The Commentariat -- Sept. 3, 2014
Internal links, graphic removed.
Julie Pace of the AP: "Mounting a show of solidarity with NATO allies, President Barack Obama announced plans Wednesday to send more Air Force units and aircraft to the Baltics, as he sought to reassure nations on edge over Russia's aggression in Ukraine. With Moscow supporting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine, NATO allies such as Estonia fear they could be the next target, and Obama's one-day visit to Estonia was designed to emphasize the U.S. commitment to defending its allies and ramp up consequences for Russian President Vladimir Putin." ...
... Eli Lake of the Daily Beast: "With Russian forces entering into Ukraine, NATO is putting together a plan to place the alliance's troops in bases behind the former Iron Curtain.... Officially, however, the Obama administration has gone to great pains to explain that the proposed outposts in these eastern European countries are not bases, per se.... The debate over the bases -- or 'persistent rotational presence,' if you must -- is part of a larger discussion with the NATO alliance and the Washington policy-making establishment over how to deter Russia after its invasion of Ukraine. Also on the table: a new, NATO quick-reaction force and new legislation, being prepared by a leading U.S. senator [Mark Kirk (R-Ill.], that would amount to an economic nuclear bomb against the Russian federation." ...
... Julie Pace: "President Barack Obama said Wednesday that the United States will not be intimidated by Islamic State militants after the beheading of a second American journalist and will build a coalition to 'degrade and destroy' the group. Obama still did not give a timeline for deciding on a strategy to go after the extremist group's operations in Syria.... Obama's comments came after he said the United States had verified the authenticity of a video released Tuesday showing the beheading of freelance reporter Steven Sotloff, two weeks after journalist James Foley was similarly killed." ...
... Rick Gladstone of the New York Times: "The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria has beheaded Steven J. Sotloff, the second American executed by the Islamic militant group, and posted a video of it on the Internet, the SITE Intelligence Group, a research organization that tracks jihadist web postings, said Tuesday. Mr. Sotloff's family issued a statement saying it believed he had been killed." ...
... Nina Golgowski of the New York Daily News: The terrorist who murdered Steven Sotloff appears to be the same person who killed James Foley. ...
... Burgess Everett of Politico: "Sen. Bill Nelson [D-Fla.] will introduce legislation that would give President Barack Obama congressional authority to bomb Islamic State forces in Syria." ...
... Azam Ahmed of the New York Times: "The siege of Amerli is thought to be the first time a town has managed to keep the militants at bay since the group, which now calls itself the Islamic State, began its march through wide areas of Iraq. By Monday, aid from the United Nations had begun reaching the starving residents.... It took an odd coalition of Iraqi and Iranian militias backed by American air support to drive off the ISIS fighters. But for long weeks before, the minority Shiite Turkmens who live here held the line, waging a desperate campaign for survival as they took up arms to protect the estimated 15,000 residents.... The fact that American air power had helped was not as celebrated. Some of the militiamen had fought the Americans after the invasion of Iraq in 2003." CW: Read to the end. ...
... Michael Cohen in the New York Daily News on "how the constant chorus of 'do something' Obama foreign policy critics gets it wrong." Includes rules to fun-&-easy game the Very Serious People have devised & perfected. Cohen asserts that actually conducting foreign policy is not a game. Spoilsport. ...
... ** David Ignatius of the Washington Post: "Even by Washington standards, the Senate Republicans have hit a new low for hypocrisy. They denounce President Obama's inaction on foreign policy -- and simultaneously refuse to confirm his nominees for U.S. ambassadors to such hot spots as Turkey, on the front lines against the Islamic State, and Sierra Leone, epicenter of the Ebola outbreak. Let's say it plainly: This is how nations lose their power and influence, when they are unable to agree even on basic matters such as diplomatic representation."
Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "Federal judges pointedly questioned a Justice Department lawyer on Tuesday about the National Security Agency's bulk collection of US phone data, in the opening day of case thatrepresents a major step toward a supreme court ruling on the constitutionality of the program. A three-judge panel from the second circuit court of appeals aimed skeptical questions at assistant attorney general Stuart Delery about the scope and breadth of the call-records dragnet, reported last year by the Guardian thanks to leaks from Edward Snowden."
Mark Guarino of the Guardian: "After 14 months of intense legal wrangling, a public relations battle, late night mediation sessions and intense number crunching, Detroit finally entered a federal courtroom on Tuesday for a trial that will determine whether or not it can emerge from the nation's largest municipal bankruptcy to become a smaller, more economically nimble city." ...
... The Detroit Free-Press story, by Nathan Bomey & Matt Helms, is here. The page also contains links to live updates & related content.
Alexander Cohen of Public Integrity: "Gazprombank GPB (OJSC), a Russian bank targeted with sanctions by President Obama over the Ukraine crisis, has hired two former U.S. senators [-- former Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) & former Sen. John Breaux (D-La.) --] to lobby against those sanctions, according to a new disclosure filed with the Senate. Gazprombank is controlled by Russia's state-owned energy company Gazprom, the country's largest gas producer; it supplies about a third of Europe's natural gas." Thanks to safari for the link. See also safari's comment in yesterday's thread....
... CW: It will be interesting to see if any MoCs speak out for or against Lott & Breaux. Maybe Chuck Todd will ask permanent green-room occupant John McCain what he thinks about his former colleagues. Nah. Breaux & Lott sell their souls inside the Beltway. Dissing the distinguished gentlemen would be bad form.
Blame It on Reagan. Devin Fergus, in a Washington Post op-ed: "Today's student aid crisis has its roots in the 1980s. In 1981, the Reagan administration, with a coalition of congressional Republicans and conservative Democrats, pushed through Congress a combination of tax- and budget-cutting measures.... Spending on higher education was slashed by some 25 percent between 1980 and 1985.... Effectively, these changes shifted the federal government's focus from providing students higher education grants to providing loans.... [The view was that] students were 'tax eaters ... [and] a drain and drag on the American economy.' Student aid 'isn't a proper obligation of the taxpayer,' Reagan's OMB Director David Stockman told Congress.... Elected officials up-and-down the ballot took notice ... that there would be no electoral consequence for cutting higher education spending."
Virgil Dickson of Modern Healthcare: "... Indiana, Tennessee, Utah and Wyoming may be next in line among GOP-led states in seeking a federal green light for their conservative-oriented [ACA Medicaid] expansion proposals." ...
... Dylan Scott of TPM: "Medicaid expansion is making progress.... But a handful [of GOP-dominated states] remain hardened in their opposition. They are largely contained to the South, and that means that the people being left out of Obamacare's safety-net expansion are disproportionately poor blacks." ...
... CW: White people can think up so many inventive ways to be racists while pretending they're not. In the particular Dylan Scott illuminates, let's give a special shout-out to Secret Racist Chief Justice John Roberts, who in his majority opinions, has (a)expressed the need for colorblind policy & (b) decided the unconstitionality of the "coercive" Medicaid expansion provisions of the ACA.
digby: Ted Cruz's father Rafael, an "ignorant creep," lectures African-Americans on history. "I don't know if they're idiots or think everyone else is an idiot but the idea that black people don't understand that the parties switched places-- due to civil rights! -- in the 1960's and 1970's is mind-boggling." AND, as Daniel Strauss of TPM points out, contrary to Father Cruz's assertion, Democrats controlled the Senate when major civil rights legislation passed.
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Karen Tumulty, et al., of the Washington Post profile their new boss, Fred Ryan. He's a great guy! And dresses impeccably! The image of a Very Serious Person! (CW: Aye, there's the rub.)
Beyond the Beltway
Rosalind Helderman & Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Jurors opened deliberations in the federal corruption trial of former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell and his wife, Maureen on Tuesday, spending five-and-a-half hours discussing the case without settling on a verdict." In his jury instructions, presiding Judge James Spencer gave the jury a broad definition of "official acts" that is favorable to the prosecution."
Jonathan Katz & Erik Eckholm of the New York Times: "Thirty years after their convictions in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl in rural North Carolina, based on confessions that they quickly repudiated and said were coerced, two mentally disabled half-brothers were declared innocent and released Tuesday by a Robeson County court. The case against the men, always weak, fell apart after DNA evidence implicated another man with a history of rape and murder.... The current district attorney, Johnson Britt, did not contest the motion to dismiss the charges [against Henry Lee McCollum, now 50, & Leon Brown, now 46] and said he would not attempt to reprosecute the men because the state 'does not have a case.'" ...
As recently as 2010, the North Carolina Republican Party put Mr. McCollum's booking photograph on campaign fliers accusing a Democrat of being soft on crime....
In 1994, when the United States Supreme Court turned down a request for review of the case, Justice Antonin Scalia described Mr. McCollum's crime as so heinous that it would be hard to argue against lethal injection.
Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post: Iberia, Louisiana, police first claimed that Victor White, a young black man "with his hands cuffed behind his back in a patrol car, produced a gun that wasn't found in two previous searches and committed suicide by shooting himself in the back." Then the coroner, whose report was not released for six months, said White shot himself in the chest (with his hands tied behind his back). White's parents are calling for a federal investigation. The full msnbc report, by Hannah Rappleye, is here. ...
... Update. Emma Fitzsimmons of the New York Times: "The said on Tuesday that it was investigating the death of Victor White III, 23, who died while in the custody of Iberia Parish sheriff's deputies in March."
Mark Santora of the New York Times: "The organizers of the New York City St. Patrick's Day parade said on Wednesday that they were lifting a ban on gay groups participating in the march, ending a policy that had sparked protests, court battles and bitter debate for decades. The decision, first reported by The Irish Voice, to allow a gay group to march under its own banner came as Mayor Bill de Blasio threatened to once again boycott the parade and the organizers faced pressure from employees of NBC Universal, which broadcasts the festivities."
Congressional Races
Casino Mogul to Purchase U.S. Senate. Peter Stone of the Daily Beast: "Billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson is poised to donate close to $100 million this election cycle, with much of that total coming in untraceable 'dark money' to conservative groups -- a massive amount that could help decide which party controls the Senate next year. Several of the casino mogul's largest checks, in the mid-seven to low-eight figure range, are being sent to a quartet of conservative nonprofits that under IRS rules can mask donors' names, say three GOP operatives and donors familiar with his contributions." ...
... Nonetheless, the Huffington Post's poll-tracker model gives Democrats a 57 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate. (The figures change at least daily.)
Bill Estep of the Lexington Herald-Leader: "Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell declined Tuesday to discuss the resignation of his former campaign manager, Jesse Benton, who quit last week as questions swirled about his role in a federal bribery case in Iowa."
Greg Sargent: Karl Rove's Crossroads GPS has a big new ad buy attacking Arkansas Sen. Mark Pryor for his support of ObamaCare. The ad is anachronistic: "This new spot shows Republicans running against this thing called 'Obamacare' they created years ago and still can't let go of."
Jed Lewison of the Daily Kos: Cory Gardner, the GOP nominee for U.S. Senate & aggressive abortion foe, has been a long-time proponent of zygote personhood -- which he now says he's against, even though he's still co-sponsoring a personhood bill in the House. He has a good chance of beating Democratic incumbent Mark Udall, especially if he can convince Colorado women he's their new best friend. Now he's running an ad advocating for over-the-counter contraception -- probably so women, rather than their health insurance under ObamaCare, will have to pay for the pills. ...
... According to Sandra Fluke, it would take a minimum wage worker 6 days' pay to buy her monthly pill supply. (More on this here.)
Eric Levenson of the Boston Globe: New Hampshire U.S. Senate candidate & former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (RDoofus) apparently doesn't mind emphasizing his carpetbagger status. On a radio show last week, Brown jokingly invited residents of other states -- Vermont & Connecticut, "wherever" -- to come to New Hampshire & vote for him in the primary election. New Hampshire has same-day voter registration, so out-of-state resident who have a "domicile" in New Hampshire -- say, a vacation home like the Browns' -- could probably vote legally in New Hampshire.
Jose Delreal of Politico: "Gary Kiehne conceded Arizona's 1st Congressional District GOP primary on Tuesday, handing the party's nomination to state House Speaker Andy Tobin, the Republican establishment's preferred challenger for vulnerable Democratic Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick.... Going into this week, Tobin held a 359-vote lead over Kiehne, though more than 3,000 outstanding ballots had yet to be counted."
Presidential Race
Rand Paul is a hawk, ready to destroy ISIS. OR he's equivocal. OR he's a dove. Maybe. It depends on the day of the week time of day. CW: I need to update my old Romney flip-flops.
News Ledes
Guardian: "John Kerry has called the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, amid a US effort to persuade Israel to reverse the go-ahead for the largest appropriation of land on the occupied West Bank since the 1980s. The secretary of state's call followed the disclosure that the US had officially requested Israel to reverse the decision, amid mounting criticism of the move both internationally and within Netanyahu's own cabinet."
Washington Post: "Andrew H. Madoff, who reported to authorities that his father and longtime Wall Street colleague, Bernard L. Madoff, had masterminded perhaps the largest Ponzi scheme in history, a multi-billion-dollar crime that Andrew described as a 'father-son betrayal of biblical proportions,' died Sept. 3 at a hospital in New York City. He was 48. His lawyer, Martin Flumenbaum, said in a statement that the cause was mantle cell lymphoma. Mr. Madoff was diagnosed in 2003 with lymphoma and suffered a relapse a decade later."
** New York Times: "President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine said on Wednesday that he and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had agreed on a cease-fire in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The announcement provided no details about the agreement, and there was no immediate reaction from the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine who have been battling government troops with assistance from Moscow." ...
... ** Reuters UPDATE: "Ukraine said on Wednesday its president had agreed with Russia's Vladimir Putin on steps towards a 'ceasefire regime' in Kiev's conflict with pro-Russian rebels, but the Kremlin denied any actual truce deal, sowing confusion on the eve of a NATO summit." ...
... ** UPDATE 2. The Times' new lede in the story linked above: "The office of President Petro O. Poroshenko of Ukraine said Wednesday that he and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had a similar understanding about what was needed to achieve a cease-fire in southeastern Ukraine, but it retracted a statement it had made earlier in the day that said the two men had agreed to a 'lasting cease-fire.'" (Emphasis added.)
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Reader Comments (15)
Thinking out loud.
I wonder what the ISIS barbarians think they are accomplishing by beheading US journalists? Obviously, if they beheaded random Americans, no one would much give a shit, but since it's journalists, the media gasps and loudly mourns its own, so there's that. A big PR coup; Look at me, ma, I'm famous. But what else? Surely they know they are also pissing off a lot of otherwise uninterested or marginally interested people, and that's not a good thing if you're trying to build support for your cause.
Marie, I really appreciated your comment, " ... CW: It will be interesting to see if any MoCs speak out for or against Lott & Breaux. Maybe Chuck Todd will ask permanent green-room occupant John McCain what he thinks about his former colleagues. Nah. Breaux & Lott sell their souls inside the Beltway. Dissing the distinguished gentlemen would be bad form."
Before I read it, I had worked myself into a lather at the very idea that these ex-Senators were willing to sell out their country on a crucial foreign policy issue. Your words at least made me laugh - especially when I imagined Tuck Chodd posing the question. My imagination didn't stretch that far, but it did bring a chuckle.
Otherwise, the whole scenario is depressing. ...
Victoria, you say depressing? This Commentariat has me ready to throw up. I don't think I'm gonna be able to make it through November.
Yet, I don't know which is worse - my depression or sinking into a despicable revenge fantasy wherein after everyone in Syria and Iraq has been murdered and only ISIS remains, we bomb the bloody hell out of those bloody bastards.
Oh, I have another confession for you. Today I heard a guy from Foreign Policy (Mearshiemer?) who convinced me that the Russia/ Ukraine problem is NATO and the West's fault. We are foolishly encroaching on their borders with our push to extend NATO. Sounds about right to me.
So as Charlie would say - anybody want to join me in a shot of Prestone?
I found the audio on the Mearsheimer interview. It's 25 minutes and IMO damned interesting.
https://soundcloud.com/wbez-worldview
Just caught up with yesterday's comments. I hope everyone remembers the guy in charge is Jeff Bezos and he runs Amazon. I can't do much about any of this other crap but I can sure never buy from Amazon or pay $50 bucks for Amazon Prime.
Re: the Uzi incident. http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/09/02/girl-who-accidentally-shot-her-instructor-with-an-uzi-said-the-gun-was-too-much-for-her/
She said the gun was "too much for her." Well duh, one look at the girl before she tried to fire it should have told a rational adult that. Apparently, rational adults were in short supply, including the girl's parents, the instructor, and the idiots who run(?) the range. I repeat, there is no reason whatsoever for civilians to fire weapons of war, let alone own and carry them. The country has been infected with mass insanity where guns are concerned. And our craven congresscritters won't do anything about it--Second Amendment, my ass!
As far as Georgia's AG is concerned, he won't do anything to rock the Republican boat. First, he should investigate our ethics-challenged governor, but you know he won't. The case of the two ex-senators shows that when elected, for many, it means park your ethics and conscience at the door.
Hmm. Tom Friedman writes a straightforward column (from my moderately informed perspective, at least) about the complexities of going after ISIS. The headline could have used a couple more words to make itself clear on the first reading. I like the working headline included in the link below. He includes the following:
"We were in a hurry, myself included, to change things after 9/11, and when you’re in a hurry you ignore complexities that come back to haunt you later."
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/03/opinion/thomas-friedman-what-are-we-really-dealing-with-in-isis.html
@Nisky Guy: Yeah, even the Daily Kos gave Friedman a link today. I agree that his sketch of the conflicting allegiances in the region might be about right. And he does include a teensy two-word mea culpa of sorts -- "including myself" -- for his multiple gung-ho rah-rahs for the Iraq War.
BTW, the story by Azam Ahmed linked above on the siege of Amerli provides a taste of how that conflict plays out for individuals. (Unlike Friedman, Ahmed does not glean his insights from taxi drivers he chats with on the way from the airport to a fancy hotel.) There's a reason I suggested reading to the end.
Marie
Haley: I found this NYT Op-Ed by Meersheimer from last March regarding the ballooning Ukrainian crisis. He makes the point you alluded to, that Europe and the U.S. overplayed their hand in supporting Ukraine's increasing ties to the West, including encouraging it to join the EU and NATO.
"One might expect American policymakers to understand Russia’s concerns about Ukraine joining a hostile alliance. After all, the United States is deeply committed to the Monroe Doctrine, which warns other great powers to stay out of the Western Hemisphere."
The piece is titled, "Getting Ukraine Wrong;" I think he was right.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/14/opinion/getting-ukraine-wrong.html?_r=0
Haley,
Pondering why Jeff Bezos bought the Post might not require much effort after all.
Given the insularity of Washington and the prominence of the Post in that bubble world (it used to be prominent outside the beltway as well, but...), the Post buy might not be much more than an attempt by Bezos--after turning the place into a good old boys club for pro-business wingers--to try to influence any legislation that could impact his business interests. This wouldn't, of course, be something new. Probably since the first town criers started disseminating news, someone has been trying to push and pull public opinion.
So, handing over the reins to one of smiling Ronnie's toadies--albeit a well dressed one--makes perfect sense. Just look at what Fred Ryan did with Politico; a Republican newsletter and major proponent of the Both Sides Do It meme, now considered "important". No wonder Charlie Pierce refers to it as Tiger Beat on the Potomac. Puerile nonsense, bubblegum profiles of their winger pin-up boys and girls, and in-depth think pieces that lack depth and thought.
Perfect.
I do love how Ryan has been blathering on about how ideology has no business in influencing the workings of a serious news organization. So, either the Post is not a serious news organization or he's lying. I mean, it's like hiring John Gotti, Lucky Luciano, Whitey Bulger, Meyer Lansky, and Santo Trafficante and saying their background will play no role in any future endeavors.
I read about the story of Victor White a couple of weeks ago, the man quite obviously killed by Iberian police after being beaten, who supposedly shot himself in the back while handcuffed.
The story is so outrageous but not nearly so outrageous as the belief (or hope) that such a preposterous story would be accepted. So first, after being grabbed, frisked, beaten, cuffed, and thrown in the back of a cruiser, Mr. White, aka Harry Houdini, produces a pistol and, having given up all hope, shoots himself in the back. But later, still while handcuffed, the story was that he shot himself in the chest.
In my blackened state of mind, I did an instant recall of a similarly ridiculous story printed in a satirical humor magazine, National Lampoon, decades ago, about the "suicide" of Salvador Allende. I've repeated it over the years so I have it pretty much down:
"Ay muchachos! Our beloved President Allende, dead of a self-inflicted air strike. Shot himself in the back 72 times from 30 paces, pausing only once to reload."
Sounds a lot more plausible than the Iberia police story. At least, to my knowledge, Allende wasn't handcuffed.
'I do love how Ryan has been blathering on about how ideology has no business in influencing the workings of a serious news organization.' -Ak
Furthering the point of Akhilleus, a while back Marie linked a column during the time that the Supreme Court decisions were being announced. The article purported to track the decisions of each Supreme Court Justice based on their adherence to liberal or conservative ideology (an inexact science in my view, but telling nonetheless).
I've mentioned here before the rosy image I'd always had with the Supreme Court before Chexing my Reality at this site. I had always imagined that the judges on the Supreme Court were incapable of skewing their decisions based on presupposed ideology. It's the SUPREME Court we're talking about. No institution exists above it, the buck stops there. Their decisions have national implications immediately, and only decades of legal battles could see a decision of theirs reversed, IF they decided to take up the issue again, which is clearly unlikely because that'd mean they'd admit to making a mistake. And to top it all off the judges sitting on the court are there for LIFE.
We're not talking about a 'serious news organization' here, it's the Law of the Land. And it turns out that ideology both ways has enormous effects on any outcomes that come out of the institution. Doubly so for conservatives. And to make matters worse, Sept. 1st Marie linked a piece by Adam Liptak explaining that not only is ideology supreme in the Justices' decision-making, but they're willing to find any bare-bones scrap of information to support their argument. Shit published on the internet for f*ck's sake! by some largely unknown ideologue with an agenda and at times without ANY constraint of academic peer review, "Recent opinions have cited “facts” from amicus briefs that were backed up by blog posts, emails or nothing at all."
I'm no historian so I don't know if there is any precedent for this amateur hour at the Supreme Court we've witnessed as of late, but it's frankly pathetic and very unnerving given the underground Conservative movement (now very well established) to contort Academia to produce their desired results through bribes of money and power. For a price, you can get some obscure institution to publish a paper saying inflation is imminent, and upon publication all the monkeys howl about Debt Armageddon. Soon we'll have so much misinformation out there that we'll have elected officials on the Natural Resources and Environment Committee claiming that the Earth shares the same temperature as Mars. Oh shit......
Safari,
Last week I linked a piece that considered how the right uses misinformation to keep the public as ignorant as possible of their plans. Conservatives on the Supreme Court are past masters at this.
Not only do they hold themselves above criticism, and unbeholden to the egalitarian spirit of America's founding documents, they drape their most insidious decisions--decisions that are changing the face of democracy and America as we speak, upending decades, generations, hundreds of years, of precedence--in holier than thou legalistic folderol and insulting doubletalk. Ever read one of Scalia's opinions? Holy Sanctimonious Ideologue, Batman.
Even worse than allowing one's ideology to control rather than inform (there's a difference: pretty much no one can completely ignore their ideological prejudices--mine include the idea that every eligible American should be able to vote in order to extend the democratic franchise as widely as possible, and thus, voting should be made easier, not more difficult, a prejudice, if you'd like to call it that, that would certainly inform--but not control--my input into any discussion along such lines) one's legal opinions is the possibility that conservatives on the Supreme Court have a more long-term and far-ranging agenda: the refacing of America according to right-wing beliefs, tenets, and ideological requirements.
I don't think I'd go so far as to call it a conspiracy, but when you look at the cases they decide to rule on, and those they don't, and their decisions, there is a very clear idea in play. The idea is to turn back the clock on all the decisions of the 60s and 70s hated by conservatives, no matter how just and legally sound, and to promote conservative beliefs, to make sure that corporations and the religious right are served, to make it as hard as possible for average Americans, especially women and minorities, to feel empowered as full citizens enjoying the rights promised in the Declaration and the Constitution to each and all, a definite attempt to redraw the contours of who exactly is in and who is out; who is privileged and cared for and who can just go fuck themselves.
For a long time progressives and liberals have thought of Scalia as the Dark Lord of right-wing hatred, but it's looking like he was just the overture to what is shaping up to be John Roberts' grisly opera of right-wing judicial revenge.
Speaking of ideology and American courts, how 'bout this one.
I missed this the other day, but it's a doozy:
Far-right governor of Kansas appoints a Koch lawyer to the Supreme Court
I kid you not.
But it gets better. This guy, Caleb Stegall, former general counsel for Americans for Prosperity, the Koch's front for all sorts of wingnut shenanigans, has one, as in singular, year--one year--on an appeals court bench in Brownbackistan.
Hey, that's good enough for Sam Brownback. Is it good enough for you? It's good enough for the Kochs. Never mind that the other candidates had 20 some odd years experience as judges before being elevated to the highest court in the State of Koch. They didn't have the qualification most valued by Brownback and his masters: unquestioning loyalty to the Kings of Wingnuttia.
Couldn't make this shit up.
Can't wait to see what kinds of decisions this guy makes.