Author Archives: oinsketta

from my letter to the board of postal governors re: replacing Looey DeJoy

It turns out there is currently a quorum of postal board governors, five of the seven appointed by President Biden, who can remove Trump megadonor Louis DeJoy as Postmaster. Been working on a letter, asking them, essentially, what the fuck? Here are the first few paragraphs:

Dear Governor (name):

I am writing to urge you to act to immediately to do whatever is necessary to replace Trump mega-donor Postmaster Louis DeJoy, who has effectively ended faith in the US Postal Service by severely disabling its formerly reliable service in multiple ways. It is essential that he is replaced while there is still time to protect the right to vote by mail in 2024 from Mr. DeJoy’s highly effective efforts to slow mail delivery to nullify those lawfully cast ballots.

The current Postmaster has introduced complete unreliability to a postal service that, until his stewardship, was remarkably consistent in its timely delivery of billions of items daily. I am 68 and have used the mail regularly since childhood. Until Mr. DeJoy took over the Post Office, delivery time was virtually always 3-5 days, over many decades. The US Postal Service, our democracy’s longtime dependable delivery service, relied upon by millions for checks, medications, letters, information, money orders, gifts, etc. has been under attack by the far right for years [1].

I understand that, due to Republicans blocking President Obama’s five nominees for the Board of governors that President Trump appointed seven governors and that they selected Trump nominee mega donor Louis DeJoy as Postmaster. President Biden’s appointment of five governors restored a quorum that could remove Mr. DeJoy. I don’t understand why a proven partisan like Mr. DeJoy, a man who has objectively done such damage to the Post Office, is still in position to continue crippling the business that he is CEO of.

I would greatly appreciate an explanation of why, two continued vacancies on the Board of Postal Governors aside, the present quorum of governors is allowing the clearly partisan Postmaster to exercise seemingly unchecked power as he hobbles mail delivery ahead of an election, expected to be close, that will feature millions of mail-in ballots.

As Postmaster, Mr. DeJoy has disabled dependable mail delivery and undermined Americans’ faith in the safety and efficiency of the USPS, under the color of “cost cutting” to reduce the Postal Service’s gigantic, legislatively imposed deficit [see footnote]. Reasonable hope of anything arriving by mail within any kind of predictable time frame is gone nationwide. Mr. DeJoy’s determined, successful efforts to hamper mail delivery appear to be part of the far right’s familiar, long-running attack on “the administrative state” – attack an institution, gain control over it and cripple it (see, e.g., the 118th Congress).

These are a couple of paragraphs I removed from the draft (I originally thought I was writing this letter to my senators and congressman):

It is a tribute to the power of propaganda, Rupert Murdoch, incendiary lies spread on unregulated social media, a brazenly partisan, aggressively activist Supreme Court, its 6-3 majority all members of an extreme right judicial fraternity, the deliberate destruction of norms, ethics, long held notions of civility and citizenship and the unlimited, tax-deductible dark money of America’s most reactionary oligarchs, the ravenous greed of corporate mass media, that the upcoming election, based on the relative accomplishments of each of the candidates while in office (one running, counterfactually, on denying he lost the previous election to the incumbent), can even be remotely close.

Personally, I think Biden wins by fifteen or even twenty million votes, but as history shows, the power of dead slaveholders gets the last word, with the Electoral College. Even a 2,000 vote margin, surgically spread across enough districts in a few key states can bring us, with mathematical precision, Project 2025. Heaven help any American with reservations about a dictatorship of the corporate/White Christian Nationalist right, massive deportation camps for millions and all the rest. Heaven help Rosie O’Donnell and the thousands on that enemies list with her.

Here is the footnote:

[1] I could not resist including this pertinent bit of context (even as I know some of it was finally addressed in The Postal Service Reform Act of 2022):

Committees of Correspondence were essential for organizing in the period leading up to the American Revolution, illustrating the danger this citizen ability to freely communicate poses to those who would be tyrants. The radical right’s project of undermining “the administrative state” made the USPS a logical target.

As you no doubt recall, at the end of the Bush/Cheney lame duck 109th Congress, by voice vote in the House and unanimous consent in the Senate, legislators passed the Postal Accountability Enhancement Act of 2006. The law imposed a mandate on the USPS that applies to no other business in the world, requiring it to pre-fund its pension and health insurance for retirees to the year 2056, ensuring the pension rights of postal workers not yet born while imposing ten years of pension prepayment costs, at $5,500,000,000 annually, on the Post Office, a self-sustaining government agency that gets no taxpayer funding. Suddenly there was a huge USPS deficit and an urgent need to cut costs regarding mail delivery, if not privatize the Postal Service outright.

A bit of perspective from a sports guy

As reported by Heather Cox Richardson:

Also on Saturday, top sports talk host Colin Cowherd pushed back on the idea that the trial was rigged, telling his listeners: “If everybody in your circle is a felon, maybe it’s not rigged. Maybe the world isn’t against you.” “Donald Trump is now a felon,” Cowherd said. “His campaign chairman was a felon. So is his deputy campaign manager, his personal lawyer, his chief strategist, his National Security Adviser, his Trade Advisor, his Foreign Policy Adviser, his campaign fixer, and his company CFO. They’re all felons. Judged by the company you keep. It’s a cabal of convicts.”

Cowherd went on: “[Trump’s] trying to sell me an America that doesn’t exist.” “Stop trying to sell me on ‘everything’s rigged, the country’s falling into the sea, the economy’s terrible,’” he continued. “The America that I live in is imperfect. But compared to the rest of the world, I think we’re doing okay.”

Look, it’s not as if Trump has ever been untruthful about being a serial fraud, our nation’s most prodigious public liar, a grabber of women’s genitalia, a two time defamer, a “civilly liable” rapist, a scammer, America’s most litigious man, an unabashed exploiter of the stupid and ambitious. He honestly paid $25,000,000 to settle a suit brought by the NY AG against his fraudulent “university” (weeks before being elected president via Electoral College), he allowed NYS to shut down his fraudulent charity and paid a $2,000,000 fine. He’s a human, he makes MISTAKES, he’s not perfect. To the religious Christians who support him he is, like King David, a flawed vessel, doing God’s will nonetheless.

I shouldn’t be so judgmental about the values of those who claim to love Christ yet believe a rapist’s unborn child has more rights than the rapist’s thirteen year-old victim. Love and empathy for everybody, isn’t that what Christ taught? Have a blessed day, as it is written.

Justice riddle I can’t solve

How is a judge who has already shown bias towards a criminal defendant, the former president who appointed her to her lifetime position, by unlawfully taking his case and abusing her discretion in bending over backwards to accommodate her benefactor, not easily disqualified from sitting in judgment in a criminal case against him when she has already demonstrated reversible bias in the case he brought to prevent the criminal case she is, again, the sitting judge on?

Former President Donald Trump, in possession of dozens of boxes of government documents he unlawfully retained after leaving the presidency, brought a case in federal court to block the government’s ability to touch him for the ongoing criminal act he was engaged in. He filed the case in a federal courthouse where the only sitting judge was the one he appointed after losing the election. He had picked Federalist Society endorsed Aileen Cannon because of her extreme loyalty to the cause, presumably MAGA.

His incoherent case was captioned Trump v United States. It sought a ruling that a former president is entitled to do anything he feels like doing regarding government documents, secret or not, as he leaves office and forever after. It was his Roy Cohn style attempt to go on the offensive to preempt the Espionage Act and obstruction of justice charges Jack Smith brought after massive evidence of Trump’s crimes was recovered at one of the crime scenes, the open and shut, now maddeningly stalled United States v. Trump in federal court in Florida.

The crack Trump legal team’s largely incoherent pleadings in Trump v. US, his attempt to block Smith’s case, failed to establish what Aileen Cannon‘s jurisdiction was to hear this case. Without a basis for jurisdiction, a federal judge cannot hear a case. Cannon returned the papers to Trump’s attorneys directing them to fix this fatal flaw in its paperwork, suggesting several dubious theories of jurisdiction to them.

Trump’s attorneys returned the papers without providing grounds for jurisdiction, so, instead of dismissing it, as any law-abiding judge would be obliged to do, Aileen Cannon provided a grounds for jurisdiction for team Trump herself. She would take the dubious case as an exercise of the court’s equitable jurisdiction, basically to avoid what would otherwise be a grave injustice. Then she continued with the proceedings, ruling for Trump at every turn. The only problem was that the case still had no basis in law, except for the judge’s extremely shaky claim of a certain kind of special jurisdiction.

In the end, after an appeal by the DOJ, she was forced to dismiss the case. Here is the reversal and order to dismiss Trump v US concisely described by legal experts.

The 11th Circuit found that Cannon “improperly exercised equitable jurisdiction” in hearing the case and that the entire proceeding should be dismissed. Notably, the court also found that regardless of the status of a document in question (personal or presidential), the government maintains the authority to seize it under a warrant supported by probable cause.

The panel wrote, “The law is clear. We cannot write a rule that allows any subject of a search warrant to block government investigations after the execution of the warrant. Nor can we write a rule that allows only former presidents to do so.”

source

I am left with only one question now, as Aileen Cannon continues to dither and delay, postponing hearings, inviting far right third parties to make oral arguments for Trump, refusing to gag a violence threatening, lying defendant, threatening the DOJ with sanctions, postponing trial indefinitely and holding off ruling on a long line of incoherent and frivolous motions by team Trump. It is a question I’m sure I share with tens of millions of aggravated Americans:

What the fucking fuck? I mean, seriously, Jack, Merrick, nothing can be done about this glaring appearance of demonstrated judicial bias/incompetence/disdain for law in our republic of law?

What, me worry?

It’s like this insane idiot is playing on a loop

2019 tweets after “Russiagate”, fresh as if he just truthed ‘em yesterday

Speaking of spying or treason, under the Espionage Act, which Trump has been indicted for violating, all the government has to prove is that the defendant had classified documents he was not allowed to have, that he handled them carelessly. In the ex- president, future dictator on day one’s case, while also in a position to give or sell them to the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Jared’s buddy, or perhaps a fine fellow like Vlad Putin, or Xi, or Orban. 

Add in his recently released filmed obstruction of justice, evidence in the case against him, surveillance video showing his hapless  workers moving boxes, at his direction,  into new hiding places to avoid being seen by the FBI and his lawyers who could then swear that they had never seen the documents he had them falsely declare had all been returned.  He was also trying to make sure the dozens of proofs of his crime were not seized and used as evidence against him.

The only thing he has going for him in that case is the female Alfred E. Neuman who is presiding over US v Trump, after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals forced her to dismiss Trump v US for lack of jurisdiction and abuse of discretion.

Both cases, the illegal one preemptively brought by Trump to block the government’s case against him, involve the identical fact pattern. She is one dedicated Colombian/American woman, Judge Cannon (shout out to her colleague and countryman Juan Merchan) working her ass off for the man who appointed her.   It appears she’s hoping he’ll reward her doglike loyalty with a Supreme Court seat.  She couldn’t be a more obedient lapdog to reactionary oligarchs religious and racial extremism, than Alito or Thomas. She would be at home on the John Roberts supreme Court.

She’s presiding over the stolen documents trial, for the moment, anyway, but, though she has the most brilliant legal minds at the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation advising her how not to overstep the bounds of her discretion every step of the way, she doesn’t seem to be that much sharper than her severely limited benefactor, the guilty acting criminal defendant who would be dictator, though only on day one.

We’ll see how much stronger her impulse control remains as she continues wildly lashing out at the Department of Justice on the defendant’s behalf.

Part of being a good Nazi is showing your willingness to show you have the stomach to do whatever needs to be done, and the unflagging stamina to do it by any means necessary.

Nazis demand mockery

As to why this brazen, hopped up, truth-challenged, wife blaming fascist has visible synovitis in his prosthetic left knee, this painful and intractable disease is the least I would wish on this particular powerful spineless reactionary partisan.

Excellent discussion of this lying, corrupt, compromised, misogynist fuck’s behavior, by Ari Melber.

Jamie Raskin makes irrefutable argument on required recusal of Thomas and Alito from MAGA cases

There is no hole in Raskin’s legal reasoning, as he presented it in today’s New York Times. The law is very clear, whatever a whining Alito might have to say about his wife’s indomitable flag flying habits and his own complete and obvious objectivity. We can only hope the remainder of the MAGA caucus on our highest court heed binding federal law, the Constitution, and their own precedent and force their two openly pro-insurrection colleagues to obey the law and take themselves off of pending cases that will decide the fate of insurrectionists, and quite possibly our Republic.

The only weakness in Raskin’s impeccable, beautifully written argument is that the action irrefutably required by the Constitution, explicit federal statute and Supreme Court precedent, depends on the transactional ethics of “justices” from an extremist judicial fraternity actually following the law to enforce required ethics. Several of them (Kavanaugh, Roberts — rewarded by Dubya Bush for his excellent work on the case that made him president — and Coney Barrett) were partisan actors, sent to Florida in the days leading up to Bush v. Gore, a highly dubious legal ruling decided by at least two judges (The Black Klansman being one of them) who had an ethical obligation to recuse themselves from that nakedly partisan case. The Federalist Six are lifetime political appointees who have many times over revealed their lack of integrity and their fraternity’s united contempt for precedent, norms and the rule of law.

Here’s a taste of Jamie Raskin’s op ed in today’s NY Times:

In one key 5-to-3 Supreme Court case from 2016, Williams v. Pennsylvania, Justice Anthony Kennedy explained why judicial bias is a defect of constitutional magnitude and offered specific objective standards for identifying it. Significantly, Justices Alito and Thomas dissented from the majority’s ruling.

The case concerned the bias of the chief justice of Pennsylvania, who had been involved as a prosecutor on the state’s side in an appellate death penalty case that was before him. Justice Kennedy found that the judge’s refusal to recuse himself when asked to do so violated due process. Justice Kennedy’s authoritative opinion on recusal illuminates three critical aspects of the current controversy.

First, Justice Kennedy found that the standard for recusal must be objective because it is impossible to rely on the affected judge’s introspection and subjective interpretations. The court’s objective standard requires recusal when the likelihood of bias on the part of the judge “is too high to be constitutionally tolerable,” citing an earlier case. “This objective risk of bias,” according to Justice Kennedy, “is reflected in the due process maxim that ‘no man can be a judge in his own case.’” A judge or justice can be convinced of his or her own impartiality but also completely missing what other people are seeing.

Second, the Williams majority endorsed the American Bar Association’s Model Code of Judicial Conduct as an appropriate articulation of the Madisonian standard that “no man can be a judge in his own cause.” Model Code Rule 2.11 on judicial disqualification says that a judge “shall disqualify himself or herself in any proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” This includes, illustratively, cases in which the judge “has a personal bias or prejudice concerning a party,” a married judge knows that “the judge’s spouse” is “a person who has more than a de minimis interest that could be substantially affected by the proceeding” or the judge “has made a public statement, other than in a court proceeding, judicial decision or opinion, that commits or appears to commit the judge to reach a particular result.” These model code illustrations ring a lot of bells at this moment.

Third and most important, Justice Kennedy found for the court that the failure of an objectively biased judge to recuse him- or herself is not “harmless error” just because the biased judge’s vote is not apparently determinative in the vote of a panel of judges. A biased judge contaminates the proceeding not just by the casting and tabulation of his or her own vote but by participating in the body’s collective deliberations and affecting, even subtly, other judges’ perceptions of the case.

read the rest here