The Latest Corporate Obamist to Be Touted for President by Big New York Media — Deval Patrick

Bain Capital's corporate logo: Vultures, rampant, on a field of bones

Bain Capital's managing director and the Obama circle's choice for next president. "We get the government we deserve in a democracy," Deval Patrick unironically said, according to the original caption (Photograph by John Trotter/MAPS for The New Yorker).

by Gaius Publius

Yet another agent of wealth is being touted as a Democratic Party candidate for president — it seems there's no end of them. This time the candidate is no Mike Bloomberg, with his suspect past, his narcissistic sense of entitlement, and openly limousine lifestyle, but an under-the-radar Democratic governor named Deval Patrick.

Patrick ticks all the boxes. He's loved by the Obama organization, he has that next-Obama feel on the stump, and he's a "moderate" (meaning corporatist) in a year when Third Way organizations are searching hard for a "sounds progressive, serves the donors" candidate to throw against the Donald Trump or Mike Pence wall in 2020.

And now he has the the big New York media pushing his candidacy, firing his big opening salvos for him. Jeffrey Toobin, not a no-name writer, has an absolutely glowing piece about Patrick in The New Yorker. Let's take a look (emphasis mine throughout):

Toobin open this way:

On Election Night last week, Deval Patrick, the former governor of Massachusetts, went out to dinner with his wife, Diane, near their apartment, in Boston’s Back Bay. They propped up their iPads on the table, trying to synchronize their schedules after a hectic couple of months. On weekdays, Patrick had been on the road for his job, as a managing director at Bain Capital, the investment firm founded by his predecessor as governor, Mitt Romney. On weekends, he had travelled to a dozen states, to campaign for Democratic candidates in the midterms, and, in the process, to generate the kind of good will and name recognition that could help him if he chooses to run for President in 2020. Diane, meanwhile, had been winding down her law practice, as a management-side labor lawyer at the major Boston firm Ropes & Gray, where she had recently given up her partnership after working there since 1995. Back at home, after dinner, Patrick took a quick look at the election results, and then turned in early, rising, as is his custom, at dawn, to take stock.

Notice, among the down home details of this warm portrait, these critical facts: Deval Patrick is managing director of Bain Capital. His wife Diane is a labor lawyer, but on the management side, meaning she helps corporations fend off unions.

Toobin clearly doesn't see any of that as a minus, but he should. Bain Capital, worth nearly $100 billion in privately held assets, is an acquirer and destroyer of companies:

In his 2009 book The Buyout of America: How Private Equity Is Destroying Jobs and Killing the American Economy, Josh Kosman described Bain Capital as "notorious for its failure to plow profits back into its businesses," being the first large private-equity firm to derive a large fraction of its revenues from corporate dividends and other distributions. The revenue potential of this strategy, which may "starve" a company of capital, was increased by a 1970s court ruling that allowed companies to consider the entire fair-market value of the company, instead of only their "hard assets", in determining how much money was available to pay dividends. In at least some instances, companies acquired by Bain borrowed money in order to increase their dividend payments, ultimately leading to the collapse of what had been financially stable businesses.

A classic "leveraged buyout" company, a vulture capital operation. Here's what Bain did to Toys 'R' Us in 2018:

Just a few years ago, Toys 'R' Us was an iconic American retailer. Six months ago, it filed for bankruptcy. Two days ago, it announced that all 800 of its American stores, and all 100 of its British ones, are closing or being sold. As many as 33,000 workers could lose their jobs.

What happened to America's biggest toy store?

Simply put, vulture capitalists ate it.

One of those vultures was Bain Capital. Deval Patrick was its managing director, the man in charge, when this occurred.

So why is Jeffrey Toobin writing about him? Maybe because Patrick is much loved by the Obama inner circle:

Patrick would enter the race with one significant distinction: he is a kind of political heir to Barack Obama, and enjoys broad support from people close to the former President. Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s former senior adviser and still a close friend, told me, “Deval would make an outstanding President. He’d make a terrific candidate.” She added, “President Obama and Deval are very much alike in terms of their core values, what drove them into public service, their willingness to lend a hand, the responsibility to give back. I think they share a basic philosophy about what it means to be a good citizen.” Obama and Patrick also have in common roots in Chicago, Ivy League educations, and complicated relationships with largely absent fathers (which both men have chronicled in memoirs that feature youthful pilgrimages to Africa). They espouse a politics of unapologetic idealism, with a largely moderate, center-left orientation. On the stump, both are part teacher and part preacher. “Deval is a very genuine person, a very empathetic person,” David Axelrod, who has been a strategist for Patrick as well as for Obama, told me. “He is a guy who makes people feel comfortable. He’s very principled, you can see that—just like Obama.”

Ignore the adoring prose layered into that paragraph — "They [Obama and Patrick] espouse a politics of unapologetic idealism, with a largely moderate, center-left orientation. On the stump, both are part teacher and part preacher" — and focus on the endorsements. Patrick's "unapologetic idealism" is just not true; both Obama and Patrick are corporatists who serve wealth first. Being "part teacher and part preacher" just means he, like Obama, is a good Elmer Gantry.

As for Patrick being "principled," indeed he is; he's principled "just like Obama," though I'm sure Toobin doesn't mean this as ironically it sounds to any real student of Obama.

Most of the piece is like that — painfully praising, and painfully revealing in a way unintended by Toobin. For example, here's Toobin on why Patrick was opposed to Brett Kavanaugh's nomination:

That afternoon, Patrick and I sat down at a diner in Asbury Park. In Washington, Brett Kavanaugh was being confirmed as a Justice of the Supreme Court, and Patrick explained his opposition to the nomination. “Some of it is very personal,” he said. ... In 1993, Patrick’s brother-in-law was convicted of raping Patrick’s sister, and Diane has talked openly about being a victim of domestic abuse during her first marriage. “I can confirm that the experience of not being believed or having the experience not taken as seriously or treated as seriously is extremely painful,” he said. He spoke with sorrow and emotional distance, and [Toobin couldn't bring himself to write "but"], notably, didn’t denounce Kavanaugh directly, or Trump for choosing him.

Note in this passage the compelling verbal portrait of a man whose sister had been raped, speaking "with sorrow and emotional distance," followed immediately by the lack of condemnation of either the rapist, the radical who nominated him, or the destructive agenda the Kavanaugh court will enact. Toobin's personal access to Patrick ("That afternoon, Patrick and I sat down at a diner in Asbury Park"), his front-and-center self-placement as the writer picked to roll out Valerie Jarrett's front-runner, also stands out. The piece is a paint job, and deaf to its ironies.

None of this means that Patrick won't be a force to be reckoned with in 2020. Both Toobin and David Axelrod attest to Patrick's preacher power on the stump. Toobin: "Soon after Patrick started to campaign, Axelrod got a phone call from his sister Joan, who lives in Massachusetts ... “She had never done anything like this before, but she gets on the phone and says she’s just met Deval and he is incredible. ‘He’s the real deal. You have to come here and work for him.’” ... Patrick beat Reilly by twenty points in the primary."

As a sleeper, Patrick is well positioned to surprise. Be prepared to find him in the running as the race evolves, with both money and power behind him and yes-we-can media angels at his shoulder.

Toobin, closing on a note of swelling church-organ glory, emphasizes Patrick's chosen theme, "hope and kindness":

"It struck me that something is so wrong when we learn to shout our anger and whisper our kindness,” he went on. “We have got to learn to stop being ashamed of being kind." In the church and elsewhere, Patrick left a message of hope and kindness. The question, for Patrick and everyone else, is whether there is a wider audience for it in this fierce and broken political moment.

Is there a place for "hope and kindness" in this "fierce and broken moment"? Let's ask the broken employees of Toys 'R' Us before seeking kindness from Deval Patrick, their destroyer.

GP
 

Perhaps Senators Who Are Uncomfortable With Trump Turning The U.S. Into A Banana Republic, Should Stop Behaving Like Banana Republicans

Nancy Ohanian: Emperor With Fig Leaf

Yesterday, Bernie was at an AFL-CIO Labor Day breakfast in Manchester, New Hampshire, where he told the crowd that Señor Trumpanzee is a "pathological liar." What's the difference between a pathological liar and a congenital liar? Bernie also reminded the folks that Trump "works night and day on behalf of his fellow billionaires... And most reprehensible, we have a president who is not doing what almost every president in American history has done: When you make it into the Oval Office, you understand you’ve got a sacred responsibility to bring the American people together. Today we have a president who for cheap political reasons is trying to divide us up."

Trump spent the day pouting and tweeting his regular hateful bullshit. Like, for example, this:

I mean, what's wrong with this jackass (his middle name)? I'm not a Jeff Sessions fan, but compared to Trump he seems like a normal human being. Trump thinks the Attorney General and the Department of Justice are supposed to be weaponized to serve his whims and political agenda. He was bitching about Chris Collins (R-NY) and Duncan Hunter (R-CA), the first and second members of Congress to have endorsed him being indicted for serious crimes because they are "two very popular Republican Congressmen." He's complaining that "Two easy wins now in doubt." I'm sure he doesn't even know he's doing anything wrong. Because of course, to the 30-something percent of American voters who support him and to whom he caters, he isn't doing anything wrong. Only Jeff Sessions and the DOJ did something wrong. CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin said the tweet by itself "may be an impeachable offense. This is such a disgrace. This is so contrary to the traditions of the Department of Justice." And recall, about a week or so ago he was whining that he needed Sessions to indict someone "from the other side."

No concept of what justice is all about. Sam Nunberg, a former aide, reported that when he tried to read the Bill of Rights of the Constitution to Trump, and only got as far as the 4th Amendment before Trump started fiddling with his lip. He's eyes rolled back in his head and the session was over. Trump always lies and says he finished at the top of his class at Wharton but one of his professors, William T. Kelley has told people over and over that "Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had." More recently, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Trump is "a moron," which upset Trump so much that he challenged Tillerson to a IQ test battle and then fired him.

Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE), who is known to be driven crazy by this kind of crap from Trump-- but is too frightened to ever do anything about it but whine-- was whining yesterday that "The United States is not some banana republic with a two-tiered system of justice-- one for the majority party and one for the minority party. These two men have been charged with crimes because of evidence, not because of who the President was when the investigations began. Instead of commenting on ongoing investigations and prosecutions, the job of the President of the United States is to defend the Constitution and protect the impartial administration of justice."

Yesterday, Trump ordered up a motorcade, went outside to get in a car, seemed dazed and confused, turned around and went back into the White House. I can't understand why he doesn't have a minder.

Earlier in the day than his attack on Sessions, he got into a little shadow boxing-- it being Labor Day-- with Richard Trumka, head of the AFL-CIO. He was angry that Trumka was on his own TV station telling the truth about the Regime's poisonous behavior towards workers.

Ian Kullgren, writing for Politico in the middle of Trump's studio tweet storm against Trumka, reported that though the illegitimate moron "president" came into office "pledging to cut regulations “massively,” he made a point of exempting regulations that protected workers’ health. But almost two years in, the Trump administration has done the opposite, rolling back worker safety protections affecting underground mine safety inspections, offshore oil rigs and line speeds in meat processing plants, among others. Trump's deregulatory moves on worker safety are at odds with his public stance as a champion of working class Americans, but consistent with his naming two management-side attorneys bent on rolling back economic protections for workers to the National Labor Relations Board, which regulates labor unions, and with his nominations of two reliably pro-management jurists to a now-Republican-majority Supreme Court that recently dealt a heavy financial blow to public-employee unions." That was one of the items that Trumka brought up on Fox.

Since Trump took office, OSHA also scrubbed a running list of worker deaths from its home page.

A notable exception to the administration’s resistance to worker-safety regulation was its decision to defend in court an Obama-era rule regulating crystalline silica-- a mineral dust long known to cause deadly lung ailments. After some initial delays, the rule took effect for most employers in June.

That action was more in tune with Trump's earlier rhetoric. "We need regulations for safety and environment and things,” President-elect Trump assured workers at an Indianapolis air-conditioner plant in December 2016. “We want to protect our workers,” President Trump repeated one year later in a speech touting the cancellation or delay of 1,500 regulatory actions.

At EPA, Trump officials are working on new rules to limit asbestos exposure as part of a congressionally mandated update to the Toxic Substances Control Act in 2016. On its face, it would seem to be strengthening safety.

But advocates worry that the rules, intended by Congress to limit asbestos, could open the door to new products containing the toxin.

EPA’s significant new use rule, proposed in June, lists 14 uses of asbestos that would trigger scrutiny by EPA. All were used at one time but have been halted by industry voluntarily, said Betsy Southerland, former director of the EPA’s science and technology office.

But the rule doesn’t require every new use of asbestos to be approved by the EPA, though advocates believe Congress gave the agency authority to do so. That means a company conceivably could develop at new use for asbestos and not have to notify the agency, said Southerland, who resigned in 2017.

“You never know what industry is going to come up with,” Southerland said. “They could want to use it to create new chemicals in the future.”

In addition, the EPA’s proposal for evaluating asbestos risks doesn’t consider so-called legacy hazards-- for example, particles of asbestos insulation or asbestos tiles that could be inhaled by workers when removed. That means workers could be more highly exposed than the general public if and when the EPA approves new uses.

“What the Trump EPA has done is essentially cooked the books to undervalue the risks posed by asbestos,” said Scott Faber, a top lobbyist for the Environmental Working Group, which has opposed a variety of Trump policies. “You don’t need to be a toxicologist to understand that you can’t determine whether a chemical is safe or not if you don’t understand the whole picture.”

In industry and industry, the regime is just telling owners and management to regulate themselves, something that has always cost workers' lives, a risk Trump-- though not Trumka-- funds acceptable.

Is There Any Way To Stop Kavanaugh's Confirmation Before The Midterms?

Brett Cavanaugh by Nancy Ohanian

L.A. is packed with state legislators from around the country for conferences this week, including several friends of mine who I don't get to see often. Last night I had dinner with one and, as we were leaving Cafe Gratitude, he asked me how I thought the Kavanaugh thing would end. I think was looking for me to affirm his own optimism. I wish I could have. Do we have a shot? Sure. But it's a really long shot. People are working very hard on this and voters are starting to rally against Kavanaugh. The latest polling I've seen, from YouGov, is... meh. Among registered voters, it's very close:

• Strongly approve- 27%
• Somewhat approve- 10%
• Somewhat disapprove- 9%
• Strongly disapprove- 28%
• Undecided- 25%

No significant difference-- just a battle for the hearts and minds of the people who describe themselves as not knowing enough to decide. Still, Kavanaugh is the least popular Supreme Court nominee in modern history-- including a Quinnipiac poll from last week that shows more people oppose his confirmation than support it.

FiveThirtyEight points out that Kavanaugh's polling numbers look like Robert Bork's and Harriet Miers'. OK, always nice to see a little history. It's not meaningless. But can Chuck Schumer pull it off?

He needs to hold shaky Trump state Democrats up for reelection (+ Doug Jones of Alabama who isn't up for reelection)-- Heidi Heitkamp, Joe Manchin, Joe Donnelly, Bill Nelson and Claire McCaskill-- from committing to support confirmation to give Schumer-- and the grassroots groups in their states-- enough room and enough time to persuade 2 Republicans (yes, technically they only need one, but will just one Republican take on the whole onus alone?) to flip. I don't see that happening, unless there's a dead girl/live boy scenario in those hidden records. Big talkers Corker and Flake could do it since both are retiring, but neither has the inclination-- nor the balls, no matter how much they detest Trump.

Yesterday, writing for the New Yorker Jeffrey Toobin wrote, trying too reassure the kinds of people who read the New Yorker that "At some point in the process, all four of these nominees-- Haynsworth, Carswell, Bork, and Ginsburg-- seemed like shoo-ins for confirmation, much as Kavanaugh does today. And yet they were all defeated. And the Justices who took their places were closer to the judicial and political mainstream. To be sure, the analogies to Kavanaugh’s case can be overdrawn. The most obvious difference is that Democrats controlled the Senate when Nixon and Reagan made their nominations. And Nixon and Reagan were less right-wing than Trump has been, at least when it comes to judicial nominations. Trump and his allies can be expected to fight furiously for Kavanaugh precisely because Blackmun and Kennedy turned out to be more moderate than many anticipated. Still, the current Republican margin in the Senate (owing to John McCain’s absence) is just a single vote, and Kavanaugh’s long paper trail, both as a judge and as a Republican political appointee, gives Democrats a great deal of material to exploit. Most of all, they need to remember that fighting Supreme Court nominees, even against formidable odds, can succeed-- and produce a better Court than anyone might have expected."

One more thing. You know who Trump is? He's the guy who, if Kavanaugh is defeated, will absolutely find someone worse, not someone better. Meanwhile, today... on the floor of the Senate:

The Deal With The Devil Is Paying Off For Evangelical Voters

Did you watch Meet The Press Sunday? The highlight was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez but Chuck Todd had another interesting guest as well, Maria Canwell, a standard issue Democrat from Washington (state and DC). Cantell had a warning for senators in regard to Trump's not-as-yet named replacement for Anthony Kennedy. "My colleagues," she said, "on both sides of the aisle know that this vote could be one of the key votes of their entire career. If they vote for somebody who's going to change precedent, it could be a career-ending move."

Remember, during his hate-filled campaign, Trump repeatedly said he would appoint nominees who would overturn Roe v. Wade, one of the top reasons over 80% of evangelicals voted for him and still support him, despite his obvious personal flaws.

On CNN yesterday, Susan Collins (R-ME) said she wouldn't support anyone who is against the Roe v. Wade. How will she know? By remembering what Trump said during the campaign? "I would not support a nominee who demonstrated hostility to Roe v. Wade because that would mean to me that their judicial philosophy did not include a respect for established decisions, established law."

CNN's top legal analyst, Jeffrey Toobin, also writes for the New Yorker and this week, he explained how How Trump's Supreme Court Pick Could Undo Kennedy's Legacy, although I think Kennedy already did that by retiring before the midterms. A conservative, Kennedy was considered the swing vote on the court because he departed from right-wing orthodoxy on some key issues: gay rights, affirmative action, the death penalty, and, in Toobin's opinion, "most notably, abortion rights. In the 1992 case of Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Kennedy voted to uphold Roe v. Wade, and he remained a reluctant but steady advocate for maintaining the precedent."

The whole purpose of Trump’s Supreme Court selection process has been to eliminate the possibility of nominating someone who might commit Kennedy’s perfidies of moderation. The activists from the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation who supplied the President’s list of twenty-five prospective nominees are determined to tear down the monuments, on select issues, that Kennedy has built. Their labors have already produced one soaring success, in the confirmation, last year, of Neil Gorsuch. His extremism has exceeded that of his predecessor Antonin Scalia and equalled that of his colleague Clarence Thomas, the Justice with whom he has voted most often.

Yet it’s far from certain that the public wants the kinds of rulings that a brazen conservative majority would produce. So the nominee and his or her supporters will avoid spelling out the implications of this judicial philosophy. As with Gorsuch, the nominee will be supported with meaningless buzz phrases: he or she will be opposed to “legislating from the bench” and in favor of “judicial restraint.” Like Gorsuch, the nominee will rely on airy generalities rather than on specific examples. It’s all the more important, then, to articulate in plain English what, if such a nominee is confirmed, a new majority will do.

It will overrule Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortions and to criminally prosecute any physicians and nurses who perform them. It will allow shopkeepers, restaurateurs, and hotel owners to refuse service to gay customers on religious grounds. It will guarantee that fewer African-American and Latino students attend élite universities. It will approve laws designed to hinder voting rights. It will sanction execution by grotesque means. It will invoke the Second Amendment to prohibit states from engaging in gun control, including the regulation of machine guns and bump stocks.

And these are just the issues that draw the most attention. In many respects, the most important right-wing agenda item for the judiciary is the undermining of the regulatory state. In the rush of conservative rulings at the end of this term, one of the most important received relatively little notice. In Janus v. afscme, a 5–4 majority (including Kennedy) said that public employees who receive the benefits of union-negotiated contracts can excuse themselves from paying union dues. In doing so, the Justices overruled a Supreme Court precedent that, as it happens, was nearly as old as Roe v. Wade. (Chief Justice John Roberts, who has made much of his reverence for stare decisis, joined in the trashing of this precedent, and will likely join his colleagues in rejecting more of them.) The decision not only cripples public-sector unions-- itself a cherished conservative goal-- but does so, oddly enough, on First Amendment grounds. The majority said that forcing government workers to pay dues violates their right to free speech. But, as Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a dissent, this is “weaponizing the First Amendment, in a way that unleashes judges, now and in the future, to intervene in economic and regulatory policy.” She added, “Speech is everywhere-- a part of every human activity (employment, health care, securities trading, you name it). For that reason, almost all economic and regulatory policy affects or touches speech. So the majority’s road runs long.”

Anthony Kennedy didn’t spend his entire career on that road, and there is, in his best opinions, the kind of decency and empathy that characterized many of the moderate Republicans who once dominated the Court, such as Justices Potter Stewart, Harry Blackmun, and Sandra Day O’Connor. Kennedy’s words at the conclusion of the Obergefell opinion deserve to be his judicial epitaph. “It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage,” he wrote. “Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.” But the Constitution grants only those rights that the Supreme Court says it grants, and a new majority can and will bestow those rights, and take them away, in chilling new ways.

Snopes: "A June 2018 news report accurately described the controversial reality of children facing deportation proceedings without legal representation."

The Trump Campaign Was Colluding With The Kremlin… Is That Illegal? Illegal Enough To Put People In Prison?

Writing for the New Yorker yesterday, Jeffrey Toobin explored the notion that collusion with a foreign government to steal the U.S. presidency is a crime or not. Wasn’t it conspiracy? “Is collusion a crime? That is one of the central questions of the investigation into Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. elections. Even if it could be proved that Donald Trump and his supporters worked with the Russian government, or with Russian citizens, to win the Presidential race, would that activity have violated United States law? It’s long been an article of faith for Trump supporters, and for Trump himself, that collusion is not illegal. As the President told the Times in an interview last December, ‘There is no collusion, and even if there was, it’s not a crime.' Now, it appears, Trump’s own Justice Department may have a different view. That conclusion appears in a document released earlier this week, in the course of pre-trial litigation in the case of Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, on charges including money laundering. Lawyers for Manafort, who has pleaded not guilty to the charges, asked that they be dismissed on the grounds that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, did not have the right to bring them; Manafort’s lawyers assert that the case—which centers on work that Manafort did for the pro-Russia government of Ukraine—was outside Mueller’s jurisdiction.” Yesterday, the judge just about laughed in his face and threw out Manafort’s case entirely.

Mueller… makes clear that he has the authority to investigate obstruction of justice--including obstruction of his own investigation. This, too, is a crucial disclosure. But, if collusion is a crime, what crime is it? What criminal statutes forbid collusion? In an article for the New Yorker in December, I explored this subject, and raised several possibilities, including conspiracy to solicit illegal campaign contributions and conspiracy to engage in illegal computer hacking. But Mueller’s subsequent actions give a hint of his own interpretation of the subject. In February, he obtained an indictment of thirteen Russian citizens and three Russian entities for using social media to help Trump win the election. The key charge in the case… is called conspiracy to defraud the United States.

…This case, of course, only deals with Russian defendants. But if Mueller were able to prove that Americans worked with the Russians in this kind of endeavor-- that is, if he can prove that Americans colluded with the Russians-- then he could bring a similar charge against them. On Tuesday night, the Washington Post reported that the President himself remains a subject of the special counsel’s investigation, meaning that his conduct is being scrutinized, but that no decision has been made about whether charges will be brought against him.

Nevertheless, Mueller now has the authority, and the legal theory, to bring criminal charges for collusion. The unanswered question is whether he has American defendants, too.

Reuters reported that “A federal judge tore into all of the legal arguments that a lawyer for President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort made on Wednesday in his long-shot civil case to convince her that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation has run amok and should be reined in. ‘I don’t really understand what is left of your case,’ U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson said to Kevin Downing, Manafort’s attorney, after peppering him with a lengthy series of questions.”

By nighttime yesterday, CNN was running with an exclusive about Mueller’s team questioning unnamed Russian oligarchs with strong connections to Putin. Both had traveled to the U.S. and Mueller had one stopped at the private airport where he landed his private jet too search his computer and cell phone. The point: Investigators are asking whether wealthy Russians illegally funneled cash donations directly or indirectly into Donald Trump's presidential campaign and inauguration.” The idea of “indirectly” certainly includes the NRA, which helped money-launder millions of dollars from the Kremlin into the Trump campaign.

The approach to Russian oligarchs in recent weeks may reflect that Mueller's team has already obtained records or documents that it has legal jurisdiction over and can get easily, one source said, and now it's a "wish list" to see what other information they can obtain from Russians entering the US or through their voluntary cooperation.

Foreign nationals are prohibited under campaign finance laws from donating to US political campaigns.

The sources did not share the names of the oligarchs but did describe the details of their interactions with the special counsel's team.

One area under scrutiny, sources say, is investments Russians made in companies or think tanks that have political action committees that donated to the campaign.

Another theory Mueller's office is pursuing, sources said, is whether wealthy Russians used straw donors-- Americans with citizenship-- as a vessel through which they could pump money into the campaign and inauguration fund.

How Many More GOP Seats Did Trump Lose With His Vile Tweet About Andy McCabe?

Neither my old friend Cynthia in L.A. nor my even older friend Helen in Westchester is a rambunctious kid, at least not any more. Helen is pushing 70 and Cynthia passed that goal post some time ago. Every day, Cynthia says things about Señor Trumpanzee that I hope and pray the Secret Service isn't hearing. And Helen... she hates Trump even more than Cynthia does. I've been worrying about Helen because she tells me she stays up nights tossing and turning and fretting about what he's doing to the country. I know these two gracious ladies aren't the only Americans in this exact frame of mind-- from from it.

Take legal scholar Jeffrey Tubin, for example. "If you wanted to tell the story of an entire Presidency in a single tweet, you could try the one that President Trump posted after Attorney General Jeff Sessions fired Andrew McCabe, the deputy director of the F.B.I., on Friday night. Every sentence is a lie. Every sentence violates norms established by Presidents of both parties. Every sentence displays the pettiness and the vindictiveness of a man unsuited to the job he holds."

In his statement, McCabe spoke with bracing directness. “Here is the reality: I am being singled out and treated this way because of the role I played, the actions I took, and the events I witnessed in the aftermath of the firing of James Comey,” he said. In other words, McCabe was fired because he is a crucial witness in the investigation led by Robert Mueller, the special counsel. The firing of Comey is the central pillar of a possible obstruction-of-justice case against the President, either in a criminal prosecution or in an impeachment proceeding. By firing McCabe, Trump (through Sessions) has attempted to neuter an important witness; if and when McCabe testifies against Trump, he will now be dismissed by the President’s supporters as an ex-employee embittered by his firing. How this kind of attack on McCabe plays out in a courtroom, or just in the court of public opinion, remains to be seen.

What’s clear, though, is the depth of the President’s determination to prevent Mueller from taking his inquiries to their conclusion, as his personal attorney, John Dowd, made clear. In an interview with the Daily Beast, Dowd said, “I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier.” Of course, notwithstanding Dowd’s caveat that he was speaking only for himself, Rosenstein is on notice that his failure to fire Mueller might lead to his own departure. And Sessions, too, must know that his craven act in firing McCabe will guarantee him nothing. Trump believes that loyalty goes only one way; the Attorney General may still be fired at any moment.

Former CIA Director John Brennan tried to send his message in the language Trumpanzee understand: Tweetese: "When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America... America will triumph over you."

Barry McCaffrey is one of the most highly decorated 4-star generals in America. Trump isn't fit to wipe his ass. I suspect it wasn't easy for him to tweet Friday "Reluctantly I have concluded that President Trump is a serious threat to US national security. He is refusing to protect vital US interests from active Russian attacks. It is apparent that he is for some unknown reason under the sway of Mr Putin."

Unlike most sane Americans, former FBI Director Jim Comey never refers to Trumpanzee as a pile of dung or something along those lines, and he still addresses him with the inappropriate monicker "Mr. President," as in "Mr. President, the American people will hear my story very soon. And they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not."

Sen. Mark Warner is a very conservative Democrat from Virginia. I rarely find myself agreeing with him on much--but this tweet is important: "Every member of Congress, Republican and Democrat, needs to speak up in defense of the Special Counsel. Now." Unfortunately, the Republicans are utterly devoid of any semblance of moral leadership. The only Republicans who are speaking up are the ones who have already announced their voluntary retirements-- like Charlie Dent (R-PA), who went on CNN Saturday morning and "harshly criticized the Trump administration’s decision to fire former FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, adding that he doesn’t think it bodes well for his party. 'Candidly, it looks like retribution and a bit vindictive,' Dent said. 'And I think it’s unfortunate. The man said he’s resigning, and on a Friday night before his 50th birthday, he’s fired to take away his pension? I don’t like the optics of this. I really don’t.' Dent said he thinks the attorney general made the decision under pressure from President Trump. Trump has repeatedly publicly demanded that Sessions fire McCabe, who is potentially a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the president for possible obstruction of justice."

The best realistic outcome we can hope for at this point is that something like 100 House Republicans-- some of the ones not speaking up (especially Paul Ryan)-- lose their seats in November. Sounds far-fetched? Not nearly as far-fetched as a candidate as mediocre as Conor Lamb in a district as red as PA-18 (R+11) could have beat Trump, Pence and Ryan's $10 million. Now, that's far-fetched! Don't listen to the media. They have no clue what's going on with electoral politics until the day after the election-- if then. Instead, be proactive: speak to friends-- persuade someone who wouldn't otherwise vote that his or her country needs them-- or volunteer on a campaign or contribute to a solid progressive candidate who is going to be vigilant against Trumpist tyranny and kakistocracy in general. (If you want to contribute... that's what that thermometer on the right is for. Click on it and give what you can-- even if you've never done so before.)

Friday night, by the way, I tweeted as well... in response to NBC host Andrea Mitchell:

By early Saturday morning congressmen Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Jamie Raskin (D-MD) + Luis Gutierrez (D-IL) had already offered to hire Andrew McCabe in their congressional offices. We need more like them in Congress... and fewer like Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy. Joe Walsh is a hate talk radio host and a former far right-- far, far right-- congressman from Chicagoland. The way his former colleagues are enabling Trump is even too much for him! Today he fulminated that "Republicans have no freaking clue about what is going to hit them in November. They're in denial."

NY Daily News sports commentator Mike Lupica, hit the nail on the head for a lot of us yesterday: "People keep saying that Trump will never fire Mueller, because that would touch off a constitutional crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen since Richard Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre in the heat of Watergate, when Nixon fired independent prosecutor Archibald Cox, which led to the resignations of his own attorney general and deputy attorney general. But every time you read or hear that, you have the same thought: What, we’re not having a constitutional crisis already?" And mainstream conservatives are losing their shit-- like Nicolle Wallace, former Communications Director for the George W. Bush White House and then a senior strategist for McCain.

Putin-Gate Coverup-- Trump Fires Comey... Bring On A Special Prosecutor

Unless you spent the afternoon and evening in a sauna or on a remote mountaintop, you probably know that Trump fired Comey today. The Times reminded its readers that "Comey was supervising an investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to steer the outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign. His firing is a stunning development in Mr. Trump’s nascent presidency."

The abrupt firing raised questions over whether Mr. Trump was trying to influence the Russia investigation. But he said he was following recommendations from the Justice Department, which criticized how Mr. Comey concluded the investigation into Mrs. Clinton.

“While I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation, I nevertheless concur with the judgment of the Department of Justice that you are not able to effectively lead the bureau,” Mr. Trump said in a letter to Mr. Comey dated Tuesday.

...The firing puts Democrats in a difficult position. Many had hoped that Mrs. Clinton would fire Mr. Comey soon after taking office, and blamed him as costing her the election. But under Mr. Trump, the outspoken and independent-minded Mr. Comey was seen as an important check on the new administration.

“Any attempt to stop or undermine this F.B.I. investigation would raise grave constitutional issues,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois. “We await clarification by the White House as soon as possible as to whether this investigation will continue and whether it will have a credible lead so that we know that it’ll have a just outcome.” Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, praised Mr. Comey’s service but said new leadership at the F.B.I. “will restore confidence in the organization.”

“Many, including myself, have questioned his actions more than once over the last year,” Mr. Blunt, who also sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.

Mr. Trump’s decision to fire Mr. Comey marks the second time since taking office that the president has fired a top law enforcement official. In early February, Mr. Trump fired Sally Q. Yates, who had worked in the Obama administration but was serving as acting attorney general.

But the president’s firing of Mr. Comey was far more consequential. Ms. Yates was a holdover, and would only have served in the Trump administration for a matter of days or weeks. By contrast, Mr. Comey was in the midst of his term as director of the bureau.

Unlike lackey Democrats like Feinstein at least John McCain's statement mentioned that he had "long called for a special congressional committee to investigate Russia's interference in the 2016 election. The president's decision to remove the FBI Director only confirms the need and the urgency of such a committee." That would have to be put in place by these two clowns

so... probably not going to happen. Besides an independent Special Prosecutor is ultimately the only way to get to the bottom of this whole Putin-Gate mess.Senator Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) both termed the Comey firing a full fledged constitutional crisis and Chuck Schumer correctly said it will be seen as "part of a cover up." It should be because it certainly is.

Michael Keegan, president of People For the American Way said that "Trump’s decision to fire the FBI director in the midst of investigations into Trump’s own campaign is gravely disturbing. Again and again, Donald Trump has shown that he believes himself to be above the law; today’s decision by the president is as flagrant an abuse of power as anything we’ve seen since the darkest days of the Watergate crisis. Without question, Donald Trump’s actions today make clear that we need a special counsel to provide a through, independent investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to the Russian government during the election. We also need a strong, independent FBI director. Any senator who takes his or her constitutional oath seriously should refuse to confirm any nominee who doesn’t meet that standard."

Bernie's tweet-- that "Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director James Comey raises serious questions about what his administration is hiding"-- was what everyone in Washington is or should be asking. Remember, Comey was scheduled to testify before the Senate Intel license Committee on Thursday, something Trump couldn't have been looking forward to. As Eric Swalwell (D-CA) mentioned on twitter this afternoon, "This is not what an innocent person would do; this is an abuse of power, and shows a consciousness of guilt."



Even Joe Manchin (D-WV) seemed pretty amazed and said that the Senate Intelligence Committe will call Comey to testify over his firing and what he was investigating. I'll give Ted Lieu (D-CA) the last word:

I find Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey to be deeply shocking. As a former prosecutor, I believe his action suggests consciousness of guilt and is similar to what former President Richard Nixon did when faced with investigations against his own associates.

Under the leadership of Director Comey, the FBI Counterintelligence Division is currently investigating associates of Donald Trump and perhaps Trump himself. The FBI may also be investigating Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The recommendation by Attorney General Sessions to fire Comey and the President's action of firing Comey suggest evidence of a massive cover up.

In addition, Attorney General Sessions violated his own recusal terms by taking part in removing the head of the FBI who was leading a counterintelligence investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

I again call for a Special Prosecutor to investigate this grave matter. I also call for the House Judiciary Committee to subpoena Attorney General Sessions and FBI Director Comey to testify in an open hearing as soon as possible.

Can President Trump jack up the shrinking execution rate the way Americans seem to want?

Death Penalty Information Center [Click to enlarge]

"The Death Penalty Information Center report notes that public-opinion polls show some decline in support for the death penalty, but the opposition has never achieved close to a majority. And, notwithstanding ambiguous poll numbers, politicians from Trump to Barack Obama understand that support for the death penalty, at least in some form, is less politically risky than opposition to it."

-- Jeffrey Toobin, in today's newyorker.com "Daily Comment,"
"The Strange Case of the Ameican Death Penalty"

by Ken

The Death Penalty Information Center has issued its annual year-end report, and the DPIC press release is headlined: "Death Sentences, Executions Drop to Historic Lows in 2016." And the evidence is striking:

Death sentences, executions, and public support for capital punishment all continued historic declines in 2016. American juries imposed the fewest death sentences in the modern era of U.S. capital punishment, since the Supreme Court declared existing death penalty statutes unconstitutional in 1972. The expected 30 new death sentences in 2016 represent a 39 percent decline from last year’s already 40-year low of 49. The 20 executions this year marked the lowest number in a quarter century, according to a report released today by the Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC). National public opinion polls also showed support for capital punishment at a 40-year low.

“America is in the midst of a major climate change concerning capital punishment. While there may be fits and starts and occasional steps backward, the long-term trend remains clear,” said Robert Dunham, DPIC’s Executive Director and the author of the report. “Whether it’s concerns about innocence, costs, and discrimination, availability of life without parole as a safe alternative, or the questionable way in which states are attempting to carry out executions, the public grows increasingly uncomfortable with the death penalty each year.”

For the first time in more than 40 years, no state imposed ten or more death sentences. Only five states imposed more than one death sentence. California imposed the most (9) followed by Ohio (4), Texas (4), Alabama (3) and Florida (2). Death sentences continued to be clustered in two percent of counties nationwide, with Los Angeles County imposing four death sentences, the most of any county. But death sentences were down 39 percent, even in those two-percent counties.
This year’s 20 executions marked a decline of more than 25 percent since last year, when there were 28 executions. Only five states conducted executions this year, the fewest number of states to do so since 1983. Two states – Georgia, which had the most executions (9), and Texas, which had the second highest number (7) – accounted for 80 percent of all executions in the U.S. Although Georgia carried out more executions than at any other time since the 1950s, juries in that state have not imposed any new death sentences in the past two years.

State and federal courts continued to strike down outlier practices that increased the likelihood a death sentence would be imposed. The United States Supreme Court struck down practices in Florida, Arizona, and Oklahoma that had disproportionately contributed to the number of death sentences imposed in those states. And state courts in Florida and Delaware ruled that portions of their statutes that permitted the death penalty based upon a non-unanimous jury vote on sentencing were unconstitutional.

In fact, a troubling later paragraph in the press release suggests that, if the states were sticking to our own legal principles, the number of people executed in 2016 would have been even lower, considerably lower, than that mere 20:

DPIC’s review of the 20 people executed in 2016 indicated that at least 60 percent of them showed significant evidence of mental illness, brain impairment, and/or low intellectual functioning. This suggests that, in spite of the constitutional requirement that the death penalty be reserved for the “worst of the worst” offenders, states continued to execute prisoners whose mental illness or intellectual disabilities are similar to impairments the Court has said should make a person ineligible for the death penalty.

But it's the paragraph in between the two chunks of the DPIC press release which got the attention of The New Yorker's legal eagle Jeffrey Toobin:

America’s deep divisions about capital punishment were reflected in voters’ action at the ballot box this year. Voters in California and Nebraska voted to retain the death penalty and Oklahoma voters approved a constitutional amendment regarding capital punishment. At the same time, prosecutors in four of the 16 counties that impose the most death sentences in the U.S. were defeated by candidates who expressed personal opposition to the death penalty or pledged to reform their county’s death penalty practices. In Kansas, pro-death penalty groups spent more than $1 million to defeat four state supreme court justices who had voted to overturn several death sentences, but voters retained all four justices.

"It’s a paradoxical moment in the history of the death penalty in the United States," Toobin begins his newyorker.com "Daily Comment" piece, "The Strange Case of the Ameican Death Penalty."

The number of executions has dwindled to just a few, but the voters, even in the most liberal states, seem to want the punishment to remain on the books. That’s the message of the annual report from the Death Penalty Information Center, which produces the most comprehensive analysis of the subject each year.

He proceeds to substantially flesh out the paradoxical picture painted in the DPIC report, then tries to figure out what the heck is going on here. We Americans love us our death penalty -- not least our soon-to-be president -- even as in practice it seems to be becoming all but obsolete. Huh?

The debate over the death penalty seems to have taken on some of the characteristics of the Presidential race this year, as a contest between populists and élitists. Judges play the part of the élites in this particular debate, and the judiciary, as a whole, has shown ever-greater hostility toward approving executions. This year, the Supreme Court ruled for prisoners in several high-profile death-penalty decisions, holding that racial bias infected jury selection, in Foster v. Chatman, a case from Georgia, and rejecting Florida’s system of allowing judges to impose the death penalty even when jurors support life in prison, in Hurst v. Florida. (The Florida legislature sought to correct the defects identified by the Supreme Court in the Hurst case, only to have the Florida Supreme Court overrule the new law as well.) Delaware’s Supreme Court also nullified its state’s death-penalty law this year.

But, as the election results in California and Nebraska illustrate, the voters—the populists—continue to back the death penalty, as does the President-elect. (Donald Trump notoriously called for the execution of the Central Park Five, fourteen-, fifteen-, and sixteen-year-olds who were charged with a high-profile rape and beating, in 1989. Even though the five were later exonerated, Trump, during this year’s campaign, reiterated his belief in their guilt.) The Death Penalty Information Center report notes that public-opinion polls show some decline in support for the death penalty, but the opposition has never achieved close to a majority. And, notwithstanding ambiguous poll numbers, politicians from Trump to Barack Obama understand that support for the death penalty, at least in some form, is less politically risky than opposition to it. (Obama, for example, has supported executions for “extraordinarily heinous crimes.”) Trump’s victory, and those of other Republicans, can only reinforce that view.

So what's the story? Well, it's pretty much what we've already said.

Many factors have led to the decline in the death penalty in recent years: less crime over all, with less fear among the public as a result; DNA exonerations leading jurors to pause before imposing death; the reluctance of pharmaceutical companies to provide lethal-injection drugs and the resulting search (still under way) for a drug protocol that passes constitutional muster; the length and expense of the appeals mandated by the Supreme Court. All those reasons for the decline remain, but so, too, does the United States remain a country that has had the death penalty in effect for virtually all of its history. That’s not likely to change, either. The death penalty may keep shrinking, but it will probably never entirely go away.

#

If the Supreme Court cripples Obamacare, which way will fingers point?

This photo appears to have been taken moments after a secret agent (right) has injected an enemy agent (left) with a deadly toxin that even now is coursing through his veins, causing . . . oh wait, it's just President Obama glad-handing Chief Justice "Smirkin' John" Roberts.

"Playing chicken with the Justices only works if it works."

-- The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin, in "Obama's
Game of Chicken with the Supreme Court"

by Ken

As DWT readers surely know by now, Obamacare is on trial for its life (as I wrote in early March, "Our clown Supreme Court takes on the bogus challenge to Obamacare -- and makes believe it's legitimate!"), over four carelessly chosen words in the Affordable Care Act which have been twisted by right-wing psychopaths and dishonest scumbags to mean that people who register for health care on the federal insurance exchange rather than on state exchanges (in the 16 states -- plus the District of Columbia -- that have established them) aren't entitled to federal subsidies as set out in the act.

Now the lying dirtbag plaintiffs in King v. Burwell know perfectly well that their "case" is idiotic on its face -- even in terms of the contested four words, which simply can't mean what they're pretending, at least not to anyone who's at all acquainted with the English language. And of course there's not a word of support anywhere else for their preposterous claim -- not in the entire rest of the ACA, not in the entire legislative history of the ACA, not even in the millions of invective-laden denunciations hurled at the ACA before this tiny phraseological glitch was glommed on. Nothing. And the lawyers have always known this. Their only interest, they have made abundantly clear, is finding whatever means they can to achieve their goal of undoing the act. Nevertheless, betting that there aren't five lying imbecile scumbags on the Roberts Court prepared to go along with the scam seems like an awfully poor bet.

In a new blogpost, New Yorker legal correspondent Jeffrey Toobin takes a new look at what happens if this bet loses, and it's "likely" that most of the 13 million people now receiving subsidies for insurance purchased on the federal exchange "will no longer be able to afford their insurance." Jeffrey presents the question of what happens next as a drama in its own right, which we might think of as being in three acts.

Act I: Democrats are all atremble

"Until recently," Jeffrey writes, "the perception has also been that the Democrats had the largest political stake in the case. After all, the A.C.A. is the signature achievement of the Democratic President."

Act II: Pity the poor GOP!

"Suddenly, though, and paradoxically," Jeffrey writes, "it has come to seem that Obamacare's Republican opponents are most at risk if the decision goes their way. They have the most to lose by winning."

As Jonathan Chait wrote recently, “The chaos their lawsuit would unleash might blow back in a way few Republicans had considered until recently, and now, on the eve of a possible triumph, they find themselves scrambling to contain the damage.” In this view, the peril is especially great for Republicans, because, as Jonathan Cohn recently pointed out, the G.O.P. has failed to propose any kind of plan to address the loss of insurance for so many millions of people.

(I suppose it would be inappropriate for me to suggest that one eminently solvable problem we have here is altogether too many Jonathans involved in the case. Perhaps some of the surplus Jonathans could investigate other names, of which there are many. Julius, for example, or Nathaniel, or Ewan. Maybe Rafael, or Spike? There are a zillion more, more than enough to go around.)

So that’s the theory: millions will suddenly be uninsured, and will blame Republicans. As Harry Reid, the Democratic leader in the Senate, put it recently, “I don’t think they will [win the case]. If they do, that’s a problem that the Republicans have.”

Act III: Hold on there, Harry!

Not so fast, Jonathans (or Rafael, or Spike), says Jeffrey T. "If the Obama Administration loses in the Supreme Court, the political pain will fall almost exclusively on the President and his Party."

To paraphrase Colin Powell and the Pottery Barn rule, President Obama will have broken health care, so he owns it. To the vast mass of Americans who follow politics casually or not at all, Obamacare and the American system of health care have become virtually synonymous. This may not be exactly right or fair, but it’s a reasonable perception on the part of most people. The scope of the Affordable Care Act is so vast, and its effects so pervasive, that there is scarcely a corner of health care, especially with regard to insurance, that is unaffected by it. So if millions lose insurance, they will hold it against Obamacare, and against Obama. Blaming the President in these circumstances may be unfair, but it’s the way American politics works.

It won't matter, Jeffrey says, how "esoteric" the legal point at issue is. "The central assertion by the plaintiffs is that the Obama Administration violated the law itself," and "the subtlety of the issue at the heart of the case will sure be lost in its aftermath."

The headlines will read, correctly, “Court rules against Obamacare,” and this will be all that matters. The Republicans will argue that the Supreme Court showed that the law was flawed from the start, that the Obama Administration is lawless, that a full repeal of the law is the only appropriate response to the Court’s decision—and that the millions who lose their subsides should blame the sponsor of the law. Watch for references to a “failed Presidency.” There’ll be plenty of them.

JEFFREY SEES THE ADMINISTRATION'S FIX, BUT --

No one, after all, knows better than people in the adminsitration "the scale of the problems that would be created by a loss in the Supreme Court." And as "a litigation strategy," there's something to be said for trying to impress on the Court the chaos that will result if the justices turn thumbs-down on the defense. He notes that HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell (the defendant "Burwell" of King v. Burwell) has said "in testimony before Congress and elsewhere . . . that the Administration has no contingency plan for an adverse ruling."

Which brings us to that line I put atop this post.

But playing chicken with the Justices only works if it works. If the Supreme Court strikes down the subsidies, the Administration will also have to answer for why it didn’t prepare for this possibility.

And it won't matter, Jeffrey insists, even if the Court is wrong -- even if, to put it in my terms, there really five or more lying-imbecile-scumbag justices.

For many people, the President of the United States is the government of the United States. It’s why he gets the credit and blame for so many things, like the economy, where his influence can be hard to discern. This is particularly true for a subject in which the President has invested so much of his personal and political capital. If the Supreme Court rules against him, the President can blame the Justices or the Republicans or anyone he likes, and he may even be correct. But the buck will stop with him.

I don't consider myself a great predictor of the responses of the American public. So while I'm not sure that Jeffrey is completely right about this, neither am I sure that he's completely wrong. And when it comes to cranking up the volume of noise, and at maximum volume hurling thunderbolts of blame at parties that may or not be to blame, which side has the better resources and track record?

#

A "scathing, exuberant indictment of the many misdeeds of the nation's highest court" -- that's Jeffrey Toobin on Ian Millhiser's new book, "Injustices"

"Injustices tells the history of the Supreme Court through the eyes of the people that it has hurt the most -- the young people stripped of their childhoods, the freedmen forced into peonage, the men and women who will die needlessly if the Supreme Court guts Obamacare."

-- Ian Millhiser, about his new book, Injustices: The Supreme Court's
History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted

by Ken

This is going to be an unusual sort of book plug -- it comes from the author. The only less impartial source of information about a book I can imagine than an author is an author's mother. But then, authors are also well-placed authorities on what their books are designed to do, and this is a special author. Anytime legal breezes blow in or around the Supreme Court, you can pretty well bet that we're going to be turning to Ian Millhiser at ThinkProgress. (Ian is the editor of ThinkProgress Justice.) We always count on Ian to set us straight, so I don't see why we shouldn't do the same thing with his new book, Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted, published by Nation Books.

Besides, the e-mail Ian sent out to the ThinkProgress mailing list comes with a blurb from The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin, our other top-tier legal guru. We'll get to that in a moment. First let's read what Ian has to say about Injustices:

Dear ThinkProgress Reader:

For the last five years, I've covered the Supreme Court for ThinkProgress. I've chronicled the justices' decision to open the floodgates to corporate election spending, and I've reported on the rash of voter suppression laws that followed after the Court gutted the Voting Rights Act. I've shared your bewilderment when the Court held that a woman's choice whether to use birth control could be given to her boss, and I've shared your terror at the prospect that the justices could rip health care away from millions of Americans.

Yet, as I explain in Injustices: The Supreme Court's History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted, these cases are hardly anomalies in the Supreme Court's history. To the contrary, the justices of the Supreme Court shaped a nation where children toiled in coal mines, where Americans could be forced into camps because of their race, and where a woman could be sterilized against her will by state officials. The Court was the midwife of Jim Crow, the right hand of union busters, and the dead hand of the Confederacy.

Injustices tells the history of the Supreme Court through the eyes of the people that it has hurt the most -- the young people stripped of their childhoods, the freedmen forced into peonage, the men and women who will die needlessly if the Supreme Court guts Obamacare. In my coverage of the Court over at ThinkProgress, I've strived to provide clarity on what the law provides and how the justices should decide their cases in accordance with that law, but I've also strived to reach beyond arcane legal arguments to show how the Court's decisions shape the lives of millions of Americans. I bring that same ethic to over 150 years of Supreme Court history in Injustices. I urge you to check it out.

Sincerely,
Ian Millhiser

NOW FOR THAT BLURB FROM JEFFREY TOOBIN

In case you think Ian's trying to put one over on us, here as promised is Jeffrey T:

They won't be selling Injustices at the Supreme Court gift shop. Ian Millhiser's scathing, exuberant indictment of the many misdeeds of the nation's highest court is a necessary, and highly entertaining, corrective to the mythology that has always surrounded the work of the Justices.

P.S.: (1) I didn't make any effort to find out whether Ian's mother is available for comment.

(2) If you don't trust Ian and Jeffrey, there's a preview of the book available on Amazon.

#