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babylonsister

babylonsister's Journal
babylonsister's Journal
March 5, 2020

Roberts Denounces Schumer for Talking About Kavanaugh the Way Kavanaugh Talked About the Senate

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/john-roberts-denounces-chuck-schumer-whirlwind-brett-kavanaugh.html

Roberts Denounces Schumer for Talking About Kavanaugh the Way Kavanaugh Talked About the Senate
By Dahlia Lithwick
March 04, 2020
7:11 PM


On Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer had a message for Donald Trump’s two nominees to the Supreme Court as the court heard oral arguments in a landmark abortion case that threatens one of the underpinnings of Roe v. Wade. “I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price!” Schumer warned of the pair’s jurisprudence since arriving on the bench. “You won’t know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.”

By Wednesday afternoon, Chief Justice John Roberts had the Supreme Court’s press office issue a stunningly rare and stinging rebuke under his signature:

Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous. All Members of the Court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.


If Schumer’s repudiated words sounded at all familiar to you, or to the chief justice, it might be because at his confirmation hearing, then-Judge Brett Kavanaugh turned to the Senate Democrats on the Judiciary Committee and pledged as follows:

Since my nomination in July, there’s been a frenzy on the left to come up with something, anything, to block my confirmation. You sowed the wind for decades to come. I fear that the whole country will reap the whirlwind.*


snip//

Still, it beggars belief that the same chief justice who stood by silently at Trump’s direct attacks at federal judge after federal judge, and hit snooze last week at presidential attacks on Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor and on Amy Berman Jackson as she is poised to sentence Roger Stone, is going to fire up the creaky old Supreme Court teletype machine to rebuke Chuck Schumer for saying the same thing Brett Kavanaugh said a little more than a year ago.

Maybe the whole threat of whirlwinds is somehow less threatening when it’s coming from a federal judge and directed at Senate Democrats than it is in a speech coming from a Senate Democrat directed at federal judges. Or maybe a threatening speech from a judge is somehow less threatening after he wins lifetime tenure? Anyone else in America could be forgiven for not recognizing that Kavanaugh’s threats in 2018 were almost word for word repeated by Schumer on Wednesday. But for a chief justice who prides himself on minimalism, humility, and a robust grasp of both history and the long game, the choice to rebuke only one judicial critic in this context puts the lie to the whole project of soaring neutrality and the grim calling of pitches. Threats are threats, whirlwinds are whirlwinds, and judges remain in daily fear of public revolt. All of them, male and female, district court, and the guy who sits next to you. Singling out only the threats that happen on your front steps doesn’t make you neutral—it makes you parochial, and in the worst possible way.
March 5, 2020

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dominates in abortion case


Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dominates in abortion case
By Ariane de Vogue, CNN Supreme Court Reporter
Updated 8:10 AM ET, Thu March 5, 2020


Washington (CNN)If there is any question whether 86-year-old Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who has spent her life steeped in issues concerning women's rights, is slowing down after four bouts of cancer, it was not evident Wednesday morning in Washington.

For over an hour, Ginsburg, the leading liberal on the bench, engaged in a high stakes constitutional version of whack-a-mole, taking down arguments put forward by supporters of a Louisiana abortion access law that requires doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital.

As lawyers for the state and the Trump administration urged the justices to greenlight the law, arguing it is necessary to protect public safety, Ginsburg worked to dismantle each of their arguments one by one. At times, she even went after her own conservative colleagues.

Ginsburg, who has served almost 30 years on the Supreme Court, is witnessing efforts by Republican-led states, emboldened by a new conservative majority on the Court, to pass increasingly restrictive abortion laws. Abortion rights supporters, who have spent years in the trenches, are fearful that the Court is rolling back rights. In Court, Ginsburg calmly, persistently and systematically dissected each point.

more...

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/05/politics/ruth-bader-ginsburg-abortion-louisiana/index.html
March 5, 2020

Schumer Being Reprimanded by Chief Justice Roberts 'Hurts the Notion of Judicial Independence...


Chuck Schumer Being Reprimanded by Chief Justice Roberts 'Hurts the Notion of Judicial Independence,' Say Legal Experts
By James Walker On 3/5/20 at 7:32 AM EST


Supreme Court Justice John Roberts' rebuke of Chuck Schumer over remarks he made at an abortion rights rally risked hurting "the notion of judicial independence" and "public faith" in America's top court, two senior lawyers have said.

The Obama-era U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, Joyce Vance said Chief Justice Roberts' comments released in a Wednesday statement risked damaging public faith in the Supreme Court's neutrality.

Gibson Dunn Partner Ted Boutrous added that Roberts should have "repudiated" President Donald Trump's attacks on Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ruth Ginsburg last week, suggesting his failure to do so while blasting Schumer brought the court's impartiality into question.

more...

https://www.newsweek.com/justice-roberts-chuck-schumer-1490651?fbclid=IwAR1yZVgc7SyBrd1HY3hXmOvbpSzyY4mXDaDl-T7FoTXQV2W4JLwUzA5nvXk
March 5, 2020

Democrats Lead In Four Key Senate Races

https://politicalwire.com/2020/03/05/democrats-lead-in-four-key-senate-races/


Democrats Lead In Four Key Senate Races
March 5, 2020 at 8:40 am EST By Taegan Goddard


Public Policy Polling surveyed four critical U.S. Senate races and found Democrats leading in them all:

ARIZONA: Mark Kelly (D) leads Sen. Martha McSally (R), 47% to 42%

COLORADO: John Hickenlooper (D) leads Sen. Cory Gardner (R), 51% to 38%.

MAINE: Sara Gideon (D) leads Sen. Susan Collins (R), 47% to 43%

NORTH CAROLINA: Cal Cunningham (D) leads Sen. Thom Tillis (R), 46% to 41%.

Key takeaway: “The Maine result is most interesting. When PPP first polled the Gideon-Collins match up for a private client last spring, Collins led by 18 points at 51% to 33%. The reason for the 22 point shift since then is that in the wake of opposing impeachment, Collins has lost most of the crossover Democratic support she’s relied on for her success over the years.”
March 5, 2020

A Not-So-Super Tuesday By Connie Schultz


A Not-So-Super Tuesday
By Connie Schultz

March 5, 2020 6 min read

snip//

Jessica Valenti, a brilliant feminist writer two decades younger than me, wrote this after Super Tuesday, for Medium:

"Even just supporting Warren has come with an unbearable amount of misogynist condescension. I'm tired of being told that I'm a single-issue voter because I care about a candidate's gender, even if it's not the only thing I care about. I'm over being made to feel as if representation for half the population isn't a necessary and radical political position. I don't appreciate being told that I'm either anti-revolution because I didn't support Bernie Sanders or unrealistic because I won't vote for Joe Biden. I especially resent the theory being bandied about that Warren somehow 'stole' votes from Sanders; it's nonsense."


If you had told me 20 years ago that we'd still be having this conversation about the limitations of women, the only thing I would have allowed you was a running start to get out of my way. Our daughters aren't much younger than Valenti, which might be why these words of hers took my breath away:

"Whoever the nominee is, their campaign is going to have to come to terms with the intense misogyny so many female voters have dealt with — and understand that it's an issue we care deeply about. And their supporters are going to have to let us be sad — depressed, even — that once again we're going to watch a race to leadership between old white men."


more...

https://www.creators.com/read/connie-schultz/03/20/a-not-so-super-tuesday?fbclid=IwAR1sME9HXY1vwLrUtRB4ldr0hn2pHfYNg5M3bUoHqK13frORHW8UZSCQMgU
March 4, 2020

DoD Contractor Charged with Leaking Military Secrets to Individual Linked to Militant Group

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/03/04/defense-department-contractor-charged-giving-military-secrets.html

DoD Contractor Charged with Leaking Military Secrets to Individual Linked to Militant Group
4 Mar 2020
The Canadian Press | By Eric Tucker


WASHINGTON — A Defense Department contract linguist has been charged with giving classified information, including the names of American intelligence assets, to a Lebanese national with ties to Hezbollah, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

Federal prosecutors accused Mariam Taha Thompson, 61, formerly of Rochester, Minnesota, of turning over information that placed in danger those intelligence assets and American military personnel.

Thompson was due in court later Wednesday for an initial appearance. She was arrested last week on the espionage-related allegation.

Prosecutors said that during a six-week period starting in late December, when U.S. airstrikes targeted Iranian-backed forces in Iraq, Thompson repeatedly accessed dozens of files that she had no need to review. Those files included the names of human assets, their photographs and cables detailing the information that the sources provided to the U.S. government.

Prosecutors said that when officials searched her living quarters, they found a handwritten note in Arabic concealed under her mattress with information about Defense Department computer systems and warning of a Defense Department target.
March 4, 2020

Is there any chance Biden and Sanders will debate?

Any precedent? I can't remember if that's a thing.

March 4, 2020

digby: The Best and the Brightest fail again

https://digbysblog.net/2020/03/the-best-and-the-brightest-fail-again/?fbclid=IwAR2F1htOR1G-11f1mFWCVZKZ9MpfhtfY7_iDbYH9Rx1PkGi2ZFu1q28OBwM


The Best and the Brightest fail again
Published by digby on March 3, 2020


This piece by George Packer may be the best analysis of what’s happened to our government — and why — than anything else I’ve read:

When Donald Trump came into office, there was a sense that he would be outmatched by the vast government he had just inherited.


snip//

The adults were too sophisticated to see Trump’s special political talents—his instinct for every adversary’s weakness, his fanatical devotion to himself, his knack for imposing his will, his sheer staying power. They also failed to appreciate the advanced decay of the Republican Party, which by 2016 was far gone in a nihilistic pursuit of power at all costs. They didn’t grasp the readiness of large numbers of Americans to accept, even relish, Trump’s contempt for democratic norms and basic decency. It took the arrival of such a leader to reveal how many things that had always seemed engraved in monumental stone turned out to depend on those flimsy norms, and how much the norms depended on public opinion. Their vanishing exposed the real power of the presidency. Legal precedent could be deleted with a keystroke; law enforcement’s independence from the White House was optional; the separation of powers turned out to be a gentleman’s agreement; transparent lies were more potent than solid facts. None of this was clear to the political class until Trump became president.

But the adults’ greatest miscalculation was to overestimate themselves—particularly in believing that other Americans saw them as selfless public servants, their stature derived from a high-minded commitment to the good of the nation.

When Trump came to power, he believed that the regime was his, property he’d rightfully acquired, and that the 2 million civilians working under him, most of them in obscurity, owed him their total loyalty. He harbored a deep suspicion that some of them were plotting in secret to destroy him. He had to bring them to heel before he could be secure in his power. This wouldn’t be easy—the permanent government had defied other leaders and outlasted them. In his inexperience and rashness—the very qualities his supporters loved—he made early mistakes. He placed unreliable or inept commissars in charge of the bureaucracy, and it kept running on its own.

But a simple intuition had propelled Trump throughout his life: Human beings are weak. They have their illusions, appetites, vanities, fears. They can be cowed, corrupted, or crushed. A government is composed of human beings. This was the flaw in the brilliant design of the Framers, and Trump learned how to exploit it. The wreckage began to pile up. He needed only a few years to warp his administration into a tool for his own benefit. If he’s given a few more years, the damage to American democracy will be irreversible.

snip//


Read the whole article if you can. It’s actually quite frightening because it discusses in detail just how much carnage he has caused within the institutions of government. It’s laid bare just how vulnerable they always were. And someone smarter but equally conscienceless as Trump will be able to take advantage of that in a much more systematic way.
March 4, 2020

To Democratic Party voters who "will never vote" for so-and-so:

Copied from a friend:

To Democratic Party voters who "will never vote" for so-and-so:

You're not voting for President.

You're voting for who replaces RBG. You're voting for the next Secretary of Education. You're voting for federal judges. You're voting for the rule of law. You're voting for saving national parks. You're voting for letting kids out of cages. You're voting for clean air and clean water. You're voting for scientists to be allowed to speak about climate change. You're voting for what the President says on Twitter. You're voting for housing rights. You're voting for LGBTQ people to be treated with dignity. You're voting for non-Christians to be able to adopt and to feel like full citizens. You're voting for Dreamers. You're voting so that there will be Social Security and Medicare when you retire. You're voting for veterans to get the care they deserve. You're voting for rural hospitals. You're voting so that someone else can have health insurance. You're voting for PBS. You're voting to have a President who doesn't embarrass this country every time she or he attends an international meeting. And you're voting against allowing the USA to become yet another authoritarian regime.

No Democrat is perfect. Your first AND second choices may have dropped out. Your third might. But here's the thing--and I need you to understand it--the nominee, no matter who she or he is, will not be perfect. They won't pass your purity test. And yet every single one of them will be better than four more years of Trump.


Please copy and paste this. Share it far and wide.

Copied from a friend, but sums it up perfectly.
March 4, 2020

Liz Cheney says Trump and Pompeo flat-out lied about the Afghan peace deal




https://www.lancastercourier.com/2020/03/04/liz-cheney-says-trump-and-pompeo-flat-out-lied-about-the-afghan-peace-deal/?fbclid=IwAR2WjIqZZv2LEB-VpKodK9SrPLoeD4t7BInhcHGk122X6Aifndo2c7e-nzo

Liz Cheney says Trump and Pompeo flat-out lied about the Afghan peace deal

Posted by Will Bishop | Mar 4, 2020 | GOP, International News, National News, Trump | 0 |
Liz Cheney says Trump and Pompeo flat-out lied about the Afghan peace deal


Even though she has been one of President Donald Trump’s most ardent defenders over the past three years, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) isn’t happy with the recently announced U.S.-Taliban peace deal, and she’s even claiming that Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lied about the details of the plan.

During a briefing in the House on Tuesday, Cheney accused Pompeo and the administration of not telling the truth, noting that classified documents related to the deal with the Taliban don’t include the things the Secretary of State said they would:

Video @ link~

As Cheney is learning the hard way, much of what the Trump administration says cannot be accepted at face value. The president himself has been caught in over 16,000 lies or half-truths since taking office, and usually resorts to fiction rather than merely stating the facts and being honest.

When it comes to the U.S.-Taliban deal, Cheney sounded totally unconvinced that such a plan was in the best interests of the United States, remarking:

“What we have seen with this agreement now concerns me as much as the Iranian nuclear deal did, now that I have seen the documents and now that there seems to be still no verification mechanism by which we are going to enforce any of the so-called Taliban promise.”


more...

https://www.lancastercourier.com/2020/03/04/liz-cheney-says-trump-and-pompeo-flat-out-lied-about-the-afghan-peace-deal/?fbclid=IwAR2WjIqZZv2LEB-VpKodK9SrPLoeD4t7BInhcHGk122X6Aifndo2c7e-nzo

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