The Debate Over Tactics In the Modern Left: Radical Opposition or Strategic Inclusive Engagement?

World CO2 emissions are growing, not falling. What will the children say? (source)

by Thomas Neuburger

Modern America is a tense place these days. By that I mean, there are a number of tensions in American social and political life that are, this year, coming to a frothy head.

First, consider the tension in center and leftish circles around class war and the 2020 election. Many argue that the right way for to Democrats to win this election is by embracing "identity politics" — that racial justice, justice for women, for gay, lesbian and trans individuals, for indigenous peoples and all other victimized groups must come first, must be placed front and center. And not just for presentation and marketing purposes (though many do argue that vote-getting starts with making the identity case), but because fighting the old white patriarchy is a necessary precursor to fighting the class war — that if the old white patriarchy is in place, the class war can't be won.

Adolph Reed Jr. has written much about this tension on the left (his latest is here), and proponents of the Sanders candidacy stand almost alone in believing the solution lies in winning the class struggle.

So that's one tension. Another is the tension around radical, oppositional action versus a more considered, careful, inclusive approach. Visitors to DWT recently read about Rep. Pramila Jayapal and her "balancing act" — her attempt to keep real progressives, not-so-real progressives and Party leaders all aligned with genuinely progressive legislation like Medicare for All. Time will determine if that strategy succeeds; everyone I know hope it does.

Radical opposition, however, has its proponents, and no subject inspires them more than the coming climate catastrophe, which the world is doing less than nothing to head off (see graph at top).

Will the politics of accommodation work in this sphere, or will radical action be required? Must the current system be broken and rebuilt before a climate solution can be enacted?

As writer David Atkins explains it in the following twitter thread, the choices left to us are really one choice. First, the Right will not let — is not letting — the current system survive in any case; they're breaking norms with everything they touch. Second, the current system cannot provide a climate solution. Thus breaking that system the way the Left wants to break it provides the only hope "for those of us who want to live to 2050."

Radical thoughts for a radical time. Here's that thread. See what you think after you read it.

Short thread here on climate change, the norms of democracy, and the battle between the right, center left and progressive left. Ready? Here goes... /1

The Right has always depended for its success on the implicit or explicit threat that it would be willing to subvert all the norms of democracy to achieve its goals, whether it be "2nd amendment remedies" or the Federalist Society's changing all the rules in the courts.../2

This is how the Right works the refs: they let everyone know that they're willing to pull out ALL the stops if white male patriarchy and racism don't stay centered in society, and if rich people don't get to keep all the loot. /3

The center left has long depended on being the "responsible" party. The cogent ones, the level headed ones. The perpetual Real Mothers in the Justice of Solomon [story] willing to sacrifice almost anything to salvage the system. /4

The problem is that this dynamic between right and center left is codependent and convenient to the status quo. The far right gets to keep the angry old racists happy, the center left keeps the concerned vaguely cosmopolitan educated crowd happy. And the donors always win. /5

The progressive left [is] saying "enough of this game. We, too, are willing to break the norms of American democracy because these issues are life and death emergencies." We're not going to play the responsible straight man to the GOP's destructive clown. /6

Yes, we KNOW the Green New Deal can't pass through the Senate under the current system. We're not stupid. We're [putting] down the marker that if this system won't let the GND pass, we will change the system until it does--eliminate the filibuster, add states, pack courts, etc. /7

So when the center left says "but I can pass this weaker version", the answer is twofold:
1) no, you can't. The GOP is a destructive clown that won't give you the time of day, either. But also,
2) we don't care what you think [you] can pass. We're telling you what we need. /8

And if that means changing the system? So be it. If it means breaking the system? So be it. The norms of 20th century American democracy are worthless compared to the threat of climate change. Also, radical inequality. Also, the declining middle class. /9

The right has been very effective playing this game. They are signaling loud and clear they would rather have a Putin-backed dictatorship under a corrupt idiot than give up old white male privilege or [plutocratic] control. What is the left willing to do? How far will we go? /10

The center left's answer? Nowhere. We'll do whatever we can with the system we have, and whatever happens happens...as long as nobody's stock portfolio takes a hit. That is completely, totally unacceptable to those of us who want to live to 2050. Or have [kids] who do. /11

If the system won't budge with us, we'll budge the system. We are dealing with catastrophic threats, and econ/tech challenges well beyond the capacity of our current politics. Your experience within the system means nothing now. Your commitment to the goal is everything. /12

In short, the current system WILL NOT SURVIVE. The right sees an existential threat from a browning, more progressive population. They cannot afford for democracy to survive, and they will kill it if given half the chance. /13

But the current system also won't let us deal with our environmental, technological and economic challenges in anything like the timeframe we need to solve them. Which means the defenders of that system are just as dangerous in their own way as the right wing is. /14

The future belongs to the side that changes the system to accomplish their goals. Will it be young progressives? Or will it rich old racists? There is no middle ground. There is no responsible defense of the status quo. It's going to be one side or the other. /fin

His conclusion is striking, but not surprising. We've heard it from others as well. As Atkins says:

• The defenders of the present system are as dangerous in their way as the right wing is.
• The future belongs to the side that changes the system to accomplish their goals. 

The terms of this debate apply to a number of policy fields, and we'll be hearing some form of this discussion, of this tension, throughout the 2020 campaign. For example, the Medicare For All debate has already been characterized (accurately in my view) as a battle to replace capitalism (see Ed Walker's "The Green New Deal Challenges the Domination of Capital").

But the argument above applies no more directly than it does in the climate debate, where the clock is running, the end (if it comes) is near and total, and there's no turning back to anything that went before, no matter how much we wish it were not so.
 

Five True Things About Mike Pence

Image courtesy The Atlantic, "God's Plan for Mike Pence"

by Gaius Publius

In the wake of ultra-right bombings and shootings, with the Mueller investigation in mind and thoughts of the 2020 election close at hand, it seems appropriate to look at Vice President Mike Pence. He could be made president before 2020, and if so, he may be president afterward as well.

So let's consider this set of five true things about Mike Pence.

1. Mike Pence Is the Most Powerful Christian Supremacist in U.S. History

In 2016, just after the November election, Jeremy Scahill wrote this about the soon-to-be vice-president:

Pence’s ascent to the second most powerful position in the U.S. government is a tremendous coup for the radical religious right. Pence — and his fellow Christian supremacist militants — would not have been able to win the White House on their own. For them, Donald Trump was a godsend. “This may not be our preferred candidate, but that doesn’t mean it may not be God’s candidate to do something that we don’t see,” said David Barton, a prominent Christian-right activist and president of Wall Builders, an organization dedicated to making the U.S. government enforce “biblical values.” In June, Barton prophesied: “We may look back in a few years and say, ‘Wow, [Trump] really did some things that none of us expected.’”

Trump is a Trojan horse for a cabal of vicious zealots who have long craved an extremist Christian theocracy, and Pence is one of its most prized warriors. With Republican control of the House and Senate and the prospect of dramatically and decisively tilting the balance of the Supreme Court to the far right, the incoming administration will have a real shot at bringing the fire and brimstone of the second coming to Washington.

“The enemy, to them, is secularism. They want a God-led government. That’s the only legitimate government,” contends Jeff Sharlet, author of two books on the radical religious right, including “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.” “So when they speak of business, they’re speaking not of something separate from God, but they’re speaking of what, in Mike Pence’s circles, would be called biblical capitalism, the idea that this economic system is God-ordained.”

This is extreme as it gets in the world of Christian dominionism. "They want a God-led government" — their god that is, an Old Testament god who terrorizes enemies, punishes unsanctioned sex and permanently assigns to women a status less than human. If you were to equate this god's dogma with Sharia law, you'd not be wrong.

Interestingly, one of the most prominent voices for dominionism, R.J. Rushdoony, was also a fan of Ludwig von Mises and his extreme form of economic libertarianism, a belief that put Rushdoony in the same economic camp as Charles Koch. Expect a President Pence to follow in those footsteps as well — religious restriction for you, extreme economic freedom for him and his friends.

2. Mike Pence Is Anti-Science

In 2002 Mike Pence said on the floor of the House (h/t Mike Stone at Progressive Secular Humanist):

I would simply and humbly ask, can we teach it as such and can we also consider teaching other theories of the origin of species? Like the theory that was believed in by every signer of the Declaration of Independence. Every signer of the Declaration of Independence believed that men and women were created and were endowed by that same Creator with certain unalienable rights. The Bible tells us that God created man in his own image, male and female he created them. And I believe that, Mr. Speaker. ...

I believe that God created the known universe, the earth and everything in it, including man. And I also believe that someday scientists will come to see that only the theory of intelligent design provides even a remotely rational explanation for the known universe. ...

I just would humbly ask that, as new theories of evolution find their ways into the newspapers and into the textbooks, let us demand that educators around America teach evolution, not as fact, but as theory [among competing explanations]. ... But let's also bring into the minds of all of our children all of the theories about the unknowable, [so] that some bright day in the future, through science and perhaps through faith, we will find the truth of from whence we come. [bolding mine]

It's easy to imagine a Mike Pence Education Department mandating this teaching to the extent it can, and a Supreme Court dominated by "five Antonin Scalias" — Roberts, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh — upholding him.

3. Mike Pence Is Virulently Homophobic

Pence is not only anti-woman, he's rabidly anti-gay, so much so that others suspect he has "those urges" himself. So far those suspicions have proved groundless, but there's no doubting the virulence of his homophobia.

Just one example (h/t Mike Gallagher at LGBTQ Nation): As Governor Mike Pence signed a bill to jail same-sex couples who apply for a marriage license. "To prove that he wasn’t singling gay people out, Pence was also willing to jail marriage clerks who supplied a license or clergy who performed the wedding."

4. Mike Pence Could Well Be Guilty of Obstruction of Justice in the Comey Firing

From Jed Shugerman at Law and Crime in 2017 (emphasis added):

On Friday, news broke that Special Counsel Robert Mueller had obtained a draft letter written by President Trump and advisor Stephen Miller explaining Trump’s decision to fire FBI Director Jim Comey. They wrote the letter over the weekend of May 5-7, and then on May 8th, Trump distributed and read the letter to senior officials, including White House Counsel Don McGahn and Vice President Mike Pence. Then the letter was edited, and Trump fired Comey the next day.  On Friday, I suggested on Lawrence O’Donnell’s “The Last Word” on MSNBC that the most significant development was Pence’s potential criminal liability for his role in obstruction of justice (and I emphasize “potential,” because all we have at this stage are allegations in media reports and a lot more questions about the contents of the letter and Pence’s role in revising or editing it).

I have explained in other posts why Trump’s firing of Comey constitutes obstruction of justice under 18 U.S.C. 1512(c)(2), and arguably Sections 1503 and 1505. “(c)Whoever corruptly- (2)… obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.” 18 USC 1515 defines “official proceeding,” and includes Congress and authorized government agencies. The 2d and 5th Circuits have held that an FBI investigation is an official proceeding (but a 9th Circuit case raises questions about that interpretation). But keep in mind that 1) Congress had already started its investigation (including having Comey testify about the Russia probe), and 2) prosecutors had already obtained grand jury subpoenas in the Flynn case. These official proceedings had already begun, particularly in the Flynn investigation, which had been the focus of Trump’s questions to Comey in January through April. Firing Comey would impede those official proceedings, and Trump himself more or less confessed to trying to influence and impede the Russia investigation by firing Comey: first on national TV to NBC’s Lester Holt, then in the Oval Office to Kislyak and Lavrov on an official transcript.

In this new post, I explain Vice President Pence’s potential criminal jeopardy for conspiring to obstruct justice, aiding the obstruction of justice, and “misprision of a felony” in concealing the obstruction of justice. ...

This should put him squarely in Robert Mueller's crosshairs. But the point may be moot, because...

5. Robert Mueller Appears to Be Protecting Mike Pence

I've always seen Robert Mueller as a political actor, a Republican political actor, the greatest evidence of which is his apparently deliberate mishandling, as head of the FBI, of the Bush era anthrax attack investigation, about which Marcy Wheeler has written a great deal.

As I read the evidence, the motive for sabotaging the investigation appears to be that it was veering in the wrong direction, beginning to point to domestic terrorists on the right. Evidence of domestic terrorism was not countenanced under President Bush, and Mueller was, among other things, a "loyal Bushie." The only other explanation for this obviously bungled investigation is incompetence, and I think Mueller is perfectly competent at what he considers his job. The question was, what did he consider the more important aspect of his job, finding the truth or supporting the Bush-Cheney agenda? (I may write more on the anthrax attack later, pulling all that evidence together, but it's too much to go into here.)

So I don't believe Robert Mueller's mission in the Trump-Russia investigation is to "find the truth." I think his mission is to "find enough truth to get rid of Donald Trump," and in that mission he's supported by the whole of the Democratic Party, the centrist media establishment, the national security establishment, and any elements of the Republican Party establishment not dependent on Trump supporters for power.

It's beyond obvious that anyone looking for crimes by Donald Trump will find them. He's been soaking in criminality his entire career. Mueller is very likely finding enough financial crime to blackmail Trump from office should he want to take that route.

As you read above, Mike Pence looks very much a part of that criminality by his behavior during the James Comey firing. So why isn't Pence being investigated by Robert Mueller along with the myriad others whose lives Mueller has pulled open?

From Allegra Kirkland at Talking Points Memo:

‘A Bit Of A Mystery’: Why Is Mueller Keeping His Distance From Pence?

...Pence was absent from many of the key incidents Mueller is reportedly investigating as part of his sprawling probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. But he was intimately involved with several, including the firing of former FBI director James Comey, and the subsequent efforts to settle on a rationale for that firing, which appear to be at the center of the Mueller investigation.

So it’s puzzling that Mueller appears to have made no attempt to talk to the administration’s second-highest-ranking official. Pence’s lawyer met with Mueller last year to offer Pence’s full cooperation.

“It’s a bit of a mystery to me that Pence’s name hasn’t really surfaced at all,” Michael Zeldin, a former federal prosecutor who worked closely with Mueller in the Justice Department’s criminal division, told TPM. “There are things that Pence seems to be relevant to. So I’m surprised.”

Pence’s lawyer, Richard Cullen, declined to comment to TPM on the record, while the special counsel’s office declined comment. Pence press secretary Alyssa Farah did not respond to TPM’s request for comment, but in December [2017] forcefully denied to CNN that Pence’s office was preparing for a meeting with Mueller.

As of mid-January [2018], NBC reported that the special counsel had made no overtures to Pence about an interview.

Just a few things you should know as you wait the outcome of the Mueller-Trump cage match. The Koch-funded radical right accomplished one of its most-cherished goals when Brett Kavanaugh replaced Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. It now has "five Scalias" on the bench, and radical rule from the judicial branch is assured for the next generation, if not far longer.

An emotionally stable, ideologically reliable, radical rightwing president is the next goal. Meet Mike Pence.

GP
  

Do Senate Democrats Want to Block Kavanaugh? Feinstein Withholds Damaging #MeToo Document from Fellow Democrats

Subtract Anthony Kennedy from the image above and add Brett Kavanaugh. Thanks to Senate Democrats, he's as good as confirmed. This is your Supreme Court for the next generation (source; click to enlarge)

by Gaius Publius

Updated below.

In years to come, when Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, smart as a whip and Koch brothers–ideologue to the core, spearheads destructive 5-4 decision after tragic 5-4 decision, blame Senate Democrats for what the nation will suffer under. Our constitution-as-practiced is about to change radically, starting as soon as October, thanks to Senate Democrats.

They should be playing the strongest card in their hand, which is a full, immediate and open release of all documents in their possession to the public. Instead, they're acting as enablers.

First, it's clear that Senate Democrats are all aligned to protect their pro-Kavanaugh, certain-to-confirm-him colleagues like Joe Manchin, Heidi Heitkamp and Joe Donnelly:

Liberal critics say Schumer is giving Kavanaugh a pass, and Republicans are trying to hitch vulnerable red-state Democrats to the New Yorker. But no matter: Schumer is expected to have broad support heading into 2019. Even a loss of Senate seats this fall is unlikely to significantly shake Schumer’s level of support.

“There is universal confidence in the Democratic Caucus for Sen. Schumer, whether they’re the progressives or the more conservative members of our caucus. There’s strong respect and admiration for how he handles diversity in our caucus,” said Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin.

"Universal confidence" in Schumer, even among self-styled progressives like Sheldon Whitehouse who "praised Schumer for 'holding a very wide ranging caucus together in a way that has made strong points in the hearing without causing problems for our 2018 candidates.'" Whitehouse added, "There is what I call Democrat disease, which is to waste our time fighting with each other and quarreling over purity contests."

So much for our heroes of the resistance.

Feinstein Withholds Damaging Kavanaugh Letter

Now, and even worse, Judiciary committee Democrat Dianne Feinstein appears to be protecting Kavanaugh by withholding a damaging document, not just from the public, but from the rest of the Democrats on the committee.

The Intercept's Ryan Grim with the story:

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee have privately requested to view a Brett Kavanaugh-related document in possession of the panel’s top Democrat, Dianne Feinstein, but the senior California senator has so far refused, according to multiple sources familiar with the situation.

The specific content of the document, which is a letter from a California constituent, is unclear, but Feinstein’s refusal to share the letter has created tension on the committee, particularly after Feinstein largely took a back seat to her more junior colleagues last week, as they took over Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings with protests around access to documents.

So Feinstein is protecting Brett Kavanaugh. Ultimately this goes back to Chuck Schumer, who as noted has taken a hands-off position on the Kavanaugh nomination. Contrast that with how Republicans handle their caucus on matters they care about.

Which leads to the question, just what do Senate Democrats care about, blocking Kavanaugh or appearing to block Kavanaugh?

Kavanaugh's #MeToo Moment?

What's in the letter? Here's a tantalizing glimpse:

Different sources provided different accounts of the contents of the letter, and some of the sources said they themselves had heard different versions, but the one consistent theme was that it describes an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in high school. Kept hidden, the letter is beginning to take on a life of its own. ...

The woman who is the subject of the letter is now being represented by Debra Katz, a whistleblower attorney who works with #MeToo survivors.

No one is commenting further, not the law firm, not the Democratic House member who passed the letter to Feinstein, and not Feinstein herself.

Are Democrats Enabling Kavanaugh's Confirmation?

I think we can draw two fair conclusions from this. First, if the letter weren't damaging, it would have been released by now. So, it's damaging, and my headline reflects that. All indicators point to a #MeToo revelation about Kavanaugh, at precisely the time when #MeToo moments are powerful.

Second, how can anyone believe that Senate Democrats want to block Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation? They're acting to enable it

The only real question is: Are they doing it on purpose, Schumer and Whitehouse and Feinstein and all the rest? Sure looks like it from the cheap seats.

Update 1: According to Buzzfeed, Feinstein has not released the letter because "[t]hat individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative authorities."

Feinstein says "That individual strongly requested confidentiality, declined to come forward or press the matter further." So, that's where we're at. Who knows with the FBI, as they're not saying anything yet.

— Joan McCarter (@joanmccarter) September 13, 2018

If so, that seems fair enough. I still question, however, the lack of full release of the 200,000 pages of Kavanaugh documents in Democratic hands, and am more than concerned that Democratic "resistance" to Kavanaugh (which seems more brave-but-futile than let's-go-get-him) is less than what is needed, and less than they could do.

I'm convinced there will be at least three Democratic votes for Kavanaugh on the Senate floor, which will put Kavanaugh on the Court and save the jobs of Republicans Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski — all because Schumer, with the full backing of his caucus, allowed this.

Update 2: And then there's this. Feinstein has had the accusatory letter since July and seems to have kept it secret, even from other Democrats on the committee. That is, she not only kept its contents secret; she kept its existence secret as well.

More (emphasis added):

Feinstein’s decision to handle the matter in her own office, without notifying other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, stirred concern among her Democratic colleagues. For several days [after other senators learned of the existence of the letter], Feinstein declined requests from other Democrats on the Judiciary Committee to share the woman’s letter and other relevant communications. A source familiar with the committee’s activities said that Feinstein’s staff initially conveyed to other Democratic members’ offices that the incident was too distant in the past to merit public discussion, and that Feinstein had “taken care of it.” On Wednesday, after media inquiries to the Democratic members multiplied, and concern among congressional colleagues increased, Feinstein agreed to brief the other Democrats on the committee, with no staff present. [...]

Sources familiar with Feinstein’s decision suggested that she was acting out of concern for the privacy of the accuser, knowing that the woman would be subject to fierce partisan attacks if she came forward. Feinstein also acted out of a sense that Democrats would be better off focussing on legal, rather than personal, issues in their questioning of Kavanaugh. Sources who worked for other members of the Judiciary Committee said that they respected the need to protect the woman’s privacy, but that they didn’t understand why Feinstein had resisted answering legitimate questions about the allegation. “We couldn’t understand what their rationale is for not briefing members on this. This is all very weird,” one of the congressional sources said. Another added, “She’s had the letter since late July. And we all just found out about it.”

So, Dianne Feinstein had this letter since July and sat on it, even to the extent that she didn't alert other committee senators of its existence, acting "out of a sense that Democrats would be better off focussing on legal, rather than personal, issues".

And she made this decision alone, in the same way that she decided by herself to "take care of" the matter by herself.

I think we're back to a question of motive. Why she did she taking it on herself to manipulate other senators in her caucus by unilaterally controlling the ground on which the Kavanaugh battle was fought on?

Was she protecting Kavanaugh, or in some weird way, the Party? Or both?

GP
 

What to Expect from a Kavanaugh Court: Government-Funded "Religious" Education

Image: plherrera via Salon

by Gaius Publius

“There are not enough philanthropic dollars in America to fund what is currently the need in education…Our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God’s kingdom.”

—Education Secretary Betsy DeVos

This begins a short series detailing the radical changes to the way our government operates — changes to its constitution if you will — that will be force on the nation by an unelected Supreme Court containing Brett Kavanaugh as the final piece of a 5-4 radical majority.

The list of these changes is long and frightening. They include:

• Reversal of Roe v. Wade, freeing states to outlaw abortion
• Presidential freedom from prosecution, further establishing the "imperial presidency" so feared by the founders
• Destruction of remaining Fourth Amendment protections, freeing government even more in matters of surveillance, search and seizure, while at the same time...
• Expanding First Amendment protection to corporations
• Assault on efforts to mitigate climate change
• Assault on government regulation of all kinds, including...
• Constitutional assault on the regulatory state itself, on the right of the Executive Branch to regulate commerce at all
• Assault on freedom from discrimination based on race, gender and sexual preference, but...
• Expanded First Amendment protection for discrimination based on "religious" reasons
• Even greater assault on labor unions, worker protection and consumer protection
• Reintroduction of Jim Crow-style voting restrictions
• Court-confirmed death of net neutrality (it violates the First Amendment rights of ISPs)

And finally:

• Conversion of the country, to the greatest extent Court rulings make possible, into Charles Koch's ideal libertarian paradise

That's a hefty, scary list, especially the last, which will not be difficult at all to document. For a hint at what the "Koch network" (author Nancy MacLean's phrase) has planned for America, consider just some of the constitutional amendments they want to pass at the Constitutional Convention they're pushing so hard to create.

Some items on the list above may look small and "manageable," but others are too huge even to contemplate. Striking down Roe v. Wade will turn all states but the most liberal into virtual back alley abortion dens, a horrifying, deadly thought. I've dealt with the assault on the regulatory state in a preliminary way and will have more on it later. But needless to say, striking down the general right of the Executive Branch to regulate commerce at all will reverse the New Deal almost in its entirety.

Consider the nation which those changes will create; then consider the nation's response, once the voters, all of them, realize how much has been lost, been given away, never to be gotten back. 

So let's look briefly, one at a time, at these aspects of a "Kavanaugh Court" — a 5-4 radical right-wing-majority Court — starting with religion and religious education, which are intertwined.

The Kavanaugh Court on Religious Education

When Kavanaugh is confirmed and seated, brace yourselves. Get ready for a series of 5-4 rulings that enshrine giving government money to religious schools, especially those espousing virulent forms of what is inaccurately called "fundamentalism." Betsy DeVos' stiffled dream, in other words, will be fulfilled from the bench.

For a taste of how that would work, consider this piece from the New York Times:

Kavanaugh Could Unlock Funding for Religious Education, School Voucher Advocates Say

Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, in a speech last year, gave a strong hint at his views on taxpayer support for religious schools when he praised his “first judicial hero,” Justice William Rehnquist, for determining that the strict wall between church and state “was wrong as a matter of law and history.”

Mr. Rehnquist’s legacy on religious issues was most profound in “ensuring that religious schools and religious institutions could participate as equals in society and in state benefits programs,” Judge Kavanaugh, President Trump’s nominee to succeed Justice Anthony M. Kennedy on the Supreme Court, declared at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative research organization.

Words like that from a Supreme Court nominee are breathing new life into the debate over public funding for sectarian education. Educators see him as crucial to answering a question left by Justice Kennedy after the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional for the state of Missouri to exclude a church-based preschool from competing for public funding to upgrade its playground: Can a church-school playground pave the way for taxpayer funding to flow to private and parochial schools for almost any purpose?

The answer to the last question is yes.

The purpose of that flow of funds would not be to ensure that a broad spectrum of religious ideas get funded — imagine the response from conservatives, for example, if a large group of Muslim madrassas were funded by the U.S. government or one of the states. That response would be like the response from whites if a large group of blacks in, say, Alabama exercised their Scalia-minted Second Amendment rights and took open-carry to the streets.

The purpose of that new funding would be to "save the nation" by creating an army of politically active fundamentalist true believers. 

"Confront the culture to advance God's Kingdom"

Voucher programs like the ones conservatives advocate exist to give government money to schools at the intersection of "libertarian" ideology and fundamentalist religious beliefs — schools like those that Dept. of Education secretary Betsy DeVos would like use tax dollars to finance.

The Times again:

Scott Sargrad, the managing director of primary and secondary education policy at the liberal Center for American Progress, wrote that while Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s school voucher agenda has not gained traction, “if confirmed, Kavanaugh may be the solution to her problems.”

“It is not a stretch to imagine a series of 5-to-4 decisions that slowly decimate public education in favor of voucher schemes,” Mr. Sargrad wrote.

Ms. DeVos has been among the most vocal critics of the legal prohibitions on parochial school vouchers. In a speech to leaders of religious schools this year, she called the prohibitions — born out of anti-Catholicism — “the last acceptable prejudice” that “should be assigned to the ash heap of history.”

Ms. DeVos has stalled in her efforts to create a $1 billion school voucher program, but after the Trinity decision, she has moved to loosen regulations that exclude religious colleges from participating in federal aid programs.

Here's Ms. DeVos belief about the mission of education: “There are not enough philanthropic dollars in America to fund what is currently the need in education…Our desire is to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance God’s kingdom.”

DeVos wants to devote government dollars to that mission. And that's the mission a Kavanaugh Court will enshrine into law. Just one of many reasons confirming Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court would be a generational disaster for a nation already in crisis.

GP
 

"It is American families who pay the real price of [the House GOP radicals'] extreme policies" (CAP Action War Room)

Mike Keefe (click to enlarge)

"The party's leadership gave in to a minority of its members who are devoted to pushing devastating cuts to working- and middle-class families in pursuit of rigid and impractical ideological principles. The result has been a government in a state of perpetual dysfunction. And while House Republicans may be paying the price with negative news coverage, it is American families who pay the real price of their extreme policies."

-- the CAP Action War Room, in the
ThinkProgress post "Banana Republicans"

by Ken

Let me just say a couple of things about the current House speakership follies before more or less turning the floor over to the CAP Action War Room.

(1) A singularly insightful take today on Wait Wait ...  Don't Tell Me!: that the House speakership has now become one of those jobs that no American wants to do, and therefore will presumably have to be filled by an undocumented immigrant.

(2) Then, there's the comical take of the cards in the House "Freedom" Caucusites: that the problem with the previous House GOP leadership, and what they plan to make sure doesn't happen with its successor, is that it isn't democratic. This was said even as the "Freedom" militia was requiring candidates for the speakership to fill out a lengthy questionaire in which they were asked to pledge support for a laundry list of the miltia's most radical positions, all aimed at bringing the country closer to the shithole lodged in their heads. In other words, under this cabal, no House speaker could be elected without pledging support for the agenda of 40 rampaging mental defectives.

Ah, it's a lovely thing, "democracy" as imagined by a cabal of crackpots, thugs, and economic predators.

IN FAIRNESS TO THE CRACKPOTS, THUGS,
AND ECONOMIC PREDATORS: A QUESTION

If we on the Left were ever able to bring to bear the political diligence -- and muscle -- to elect 40 House members willing to go the mat for the basics of our political agenda, would we not cheer them on if they played this kind of we're-not-kidding hardball with the Democratic Party leadership? (Would the other side not be denouncing us as "extremists" and "radicals"?)

Just asking.

"THE LATEST HOUSE GOP MELTDOWN HAS BEEN A
LONG TIME COMING, AND IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT THEM"

This is the proposition advanced in the post I alluded to earlier from the CAP Action War Room, called "Banana Republicans." In the introductory portion, the post notes:

The media frenzy surrounding these events has focused on intrigue like it is an episode of House of Cards." Was there something behind why McCarthy took himself out of the running? Will Paul Ryan step up and run for speaker despite repeatedly pledging not to?

"But," the post continues (with lots of links onsite),

here’s what is much more important: this self-inflicted leadership breakdown is just one more chapter in a story of House Republican recklessness – and their own caucus hasn’t been the only victim. House GOP dysfunction has resulted in a string of harmful policies and American families have paid the price.

The post proceeds to offer "just a few examples":

• The GOP orchestrated the reckless government shutdown in 2013 which had a devastating impact on our economy. Republican leaders bowed to the will of their extreme right wing to shut down the government over the Affordable Care Act. The shutdown lost Americans at least 120,000 jobs, prevented sick Americans from enrolling in clinical trials, forced Head Start programs for children to shut down, stalled veterans’ disability claims, delayed $4 billion in tax returns for Americans, and severely hurt small businesses. Overall, S&P estimates that the Republicans cost the United States economy a whopping $24 billion with their shutdown.

• The GOP has repeatedly used the debt ceiling to manufacture crises. In order to maintain the full faith and credit of the United States and avoid global economic collapse, Congress needs to raise the debt ceiling from time to time. Yet, GOP leaders have repeatedly joined with their unyielding Tea Party caucus to manipulate these once run-of-the-mill debt ceiling increases for their own gain. In 2011, the GOP threatened to force the United States into a default – to “crash the global economy,” as Time put it – which was only averted after both sides agreed to $1.2 trillion in economically damaging sequestration cuts. This behavior led to a U.S. credit rating downgrade. In 2013, the GOP used this brinksmanship again to attempt to make cuts to programs like Social Security, Medicare, and the SNAP food program, again putting the credit-worthiness of the United States in jeopardy.

• The GOP also used a manufactured crisis to force sequestration cuts that are still hurting the economy today. The Republican-induced sequester disproportionately hurt low-income and middle class families. It led to significant cuts to funding for education, small business, and health research. Sequestration overall will cause approximately 1.8 million people to lose their jobs.

"CLEARLY, THE GOP'S INABILITY TO CONTROL THEIR
OWN PARTY HAS ALREADY CAUSED A LOT OF DAMAGE"

That's damage, the post continues, "to our economy and the well-being of American taxpayers. "

And yet, as their conference devolves again into chaos, they have no inclination to change their backwards policies or irresponsible behavior. They have no plans to avert the upcoming shutdown or increase the debt ceiling, even though the United States could default on its obligations if Congress doesn’t act by November 5th. House Republicans are not only distracted by their internal pandemonium, going into the upcoming budget negotiations they remain committed to the backwards, policy ideas and reckless political strategy that have caused so many problems for themselves, but more importantly for the American people.

BOTTOM LINE: The GOP’s current state of disarray has been a long time coming. The party’s leadership gave in to a minority of its members who are devoted to pushing devastating cuts to working- and middle-class families in pursuit of rigid and impractical ideological principles. The result has been a government in a state of perpetual dysfunction. And while House Republicans may be paying the price with negative news coverage, it is American families who pay the real price of their extreme policies.

Yes, I think that about sums it up.

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Can the ideological perversions of two unapologetic far-right-wing activists on the District Circuit Court of Appeals lead to defunding Obamacare?

Plus a promise of thoughts-to-come about James Garner

Yes, justice is supposed to be blind, in the sense of being impervious to outside influences. Unfortunately, the two right-wing crusaders on the District Circuit Court of Appeals who channeled their hostility toward the ACA aren't blind, they're dumb and dishonest.

by Ken

You've no doubt already heard that, as the washingtonpost.com headline put it this afternoon, "Federal appeals courts issue contradictory rulings on health-law subsidies." Which was at least an improvement over the earlier headline, before the announcement of the second ruling: "Federal appeals court panel deals major blow to health law," which spawned pithy broadsides like this blurb on a washingtonpost.com post: "The decision to strike down tax subsidies in federal-exchange states deals a major blow to the Affordable Care Act."

Here's how the Post's Sandhya Somashekhar and Amy Goldstein began their afternoon report on the conflicting rulings, issued about two hours and 100 miles apart:

Two federal appellate courts handed down contradictory rulings Tuesday on the legality of a central part of the Affordable Care Act that provides insurance subsidies to millions of Americans in three dozen states.

The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the subsidies available under the 2010 health-care law may be provided only to residents of states that set up their own health insurance marketplaces. Less than two hours later, the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the subsidies, ruling in a separate case that the law’s language was ambiguous, giving the Obama administration the authority to allow the subsidies nationwide.

The divergent rulings increase the likelihood that the question will be decided by the Supreme Court. If the subsidies ultimately are struck down for states that did not set up their own marketplaces, it would be a crippling blow to the federal program, dramatically reducing the ability of low- and middle-income Americans to pay for health insurance, which is now mandatory for most people. . . .

Well, the Obama health-care law may in fact be in jeopardy, considering the species of quasi-judicial life forms a case may encounter as it moves its way up the federal court system to the very pinnacle, which is where, finally, disagreements between the U.S. circuit courts of appeals are resolved. We already know that there are five justices sitting on the Supreme Court who pay only nominal attention to the law and the Constitution, as they happen to align with those justices' deeply held biases and ideological perversions.

But for the record, we're not talking about two circuit court panels that looked deeply into the legal particulars of the case and in all honesty came up with divergent conclusions.

Now I'm prepared to believe that the Fourth Circuit panel did more or less what I just described: look deeply into the legal particulars of its case and come up with its best understanding of the law. But that sure as shootin' isn't what happened with the panel of the District Circuit.

There the two Republican judges, Raymond Randolph (appointed by Bush the Father) and Thomas Griffith (appointed by Bush the Son), who formed the 2-1 majority by which Obamacare would be defunded in states where the health-care marketplaces are federal rather than state entities, simply hung their rigid far-right-wing dogma on what ThinkProgress's Ian Milhiser described in his earlier post today as "a proofreading error" in the ACA, to produce a result that makes sense only when we know that Judge Randolph has already been agitating against the law and during oral arguments actively advocated for the "fuck Obamacare" side.

Here's Ian M on the wacko scumbag who wrote today's jackass, almost totally anti-factual District Circuit ruling:

Judge Randolph is a staunchly conservative judge who spent much of the oral argument in this case acting as an advocate for the anti-Obamacare side. Randolph complained, just a few weeks before President Obama would announce that the Affordable Care Act had overshot its enrollment goal, that the launch of the Affordable Care Act was “an unmitigated disaster” and that its costs “have gone sky-high.” At one point, Randolph also cut off Judge Harry Edwards, the sole Democratic appointee on the panel, to cite an editorial published by the conservative Investor’s Business Daily to prove the argument that Obamacare should be defunded.

The Investor’s Business Daily is not known as a particularly reliable source on health policy. In 2009, for example, it published an editorial arguing that Stephen Hawking, the British physicist who is an Englishman from the United Kingdom, “wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.”

Ian isn't much kinder to Judge Griffith, who "has a reputation has a more moderate judge."

In 2012, Griffith’s colleague, Judge Janice Rogers Brown, published a concurring opinion suggesting that all labor, business or Wall Street regulation is constitutionally suspect. “America’s cowboy capitalism,” Brown claimed, “was long ago disarmed by a democratic process increasingly dominated by powerful groups with economic interests antithetical to competitors and consumers. And the courts, from which the victims of burdensome regulation sought protection, have been negotiating the terms of surrender since the 1930s.” Later in her opinion, Brown suggested that the Court went off the rails when it “decided economic liberty was not a fundamental constitutional right.” In the early Twentieth Century, conservative justices relied on ideas of “economic liberty” that were discarded in the 1930s in order to strike down laws protecting workers’ right to organize, laws ensuring a minimum wage and laws prohibiting employers from overworking their employees.

Griffith did not join Brown’s opinion, but his explanation for why he did not do so is instructive — “[a]lthough by no means unsympathetic to [Brown's] criticism nor critical of [her] choice to express [her] perspective, I am reluctant to set forth my own views on the wisdom of such a broad area of the Supreme Court’s settled jurisprudence that was not challenged by the petitioner.” So Griffith is “sympathetic” to Brown’s argument that much of the Twentieth Century is unconstitutional, but he did not want to join her opinion because the arguments she made were not raised by the parties in that case. Halbig, by contrast, presented Griffith with a much more direct attack on supposedly “burdensome regulation” brought by the forces of “cowboy capitalism.”

SO WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

What is this "proofreading error," as Ian M describes it? Why don't we let him explain?

The two Republicans’ decision rests on a glorified typo in the Affordable Care Act itself. Obamacare gives states a choice. They can either run their own health insurance exchange where their residents may buy health insurance, and receive subsidies to help them pay for that insurance if they qualify, or they can allow the federal government to run that exchange for them. Yet the plaintiffs’ in this case uncovered a drafting error in the statute where it appears to limit the subsidies to individuals who obtain insurance through “an Exchange established by the State.” Randolph and Griffith’s opinion concludes that this drafting error is the only thing that matters. In their words, “a federal Exchange is not an ‘Exchange established by the State,’” and that’s it. The upshot of this opinion is that 6.5 million Americans will lose their ability to afford health insurance, according to one estimate.

Ian acknowledges, "It is indeed true that a single phrase of the Affordable Care Act, if read in isolation, suggests that Congress intended only state-run exchanges -- as opposed to federal exchanges -- to offer subsidies, but this provision is contradicted by numerous other provisions of the law." And he proceeds to set some of them out. The fact is, the Scumbag Judges appear to have pounced on the only mention in the entire law where it's possible to read in such a distinction between state exchanges and the backup federal ones.

And the bald assertion that "a federal Exchange is not an 'Exchange established by the State,' " is on the simple factual level 100 percent incorrect. As Ian points out, Congress always gets to define its own terms in a piece of legislation, and the Twin Scumbags hadn't been so ignorant, lazy, and/or dishonest, they could have availed themselves of the opportunity to inform themselves of what the ACA actually says on the subject. Another provision, Ian points out, indicateds that "any 'exchange' shall be an 'entity that is established by a State'"— language which indicates that federally run exchanges will be deemed to be “established by a state.”

There's a good deal else in the law that makes nonsense of the judicial excrement that flowed from Judge Raymond's stinkybutt into his ruling, starting with the ACA section title "Affordable Coverage Choices for All Americans." "If Randolph and Griffith are correct," says Ian, "Congress would have named that subtitle 'Affordable Coverage Choices for All Americans Except For Those Americans Who Live In States With Federally-Run Exchanges.' " Put it all together, and it's hard to see how any reasonable person could have any question about the intent of Congress here.

But Judge Stinkybutt isn't any reasonable person. It seems clear that he didn't give a good goddamn what the law says, or what the law is. He was after all, actively engaged as a crusading activist, for which the courts above him should not only strike him and his pathetic weasel accomplice Judge Griffith down but recommend that they do the right thing and, in view of their demonstrated inability to serve honestly as judges, step down from the court.

By contrast, Ian writes in his later post taking the ruling delivered two hours later into account:

Unlike the DC Circuit’s opinion, the Fourth Circuit is a model of judicial restraint and humility. Although all three judges on the Fourth Circuit panel were nominated by Democratic presidents (Judge Roger Gregory, who authored the opinion, has the unusual distinction of being nominated by both President Clinton and the second President Bush), the majority opinion does not claim, as the DC Circuit did, that this case is a slam-dunk for their political party’s preferred outcome. Indeed, it claims that different provisions of the law seem to conflict with one another, and that the meaning of the statute is ambiguous. Though Judge Gregory’s opinion concludes that the Obama Administration “make[s] the better of the two cases” regarding how the law should be read, he also writes that “we are not convinced that either of the purported statutory conflicts render Congress’s intent clear.”

Under the longstanding Chevron Doctrine, however, it is not the job of judges who are confronted with an ambiguous statute to read their preferred outcome into the law. Rather, the Supreme Court has ordered federal judges to defer to an agency’s reading of a law — in this case, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — so long as “the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.” “We ‘will not usurp an agency’s interpretive authority by supplanting its construction with our own,” Gregory writes, “so long as the interpretation is not ‘arbitrary, capricious, or manifestly contrary to the statute.’”

"In the end," says Ian, "the battle between the Fourth Circuit and the DC Circuit is a battle over who gets to make law."

Normally, that power rests with Congress, but when a law is ambiguous, the Supreme Court has long recognized that courts should defer to the Executive Branch. This rule achieves two ends. It ensures that agencies with expertise on a particular area of law get to interpret that law, rather than leaving matters to inexpert judges. And it also ensures that the people who make important policy decisions are ultimately accountable to the American people.

If the electorate does not approve of the Obama Administration’s reading of this law, then the Fourth Circuit’s opinion permits them to vote for a different president who will read the law in a different way. The DC Circuit, however, would steal this decision away from the American people, and place it in the hands of a few unelected officials in black robes.

ABOUT JAMES GARNER

I should have gotten myself into gear faster, I know, since the death of James Garner on Saturday. But it has been an even more than usually hectic time for me, and I need a beat or two to collect some thoughts about the man behind one of the greatest characters, if not the greatest, in screen history. I'm shooting for tomorrow.

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Out of the mouth of a merely far-right-winger comes a cry of pain at the peril from far-far-far-right-wingers in West Virginia

"Career-long tool of the mining industry" Shelley Moore Capito

by Ken

As I've mentioned, I sometimes get my best insight into the minds, such as they are, of the far-far-far-right-wingers from the merely far-right-wingers. (Wasn't it Freud who said, "It takes one to know one"?) By now it's no surprise to hear the MFRWs tsk-tsk-ing the FFFRWs. Ever since the screaming insanity of the FFFRWs began reaching deafening proportions during the later years of the reign of "Chimpy the Prez" Bush, the sound finally began to reach the nervous systems of the MFRWs.

Among the more prominent MFRWs is the Washington Post's certified-conservative columnist Kathleen Parker. (Remember, the Post actually tells us who its left- and right-wing columnists are.) And today Miss Kathleen is here to tell us, or rather them, that the FFFRWs are at it again ("There they go again"; lotsa links onsite):

After ending 2013 with tails tucked, thanks to a series of errors, blunders, glitches and misstatements of true-ish-ness, Democrats were poised to lose control of the Senate. Instead, tea party Republicans seem bent on helping Democrats win.

The formula is familiar by now: Republicans who aren't conservative enough, meaning they might deign to work with Democrats, are targeted for primary challenges by folks who often couldn't win a staring contest, much less a statewide election.

(I suppose what Miss K has to say about the blundering and glitchy Dems is true enough. Left out, however, is that the Rs are a party that has committed itself to a formula whereby no sworn member may ever tell the truth about anything, and decency is pretty sternly frowned on too.)

Our guide through the thicket of the FFFRWs harks back to the 2012 senatorial fiasco in Delaware, which unquestionablyl caused the R's a Senate seat, but lingers note the demonstrated electability of hopeless crackpots Ted Cruz and Mike Lee in Texas and Utah. (Has anyone worked up a theory that the FFFRW yearning for simplicity-to-the-point-0f-imbecility may be a blessing for candidates who can fit their entire names in no more than seven letters?)

Which brings Miss K back to 2014, "a rare -- undeserved, some would say -- opportunity for Republicans," with 21 D and 14 R seats up for grabs in the Senate, and several of those D seats held by retirees in what looks to be awfully congenial R territory: Montana, South Dakota, and West Virginia. "What smart Republicans are aiming for," she says, "are candidates who can win both a primary and a general election, actual human beings who can appeal to a wide swath of the electorate, not just the purity-proof hard-liners on the right" -- among them WV seven-term Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (whom Howie described as "a career-long tool of the mining industry when he wrote about this race in late November, "Shelley Capito Isn't The Only Conservative Being Targeted by Lunactic Fringe Teabaggers")

"But," she says, "recruiting and training good candidates may not be enough for a Republican Party still dogged by the purity plank."

Tea party organizers have vowed to take on more-mainstream candidates, including seven of the 12 Republican incumbents. If a Republican failed to support Cruz's procedural motion to defund Obamacare (beware, John Cornyn), it's outsville.

Capito could be Exhibit A when it comes to a winning candidate undermined by her own party. She's from a state where President Obama isn't very popular, and she has won reelection handily to serve a total of seven terms. She is a strong advocate for the coal industry and should have no trouble securing her party's nomination. She is also favored to win the general election against Secretary of State Natalie Tennant.

Except. Guess who doesn't like Capito?

The conservative Club for Growth and the Republican Liberty Caucus (RLC), which calls itself the "conscience of the Republican Party." Last August, a "Too Liberal for West Virginia" campaign was launched against Capito because, among other things, she is pro-choice and voted to raise the debt ceiling. In her stead, the RLC is supporting Republican Pat McGeehan, who served in the House of Delegates from 2008 to 2010 but has lost two state Senate elections.

Despite having tailwinds at their back, Republicans stand to lose to proud purists while Democrats, feet up, admire the shine on their shoes. To put it kindly, pride in losing does little to contradict Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's observation that the GOP needs to "stop being the stupid party."

Wonder what the fat lady will sing?

We always have to remember that the split between the FFFRWs and MFRWs is almost entirely strategic rather than ideological. All the same, out of the mouths of MFRWs . . . .

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Did Justice Thomas shed some light on why he may have been such an unappealing hire?

In court or out, Justice Thomas enjoys a good laugh: It's possible that, as the justice has always insisted, disdain for beneficiaries of affirmative action made him such a difficult hire coming out of Yale Law School. Or it's possible that there were other factors.

by Ken

This is why it's so valuable to have media surrogates who patrol their beats.

I expect that, like me, you heard the story of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas breaking his famous open-court silence the other day, allowing his voice to be heard, albeit briefly, for the first time since 2006. And I'll bet that in the accounts you heard or read, there was just some puzzling reference to his making a joke and then reverting to silence.

Nothing to be gleaned from that, right?

Well, not if you're Jeffrey Toobin. The Supreme Court is emphatically part of the New Yorker legal-affairs correspondent's beat. And although, as he tells us in the newyorker.com blogpost "Clarence Thomas Speaks, Finally," he wasn't in court that day, he didn't let the matter rest there.

First Jeffrey quotes the account by the NYT's Adam Liptak:

Justice Antonin Scalia noted that [the lawyer in question] had graduated from Yale Law School, which is, by some measures, the best in the nation. It is also Justice Thomas’s alma mater.

Justice Thomas leaned into his microphone, and in the midst of a great deal of cross talk among the justices, cracked a joke. Or so it seemed to people in the courtroom.

Then Jeffrey goes to the transcript, which he says is "ambiguous." However, "the gist . . . appears to be that graduation from Yale is a sign of incompetence." And he tells us, "If that's what Thomas said -- and I bet it was -- the wisecrack comes with a long history."

For many years, Thomas viewed Yale with undisguised hostility. The gist of his complaint was that he was admitted under an affirmative-action program -- and, as a result, suffered from a stigma that tainted his judicial career. "I couldn't get a job out of Yale Law School," he told an interviewer in 1998, "That's how much good it did me. I think I'll send the degree back." As I noted in "The Nine," Thomas had a "Yale Sucks" bumper sticker on the mantle in his chambers for a time.

Thomas and Yale repaired their relationship in recent years. In "The Oath," I reported that Thomas returned to Yale for the first time in decades in December, 2011, where he had congenial meetings with students and faculty. In fact, on the night of June 25, 2012, a few hours after the Court's decision on Obamacare was announced, Thomas met in Washington with a group of Yale Law School alumni. The rift appeared to be over.

But, as this latest remark showed, Thomas's anger at Yale is not gone. Thomas's supporters always protest when the Justice is described as angry and bitter and still resentful of his treatment during his confirmation hearings, almost twenty-two years ago. But Thomas's true feelings about his villains in that struggle -- including Yale, Democrats, and the news media -- always come out, as they did on Monday.

You have to wonder whether disdain for affirmative action has really been the bane of Justice Thomas's career, or whether it has played any significant role at all. Combine good old-fashioned racism, which of course the justice pooh-poohs, with a spectacularly revolting personality and you've got a package that could easily intimidate the strongest-stomached hiring apparatchik in the Big Law establishment.

I'm not sure what's supposed to be funny about the little witticism that apparently induced Justice Thomas to break his historic silence, about graduation from Yale being a sign of incompetence. It would be no wittier, but also no less witty, to suggest that graduation from Yale doesn't rule out incompetence, and I think we can all think, off the top of our heads, of a couple of contemporary cases in point drawn from the very highest ranks of our government.

Is it really necessary to point out how many vastly more capable and deserving lawyers have had vastly less rewarding careers than the vastly overfortunate Justice T?

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Can people on the Right pound a lick of sense into the rockbrains of the rampaging Loony Right?

At the link, hear NJ Gov. Chris Christie tear into the other-than-"good" people in Congress who last night turned their backs on the victims of Superstorm Sandy.

They have the still North in their hearts,
the hill winds in their veins,
and the GRANITE of New Hampshire
in their muscles and their brains,
and the GRANITE of New Hampshire
in their muscles and their brains.

-- the grand climax of a mercifully disused old college song

by Ken

We actually used to that old college song in olden days, and some of us relished the silliness of all but boasting of that granite in our brains, something you would normally wait for your enemies to accuse you of. (By the way, my caps on the word "granite" aren't editorial. They're meant to convey the spitting emphasis on the word made by the musical setting.)

Well, the latter-day Rampaging Right is laying incontestable claim -- with its cozy mélange of plumb ignorance, unbridled indecency, and depraved savagery -- to the mantle of Supremest Rockbrains of the Universe. And of course these toxic life forms couldn't be more pleased with themselves. Do you suppose there's any chance that people from their own side of the political spectrum might be able to make contact?

LOS ANGELES TIMES

Enraged Chris Christie blasts Boehner, House GOP over Sandy aid
By Paul West
January 2, 2013, 1:47 p.m.

WASHINGTON -- Enraged over Congress' failure to approve disaster relief for victims of Superstorm Sandy, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey unloaded Wednesday on House Speaker John A. Boehner and Republican lawmakers in Washington for putting "palace intrigue" ahead of their official responsibilities.

Washington politicians "will say whatever they have to say to get through the day," Christie said, adding that, as a governor, he had "actual responsibilities" -- "unlike people in Congress."

Christie, a potential 2016 GOP presidential contender, reserved his most blistering words for the Republican House speaker.  He described Boehner, variously, as selfish, duplicitous and gutless for reversing course at the last minute on Tuesday night and refusing to allow a vote on a $60-billion aid package before the current Congress adjourned.

Christie said that as a result of "the speaker's irresponsible action," there will be further delay in federal disaster aid to New Jersey, New York, Connecticut and other areas hit by the October storm. He pointed out that it had been 66 days since the storm hit and that areas struck by other hurricanes in recent years had received relief packages in far less time. . . .

The other Republican conspicuously on the warpath today about the GOP Sandy Bungle, Long Island Rep. Peter King, I'm afraid doesn't really count here. You might think he has closer ties to the House GOP crazies than does Governor Christie, since for some years now he has cast his political lot with them, but unfortunately for Poopy Petey, the House GOP loonies will recognize only too well that he hasn't changed his adoptive policy of "Screw the bustards!," applicable to everyone with legitimate claims on the polity who happens to be outside the Kernel of Craziness. No, it's just that now the Poopster finds his people as prime specimens of the bustards that modern-day conservatism exists to screw. When you've made yourself a leading voice for bustard-screwing, you're in awkward territory when you find yourself the bustard-in-need. You can too easily be dismissed as a mere "special interest."


THEN THERE'S THE MATTER OF THE SAVAGES WHO
JUMPED WILDLY ON THE FALLEN HILLARY CLINTON

Here's where WaPo right-wing columnist Kathleen Parker once again shows her value. She has hard-to-impeach conservative credentials and yet has repeated declined to leap off the cliff of sanity with her fellow ideologists.

The character assassination of Hillary Clinton

By Kathleen Parker, Published: January 1

The new year began not with a cannonball off the "fiscal cliff" but with an outbreak of conspiratorial cynicism.

This time it's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whose fall and concussion, followed by a blood clot between her brain and skull, has prompted an embarrassment of theories. The gist: That woman will do anything to avoid testifying about Benghazi.

Several commentators on the right opined via Twitter and TV, those most deadly hosts for the parasites of rumor and innuendo, that Clinton was faking her concussion to duck out on her appearance before congressional committees investigating the attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Libya that killed Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

Naturally Kathleen wants it understood: "The sentiment that Clinton might not wish to testify on the matter is not without reason." But, she says,

the attacks on Clinton during her illness, essentially attacks on her character, have been cruel and unfair. What must the world think of us?

Clinton, who fainted as a result of dehydration after a bout of flu, hit her head and suffered a concussion, after which a blood clot was discovered. She had to be hospitalized while blood-thinning medications were administered and monitored.
Although her critics backed off once the clot was reported, initial responses ranged from "She's faking" to demands for proof of her concussion.

One writer demanded her medical records. John Bolton, former ambassador to the United Nations, called Clinton's affliction a "diplomatic illness" to avoid testifying about Benghazi. Later he suggested that details were skimpy in an effort to protect her potential 2016 presidential run.

"I think it's the too-cute-by-half approach that's reflected in the absence of transparency that's going to end up damaging her and damaging her credibility," he said on Fox News.

Again, Clinton may well prefer to miss her day before the firing squad, but it is unlikely that doctors or a hospital would assist a secretary of state -- or anyone -- in concocting a fake affliction.

And good on Kathleen, she doesn't stop there. She has the temerity to insist on a modicum of logic. Considering the people she's dealing with, this can be viewed as either astonishingly bold or merely pointless. Still, she makes the pont.

[Y]ou can't have it every which way. Immediately after the Benghazi attacks, Clinton took full responsibility for the events and was accused by Republicans of falling on her sword to protect President Obama. Now that she's temporarily indisposed and unable to elaborate on her admitted responsibility, those same critics insist she's trying to avoid taking personal responsibility.

Eventually our Kathleen retreats into a safe bunker of even-handedness, which fudges the issue of where the breakdown in sanity and civility has really occurred. But she couches the argument reasonably.

The viciousness of the pundit class is disheartening and disgusting. And these days everyone's a pundit. Got an opinion? Why, step right up to the microphone. If you're "good TV," you too can be a "contributor."

Out in the hinterlands, where Americans consume "news" that suits their political proclivities, opinions are formed on the basis of what-he-said. Reputations and lives are ruined on the tines of pitchforks glimmering in the light of torch-bearing mobs. And those are just the "news" shows.

One doesn't have to be a fan of Hillary Clinton, though a Bloomberg poll says that two-thirds of Americans are, to feel tainted by the relish with which she and many others have been attacked -- unfairly and disproportionately. Susan Rice, who was Obama's favorite to replace Clinton as secretary of state, comes to mind.

But this isn't a problem only for women or Democrats. The rush to character assassination seems to be our only bipartisan imperative and is a blight on our political system. In this brooding age of superstition and portent, every misspoken word is a lie, every human error a hanging offense.

This is to suggest not that we be naive or credulous but that we seek some balance in our approach to discovery. At the moment, we seem to be ricocheting between hysteria and delusion.

Eventually, Clinton will have to step forward and take her medicine. She is slated to appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in mid-January, though the date hasn't been set. The nation clearly needs answers on what happened in Benghazi, and no doubt Clinton will provide them.

This is not blind faith in a favored politician but respect for a process that relies on accepted rules of order. We owe our representative to the world -- which is to say, ourselves -- at least this much.

My guess is that the response on the Loony Right to the heresies of Governor Chris and Columnist Kathleen will be mostly scorn and derision. Given them credit for standing up and being counted, though.

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Is there a more polished way to message the New Democratic Creed: "Vote for me 'cause, um, heh-heh-heh"?

In their recall-election debate last night, Wisconsin Governorissimo Scott Walker says to his Democratic challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett: "I worship at the toes of billionaires and am a sniveling crook besides, and did I mention my lovely full head of naturally dark hair? Is it any wonder that voters want me, you union-coddling old coot?"

by Ken

Just as I was preparing to fulminate a little about the art and science of political "messaging," I made the mistake of glancing at the POLITICS section of this morning's washingtonpost.com e-rundown (you can click on it to enlarge, if you're sufficiently strong of stomach):


Apart from the prevailing disgustingness -- the exceptions being Vice President Biden, talking about the tragedy of the loss of his first family, and the all-around-unspeakable John Edwards -- what's interesting is that these are tales of Republican loathsomeness. On some level the electorate does register the slime factor, but somehow when it comes to GOP perfidy, the way it generally registers is in general revulsion at the political system, of the "They all suck" variety. Traditional Republican consultants don't mind this, because depressing the vote has the effect of magnifying the electoral oomph of their core voters: the hard-core deranged.

One of the few recent Borowitz Report dispatches that I didn't pass along here was Thursday's witty-as-usual "U.S. Sends Emergency Shipment of Negative Ads to Egypt Aid to Fledgling Democracy," which began:

In what it is calling a mission to support a fledgling democracy in the Middle East, the United States this week sent an emergency shipment of negative ads to Cairo.

Explaining the secret mission, a State Department official said that with its first democratic elections getting underway, "Egypt had no access to the mother's milk of any working democracy: vicious campaign ads full of lies and distortions." . . .

Actually, it was the e-blurb for the story about the Virginia GOP Senate primary that got me thinking (this time) about the paradox of political messaging. For how long now have we been talking about a November showdown between GOP former Gov. and Sen. George "Macaca Man" Allen and nominal Dem former Gov. Tim Kaine? So long and so certainly that it hadn't even dawned on me that the Macaca Man first has to get through a primary. I saw that blurb, "The recent rejection of a gay judge is among the dividing lines in the final GOP primary debate" (referring to the shocking recent episode where the state's House of Delegates allowed itself to be intimidated by rampagingly unapologetic homophobes) and realized that there are shadings to be observed even among the slime-bound, who vie to persuade GOP core voters that they've got the most suitably slimy message.

It says something about the state of our political discourse, I think, that the most honest and illuminating media voices belong to the likes of Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, and of course Andy Borowitz. At least there's the added benefit that for the brief moments when they're holding forth, we get to laugh at it.

Then we turn back to reality. It's always still there. It's not going anywhere except maybe down. Possible exception: As we continue to ignore looming catastrophes like climate change, it may be going where we all are: down the tubes.

Even there we can see the depressing lowering of the already-too-low-to-believe right-wing standard of attention to reality. The standard right-wing response to the climate-change issue used to be: We need more studies. Perhaps because the very idea of "studies" suggests some adherence to a "knowledge" standard, this has evolved into: There ain't no such thing, you liberal devil, and your mother wears sweat socks.

And yet, somehow, the right-wingers continue to get away with it. One of my larger frustrations with out present-day political swamp is the Messaging Gap. The true right-wing message, after all, is something like:

I'm garbage; you're worse -- it's a marriage made by God in his Hell Heaven. And did I mention that if you don't vote for me, I'll make the world blow up the world will blow up.

Yet by the time the silver-tongued right-wing messagers have worked their magic, it's all about God, country, and puppies.

It goes without saying -- doesn't it? -- that Republicans don't believe those beautifully polished fake messages crafted for them by master strategists like Frank Luntz. That all falls under the heading of "stuff we say," which may or may not having anything to do with "what we do." It occurs to me that the Incorporated Willard may be the ultimate case: The man will say absolutely anything he thinks will get him either votes or campaign cash, and gets positively indignant when he's called to account for stuff he says.

RIGHT-WINGERS HATE, HATE, HATE HAVING
STUFF THEY'VE SAID QUOTED BACK AT THEM

As I've noted a number of times, this has become an exceedingly popular right-wing response, this gut-wrenched outrage at being confronted with stuff that they've in fact said or done. Dating back at least to the mercifully unsuccessful struggle to get ultra-right-wing zealot Robert Bork confirmed to the Supreme Court, few things aggrieve right-wing dears more self-righteously than quoting back to them stuff they've, you know, said. The Bork failure-to-achieve-confirmation spectacle gave rise to the term "Borking," which entered the political language without even ironic recognition that all those dastardly things said about the victim of Borking may in fact be 100 percent true. (No, 200 percent true!)

AND IT'S NOT AS IF WE DON'T HAVE
EXPERT MESSAGERS ON OUR SIDE

And they have the added advantage that their messages are true. I was just looking back at the chunklets of wisdom from Drew Westen I've quoted in previous posts. (Do yourself a favor and lick on the "Drew Westen" label at the bottom of this post, and then do yourself an even larger favor by clicking through -- as I always urged -- to read the full sources from which the chunklets were chunked.

Drew's cases are so rigorously as well as eloquently argued that, while they're quotable as hell (almost every sentence and paragraph in a Drew Westen piece can be usefully excerpted), the quotes don't fairly represent the rigor and sensibleness of the arguments. But let me just one example, from the September 2010 pre-election period (originally quoted in a post called "Can 2010 electoral disaster be averted? Drew Westen and Mike Lux weigh in"):

What Democrats have needed to offer the American people is a clear narrative about what and who led our country to the mess in which we find ourselves today and a clear vision of what and who will lead us out. That narrative would have laid a roadmap for our elected officials and voters alike, rather than making each legislative issue a seemingly discrete turn onto a dirt road. That narrative might have included -- and should include today -- some key elements: that if the economy is tumbling, it's the role of leadership and government to stop the free-fall; that if Wall Street is gambling with our financial security, our homes, and our jobs, true leaders do not sit back helplessly and wax eloquent about the free market, they take away the dice; that if the private sector can't create jobs for people who want to work, then we'll put Americans back to work rebuilding our roads, bridges, and schools; that if Big Oil is preventing us from competing with China's wind and solar energy programs, then we'll eliminate the tax breaks that lead to dysfunctional investments in 19th century fuels and have a public-private partnership with companies that will create the clean, safe fuels of the 21st century and the millions of good American jobs that will follow.

Call me slow, but it's only gradually dawned on me that there's a perfectly good reason so many Democrats -- including the Obama White House, to pick a random example -- don't avail themselves of Drew Westen's brilliant messaging. The reason is that they don't believe in the messages, or at least are afraid to be caught publicly believing in them. Maybe there's some depressing opposite-parallelism here: Republicans who don't believe the cunning button-pushing messages crafted for them by their master messagers have no trouble spouting them, while Democrats are unable or unwilling even to pretend to believe in truth-anchored messages that offer us a possible way out.

Is it any wonder we turn to Jon S, Stephen C, and Andy B?

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