Do the people protesting Kim Davis's "religious persecution" have any idea what actual religious persecution is?

Yes, she's back from the hoosegow, and the theory now is that marriage licenses will be issued in her holy see Rowan County, but without her name. Of course, if the theory is that her name on a document is supposed to signify its compliance with relevant law, hasn't that ship already sailed?


"Calling [Kim Davis's situation] persecution is insulting to the people who really are fighting for their right to live out their beliefs -- as human beings, not as elected officials with $80,000 annual salaries."

-- washingtonpost.com's Alexandra Petri,
in the post "The Passion of Kim Davis"

by Ken

The battle lines over Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis's refusal to do her job are familiar enough that they haven't seemed to require comment from me, beyond endorsing the terrific point that Greg Sargent made: that the real news in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision upholding a constitutional right to same-sex marriage is how smoothly, on the whole, the transition has gone.

All through the ascendancy of the New Right in American politics it has been a source of, hmm, curiosity that such a coalition has been maintained despite large differences, and in fact open contradictions, of belief within that coalition. But I guess the Economic-Predator Right-Wingery who mostly had the final say could live with their unwashed brothers and sisters as long as they got their way on the important stuff, like invading Iraq in order to turn it into a model of free-market capitalism for the world to see and emulate. The unwashed, in exchange for their support, or at least non-opposition, on the Predators' issues, about which they didn't have strong feelings anyway, got handouts of Social-Fascist Wingnuttery, which sort of kept the whole polluted thing together.
 
PITY THE POOR POLITICAL PANDERERING
CLASS: WHO'S GOT THE HOT BUTTONS?

What's more, in those days the political Right was positioned to take full advantage of all the research and field-testing the Predators were funding and encouraging into "hot-button issues" that could keep their voting coalition broad enough to keep them in power. Alas, as the GOP's legions of presidential candidates are discovering to their chagrin, you have to keep up to date on hot buttons, which often have to be tuned or even outright discarded when they no longer touch the current terrors and rages of the core voters they need to corral. The mere existence of so many GOP presidential candidates makes it that much more important that each of them have his/her own button(s) not shared by more than, say, a dozen of the hundreds of other candidates. Wasn't it Plato who said, apropos of candidates for political office, "Ya gotta have a gimmick"?

Under such circumstances, even the most committed, determined panderer doesn't know who to pander to or how.

As Howie was just pointing out yesterday, though, in dissecting the down-for-the-count "campaign" of the prince of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, as he desperately tries to retool his "campaign" (I really don't see any alternative to putting what he's put forth so far as a "campaign" in quotes), bringing back his "signature" issue, union-bashing, union-busting doesn't seem to be the hot-button issue that fervid Economic-Predator Right-Wingers have made it in the recent past. Either the folks are bored, or perhaps they've noticed that Prince Scott's economic "reforms" have turned his state's economy to crap. They may even have begun to make the connection that U.S. employers have: that the less they have to fear the pushback of labor unions, the less they have to listen to the whiny wants of their employees.

Well, the polling I've seen so far shows that the Social-Fascist Right-Wingers who've been trying to play the Kim Davis "religious persecution" card aren't getting the play they would once have taken for granted when you have an unobstructed shot at homo-bashing. Oh, they're getting the usual core crackpots and religious delusionalists and bullies, but inside the circled wagons the territory has shrunk. Put all the "Hate the Homos Now and Forever" diehards together, and you don't seem to have an especially potent voting bloc.

A LOT OF AMERICANS ARE GRASPING THAT KIM
DAVIS'S PROBLEM IS HER REFUSAL TO DO HER JOB

Her job is to carry out the laws that fall under the jurisdiction of a Kentucky county clerk. She is, of course, entitled to her opinion of those laws, but she isn't entitled to pick and choose which laws she will and which laws she won't enforce.

This might not even be an issue if it had been dealt with in the case of pharmacists and the day-after abortion pill. Again, people have the right to their opinion of drugs that have been certified by the relevant governmental authorities as legal for sale in their jurisdiction, but there isn't any stretch by which they could possibly have a right to selectively disburse or refuse to disburse drugs approved for sale. Pharmacists are by definition licensed enforcers of the meting out of the drug-authorizing authorities' decisions.

If you can't or won't fulfill the legal obligations of your chosen profession, no one can force you to, but you have to recognize that your conscience requires you to seen another profession, one you can exercise within the limit of your principles.

Granted, Kim Davis's case is made particularly preposterous by the views on marriage reflected in her own marital history -- four times married, to three different men. On the radio I heard an enraged citizen of Kentucky express outrage that this issue was raised against Davis, outrage that seems to me ridiculous. The Davis woman claims the right to decide who can and can't get married, and her own marital history is somehow out of bounds?

I think washingtonpost.com's Alexandra Petri got this just about right yesterday.

ComPost

The Passion of Kim Davis

By Alexandra Petri | September 14 at 10:00 AM

Kim Davis is a false idol.

To suffer for your beliefs can be ennobling. To suffer for your misconceptions is just embarrassing. And she’s doing the latter, not the former.

Today, she’s back at work.

Last Tuesday afternoon found her being released from jail, as Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz rallied around her and “Eye of the Tiger” played. (Survivor issued a cease and desist.) Crosses waved, “Amazing Grace” was sung, speeches were given. It was all the fun of martyrdom with none of the stigma(ta.)

But make no mistake. Kim Davis is not being persecuted for her beliefs. This is to actual religious persecution as anything in that Alanis Morrisette song was to irony: which is to say, this only looks like it if you don’t properly understand the meaning of the word.

She’s celebre in a bad cause.

And now everyone is frantically trying to lay hands on this relic before she loses her potency.

(Poor Ted Cruz, whom Huckabee staffers headed off as he tried to touch the hem of Davis’s robe. He stood glumly offstage watching the rally unfold. It seemed, to use a biblical metaphor, like pretty small pottage for which he had traded the birthright of being someone who appeared to possess an understanding of the law.)

Kim Davis has gone even farther than John C. Calhoun, who, when he was suggesting wild extra-constitutional solutions to Supreme Court decisions he disliked, at least offered up the theory that the state could interpose between a court decision and its people. All Davis suggests is that Kim Davis can interpose herself between court and people.

At the risk of sounding like Javert, you must learn the meaning of the law.

This is not a case of the law interfering with her ability to practice her faith. That would indeed be a grave matter. This is a case of her faith interfering with her ability to uphold the law as a public official. You have every right to believe that the earth is 6,000 years old, but you can’t expect to keep your job at the U.S. Geological Survey if you won’t backdate the rocks. And if they fired you, we would not call you persecuted. We would say, “Well, science is clearly not your field.”

It is one thing to disagree with a law that you are required to uphold by your job. What you do in that case is resign.

It’s fine that if you don’t want your name on the marriage licenses. What you do in that case is resign.

It’s fine if you feel that you can’t perform your job and avoid hell simultaneously. What you do in that case is resign. It’s a quandary, certainly. What it is not is religious persecution.

But not to hear Mike Huckabee tell it.

“Where does this end when you have this level of outright discrimination and, frankly, persecution [of] someone who genuinely believes in her heart the difference between marriage and something that the Supreme Court has created?” said Mike Huckabee on CNN. (See: Judges 15:16.)

This is not someone being persecuted for her faith. This is someone being punished for failing to do her job, then being in contempt of court. Calling it persecution is insulting to the people who really are fighting for their right to live out their beliefs — as human beings, not as elected officials with $80,000 annual salaries.

Religious persecution of Christians is real and ongoing. It is what is happening in North Korea, where tens of thousands of Christians live in forced labor camps. It is what is happening in Saudi Arabia, where even building churches is prohibited. But it is not what is happening to Kim Davis.

In China, pastors are imprisoned, churches closed and crosses torn down.

In America, a county clerk is — displaying a baffling lack of understanding when it comes to the law of the land, and presidential candidates are enabling her.

Once more, with feeling: You don’t have to do your job. But equally the taxpayers do not have to pay you. You have the right to your beliefs. You do not have the right to be a county clerk.

If your job offends you, cast it out.

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Fasten your seatbelts, buckos -- it's going to be a banner election season for the madly whirling Candidate Shuffle

I just love this headline, which shows us that the Candidate Shuffle season is in full whirl. You can see the full article below.

by Ken

It's hardly a new-for-2016, the Candidate Shuffle. One of the reasons God created political "handlers" is to help candidates figure out what potential voters want to hear them say. It's a pretty astonishing thing at the presidential level, where you figure the parties are trotting out their most seasoned and mature candidates, who will be standing on their history of principle and accomplishment. But sometimes a candidate might want to know what little bits of emphasis and deemphasis to apply to his/her record to suit the present mood of the electorate.

Ex-Shuffle champ McCranky

Who am I kidding? By and large candidates are willing to say or do anything their consultants say will give them an edge. Still, you'd have thought that nobody could top the whirligig that was the 2008 presidential campaign of Young Johnny McCranky, who managed to stake out a minimum of three positions -- all of them nuts -- on just about every interest he mentioned in the campaign.

But it looks like the 2016 fun and games are going to make Young Johnny look like a steadfast man of principle, hilarious as that idea is. With the country, and the party, in a mood like they're in, and a field as crazy as the 2016 GOP presidential field, it's hardly surprising that we're going to see posturing and pandering at record levels. The joker in 2016 is the combination of the whacked-out mood of the GOP base and the so-far-successful demonstration that you can get record levels of attention by saying crazier stuff than anyone is accustomed to saying or hearing outside the walls of a mental institution.

Which is why I love that headline on Dave Weigel's washingtonpost.com piece: "In a shift, Mike Huckabee is open to ending 'birthright citizenship.' " The key phrase there is "is open to." I can barely imagine what we're going to see candidates "open to."

The spinning is going to come in two forms: stuff that these, er, people have always in fact believed but though they didn't dare say publicly, and wackiness they don't believe but now feel empowered, or even obliged, to say.

It's not entirely clear which category Minister Mike Hucksterbee's whirling dervish act on birth citizenship fits into, and his history with the issue only makes it murkier. I guess the key thing is just to sit back and watch him whirl. (Find lotsa links for the following article onsite.)

Post Politics

In a shift, Mike Huckabee is open to ending ‘birthright citizenship’

By David Weigel


Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee said Friday he is open to ending "birthright citizenship" for children of immigrants born in the United States.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee said Friday that he was open to laws that would end the "birthright" citizenship granted to children by the 14th Amendment, joining several other GOP candidates in endorsing the idea.

The comments came in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, who asked the question twice to be clear that Huckabee really would "abrogate" that right.

"I would," said Huckabee, "because I think that when we see advertisements in China, advertising essentially ‘birth tourism,’ where people are able to purchase packages so they fly to the U.S., have their baby in the U.S. so it has dual citizenship – these aren’t people who are impoverished, looking for a Medicaid payment. These are very wealthy people who are coming here so their child will in essence be put a foot down and say ‘I have American citizenship.’”

The "birthright" issue has bedeviled Huckabee since his first campaign for the presidency. In 2007, he told Washington Times reporter Stephen Dinan that he would support changing the policy that grants citizenship "just because a person, through sheer chance of geography, happened to be physically here at the point of birth." Early in 2008, Minutemen Project founder Jim Gilchrist claimed that Huckabee favored a new amendment to the Constitution to codify that.

A day later -- as he was riding high from a victory in the Iowa caucuses -- Huckabee walked back Gilchrist's comment. Two years later, Huckabee told NPR's Tom Ashbrook that he opposed major changes to the 14th Amendment. "I don't even think that's possible," he said.

But in the new interview, Huckabee seemed to rediscover his enthusiasm for reforming the "birthright" process.

"It has been the practice that we’ve had for over 100 years," he told Hewitt. "I think if we’re going to change that, then we need to be able to declare why we’re going to change it. I know that there’s the language about jurisdiction, there have been questions about it. The diplomat's child was born here -- does that make that person a citizen? I don't think that it's an ironclad-type decision, but it would be helpful for there to be legislation defining what the jurisdiction clause means. I don't think a constitutional amendment is likely to happen, but it would be helpful to have a constitutional amendment."

Earlier this month, at the first televised Republican presidential debate, Huckabee said that the 14th Amendment could and should be used to treat the unborn as American citizens. "This notion that we just continue to ignore the personhood of the individual is a violation of that unborn child’s Fifth and 14th Amendment rights for due process and equal protection under the law," he said.

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Tennessee pulls back from the nuttiness of designating the Bible as the state's official book

Daryl Cagle, cagle.com (click to enlarge)

by Ken

So it appears that Tennessee will not, after all, designate the Bible as the state's official book. On Wednesday, the state House voted 55-38 to do just that. But as Dave Boucher reported Thursday evening for The Tennessean:

The Bible will not become the official book of Tennessee this year.

Bolstered by opposition from Republican leadership, the Senate voted 22-9 to send the Bible to committee, effectively killing the bill a day after it was adopted by the House.

"This isn't the time or place now in the full Senate floor to delve into that. We really need to look into it in committee," Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris, R-Collierville, said about two hours before the vote.

Gov. Bill Haslam and Attorney General Herbert Slatery oppose the bill; Slatery recently announced he thinks the bill violates the state and federal constitutions.

Norris led the effort to kill the bill in the Senate. He asked for the bill to be sent back to the Senate Judiciary Committee to address the Slatery opinion. The Senate agreed, supporting Norris and effectively killing the bill for the year.

"I sure hope it won't pass. I think it'll be a dark day for Tennessee if it does," Norris said Wednesday.

"All I know is that I hear Satan snickering. He loves this kind of mischief. You just dumb the good book down far enough to make it whatever it takes to make it a state symbol, and you're on your way to where he wants you."

Bill sponsor Sen. Steve Southerland, R-Morristown, and other supporters argue the bill highlights the economic and historical impact of the Bible in Tennessee. The House passed the bill by a 55-38 vote Wednesday after two hours of debate over the course of two days.

"The Bible has great historical and cultural significance in the state of Tennessee," Southerland said Wednesday, at times getting emotional on the Senate floor.

On Wednesday, after the large-majority House vote in favor of the bill, the outcome didn't look nearly so sensible. To their credit, though, a host of red-blooded Tennessee conservatives got the issue right. Like the state's lieutenant governor, Ron Ramsey.

Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, has been outspoken in his belief that the bill belittles the Bible by placing it next to state symbols. After the vote, Ramsey heralded the decision to send the bill back to committee.

"I am a Christian, but I am also a constitutionalist and a conservative. It would be fiscally irresponsible to put the state in a position to have to spend tax dollars defending a largely symbolic piece of legislation," Ramsey said in a statement.

"We don't need to put the Bible beside salamanders, tulip poplars and 'Rocky Top' in the Tennessee Blue Book to appreciate its importance to our state."

The reference to fiscal irresponsibility is interesting, and brings me to the case made by The Frisky's Robyn Pennacchia, who wrote after the state House passage on Wednesday:

The Senate will vote on it today, and then it will go to the governor, and then if it’s passed people will sue and if it’s not we’ll have to hear about how Christians are oppressed even in the Bible Belt. I will probably have to write another goddamned blog post about it.

As much as I want to make this about the separation of church and state–and it most definitely is, even the TN state attorney general agrees with me there–there are a few things about this vote that actually bothered me more. In particular, this line from the New York Times article on the subject [actually an AP report -- Ed.].

While supporters acknowledged the likelihood of a lawsuit if the bill becomes law, some said it would be worth the expense.

Really? With 17 percent of your population living below the poverty line, this is what you think is fine to spend money on, Tennessee? Seriously? You’re one of the ten poorest states in the country, and you’re going to spend your people’s tax money on some stupid and purely symbolic gesture that people in your state will most likely only be reminded of during pub trivia?

To boot, not to be petty, but Tennessee is like, number 11 in terms of taker states. They take in far more federal tax dollars than they put out. We’re giving them money, and they are cool with spending theirs on–I don’t know, trying to make Jewish people feel unwelcome or something? You know, given how much Republican lawmakers go on and on about their fears that poor people are secretly purchasing filet mignon with their $29 a week food stamp budget, you’d think they’d oppose measures like this which barely serve any purpose other than to court lawsuits.

That’s not entirely true though. I’m going to say a pretty large part of it is also bread and circuses. These people are basically just distracting the poor white Christians in their state by going “Look at how special we think you are! You just go and ignore the fact that we have the sixth highest unemployment rate in the country, OK? Just think about how nice you’d feel if the government gave a ringing endorsement of your personal choice of religion, and about how all the mean atheists want to take that away from you! They don’t want you to be special! Look here, don’t look there!”

Notice that the other two states who have tried to advance such measures–and failed–were Mississippi and Louisiana. Both of which, I’m sorry, have a lot more important things to attend to than trying to test the boundaries of the separation of church and state with a vote on what the state book is going to be. You know, there is that saying about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

Mercifully, the Tennessee Senate similarly put a stop to the madness, at least for this year. But that doesn't mean this phony-baloney issue is going to go away, and everything Robyn says here is assuredly to the point. Let's hope she doesn't have to keep saying it.

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Right-wing ideologues, not just off the bench but also ON it, do their damedest to pervert the legal system

Dim-bulb Western PA District Court Judge Arthur J. Schwab, who yesterday struck down the president's executive order on immigration, is pictured here in 2012, when for the second time in four years the Third Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals took the extraordinary step of removing him from a case.

"It's one thing to have your own personal beliefs. It's quite another to use your official powers and your official office to subvert the court and the lawful process."

-- attorney George Felos

by Ken

The funny thing is, you might guess that attorney Felos, quoted above, is somehow involved in the stuningly inept decision by a GWB-appointed Western Pennsylvania district court hack declaring the Obama executive order on immigration unconstitutional. Felos's observation certainly applies.

In fact, though, Felos is the lawyer who represented Michael Schiavo in 2002 when Florida's then-Gov. Jeb Bush served as the point man for the brigade of ideologically diseased pandering pols who did everything in their power to force Schiavo's brain-dead wife Terri to be kept alive artificially, for no reason except to satisfy their own contrary-to-law beliefs.

In the wake of Jebbie's declaration that he's considering a 2016 presidential run, ThinkProgress spoke to both Schiavo and Felos ("Terri Schiavo's Husband Speaks Out On Jeb Bush's Presidential Bid"). As Josh Israel reports, neither is enthusiastic about the prospect: "Both expressed concern that Bush's record was one of government interference and opposing individual liberty."

Josh recalls for us (with lots of links onsite):

Though Michael Schiavo got a court order in 2002 to remove his wife’s feeding tube — he said his wife had not wanted to be kept alive artificially — Jeb Bush intervened, pushing the state legislature to pass an unconstitutional bill in a special session giving him authority to order the feeding tube reinserted. When a state judge ordered it removed again, Felos told ThinkProgress, Bush “manipulated the organs of state government in order to try to evade the court order.”

“Through the Dept. of Children and Family Services and through the Department of Law Enforcement they tried in the courts to ignore the higher court pronouncements – this was documented in an article by the Miami Herald,” he recalled, though, “when local authorities said you’re going to have to go through us in order to get her, and the state law enforcement agency backed down.”

Though Bush, then-U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN), and social conservative activists protested that Terri Schiavo was not in a persistent vegetative state, an autopsy confirmed that she had been.

Josh reports further that Felos --

also recalled that after Schiavo’s death, Jeb Bush went after Michael Schiavo personally, asking the state’s attorney to investigate whether he had called 911 fast enough. “It was very odd, almost like a personal vendetta the governor had towards Michael Schaivo.” The state’s attorney found no evidence against him and closed the case. “The propriety of using your office to hunt and harass people, as the governor did to Mr. Schiavo after his wife’s death, I think raises significant questions about his judgment and his character,” Felos said.

When it comes to "subvert[ing] the court," though, nothing beats having dishonest, legally incompetent judges sitting right there on the bench, spinning legal fantasies blown out of their butts.

Which brings us back to Western Pennsylvania District Court Judge Arthur J. Schwab, who pounced on the opportunity of a case with only the thinnest, most tortured connection to the executive order, and applied to it an almost total ignorance of immigration law and the Constitution to come up with a result that came blown out of his butt.

ThinkProgress legal eagle Ian Millhiser was all over this astonishing development yesterday:

In an extraordinary opinion that transforms a routine sentencing matter into a vehicle to strike down a politically controversial policy, a George W. Bush-appointed judge in Pennsylvania declared President Obama’s recently announced immigration policy unconstitutional on Tuesday. Because the policy “may” apply to a defendant who was awaiting sentencing of a criminal immigration violation, Judge Arthur Schwab decides that he must determine “whether the Executive Action is constitutional.”

In case the suspense is killing you, Ian continues: " He concludes that it is not."

Yesterday Ian spent some time going through the startlingly brief (for such a significant decision) rationale for the decision, a major portion of which is devoted to rambling about political comments made by President Obama, which have no demonstrated relevance to the legal basis for his executive order. Ian then showed that Judge Schwab really doesn't seem familiar with the actual legal and constitutional issues here, and among other things totally ignores probably the most relevant federal precedent,Arizona v. United States,

where the Supreme Court said that the executive branch has “broad discretion” [this link is to a November 19 post of Ian's, "The Roberts Court Has Already Said That Obama Has The Power To Issue His Immigration Order" -- Ed.] in matters of deportation and removal. As Arizona explains, a “principal feature of the removal system is the broad discretion exercised by immigration officials.” Executive branch officials, moreover, “must decide whether it makes sense to pursue removal at all.”

Notably, Arizona also indicates that this broad discretion flows from federal immigration law — i.e. laws that were enacted by Congress. This matters because Schwab’s opinion concludes that Obama’s “unilateral” policy “violates the separation of powers provided for in the United States Constitution as well as the Take Care Clause.” In essence, Schwab concludes that the president lacks the authority to act in the absence of authorization by Congress. Schwab does not even discuss the possibility that Obama’s actions may actually be authorized by Congress. Thus, even if Schwab’s reading of the Constitution is correct — itself a questionable proposition — the judge does not even discuss another major source of law that can justify the president’s actions.

After doing his best to find legal grounding in Judge Schwab's ruling, and failing, Ian wrote yesterday,

So Schwab’s legal analysis is thin. He spends nearly as much time making what appear to be political attacks on the president as he does evaluating actual legal matters. And what little legal analysis he does provide fails to cite key Supreme Court decisions that seem to contradict his conclusion. Judge Schwab traveled far along a very thin branch to reach this decision, and he anchored his decision with little grounding in legal authorities.

Moreover, it’s not clear what effect, if any effect at all, this decision will actually have. The judge does not issue an injunction halting the new immigration policy. Nor does he even state with certainty that the actual defendant in the case before his court will benefit from an order declaring the immigration policy unconstitutional.

Today Ian notes that Judge Schwab's shaky procedural grounds are of concern even Mr. Torture himself, John Yoo, who declares himself (in a National Review Online post called "Was Today's Ruling Against Obama's ImmigrationOrders Judicial Activism?") in sympathy with the view that the president's executive order is executive overreach but nevertheless --

criticizes Schwab for opining on the immigration policy’s constitutionality when the issue was not properly before his court. As Yoo notes, “[t]his is not a case where the executive order applies, because the Obama administration is not allowing an illegal alien to remain in the country.” Thus, the case presents “no real dispute over the law, because regardless of whether the executive order is constitutional or not, it would make no difference in [this defendant’s] case.”

RIGHT-WING IDEOLOGUES CARE ABOUT
BEING RIGHT-WING, NOT BEING RIGHT

Of course it has become standard operating practice for right-wing ideologues (GOPSOP?) to declare the president's executive order unconstitutional, despite their near-total ignorance of the relevant legal and specific constitutional issues. But then, if you're a confirmed right-wing liar-obfuscator, with a deep-gut-level conviction that facts are a left-wing conspiracy, then you just naturally blow with whatever whizzes out of your butt.

Ian looks more closely at the case of John Yoo, who he points out "once argued that the president’s power to act unilaterally is so expansive that the chief executive could order interrogators to crush a child’s testicles" (the title placed by the poster on this 2006 YouTube clip is "John Yoo Says President Bush Can Legally Torture Children"). Specifically, he notes "the former Justice Department attorney's transformation from a proponent of largely unchecked executive power under Bush into a man deeply concerned with government action under Obama." Suddenly Mr. Torture has become ever so fastidious about the issue of executive "reach" -- now that the chief executive is no longer a right-wing sociopath.

Yoo has argued that the Supreme Court decision upholding much of the Affordable Care Act “did great violence” to constitutional limits on federal power. Yet, during the Bush Administration, Yoo offered a view that, if followed to its logical conclusion, would grant President Obama the authority to implement many provisions of Obamacare even if Congress had never passed the law in the first place.

During the Bush years, Yoo argued that the Constitution permits the president to judge what steps are “necessary” to prosecute a war.

To be sure, this attitude hasn't been confined to legal commentators. From the outset of the Obama administration, a president who has for the most part exercised his powers with exceptional timidity has been assaulted as a monstrously overreaching executive tyrant by the usual band of Lying Liars of the Right (stand up and take a bow, George will) by the very media thugs who hailed George W. Bush's every exercise of dictatorial powers. In the legal arena, Ian notes, "Yoo seems particularly willing to advocate in favor of expansive powers for presidents of his party and narrow contractions of federal power when Democrats are calling the shots." In which connection, Ian suggests, Yoo is "a harbinger of a new legal era."

Data shows that the best predictor of whether a lawsuit challenging portions of Obamacare will succeed is whether a majority of the judges hearing the case are Republicans. Justice Antonin Scalia authored an opinion that provided a clear rationale for upholding the Affordable Care Act several years before he joined another opinion attempting to repeal the entire law. Judge Schwab rejected Obama’s immigration policy without even feeling the need to cite precedents supporting the core of his reasoning.

Yoo’s flexible approach to the law, in other words, is hardly limited to Yoo himself. It is increasingly easy to find on the federal bench.

Yesterday Ian pointed out that, while Judge Schwab's ruling striking down the immigration executive order is a sham as legal argumentation, "immigrant families would be wrong to write off the threat his decision could present."

There was a time when the constitutional challenges to the Affordable Care Act were widely dismissed by legal experts — Ronald Reagan’s former solicitor general said he would “eat a hat which I bought in Australia last month made of kangaroo skin” if the Supreme Court struck the law down — yet these challenges rapidly gained momentum after a few Republican judges reached out to strike the law down. The same can be said about the legal theory in King v. Burwell, a lawsuit currently before the Supreme Court that seeks to gut much of Obamacare.

It remains to be seen whether Schwab’s opinion — thin though its reasoning may be — will also grant legitimacy to the case against the president’s immigration policy.

When the courts are packed with dimwitted thugs, chosen for their ideological thuggery I guess it's not a surprise that we wind up with dimwitted legal hooliganism.

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HUNGRY? MAYBE NOT YET-- BUT MILLIONS ARE AND SOON WE MAY BE TOO

Bush and Dupont have a concept they want to sell you

The way the political parties pick their/our presidential candidates has been completely perverted because Iowa (and New Hampshire) have grown accustomed to the attention and income that their early and completely unrepresentative caucus and primary bring them. It's a system that should have wound up on the trash heap of history long ago. But our political class is so devoid of even the most basic leadership qualities-- not to mention strength of character-- that it has just festered and helped rot out the system.

And largely because of Iowa's role, almost every pathetic political hack striving for higher office pays obeisance to Iowa's biofuels policy, a policy based on driving up the cost of corn. Today's Guardian reports (as does the NT Times) that political pandering to Iowa's (and others') illogical biofuels aspirations has driving up the cost of food-- worldwide-- by 75%.

The World Bank has been attempting to keep their analysis secret so as not to get into a conflict with the Bush Regime, which has fudged the figures-- as they do with everything (SOP)-- to make it seem that biofuels have caused food prices to rise by a benign 3%, rather than 75%.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

..."Political leaders seem intent on suppressing and ignoring the strong evidence that biofuels are a major factor in recent food price rises," said Robert Bailey, policy adviser at Oxfam. "It is imperative that we have the full picture. While politicians concentrate on keeping industry lobbies happy, people in poor countries cannot afford enough to eat."

Rising food prices have pushed 100m people worldwide below the poverty line, estimates the World Bank, and have sparked riots from Bangladesh to Egypt. Government ministers here have described higher food and fuel prices as "the first real economic crisis of globalisation."

President Bush has linked higher food prices to higher demand from India and China, but the leaked World Bank study disputes that: "Rapid income growth in developing countries has not led to large increases in global grain consumption and was not a major factor responsible for the large price increases."

Did your grandma ever tell you to clean your plate because people in China were starving? Mine did and it makes as much sense as Bush's assertion about higher demand in India and China. Both are net exporters of food, not importers. He just knows the Fox TV crowd has let him get away with the assertion that gasoline prices have risen because of demand from China and India-- rather than because of Bush's speculator buddies-- and thought he could make it work for the food crisis too. Of course Bush has food speculators in his circle as well, they have worked diligently to drive up the cost of food.

"Without the increase in biofuels, global wheat and maize stocks would not have declined appreciably and price increases due to other factors would have been moderate," says the report. The basket of food prices examined in the study rose by 140% between 2002 and this February. The report estimates that higher energy and fertilizer prices accounted for an increase of only 15%, while biofuels have been responsible for a 75% jump over that period.

It argues that production of biofuels has distorted food markets in three main ways. First, it has diverted grain away from food for fuel, with over a third of US corn now used to produce ethanol and about half of vegetable oils in the EU going towards the production of biodiesel. Second, farmers have been encouraged to set land aside for biofuel production. Third, it has sparked financial speculation in grains, driving prices up higher.

...The report points out biofuels derived from sugarcane, which Brazil specializes in, have not had such a dramatic impact.

Supporters of biofuels argue that they are a greener alternative to relying on oil and other fossil fuels, but even that claim has been disputed by some experts, who argue that it does not apply to US production of ethanol from plants.

And Iowa grows no sugar cane. And there are no presidential primaries in Brazil.

THE REAL ELITIST DREAM TICKET-- CLINTON AND McCAIN

Who could resist? All the absolute worst garbage from each party. Today, TV toady George Stephanopoulos began his interview with Clinton "by asking if she could name a single economist who supports her plan for a gas tax suspension." She couldn't, although plenty of lobbyists do-- the nonpartisan ones who will be just as happy sucking up money from a corrupt McCain administration as fro a nearly as corrupt Clinton administration. Hillary's laughably phony stab at populism-- no, she didn't pull out a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon and take a swig and belch loudly while she said it-- was petulant and almost Bush-like: “I’m not going to put in my lot with economists... Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans.” Who better to tell us about what elite opinion is on the side of (not counting McCain)? Clinton-Bush NAFTA would be the perfect example of what elites push... to the disadvantage of the vast majority of Americans. "This gas tax issue to me is very real because I have been meeting people across Indiana and North Carolina who drive for a living, who commute long distances, who would save money," Yes, $25-30 for the summer, about half a tank of gas. How much does  anew tire cost-- or a pothole-inspired front end realignment?

Senator Barack Obama has derided the gas-tax suspension as a gimmick that would save consumers little and cost thousands of jobs, and Kara Glennon, a member of the audience at a town-hall meeting, seemed to agree. Gas prices are “not academic” for her, she told Mrs. Clinton, because she makes less than $25,000 a year-- and then she accused Mrs. Clinton of pandering. “Call me crazy, but I listen to economists because I think I know what they studied,” she said.

Robert Reich, who was President Clinton's excellent Secretary of Labor, also weighed in on this today. And he got right to the heart of the matter-- why Obama is far better suited to lead this country out of the mess that's been created over the last 2 decades than either Clinton or McCain, each of whom has been an integral part of creating the mess.

I know several of the economists who have been advising Senator Clinton, so I phoned them right after I heard this. I reached two of them. One hadn’t heard her remark and said he couldn’t believe she’d say it. The other had heard it and shrugged it off as “politics as usual.”

That’s the problem: Politics as usual.

The gas tax holiday is small potatoes relative to everything else. But it’s so economically stupid (it would increase demand for gas and cause prices to rise, eliminating any benefit to consumers while costing the Treasury more than $9 billion, and generate more pollution) and silly (even if she won, HRC won’t be president this summer) as to be worrisome. That HRC now says she doesn’t care that what economists think is even more troubling.

In case you’ve missed it, we now have a president who doesn’t care what most economists think. George W. Bush doesn’t even care what scientists think. He rejects all experts who disagree with his politics. This has led to some extraordinarily stupid policies.

I’m not saying HRC is George Bush. And I'm not suggesting economists have all the answers. But when economists tell a president or a presidential candidate that his or her idea is dumb – and when all respectable economists around America agree that it’s a dumb idea – it’s probably wise for the president or presidential candidate to listen. When the president or candidate doesn’t, and proudly defends the policy by saying she's "not going to put my lot in with economists,” we’ve got a problem, folks.

Even though the summer gas tax holiday is pure hokum, it polls well, which is why HRC and John McCain are pushing it. That Barack Obama is not in favor of it despite its positive polling numbers speaks volumes about the kind of president he’ll be – and the kind of president we’d otherwise get from McCain and HRC.

Haven’t we had enough of politicians who reject facts in favor of short-term poll-driven politics?

Precisely. And Obama is getting the word out too:

THOMAS FRIEDMAN CHIMES IN-- AGAINST THE SHAMELESS PANDERING FROM McCAIN AND HILLARY

McCain and Hillary-- two pandering fools

You may think of Thomas Friedman primarily as one of the cheerleaders behind Bush's illegal attack on Iraq, but he also sometimes makes a little sense-- like in his NY Times column today. Like anyone everyone who takes the problems of the economy seriously, he is very disappointed that Hillary would lower herself to the standards of McCain-- and he explains why. Their proposal is "not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country. When the summer is over, we will have increased our debt to China, increased our transfer of wealth to Saudi Arabia and increased our contribution to global warming for our kids to inherit." He commends Obama for resisting the politician's inborn urge to pander. I'd go further and point out that their respective positions show that Obama is the only one of the three fit to be president.

our problem is so much worse than you think. We have no energy strategy. If you are going to use tax policy to shape energy strategy then you want to raise taxes on the things you want to discourage-- gasoline consumption and gas-guzzling cars-- and you want to lower taxes on the things you want to encourage-- new, renewable energy technologies. We are doing just the opposite.

Are you sitting down?

Few Americans know it, but for almost a year now, Congress has been bickering over whether and how to renew the investment tax credit to stimulate investment in solar energy and the production tax credit to encourage investment in wind energy. The bickering has been so poisonous that when Congress passed the 2007 energy bill last December, it failed to extend any stimulus for wind and solar energy production. Oil and gas kept all their credits, but those for wind and solar have been left to expire this December. I am not making this up. At a time when we should be throwing everything into clean power innovation, we are squabbling over pennies.

These credits are critical because they ensure that if oil prices slip back down again-- which often happens-- investments in wind and solar would still be profitable. That’s how you launch a new energy technology and help it achieve scale, so it can compete without subsidies.

The Democrats wanted the wind and solar credits to be paid for by taking away tax credits from the oil industry. President Bush said he would veto that. Neither side would back down, and Mr. Bush-- showing not one iota of leadership-- refused to get all the adults together in a room and work out a compromise. Stalemate. Meanwhile, Germany has a 20-year solar incentive program; Japan 12 years. Ours, at best, run two years.

“It’s a disaster,” says Michael Polsky, founder of Invenergy, one of the biggest wind-power developers in America. “Wind is a very capital-intensive industry, and financial institutions are not ready to take ‘Congressional risk.’ They say if you don’t get the [production tax credit] we will not lend you the money to buy more turbines and build projects.”

It is also alarming, says Rhone Resch, the president of the Solar Energy Industries Association, that the U.S. has reached a point “where the priorities of Congress could become so distorted by politics” that it would turn its back on the next great global industry-- clean power-- “but that’s exactly what is happening.” If the wind and solar credits expire, said Resch, the impact in just 2009 would be more than 100,000 jobs either lost or not created in these industries, and $20 billion worth of investments that won’t be made.

UPDATE: THE HILLDOG ATTACKS OBAMA FOR NOT BUYING INTO HER AND McCAIN'S CHEAP GAS GIMMICK

You wouldn't vote for McCain, I'm sure. Hillary is better than he is... to some extent. Obama is the only one qualified to be president. He's willing to tell the truth to the American people. McCain and Hillary are just dishonest political hacks.


UPDATE: JONATHAN ALTER ASKS A RHETORICAL QUESTION

Alter is a smart guy and in Newsweek today he asked, rhetorically, why McCain and Hillary don't know any better than to propose this horribly pandering gas tax holiday. I think they did the American voters a great service by both coming out for it. It shows voters exactly who is willing to try to buy them off with cheap counter-productive tricks and who is willing to stand up and speak the real straight talk. And it shows the American people-- or at least those willing to use their noggins-- how pathetic the mass media is.

Hillary Clinton has now joined John McCain in proposing the most irresponsible policy idea of the year-- an idea that actually could aid the terrorists. What's worse, both of them know that suspending the federal gas tax this summer is a terrible pander, and yet they're pushing it anyway for crass political advantage.

Clinton and McCain have learned a destructive lesson from the Bush era: as Bill Clinton said in 2002, it's better politically to be "strong and wrong" than thoughtful and right. The goal is to depict Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist. By any means necessary.

I could highlight a long debate among economists on suspending the gas tax, but there is no debate. Not one respectable economist [though all of McCain's and Hillary's repulsive cadres of lobbyists]-- and not one environmentalist or foreign policy expert-- supports the idea, unless they are official members of the Clinton or McCain campaigns (and even some of them privately oppose it). To relieve suffering at the pump, send another rebate check or provide tax credits or something else, but not this.

Why is this gas pander so bad? Let me count the ways:

* It's a direct transfer of money from motorists to oil companies, which are getting ready this week to again report record obscene profits. If the federal excise tax were lifted, oil companies would simply raise prices and pocket most of the difference. Clinton's proposal to recover the money with a windfall profits tax on oil companies sounds nice but won't happen. That tax was easily blocked by the Senate in December and would likely be blocked again.

* It offers taxpayers only peanuts. The Congressional Budget Office says the average savings to motorists this summer would be a total of $30. Did I miss something, or was that measly number somehow not included in Clinton's explanation of her support?

* It sends more hard-earned money to the Middle East, which is terrible for our national security. Remember, 15 of the 19 terrorists on 9/11 came from Saudi Arabia. How did they get the terrorist training? The madrassa indoctrination? Oil money.

* It worsens global warming by encouraging gasoline consumption. When you flee your house in 2020 because of flooding, remember which politicians pandered.

* It makes it more likely you'll have a car accident or will waste even more time in traffic. The proceeds from the gas tax go for highway construction and upgrades. Because the tax (24.4 cents a gallon on diesel fuel) was last raised 15 years ago, our infrastructure is a mess, with potholes and dangerous crossings practically everywhere. Thousands of repair projects will be further delayed.

* It will cost 300,000 construction jobs, according to the Department of Transportation. Makes it kind of ironic when Clinton starts her rallies saying she wants "jobs, jobs, jobs."

* It will cost the U.S. Treasury at least $8.5 billion and probably much more, according to state highway officials. For McCain that's no money at all-- merely one month in Iraq. For Clinton it's money she's already spent. She has said in the past that any proceeds from a windfall profits tax would go for renewable energy. The $8.5 billion figure assumes the tax would be reapplied after Labor Day. Fat chance. The one-year costs are probably closer to $30 billion.

* It won't happen anyway because Congress isn't usually quite that stupid, and if it is, President Bush would veto the bill.

So why are McCain and Clinton doing this? Because when they learned that Obama had supported a similar suspension of the Illinois gas tax in Springfield, Ill., before realizing it was a bad idea, they saw an opening. It was like Hillary's whiskey shot in the bar, only sleazier. Try to show that the guy just doesn't get it.

Of course, McCain and Clinton do get it. They get that people are hurting and want some relief, even if this form of it makes no sense. They get that voters have been conned into believing that both
candidates are responsible public servants because they're not as bad as some others, so they can trade on that reputation. They get that smacking Obama is more important than anything else on the planet right now, and that for Obama to respond by calling them panderers will take Obama about as far as it took Paul Tsongas in 1992 when he leveled the same charge at Bill Clinton.