419 Comments

I have a strong feeling that, while he was clearly robbed of a Supreme Court seat, Merrick Garland could actually do more for American justice in this position than he could as a Supreme Court Judge. He can bring attention and therefore, change to many more important situations than he could in what seems more like the passive position of a Justice. He can shine a light on these things instead of sitting back waiting for cases to be brought before the court through the long journey of decision, appeal, etc.

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"The group [of Biden campaigners threatened in TX] is also suing local law enforcement for refusing to come to their aid despite their frantic phone calls to 911.

This is one of the most disturbing events of the last election season. Brownshirts using violence against The Party's opposition, sanctioned by law enforcement, is one of the undeniable parallels to the rise of fascism just less than a century ago.

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The history lesson on the origin of the DoJ is why reading HCR is so important to me. By god we really are still fighting the Civil War in this country. There are millions of our fellow citizens more than willing to be lead back to the plantation and the company town, and to drag the rest of us back with them. They would gladly plant a US flag on the whippimg post in the bargain.

The Republicans knew what they were doing when the kept Judge Garland of the Supreme Court.

As to "...criminal charges against the [Trump] company as soon as next week over tax issues...";

Against the company? Can I safely assume they mean individuals within the company? In my opinion, criminal, and civil,responsibility should only apply to individuals, never organizations. We don't arrest cars for drunk driving. The murder weapon is not the responsible party to the killing. I do not want to see the Trump company fined; I want to see the responsible individuals, especially individual #1, go to jail.

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The difference between a civilized society and anarchy is accountability.

-K. Eli 2014

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More than 20 years prison time for a cop, dismissal of fraudulent ballot claims in GA, the Justice Department suing GA for its elections bill and more DOJ law suits to come, a civil law suit against the Texas terrorist KKK-like caravan and their police supporters, and criminal charges for the Trump Organization in NY -- chickens coming home to roost.

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I hope someone credible is keeping track of the money the last guy is costing us. The golf games and paying for secret service to stay in his hotels which he raised the rates on as soon as he became president, we knew about those. But what is the tally of 1/6 damage, overtime, additional security, repairs, lawyers, meetings, and sooooooo much more. What is the cost and where might we see an annotated running tally? Ballot recounts, the time taken to undo the damage to the bureaucracy,…

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Election workers are quitting because of threats in swing states. Couldn’t/shouldn’t those making the threats face legal consequences?

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Thank you, Heather, for your diligence and commitment to educate and inform us in our struggle to keep democracy and justice alive in the USA.

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This is off topic, but as the wife of a disabled veteran, I just found out this morning that USAA advertises on faux news, especially on Tucker Carlson.

I guess there is a lot of people who are giving USAA notice that they will be taking their business elsewhere if they don't stop advertising on faux.

I sent an email to them just 10 minutes ago telling them that they have 60 days to make a public announcement about pulling their ad from faux. Looking forward to their response.

As for what HCR talked about, I am glad the cop who killed George Flyod a good amount of years behind bars.

My husband and I were talking yesterday that we are so happy to live in NV. We have a governor who made it easier for everyone to vote and we don't have to do anything to get a mail in ballot.

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My only comment is this:

Why do we care what the former racist president has to say about pending criminal charges against him?

There’s a reason he and his comments have been disappearing from view.

As usual, an excellent summary of the day’s news, thank you Heather.

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I wrote a comment on Nick Anderson's 'Counterpoint' a couple of days ago when one of the opposing cartoonists accused the Democrats of over-reach because they are attempting to protect voters and the constitution.

"Rather than going to trial, the RNC agreed to settle the case, and it settled the case in what's called a consent decree, which means that the settlement between the parties was embodied in a court order. And if the RNC ever violated that order, they could be found in contempt. And so this was a very powerful tool that the Democrats have been able to use for the last few decades."

During the last election, the DNC again took the RNC to task because of assaults on the election process by the Trump campaign. The court decided only Trump was at fault and lifted the consent decree against the RNC. The result of that decision is what we see today. The RNC, GOP, and every Republican-controlled state are doing a full-court press to prevent as many people from voting as possible. This is the very thing the consent decree was in place for. This is the Republican party without adult supervision.

"Depriving people of the right to vote is not winning. It is cheating."

That's either from Steven Beschloss or Jon Meachum. I think.

Republicans have gone beyond legal means to win. It is now 'do or die' because that any integrity they may have had, Trump has eaten. Trump only threatens Republicans, knowing their panic will keep them responding to everything he says.

Hopefully, the Justice Department will start prosecuting all the violations. Hopefully, there will be another suit against the RNC, this time, not allowing them to escape with a consent decree.

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"Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said: ““The Biden Administration continues to do the bidding of Stacey Abrams and spreads more lies about Georgia’s election law…. "

..., oh now I see, so Stacy Abrams is in charge here, and good ol' Sleepy Joe is just a bobblehead in her command ...?

Does anyone know why they call Biden 'Sleepy Joe ' ...?

"Georgia governor Brian Kemp, whose victory over Stacey Abrams in the 2018 election has been widely associated with voter suppression, accused the Biden administration of “weaponizing the Department of Justice to serve their own partisan goals.”"

... really? After the last five years of that very dynamic in the former admin ... in other words, it's ok if it's your own vested interest group - otherwise, not allowed ...?

"Their false and baseless allegations are, quite honestly, disgusting.""

... indeed ... false and baseless allegations are, quite honestly, ... disgusting.

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“Ebben nincs kompromisszum. We will not compromise.”

This is a long post because I have included a significant portion of an essay discussing American election politics written by a German lawyer/blogger.

From time to time, I’ve referred to a newsletter (Verfassungsblog) here in Germany that focuses “On Matters Constitutional” which, while primarily about Europe, also covers Constitutional issues in the United States.

This morning the topic was Hungary and Victor Orban’s ruling party that has just passed a new law banning LGBTQI+ references for minors. It is quite broad (See: https://www.euractiv.com/section/non-discrimination/news/portrayal-and-promotion-hungarys-latest-anti-lgbt-law-explained/) prompting the following statement from the EU: “[EU] Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called the law "a shame" and pledged in German, French, English, and Hungarian to use all her legal power to stop it: Ebben nincs kompromisszum. We will not compromise. You can't brand LGBT people as a danger to children by law and at the same time be committed to the EU's fundamental values of "human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities".

Today’s post went on to discuss voting rights in the US. Included is a large excerpt from the essay:

A matter of reflection

“I had the opportunity to meet with our old friend and supporter Mattias Kumm at the WZB this week, at last after a long pandemic break, and talk about the USA, among other things, where he spends half the year teaching at NYU. In our conversation, we came up with a hypothesis that appears pretty plausible to me: What if Republicans actually have a entirely different idea of what an election is about? What if their idea of correct and functional elections is not so much about adherence to procedural rules at all? What if they regard democratic collective self-determination rather as a kind of mirror in which "the people" reflect and recognize and reassure themselves of their identity? What if that is what these normal, law-abiding, God-fearing American patriots actually expect from a democratic election most: to recognise in it their own normal, law-abiding, God-fearing patriotic likeness, as opposed to minorities, socialists, elites and foreigners?

If that is so, then there is indeed little point in calling the Republicans to account about how little evidence there is for Democrat election rigging in the past and how much there is for Republican election rigging in future. Procedure, for them, is all just technicalities and legal niceties, not what actually matters in a democratic election, which is the correct reflection of the people. From that correct reflection, or what they consider it to be, they read whether the election worked, and if it didn't, then, regardless of procedure, the official winner of the election is a fake. Then the real President is Trump. Then storming the Capitol is just consequential.

Perhaps it has always been the case that a great many people care much less about procedure than we lawyers would like to believe. It's just that it didn't matter that much because it didn't affect the result most of the time: The normal, law-abiding, God-fearing patriots were reliably in the majority anyway, and there were procedural rules in place to make sure it stayed that way, so procedurally by-and-large correct elections could usually be relied upon to reflect just what they were supposed to reflect.

They were, after all, the normal folks, and the ab-normal minorities had a claim to tolerance at best, but certainly not to power. That was held by their likeness, Democrat or Republican, and the more certain they could be about that, the more fairness, bipartisanship and procedural openness of outcome they could safely afford.

That is no longer the case. Minorities don't necessarily stay in the minority, if they ever were, and normal folks are having their normality and normativity disputed with increasing vigour and success. It has become possible, if not probable, that the procedural outcome and the mirror image fall apart. What, in that case, will people be faithful to? That's not exactly obvious, is it?

If that is so, if this is about whether democratic legitimacy comes from correct procedure or from identitarian reflection – how can we trust that this dispute can be settled between political opponents within the framework of rule-based democratic procedures itself?

It may have been a big mistake for the Democrats in the Senate not to abolish the filibuster when they could – as if the Republicans would flinch before doing the same to them if they were in their place. This is going to be a long, hard fight. It already has been for a while, actually. Not just in the US. Ebben nincs kompromisszum. We will not compromise.”

I don’t know about you, but it is more than a little unsettling to note the comparison being made between the Republican party in the United States and Victor Orban’s Fidesz party in Hungary.

Source: https://verfassungsblog.de/

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Thank you for continuing to help me understand our political world and put it in historical perspective.

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Thank you Heather.

I was surprised to hear Raffensburger's adamant claim of dirty play by the "Biden appointed " DOJ and how he can't wait to beat him in court.. Isn't this the same guy that cried on 60 Minutes about being threatened by Trump about overturning an election? Oh that's right, he's a Republican, what did I expect, integrity? Somehow I feel we are going to be seeing that video again.

I watched the Chauvin sentencing today, yet the 22.5 didn't seem like a fair exchange for willfully taking someone's life. Maybe it's a start to prevent the next cop from taking the life of another and trying to hide behind their badge. I did hear someone say, I'm afraid I didn't catch his name, that with the possibility of parole, Chavin could actually only see roughly 6 years behind bars. That would be disgusting, at best.

Be safe, be. Have a good weekend all......

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Let's see a whole lot of Trumpscum become defendants. And then convicted felons. For *all* these things!

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