the first 10 amendments to the Constitution.In 1947, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black write for the majority that "The 'establishment of religion' clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state nor the Federal Government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion to another ... in the words of Jefferson, the [First Amendment] clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect 'a wall of separation between church and State' ... That wall must be kept high and impregnable. We could not approve the slightest breach."

More recently (1994), Justice David Souter, writing for the majority, asserted that "government should not prefer one religion to another, or religion to irreligion." The idea that the First Amendment was somehow meant to apply only to Christians is bizarre and unsupported by history or common sense-- and just garbage floating around on the outer fringes of the far right-- so you can count on it being part of the GOP mainstream in about a year. "I have contended for years," raves Fischer, "that the First Amendment, as given by the Founders, provides religious liberty protections for Christianity only. Most attorney types, befuddled by years of untethered Supreme Court activism, think it covers any and all religions you can name." He contends that the word "religion" was meant by the Founders as being a synonym for "Christianity." He is, as usual, dead wrong. During the Revolution, there were even member of Congress who wanted to ban the use of English and adopt Hebrew as the American language! By 1776 there were 2,000 Jews in the colonies and while a third of the Christians, basically, the conservatives, fought for the British side, virtually 100% of the Jews fought with the rebels and were key in helping to finance the Revolution as well. President George Washington remembered the Jewish contribution when the first synagogue opened in Newport, Rhode Island, in 1790: "May the children of the stock of Abraham who dwell in the land continue to merit and enjoy the goodwill of the other inhabitants. While everyone shall sit safely under his own vine and fig-tree and there shall be none to make him afraid."

And in terms of the far right's bête noire, Muslims, the Founding Fathers certainly included them as well.

At a time when most Americans were uninformed, misinformed, or simply afraid of Islam, Thomas Jefferson imagined Muslims as future citizens of his new nation. His engagement with the faith began with the purchase of a Qur’an eleven years before he wrote the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson’s Qur’an survives still in the Library of Congress, serving as a symbol of his and early America’s complex relationship with Islam and its adherents. That relationship remains of signal importance to this day.

That he owned a Qur’an reveals Jefferson’s interest in the Islamic religion, but it does not explain his support for the rights of Muslims. Jefferson first read about Muslim “civil rights” in the work of one of his intellectual heroes: the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke. Locke had advocated the toleration of Muslims-- and Jews-- following in the footsteps of a few others in Europe who had considered the matter for more than a century before him. Jefferson’s ideas about Muslim rights must be understood within this older context, a complex set of transatlantic ideas that would continue to evolve most markedly from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries.

Amid the interdenominational Christian violence in Europe, some Christians, beginning in the sixteenth century, chose Muslims as the test case for the demarcation of the theoretical boundaries of their toleration for all believers. Because of these European precedents, Muslims also became a part of American debates about religion and the limits of citizenship. As they set about creating a new government in the United States, the American Founders, Protestants all, frequently referred to the adherents of Islam as they contemplated the proper scope of religious freedom and individual rights among the nation’s present and potential inhabitants. The founding generation debated whether the United States should be exclusively Protestant or a religiously plural polity. And if the latter, whether political equality-- the full rights of citizenship, including access to the highest office-- should extend to non-Protestants. The mention, then, of Muslims as potential citizens of the United States forced the Protestant majority to imagine the parameters of their new society beyond toleration. It obliged them to interrogate the nature of religious freedom: the issue of a “religious test” in the Constitution, like the ones that would exist at the state level into the nineteenth century; the question of “an establishment of religion,” potentially of Protestant Christianity; and the meaning and extent of a separation of religion from government.

…In 1783, the year of the nation’s official independence from Great Britain, George Washington wrote to recent Irish Catholic immigrants in New York City. The American Catholic minority of roughly twenty-five thousand then had few legal protections in any state and, because of their faith, no right to hold political office in New York. Washington insisted that “the bosom of America” was “open to receive . . . the oppressed and the persecuted of all Nations and Religions; whom we shall welcome to a participation of all our rights and privileges.” He would also write similar missives to Jewish communities, whose total population numbered only about two thousand at this time.

One year later, in 1784, Washington theoretically enfolded Muslims into his private world at Mount Vernon. In a letter to a friend seeking a carpenter and bricklayer to help at his Virginia home, he explained that the workers’ beliefs—or lack thereof-- mattered not at all: “If they are good workmen, they may be of Asia, Africa, or Europe. They may be Mahometans [Muslims], Jews or Christian of an[y] Sect, or they may be Atheists.” Clearly, Muslims were part of Washington’s understanding of religious pluralism-- at least in theory. But he would not have actually expected any Muslim applicants.

Another Republican mainstay is Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore and he's right there with Bryant, of course:

Huh? You mean cops "don't pay attention to the First Amendment"? It's shocking, Rosemarie, but I'm afraid no, not so much

Plus: An Alexander Cockburn postscript

from the Inwod Community Group's Facebook page

"To lump all cops as killers is wrong."

-- former cop John Garvey, on the same Facebook page

"While police have always considered themselves above the common herd, and have always looked after themselves first and civilians second, it's very clear that police today are much worse in this regard than they were 10 years ago, and 10 years before that, and 10 years before that. Police are well aware that they have near full immunity: they can beat people, kill people, plant evidence on people and they will, in most cases, get away with it. Even if caught on tape, the worst punishment is likely to be paid suspension."

-- Ian Welsh, in a blogpost of "scattered thoughts
on cops, particularly cops in the US"

"What the hell is the thinking here and where does any cop have the right to do this? They don't pay attention to the First Amendment?”

-- Invwood resident Rosemarie Kliegman, on the Facebook page

by Ken

First, some context for the above Facebook quotes, for those who who haven't been following the story. (I don't know how much play it has gotten outside NYC -- or in the city, for that matter.) it concerns a mural painted on the wall of a building in Inwood, Manhattan's far-northern neighborhood by artist Alan Ket. As Carla Zanoni recalls in a follow-up piece today on the invaluable DNAinfo.com, "Inwood Artist Told His Controversial Work Needs NYPD Clearance" (links onsite).

Ket’s painting, that called police "murderers," was removed by a pair of plainclothes officers who arrived at the New Edition Cleaners at 4929 Broadway at 11 a.m. Tuesday armed with buckets of black paint, roller brushes and drop cloths.

They were carrying out orders issued by the 34th Precinct, according to police sources.

The mural, which showed the word "murderers" painted over tombstones and coffins with epitaph names that included the NYPD, the Environmental Protection Agency and global corporations including Halliburton and Monsanto, had been painted on the wall of the business with the permission of its owners.

[Note: DNAinfo.com has a slide show of photos.]

Before we continue, we ought perhaps to clarify the "permission" issues, from Carla Zanoni's own report (a follow-up to her report yesterday, "Cops Paint Over Inwood Mural That Depicts NYPD as 'Murderers'"), from which I gather that for at least five years Alan Ket had gotten year-by-year permission from the owners to paint some sort of mural. Now, Zanoni tells us:

The building’s landlord, who would only identify himself as Victor, said he is willing to work with Ket on replacing the mural, but would no longer allow him to spray paint just any image on the wall.

"They were nice paintings before, but the new painting was very offensive," he said. "I don't agree with it and neither do the police."

One is tempted to crack some sort of joke about everyone being a critic. After all, "Victor" presumably would have had the right to approve of what Ket painted on his wall, if he had chosen to do so, which it seems he didn't. But then there's that sentence: "I don't agree with it and neither do the police."

Where do the police come into having opinions about murals painted on private property? Opinions that they proceed to back up by unilaterally painting over the painting. And by the way, in the matter of "Victor" being "willing to work with Ket on replacing the mural,"

After the incident, Ket, who has had permission to paint murals on the wall for at least five years, said he asked the landlord if he could paint the word “censored” on the coat of glossy black paint that now covers his original art.

The landlord said no.

“It’s a little bit crazy,” Ket said.

"This wall is being censored by the NYPD," Ket said to Carla Zanoni. Of his conversation with "Victor," he said, "I told him I found it kind of strange he would feel he needed to get approval or permission or run anything by the police, but he said that he doesn’t want any problems with the police, that the police are a bit threatening."

Zanoni concludes her report today:

Inwood residents said they were appalled at the removal of the mural and said aesthetic or political preference should not weigh in on whether the mural remained or was removed.

"If they had to censor something, why didn't they just cross out the tomb stone with NYPD," wrote Inwood resident Rosemarie Kliegman on Facebook's Inwood Community Group.

"What the hell is the thinking here and where does any cop have the right to do this? They don't pay attention to the First Amendment?” she continued.

Despite the overwhelmingly negative response to the mural’s removal, not all Inwood residents opposed the NYPD's action.

“Let's just say that nobody would like a wall painted about them and their job, that is a bold lie,” wrote John Garvey on the site, identifying himself as a former cop.

"To lump all cops as killers is wrong."

This last sentence, you'll note is the quote I tacked to the top of this post. "To lump all cops as killers is wrong." Am I the only one who's kind of astonished at the way this ex-cop couches his indignation? "So the "bold lie," apparently is "to lump all cops as killers." Left open is the question of exactly what percentage of cops are killers. Yikes!

Carla Zanoni's original report must have been lodged in the back of my head when I read the new post from Ian Welsh from which I've taken the second quote at the top of this post. If "police are well aware that they have near full immunity," that "they can beat people, kill people, plant evidence on people and they will, in most cases, get away with it," then I don't imagine they would even give a second thought about painting over a mural. Which brings me to the final quote up top, in which Rosemarie Kliegman asks, as I would like to think any patriotic American would, "What the hell is the thinking here and where does any cop have the right to do this? [emphasis added]" And then she asks, "They don't pay attention to the First Amendment?"

You're probably laughing hysterically by now. Is Rosemarie on medication of some sort? Cops pay attention to the First Amendment? However, I would like to think, at least for this brief moment, that her response is exactly what we would hope any true-blue American's would be. Can it possibly be that cops aren't answerable to the most basic laws of the land?

I don't know how to break this to you, Rosemarie, but no, they don't pay attention to the First Amendment, or to any other fussy old rules they can get away with not paying attention to. As Ian Welsh writes, "The jokes about the crime of 'disrespect of cop' aren't jokes; it is very close to the most dangerous thing you can do around a cop, as any refusal to obey an order can be cause for a beating and a free-standing resisting arrest warrant (something which used to be impossible, but is now common)."

Ian is writing specifically here of the "thug" personality that's so common in Western security forces, which he distinguishes from the "ideologue" type once common, for example, in the old KGB, which brought both the advantages and the disadvantages" of "believers" -- the disadvantage he cites being: "They generally don't get off on violence and cruelty, though they do it when necessary."

Thugs, on the other hand, want a license to allow them to be brutal and cruel. They like power and they like to be able to tell other people what to do, to force them to obey and even to grovel. The jokes about the crime of "disrespect of cop" aren't jokes, it is very close to the most dangerous thing you can do around a cop, as any refusal to obey an order can be cause for a beating and a free-standing resisting arrest warrant (something which used to be impossible, but is now common.)

The problem with thugs is that they really aren't that discriminate. They like hurting people and forcing people to grovel and under the right circumstances they'd be just as happy to do it to their lords and masters as to dirty hippies. From the point of view of a real reformer, security forces, whether police or otherwise, are a huge problem. They're trained in violence, they like it and they want to keep doing it. If you fire them or lay them off in large numbers, they will turn their skill in violence against you. Mind, they are actually lousy at fighting anyone who can fight back, paramilitarized police are generally no threat to the real military, but they are excellent at terrorizing civilians.

In fairness, I would suggest that the constitutional protections against police misconduct defined by the Warren Court really did, in many ways, force police to do their jobs better -- and I do mean not just more correctly, but better. If you can't just beat a confession out of the first schlepp you pick up, you may actually be forced to solve the crime, and back up your arrest with legitimate evidence that can prove the case to a jury.

Of course the Rehnquist and Warren courts have been eroding those constitutional protections as fast as their Constitution-overwriting crayons will allow. And I suspect there's a lot of pent-up rage at the shilly-shalliers' refusal to just let cops be cops, not to mention the abusive reality that these days all the riffraff have cameras and you never know when you're going to wind up on YouTube. I suspect that a lot of this added rage is being released in all the extra-constitutional methodologies that have become part of modern police-state enforcement.

That enforcement isn't necessarily terribly efficient, however, and certainly doesn't come cheap, as we've found out when we get glimpses of the tab for the NYPD's repression of the Occupy movement, acting basically as the hired goons of the .01 Percent, except without the "hiring" part, since the elites got their dirty work done at taxpayer expense.

Ian notes:

One of the most notable things, to me, about the police, is that as they have become more and more "militarized" they have become more and more ineffective. It now takes 10 car loads to quell disturbances that 30 years ago a single car could have handled. I was recently treated to the spectacle of less than 50 Occupy Toronto protestors marching, surrounded on all three sides by police, a squad of horse-cops following and a bunch of paddy wagons in addition. Dealing with any sort of real crowds always involves bussing in cops from hundreds of miles around, and their reactions in crisis are slow, confused and yes, brutal.

What's more, "the police have also been corrupted,"

especially in the US, by seizure laws in general and the war on drugs in particular. The ability to seize cash and property without proving an underlying crime has turned the police into a crime syndicate themselves. I have friends who won't travel through entire US states because police systematically target out-of-state travelers in order to seize their money and property.

"All of this," he continues, "is before we get to the problem of prison guards."

Violent, brutal and numerous, they are politically powerful, their industry is the mainstay of entire towns, and they can't be laid off in large numbers for the same reason you can't get rid of police who are thugs, because they are trained in violence and cruelty and it can be reasonably expected that jobless ex-prison guards in large numbers will engage in violence.

"This problem is an ancient one," he says:

Teach men to be violent, and to enjoy cruelty, give them license and you become as much their prisoner as their master. For now the police are willing to do their master's bidding, and brutalize the citizenry, because they enjoy it and see citizens as lesser forms of life, who need to be taught their power. But they are a danger to everyone, their masters and anyone who would fix society alike, for there is no road to fixing many nations which does not include de-militarizing the police. And that removal of their power and license to abuse is something they are unlikely to tolerate.

I guess we can take comfort in the now-established reality that not all cops are killers.

I might just add that I hate this for the added reason that I would really and truly like to believe in the mission of the police as upholders of our common well-being. It's an unfortunate reality that not all citizens accept the responsibility of behaving in civilized fashion, and we necessarily have laws to protect our society, and it sure would be swell if that's what our men and women in blue were doing. Sometimes, of course, it is, and at those times we can believe in rubrics like New York's Finest. Too much of the time, though, it isn't. I can understand that many cops' feelings are hurt when they're called stuff like "pigs" and "fascist enforcers." Regrettably, when the cause is fascist-enforcer-type behavior, the name-calling truly isn't the problem.


AN ALEXANDER COCKBURN POSTSCRIPT

Drat the luck! I had finished the above post when I stumbled across Hendrik Hertzberg's new newyorker.com blogpost, "Alexander the Great (and the Grating)." The other day I grappled with my wildly conflicted feelings about the late Alexander Cockburn. I could easily have gotten a post out of it -- and may yet. Hertzberg has all sorts of inside knowledge of personalities and issues which I didn't and don't, and so I'm poorly equipped to evaluate his analysis of the "bad" Alex, much of it having to do with the legacy of his father. (By the way, I'd like to think HH already regrets putting into print the clever-sounding but screamingly idiotic notion of him as "John the Baptist to Christopher [Hitchens]'s Jesus," not to mention his preoccupation with their looks.)

I'm sure that some of what Hertzberg has to say about the bad side has validity, and the clear understanding that there were both good and bad sides comforts me in my helpless confusion at to what to make of the man and his legacy. More important, though, at least to me, is HH's description of the "good" Alex.

Within his ideological comfort zone, and when none of his tripwires had been tripped, Alexander Cockburn did a prodigious amount of valuable journalism. Among other services, he practically invented modern press criticism, now (unlike the press itself) a thriving industry. His crackling "Press Clips" column was the perfect vehicle for his talents, his insights, and his prejudices. It was the first thing thousands of readers, me included, turned to in the vital Voice of the seventies, and I don't remember it ever disappointing, even on those occasions, all too rare, when he took a swipe at me. After all, as Katrina vanden Heuvel, Alex's long-suffering editor at The Nation, said in her statement after his death, "It was an honor, in many ways, to join the growing list of people Alexander would attack with his pen."

Let me also pass along this parenthetical note from HH: "Among the many Cockburn tributes and anti-tributes, I’d especially recommend those of Michael Tomasky and Harold Meyerson. Jack Shafer’s is worth a read, too." I haven't read them yet, but don't let me stop you. (Okay, since writing this, I've read all three pieces. You do what you want.)

#

Will the 1%'s security thugs (aka "local law enforcement") put the screws to protesters and photojournalists in Chicago this weekend?

Flags fly in Chicago for this weekend's NATO summit.

”Since Occupy Wall Street began last September, more than 75 journalists have been arrested. My colleague Josh Stearns has chronicled these arrests since the movement's earliest days. Stearns expects to see an uptick in arrests as thousands of protesters and reporters converge on Chicago.”

-- Timothy Karr, in “The Police, the iPhone
and Your Right to Record,” on HuffPost

by Ken

This afternoon Reuters' Ann Saphir and Mary Winiewski reported from Chicago that, despite the gathered presence of "thousands of security personnel," "the mood was mostly festive . . . with groups of nurses dancing and singing."

An estimated 2,500 people, including hundreds of nurses, protested peacefully in a downtown Chicago plaza under the watchful eye of police Friday, chanting mostly about economic issues that have little to do with the summit of the NATO military alliance starting this weekend.

The rally, which Chicago police estimated at about 2,500, was the largest so far in a week of daily protests before representatives from 60 countries arrive for the two-day summit to discuss the war in Afghanistan.

Some 150 blue-uniformed Chicago police officers ringed the square, named after Chicago's legendary former Mayor Richard J. Daley, who presided over bloody clashes between police and anti-Vietnam War protesters at the 1968 Democratic convention.

The nurses mentioned by the Reuters reporters, who are "holding a convention at a nearby hotel, paid for a dozen buses carrying hundreds more protesters from around the country."

The nurses called for what they term a "Robin Hood" tax on financial institutions' transactions to offset government funding cuts that have affected healthcare, education and social services. Many sported green hats and masks.

"The solution is a tiny, tiny tax," said Deborah Burger, president of the nurses' group, who complained that healthcare patients are skimping on care because of the cost.

"What we want to say is our priorities are upside down and we need to make sure we focus on our communities," she said.

A banner reading, "Nurses campaign to heal the world, An economy for the 99 percent, Tax Wall Street, National Nurses United," was displayed in the plaza.

Perhaps the most tangible legacy of the Occupy Wall Street movement is the regrouping of the security apparatus of the 1%, which has learned how easily and effectively it can mobilize law-enforcement personnel at all levels to serve as their private paramilitary force. They've learned to expect no serious opposition among law-enforcement officials or the civilian authorities who command them, like NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, who put the NYPD at the corporate elites' disposal.

The most luscious part is that we the people get to pay for the forcible repression of those folks trying to stick up for our interests. Just today DNAinfo.com's Julie Shapiro reports ("NYC Spent $30 Million Policing Occupy Wall Street, Officials Say") that "the total [police] overtime cost has ballooned over the past two months from $17 million in March to nearly double that on Thursday," according to the testimony of Police Commissioner Ray Kelly at a City Council budget hearing yesterday.

The Occupy Wall Street protests -- along with Hurricane Irene, which cost the NYPD $7 million in overtime pay -- have busted the NYPD's overtime budget, pushing it up to $604 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, Kelly said.

That's $53 million more in police overtime than the city paid the previous year, he said.

The new "public-private security partnership" should be on display this weekend in Chicago. And our colleague Tim Karr, who keeps tabs on media-openness issues as campaign director for Free Press and SavetheInternet.com, is calling particular attention to the security apparatus's pretty much unopposed crackdown on the "new breed of journalists and onlookers" who use modern technology like micro-photography to cover protests. For example --

[Photojournalist Carlos Miller] has been arrested three times. His "crime?" Photographing the police. Most recently, in January, Miller was filming the eviction of Occupy Wall Street activists from a park in downtown Miami.

In twist that's become too familiar to many, the journalist became the story as police focused their crackdown on the scrum of reporters there to cover the eviction. Miller came face to face with Officer Nancy Perez [a “public information officer”!], who confiscated his camera and placed him under arrest.

"The ubiquity of camera-ready smartphones," Tim Karr reports, "has spawned legions of 'live-streamers' who can be found at every large-scale protest streaming a close-up account of almost every arrest. It's a new form of journalism that's open to anyone with a mobile phone and the resolve to get between police and protesters."

In the chaos of these events, many live-streamers have been snared in mass arrests. Others are deliberately targeted by officers who aren't accustomed to the radical transparency of the smartphone era.

Tim Pool has seen the live-streaming phenomenon grow exponentially since he first started streaming Occupy Wall Street protests using a live-linked Galaxy S2 phone. "Most of the people are live-streaming because they think the mainstream media isn't telling the story that needs to be told," he says.

The audience for Pool's smartphone stream peaked above 30,000 simultaneous viewers during last year's Occupy evictions, making Pool's raw and unedited reporting a model hundreds of other live-streamers have followed.

Pool plans to organize a global collective of live-streamers to create an alternative news network that gets the story live on the streets before the traditional news vans arrive. "There are not enough streamers for breaking 24-hour global news coverage," he says, "but we're getting pretty close."

As the new breed of journalists find themselves increasingly subject to harassment by law enforcers ("Police departments," Tim notes,"like having a degree of flexibility in interpreting the law as it gives their officers loose rein to arrest anyone they deem a nuisance, even when they know their case will collapse before the courts"), the Justice Department and the courts are beginning to push back, but not much relief has found its way to photojournalists on the ground. Tim Karr again:

"When I have been confronted by officers the implicit threat is that if I continued to videotape, they would take away my liberty," says advocacy journalist Bill Huston. Police have harassed Huston as he's attempted to record public events related to the fracking controversy in Pennsylvania and New York.

"Even though this is constitutionally protected behavior, the police will intimidate you and demand that you follow their orders," he said. "Even though we may get a legal remedy in the courts we are still prevented from videotaping on the scene. Our rights are still violated. This is not how the system is supposed to work."

So far, at least, "most of the lower courts have found a rock-solid First Amendment argument for taking photos and video of law enforcement officers in public." The issue is surely bound for the Supreme Court, but who knows what will bring?

#

The Supreme Court's final rulings of the term -- some surprises, but in the end really more of the same

Plus: Will Blago have to serve the full 300 years?

""Laws like Arizona's matching funds provision that inhibit robust and wide-open political debate without sufficient justification cannot stand."

-- Chief Justice "Smirkin' John" Roberts, in his opinion
in Arizona Free Enterprise Club v. Bennett

by Ken

Here's how the story was reported in Arizona:

Supreme Court strikes down provision of Arizona campaign finance law

by Mary Jo Pitzl - Jun. 27, 2011
The Republic | azcentral.com

In a 5-4 opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court Monday struck down a key provision of Arizona's public campaign-finance law.

The court's decision means candidates running under the Arizona Clean Elections system in next year's state elections will not be able to tap public dollars to match the funds raised by their opponents.

Matching funds were created to try and level the playing field between candidates running with public funds and those funding their campaigns with traditional fund-raising tactics. . . .

Man oh man, if there's anything the Roberts Court Gang of Five hates, it's trying to create a level playing field.

The most useful commentary I've seen so far remains the one provided by The New Republic's Rick Hasen: "The Arizona Campaign Finance Law: The Surprisingly Good News in the Supreme Court’s New Decision." Hasen (a visiting law professor at UC Irvine and the writer of Election Law Blog), as I noted earlier, finds in the decision "three pieces of unexpected good news to those of us who believe that reasonable campaign finance regulation is not only constitutional, but essential to prevent corruption and ensure fairness in our democracy":

(1) "[T]he Roberts Court seems to have retreated from the suggestion that all campaign finance laws, aside from disclosure, are in constitutional trouble. . . . [T]he Court confirmed that Citizens United did not overturn the law related to contribution limits, finding these restrictions 'less onerous' and to be upheld under a 'lower level of scrutiny.' That's important, because opponents of campaign finance laws such as conservative attorney Jim Bopp have been going around citing Citizens United in their attempts to get contribution limits struck down left and right."

(2) Confounding some expectations of where Justice Elena Kagan might stand on this issue, based on some of her academic writings, she emerges in writing the dissenting opinion "as a forceful intellectual voice for the constitutionality of reasonable campaign finance regulation. . . . Kagan's dissent was caustic, accusing the majority of missing the point and the challengers to the Arizona law as full of chutzpah. . . . Kagan has emerged here as not only an intellectual leader, but a pugnacious, take-no-prisoners' writer on an issue about which she feels passionately. It is a welcome contrast to Justice Stevens' meandering dissent in Citizens United."

(3) "The last piece of good news is that the Court did not level a death blow to public financing laws. Instead, it said that the decision of cities, states, or Congress enact public financing is 'not our business.' The problem with Arizona's law was not that it gave public financing for elections to candidates, but that it pegged the amount of financing to the political spending of opponents or independent groups opposing the candidate. But lump sum payments should be okay."

Professor Hasen adds:

The big question left open is the fate of public financing programs such as New York City's, which give extra matching funds to participating candidates who collect small donations. This program doesn't directly violate the rule in today's Arizona case, because the amount received is not triggered by opponent spending. But the question will be whether the motive for such programs is to level the playing field. Under the Roberts Court's view of the First Amendment, such an interest remains verboten, even if, as Justice Kagan points out, the law also is justified on anticorruption grounds. Without something like additional matching funds, it is hard to see how governments will enact public financing programs that are both constitutional and attractive enough to candidates.

IN TODAY'S OTHER MAJOR COURT DECISION, ON
SHIELDING MINORS FROM VIDEO-GAME VIOLENCE . . .

The conversion of the First Amendment into a right-wing cudgel continues, as the Court struck down California's attempt to prevent sales of extremely violent video games to minors on First Amendment grounds, with ideological lines zigzagging all over the place. The vote was 7-2, and the justices in the "majority" seemed to be ruling on two totally different cases (about the only thing they had in common was their "yea" votes), while the minority consisted of the odd couple of Clarence Thomas and Stephen Breyer.

The assorted opinions seem mostly direct projections from the relevant justices' ids and superegos. Note, though, that in the end the decision follows the money. Companies wanna sell stuff, and the Roberts Court rarely gets between rich fat white guys and their quest for the Holy Buck.


ELSEWHERE ON THE JUDICIAL FRONT: DOES THIS
MEAN BLAGO'S OFF THE TALK-SHOW CIRCUIT?

Jury convicts ousted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich of trying to sell Obama’s old Senate seat

by Associated Press, Monday, June 27

CHICAGO — Rod Blagojevich, who rode his talkative everyman image to two terms as Illinois governor before scandal made him a national punch line, was convicted Monday of a wide range of corruption charges, including the incendiary allegation that he tried to sell or trade President Barack Obama’s Senate seat.

The verdict was a bitter defeat for Blagojevich, who had spent 2½ years professing his innocence on reality TV shows and later on the witness stand. His defense team had insisted that hours of FBI wiretap recordings were just the ramblings of a politician who liked to think out loud. He faces up to 300 years in prison, although federal sentencing guidelines are sure to reduce his time behind bars. . . .

What? You mean the bastard's not going to serve the full 300 years? It's an outrage!

UPDATE: Raúl Grijalva Responds To Supreme Court's Narrow Pro-Fascist, Anti-Democracy Decision

Calling the decision “a troubling sign that wealth now decides how much free speech you get," Grijalva explained that it will reduce the number of qualified people running for office because they can no longer respond to barrages of attack ads with public campaign funds. According to Reuters, about two-thirds of Arizona state candidates use the current public financing system. “Who wants that many Arizonans to decide they can no longer ask for our votes simply because they’re not wealthy?” Grijalva said. He pointed out that the Arizona law in no way prohibits any individual or group from buying advertising or otherwise communicating a political stance or opinion. “All the state said was that money shouldn’t be the determining factor in an election, and today the Supreme Court decided otherwise,” he said. “It’s part of a larger pattern that began with the ideological Citizens United ruling, which has made it impossible to fix what ails our political process. As soon as you decide a corporation is a person, with all the rights we’re granted as free citizens, you’ve turned government into a contest of corporate interests versus popular interests, and corporations always have more to spend than individuals.”

Grijalva said the logic of today’s decision is more about who influences elections than a plain reading of the First Amendment. “While the court majority described this as a matter of free speech, we should talk about the real issue: corporate control of the political process,” Grijalva said. “Working people’s voices continue to be drowned out by well financed corporations with expert marketing strategies. The Framers of our Constitution never meant for wealthy companies or individuals with their own agendas to drown out the rest of us in public debate, especially not by outspending us.”

The dissenting opinion points out that the victorious plaintiffs in the case “ask this Court to prevent Arizona from funding electoral speech-- even though that assistance is offered to every state candidate, on the same (entirely unobjectionable) basis.”

#

Is the Supreme Court ready to legalize the theory and practice of corruption in government?

Do not fret, worried sir. Think of it as "free speech,"
not "potential conflict of interest," and it's all OK.

"The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Wednesday in a case that could put a constitutional cloud of doubt over hundreds -- if not thousands -- of state and local ethics laws across the country.

"For the first time, the justices will consider whether a legislative vote is protected by the First Amendment guarantee of free speech -- specifically, whether states may forbid officeholders from voting on matters that appear to involve a personal conflict."

-- from the Web version of Nina Totenberg's
NPR Morning Edition report today

by Ken

From the sober way Nina Totenberg frames the legal issue in her lead, you might not guess how preposterous this case is. And given the level of ignorance and corruption currently infesting the Supreme Court -- thinking of the thugs who not only refuse to reconsider the idiotic ruling that "money" equals "speech" (as in "free speech") but have expanded the doctrine to include corporations' right of "free speech" -- you worry that the Gang of Five might actually be prepared to rule for the guy who whines, "I used my best judgment, and they punished me for it."

Well, Sparks (Nevada) City Councilman Michael Carrigan may indeed have used his "best judgment," but that judgment was only good enough to tell him that he needed to seek legal advice before casting a particular vote. That judgment is apparently not good enough to suggest to him that he may have gotten -- perhaps even engineered -- bad legal advice

Because what he is asking the Supreme Court to ratify is a doctrine that the right to free speech guarantees the right to corruption. Well, hey, why not? What the Nevada Commission on Ethics ruled was a conflict of interest is, at root, a matter of money changing hands, and we know that that's a mere matter of the exercise of free speech, and that can't be abridged.

Some facts please, Nina.

The case comes from Sparks, Nev., sister city to Reno. In 2006, during its election season, the city council was voting on a high profile and controversial proposed new casino project called the "Lazy 8." Council member Michael Carrigan's longtime friend and three-time campaign manager, Carlos Vasquez, was on retainer to the Lazy 8 developer for $10,000 a month.

The Nevada ethics code requires public officials to recuse themselves from voting on any matter involving a close relative, an employer, a business associate or anyone who has a relationship that is "substantially similar." With that in mind, Carrigan asked the city attorney whether his relationship with Vasquez required him to abstain from voting on the casino project.
According to Carrigan, the city attorney told him he should disclose his relationship. "[He said] I could vote if I felt that my friend was not getting any other benefit out of it that a normal citizen wouldn't get," he says.

Following that advice, Carrigan did disclose and then voted to approve the Lazy 8 project. Opponents of the project filed a complaint against him with the state ethics commission.

The state ethics commission had a different view from that attributed by Carrigan to the city attorney: Uh-uh, you can't do that.

But Caren Jenkins, the commission's executive director, notes there was no punishment. "Because the violation was not willful, no sanction was imposed," she says.

Jenkins went on to explain the commission's reasoning.

Jenkins says Carrigan's violation was based on the fact that he had an ongoing business relationship with his campaign manager, who provided business services at a cost to the campaign, and that the two had a longtime close, personal friendship.

"Mr. Vasquez was a friend, an adviser [and] a confidant," to Carrigan, explains Jenkins, noting that Carrigan testified Vasquez was "like a brother" to him.

However, Carrigan, "a retired U.S. Navy aviator," was so "outraged" by the ruling that he went to court, and "the Nevada Supreme Court ruled in his favor, declaring that 'voting by public officers on public issues is protected speech under the First Amendment.'"

We're not told what drugs the Nevada Supreme Court justices were on when they arrived at this conclusion, according to which our pols should feel free to buy and sell their votes on the open market, since those votes are "protected speech." After all, buying and selling protected speech is now the way the nation's governing is done.

SOMETIMES YOU WONDER, DO RIGHT-WINGERS
& THEIR MOUTHPIECES LISTEN TO THEMSELVES?

In his pleading today, Nina tells us, Carrigan's lawyer, E. Joshua Rosenkranz, was expected to " tell the justices that the commission's action struck at the heart of the democratic process."

Rosenkranz argues that "the manner in which Nevada has decided to regulate politics puts an untenable burden on the sorts of relationships and political loyalties that make democracy work."

Indeed, he contends that relationships like the one between councilman Carrigan and his campaign manager are the "very fabric of our democracy."

"It's a relationship that arose because Vasquez believed in Carrigan, believed in what he values and wanted to help him get elected to office," Ronsenkranz says. "And if a state declares that the political activities of a campaign volunteer will get the elected official disqualified from an important vote, volunteers will stop volunteering, and candidates will be reluctant to associate with volunteers, campaigns will be weaker, and so will our democracy."

The "very fabric of our democracy," eh? There's no way of knowing whether counselor Rosenkranz is really this stupid, or just this corrupt.

What he's talking about -- the unfettered ability of money to exercise its free-speech rights (we have established that money has free-speech rights, haven't we? send a memo to Chief Justice Roberts) by buying as much government as it can afford -- may well be "the fabric" of something, but I refuse to accept that that something is "our democracy." And to return to Nina's portentous lead, if the Supreme Court thugs get this one wrong, the clock may be ticking on every ethics law in the country.

Which will be just peachy for the fabric of our democracy.

#

The thing to remember about Justice Sammy "The Hammer" is that at heart he's still a constitution-busting ideological goon

The eight other Supreme Court justices agreed that the Westboro Baptist-Scum Church wackos have a First Amendment right to inflict their psychotic homophobia on funeral mourners -- and of course they're probably right. So what's the deal with Sammy "The Hammer"?

""It does not follow, however, that they may intentionally inflict severe emotional injury on private persons at a time of intense emotional sensitivity by launching vicious verbal attacks that make no contribution to public debate."

""Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case."

-- from Justice Alito's dissent arguing in favor of restricting the First Amendment rights of people like the Westboro Baptist-Scum Church

by Ken

Were you, like a lot of folks, surprised to find Justice Sammy "The Hammer" Alito the lone dissenter in the Supreme Court's 8-1 ruling that the goons of the Irreverend Fred Phelps's Westboro Baptist-Scum Church have an involable constitutionally protected right to inflict their taunting, psychotic homophobia on mourners at a funeral?

It certainly got my attention. On an issue that finds accord among the High Court's three other rabid right-wing zealots and the four moderates and "Slow Anthony" Kennedy, it's hard not to wonder about that lone dissent. So I was curious about Washington Post reporter Robert Barnes's attempt today to get to the bottom of it ("Alito stands alone on Supreme Court's First Amendment cases").

A lot of attention is being paid to Justice Sammy's loner dissent, in particular to the portion I've quoted at the top of this post. Here's the Post's Robert Barnes:

In Wednesday's dissent in Snyder v. Phelps, Alito said Albert Snyder had an "elementary right" to bury his son in peace. Members of the church had no right to launch "a malevolent verbal attack on Matthew and his family at a time of acute emotional vulnerability."

He added: "Our profound national commitment to free and open debate is not a license for the vicious verbal assault that occurred in this case."

More particularly, in what we might think of as a case of "I believe in the First Amendment as much as the next guy" (though not -- oops! -- if the next guy happens to be Nino Scalia or Clarence Thomas or John Roberts):

Alito rejected the view that the caustic signs carried by the protesters -- "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "God Hates Fags" are favorites -- were legitimate public speech in a public forum.

"The First Amendment ensures that they have almost limitless opportunities to express their views," Alito wrote about the church's opinion that military deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are God's punishment for the nation's tolerance for homosexuality.

"They may write and distribute books, articles, and other texts; they may create and disseminate video and audio recordings; they may circulate petitions; they may speak to individuals and groups in public forums and in any private venue that wishes to accommodate them; they may picket peacefully in countless locations; they may appear on television and speak on the radio; they may post messages on the Internet and send out e-mails," Alito wrote.

He added: "It does not follow, however, that they may intentionally inflict severe emotional injury on private persons at a time of intense emotional sensitivity by launching vicious verbal attacks that make no contribution to public debate."

THE FIRST POINT TO MAKE IS THAT JUSTICE
SAMMY'S VOTE WAS UTTERLY IRRELEVANT

You can, of course, find cases where the lone dissent in and 8-1 Court ruling wound up having long-term traction. But I don't think you'd find any where that dissenting ruling. prescient as it may ultimately have proved, actually had any effect on the subsequent evolution in the Court's adjudicating. Practically speaking, I think it's fair to say that the "1" in an 8-to-1 ruling couldn't be more irrelevant, at least with regard to the issue under consideration. When you have eight Supreme Court justices united, that tells you that for the present and foreseeable future, the issue is settled.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that Justice Sammy took advantage of his irrelevance on the issue to allow a previously unsuspected bleeding heart to flow. On the other hand, I don't exactly want to rule out the thought that the Sam-man knew he had a "free pass" on this one, to do . . . well, whatever the heck it is he thinks he's done. Put that pesky First Amendment in is place, or something like that.

THE SECOND POINT IS THAT JUSTICE SAMMY
HASN'T SUDDENLY BECOME A CIVIL LIBERTARIAN

The line of inquiry that more or less monopolizes Barnes's attention is the apparent common thread between the just-decided Snyder vs. Phleps and an earlier ruling in which Justice Sammy came out four-square not entirely in favor of the First Amendment.

Last April, the other justices forcefully struck down a federal law aimed at banning depictions of dog fighting and other violence against animals, saying it violated constitutional guarantees of free speech and created a "criminal prohibition of alarming breadth."

That ruling, which like Wednesday's was written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., was another ringing endorsement of the First Amendment's protection of even distasteful expression. Roberts called "startling and dangerous" the government's argument that the value of certain categories of speech should be weighed against their societal costs when protecting free speech.

Alito did not.

"The First Amendment protects freedom of speech, but it most certainly does not protect violent criminal conduct, even if engaged in for expressive purposes," Alito wrote in that case, U.S. v. Stevens . Videos that depict acts of animal mutilation and death "present a highly unusual free speech issue because they are so closely linked with violent criminal conduct."

From this, Thomas C. Goldstein, described by Barnes as "a Supreme Court practitioner who runs scotusblog.com," deduces:

In his view, the First Amendment has a core value relating to political speech. In his view, extending it to protect videos of animal cruelty and exploitation of a military funeral goes too far. The rest of the court obviously disagrees, but his position seems completely coherent.

I should explain that the "coherence" Goldstein is defending has to do with the charge of inconsistency between these votes and the Hammer's lockstep endorsement of the Citizens United that the First Amendment rights of those ineffably fragile entities, corporations, may not constitutionally be impinged upon.

To be honest, I don't rightly know what Justice Sammy believes about the First Amendment. I'm admit I'm kind of surprised that the line he seems to be drawing falls on the near side of the unlimited-free-speech rights of ultra-right-wing crazies, but I don't draw any comfort from this given (a) the very "ultra"-ness of these particular right-wingers and (b) again, the fact that in these cases his vote just hasn't meant squat. Clearly, though, when it comes to speech that isn't comfortably right-wing, the kind of speech that may elicit less protective First Amendment sensibilities from Justices Nino, Clarence, Smirkin' John, and Slow Anthony, any complainant who may hope for protection for the Sam-man is deluded.

Now it's possible that practitioner-blogger Thomas Goldstein may have hit the nail on the head with his speculation that in Justice Sammy's view "the First Amendment has a core value relating to political speech." There's a small problem here, though. The actual First Amendment in the actual Constitution doesn't contain the slightest ghost of a whisper of the shadow of a possibility of a hint of such a distinction -- of some kind of "core" value to the First Amendment that, where speech is concerned, protects only political speech.

BY THE WAY, DOES THE CONSTITUTION
TELL US HOW TO DETERMINE . . .

. . . that the speech of the Westboro Baptist-Scum Church dirtbags is not political? You know, to help us apply this "core" distinction that he Justice Sammy seems to know the First Amendment intends but just never got around to mentioning? Oh, you say, the Westboro Baptist trolls' speech isn't political, it's religious? Uh-oh, maybe you want to take another look at that there First Amendment? And let Mr. Goldstein know what you find. But I suggest you not bother mentioning it to Justice Sammy. He doesn't seem to care. He doesn't seem to know or care what the First Amendment says, just what it means. Which he knows.

For that matter, these "elementary rights" of which our Sammy speaks, like the right to bury your son in peace, the right that he appears to be holding sacred in his dissent -- um, these "rights" are also utterly non-existent in the Constitution, and also, as far as I'm aware, in previous Supreme Court jurisprudence.

And the problem is that Justice Alito is one of the Court's right-wing extremist thugs who brazenly lied his way through his Senate confirmation hearings by claiming that Supreme Court justices aren't called on to interpret the Constitution, just to apply, the standard lying imbecility on which the massed forces of right-wing injustice have settled as the be-all and end-all of elementary qualifications to be a Supreme Court justice -- an unreservedly ideological imbeciliity that the infotainment noozemedia has been only too happy to rubber-stamp. It's not the noozers' job, at least in their little minds, to question publicly declared right-wing imbecilitiess.

In Justice Sammy's defense, sort of, anyone with the tiniest sliver of a working brain knows that this "just apply the Constitution" is the rankest, most hypocritical fraud. It's an absolute impossibility, and anyone who says otherwise is either a legal imbecile or a legal liar. And way high on that list is Justice Sammy "I Lie Because I Am" Alito. Maybe somebody would like to ask him about that "inconsistency." Of course Supreme Court justices don't have to answer nuttin' from nobody, however curious we may be to have one of them explain, say, whether citizens may have an "elementary" right to have their speech protected from the blanketing assault of corporate cash, or whether there is perhaps a "core value" in the Second Amendment (which is actually stated pretty explicitly, unless you happen to be a right-wing crackpot too stupid or dishonest to be able to, you know, read at, say, an elementary-school level).

Our last chance to demand answers from Sammy was at his confirmation hearings. You know, back when he said, in effect, that he reserves the right to lie whenever he feels like it, for as long as he lives, amen. The only recourse we have if we don't like it is impeachment, and that's not going to happen.

But it would be something if the noozemedia began to make clear that the extreme right-wing majority of the current Supreme Court is made up of a bunch of lying sacks of doody.

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