Category Archives: Law and Justice

Nullifier-in-Chief

Trump’s hero, Andrew Jackson (from Trump’s first administration when he hung Old Hickory’s portrait in the Oval Office) was enraged by South Carolina’s attempted nullification of a tax bill Jackson had signed into law (South Carolina’s nullification decree was written by his vice president John C. Calhoun, “the Great Nullifier” [1]). Jackson, a famously violent psychopath, was mad enough to kill. Calhoun advanced the proposition that any state may nullify any federal law that is not in that state’s best interests. Jackson’s public response was to threaten to go to South Carolina and personally hang Calhoun. South Carolina was forced to back down and the federal government’s power was retained, for the moment. That Jackson hadn’t followed through on his threat to kill Calhoun was one of his greatest regrets as he was leaving office.

In our current Age of Incoherence, presidential nullification (if the president is Republican) — of Congressional budgets, of agencies created by Congress, of civil service and immigration law, of separation of powers, of long cherished norms and common decency — is fine, according to the Supreme Court.

It’s crucial for thinking people to understand this anti-democratic mechanism for centralizing all government control in a corporate CEO with no constraint from a board of directors and no input from stakeholders. Koch’s network of “think tanks” have coined the idiotic term Unitary Executive as shorthand for this kind of imperial presidency and it has long been their dream to have a supremely manipulable, brazen puppet in the Unitary Executive’s chair. The better to advance their long game agenda to destroy “majoritarian tyranny”.

Our democracy lurched to a jarring halt during the heat of the 2024 presidential campaign when six unelected members of an activist, far-right judicial fraternity decided Trump v. United States in Trump’s favor. The 6-3 Trump appointed majority (the result of a political deal he made with Leonard Leo/Charles Koch/Evangelical leaders, brokered by the far-right Council for National Policy) delayed hearing the case for months, putting the criminal case against Trump for his multi-pronged attempt to retain power after losing the 2020 election on ice until it was too late to prosecute him for crimes he definitely, and publicly, committed. Then they ruled in favor of Trump.

A president, they ruled, specifically for Trump’s benefit, may not be held accountable for criminal acts done while performing the core duties of his office. A convincing hypothetical for when this criminal act might be necessary was not provided. President Trump, they ruled, is presumptively immune from prosecution for all criminal acts done as president, and proof of criminal acts protected by his new “core duties” absolute immunity may not be offered in evidence in any other criminal case against him. The Fascist Six gave candidate/prospective president Trump, the proverbial carte blanche. For dessert they ruled that no presidential pardon may ever be challenged as corrupt or an abuse of power. How you feeling now, Ghislaine?

If it was illegal for Trump to create a government “department” (that power is reserved for Congress), appoint his top donor to lead it, illegally fire tens of thousands of protected civil servants without cause, and harvest sensitive, personal data on every American, see Trump v. US. If Musk’s actions were criminal, there is no questioning Trump’s pardon of Musk, if the president deems it advantageous to pardon his deeply creepy former bestie, see Trump v. US. If withholding the funds allocated by Congress, sole holders of the “power of the purse”, by the president was illegal, a flagrant violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974, see Trump v. US.

The 6-3 majority has increasing used the “Shadow Docket” (formerly reserved for extreme emergency applications) to rule in Trump’s favor whenever he needs a win. His winning percentage in those rulings is impressive, like .900. Shadow docket rulings are bare bones, no explanation for the ruling, no cases cited, no argument, the shadow docket ruling is a mere thumbs up or thumbs down.

Trump illegally fired tens of thousands of civil servants in violation of civil service law (arguably a crime for which he’s immune under Trump v. US.). A shadow docket ruling, in response to an “emergency” application by Trump — the emergency being Trump lost at the trial court and on appeal– put the question of these illegal firings on hold indefinitely. Those firings might be illegal, might be legal, but we’ll allow him to continue doing it until we have time to rule on the merits of the case.

Same deal for his day one executive order purporting to end birthright citizenship. The legal issue is not complex — the Constitution may not be changed by a scrawled Sharpie signature on an order written for the president by someone who hates immigrants and their children. But, for the meantime, pursuant to an unsigned one paragraph 6-3 shadow docket “decision”, taken without argument or any kind of briefing, the president may continue to act as though he has abolished birthright citizenship, until there can be a full argument on the merits. There is no argument on the merits that supports Trump’s illegal action, therefore, delay is the best the 6-3 majority can provide for Trump until an actual police state, and network of private “detention centers” can presumably be put into place.

The most recent 6-3 shadow docket ruling, in McMahon v. New York, allowing Trump to finish dismantling the Department of Education, is a grotesque example of Federalist Society methodology. You work backwards from the conclusion you want, focusing on technicalities, rather than the actual merits of the case or anything that would constitute a true emergency. Fill in the blanks as needed, ignore inconvenient facts, Supreme Court precedents, cite specious authorities (like the 17th century witch burner Alito cited over and over in Dobbs as the “authority” for criminalizing abortion rights [2]) glibly distinguish between substance and procedure and pull new “legal theories” out of far right “think tanks” who act as amicus curae, friends of the court.

Ignore law, and the Constitution, whenever necessary and create binding new law (see Trump v. US., Citizens United, Shelby County v. Holder, etc.) derived from the mystically divined “original intent” of the wealthy slaveholders, and other wealthy non-slaveholding white men, who compromised to come up with our constitution-based system of law. Ignore any constitutional amendments that were not part of the “original intent of the Framers” four score and seven years before the Civil War ended.

McMahon v. New York, the case brought in the name of Linda McMahon, the professional wrestling magnate/generous Trump donor who Trump appointed to dismantle the Department of Education, to allow her to continue gutting the Department of Education (most of its funding goes to poor and disabled students) was lost at the trial court level, where a hold on mass firings was imposed and that stay was affirmed by the appeals court. Time for an emergency application to the rocket docket!

Note the cunning of the unappealable Federalist Society Six. They decline to rule if the president has the power to order the gutting of a Congressionally authorized agency. They rule instead, in an unsigned one paragraph shadow docket ruling, that the practice may continue in the meantime, until they get a chance to hear arguments and rule on the merits of the case. Only Sonia Sotomayor’s dissent sheds any light into the dark, ominous shadow of the 6-3 ruling by the lockstep MAGA majority:

Justice Sonia Sotomayor did offer a sharp dissent, saying the decision is “indefensible” and that “it hands the Executive the power to repeal statutes by firing all those necessary to carry them out. The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave.”

In a press release, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said, “While today’s ruling is a significant win for students and families, it is a shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution.” source

Because Linda McMahon is a lying, unqualified political hack/Trump megadonor attached, remora-like, to Trump’s underside, let me give Justice Sotomayor the last word on this:

In her dissent, Sotomayor emphasized that, until this year, “Presidents have recognized they lack the unilateral authority to eradicate a Department that Congress has tasked with fulfilling statutory duties.” But President Donald Trump, she said, “has made clear that he intends to close the Department without Congress’s involvement.”

In its briefs at the Supreme Court, Sotomayor continued, “the Government does not defend the lawfulness of its actions” but instead “presents a grab bag of jurisdictional and remedial arguments to support its bid for emergency relief” – none of which, she said, “justifies this Court’s intervention.”

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Delay is the primary legal weapon Trump has used throughout his long career as America’s most prolific vexatious litigant/serial scofflaw. If he can get a long enough delay, that generally amounts to a victory. He has evaded legal responsibility for an impressive list of immoral and criminal acts committed over the ugly course of his long, miserable, highly parasitic life.

Right before cynical, defiant, crying, conspiracy theory spouting, self-pitying right-wing partisan Boof Kavanaugh was confirmed for his lifetime seat on the Supreme Court, days after the American Jesuits called for him to gracefully step down in the face of credible allegations of his unfitness for the Supreme Court, I did a little research on the Jesuits. Kavanaugh had gone to an elite, very expensive, ivy league prep school down the street from my aunt and uncle’s place in Maryland. I’d passed its majestic gates and seen its enormous lawn many times on visits to my relatives. Georgetown Prep is run by Jesuits. I visited their website and learned that the heart of Jesuit teaching is that the godly in us, when it recognizes the godly in another person, is the basis for the deepest love and understanding between people. This is what the Jesuits teach their students, to reach for the godly in everyone you meet.

I mentioned this beautiful idea to a Catholic friend who grunted before gently castigating my naivete. “Read the history of the Jesuits,” he said. The Jesuits were founded in Spain as “defenders of the faith”. They were the fanatical lawyers for the Spanish Inquisition who used learned, convoluted Biblical reasoning to give the green light to Inquisitors to torture heretics in the name of Jesus Christ, essentially arguing that God and His son Jesus love the agonized screams of heretics as they are burned alive. And why wouldn’t They?

[1] From The Calhoun Institute:

The Great Nullifier was dead. A man of enormous ability, Calhoun was, and perhaps still is, South Carolina’s most distinguished son. One cannot help but think that had he devoted his political skills to preserving the Union, rather than championing “state’s rights” and slavery, he would have realized his presidential ambitions and, vastly more important, spared his beloved South and the nation the horrors of civil war.

[2] from ProPublica:

Sir Matthew Hale, a 17th-century jurist who conceived the notion that husbands can’t be prosecuted for raping their wives, who sentenced women to death as “witches,” and whose misogyny stood out even in his time.

Oh, yeah:

Judicial temperament

Emil Bove III in mid Roman Salute

Here’s some interesting and important material on the “judicial temperament” of Trump’s favorite unprincipled legal Pitbull, Emil Bove III, from an op ed in today’s New York Times. Bove is about as MAGA as they come, apparently deeply drawn to the intoxicating scent given off by America’s Greatest Winner Ever, or, at least, what he can get by loyal proximity to Jeffrey Epstein’s close friend.

In 2018 a defense lawyer, speaking on behalf of a group of colleagues, including several former prosecutors, wrote to a supervisor in the U.S. attorney’s office complaining about Mr. Bove’s “unprofessional and unethical” behavior. One former assistant U.S. attorney quoted in the email said that Mr. Bove was “a prosecutor version of a drunken driver — completely out of control” and that Mr. Bove was “quick to bully and threaten.” Still another said that he “seems totally hung up on a power trip.”

That complaint was followed by an incident that appeared to vindicate these warnings, when a federal judge dismissed a prosecution supervised by Mr. Bove after a request from the U.S. attorney’s office. In the case, which involved charges that the defendant had evaded sanctions imposed on Iran, the judge found that prosecutors had attempted to bury exculpatory evidence and then lied to the court about the matter. The misconduct was so severe that the U.S. attorney’s office, even after a jury verdict in its favor, chose instead to end the prosecution.

Then a group of his colleagues complained that Mr. Bove showed uncontrolled anger and was abusive toward subordinates, and they asked that he be demoted from a supervisory role. Mr. Bove was not demoted, but he decided to leave the U.S. attorney’s office shortly after that, in 2021.

Unlike many of his colleagues in the Southern District, Mr. Bove found a soft landing not at a major New York law firm but at a midsize firm in suburban New Jersey. In short order, though, Mr. Blanche asked Mr. Bove to join him in a new venture: a tiny law firm devoted to the criminal defense of Mr. Trump.

At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Bove portrayed his decision to defend Mr. Trump as an act of courage. “All manner of evil and negative consequences were sort of foisted and thrown at Todd and I regularly as we had to make a decision, and many others didn’t have the courage to make to stand up for what was right,” he said. He added, “That was a decision to fight for what was right and fight for the rule of law.” Mr. Blanche and Mr. Bove lost Mr. Trump’s criminal case in Manhattan, but as far as their career fortunes were concerned, they won big, securing themselves their next jobs. . .

. . . Mr. Bove fired about two dozen federal prosecutors in Washington who had brought cases against Jan. 6 rioters, and he endorsed the view that these prosecutions [he himself prosecuted many of the J6 cases] were a “grave national injustice.” Asked at his hearing whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election, Mr. Bove conceded only that Mr. Biden was “certified” as the victor.

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Sound about right for a lifetime seat on the federal appeals court, one step away from replacing Alito or Thomas, after their perfectly legal (6-3, suckers!) prospective and retrospective blanket lifetime pardons from Trump? Even a flagrantly criminal pardon, sold to the highest bidder, is cool, as long as the president does it in his official chair at the Resolute desk. So saith the MAGA Six. Emil Bove III would certainly agree. That’s called judicial temperament in MAGA world.

Boof, displaying judicial temperament at his confirmation hearing

Trump 2024 sweep of swing states highly unlikely

Click on image above for updated, improved version of this post

As George Carlin pointed out years ago, obscenely wealthy white men don’t need to meet in a smoke-filled room to hatch a conspiracy, all they have to do is simply keep acting in their common interest. Kick in a tax-exempt billion here and there to buy politicians and influence public opinion and you can control government policy, pack the Supreme Court with right-wing zealots from a far-right judicial fraternity, and fund all other measures needed to consolidate your power and privilege. Use dark money to buy political attack ads and create “grassroots” groups that gather angry, ordinary Americans and televise their coordinated nationwide protests against a Black president (formerly known as mulatto, half-white, anyway) on all of the corporate news outlets simultaneously. Consolidate media so that one script of right-wing talking points is read by thousands of trusted local anchors. Blame liberals for the biased media, and for rigging elections, pedophilia, etc., and continually vilify rare left-wing billionaire George Soros. We’ve been living in an escalating cacophony of well-funded right-wing propaganda for decades, with unregulated social media, AI and finally, an emotionally unregulated, colorful maniac front man/conman for the billionaire class as the final touches. The perfect shit storm.

There were many highly suspect irregularities in the 2024 presidential election that are outlined in the video, and this analysis barely touches on the sudden drop in mail-in ballots in 2024. We learned in the weeks before the election that Harris led in swing states in the early voting (every one of which she suspiciously lost, by virtually identical margins) This thorough analysis of the several pronged GOP attack on voting does not focus on the significant drop off in mail-in ballots under Trump megadonor Postmaster Looey DeJoy, which, by itself, was capable of wiping out a Kamala Harris majority. I’ll get back to that below.

Voters Cast Fewer Mail Ballots

One of the most noticeable trends this year was the sharp decline in mail-in voting, particularly in states that enacted significant barriers to absentee ballots. These declines may also be influenced by other factors, such as the easing of the COVID-19 pandemic and the increased availability of in-person early voting options. 

Georgia, for example, passed S.B. 202 in 2021, which introduced new voter ID requirements for absentee ballot applications and return envelopes, among other provisions. As a result, mail-in voting plummeted. In 2020, over 1.3 million mail ballots were cast in Georgia – making up 26% of all ballots. In 2024, that number plummeted to 286,000 ballots, or just 5% of the total votes cast.

Similarly, Florida – a state known for its high rate of mail voting – saw a drop in absentee ballots after the passage of S.B. 90, which introduced stricter ID requirements and reduced the number of drop-off locations. In 2020, Florida had over 4.8 million mail ballots (44% of total ballots). In 2024, that number fell to just over 3 million (28%). Texas, where absentee voting laws were tightened under S.B. 1 in 2021, also saw a dramatic decrease. In 2020, nearly 1 million mail ballots were cast in Texas (9% of total ballots) compared to roughly 342,000 (3%) in 2024.

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I’ll be keeping my eye on this Rockland County case (mentioned in the video) which appears to be on a very slow track to resolving the underlying issues raised by plaintiffs who claim their votes for Harris were not counted, or were counted for Trump, in Rockland County — it’s on the calendar for August 29, 2025, as the judge considers the Rockland County Election Board’s motion to dismiss.

We are witnessing the chaos, lawlessness and terror unleashed by unqualified anti-government loyalists serving as the federal government, on behalf of a clearly unhinged CEO. The theory is to keep turning up the heat. Create enough misery, financial and health insecurity, food insecurity, stoke enough hatred, turn up the heat on the frog pot to close to boiling and the more violent among us will react with violence, at which point, endgame, welcome to the Libertarian States of Charles Koch, Jeff Bezos, Peter Theil, et al.

Speaking of unhinged, revenge-fueled maniacs, I knew it was only a matter of time until Dear Leader got back to settling his ancient grudge with his longtime enemy Rosie O’Donnell…

FBI director Kashyap Pramod Patel’s birthright citizenship appears to be airtight, at the moment, as long as he doesn’t do anything stupid or disloyal.

Loyalty to Kashyap, not the Constitution

A highly problematic report from the highly problematic New York Times:

It’s no longer a gratuitous comparison, MAGA is, in every essential way, the National Socialist German Workers Party who had such stupendous success during the early years of World War Two.  The requirement of a personal loyalty oath to your superior officer (see, e.g., Führereid or Führer Oath) flows directly from the Führerprinzip, the irrefutable idea that all authority and power flows downwards from the infallible Leader through his chosen chiefs.  It is supported by that old motto of the Third Reich, Führerworte haben Gesetzeskraft, “the Leader’s word is law” since the Leader is the ultimate expert on every subject.  

You don’t advance in this hierarchic, loyalty-based system where you may never question orders unless you accept that you’ll be punished severely if you disagree with the boss — on any grounds.   Principled dissent,  or — as some might claim — acting on conscience, or in obedience to constitutional limits of power, forbidden.  Defiance of authority is a fatal violation of the loyalty oath you are duty-bound to keep, in an authoritarian party.   If part of your duty is to faithfully tell any lie you’re required to tell (and now, as then, there is required language you must always use when asked certain questions — Sprachtregelung [1]) , then you are part of a  totalitarian regime.

Make no mistake, these grossly unqualified, radically ambitious extremists in charge of Trump’s federal government are National Socialists, our own homegrown modern American Nazis (though the FBI director’s immigrant parents both emigrated from Uganda, Kash is a birthright citizen, for the moment).   Motivated by personal ambition and a blind willingness to do whatever they’re asked to do, these guys, Kashyap, Pete, RFK Jr., Kristi, Pam, Marco, Tulsi and so on, will do whatever their Leader, and Stephen Miller, tells them to do.  The same goes for the slim majority in Congress and Charles Koch’s Supreme Court super-majority.

Right now a few Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee face an agonizing decision about who to believe and who is lying.  A whistleblower, a recently fired (for candor to the judge, as an officer of the court), highly respected, fifteen year nonpartisan employee of the DOJ who has now corroborated the main allegations of his complaint — or the president’s recent criminal lawyer and former acting AG, current nominee to a lifetime appointment to the federal appeals bench.

What we know about Emil Bove III is that he’s a fierce and unapologetic Trump loyalist who represented the president in all the weaponized criminal witch hunts against the Leader. More recently, as Acting AG in the present administration, he appeared personally in federal court to deny that there was a quid pro quo to drop federal charges against corrupt-looking NYC mayor Eric Adams in exchange for Adams giving ICE access to the sanctuary city. He also told the judge that even if there had been a quid pro quo, the court still couldn’t stop DOJ from dismissing the indictment against Adams.  Bove told the Senate Judiciary Committee, under oath, that he can’t recall if he told his lawyers to be evasive and obstructive in court or to simply ignore court deadlines and orders, like Judge Boasberg’s order not to send 230 non-criminal immigrants to a terrorist torture prison in El Salvador.  

At least one  GOP senator may have a hard choice to make, because the Boss really, really wants his bellicose myrmidon, which proved over and over that he’s willing to lie for him, on the Supreme Court when Alito or Thomas leave.   We’ll have to keep an eye on this one. 

A loyal man who never violated his oath

[1] Sprachregelung is a German language term meaning “speech code”. It refers to a formal or informal agreement, or order, that certain things should be expressed in specific ways in official communications by an organization or by a political entity. It can also cover such concepts as agreed “lines-to-take”, talking points, and the exertion of message discipline. An example came in January 1945 when Ribbentrop sent emissaries to contact the Western Allies in Sweden and Switzerland, aiming to negotiate a separate peace; they carried with them a list of Sprachregelungen to ensure they gave the same message. Wikipedia

MAGA insists on the right to be incoherent!

Jennifer Rubin used a phrase in a recent Substack piece that really puts the entire Trump political brand into a great frame. “In other words, coherent policy is impossible without an accurate understanding.” Trump reflexively makes coherent policy impossible by erasing the possibility of understanding with constant lies over mass media, threatening, bragging and bringing about the “complete and total obliteration” of fact for a large swath of Americans. 

The reason MAGA gets away with doing all these objectively incoherent things (take from the nation’s poor and elderly, while creating American carnage, to give more to Koch, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Thiel, Musk, $Trump et al) is because they “totally and completely obliterate”  any grounds for accurate understanding of the forces involved by indignantly insisting on their right to be incoherent (see, for example, Lisa Murkowski). 

Trump claims that the US “totally and completely obliterated” Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program with its illegal bombing of three sites after Israel disabled Iran’s air defenses. No discussion of war crimes or Trump’s flagrant violation of the War Powers Act because… complete and total victory! Pam Bondi answers questions, under oath, about her department’s shady, partisan, unethical behavior by bellowing about Biden’s supposedly weaponized DOJ, Benghazi, trans athletes, whatever other Fox talking point comes to mind.  I forgot until the other day that she was one of Trump’s lawyers during his second impeachment; it makes perfect sense when you hear her yelling at senators and accusing them of being partisan commie hacks.  Incoherence is MAGA’s brand, coherent policy is not a consideration, enforcing their collective will is their only priority. 

Incoherence is professional conman Trump’s natural milieu, stoking confusion, lying and attacking, while strutting in a childish display of “strength” as he threatens violence he knows the more unhinged of his cult will eagerly carry out, when the moment is right.  His constant dance of rage destroys the possibility of any productive discussion, let alone one based on an accurate understanding of discernible facts — the facts are his deadly enemy, like anyone who honestly reports them.

This is what tyrannical personalities always do.  Control the discourse by framing the terms and, in the case of a Hitler or Trump, making the frame as incoherent, chaotic, threatening, distracting, terrifying and enraging as possible.   Instead of Trump on the spot, the news cycle focused on the president forced to defend himself to Congress for his blatant violation of the War Powers Act and his war crime bomber attack on Iran, he strikes poses on TV, bragging, threatening and twisting arms to get all media attention on his arbitrary deadline for his Big, Beautiful “let’s make the poor so desperate we can provoke them to violence and have the police state we all want” bill to his Resolute desk so he can claim another big win, another 51-50 mandate. 

Tanking the economy for working people and increasing general fear and anxiety are necessary ingredients for the completion of the determined lurch toward American fascism that has been Charles Koch’s well-funded project since at least 1980. Without economic despair in Germany, no Hitler. Without similar conditions here, no American fascism. Turn up the heat enough on poor Americans, let enough of them go hungry, force them to care for elderly, sick parents at home, die of treatable diseases, use enough heavy handed Gestapo-like tactics against innocent immigrants and political opponents, openly weaponize the Department of Justice, and people will eventually begin to freak out. Time to bring in the troops, led by Mr. Insurrection Act, General Mike “Lock Her Up” Flynn.

Trump’s claim after Mueller laid out ten prosecutable instances of obstruction of justice was also “complete and total exoneration.”   The overemphasis is always a tell that he’s lying, as Jen Rubin points out, although his mouth moving is another tell.   Of course, like obliteration, there’s only one kind of exoneration, it means — beyond being found not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt — you were deemed innocent of the charges because evidence ruled out your guilt or the guilty party was found, tried and convicted of the crime you were accused of.  That we are in the hands of an insane, perpetually enraged and emotionally needy two year-old, does not speak well of our culture.

On our culture, I recommend Gabor Mate’s The Myth of Normal.  The book really lays out the toxic nature of our kind of normal. 

Trump’s perfectly normal, in this upside down world that normalizes people like him.  Hannah Arendt described Eichmann’s behavior during the Third Reich and pointed out that everything he did was perfectly normal, in Nazi Germany where an insane megalomaniac’s every spoken word was, literally, the law.   

One of the psychiatrists who examined Eichmann before the trial was asked by the court if Eichmann was sane for purposes of standing trial.  “Saner than I am, at any rate, after talking to him for two hours,” the shrink said.  Eichmann’s inability to think for himself (reflected by his inability to express himself, beyond cliches), to consider anything beyond what was “normal” at the time, is what marked him as the perfect Nazi bureaucrat.  

Here’s another perfect Nazi bureaucrat, a violent rioter tasked with helping to weaponize the government against all enemies of the Leader. You can’t make this stuff up…

Lisa Murkowski for president

Today’s profile in spinelessness goes to Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski who voted “yea” effectively casting the deciding vote for The Act [1], a bill she said repeatedly she didn’t support. A senator who raised his fist to an insurrectionist mob, Josh Hawley, can be counted on to sincerely express grave concerns about the serious damage a bill will do to working poor people in his state and then follow his conscience and vote to pass the bill, but Murkowski, it seemed (until today), still wanted to be seen as a person of independent judgment, integrity and good character. A sturdy spined, independent woman, like the senator from Maine, one of three Republicans who voted to kill the killer bill. Thank you, Susan Collins, 75% of our nation — and a legitimately frightened world — is grateful for your reality-affirming vote. As for Ms. Murkowski, read the transcript of her incredibly idiotic answer (and confession) to the accusation that she’d sold out the country for a deal that helps her state.

After she cast what amounts to the deciding vote (a vote any one of the remaining 50 Republicans could have made, of course, Lyin’ Ted, Lindsey, Ron Johnson from Wisconsin, Joni Ernst) in favor of a brutally unfair budget that punishes the poor and vulnerable to enrich the already obscenely rich, she was asked by NBC reporter Ryan Nobles what her response was to senator Rand Paul’s statement that she’d bailed out Alaska at the expense of the country:

“Oh my God… (then there was a long silence, and a long glare from Murkowski, then the reporter clarified that Paul had said that, repeated it, and asked for her response) …

“… my response is… I have an obligation to the people of the state of Alaska and I live up to that every single day. I fight for my state’s interests and I make sure that Alaskans are understood. I work hard to take care of the state that has more unique … situations … more unique people, and it’s just different. And so, when people suggest that federal dollars go to one of our fifty states in a quote “bail out”, I find that offensive. I advocated for my state’s interests, I will continue to do that and I make no excuses for doing that.

“Do I like this bill? No, because I tried to take care of my state but I know, I know that in many parts of the country there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill. I don’t like that. I don’t like… the fact… that we moved to an artificial deadline, an artificial time line to produce something to meet a deadline, rather than to actually try to produce the best bill for the country. But when I saw the direction it was going, you can either say ‘I don’t like it’ and not try to help my state, or you can roll up your sleeves… [and lick the Leader’s ‘ring’, as required, and get the best possible deal in exchange for my vote]”

“Do I like this bill? No, because I tried to take care of my state but I know, I know that in many parts of the country there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill. I don’t like that.”

“In many parts of the country there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill.”

And Lisa Murkowski doesn’t like that, not at all. Also, she didn’t like the artificial emergency and the pressure to pass the bill before the Fourth of July, didn’t like any of that at all. There hadn’t been time to fully debate the bill and make the best amendments to it, or even to read the final version in full. She didn’t like that. At the same time, when the moment came, she rightfully considered only the best quid pro quo she could get to make sure Alaskans, unique among the citizens of all fifty states, were not among those Americans who were “not going to be advantaged by this bill.”

”But when I saw the direction it was going, you can either say ‘I don’t like it’ and not try to help my state, or you can roll up your sleeves… [and obey the Leader’s will, as required]”

No, Lisa. You roll up your sleeves, vote “nay” and get back to work drafting a better bill if you believe millions of Americans will “not be advantaged by” a viciously cruel bill. All it would have taken to defeat “the direction it was going” was to say no to the naked quid pro quo (which you admitted to in your answer, fool) and vote to return the bill for further revision.

Imagine a person as dumb as a pile of shit. Ask it to respond to a critical comment about how it made a special deal that sold out the American people. I expect its answer would be something like “Oh my God … of course I made a special deal that sold out the American people, because I work for Alaska, which is unique, and not like the rest of those Americans who are, unfortunately, not going to be advantaged by this bill.”

Hard to ignore the smell of the thing as it gives its idiotic response.

It’s now time to call Congress members as this highly toxic shit sandwich heads back to the House and root for the dysfunction of the slim MAGA House majority and the political genius of one of Trump’s most loyal and delusional lackeys, MAGA Mike Johnson. I’ve got to write a letter to House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, waiting to respond at a time and place of his choosing, tomorrow, remind me.

[1] Chuck Schumer officially got the name of the One Big, Beautiful Bill, an abomination and obscenity by any name, changed, to The Act. Small, symbolic victory, I suppose.

Echoes of a horrifying chapter of history

I recently watched an excellent documentary, Facing Tyranny, on PBS [1], about one of my heroes, Hannah Arendt. Arendt was a brilliant, fearless thinker and writer who was universally attacked for her frankness and irony in assessing Adolf Eichmann’s actual role in the industrialized mass murder of European Jewry (amidst the mass murder, and general slaughter, of tens of millions of others).

Eichmann in Jerusalem, Arendt’s account of the Eichmann trial, a masterpiece, was condemned and dismissed by critics from every part of the political spectrum. Arendt commented that she understood, in hindsight, that her ironic tone about Nazi horrors (and Jewish complicity in some cases) that the public was just confronting graphically for the first time, may have led to much of the criticism. The public, she now understood, had not been ready for her ironic tone in laying out such horrors. She took a drag on her cigarette, and said “if I had it to do over again, I’d have done it the same way.” My hero.

In a traumatized society obedient to the will of a madman, where führerwortes haben gesetzeskraft (the Leader’s word has the force of law) and every one of Hitler’s brain farts immediately became the law of Germany, an unquestioningly obedient, ambitious government worker like Eichmann was completely unremarkable.

Arendt noted that Eichmann’s inability to speak with any degree of coherence, outside of defending his duty to obey the laws foaming out of the Leader’s rabid mouth, reflected his inability to think. Remove critical thinking and every monster you can imagine springs to life. Society can then be dominated by the indecent, monstrous will of unreasoning, calculating, all-powerful psychopaths.

The evil done by these evil fucks is rendered banal by the lack of thought with which they commit unspeakable atrocities and their absence of awareness and conscience as they commit their, now legal, even praiseworthy, crimes. A guy like Eichmann, Arendt noted, was simply an efficient, hard-working, unthinking member of a bureaucratic lynch mob, not the demonic architect of mass murder the Israeli prosecutor made him out to be. People tried to rough Arendt up over that banality of evil idea. Good luck, I say, take a glance around Congress.

The Senate is currently debating a big, sadistic, hideously “beautiful” bill (beautiful only for our 801 billionaires, their cumulative $6,500,000,000,000 and their corporate alter egos) that will pay for the billionaires’ massive tax cuts by removing health care from millions of working, elderly and disabled Americans and starving poor children by the millions while closing rural hospitals and nursing homes, increasing taxes on the lowest earners by an audacious 73% as it drastically cuts taxes on the wealthiest, while giving fossil fuel climate deniers (currently already subsidized $700,000,000,000 annually) infinitely more profit by squashing cheaper, sustainable American renewable energy and allowing Koch and friends to drastically raise energy prices nationwide. Oh yeah, and since the BBB will “pay for itself” by cutting the social safety net half of Americans rely on, we also need to raise the debt ceiling by $5,000,000,000,000.

There is so much ugliness in the Big Beautiful Bill (example of Orwell’s Newspeak [2], like “Truth Social”) it’s impossible to know or itemize all of it. Why would a faithful follower of Jesus Christ want to see millions of American children and old people go to bed hungry, lose health care, die unnecessary deaths in the richest country in the world? How would Jesus feel about giving more to the already obscenely rich while the poor, and their children, are immiserated further? Christian MAGA supporters will not ever confront this clear moral question, which their MAGA pastors and ministers will proactively protect them from ever asking.

Remember, MAGA would not be in power without the organized support of millions of Evangelical Christians and radically reactionary Catholics (think Bill Barr, Leonard Leo, Sammy the Bull Alito, Clarence and Ginny Thomas). How did those two groups of Christians do in Germany during the rise of the New York Times’ Mr. Hitler?

I stumbled on a Chris Hedges video discussing the work of Eric Voegelin, who studied the Nazi era (after running for his life from the Nazis in 1938) and made certain chilling connections, which are summarized in this bit from a search for Voegelin’s Hitler and the Germans.

Responding to publications on National Socialist Germany, Eric Voegelin [in Hilter and the Germans] discusses the historian Percy Schramm’s “Anatomy of a Dictator,” along with studies of the churches and the legal profession. His inquiry uncovers a historiography that was substantially unhistoric: a German Evangelical Church that misinterpreted the Gospel, a German Catholic Church that denied universal humanity, and a legal process enmeshed in criminal homicide.

a German Evangelical Church that misinterpreted the Gospel, a German Catholic Church that denied universal humanity, and a legal process enmeshed in criminal homicide.

Here we have an American Evangelical Church whose leaders embrace a radically strange interpretation of the teachings of their Savior in flagrant conflict with those teachings, a radicalized American Catholic Church whose political leadership denies the humanity of girls and women who are rape victims (in the name of protecting the sacred fetus of the rapist), and a legal profession that… well, in Germany the doctors were the first professional group to voluntarily Nazify — being an “Aryan” and Nazi party membership were required to practice medicine in Hitler’s Germany — and, most certainly, the fucking lawyers were the second professional group to become loyal Hitlerites.

The horror, the horror. Makes me want to holler.

[1] Public Broadcasting, of course, is a deadly enemy to Trumpworld. How dare they make documentaries about radical left antisemitic Jews like Hannah Arendt? They harm innocent young white Christian children by recounting tired stories of so-called racism, slavery, and centuries of terrorism against Blacks. They don’t hate and reject gay people, as Jesus urged every Christian to do. They oppose book banning, book burning, they challenge propaganda itself sometimes! DEFUND PBS! (But watch the Arendt documentary first).

[2] In 1984, Orwell introduced the concept of Newspeak, a controlled language designed to eliminate any possibility of rebellious thoughts. By systematically reducing vocabulary, the ruling Party ensured that individuals could not even conceive of dissent, let alone articulate it. Words like “doubleplusgood” replaced more complex expressions, stripping language of nuance and ambiguity.

Newspeak operates on the principle that if certain words do not exist, the concepts they represent cannot be thought about. The language was deliberately constructed to remove any potential for subversive thought, thereby eliminating free will at the linguistic level. The ultimate goal? To make independent thinking impossible by restructuring language to serve only the Party’s ideological needs. By shrinking the range of thought through a diminishing vocabulary, Orwell emphasized how linguistic engineering could erode cognitive freedom. source

Election (fraud) Denial

Trump and the rightwing propaganda machine have done such a good, proactive, preemptive job of accusing Democrats of the crimes they themselves commit (weaponizing the DOJ, partisan hack activist judges, etc.) that it’s unthinkable for a Democrat to point out how fossil fuel billionaire Koch and Co. (with the help of Putin, Musk, Thiel, et al) almost certainly rigged the mathematically impossible 2024 election results.

These super-wealthy fascists were undoubtedly aided by harsh voter suppression laws in many states, (brought to you by a lying John Roberts/Federalist Society/Kochtopus 5-4 decision overruling a 98-0 Senate reauthorization of the Voting Rights Act).  Questioning the legitimacy of Trump’s highly improbable “mandate” (he won every swing state, a rare feat, even states otherwise swept by Democrats, with virtually identical margins, just out of automatic recount range, flipping 88 strategic counties blue to red while none flipped the other way) would make the Democrats look like whining, pouting, evidence-denying, democracy rejecting “election deniers” like Kari Lake, Trump and co.   

I find this short series very convincing, but then again, I can’t find an explanation for the 20,000,000 vote drop off in mail-in ballots (after mail-in voting increased in the 8 straight elections), except as the nefarious plan of a shameless, pugnacious Trump megadonor postmaster who retired, job done, shortly after the election.   

Let me know what you think, and share this with your group, see what they think.

Emil Bove III

Emil Bove, former Trump criminal lawyer [1], is on Trump’s short list to replace Samuel Alito, once Bove has been appointed to, and served briefly on, the federal appeals court. Bove was the acting head of the DOJ who dismissed the Eric Adams indictment and sought to keep the charges hanging over Adams’ head by dismissing the case “without prejudice” (meaning, he could prosecute at will in the future). Bove was doing this to advance Trump/Miller’s draconian deportation program by ensuring that NYC mayor Adams allowed ICE to operate freely in NYC, something Adams agreed to as part of a quid pro quo to escape prosecution for a variety of felonies.

Bove was outraged at the suggestion of a quid pro quo, as he told the judge. He also told the judge that even it was a quid pro quo, the judge still couldn’t stop DOJ from dismissing the case. Of course, after the quid pro quo was announced by Bove, U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon and six other federal prosecutors resigned in protest. Four deputy mayors in Adams’ administration also resigned.

Bove sent a lawyer to federal court in Maryland to stonewall the judge (one of the many currently sued on Trump’s behalf by rabid AG Pam Bondi’s DOJ) in the Abrego Garcia abduction/rendition to El Salvador prison for terrorists case. Erez Reuveni, experienced, recently promoted DOJ lawyer, who had argued Trump’s cases zealously in the Orange Polyp’s first term, was, as his duty to the Constitution required, candid with the court.

That attorney, former DOJ assistant director in the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation, Erez Reuveni, (I applauded the candor he was fired for at the time) is now a whistleblower, issuing a detailed warning about the corrupt orders he was given (lie to the court) by Bove, supremely loyal Nazi fuck and former Trump criminal lawyer that Trump is trying to ram on to the federal appeals court.

Bove stonewalled Congress the other day as he claimed not to recall telling Reuveni and a room full of DOJ lawyers to be ready to say “fuck you” to federal judges. “I don’t recall” said Bove, any time he was pressed, as every one of these carefully coached creeps does when a truthful answer would tank their nomination.

Reuveni’s whistleblower complaint begins:

Between March 14, 2025, and April 5, 2025, Mr. Reuveni, almost immediately after receiving notice of his promotion to serve as Acting Deputy Director of OIL, became aware of the plans of DOJ leadership to resist court orders that would impede potentially illegal efforts to deport noncitizens, and further became aware of the details to execute those plans. source

Here’s the money shot, the scene Bove claims not to recall:

Like so many other Trump Derangement Syndrome leftie commie fascist weirdos, anyone in MAGA world who does not line up to loyally do whatever they are asked, fired DOJ attorney Erez Reuveni was at one time, not long ago, a warrior for the mad president. Check this out.

It is a reasonable question to ask of Bove, if you have so little recall of what you said as acting head of the DOJ, since you can’t remember what every other lawyer in that suddenly silent room heard you say, should you be a fucking judge in the first place, you lying sack of sanctimonious shit?

And, since we live in a world of wrap around propaganda, here’s Rupert Murdoch, doing his part.  Language matters. Trump “reveals”…

[1] Wikipedia: In September 2023, he became a partner at Blanche Law, a law firm founded by Todd Blanche. Days later, Bove joined Donald Trump‘s criminal defense team.[12] In the state court criminal trial of Trump in New York, he was second chair to Blanche on Trump’s defense team.[18][19] Bove represented Trump in the federal classified documents and election obstruction cases.[20]

Government is not a fucking business

Try for a moment to forget that we are currently being bombarded by actual tax-payer funded advertisements made by sitting federal officials (Gabbard, Bondi, et al), shameless loyalists gushing over the great accomplishments of their Dear Leader. Robert Reich breaks down the simplistic, criminally cynical far-right claim that the government (whose purpose in a democracy is to promote the welfare of all citizens) must be run like a corporation (a judicially created “person”, a psychopath of eternal life with only one goal — monetary profit).

These Nazi fucks (right-wing billionaires and their “apolitical” corporate allies), if their claim is to be believed, and they are consistent, would consider it prudent for a democratic government to declare bankruptcy, like any other failing business, if democratic government faces the fate of the rest of Trump’s highly successful business ventures.

If I’m lying may my golden Trump sneakers get lost in the mail, like my ballot, my Trump bible, $Trump crypto, Trump NFTs and gold sprayed (in America) Trump phone, proudly made in the American minds of MAGA (all products are made in USA, even if “physically” made in China). USA! USA!!! We’re not a laughingstock anymore! We’re a great brand.