December 8, 2022

US supreme court hears case that could radically reshape elections

(Guardian UK) The US supreme court heard arguments on Wednesday in Moore v Harper, one of this term’s highest profile and most contentious cases which has the potential to fundamentally reshape elections for Congress and the presidency.

The justices appeared to be starkly divided along predictable ideological lines as they mulled over the power of state courts to strike down congressional districts drawn by state legislatures because they violate state constitutions.

Republicans from North Carolina who brought the case argue that a provision of the US constitution known as the elections clause gives state lawmakers virtually total control over the “times, places and manner” of congressional elections, including redistricting, and cuts state courts out of the process.

The Republicans are advancing a concept called the “independent state legislature theory”, never before adopted by the supreme court but cited approvingly by four conservative justices.

The direction of questioning at Wednesday’s hearing suggested thatthree of those conservative justices – Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas – were open to the idea of adopting the theory, despite decades of precedent from their own court dismissing it. They seemed to have the slightly more tentative backing of Brett Kavanaugh, who was part of the legal team in 2000 that assisted George W Bush through Bush v Gore, the case that in modern times put the independent state legislature theory on the map. ..............(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/dec/07/us-supreme-court-elections-case-independent-state-legislature-theory

December 7, 2022

How Raphael Warnock's Win Reflects the Entire Midterm Cycle

How Raphael Warnock’s Win Reflects the Entire Midterm Cycle
The year of Republicans blowing it is now complete.

BY JIM NEWELL
DEC 06, 202211:11 PM


(Slate) In the runoff for the last Senate race of the cycle, Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock defeated Republican Herschel Walker in Georgia, earning a full six-year term and adding a 51st seat to Democrats’ Senate majority.

Networks began to call the race in Warnock’s favor around 10 p.m. Tuesday night, as Warnock had taken the lead and the vast number of remaining ballots to be counted were from Democratic counties.

Warnock, like the rest of over-politicked Georgia, can now take a breather after three years of endless campaigning. He, as Georgia’s first multiple Senate campaign-winning Democrat in some time, has provided the roadmap for other statewide candidates: Raise what one Democratic source working on the race described to me as “more money than God,” and also, run campaign ads with a dog.

Senate Republicans, meanwhile, now get to relive their recent trauma from Nov. 8

They have just lost their third Georgia Senate race in a row after not losing any for decades. There’s no need to overcomplicate the reason: It’s the same story this cycle of how Republicans lost Senate races in Pennsylvania, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Nevada. In each case, the Republican candidate—for all of the midterm election advantages the party enjoyed—was simply bad. ..............(more)

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/12/raphael-warnock-win-herschel-walker-senate-georgia.html

December 7, 2022

Warnock's Victory Forges Democrats' Path Through the New Battlegrounds

For decades, Florida and Ohio reigned supreme over presidential politics. The two states relished their role crowning presidents and spawning political clichés. Industrial Cleveland faced off against white-collar Cincinnati, the Midwestern snowbirds of the Villages against the Puerto Rican diaspora of the Orlando suburbs.

But the Georgia runoff, the final note of the 2022 midterm elections, may have said goodbye to all that. The Marietta moms are in charge now.

Senator Raphael Warnock’s win over Herschel Walker — his fifth victory in just over two years — proved that the Democratic surge in the Peach State two years ago was no Trump-era fluke, no one-off rebuke of an unpopular president. Georgia, with its storied civil rights history, booming Atlanta suburbs like Marietta and exploding ethnic diversity, is now officially contested ground, joining a narrow set of states that will select the next president.

Mr. Warnock’s race was the final marker for a 2024 presidential road map that political strategists, officials and politicians in both parties say will run largely through six states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The shrunken, shifted battlefield reflects a diversifying country remade by the polarizing politics of the Trump era. As white, working-class voters defected from Democrats, persuaded by Donald J. Trump’s populist cultural appeals and anti-elitist rhetoric, demographic changes opened up new presidential battlegrounds in the West and South. ...........(more)

https://dnyuz.com/2022/12/07/warnocks-victory-forges-democrats-path-through-the-new-battlegrounds/

December 7, 2022

Why Warnock's seat means so much to Senate Democrats

(NPR) Incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock's win in the Georgia Senate runoff could have far-reaching consequences legislatively and politically for Democrats.

"The truth is it's not a 1% difference," Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said earlier this week. "It's a world of difference."

Warnock's victory over former NFL and University of Georgia star Herschel Walker came after a shortened four-week runoff following a hotly contested election. Neither candidate got more than 50%, which pushed the race to a runoff.

Between the general election and the runoff, this race was the most expensive of the 2022 election cycle with some $425 million spent between the campaigns and outside groups supporting them.

Even though the result only expands the Democratic majority by one, from 50-50 to 51-49, party leadership and interest groups spent the kind of money they did because they clearly saw it as critically important. ............(more)

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/07/1141065758/why-warnocks-seat-means-so-much-to-senate-democrats

December 7, 2022

Indonesia bans sex outside marriage as parliament passes sweeping new criminal code

Jakarta, Indonesia
CNN
—
Indonesian lawmakers unanimously passed a sweeping new criminal code on Tuesday that criminalizes sex outside marriage, as part of a tranche of changes that critics say threaten human rights and freedoms in the Southeast Asian country.

The new code, which also applies to foreign residents and tourists, bans cohabitation before marriage, apostasy, and provides punishments for insulting the president or expressing views counter to the national ideology.

“All have agreed to ratify the (draft changes) into law,” said lawmaker Bambang Wuryanto, who led the parliamentary commission in charge of revising the colonial-era code. “The old code belongs to Dutch heritage … and is no longer relevant.” .............(more)

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/05/asia/indonesia-new-code-passed-sex-cohabitation-intl-hnk/index.html

December 7, 2022

Kari, don't go away mad. Kari, just go away.

Kari Lake goes out with a whimper: She couldn't galvanize Trump's Jan. 6 army
Katie Hobbs was certified as Arizona's next governor, as Kari Lake's mini-Trump act fizzles out in MAGA frustration

By AMANDA MARCOTTE
Senior Writer
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 7, 2022 6:00AM (EST)


(Salon) In the end, the Big Lie 2.0 went out with a whimper, instead of the bang Donald Trump and his acolytes were clearly anticipating. For months, Trump-loyal Republican candidates for state and local offices — often those hand-picked by Trump himself — recycled his false claims that a secret cabal of Democrats had secretly created a system to "steal" elections from Republicans. Not only did MAGA superfans like Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake argue that Joe Biden had somehow stolen the 2020 from Trump, they repeatedly suggested that, should they lose in 2022, that should be presumed illegitimate as well.

There was plenty of cause for worry that all these conspiracy theories were building toward some kind of Jan. 6 redux, especially as several of these candidates had direct ties to the original assault on the Capitol. Pennsylvania state Sen. Doug Mastriano, the GOP gubernatorial candidate, wasn't just at the Capitol that day, but literally paid for charter buses to send Trump supporters to the rally that turned into an insurrection. Tim Michels, the Wisconsin Republican running against incumbent Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, promised that "Republicans will never lose another election in Wisconsin after I'm elected governor." Mark Finchem, the Republican candidate for secretary of state in Arizona, was also in D.C. on Jan. 6 and his attorney was deeply involved in the "fake elector" plot Trump hoped he could use to steal the 2020 election.

In the days before the election, Homeland Security and the FBI circulated a memo warning of a "heightened threat" of election violence that might target "candidates running for public office, elected officials, election workers, political rallies, political party representatives, racial and religious minorities, or perceived ideological opponents."

Instead what happened, for the most part, was nothing, thank goodness. Most of the Trumpy candidates seeking swing-state offices that would give them control over the 2024 presidential election lost. They complained but mostly didn't try to fight the results. And none of them actually incited violence in an effort to steal those elections. Maybe that's a modest win for democracy, but it counts. ..............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/12/07/kari-lake-goes-out-with-a-whimper-she-couldnt-galvanize-jan-6-army/

December 7, 2022

Germany arrests 25 suspected far-right extremists for plotting to overthrow government

Sounds familiar .....


CNN
—
German officials arrested 22 suspected members and three suspected supporters of a far-right terrorist organization across the country on Wednesday on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government.

In a statement, the German federal prosecutor’s office said an estimated 50 people were suspected to have been part of the group called Reich Citizens movement, founded no later than November 2021, who were plotting to overthrow the government and replace it with their own order.

“The accused are united by a deep rejection of state institutions and the free democratic basic order of the Federal Republic of Germany, which over time has led to their decision to participate in their violent elimination and to engage in concrete preparatory actions for this purpose,” the statement said. .....(more)

https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/07/europe/germany-far-right-arrests-grm-intl/index.html

December 7, 2022

The smile on my face......

..... is because I'm thinking about all the Biden-appointed federal judges we'll be able to get confirmed

December 7, 2022

The US supreme court is poised to strike another blow against gay rights

The US supreme court is poised to strike another blow against gay rights
Moira Donegan

The court is hearing a case that could allow the kind of naked discrimination that the gay rights and civil rights movements fought so hard to end
Tue 6 Dec 2022 06.03 EST


(Guardian UK) It’s not clear what, exactly, Lorie Smith’s problem is. The Colorado woman aspires to be a web designer; apparently, she’s also upset that gay people can get married. Smith is an evangelical Christian who says that her faith makes her object to same-sex marriage.

This wouldn’t be anyone’s problem, except that Smith lives in a state with a robust civil rights law, one that forbids business owners who make their services available to the public from discriminating. But Smith really wants to discriminate: she hopes to be able to turn away gay clients from her as-yet-hypothetical wedding website business; she wants to put a banner at the top of her business homepage proclaiming her unwillingness to design websites for gay weddings. The law would forbid this if she ever went into business, so she’s suing.

As of now, none of this has actually come up. At the time Smith filed her lawsuit, demanding an exemption to her state’s law, she didn’t even have a business with which to discriminate. The law has never been enforced against her; she’s never had the opportunity to discriminate that she so craves. It’s not clear, in other words, that she really has standing to sue – she’s never been forced to provide services to gay people, so, in legal parlance, there’s no “injury” to speak of. But Smith is an angry conservative, and she’s found some very well-funded lawyers from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a huge rightwing legal organization that has embarked on a nationwide campaign of lawsuits to erode civil rights protections for gay people.

The result is 303 Creative v Elenis, a case in which Smith argues that her religious convictions mean that she shouldn’t have to comply with a generally applicable civil rights law, and should be granted license to discriminate by her state. The US supreme court heard oral arguments on Monday, and the 6-3 conservative majority is certain to hand Smith a victory allowing her to deny service to clients based on sexual orientation.

A decision from the court is expected next summer. The question, as happens so often with this rabidly conservative court, is not who is going to win. That question was probably answered the moment the court agreed to hear the case, to the point that briefings and oral arguments in hot-button culture and identity cases like 303 Creative have been rendered largely moot. ................(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/dec/06/us-supreme-court-colorado-gay-rights

December 7, 2022

Man faces charges for slapping police horse on butt

PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. – A Florida man is facing charges after police said he assaulted a police horse.

St. Petersburg Police said Alisha Lalani, 27, walked up to them while they were on duty on Saturday and used an open hand to slap the rear of the animal.

According to a arrest report, the horses were wearing police insignia and flashing blue lights when Lalani approached them. ..............(more)

https://www.local10.com/news/florida/2022/12/06/florida-man-faces-charges-for-slapping-police-horse-on-butt/