Midnight Meme Of The Day!

by Noah

Well, yesterday was the big day! It was Kellyanne Conway's last day at the White House and our DWT cameras caught her exit! No more Witch Queen of Alternative Facts spinning her wild yarns before the cameras on the lawn of the White House. Where to next Kellyanne? Where will you ply your traitorous trade now? We can hardly wait to see. I seriously doubt that a person like you can think your work is done. What's in your future? Cross burning picnics in the backyard? Carefully building delicate models of children in cages from scratch? A nice dacha in the Crimea?

The Age Of Trump: Lawlessness And Disorder

American Fascism's Betsy Ross

Has there ever been a president less about either law or order than Trump? I though Nixon was so bad that I went to live overseas for nearly 7 years after he won the first time. And on Nixon's worst day, he was never as bad as Trump on his best day... not that I recall any Trump best days. You?

Ben Mathis-Lilley, writing for Slate yesterday, probably doesn't. He noted just before Trump went on that "One major theme of the Republican National Convention has been 'rioting' and alleged lawlessness in 'Democrat-run' cities across the Untied States. Anxious Democrats and media observers have wondered if this traditionally potent GOP 'law and order' message will be able to boost Donald Trump’s presidential election chances against Joe Biden, who he currently trails by eight-plus points in the FiveThirtyEight polling average. This discourse can be, in a limited sense, connected to events in reality. In recent days there has been notable protest-related violence and property damage in Kenosha, Wisconsin and Portland, Oregon. These cities do have Democratic mayors. If Biden were to do literally nothing to respond to the Republican Party’s rhetoric, maybe he would lose votes. In the larger sense, however, what the hell are we talking about here?"

Mathis-Lilley wrote about the ugly Trumpist-era "context in which a police officer in Kenosha was videotaped shooting an unarmed Black man seven times in the back while, according to a family attorney, his three children watched from inside their car. This is the context in which property damage occurred during a protest against Kenosha law enforcement officers, whose sheriff said in 2018 that he wished he could put four black shoplifters in jail for the rest of their lives so they wouldn’t reproduce. This is the context in which a white 17-year-old Trump supporter from Illinois drove to Kenosha on Tuesday and shot two protesters to death with an assault rifle after the police appeared to give encouragement to the 'militia' group he was with. This is the context in which that armed white supremacists have appeared at civil rights protests in Portland and become involved in altercations. Some law and order would be pretty nice, wouldn’t it? What protesters are calling for, with public sentiment behind them, is for people to be able to live their lives in peace and safety. How much unrest is ongoing in the countries that have contained the coronavirus and reopened public spaces? How much political violence is there in the countries in which armed neo-Nazis aren’t ubiquitously present at political events? How much property damage would be taking place in a country whose national response to a widely acknowledged police brutality problem wasn’t 'nothing'?"

This morning, the Politico Playbook crew professed shock that the president used America’s monuments-- Fort McHenry, the Washington Monument and the White House-- for nakedly partisan political purposes. It’s clearly illegal... 'The South Lawn speech was the final demolition of the boundaries between governance and campaigning in a week full of such eroding'." Considering the criminal nature of the Trump regime for the last 3 plus years-- not to mention the existing threat to democracy we're living through today-- the South Lawn speech...? Really?

Jonathan Chait seems to have thought so. "The second night of the Republican convention was a festival of massive lawbreaking," he wrote. "In open violation of the Hatch Act, President Trump turned the White House into a convention stage. He even held an immigration ceremony on camera, and had his secretary of State deliver a speech in explicit violation of State Department regulations. The White House might as well have been surrounded by yellow police tape... [T]he blatant violation was met with resignation. 'Nobody outside of the Beltway really cares,' sneers Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. There is a controlling legal authority-- they just don’t care."

Does the Hatch Act matter? Everybody in government thought it did, at least a little, right until the Trump administration. Government officials used to take pains to avoid using their offices for campaign purposes. Two former officials wrote about the hassle they would go through to avoid a small breach. The purpose of this restriction is clear enough: Control of the federal government is not supposed to grant the in party advantages (or at least not excessive advantages) over the opposition. Joe Biden can’t hold campaign events in the East Wing, so why can Trump?

The Trump administration has effectively turned the law into a dead letter, in following its basic principle that any law that lacks an effective and immediate enforcement mechanism essentially does not exist. Trump has ignored the law for years, using his official events for campaigning, while previous presidents carefully avoided doing so, and even reimbursed the government for expenses incurred while traveling for campaign events. After the Office of Special Counsel recommended firing Kellyanne Conway for Hatch Act violations last year, nothing happened. “Some of Mr. Trump’s aides privately scoff at the Hatch Act and say they take pride in violating its regulations,” reported the New York Times last week.

Laws like the Hatch Act and prohibitions on using private emails for official purposes are in a category of laws that effectively bind one party but not the other. (Indeed, Trump’s administration is filled with private email users-- nobody cares.) Why is that?

One reason, particular to this administration, is that Trump violates so many norms so flagrantly that he shatters the scale. There’s only so much journalistic bandwidth. Covering Trump’s violations of laws and norms by the standard you would apply to a normal president would mean banner headlines every day and interrupting television programming with breaking news every night.

But another, more long-standing, reason is that the two parties operate in structurally different news environments. The Republican base largely follows partisan Republican news sources, like Fox News, which largely do not hold their officials accountable. Republicans don’t have to worry that their small legal violations will make their own voters raise questions, because their own voters either won’t hear about the story in the first place, or-- if it becomes too big to ignore-- will learn about it in the context of some kind of whatboutist defense emphasizing how the Democrats are worse.

Disdain for democracy starts here

Democrats, on the other hand, have to communicate to their base through mainstream news outlets that follow traditional norms of journalistic independence. Of course you can critique the media for its implicit liberal biases. Even conceding for the sake of argument that the mainstream media has a strong social liberal bias, though, it is evidently true that they take Democratic violations seriously. The Times might go easy on any number of liberal shibboleths, but it was extremely tough on Clinton email protocol.

The media asymmetry is compounded by a structural bias in political representation. The House, Senate, and Electoral College all have Republican biases to various degrees. Republicans have the luxury of winning through pure polarized base appeals that Democrats do not enjoy. (This is one reason why, if you want Republicans to moderate, reforming the Senate would be a good start.)

And then there’s the additional problem that arises when reporters treat these asymmetrical conditions as unalterable and unremarkable features of the political landscape. From that standpoint, it’s obvious that minor Republican legal violations will not matter, and minor Democratic violations will. “Of course, much of this is improper, and, according to most every straight-faced expert, it’s a violation of the Hatch Act…” concedes Politico’s Playbook. “But do you think a single person outside the Beltway gives a hoot about the president politicking from the White House or using the federal government to his political advantage? Do you think any persuadable voter even notices?”

As analysis and prediction, this is correct. But it also has a self-fulfilling quality. Reporters assume small Democratic scandals “matter” much more than small Republican scandals, because Democratic voters follow news coverage that treats those violations seriously and Republican voters don’t. This is how you get to a world where Al Gore’s fundraising calls are still raising questions about his ethics three years later, while Trump’s latest obliteration of a law will be forgotten within days.

Trump's Original Suggestions For His Garden Of American Heroes

-by Noah

Oh to be a fly on the wall in the oval office! Fortunately, we at DWT have use of alien tech which enables us to eavesdrop. Imagine our surprise when we went over our recordings and found this oval office dialog. We're proud to publish it as an exclusive. We've identified all of the participants by matching voice prints with known, public statements. Here's a portion. Enjoy!

Kellyanne Conway: Stephen Miller's on the phone for you Mr. President! (Grunt heard) Shall I take that burger tray away?

Traitor Don: Stephen! How was that late night rally you organized in Alabama this weekend? How'd it go?

Stephen Miller: Great attendance, Mr. President. Big numbers and none of that social distancing crap. Although, ha ha, everyone wore a mask, er, hood!

Traitor Don: Heh. Heh. Now that's great to hear. I've got some names for that Garden of American Heroes thing. Tell me what you think. Here goes. Me first. Biggest statue. Lots of hair. Then, I've got George Wallace, Limbaugh, Carlson, James Earl Ray... Vlad wants to be included so he's on. He's almost an American anyway and he's my hero! He has a nice idea for a monument to our partnership. He suggested the Rosenbergs so I've got them too. Not sure who they are but friends of Vlad are friends of mine! I've got Robert E. Lee, and Bull Connor, all four of those Minneapolis cops, real heroes those guys... We should invite them to the convention. They could do reenactments! Wow, wouldn't that be a great idea for a statue? And I see a statue of Wallace standing in a doorway. Conner has a firehose on full! It could be a fountain! With orangey lights! James Earl Ray taking aim! Maybe we could have a kind of booth at my garden where my fans get to shoot at a stand up of MLK on a balcony. My voters would love it. We could even sell red rifles and red bullets with MAGA on them! I've, this'll make you happy too, Stephen, Nathan Bedford Forest. My father told me all about him. He was dad's idol. Maybe we should put my dad on the list. There's no me without him! Lindsey Graham wants to be on the list but I don't know. You know...

Stephen Miller: Yeah, we'll never get the LGBTQ community vote anyway. Who else?

Traitor Don: J. Edgar!

Stephen Miller: No. Uh, a, same as...

Traitor Don: (Sputters) Really? You mean?

Kellyanne Conway: (Laughs) No way!

Traitor Don: But the FBI building is named after him! Damn, maybe that's why... Hey, how 'bout Timothy McVeigh? Now there's a great man who knew how to make a statement. Great ratings!

Stephen Miller: Could be. Something wrong about that place. Is Joe McCarthy on the list?

Traitor Don: Good one, Stephen. That's why I keep you around.

Stephen Miller: Strom Thurmond?

Traitor Don: Wasn't he a Democrat? No Democrats! None!

Stephen Miller: He was but he switched to our side when the Dems went soft on racism in the 60s. Don't worry he was always one of us. You need to add Hiram Wesley Evans, special favorite of mine! We could sell copies of The Rising Storm at the gift shop. And don't forget Q.

Traitor Don: Oh, OK. What about Wernher Von Braun. He was one of Adolf's boys... Space Force! Space Force! Space Force! Yay, Space Force! (Door heard opening and closing) Mikey! Just in time. Space Force! I'm on the phone here with Stephen. We're putting a list of great names for my American Heroes garden. Wernher Von Braun is on it.

Mike Pence: Who?

Traitor Don: Wernher Von Braun. The rocket guy!

Mike Pence: Oooh, I love rocket guys!

Stephen Miller: Get that idiot queer out of your office. He gives me the creeps.

Kellyanne Conway: We could have a Tomb Of The Unknown Anti-Semite.

But Now They Only Block The Sun...

Yesterday, McTurtle read his carefully crafted "both sides" response to Trump's racism to the press: "From the president, to the speaker to freshmen members of the House, all of us have a responsibility to elevate the public discourse. Our words do matter. We all know politics is a combat sport, but it’s about time we lowered the temperature all across the board."

You leave 'em laughing when you go... don't give yourself away.

Ole Kellyanne, though, didn't take him up on it, going on Fox News to spout her canned lies about AOC, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib. How does this stain on humanity look at herself in the mirror when she wakes up? "What the president is doing is, we are tired... sick and tired... of many people in this country. Forget these four. They represent a dark underbelly of people in this country of people who are not respecting our troops, are not giving them the resources and the respect that they deserve."

I don't know how closely Kellyanne worked with Jason Miller, a top Trump campaign staffer. After all, he was the top communications official on the campaign, so he must have responded-- when Kellyanne, a fully-owned subsidiary of the Mercer family, so when they were still backing Cruz and before they donated her (and Bannon) to Trump-- to this kind of stuff during the campaign:



But however close they got eventually, we all have to worry when she figured out how representative he always was of a dark underbelly. After all, as Caleb Ecarma reported for Mediaite yesterday, Miller testified "he hired numerous prostitutes and visited 'hand job' massage parlors as recently as a few months ago."

Miller made the admission while testifying on May 30 in Washington D.C. in connection to his lawsuit against the digital media company Gizmodo-- a case that is being litigated in Southern Florida’s District Court. Despite Miller’s counsel calling for a protective order to make the deposition confidential, a redacted version was made public on July 11.

The suit accuses Gizmodo of defaming Miller with a story citing an allegation he slipped an “abortion pill” to a Florida strip club dancer he impregnated. The story was based on a sealed court filing. Miller denies the allegation and claims the story is untrue. The lawsuit also names individual defendants Katherine Krueger, a reporter for Gizmodo’s political site Splinter, and Will Menaker, the host of the popular leftist podcast Chapo Trap House. (Menaker was dropped from the suit in the weeks after the deposition).

In a written transcript of the deposition obtained by Mediaite, Miller describes the occasions he paid women for sex since 2001. Soliciting prostitution was, and still is, a crime in the cities where Miller admitted to hiring escorts.

Miller said his most recent visit to a “happy ending” massage parlor came as recently as “a couple of months ago.” He said he recalled having sex with an escort as recently as the spring of 2017-- just a few months after quitting the Trump transition team, where he served as chief spokesman. Trump had named Miller communications director in his new administration, but Miller resigned from the job before the inauguration amid allegations of an affair. He went on to join CNN, where he worked as a commentator in the spring of 2017.

The May deposition details Miller’s multiple extramarital affairs, including his sexual relationships with two subordinates during the 2016 presidential campaign. His relationship with one of these women, former Trump campaign advisor A.J. Delgado, has been public knowledge since late 2016. But Miller provided new information on a second affair with Catherine Frazier, who worked as a press secretary for Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign during Miller’s time leading the candidate’s communications operation. The affairs occurred while his wife, Kelly Miller, was pregnant and the two were not legally separated.

...“It’s not something I’m particularly proud of,” he said after being asked to mention which parlors he visited. “I don’t remember the names.”

He continued by detailing his encounters with what he called escorts: “In 2015, and then I believe again in 2017, I had sex with an escort.” Miller said the fall 2015 and spring 2017 incidents took place in D.C., with the 2017 encounter occurring after Miller’s wife, in the words of Gizmodo’s attorney, “had your daughter” and “after you and your wife decided to try and make things work.”

He then admitted to visiting a massage parlor “a couple of months ago” in New York.

“I’ve obviously made some serious mistakes in my marriage, and we had gotten things back to a really good place,” Miller said. “There wasn’t any of that in-- I remember in 2018. We got things back to a-- a good place-- and I screwed up again this spring.”

Despite significant protest from Miller’s legal counsel, Shane Vogt-- famous for representing Hulk Hogan in the lawsuit that took down Gawker-- Gizmodo’s attorney Bolger cornered Miller into revealing the specifics about his dalliances.

“The question is how much did you pay to have sex with an escort in the spring of 2017?” Bolger asked.

“I think it was something like $2[00] or $300, somewhere in the range,” Miller replied, explaining he “just Googled” for escort services and “initially set up a-- like a massage appointment and then we just went from there.”

Miller’s candid admissions teed up a hard swing from Gizmodo’s legal counsel: “You just testified that you had sex with an escort in the spring of 2017. Other than-- is that the last time you have been unfaithful to your wife?”

“Other than the massage parlor trip? Yes,” he replied.

Bolger’s questioning then turned to Miller’s attendance at strip clubs. The defamation suit is based on an allegation-- which Miller denies-- pertaining to his relationship with a Florida dancer. Miller was able to rattle off the names of numerous Sunshine State gentleman’s clubs he has visited, including Thee Dollhouse and 2001 Odyssey in Tampa; the Diamond Club in Orlando; Scarlett’s outside Miami; Rachel’s in Winter Park and Rachel’s in Orlando. Miller also said he went to Flash Dancers in New York in 2016.

Still, Miller insisted his affinity for strip clubs is behind him, stating, “I’m trying to be a better person, and that’s not something that I do anymore.” Most importantly, he denied having a relationship with any strippers.

He went on to note that then-top Trump campaign advisor Jared Kushner “rightfully chewed me out for some poor decision making” after he went to the Sapphire strip club in Las Vegas late in the 2016 election with members of the media and Trump campaign staffers, including Delgado and Jessica Ditto, who currently works as the White House deputy communications director.

As for Miller’s previously undisclosed affair with Cruz campaign staffer Catherine Frazier, he said the relationship began at the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in April 2016 and lasted until roughly late August of that year-- all while his wife was pregnant with their second child, who was born in January 2017.

While direct mentions of Frazier, who now works for GOP strategist Jeff Roe’s consulting firm Axiom Strategies, were redacted from the public record, sources familiar with their relationship and who have seen the transcript, confirmed Frazier was the Cruz staffer involved with Miller. Frazier, who sources said was also married at the time, has not tweeted in more than two weeks; her disappearance from the social media site where she is normally active occurred a day after the first part of Miller’s deposition became public.

...Since declining the White House job, Miller’s career has been turbulent. He left his job as a CNN contributor in September amid what he called “false and defamatory accusations being made” against him. Splinter’s “abortion pill” story was released that month.

In May, Miller left his job at Teneo, a corporate advisory firm, after going on a wild Twitter tirade repeatedly calling Rep. Jerry Nadler a “fat fuck” and telling him to “take a long walk off a short pier.”

Despite this constant stream of controversies, Miller has kept up appearances of being in President Donald Trump’s orbit. As the 2020 election approaches, Miller has repeatedly given interviews to publications, such as the New York Times, Politico, and the Washington Post, discussing the president’s 2020 strategy and attacking Democratic presidential candidates. He has publicly advertised his connections to the campaign, telling Vanity Fair in March “spoke with” Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale “this morning” while describing the president’s strategy to target voters.

Where have all the flowers gone... long time ago?

Everyone knows He's Certifiably Insane-- But The Media Feels Uncomfortable Using The "C" Word

The new Emerson Poll of Wisconsin voters shows only three Democrats into double-digits in their primary:

• Bernie- 39%
• Biden- 24%
• Elizabeth Warren- 14%

But it also shows that any of that trio (as well as Beto) would beat Trump in a general election matchup. Kamala and Klobuchar would both tie him in a head to head if the election were held today. In other words, Wisconsin, a state he eon in 2016 looks bad for Trump going into 2020. A fully 40% of Trump voters in the state said they voted for him primarily because they didn't like Hillary. Hopefully, the Democrats won't nominate another Wall Street mushy centrist.

If Roy Blunt's experience in Missouri after he voted against Trump's phony state of emergency, Trump's party is cracking and splintering. McClatchy reported yesterday that Blunt was "disinvited from a local GOP gathering in Christian County, Missouri, next month amid a backlash over his vote... [which] angered ardent Trump supporters across Missouri, who saw it as a betrayal."

“I am so disappointed in you now that I can hardly speak,” wrote Wanda Martens, a member of the Christian County Republican Central Committee, in an email to Blunt’s office. “Why could you not support my president in the emergency declaration? President Trump tried every available means to work the Senate to resolve the border issue and build the much needed wall. He is well within his presidential powers to do this.”

Martens serves as the local party committee’s events chair. She told the senator in her email, which was obtained by The Kansas City Star, that she did not want to see him when the local party holds its Lincoln/Trump Day Dinner on April 6 in Ozark, Missouri, one of the most conservative areas in the state.

“Please don’t try to tell me that I don’t understand. I understand completely,” Martens wrote. “I hate it when someone calls you the establishment and that you are part of the swamp, but maybe they were right.”


...John Adams, a 74-year-old retiree who lives in south Kansas City, said he’s voted for Blunt in every election he has run for elected office. He’ll never vote for him again.

“I used to support Blunt. I just can’t do it anymore,” Adams said. “I’m sorry. He’s not supporting my president in the way that I anticipated.”

Adams said he’d support another Republican in the primary if Blunt runs again in 2022. And if Blunt wins the GOP nomination, Adams said he’d sit out Election Day rather than cast a ballot for Blunt again, even against a Democrat.

“I absolutely felt betrayed.”

The Republicans have cultivated these ignorant crackpots and allowed them to take over the party. They are reaping what they have sown-- all the garbage from Trump straight down to Wanda Martens. At least Trump can blame it on his bad brain. Early the morning, attorney George Conway, the highly respected and universally admired husband of one of Trump's top lieutenants, Kellyanne Conman, started tweeting out passages from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. No one could read them and claim they don't describe Trump to a "t." Here's one; what do you think?

Conway has been poking where the corporate media has pretty much just plain refused to go-- into Trump's obvious mental illnesses, which sometimes-- more and more frequently-- seem to spiral out of control. He's been asking if the country needs a "serious inquiry" into Trump's drastically deteriorating mental state. Everyone seems to agree... except some of the people on the Christian County, Missouri Republican Central Committee. And Kellyanne. Yesterday she told reporters that she doesn't share her husband's concerns.
 It's been more than apparent for quite a few years now that she certainly doesn't share the country's concerns either.

Anyone Think Trump Has Read The Constitution, Let Alone Understood It? Kellyanne's Hubby Does

Some of the really craziest Republicans in the House, the Devin Nuneses and Matt Gaetzes of the dysfunctional chamber, have been trying, along with Giuliani and Hannity, to claim the Mueller investigation of Russian i Kellyanne Conwaytook to the pages of Lawfare on Monday to set his fellow-Republicans straight. I feel like we're living through the first season of Billions.

Trump, of course, in a twitter explosion of adderall-fuelled, self-serving rage and idiocy a few days ago claimed the very appointment of the "Special Councel (sic) is totally UNCONSTITUTIONAL." The tweet-- and the one that correct his misspelling-- have been removed from his feed. Conway provided his readers with both:

Señor Trumpanzee "didn’t explain, he wrote, "what his argument was, or where he got it, but a good guess is that it came from some recent writings by a well-respected conservative legal scholar and co-founder of the Federalist Society, professor Steven Calabresi. Unfortunately for the president, these writings are no more correct than the spelling in his original tweet. And in light of the president’s apparent embrace of Calabresi’s conclusions, it is well worth taking a close look at Calabresi’s argument in support of those conclusions."

Um... Trump doesn't read, let alone dense legal arguments by legal scholars and he certainly never explains what his argument is, or where he got it." Usually his rantings come from a toxic combination of snorted Adderall, Finasteride and Fox and Friends. But Conway's rebuttal to Calabresi's contention that "all of Special Counsel Mueller’s work is unconstitutionally 'null and void' because... Mueller’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2," is still worth reading.

The Appointments Clause distinguishes between two classes of executive-branch “officers”-- principal officers and inferior officers-- and specifies how each may be appointed. As a general rule, the clause says that “Officers of the United States”-- principal officers-- must be nominated by the president and appointed “with the Advice and Consent of the Senate.” At the same time, however, the Appointments Clause allows for a more convenient selection method for “inferior officers”: It goes on to add, “but the Congress may by law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of law, or in the Heads of Departments.”

Calabresi argues that Special Counsel Mueller is acting as a principal officer and that, accordingly, Mueller’s appointment violates the Constitution because Mueller was appointed by the acting attorney general, and not by the president with the advice and consent of the Senate. In support of this broad point, Calabresi makes first a specific claim and then a more general one.

His specific claim, made at the outset of his “Legal Opinion,” is that “Robert Mueller has behaved like the 96 [sic] U.S. Attorneys who are principal officers of the United States and who must be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.” His more general, and overarching, claim is that under Supreme Court case law applying the Appointments Clause, Special Counsel Mueller is a principal officer because “because Mueller does not have a boss who is supervising and directing what he is doing.”

Calabresi’s first point-- the illustrative comparison between Mueller and the U.S. attorneys-- begins with a badly mistaken premise. Without citing anything at all, he repeatedly assumes, in both his op-ed and his “Legal Opinion” paper, that “Congress has specified that the 96 [sic] U.S. Attorneys are all principal officers who must be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate.” (Emphasis mine.)

This assumption is just wrong-- uncomplicatedly, flatly wrong. It is true that, typically, the 93 (not 96) U.S. attorneys are presidentially nominated and Senate-confirmed. But Congress has established an alternative method of appointment. Title 28 U.S.C. § 546 provides that, until the Senate confirms a presidential nominee, U.S. attorney vacancies can be filled for up to 120 days by an appointment made by the attorney general and then indefinitely by local district courts. Such non-presidential, non-Senate-confirmed appointees are, as one court of appeals has put it, “fully-empowered United States Attorneys, … not subordinates assuming the role of ‘Acting’ United States Attorney.” And such fully-empowered, non-presidentially-appointed U.S. attorneys are not all that uncommon. Today, the sitting United States attorneys in two of the most important judicial districts in the country-- the Southern and Eastern Districts of New York-- were appointed by the judges of those districts under Section 546(d).

And so “the Congress …  by … vest[ing] the Appointment” of U.S. attorneys “in the Courts of law” and “in the Heads of Departments,” obviously recognized that U.S. attorneys are “inferior officers.” But Congress is not the only branch of the government to have reached this conclusion. In 1978, the question was expressly put to the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. OLC’s conclusion: U.S. attorneys are inferior officers, because the law “authorizes the Attorney General to direct all U.S. Attorneys in the discharge of their duties.”

Not to be left out, members of the third branch-- which has made a lot of these appointments-- have also agreed. The Supreme Court has never squarely addressed the point under the Appointments Clause, but in discussing presidential removal power in Myers v. United States, the Supreme Court specifically referred to “a United States attorney” as an example of “an inferior officer.” More recently, in Morrison v. Olson, the high court approvingly noted how “Congress itself has vested the power to make [U.S. attorney] interim appointments in the district courts” under 28 U.S.C. § 546(d), and observed that “[l]ower courts have also upheld [those] interim judicial appointments of United States Attorneys” under the Appointments Clause. These lower courts include two federal courts of appeals, one of which rejected an Appointments Clause challenge to a U.S. attorney who had served under a judicial appointment for more than six years.

Accordingly, there is no serious dispute: U.S. attorneys are inferior officers. So if what Robert Mueller is really doing is, as Calabresi suggests, “behav[ing] like the [93] U.S. Attorneys,” then Calabresi’s argument immediately collapses on itself. Mueller is an inferior officer, just as U.S. attorneys are.

...[Rosenstein] confirms that Special Counsel Mueller does have an active principal-officer boss-- indeed, it suggests that Mueller is probably being supervised and directed more closely than any of the 93 U.S attorneys from Maryland to Guam... [N]not only does Mueller have a boss, and not only is the boss keeping tabs on Mueller, but, according to this judicial decision, Mueller is also faithfully following his boss’s orders.

That disposes of Calabresi’s Appointment Clause contentions, but Calabresi makes one additional constitutional point—and it’s a very, very, very odd one. It is based upon Morrison v. Olson, the 7-1 Supreme Court decision in 1988 that upheld the markedly different, long-expired independent-counsel provisions of the Ethics in Government Act of 1978.

To conservative lawyers of my generation, Morrison is, to say the least, a deeply unsettling decision, because it upheld the creation of a truly “independent” prosecutor-- an official who was exercising purely executive power, the power to prosecute, yet was doing so not only outside the Justice Department but, effectively, outside the entire executive branch. It provoked one of Justice Scalia’s greatest dissents-- to my mind, one of the greatest dissents of all time.

The majority in Morrison upheld the independent counsel mechanism against a variety of constitutional attacks-- including an Appointments Clause claim and a separation-of-powers claim. It rejected the Appointments Clause claim because four factual circumstances were present: the independent counsel was ultimately removable “for cause” by the attorney general, though unsupervised by him; the independent counsel had “limited duties,” involving merely investigation and prosecution; the counsel was “limited in jurisdiction”; and she was “limited in tenure.” As for the overall separation-of-powers claim, the court held, in the last major section of its opinion, that the independent counsel scheme did not “unduly interfer[e] with the role of the Executive Branch.”

For his part, Justice Scalia dissented vigorously and brilliantly from both holdings. As for the Appointments Clause, presaging his later opinion for the court in Edmond, he concluded that the independent counsel was a principal officer, and not an inferior officer, because she was subordinate to no one in the executive branch. As for the separation-of-powers holding in Morrison, Justice Scalia decried the “ad hoc, standardless” “balancing test” applied by the court. “[H]ow much removal of Presidential power is too much?” he plaintively asked. In the stirring conclusion to his dissent, Justice Scalia declared his preference to “rely upon the judgment” of the people who “constructed our system … and approved it,” when they declared “quite plainly,” in Article II, § 1 of the Constitution, “that ‘[t]he executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States.”

I have already said enough about the Appointments Clause: The special counsel passes muster even under Justice Scalia’s test, which under Edmond is now the law. But on the basis of Morrison, Calabresi launches one further attack, albeit a half-hearted one, on the special counsel: He actually suggests that, in contrast to the independent counsel scheme upheld in Morrison, “[t]he Mueller appointment also violates the final part of [the] Morrison opinion”-- the separation-of-powers holding-- “because it interferes ‘too much’ with the President’s executive power.”

This is almost too much to bear, because what happened in Morrison was that Congress passed a statute that took prosecutorial power-- purely executive power-- away from, and out of, the executive branch. Cue Justice Scalia’s dissent: “the statute before us deprives the President of exclusive control over that quintessentially executive activity” and “[t]he Court does not, and could not possibly, assert that it does not.” “[T]he independent counsel exercises executive power free from the President’s control.” “[T]he independent counsel is not an inferior officer because she is not subordinate to any officer in the Executive Branch (indeed, not even to the President).” Despite all that, the majority in Morrison did not think the old independent counsel law stripped “too much” executive power away from the executive.

Contrast that with the situation here-- where not even Justice Scalia would think any power has been removed from the executive. Here there was no statute imposed by Congress, just a regulation-- a regulation promulgated by and within the executive branch. Specifically, a Justice Department regulation promulgated by the attorney general, an officer fireable at will by the president. And what does this regulation do? It simply divides work among lawyers within the Department of Justice-- within the executive branch. It surely doesn’t remove any executive power from the executive branch.

And not only that, the special counsel regulations can be unilaterally revoked by the very executive branch that unilaterally created them. Indeed, according to Attorney General Janet Reno when she issued the special counsel regulations in 1999, those regulations aren’t even subject to notice-and-comment rulemaking, because they relate to “matters of agency management or personnel,” and “agency organization, procedure, or practice”-- which suggests they could be dispensed with equally unceremoniously as well. In short, not only does the special counsel regulation not  take power away from the executive branch, but the internal rearrangement of authority it brings about within that branch could be relatively easily undone by a presidentially removable principal officer. No matter how you cut it, to borrow Justice Scalia’s words, there has been no “removal of Presidential power”-- none-- let alone too much.

In short, there is no serious argument that Special Counsel Mueller’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause specifically or the separation of powers generally.

*     *     *

A final observation: It isn’t very surprising to see the president tweet a meritless legal position, because, as a non-lawyer, he wouldn’t know the difference between a good one and a bad one. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with lawyers making inventive and novel arguments on behalf of their clients, or on behalf of causes or people they support, if the arguments are well-grounded in law and fact, even if the arguments ultimately turn out to be wrong. But the “constitutional” arguments made against the special counsel do not meet that standard and had little more rigor than the tweet that promoted them. Such a lack of rigor, sadly, has been a disturbing trend in much of the politically charged public discourse about the law lately, and one that lawyers-- regardless of their politics-- owe a duty to abjure.

Politicizing The NRA/GOP Massacre In Santa Fe

Adrienne Bell and Trump Regime con man

Santa Fe is a small, affluent city-- population just over 12,000-- that sprawls on both sides of state highway 6 in Galveston County, south of Houston. A little context: in 1981, when Vietnamese shrimpers moved into the area, the KKK hosted a fish fry in Santa Fe and ceremonially burned a Vietnamese fishing boat. About 2 decades later Santa Fe was in the news again when the Supreme Court ruled their school district's sneaky way of allowing prayer in the school district was unconstitutional. And last week, about 2 decades later, Santa Fe was in the news again-- 9 dead students and one dead teacher... another NRA/GOP special event.

Santa Fe is part of Texas' 14th congressional district, represented by far right Republican Randy Weber, whose lifetime score from the NRA is "A." And, yes, he has accepted NRA bloody money for his votes in their favor. The PVI of TX-14 is R+12 and Obama lost the district both times he ran. In 2016 Trump beat Hillary there, 58.2% to 38.4%. Weber was reelected with an even higher percentage-- 61.9% against an unfunded Democrat, Michael Cole. This cycle his Democratic opponent is Adrienne Bell, a Berniecrat who beat Levy Barnes in the primary with enough votes (79.8% to 20.2%) to avoid Tuesday's run-off. She's a school teacher who has been endorsed by Our Revolution Texas and the Justice Democrats. If you want to contribute to her campaign you can do so by clicking on the ActBlue Turning Texas Blue thermometer on the right. Her grassroots campaign can certainly use the help and support.

As of the March 31 FEC reporting deadline, Weber had raised $471,983 for his campaign compared to Adrienne's $76,960. After the massacre she issued this statement:

My heart goes out to the families impacted by the horrendous act that happened today at Santa Fe High School. As an educator, who has taught in a classroom, we view our students as our own. We are there not only to educate, but also to protect and serve. It breaks my heart to think of the fear our teachers, students, and parents are experiencing. This national tragedy, which has plagued schools across America, made it to our doorsteps in Santa Fe, Texas.

It’s past time for Congress to act. Federal representatives must explore EVERY avenue to make sure our children can learn, and our teachers can teach, in a safe environment. This is not a red/blue issue, it is an American issue.

Parents should be able to send their children to school without fear. Children should be able to attend school without fear. It is time to come together as a community of Americans, in support of our children and their right to learn in a safe environment.

On her campaign website she had made it clear that she believes in and supports the second amendment and supports sane, common sense gun legislation: "This national conversation of arming teachers to prevent gun violence in our schools," she wrote, "is disturbing. Texas teachers are trained to meet pedagogy and professional standards, that make learning relevant for today’s learners. Our responsibility does not, and should not, be that of an armed guard. Teachers have always been on the frontline, and now we are on the front-line of violence. Instead, the conversation should be focused on AR-15s being used in the recent mass murders of students, and school personnel, at Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Since 2012, the AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle, has been the weapon of choice, in the deadliest mass murders in our country. At Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, the gunman fired 154 rounds in less than five minutes, murdering 20 innocent children, aged 6-7, and six staff members. A recent Quinnipiac poll, released February 20, 2018, found that 67% of Americans, which included 53% gun owners, are in support of a nationwide ban on the sale of assault weapons. This is the conversation we need to have-- banning assault weapons, and protecting Americans from mass murders. I stand with the majority of Americans, and call for a ban on assault weapons. I support: Assault weapon ban-- including the sale, transfer, manufacturing and importation of customizable semi-automatic rifles Universal background check, Mandatory waiting period for all gun purchases, Ban of high capacity ammunition magazines, Extreme Risk Protection Order."

Right after the massacre, Kellyanne Conway rushed to Fox News Radio to politicize the latest NRA/GOP murder spree by falsely blaming Democrats, claiming-- and without a shred of evidence-- that Democrats are "going right into this gun grab mode." The Con:

There is certain reflexive and thoughtless and pretty predictable and pathetic reaction coming from lots of folks. And frankly, it usually comes from folks who, unlike Donald J. Trump, have been in office for decades and decades and decades and so that certainly applies to the two people you just mentioned. It also is always insensitive that they will… [go] right past the fact that people are suffering, their lives have changed in blink of a second, and they never get all the facts. They just know, right away, they know because it fits the political narrative.

Let's help get rid of NRA handmaiden and Trump rubber stamp Randy Weber and replace him with Adrienne Bell, who does not and will not, take any contributions from the NRA or, for that matter, from any corporate or right-wing PACs. Again, please consider clicking on the thermometer above and contributing what you can to Adrienne's campaign.

2017, A Hell Bound Train Of A Year (Part 8): Republican Words As Windows To Their Souls. Round 2

-by Noah

As I said in the intro of Round 1 on this topic a few days ago, the old saying goes that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Ah, but that presumes that republicans aren’t soulless creatures. Their words and actions indicate otherwise. I mean; can you imagine that any soul or that any soul would want to live in such a spiritually toxic body as that of Paul Ryan or Donald Trump?

For this round, I thought it would be good to deal with the topic of health care, since it was such a driving force behind the psychotic and sociopathic actions of republicans in 2017.

The following quotes are actual words from the mouths of these horrors.

1. Kellyanne Conway, White House Spokescretin:

Those on Medicaid who will lose health insurance can always get jobs.

And what jobs are those Kellyanne? What jobs with benefits? What jobs for people who are so disabled that that is why they are on Medicaid in the first place? This is classic Republican “Let them eat cake” stuff. Or, to put it another way, they’re saying “Let them eat shit.”

Nearly 1 in 5 Americans are on Medicaid. Do the math. Are there really enough jobs to cover that 1 in 5 of 325,000,000 citizens? How many of those jobs Kellyanne and her despicable ilk yap about will provide enough salary to deal with an onslaught of six-figure cancer treatment bills? Oh, and since Medicaid covers two-thirds of our people in nursing homes, please tell me, Kellyanne, what jobs will they be getting? Medicaid also covers 1 out of 3 American children. What jobs do you have planned for them, Kellyanne, even after your psychotic party has done away with child labor laws?

Conway’s statement isn’t just classic republican “fuck all of you” talk. The kind of person who would make such a statement is either so far out of touch that they belong in a home for the insane, or, they are just so filled with contempt for humanity that it was their consciously planned and thought out message to mankind. It also reminds me of Trump’s blissfully moronic Economic Council Director, Gary Cohn stating that a family getting a $1000 tax break could use it to renovate their kitchen or buy a new car. Really, one can remodel a kitchen for only a $1000? And, does that $1000 car come with wheels that turn?

Come to think of it, Kellyanne is already in a home for the insane. It’s called the White House.

2. $enator Chuck Grassley of Iowa:

Here’s Chucky saying he’s going to vote against health care for his fellow Americans even though he sees reasons why that “might” be the wrong thing to do.

I could maybe give you 10 reasons why this bill shouldn’t be considered. But republicans campaigned on this so often that you have a responsibility to carry out what you said in the campaign.

No, Mr. Grasshole. your responsibility is to do what is right for the people who voted for you even if they were stupid enough for you. And, since when has a politician held his or her campaign promises sacred? You are being so extremely disingenuous here that you should get some sort of award. I can think of several forms that award could take.

Obviously Grasshole doesn’t get any of this, and if he did he wouldn’t give a shit anyway. He’s got his health care and we pay for it. For him, as for most of his colleagues, it’s all about doing what is best for his corporate masters who keep him afloat with bribes in the form of “campaign contributions”. Keep in mind that when confronted with the stories about Roy Moore and underage girls, he laughed his head off, right on TV. They don’t come much lower than Chucky.



3. Señor Trumpanzee himself:

Let Obamacare implode.

Back in July, Trump had words, what he would call “the best words” after the $enate, controlled by his Republican Party, dramatically failed to repeal Obamacare, at least temporarily. It was a bitter disappointment for a party that aspires to be a party of mass murderers by taking way the insurance of tens of millions of Americans.

Republicans in Washington have voted over 60 times but they have failed. They’ve managed to hurt Obamacare, aka The Affordable Care Act, many times, often by denying it funding at the state level or removing funding for advertising the availability of the program. Only with their Christmas Tax Scam vote have they dealt it a serious blow. But the July failure was because there were 3 republican senators who were capable of mustering some level of temporary sanity and moral bearing. While the rest of the repug senators in the building fancied themselves as carrying on and building upon the works of people like Charlie Manson or the Zodiac Killer, Senators Collins, McCain, and Murkowski said no to the republican dream of “No Chemo For You.” That the final vote was a stunner is a measure of what republicans are.

Trump didn’t stop. Next he tantrum tweeted is demand:

Unless the Republican Senators are total quitters, Repeal & Replace is not dead! Demand another vote before voting on any other bill!

And, tweeted some overt threats (his caps, not mine):

If a new Healthcare Bill is not approved quickly, BAILOUTS for Insurance Companies and BAILOUTS for Members of Congress will end very soon!

Señor Trumpanzee’s threat against the insurance companies would sabotage not only Obamacare, but the entire healthcare industry. This is the action of a madman intent on creating as much mayhem and death as he possibly can.

It seems that no amount of American carnage will be enough to satisfy the dreams of the raging Trumpanzee. To top it off, a few days later, in New York, Trump spoke to a confab of New York police and made his implode statement to the cheers of the police. That was especially heinous when one considers that the police Trump was speaking to, like the republican senators who repeatedly vote against Obamacare, enjoy the benefits of government health care, not only for themselves but for their families, for life. So much for the concept of “protect and serve.”

4. Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho:

“No one dies because they don’t have access to healthcare.”

When Labrador said that, it got me to thinking about other things that Republicans believe:

• Contraception does not work. No one gets pregnant from not using contraception. Only an aspirin held firmly between the knees is necessary.
• No one dies from a gun fired by a mentally ill person
• Trump is not a neo-Nazi.
• Putin, now that’s a leader and the Russian are our friends!
• There’s no need for having a woman on the panel dealing with healthcare.
• Some rape is legitimate.
• Jesus is coming tomorrow, no, wait, next week, no wait, next month, no wait…
• Voter Fraud exists on a wide scale but Election Fraud does not exist at all.
• All Syrians are terrorists by their very nature.
• There’s such a thing as corn oil so how can a flood of oil in a cornfield be bad? Pipes never leak anyway.
• Trump is not mentally ill.
• Gay conversion therapy is swell.
• Domestic violence should be strictly between one man and one woman.
• Republicans need protection from the spells of witches.
• There’s no need for a presidential candidate to release their taxes to the public.
• Tax cuts beget the tickle down.
• Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan.
• The fact that reports of Gen. Flynn’s activities have been reported in the news is more important than those activities.

5. Mike Pence, Vice President and Chief Verbal Fellator To Señor Trumpanzee

Every day Obamacare survives is another day America suffers.

Yeah, right. Asshole. No further comment necessary.

2017 In Review: A Hell Bound Train Of A Year (Part 6)-- Republican Words As Windows To Their Souls, Round 1

-by Noah

OK. I know the title is misleading. Republicans show no evidence of having souls.

I often wonder if today’s Republicans ever did. Or, were republicans just born the way they are. Do they come out of the womb as full-blown sociopaths or, even worse, psychotics? They say you have to be taught to hate, but… I wonder.

The old saying is that the eyes are the windows to the soul. Unfortunately, when I look at the eyes of republicans, well, I see dead people. Sometimes, if you say the word ‘Obama’ in the presence of a Republican, the eyes go glassy and their mouths start to sputter. It’s sad, but it does tell me that there’s life there. Alas, though, it is alien life. They do walk among us. Who needs the X-Files when we have people like these?

The following are things that actually came out of the mouths of Republicans in 2017:

1. Ben Carson, Trump’s Secretary Of Housing And Urban Development:

It will not be my intention to do anything to benefit any, any American.

Carson said this at his confirmation hearing in response to a question from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. Freudian slip? Just being honest? Whichever, it was all republicans needed to hear. Confirmed!

2. $enate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell:

She was warned. Never the less, she persisted.

McConnell was referring to that same Sen. Elizabeth Warren who Republicans always see as an “uppity woman” and a thorn in their sides. Sen. Warren had wanted to read a letter by Coretta Scott King, widow of the late Martin Luther King. Mere mention of the Kings drives republicans up a wall. The occasion was the confirmation hearing of Alabama racist Jeff Sessions for Attorney General. McConnell got his knickers in a twist and forbade it.

The letter was once “lost” by segregationist Sen. Strom Thurmond in 1986 when it was supposed to be entered into the Congressional Record when Sessions was nominated for a Federal judgeship.

What a surprise. McConnell and his fellow KKK Krew in the Senate just can’t bear to hear the words of the widow of MLK spoken on the Senate floor. Talk about revealing what’s inside republicans. In defending Sessions, they have shown us all what Sessions is all about and what the Republican Party is all about. What is so disturbing about those words? Should we be surprised that republicans will fight so hard to get a racist Attorney General in place for a president that built his campaign on racism? Nope.

The response was swift, as it should be. “Never the less, she persisted” is a rallying cry. Fuck you, McConnell. Go back to Kentucky and drink you bourbon, cut with water from a whites only water fountain, of course.

3. Kellyanne Conway, White House Spokeswacko:

There are many ways to surveil each other now, unfortunately. There was an article this week that talked about how you can surveil someone through their phones, certainly through their television sets, any number of different ways. And microwaves that turn into cameras, etc. So we know that that is just a fact of modern life.

Yep. I don’t know about you, but my microwave is watching me right now. So is my toaster, and damn, the refrigerator just keeps laughing at me!

Is there anyone in the Trumpanzee White House that’s sane? Even a little bit? Conway was talking to her hometown newspaper, the Bergen Record. She was trying in vain to justify her boss’s claim that Obama had government eyes spying on him in his home at the Trump Tower. Nothing like sending a total nut to justify the actions of a total nut. Yo! Kellyanne, the clock on the wall says it’s time to go!

4. Missouri State Rep. Rick Brattin:

There is a distinction between homosexuality and just being a human being.

At first, I thought Brattin was just submitting this as his entrant for a contest among Republicans to pick a new motto for the party. He probably felt “Hey why not? It’s catchy. It’s true. And, it’s something almost all my party can agree on”. But, no. Brattin was just mouthing off on the floor of the Missouri state legislature as they debated an amendment to a state discrimination law. that would ban discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. He was even using religion, all religions, in his crazy mind, to back his vehement argument against banning discrimination. You see, in Missouri, like in other places where republicans rule, a boss can still fire you if you’re gay. And, Republicans like that just fine.