And it all may happen after Tuesday's ruling.

There have been other threads about this, but it never hurts to remind those who may have missed it the first time.

NY Times story

Electoral College Members Can Defy Voters’ Wishes, Court Rules

In a ruling that kicks at the foundation of how America chooses presidents, a federal appeals court on Tuesday said members of the Electoral College, who cast the actual votes for president, may choose whomever they please regardless of a state’s popular vote.

The ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit in Denver said Colorado was out of bounds in 2016 when it canceled the vote of a so-called faithless elector named Michael Baca. Mr. Baca, a Democrat, wrote in the name of John Kasich, a Republican who was Ohio’s governor at the time, even though Hillary Clinton carried Colorado, earning its nine electoral votes. The secretary of state replaced Mr. Baca with another elector who then voted for Mrs. Clinton.

“The text of the Constitution makes clear that states do not have the constitutional authority to interfere with presidential electors who exercise their constitutional right to vote for the president and vice president candidates of their choice,” the court majority wrote in a split ruling by a three-judge panel.

Lawrence Lessig, a Harvard law professor who founded the group that brought the case, Equal Citizens, said it was the first time a federal appeals court had ruled on whether electors could be bound in how they vote. Many states, including Colorado, have laws requiring electors to pledge that they will support the winner of the popular vote. The Constitution is mute on the subject. The appeals court noted that a handful of faithless electors have broken pledges to vote with their state’s majority since the presidential election of 1796.

This is one of those items that would seem like a big deal in any other administration, but it's just part of the daily shitstorm out of this WH:

SENATE
LYNDA BLANCHARD, AMBASSADOR TO SLOVENIA: Voting 54 for and 40 against, the Senate on July 18 confirmed Lynda Blanchard of Montgomery, Ala., as U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Slovenia. Blanchard is co-founder of a real estate investment firm and a non-profit for helping impoverished children in the United States and developing countries, and she is also known for circulating murderous conspiracy theories about Bill and Hillary Clinton on Facebook. A Republican Party donor, she received her ambassadorial nomination in June 2018 after her husband, John, donated more than $500,000 to the Trump inaugural fund, according to NBC News.

A yes vote was to confirm the nominee.

If you're trying to describe a single motherfucker who is both a racist and a piece of shit, there are some basic rules to follow:

1) Motherfucker is, indeed, a compound noun, so it is a single word: "motherfucker," as is the gerund/adjective "motherfucking," as in "The president of the United States is a motherfucking racist," or "The president of the United States is a motherfucker."
2) "Racist" can be used as both a noun and an adjective, so its placement in your sentence depends on how you use it: "The motherfucking president is a racist," and "The president is a motherfucking racist" are both correct, as is "The racist president is a motherfucker."
3) "Piece of shit" is different from both "motherfucking" and "racist" because as a compound adjective used before the noun it modifies, it needs hyphenation. As a noun, "piece of shit" needs no extra hyphenation: "The president is a piece of shit" is fine, but you need to write "The piece-of-shit president is a motherfucking racist" with the hyphens indicating its role as an adjective.
4) If you want to use both "piece of shit" as a predicate adjective and "motherfucking" and "racist" as adjectives before the noun, you need a comma to separate what are called "adjectives of equal rank": "The President is a motherfucking, racist piece of shit." (Thanks, Roland99!)

If you memorize nothing else from the Mueller Report, try out these 24 words on the "no-obstruction" bleaters:

"We concluded that Congress can validly regulate the President's exercise of official duties to prohibit actions motivated by a corrupt intent to obstruct justice." Vol. II, page 169.

Then, of course, all the details where Twitler obstructed justice 10 times.

Later, we get the famous "it also does not exonerate him" line. Put that with the above sentence, and it's pretty fucking simple, even to a mouth-breathing Trumpist, though the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level Readability scale puts it at 12.69, so that could be a problem.

Clearly stated: "Drumpf is not above the law, he appears to have obstructed justice, and Congress can do something about it."

If Mueller would simply state those words in front of a camera, we could flip the entire conversation.

From the Student Press Law Center

TEXAS — An adviser at a high school in suburban Houston has left her job after the principal pulled stories, yearbook spreads and repeatedly questioned her judgment.

Katie Moreno, the media adviser at Seven Lakes High School in Katy, Texas, decided to turn in her resignation after detailing months of censorship and after what her students called “bullying” tactics from the school principal, Kerri Finnesand.

There are no robust protections against prior restraint or censorship for student journalists in Texas. Seven Lakes High School’s district policy leaves it up to individual principals to decide how to operate school publications, and this past year, Finnesand decided to enact tighter control.

Finnesand did not respond to a request for comment. The request was forwarded to Justin Graham, general counsel for the school district.

(end clipping)

Texas' legislature is mulling a "New Voices" act that would guarantee public school students' their First Amendment rights.

Here's a link for that.

I get this feeling we need someone to produce a feature-length motion picture that dramatizes the Mueller Report, both volumes, no embellishments, just the facts.

Most of the country doesn't read the great reporting done by stellar journalists at the NY Times, the Washington Post and other places that have uncovered almost everything we know about the Mueller report and other investigations into Trump's crimes. Worse, many of those non-readers also believe such great American journalists are purveyors of lies.

So give them what they want — a movie with high production values, but at low cost and released before the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 3, 2020.

Mueller, of course, will be played by DeNiro. But we need someone less comical than Alec Baldwin to play Dump Sr.

Your ideas?

From the Cedar Rapids Gazette

DES MOINES — The polls would close an hour earlier for some Iowa elections, and public universities and other state-owned buildings could not serve as satellite voting locations under legislation being considered by state lawmakers.

Sen. Roby Smith, R-Davenport, said the goal of the bill, Senate Study Bill 1241, is to strengthen state election laws to ensure Iowa elections are “safe and fair.”

SNIP

Among the bill’s provisions:
• Polls would close for all Iowa elections at 8 p.m. Currently, polls remain open for statewide elections until 9 p.m., and for some local elections the polls close at 8 p.m.;
• State-owned buildings, with the exception of county courthouses, could not serve as satellite voting locations.
• Absentee ballots would be required to be received by the auditor by Election Day. Current law allows absentee ballots to be received and counted so long as they were postmarked by the day before Election Day.
• Elections officials would be required to verify signatures on absentee ballots.
• College students would be given a form that would ask whether they plan to live in or outside Iowa upon graduation, and those who indicate they plan to live outside Iowa would be removed from the voter registration list.
• When a local entity asks voters for permission to issue bonds, ballots would be required to include information on potential increases in property taxes.

“We are making sure that elections are fair,” Smith said. “It’s the checks and balances that come with living in a constitutional republic that we have.”

especially on his record regarding education and workers' rights.

Who Is Brett Kavanaugh?
The next Supreme Court justice must not be beholden to partisan or corporate interests. But nominee Brett Kavanaugh, whose confirmation hearing begins September 4, is a Washington insider who has spent his entire life in Washington, DC, and has been tied to anti-public education and anti-labor groups for decades. If appointed, he will advance an agenda that favors the wealthy and powerful over everyday Americans.

The page at the link runs down his decisions and other activities over the past 20 years.

These are my friends and colleagues. Rogues, all of us.
(I'm fifth row down, fourth from the right.)

Source: NY Times

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has been battling brain cancer for more than a year, will no longer be treated for his condition, his family announced on Friday, a sign that the Republican war hero is most likely entering his final days.

“Last summer, Senator John McCain shared with Americans the news our family already knew: He had been diagnosed with an aggressive glioblastoma, and the prognosis was serious. In the year since, John has surpassed expectations for his survival. But the progress of disease and the inexorable advance of age render their verdict,” the family said in a statement. “With his usual strength of will, he has now chosen to discontinue medical treatment.”

Mr. McCain had been undergoing treatment since July 2017, and has been absent from Washington since December. Mr. McCain’s family has gathered in Arizona, and people close to him say his death is imminent.

From his ranch in Arizona, Mr. McCain had managed to maintain a voice in key foreign policy and military policy debates, sharply criticizing President Trump after his summit meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, an old adversary of Mr. McCain. At home, he has welcomed close friends to renew ties. But after decades as a fixture in Washington and a larger-than-life character, he had largely retreated from the public eye.



Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/us/politics/john-mccain-brain-cancer.html