April 23, 2023
Coral Davenport & Lisa Friedman of the New York Times: "President Biden's administration is poised to announce limits on greenhouse gas emissions from power plants that could compel them to capture the pollution from their smokestacks, technology now used by fewer than 20 of the nation's 3,400 coal and gas-fired plants, according to three people who were briefed on the rule. If implemented, the proposed regulation would be the first time the federal government has restricted carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants, which generate about 25 percent of the planet-warming pollution produced by the United States. It would also apply to future plants.... The proposed rule is sure to face opposition from the fossil fuel industry, power plant operators and their allies in Congress. It is likely to draw an immediate legal challenge from a group of Republican attorneys general that has already sued the Biden administration to stop other climate policies. A future administration could also weaken the regulation." MB: Because of course what the world needs is assurance that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions continue apace.
Rebecca Beitsch of the Hill: "The silencing of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) after she called Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas a liar in a hearing has led to a pledge for a more civil House Homeland Security Committee going forward -- a standard lawmakers may struggle to meet as they gear up for the secretary's impeachment.... Greene called the decision to silence her for the rest of the hearing unfair, noting that numerous Republican speakers before her accused Mayorkas of lying to Congress, even if they did not label him as a liar directly... '... I think most Republicans were calling [the] secretary names, belittling him and not allowing him to speak, insinuating that he was lying -- all things which are false,' [Rep. Robert] Garcia [D-Calif.] told The Hill.... Several Democrats, meanwhile, have sought to dismiss the budding impeachment argument from the GOP. 'They can disagree with [Mayorkas] on policy, but that is not a high crime and misdemeanor, nor does it in any way violate the Constitution and has no grounds for impeachment,' Rep. Daniel Goldman (D-N.Y.) said." ~~~
~~~ Marie: I'm sorry, but people like Miss Margie have never learned to have any self-control. I believe she would tell the Pope to his face he was an asshole if she disagreed with him about something. And if chastised, she would defend her remark because these people also have no inclination toward self-reflection. They suffer from extreme arrested development; they got stuck in their terrible twos and they can't get out.
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "... the Supreme Court's order on Friday night maintaining the availability of a commonly used abortion pill nonetheless sent a powerful message from a chastened court. 'Legal sanity prevailed, proving that, at least for now, disrupting the national market for an F.D.A.-approved drug is a bridge too far, even for this court,' said David S. Cohen, a law professor at Drexel University.... In his concurrence in Dobbs, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the majority had abandoned 'principles of judicial restraint' at the cost of 'a serious jolt to the legal system.' Friday's order avoided a second jolt.... Notwithstanding his pledges that the court was getting out of the abortion business, [Justice Samuel Alito] issued a dissent that packed a lot of grievance into its roughly three pages.... He devoted much of it to accusing the Biden administration of acting in bad faith.... 'Justice Alito, who wrote so passionately [in Dobbs] about returning abortion to the states to be decided by their elected representatives, would have allowed an order to take effect that made abortion less accessible only in states where abortion remained legal,' [University of Pittsburgh law professor Greer Donley said." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Note that if "legal sanity prevailed," as Prof. Cohen says, then it follows that Alito's and Thomas's dissents are exercises in "legal insanity." I'll go along with that. ~~~
~~~ Alito's Opinion "Reads Like a Fox News Grandpa's Rant." Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post:"In the rush to celebrate the failure of medical zealots (this time) to dredge up an antiabortion activist in robes to countermand the FDA, Alito's dissent shouldn't be ignored, for it perfectly encapsulates the degree to which he's become 'unmoored from reason,' as legal scholar Norman Eisen tells me.... Supreme Court advocates and constitutional experts with whom I spoke ... cite a batch of objectionable arguments and remarks in his dissent.... Alito's dissent begins with an extended, bitter and unnecessary rant about the shadow docket.... It's entirely irrelevant to the matter at hand and, as with so much of Alito's writing, utterly intemperate.... [His] unprecedented attack on the government's obedience to court rulings -- based on nothing -- is out of order.... Moreover, Alito's dissent demonstrates that he does not care one whit about the women affected if the drug were suddenly made unavailable. (At least he's consistent; he also utterly ignored the interests of women in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, giving them no weight in contrast to the seemingly inviolate interest of states in commandeering women's reproductive choices.)" Read the whole column. ~~~
~~~ Linda Greenhouse of the New York Times argues that the mifepristone case & several others cases before the courts demonstrate how religious (MB: I would say "Christian fundamentalist") beliefs have informed judicial decisions.
Roberts Punts Again. Ariane de Vogue of CNN: "Chief Justice John Roberts has declined to directly respond [link fixed] to a congressional request to investigate Justice Clarence Thomas' alleged ethical lapses. Roberts instead referred the request from Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin to the Judicial Conference, which serves as the policy-making body of the federal courts. The Illinois Democrat had penned a letter urging Roberts to investigate Thomas after a ProPublica report that found that Thomas had gone on several luxury trips at the invitation of a GOP megadonor. The trips were not disclosed on Thomas' public financial filings.... Durbin has also sent a separate letter to Roberts asking him to testify in an upcoming hearing regarding Supreme Court ethics. Roberts has yet to respond to that letter. The senator said in a statement Saturday, 'It is clear that such an appearance by the Chief Justice may be the only way for the Court to set out with clarity and meaningful and credible reform.' He added that if the "Court does not address shortcomings in its ethical standards," then Congress must. Durbin's statement included a letter from Judge Roslynn R. Mauskopf, the secretary of the Judicial Conference, that said, 'I write in response to the letter of April 10, 2023, from you and other members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to the Chief Justice of the United States, which has been referred to me.' Mauskopf added that she would send the matter to the conference's Committee on Financial Disclosure." ~~~
~~~ Marie: The headline of de Vogue's article describes Roberts as "punting" Durbin's request. Roberts punts a lot. He wanted to punt on Dobbs, for instance, but he couldn't control the Court's zealots. He did manage to punt on the mifepristone case. In his confirmation hearings, Roberts famously claimed, "My job is to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat. I have no agenda." That baseball analogy of course turned out to be a "misdirection," as Roberts led the Court's sharp right turn. The football analogy is a better fit.
Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Anyone expecting that Fox's $787.5 million settlement with Dominion this week would make the network any humbler or gentler is likely to be disappointed. And there probably won't be much of a shift in the way the network favorably covers [Donald] Trump and the issues that resonate with his followers.... After a hiatus from the network that lasted much of 2022, Mr. Trump is back on Fox News.... In Mr. Trump's recent interview with the Fox host Tucker Carlson, he implied that there was good reason to doubt the legitimacy of President Biden's victory, saying, 'People could say he won an election.' Mr. Carlson, for his part, has also dipped back into election denialism recently. 'Jan. 6, I think, is probably second only to the 2020 election as the biggest scam of my lifetime,' he said on the air on March 14.... In the immediate term, [Rupert] Murdoch seems unlikely to make any major changes at any of his Fox properties."
Presidential Race 2024. Maureen Dowd of the New York Times: "Even in a world made crueler by social media and Donald Trump, [Ron] DeSantis seems mean, punching out at Mickey Mouse, imigrants, gays and women; pushing through an expansion of his proposal to ban school discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity to include all grades, as well as a draconian ban on abortion after six weeks. He even admonished some high school kids during the pandemic for wearing masks. On Thursday, DeSantis signed a bill cutting the number of jurors needed to give a defendant the death sentence from 12 to 8."
Beyond the Beltway
Alaska. Sean McGuire of the Anchorage Daily News, via Yahoo! News: "In a landmark decision, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled Friday that partisan gerrymandering is unconstitutional under the Alaska Constitution's equal protection doctrine. The decision follows a contentious recent reapportionment cycle: The Alaska Redistricting Board was twice found by the state's highest court of having unconstitutionally gerrymandered the state's political maps by attempting to give solidly Republican Eagle River more political representation with two Senate seats. Following a court order, the board approved an interim map last year for November's general election that kept Eagle River intact in one Senate district. The court ruled Friday that the redistricting board would have 90 days to appear before a Superior Court judge and show cause why the interim political map should not be used until the 2032 general election." ~~~
~~~ Marie: If all state supreme courts would recognize the right to equal representation, we would have a different House of Representatives, most likely one with a Democratic majority. (Of course, a few states have only one House member, so on the federal level, there would be no change. But in state houses, forbidding gerrymandering -- as a few states already do -- would make quite a difference.)
Way Beyond
Sudan. The New York Times is live-updating developments in the crisis in Sudan: "The United States military airlifted embassy officials out of Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, amid continuing violence as rival military leaders battled for control of Africa's third-largest country, President Biden said late on Saturday. In a briefing for reporters, officials said that just over 100 special operations troops were involved in evacuating under 100 people -- mostly U.S. Embassy employees -- using helicopters that flew in from the nation of Djibouti, about 800 miles away." ~~~
~~~ John Hudson of the Washington Post: "The U.S. military completed the evacuation of all American embassy personnel and family members from Sudan early Sunday local time, President Biden said, as rival military factions battled for control of the country amid a sharp uptick in casualties in Africa's third-largest nation. 'I am grateful for the unmatched skill of our service members who successfully brought them to safety,' Biden said in a statement that also thanked the governments of Djibouti, Ethiopia and Saudi Arabia for help." CNN's report is here. ~~~
~~~ President Biden's statement, via the White House, is here.
Ukraine, et al. The Washington Post's live briefing of developments Sunday in Russia's war on Ukraine is here: "The Kremlin will expel more than 20 German diplomats from Russia, state media reported, in a move characterized by Moscow as retaliation for a similar move by Berlin. The German Foreign Ministry acknowledged that it had kicked out Russian diplomats as part of an attempt to decrease the number of intelligence agents in the country.... Russia told its citizens to avoid travel to Canada due to alleged incidents of discrimination and physical attacks. It did not substantiate the accusations.... Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced new measures targeting 322 companies and numerous other entities. The blacklist includes Russian weapons manufacturers and those who help Russia circumvent punitive measures.
Share Article
Reader Comments (4)
Today is World Book Day, organized by the United Nations
Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization to promote
reading, publishing, etc.
Take that, red states, if they have any books left to ban!
Trickle down racism, sexism and the like , has now reached the
county level here in West Michigan. County commissions are firing
any qualified person, some with 30 or more years experience and
replacing them with like minded racists and sexists. What does a
used car salesman know about running a particular division of
government?
And I thought it could never happen here. Can't vote them out 'cause
only Republicans run for office. Dems don't have a chance in hell.
(Hell is a small town in southern Michigan).
Getting the name right
Jen Rubin, in the article linked above, points out, should any pointing still be required, Hit Man Sam Alito’s antipathy towards any concerns women might have about being denied access to mifepristone.
One needs only to recall the title of the case that allowed this off the chain, extremist, theocratic court to effectively ban abortions in most states which involved Thomas Dobbs, state health officer of the Mississippi State Department and the Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
According to most accounts of the case, Dobbs played no active role in the Supreme Court’s theocratic infused deliberations. The anti-democratic theocrats on the Court simply saw this case as their chance to shiv Roe. Thus, the case, Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health should more accurately and truthfully be known as Supreme Court v Women’s Health.
That says it all.
A former judge resigns from the S.C. Bar and details reasons for in a letter to Roberts–--he says he has lost faith in the court. It's worth a read.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/judge-james-dannenberg-supreme-court-bar-roberts-letter.html
Forest: And I thought Michigan was going great guns with Whitmore as a feisty arbiter of democracy. Guess you can't control everything.
"I thought it could never happen here" is the refrain from others through the ages after their lives have been shattered.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/18-northern-us-states-able-
16580413.html
Everyone has to stay up late tonite if you're in the northern states.
Northern lights should start after 10:00 P.M.