Thursday
Jan272022
January 28, 2022
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Shannon Pettypiece of NBC News: "President Joe Biden visited the site of a bridge collapse in Pittsburgh on Friday during a trip to the city to promote an infrastructure package that he said would help repair the nation's infrastructure and prevent similar incidents. As he surveyed the damage, Biden thanked first responders and spoke with local officials. 'We're going to fix them all. Not a joke, this is going to be a gigantic change,' he said, noting that the collapsed bridge in Frick Park had been rated in poor condition for 10 years." ~~~
New York Times Liveblog: "President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has deployed the troops and military hardware needed to invade all of Ukraine, the Pentagon's top leaders said on Friday, as senior Defense Department officials warned that the tense standoff was leading the United States, its NATO allies and Russia into uncharted territory.... Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III described a bristling array of Russian combined arms formations, artillery and rockets assembled at the Ukrainian border, which he said 'far and away exceeds what we would typically see them do for exercises.' Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was more blunt: 'I think you'd have to go back quite a while to the Cold War days to see something of this magnitude.'"
Luke Broadwater & Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack issued 14 subpoenas on Friday to people who falsely claimed to be electors for ... Donald J. Trump in the 2020 election in states that were actually won by Joseph R. Biden Jr., digging deeper into Mr. Trump's efforts to overturn the results. The subpoenas target individuals who met and submitted false Electoral College certificates in seven states won by President Biden: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. 'The select committee is seeking information about attempts in multiple states to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including the planning and coordination of efforts to send false slates of electors to the National Archives,' Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and the chairman of the committee, said in a statement."
CNN Liveblog: "The Allegheny County [Pittsburgh] Police Department was notified about a partial bridge collapse after 6 a.m. Friday, Amie Downs, the county's communications director, said in a statement. Four vehicles were on the bridge at the time of the collapse and only minor injuries have been reported, Downs said, adding that a driver of an articulated bus and two passengers were among those rescued with minor injuries. There was a massive gas leak caused by the collapse, which is now under control, according to Pittsburgh Fire Department Chief Darryl Jones.... President Biden is aware of the bridge collapse in Pittsburgh, which happened earlier this morning about six miles away from where he is set to deliver remarks on infrastructure and other topics later Friday. He will proceed with that trip, according to the White House.... Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey said the bridge collapse left 10 minor injuries and three people were transported." MB: Photos of the bridge collapse make it look more than "partial" to me, and local officials have told CNN that the bridge was part of a major artery. Also, the bridge fell into a public park, and it's possible there are victims who were in the park. ~~~
~~~ A New York Times report is here. ~~~
~~~ Philip Bump of the Washington Post: "Pittsburgh is called the City of Bridges. The federal government, as you would expect, tracks the condition of those bridges." The bridge that collapsed is one the feds had determined was in "poor" condition. "... it sits at the end of one of ... Forbes Avenue..., a major thoroughfare into and out of downtown.... A review of the most recent report indicates that more than 7,500 bridges in the 50 states and D.C. are both in poor condition and rated lower or the same [as the Forbes Avenue bridge] on the four main measures of condition.... President Biden was already slated to be in Pittsburgh on Friday, to give a speech focused on infrastructure. This bridge collapse offers a useful if unwelcome demonstration of the need for the recently passed infrastructure bill to be implemented."
Ohio Senate Race. Liz Skalka of the Huffington Post on a debate between Ohio U.S. Senate candidates Morgan Harper (D) & Josh Mandel (ARrrr). Good grief. P.D. Pepe discusses the debate in today's Comments.
~~~~~~~~~~~
"Now We Are Engaged in a Great Civil War." President Biden & Justice Breyer addressed the public early Thursday afternoon: ~~~
~~~ The New York Times is liveblogging developments here: "In his letter to President Biden, Justice Breyer said he would leave at the end of the Supreme Court's current term, in late June or early July, 'assuming that by then my successor has been nominated and confirmed.' This is a hybrid model: Most retiring justices step down either at a set time or on the confirmation of their successor." The letter is reproduced in the item. Here's the letter (pdf) via the Supreme Court. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Nick Niedzwiadek of Politico: President "Biden said Thursday that he intends to nominate [Justice] Breyer's replacement by the end of February. But he spent the bulk of his remarks lauding the retiring justice for his 'practical, sensible and nuanced' judicial record." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) The New York Times report is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: At the end of remarks, after Justice Breyer had spent some time discussing the importance of part of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, President Biden invited the Breyers to spend the night in the Lincoln Bedroom, where there is a copy of the Gettysburg address, written in Lincoln's hand.
Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times: "Two misfortunes have befallen Stephen G. Breyer during his long Supreme Court career. One, which became apparent about halfway through his nearly 28-year tenure, was that it was his fate to be the quintessential Enlightenment man in an increasingly unenlightened era at the court. The second happened during this past year: the demand from the left that he step down and open his seat for President Biden to fill. Justice Breyer's belief in the power of facts, evidence and expertise was out of step in a postfactual age." (Also linked yesterday.)
Whoever She May Be, She's Part of the "Radical Left." Michael Scherer & Seung Min Kim of the Washington Post: "Justice Stephen G. Breyer’s planned retirement set up a new election-year challenge as the deadlocked 50-50 Senate confronts a heated Supreme Court confirmation fight focused on some of the most contentious issues in the nation's ongoing cultural divide.... Conservative voters have traditionally prioritized court politics far more than Democrats at the ballot box.... Republicans on Wednesday responded with efforts to mobilize their core voters in response..., and preemptively cast the yet-unnamed nominee to replace Breyer as a radical." MB: Mitch McConnell probably thinks Attila the Hun was a member of the radical left. (Also linked yesterday.)
Lauren Lumpkin of the Washington Post: "The incoming leader of a Georgetown Law research institute has apologized after facing backlash for a series of now-deleted tweets about President Biden's promise to nominate a Black woman for the Supreme Court that the school's dean has called 'appalling.' Ilya Shapiro, the vice president and director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies at the Cato Institute, is set to begin his new role as executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution on Tuesday. [After recommending Judge Sri Srinivasan of the nomination, Shapiro wrote,] 'But alas doesn't fit into the latest intersectionality hierarchy so we'll get lesser black woman[.]'... In a tweet that followed, Shapiro added that if Biden[s] ... nominee 'will always have an asterisk attached. Fitting that the Court takes up affirmative action next term.'... Shapiro made similar remarks about identity following Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the high court in 2009." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Shapiro's apology was, in part, "I meant no offense, but it was an inartful tweet." "No offense"? Hey, why would anyone be offended by racist, sexist tweets? "Inartful"? No, you said what you meant, and further proof of that is your remarks about Sotomayor. This is a weasly fake "apology," Ilya, designed to keep Georgetown from firing your ass before they put your name on the door. I hope it doesn't work & you're stuck at Cato, which deserves you. ~~~
~~~ Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "... there is absolutely no difference between what Biden did and what past presidents had done. And moreover there is nothing wrong with this, because there are hundreds of thousands of people fully capable of doing the job of Supreme Court justice..., and so considering representation is perfectly appropriate! And, by the same token, Shapiro asserting that somehow women of color can never be the imaginary One Most Qualified Nominee -- and we can know this even before we know who the nominee even is! -- cannot possibly be defended." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I don't believe "there are hundreds of thousands of people fully capable of doing the job of Supreme Court justice." On the other hand, there are a whole lotta people with some kind of legal and life experience who have the potential to be good at the job. As for qualifications, it's unlikely -- given the state of partisanship -- that any president ever will nominate the most qualified person. The "most qualified person" -- at least on paper -- likely is an Older White Male, a thoughtful, smart judge with long experience adjudicating Constitutional issues. No president is apt to choose an old person for a lifetime position. So there's built-in ageism at the top of the selection process. And, as Lemieux notes, that are other factors, most of them at least marginally political, that presidents consider, and those considerations will severely whittle down the pool of candidates.
Mark Landler, et al., of the New York Times: "When President Biden held a video call with European leaders about Ukraine this week..., [he] expanded the seats on his war council, adding Poland, Italy and the European Union to the familiar lineup of Britain, France and Germany.... After complaints from Europeans that they were blindsided by the swift American withdrawal from Afghanistan last summer, and that France was frozen out of a new defense alliance with Australia, Mr. Biden has gone out of his way to involve allies in every step of this crisis." MB: Of course Biden is trying to be super-nice to our strongest allies. I mean, who can imagine a president* who wouldn't be?
Eric Schmitt, et al., of the New York Times: "Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III ordered the military on Thursday to strengthen its efforts to prevent civilian deaths and to improve the way it investigates and acknowledges claims of civilian harm in U.S. combat operations. In his most sweeping statement on the issue to date, Mr. Austin set in motion a series of measures that military officials say are intended to change how commanders in the field think about their jobs, fostering a culture in which they view preventing civilian harm as a core part of their missions."
Lisa Friedman of the New York Times: "A federal judge on Thursday canceled oil and gas leases of more than 80 million acres in the Gulf of Mexico, ruling that the Biden administration did not sufficiently take climate change into account when it auctioned the leases late last year. The decision by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia is a major victory for environmental groups that criticized the Biden administration for holding the sale after promising to move the country away from fossil fuels. It had been the largest lease sale in United States history. Now the Interior Department must conduct a new environmental analysis that accounts for the greenhouse gas emissions that would result from the eventual development and production of the leases. After that, the agency will have to decide whether it will hold a new auction." ~~~
~~~ MEANWHILE/BUT. Maxine Joselaw of the Washington Post: "The Biden administration has approved more oil and gas drilling permits on public lands per month than the Trump administration did during the first three years of Donald Trump's presidency, according to an analysis shared exclusively with The Climate 202. The report by Public Citizen, a liberal advocacy group, illustrates that President Biden has been slow to reverse Trump's fossil-fuel-friendly agenda, despite his campaign promise to push for 'no more drilling on federal lands" because of climate change.... During his first week in office, Biden issued an executive order instructing the Interior Department to pause all new lease sales on public lands and waters while it reviewed how to adjust the program. But Western oil drillers and 14 Republican-led states sued over the order. And in June, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Louisiana issued a preliminary injunction to block the leasing pause. The Biden administration is appealing that court decision." Some emphasis removed.
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "A federal judge is ramping up pressure on attorney John Eastman -- a central ally in Donald Trump's effort to subvert the election on Jan. 6, 2021 -- to begin producing thousands of pages of records to congressional investigators. Judge David Carter, who already sharply rejected Eastman's attempt to block the Jan. 6 select committee's subpoena for 19,000 pages of emails held by his former employer Chapman University, issued a detailed plan Wednesday to help speed the process along." ~~~
~~~ Michael Isikoff of Yahoo! News (Jan. 25): "John Eastman ... invoked his Fifth Amendment rights 146 times when he was questioned by the Jan. 6 committee last month.... The disclosure came in a court hearing before U.S. District Judge David Carter in Santa Ana, Calif., on Eastman's lawsuit to block a subpoena from the committee directing Chapman University -- where he previously worked as a professor -- to turn over more than 19,000 emails relating to his work for Trump in the months following the Nov. 3, 2020, election.... But Eastman's argument suffered a blow when the lawyer for Chapman University, whose computer hosts the emails, told the judge that the professor had no right to use the university email system for his representation of Trump because it was partisan work on behalf of a political candidate -- a violation of the university's status as a nonprofit. Any use by Eastman of Chapman emails on behalf of Trump was 'improper' and 'unauthorized,' said Fred Plevin, a lawyer for Chapman. 'I liken [it] to contraband,' he added."
Brigid Kennedy of the Week, republished by Yahoo! News: "After conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed Tuesday to have pleaded the Fifth 'almost 100 times' during his testimony before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, panel member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) has publicly taken issue with the flawed strategy. 'The thing that Mr. Jones and all of the defendants and all of the witnesses are forgetting is that the Fifth Amendment is meant to be used selectively if you think that you might be incriminating yourself by answering a question,' Raskin said during an appearance on MSNBC. "It's not a magic wand that you wave over the whole proceeding and you don't have to answer anything.... What we're seeing is this extravagant new deployment of the Fifth Amendment as a kind of get-out-of-a-subpoena card."
On the day the big news is the retirement of high-minded Justice Stephen Breyer, we are left with his tawdry detritus from the Trumpalumpa Files: ~~~
~~~ The Case of the Porn Star & the (Alleged!) Crooked Lawyer. Colin Moynihan of the New York Times: "Stormy Daniels, the pornographic film star whose lawsuit against ... Donald J. Trump was at the center of a 2018 scandal, took the stand as a witness on Thursday in the trial of Michael Avenatti, the lawyer who once represented her but now stands accused of stealing from her. 'He stole from me and lied to me,' Ms. Daniels testified in Federal District Court in Manhattan after being called as a government witness shortly after 11 a.m. By day's end, Ms. Daniels was being cross-examined by the man who once was her fierce advocate: Mr. Avenatti, who is serving as his own lawyer."
Talmon Smith of the New Yoirk Times: "Continuing to rebound from the shocks of the pandemic, the nation's economy expanded by 1.7 percent in the final three months of 2021, the Commerce Department announced Thursday. The figure, which was adjusted for inflation, reflects the growth in gross domestic product -- the broadest measure of the goods and services produced. On an annualized basis, the increase for the quarter was 6.9 percent. For the full year, the economic expansion was 5.7 percent, the biggest since 1984 -- an impressive feat, though one that also reflects the depth of the damage inflicted by the coronavirus the year before." CNBC's report is here. (Also linked yesterday.)
News You Can Use. Drew Harwell of the Washington Post: "Millions of Americans will soon have to scan their faces to access their Internal Revenue Service tax accounts, one of the government's biggest expansions yet of facial recognition software into people's everyday lives. Taxpayers will still be able to file their returns the old-fashioned way; the IRS began accepting returns for 2021 earnings on Monday, encouraging electronic filing. But by this summer, anyone wanting to access their records -- including details about child tax credits, payment plans or tax transcripts -- on the IRS website will be required to record a video of their face with their computer or smartphone and send it to the private contractor ID.me to confirm their identity." MB: As I recall, I have to open my account when I pay my taxes. I sure hope there's a way to do that without having to show my pretty face.
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Friday are here: "... 10 billion vaccine doses have been administered globally, a milestone that reflects the astonishing speed with which governments and drug companies have mobilized, allowing many nations to envision a near future in which their people coexist with the virus but aren't confined by it. The milestone, reached on Friday, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford, has not been arrived at equitably, even though 10 billion doses could theoretically have meant at least one shot for all of the world's 7.9 billion people." ~~~
~~~ The Washington Post's live Covid-19 updates are here.
It's Okay to Make Other People Sick if You're a Republican. Jake Offenhartz of the Gothamist: Sarah Palin "returned to Elio's restaurant Wednesday night and dined outdoors just days after it was revealed she tested positive for COVID-19. Palin, who has touted the fact that she is not vaccinated, was seen dining inside the Upper East Side Italian restaurant on Saturday, before her diagnosis. The city requires proof of vaccination to eat indoors. And WNYC/Gothamist confirmed the former vice presidential candidate dined al fresco Tuesday night at Campagnola, another Italian restaurant in the area.... There is no penalty for individuals who don't quarantine, according to the city -- but there is a high rate of self-reported compliance among most New Yorkers. According to one recent survey, 98% of people with positive COVID cases told NYC]s Test and Trace Corps they had not left home." ~~~
~~~ Lauren McCarthy of the New York Times: "Two days after Sarah Palin tested positive for the coronavirus..., [she] dined outdoors in New York City on Wednesday evening, defying federal guidance that infected people isolate from others for at least five full days.... Anne Isaak, the owner of Elio's, said it was against her 'clearly stated wishes that Sarah Palin dined outside last night,' according to The Washington Post.... 'By repeatedly flouting C.D.C. guidelines, Ms. Palin has shown a complete disregard for the health and safety of small business workers and her fellow patrons,' a spokesman for City Hall said Thursday over email."
Beyond the Beltway
Arizona. Ducey in the Dark? Sarah Burris of the Raw Story (Jan. 24): "The Arizona Republic reported Monday that Gov. Doug Ducey (R-AZ) said that he had nothing to do with the fake electors from Arizona for ... Donald Trump. According to him, he didn't even know about the fake electors until Monday morning, in 2022. Dec. 14, 2020, the Arizona Republic reported on the 11 fake electors.... At one point, Politico's Nicholas Wu obtained a cease and desist document that the Arizona [Secretary of State Katie Hobbs (D)] sent to a sovereign citizens group trying to pass off the fake document with an official seal.
New York. Dana Rubenstein & Michael Rothfeld of the New York Times: "When a furor erupted over Mayor Eric Adams's decision to hire his brother to manage his security detail, the mayor retroactively sought formal guidance from the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board and vowed to abide by its determination. On Thursday, the board made its ruling public.... After discussions between the mayor's office and the board, new terms of employment were agreed upon: Instead of earning $210,000 a year, he will earn $1; instead of serving as the 'executive director of mayoral security' within the confines of the New York Police Department, he will instead serve as a 'senior adviser for mayoral security' within the office of the mayor. No city personnel will be allowed to report to him. Nor can he have any 'command authority' at the Police Department.... Bernard Adams has agreed to those conditions, according to a spokesman for the mayor."
New York. Good News for Air Travelers: From "Crappy" to Snappy. Patrick McGeehan of the New York Times: "For decades, La Guardia Airport was one of the most maligned airports in the country -- leaky ceilings, cramped corridors, regular rodent sightings and broken escalators set a standard for the dreadful travel experience.... But on Thursday..., state and local officials celebrated the airport's revival upon the completion of a wholly new main terminal that shares nothing but a name and location with the old La Guardia.... The terminal was declared the best new airport building in the world by an international panel of judges.... Despite the fanfare, the $8 billion overhaul of La Guardia is not yet complete."
Pennsylvania. Kate Huangpu of Spotlight PA: "Gov. Tom Wolf [D] has vetoed a congressional map sent to him by Republican lawmakers, leaving the monumental job of picking Pennsylvania's next district lines to the state courts. In a veto message issued late Wednesday, Wolf said the map failed 'the test of fundamental fairness.'... The map sent to Wolf by the GOP-controlled legislature was initially drawn by Amanda Holt -- a noted redistricting reform advocate and former Lehigh County commissioner -- and championed by state Rep. Seth Grove (R., York). It was amended by Grove's legislative committee after GOP members of the panel criticized how their counties were split. It improves upon four fairness criteria outlined in a previous state Supreme Court ruling, but nonpartisan analyses show it has a partisan bias in favor of Republicans.... The state judicial system is now likely to have the final say."
Tennessee. Book-Burning. Jenny Gross of the New York Times: "A school board in Tennessee voted unanimously this month to ban 'Maus,' a Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel about the Holocaust, from being taught in its [eighth-grade] classrooms because the book contains material that board members said was inappropriate for students.... Members of the board said the book, which portrays Jews as mice and Nazis as cats in recounting the author's parents' experience during the Holocaust, contained inappropriate curse words and a depiction of a naked character.... Art Spiegelman, the author of 'Maus,' ... said he got the impression that the board members were asking, 'Why can't they teach a nicer Holocaust?'" ~~~
~~~ Marie: Sorry, Art, but a book about Christian white people torturing & killing non-Christians caused the board "discomfort." I told you-all this would happen; turns out it already has. BTW, the objectionable "naked character" in the book was a mouse (WashPo link).* When I was in the ninth grade, we had to cut up mice in biology class. The mice were, not surprisingly, naked, and they had all their sex parts, at least till we cut 'em up. And, yeah, I'm sure we giggled, as ninth-graders will. Then again, our biology teacher taught evolution matter-of-factly, and in those days, they didn't approve of that in Tennessee, either. ~~~
~~~ Update/Correction. Several sources noted that the naked image was of a mouse. But according to David Perry, in a CNN opinion piece, the "naked picture" was "a small image of the artist's mother in the bathtub after taking pills and slashing her wrists, with her breasts visible...." I have never looked so diligently for a "naked picture," but I finally found it here, and Perry is right. It's a cartoon drawing of course, so the offending image depicts the breasts as a sort of double-peaked sine wave with tiny circles for nipples. An eighth-grader whose only exposure to women's breasts is Spiegelman's cartoon is going to be in for a shock when he sees real breasts.
News Lede
New York Times Liveblog: "Blizzard conditions are expected from Long Island north along coastal New England. Officials are urging residents to stay home Saturday.... A powerful winter storm drove flight cancellations up to nearly 5,000 flights on Friday and Saturday in and out of the United States, according to FlightAware, a site that tracks flights and the airline industry. Most of the cancellations were on the East Coast, where airports were preparing for high winds and up to two feet of snow in some regions."
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Reader Comments (14)
In recalling this, my favorite memory of remarks made about Supreme Court nominees and who or what they ought to "represent," I did learn something about the Senator who made it:
https://www.npr.org/sections/politicaljunkie/2009/03/on_this_day_in_1970_hruska_mak_1.html
And what I learned about this Senator from Nebraska was that he might not have been the intransigent Republican dolt I had taken him for and remembered him as.
Tough work for an old man to revise a long-held opinion, but among other things, during his long career Senator Hruska voted for numerous Civil Rights Acts and the confirmation of Thurgood Marshall.
Not one of today's Republicans...but that was Then, not Now.
@Ken Winkes: Yes, but don't mediocre people already have plenty of representation on the Supreme Court?
P.S. When I get my right hand on the wrong keys (as I just did) -- one key to the left -- your first name comes up "Jeb." Does that signify Jeb! is to the left of you?
A DISNEY WORLD WRIT LARGE:
When I first saw Disney's "Bambi" I was eight years old and afterwards begged my father never to kill another deer. Now I've learned that this tale was not based on a fairy tale but was adapted from "A Life in the Woods", a 1922 novel by the Austro-Hungarian writer and critic Felix Salter. The book rendered him famous; the movie, which altered and overshadowed its source material rendered him him virtually unknown. The original version was banned and burned in Nazi Germany where it was regarded as a parable about the treatment of the Jews in Europe. Salten insisted that he wrote "Bambi" to educate naive readers about nature as it really is: a place where life is always contingent on death, where starvation, competition and predation are the norm.
Today we have the banning of books and "Maus" is on the hot list–-a book my son in Germany once read to his children and said at the time how it elicited deep conversations between them. To think in this country we are stifling kid's reading material because "we need to protect our children" is not only abominable but frightening––and it breaks my heart.
O-OH-OHIO!!
Morgan Harper (D-Ohio), a progressive democrat, after not being able to get her main opponent to debate , she opted for a Republican candidate, one Josh Mandel, the front runner in the GOP primary. Keep in mind as you read this, that he is the front runner.
First off he called Harper "A looney Nancy Pelosi" for advocating for all this green energy stuff. Then he says the Democratic Party condescends to people of color like Harper and the reason her opponent wouldn't debate her is because she isn't a white male. But the following takes the cake:
In the evening’s most bizarre exchange, Mandel insisted there is no separation between church and state in the United States — the literal First Amendment of the Constitution.
“I’m pro-God, pro-gun, pro-Trump, and I will fight in Washington with the Constitution in one hand and the Bible in the other.”
Well, Shucks, partner, you miserable piece of shit, since both your hands will be occupied, it will prevent you for taking a swing at those "people of color" who just may come out in droves to cut you down.
Good heavens! what have we wrought?
@P.D. Pepe: Ohio. That's reads exactly like the e-mail we received
from the Ohio relatives (his, not mine).
After many attempts to convince them to get the damned vaccine,
their final reply was "We are pro-God and pro-Trump. You two
should read your bible. You're going to hell if you don't change
your sinful ways."
The e-mail went on and on with all those conspiracy theories you
read about from right wing-nuts.
You can choose your friends, but you're stuck with your family.
Just thinking:
What if stupid white people make me uncomfortable, as truth to tell, they sometimes do?
Can we keep them out of our schools?
Some conservative opinionati are saying that, whomever President Biden nominates for justice, she will be proof that PB is "doing politics", specifically affirmative-action virtue signaling and identity politics.
Fair enough. SC nominations have always been "politics."
But. The problem with many of these preemptive strikes is the insinuation that the nominee will be an inferior choice, not "the most qualified," because she will be an AA pick. Logically, that implies that ALL Black female candidates would be less qualified than some other nominee.
Without reference to issues like life experience, community representation, demonstration effect, and so many other characteristics, it is possible that PB's nominee will be the "most qualified." Even though there are NO official criteria anywhere for SCJ qualifications. You can say that PB only considered Black female candidates because of his campaign promise, but what of it? You cannot say that non-Black non-females were denied an opportunity, because in reality there is never an open merit field for these nominations. Politics, remember?
I'm looking forward to world-class logic torture in the next few months.
Krugman draws in interesting parallel between Then and Now:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/27/opinion/cryptocurrency-subprime-vulnerable.html
Feeling left out? Wanna get rich?
Boy, do we have a deal for you!
As a long time fan of "Go East Young Man", a couple thoughts about SC. "As of fiscal year 2017, the ABA had 194,000 dues-paying members, constituting approximately 14.4% of U.S. attorneys." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Bar_Association.
Just like the SC shouldn't be the exclusive domain of Catholics, neither should it be ruled by the Ivy League as it is now. I believe there ARE "hundreds of thousands of people fully capable of doing the job of Supreme Court justice." When we don't believe we are capable of governing ourselves, we all shrink. Then the likes of Cotton, Cruz, Pompeo, or Bush take over.
@citizen 625
Good point. It's long been obvious that SCOTUS picks and their decisions are only tangentially related to the "Law."
I'm also a long time fan of that "Go East Young Man" guy from the far west, who came within a hair's breadth of becoming our Vice President, tho' in our family his name was thoroughly black-end after he divorced and married a younger woman.
But...he did go east. Columbia University Law, as I remember
Who will be the first right wing-nut to say that the Pittsburgh
bridge collapse was planned by liberals to help publicize Biden's
plans for infrastructure and other things he wants to get thru Congress.
@Forrest Morris: Great minds think alike. When I first saw a story about the bridge collapse, my first thought was, "Hey, isn't Biden going to Pittsburgh today?" My second thought was, "Now some right-wing conspiracy theorists will say the bridge collapse was engineered by the government to boost Biden's flagging poll numbers." And 25 percent of Republican voters will believe it. Tucker will "ask" about it several times before he has one of his special guests come on to talk about "evidence" that "deep state" operatives sabotaged the bridge at Biden's order. Tucker will "look concerned." Marjorie Taylor Greene will renew her calls to impeach Biden. And so forth.
Favorite headline of the day:
https://nypost.com/2022/01/28/nypd-commissioner-sewell-posthumously-promotes-officer-jason-rivera/
That Sewell is/was quite a guy!
The facial recognition to get access to your taxes story brought up so many questions. Facial recognition has been notoriously bad at identifying people of color. Have there been new advancements in that area or are people from minority communities going to have trouble accessing their accounts? Or will they be misidentified as someone else? Will the IRS now be notified everytime a person gets a nose job? Or what about a stroke? What about aging? If I don't need to access my account for a decade or two and have been living rough will I still be recognized as me?