Constitutional Issues – Page 2

The Pro-Abortion Political Movement

The Daily Escape:

Artichoke blossom, Imperial County, CA – June 2024 photo by Paulette Donnellon

The repealing of Roe v. Wade via the Dobbs decision has helped create a dynamic new political movement: A revolt of millions of Americans (predominantly women) who think government has no business inserting itself into a woman’s personal decisions. This is going to be an important factor in the 2024 elections as it was in 2022.

The Economist says that only:

“….ten thousand women eligible to vote in this November’s elections were born before women won the right to vote. In the century since then, American women have steadily accumulated rights. In the 1960s the contraceptive pill let women choose how many children they had. In the 1970s no-fault divorce laws and Roe v Wade gave women more choices that had been denied to their mothers. This progress seemed irreversible, and was often taken for granted.”

Then it was time for the Trump-appointed Conservative Supreme Court majority to do what it had been hired to do: Overturn a woman’s right to an abortion. More from The Economist:

“A third of American women aged 15-49 now live in states where abortion is either illegal or impossibly restricted.”

These people are leading the biggest voter rebellion since the Tea Party movement in 2009.

Surprisingly, the number of abortions in the US has risen slightly since the Court’s decision, mostly due to the availability of the drug Mifepristone, which can be prescribed by mail. Medication abortions now account for about 63 percent of pregnancy terminations nationwide. The legality of Mifepristone is also currently under review by the same six Conservative justices. That decision could come down as early as today, and certainly by early July.

What a country! Americans have grown used to the idea that every spring, we wait for 9 unelected government officials with lifetime jobs to tell us what kind of country we’re going to live in. Elections should serve this purpose, and we the people should be doing the telling.

But that revolution remains in our future. What is part of our present is an attempt by House Democrats to force a vote on codifying the right to birth control access nationwide. From the NYT: (brackets by Wrongo):

“The [Democrat’s] maneuver, through a procedural move known as a discharge petition, is all but certain to fail for lack of Republican support, but that is by design. It is part of a broad election-year push by Democrats to highlight Republicans’ record of opposing abortion rights and other reproductive health choices that voters fear will be stripped away following the fall of Roe v. Wade.”

The Senate Democrats also plan to force a vote on an identical contraceptive access bill, which once again, Republicans are expected to block. This coordinated push shows that Democrats regard access to abortion and contraception options as a key issue that will show a contrast with Republicans this fall.

We’ve seen that the Dobbs decision caused an immediate political reaction. Six states have held referendums on abortion, and in all six, the abortion rights side prevailed. A potential problem for anti-abortion Republicans is that referendums to legalize abortion could be on the ballot in up to 16 more states.

Abortion rights campaigners already have enough signatures to get on the ballot in a few states, including Florida. That state is crucial because it was the abortion destination for many women in the South until May 1st, when it outlawed most abortions after six weeks. If the Florida initiative passes, abortion will be legalized up to the point of viability, roughly 24 weeks. Democrats vainly hope the issue has put Florida in play in the presidential election, although it must pass by 60% to become law. It can easily impact the elections in Arizona and other states. More:

“In only two of the six states that have held referendums, California and Vermont, did the abortion-rights side get such a large share. When Michigan held its referendum in 2022, 57% voted in favor of protecting abortion even though 63% broadly supported the procedure, a rate similar to Floridians.”

That means we’re in the middle of a vast political battle that parallels the presidential battle. Outside groups are pouring tens of millions of dollars into competitive House districts to amplify the message. The main super PAC supporting House Democrats last month announced a new $100 million fund focusing on abortion rights in swing districts.

And the group Americans for Contraception plans to spend more than $7 million on television and digital ads, targeting Republicans in the Senate who vote against the bill and House members who do not sign the petition.

A few voters could be pulled away from the Republicans. More from The Economist: (emphasis by Wrongo):

“The midterm elections in 2022 hinted at that….Although only 14% of registered Republican voters were upset about the Dobbs ruling, a quarter of that group voted for a Democrat in their House district…. Republicans and independents who saw abortion as an important issue were more likely to vote for Democrats in 2022 than two years earlier.”

That equals 3.5% of Republicans, and may be among the reasons a predicted “red wave” lifting Republican candidates failed to appear in 2022.

Republicans are in a bind on reproductive rights. They can’t reconcile their Party’s hard-line policies on women’s health and they’re out of step with the vast majority of the country. Despite that, they continue to try to tuck anti-abortion policies into pending legislation.

However the 2024 elections pan out, the anti-Dobbs movement represents something different in US politics. Unlike the Republicans, it isn’t a group of keyboard warriors vying for attention or grift online. Instead it’s people giving up their weekends and evenings to try to persuade their neighbors about an idea they hold deeply.

And it isn’t simply a political cause about a single issue. It’s many issues: The right to live, the right to privacy for medical procedures, the right to not be forced by the state to undergo unnecessary physical or mental injury.

Like most successful revolutions, it’s participatory and local. It is how democracy in America was designed to work. Help it succeed in November!

Democrats’ Grasp On Political Power Is Slipping

The Daily Escape:

Shiprock reflection, Shiprock, NM – May 2024 photo by Alex Spahn

Hope that everyone had a relaxing Memorial Day break. Despite our relaxing, time continued to march forward. And now some pundits are saying that America has entered the stretch run to the November presidential election. To a large extent, they’re correct. There’s only four months until early voting begins.

And its not just Trump we should be worrying about. At the moment, the Senate’s electoral map for November is grim for Democrats. They are certain to lose West Virginia, and the nine most competitive Senate races feature eight Democratic incumbents and Ted Cruz. And despite having a great Democrat (Colin Allred) running against Cruz, Texas may be the least likely to flip of those nine seats. So the odds on that are as long as drawing to an inside straight.

This brings up just how stacked against Democrats our Constitutional Republic has become. Fifteen years from now, states with 30% of the nation’s population will control 70% of the Senate’s seats. And the Senate is a legislative body where you need 60% of the votes (with certain exceptions) to bring a bill to the floor.

The difficult Senate map for 2024 means it is more likely than not that we may be kissing goodbye to adding additional progressive justices to the Supreme Court for some time, since a Republican-controlled Senate is unlikely to ever confirm a Biden nominee. (That’s assuming Biden wins in the fall.)

And it’s become clear that the Supreme Court as currently constituted is completely unfriendly to making voting easy for the masses. And they’re doing that in support of the Republican agenda. As Mark Jacob reminds us:

“The court has made a series of key rulings in recent decades that have handed Republicans major advantages, including:

The Bush v. Gore decision to block a recount in Florida in 2000 and award George W. Bush the presidency

The Citizens United ruling of 2010 that was rocket fuel for the political influence of wealthy donors and corporations

A 2013 ruling written by Chief Justice John Roberts that gutted the Voting Rights Act and cleared the way for voter suppression laws

A 2019 pro-gerrymandering ruling also written by Roberts that let political parties draw election maps to their unfair advantage. (The court takes the position that it can strike down gerrymandering if it’s done for racially discriminatory reasons rather than partisan ones….”

Back in the day, we all wanted to believe that the Supreme Court was MOSTLY unbiased and above the political fray. We’re now painfully aware that this “pillar” of justice is simply a facade. Alito and Thomas are doing whatever they please.

Most recently, as Democracy Docket reported, the Supreme Court ruled that South Carolina’s congressional map is not a racial gerrymander, reversing a lower court decision that had earlier struck down the same map. That decision will result in worse representation for South Carolina’s Black voters. This is in stark contrast with a Louisiana district court’s decision in which the state’s white voters were able to get a racially compliant map struck down as a racial gerrymander, meaning that it too will now favor White representation for a Louisiana district.

This now means that the Supremes have kneecapped the ability of plaintiffs either to prove racial bias or to change gerrymandered districts on the basis of partisanship. Black voters are reaping what was sowed by Chief Justice John Roberts in his 2013 opinion gutting the Voting Rights Act. The president of the South Carolina NAACP, Brenda C. Murphy, said about Alito’s decision against South Carolina’s map:

“The Supreme Court has failed. The American people’s voting rights have taken another gut punch, and the future of democracy in South Carolina is dangling by a thread,”

As if this isn’t bad enough, Matt Cohen, also of Democracy Docket, reports on yet another Right-wing group organizing to disrupt the national election this fall. The group is called United Sovereign Americans (USA). They’re planning a series of lawsuits aimed at upending the voting process in a handful of states by claiming that non-citizens are voting in the federal election. Forget that there is nearly zero evidence for the claim, and that non-citizen voting is already forbidden by federal law.

In early March, United Sovereign Americans filed a lawsuit in Maryland challenging the state’s voter roll maintenance practices and other election procedures. The group says they plan to file similar lawsuits in at least nine states challenging election administration and voting laws. And although a federal judge tossed out the Maryland lawsuit, the group recently filed an appeal to the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals.

The crux of USA’s argument is that inaccurate voter rolls lead to illegally cast votes, a civil rights violation because the US Constitution guarantees that right. The group’s claim is that when an election is marred by hundreds of thousands of illegal votes, it dilutes the power of lawful votes and violates the civil rights of US citizens.

This is a legal longshot. So the group is also building a grassroots movement that, much like in 2020 and 2022, is radicalizing a large group of people across the country to become election vigilantes. Their job is to swamp local election officials with false claims in an effort to derail current election policies in various states.

Finally, we turn to that bastion of democracy, Texas. The Texas Tribune reports that:

“Republican Party of Texas delegates voted Saturday on a platform that called for new laws to require the Bible to be taught in public schools and a constitutional amendment that would require statewide elected leaders to win the popular vote in a majority of Texas counties.

Other proposed planks of the 50-page platform included proclamations that “abortion is not healthcare it is homicide”; that gender-transition treatment for children is “child abuse”; calls to reverse recent name changes to military bases and “publicly honor the southern heroes”; support for declaring gold and silver as legal tender; and demands that the US government disclose “all pertinent information and knowledge” of UFOs.”

How is it that these Republicans are taken seriously as politicians in a state as diverse as Texas? Apparently, they don’t trust their ability to keep winning statewide elections, even if it’s hard to see when (or if) Texas may become a purple or blue state.

Trump has shown America that there really aren’t any political constraints. Add to that the removal by the Supremes of several of the real constraints we did enjoy. What’s left is that state political parties can do just about anything to keep themselves in power.

Texas shows that. State electoral colleges? Sure. Gerrymandering where you can lose 57-43 and still win? Sure. Make voting a pain in the ass for voters you don’t want to see vote? Sure.

With the rules as they are, there is little recourse. But if Dems say “Court Reform” every time they’re in front of a camera, in a few years, the message might start to gain adherents.

Americans Have No Idea How Deep Our Illiberal Roots Are

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Avon Beach, NC – May 2024 photo by Donna Cartwright Hayden

Discussions about “Illiberalism” are suddenly popping up in Wrongo’s daily feeds from many sources. Several are reviews of a book (“Illiberal America”) by Steven Hahn, an NYU professor of history.

Hahn also wrote an article in Saturday’s NYT that condenses the arguments in his book. In his column, “The Deep, Tangled Roots of American Illiberalism”, Hahn argues that American illiberalism is not a mere reaction to a dominant tradition of freedom and individual rights, but a philosophy that has long competed against liberalism for primacy in American politics.

David Leonhardt in a NYT book review of Hahn’s book says:

“This country’s liberal tradition is certainly strong. It explains the democratic radicalism of the American Revolution, the relative openness of the US immigration system in the early 19th century and the inclusiveness of the nation’s public education system in the early 20th century.”

A short version of Hahn’s thesis is that the US has long been deeply reactionary and it’s amazing we’ve gotten as far as we have without a challenge to American democracy prior to Trump. Here’s a excerpt of Hahn’s view of our history:

“Back in the 1830s, Alexis de Tocqueville, in “Democracy in America,” glimpsed the illiberal currents that already entangled the country’s politics. While he marveled at the “equality of conditions,” the fluidity of social life and the strength of republican institutions, he also worried about the “omnipotence of the majority.”

“What I find most repulsive in America is not the extreme freedom reigning there,” Tocqueville wrote, “but the shortage of guarantees against tyranny.” He pointed to communities “taking justice into their own hands,” and warned that “associations of plain citizens can compose very rich, influential, and powerful bodies, in other words, aristocratic bodies.” Lamenting their intellectual conformity, Tocqueville believed that if Americans ever gave up republican government, “they will pass rapidly on to despotism,” restricting “the sphere of political rights, taking some of them away in order to entrust them to a single man.”

The slide toward despotism that Tocqueville feared may be well underway, whatever the election’s outcome. Even if they try to fool themselves into thinking that Mr. Trump won’t follow through, millions of voters seem ready to entrust their rights to “a single man” who has announced his intent to use autocratic powers for retribution, repression, expulsion and misogyny.

Only by recognizing what we’re up against can we mount an effective campaign to protect our democracy, leaning on the important political struggles — abolitionism, antimonopoly, social democracy, human rights, civil rights, feminism — that have challenged illiberalism in the past and offer the vision and political pathways to guide us in the future.

Our biggest mistake would be to believe that we’re watching an exceptional departure in the country’s history. Because from the first, Mr. Trump has tapped into deep and ever-expanding illiberal roots. Illiberalism’s history is America’s history.”

America remains a self-deluded country since many Americans have no idea just how illiberal they are, or how deep those illiberal roots run. Today’s college students are living through the consequences of illiberalism. Educational institutions with DEI programs and cultural studies majors have no qualms about siccing the police on their students.

It’s no surprise that university administrators don’t observe the liberal tolerance they espouse in their curricula. But what’s less clear is American colleges and universities exist as training grounds for lawyers, physicians, future Wall Street geniuses and other legs in the stool of elitism. These students are supposed to be compliant because those professions require it.

Time to wake up America! In a few months we’re holding a presidential election in which an illiberal ethnonationalist will stoke white fear of replacement while his Party exploits anti-antisemitism to chip away at our tenuous liberal coalition. There’s danger, and we have little time left to get it right.

No matter how much violence a Trump loss unleashes it’ll pale in comparison to the violence that will come under a Trump dictatorship.

To help you wake up, watch and listen to Van Halen’s “Ballot Or The Bullet” from their 1998 album “Van Halen III”. The song’s title comes from a 1964 speech by Malcolm X who, while speaking about the civil rights struggle, said “We’re going to be forced either to use the ballot or the bullet.”

Van Halen wasn’t a political band, but they appropriated Malcolm X’s speech for this tune:

Also, Eddie Van Halen played slide guitar on this, a rarity.

Sample Lyrics:

Give me liberty or give me death
No truer words have ever been said
Well are you prepared for your very last breath?
Don’t you dare start what you cannot finish
So when we face, face the adversary
No longer are we the minority

When a house is divided, it just will not stand
Once it’s decided, a line drawn in the sand

Ah, the ballot or the bullet
The choice is up to you
The ballot or the bullet
Tell me what you gonna do
The sword or the pen
Can’t be held by the same hand

More On The Campus Protests

The Daily Escape:

Japanese Garden, Portland, OR – April 2024 photo via The Oregonian

On Tuesday night, hundreds of NYPD officers entered Columbia University in riot gear, one night after students occupied the University’s Hamilton Hall.

And in a “you can’t make this s__t up” moment, Tuesday was exactly 56 years to the day when police cleared Hamilton Hall of Vietnam War protestors in 1968. The new clear out happened 13 days after students built their encampment and lit the match that started a student movement against the war in Gaza on college campuses nationwide.

The police crackdown at Columbia isn’t an isolated event. There was a round of arrests at City College in Harlem (NY). And police responded to clashes between pro-Palestinian and counter-protesters at UCLA. On Monday, demonstrators at The New School took over Parsons School of Design. Meanwhile, police cleared an encampment at Yale. Nationwide, more than 1,000 students have been taken into police custody since the original encampment began at Columbia on April 18.

From John Dean:

“More than four dozen colleges now have active protests against . . . against what? Signs demand an end to genocide in Gaza, disinvestment from Israel, and an end of US support for Israel. But Jewish students are also being attacked. For some protestors, Palestinians are the people fighting for freedom, and the Jews are the oppressors.”

As the protests continue, the story grows ever more complicated. House Republicans plan a series of hearings into what they are characterizing as antisemitism on college campuses. House Speaker Mike Johnson announced the hearings and also threatened the loss of federal funding:

“Over the last few weeks, we’ve seen absolute lawlessness and chaos on college and university campuses across America. It’s not right, and everybody in this country knows it. If they don’t correct this quickly, you will see Congress respond in time, you’re gonna see funding sources begin to dry up. You’re gonna see every level of accountability that we can muster.”

Columbia’s leadership took the Republicans at their word. They invited the NYPD to campus to remove students from Hamilton Hall with force.

Before the Columbia students occupied Hamilton Hall and got ejected, and before the UCLA demonstrating groups decided to fight each other, these protests seemed familiar in that they were an echo of the Occupy Movement in 2012. Back then, the vast majority of the violence was caused by police, much like it is today, But it isn’t clear that today’s encampments have sufficient size or strength to achieve their goals. They are certainly not of the scale of 2012’s Occupy, let alone the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

If the past tells us anything, we should be skeptical that these protests will actually lead anywhere. The 1968 Vietnam protests eventually fizzled out, particularly when it became clear that students would be shot and killed by police and the National Guard. Occupy ended with a 17-city crackdown by police that happened just two months after Occupy began. The George Floyd protests fizzled out, but not before significant property damage and police crackdowns.

One thing is very clear: The speed with which campus protestors have embraced Palestine is remarkable. These students have never shown interest in the slaughter of Muslim children in Syria, or women and teenage girls in Iran. To Wrongo’s knowledge, none have protested against genocide in Darfur. Is now what we’re seeing the power of TikTok to feed highly curated information to them?

Some might say that the students are expressing normal human empathy, possibly with a touch of ignorance regarding the history of the Palestinians and the Israelis. And certainly with a definite lack of understanding of the limits of free speech in America. Free speech does not permit extended protests on private property.

The purpose of free speech is the absolute freedom to speak your mind. The First Amendment does not grant the right for a person or group to occupy property that doesn’t belong to them. Freedom of speech does not include resisting arrest. Would any of us say that freedom of speech allows protesters to occupy their home? Free speech doesn’t allow making threats to kill a person or members of a group.

In addition to the desire to draw attention to the Gaza carnage, the campus protests seem to be about the role of the US government and American companies supporting Israel. Doesn’t that make their protests difficult to understand? Israel has been a US ally for more than 70 years. In that time, it hasn’t been able to defend itself without substantial US aid. Most Israeli aircraft bombing Gaza targets today are American-made.

Does our support for Israel make the US complicit in the Israeli military action in Gaza? Of course, but should the US now end that support? If colleges divest from Israel, would that help Palestinians? Hard to say, but it’s unlikely to cause any meaningful change.

Wrongo doesn’t think the students’ problems are with Israel the country or necessarily, with the Israeli people. Most of the heat is reserved for actions by Bibi, his cronies and the IDF. From The Economist:

“Two areas where the IDF has fallen short are its responsibilities as an occupying power and its duty to minimize civilian deaths. Some 1.7m people have been displaced; many lack adequate food, water or medicine.”

More: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…many armies would find Israel’s rules of engagement disproportionate and hence illegal. The IDF is reported to have set the threshold of civilian deaths in justifying decisions to strike a junior Hamas fighter at 20:1 and a senior leader at 100:1. For Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s dictator, America set a threshold of 30:1.”

The IDF appears to be failing in its goal of destroying Hamas. After six months, Hama’s most senior leaders are still alive, and over 100 hostages remain in captivity. Most important, Israel appears to have no strategy to prevent Hamas from rising from the rubble. Without meeting their goal of destroying Hamas, Israel will remain subject to insurgency.

Israel is paying a high price both economically and diplomatically for its Hamas war. There has been a very real shift in support for Israel’s methods of conducting its war with Hamas. If the student protests were to energize America voters to reject supporting an unending conflict, a significant number of American politicians would eventually follow.

Today, Israel is in a doom loop where the operations designed to reduce the number of terrorists will likely attract recruits to replace them. Without a plan for peace, Israel will end up as an occupier or as in the past, repeatedly striking Gaza to tamp down the insurrectionists.

The story of the 2024 campus protests is still being written. The outcome remains difficult to predict. With the end of the academic year approaching, could the calendar be the deciding factor?

Should Dems Worry About Students Disrupting Their Convention?

The Daily Escape:

Sunrise, Iron Duff, NC – April 2024 photo by Rhiannon Medford. Hard to believe those colors aren’t enhanced.

The clashes between Hamas/Israel war protesters and police on college campuses nationwide is spreading alarm among Senate Democrats. They’re worrying that this type of anger will make the Party’s Chicago-based presidential nominating convention a spectacle that will hurt Biden’s chances of re-election. Does that mean we’re looking at Chicago 1968 version 2.0?

From The Wrongologist:

“In 1968, Tom Hayden helped plan the antiwar protests in Chicago that targeted the Democratic National Convention. Police officers clashed with thousands of demonstrators, injuring hundreds in a televised spectacle that a national commission later called a police riot. Yet, Hayden and others were charged by federal officials with inciting riot and conspiracy.”

Those demonstration led to the Chicago Police riot. We remember it for Mayor Richard Daly saying these immortal words:

“Gentlemen, let’s get this straight. The policeman isn’t there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder.”

Those of us who have reached a certain age remember too well what happened in Chicago at the 1968 convention. From The Hill:

“A number of Democratic senators are old enough to remember the violent clashes between police and anti-Vietnam War protesters at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago, where the nomination of Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the party’s presidential candidate was marred by images of police tear-gassing protesters and beating them with clubs.”

The Atlantic’s David Frum explains why the disruptions in Chicago in 1968 are unlikely to happen again. His point is that 2024 isn’t 1968. Protesters presuming to replicate 1968 will find the US government is much better prepared, Frum says: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“…responsibility for protecting political conventions has shifted from cities and states to the federal government. This…was formalized in a directive signed by…Clinton in 1998. The order created a category of “National Special Security Events,” for which planning would be led by the Secret Service.

National Security Special Events draw on all the resources of the federal government, including, if need be, those of the Defense Department. In 2016, the federal government spent $50 million on security for each of the two major-party conventions.

Those funds enabled Cleveland, the host of the 2016 Republican convention, to deploy thousands of law-enforcement personnel….Federal funds paid for police to be trained in understanding the difference between lawful and unlawful protest, and to equip them with body cameras to record interactions with the public. The city also used federal funds to buy 300 bicycles to field a force that could move quickly into places where cars might not be able to go, and that could patrol public spaces in a way that was more approachable and friendly.”

This wasn’t an issue in 2020 when the conventions were mostly virtual due to the Covid pandemic.

Right now, the media are making the campus demonstrations seem like a big deal, and they are, in the sense that university campuses are lightly controlled and lightly policed. Frum adds:

“Pro-Palestinian protesters have proved considerably more circumspect when they march in places where laws of public order are upheld.”

The Feds have also gone to school on the Jan. 6 insurrection that has informed their planning. While the subsequent J6 prosecutions make it much less likely that people hoping to disrupt the DNC convention will ever get much beyond being hopeful. It’s important to point out that the scale of today’s protests are nowhere near the same as the Vietnam protests in 1968.

More on the current thinking of students from Simon Rosenberg:

“…there is not broad support for these protests in America or on American college campuses. Most young people are far more concerned with making a living, their health after a pandemic, loss of reproductive freedom and our democracy, climate change, gun safety and a host of other issues.”

Rosenberg includes an interesting chart from the Harvard IOP Youth Poll:

The only issue where inflation did not win its individual match-up was when it was paired with women’s reproductive rights. Women’s reproductive rights was considered the more important issue, 57% to 43%. Israel/Palestine ranked next to last among the 16 issues.

Wrongo has no idea if the campus demonstrations will morph into something huge, or become a nothingburger, but he agrees with this from Caroline Orr Bueno:

“The stories you hear in the media will be the most extreme examples that can be found, and nearly all of them will be fundamentally misrepresented based on the biases of the person telling the story. This will fuel a cycle of escalation that few people on either side want.”

She makes the point that university administrators are not prepared to handle the demonstrations while at the same time, facing donor anger. From the London FT:

“Donors are withdrawing millions of dollars in planned funding to punish US universities for their responses to Hamas’s attack on Israel, in a stand-off over free speech, higher education funding and academic leaders’ public responsibilities.”

The FT also reports that:

“Such actions have highlighted the influence of donors, who last year contributed $60bn to US universities…”

Time to wake up, America! Let’s not get twisted up by the potential for demonstrations in Chicago by students protesting the Hamas/Israel war. How about focusing instead on the antidemocratic extremists who speak at the Republican convention to renominate Trump? We shouldn’t fear this debate. We should welcome it.

To help you wake up on a warm Tuesday, watch and listen to the late Peter Green, former guitarist of Fleetwood Mac, play “Albatross”, originally from FM’s 1969 album “The Pious Bird of Good Omen”. Here Green plays it with the Peter Green Splinter Group in England in 2003:

The late, great BB King said of Peter Green: “He’s the only white guy to ever make me sweat.”

The Supreme Court Is Officially Corrupt

The Daily Escape:

Moonrise, Boston, MA – April 2024 photo by Kristen Wilkinson. The Jenga-style building is Boston University’s Data Science Center.

Wrongo spent part of Thursday morning listening live to the oral arguments at the Supreme Court (SCOTUS) over Trump v. United States, which concerns former president Trump’s claim of absolute immunity from criminal charges for “official acts”: In this case, whether Trump can claim immunity as a defense in the Jan. 6 case brought by Jack Smith, the DOJ’s special prosecutor.

While the decision in this case is unclear at this point, the questions the Conservative justices asked of both sides were very disheartening.

A short walk through the history of this case: The Conservative majority granted Trump a victory before the hearing began by refusing Jack Smith’s request to skip the intermediate step of an appeal to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. Then the Court improved on that by refusing to hear the matter on an expedited schedule. Finally it appears that the Court probably won’t issue what pundits think will be a fractured opinion until the last possible day (June 30). It’s possible that the Court will order the DC trial court to engage in pre-trial fact-finding about the difference between “private” and “official” acts. Meaning further delays, possibly until after the November presidential election.

And if Trump were to win, the Jan. 6 case will be quashed by the incoming DOJ.

So even if the Supremes don’t grant Trump a total victory, they have already granted Trump what he most wanted: a lengthy delay. Their lackadaisical approach to resolving the question of immunity smells of the current politicization of the Court. From Jamele Bouie:

“Rather than grapple with the situation at hand — a defeated president worked with his allies to try to overturn the results of an election he lost, eventually summoning a mob to try to subvert the peaceful transfer of power — the Republican-appointed majority worried about hypothetical prosecutions against hypothetical presidents who might try to stay in office against the will of the people if they aren’t placed above the law.

It was a farce befitting the absurdity of the situation. Trump has asked the Supreme Court if he is, in effect, a king. And at least four members of the court, among them the so-called originalists, have said, in essence, that they’ll have to think about it. “

Chris Hayes reminded us when Republicans aggressively took the other side of the immunity argument:

Taking a wide view, Alito is 74. Thomas is 75. Roberts and Sotomayor are 69. The next president could be in a position to nominate four replacements for these justices if Trump wins, or if Biden wins a second term. If it’s Trump, say goodbye to the SCOTUS for at least 30 years, and say goodbye to your Constitutional rights. That would also mean that Trump can commit crimes with impunity, including a complete dissolution of the Voting Rights Act, implementing legalized voter suppression, and much more.

Is it totally lost on the American people that the very same Supreme Court who ruled that 172 million women should no longer have the freedom to decide their own pregnancy choices, is now, suddenly, struggling with the idea whether ONLY ONE MAN in America should have the freedom to commit crimes without punishment?

Watergate and Nixon doesn’t come close to the stench surrounding today’s Supreme Court and its propping up of Trump. Josh Marshall had this to say:

“The Roberts Court is a corrupt institution which operates in concert with and on behalf of the Republican Party . . . That’s the challenge in front of us. . . . But things become more clear-cut once we take the plunge and accept that fact.”

But, there’s really nothing you can do about it individually. So relax and cruise into our Saturday Soother, where we turn off all political news for a few minutes and try to find the will to rejoin the fight next week.

Here on the Fields of Wrong, we had a hard frost on Friday morning, and expect 80° on Monday. It’s weather like this that keeps us from planting the vegetable garden until early May. To help you get into a proper frame of mind, grab a seat by a south-facing window. Now watch and listen to “Suite Opus 34 for flute, harp, violin, viola and cello” by Marcel Tournier. Tournier is among the relatively few important composers who were also virtuoso harpists. He composed several dozen solos for harp, and a few chamber works that feature the harp. Tournier wrote this Suite in 1928. He died in 1951.

Here is his “Opus 34” performed by the Cracow Harp Quintet:

Wrongo and Ms. Right first learned about Tournier and saw this live last summer as part of a local concert series by the Washington Friends of Music.

Update On Book Banning

The Daily Escape:

Ashokan Reservoir, Ulster County, NY – February 2024 photo by Dan Mish

The GOP effort at book banning isn’t going well. DeSantis acts SHOCKED that his punitive censorship laws have resulted in chaos and excessive book banning in Florida public schools. DeSantis knows he went too far. Mr. Never Back Down, is in fact, backing down:

“With objecting – if you go to a school board meeting objecting. If you have a kid in school, okay. But if you’re somebody who doesn’t have a kid in school and you’re gonna object to 100 books? No, I don’t think that’s appropriate. So I think the legislature is interested in limiting what the number of challenges you can do, and maybe making it be contingent on whether you actually have kids in school or not. We just want to make sure we’re not trying to incentivize frivolous objections or any type of games being played.”

But don’t get your hopes up. The Propaganda Professor (PP) takes a look at book banning, riffing on a National Review article “Book Curation is Not Censorship”:

“Curation is the process whereby a venue (library, museum, theater, etc.) decides what products to offer its patrons….But curation means making such decisions…on the basis of such factors as quality, relevance, timeliness, and constraints of space and budget. Those factors for the most part do not figure into with what is happening in Florida, Texas and elsewhere. Books are being pulled just because someone chooses to find them offensive….And those choices aren’t being made autonomously. They’re being made under intense pressure from government bodies and their proxy agitators.”

While denying that they’re really banning books, Right-wingers offer attempts to justify the bans they say that they’re not really doing. They often brand the offending book as “pornographic”. They slap the “pornography” label on anything that makes any vague reference to sex. Another common claim is that the books being attacked are guilty of somehow “indoctrinating” kids into…something. Usually some combination of “liberalism”, “leftism”, “communism” or “anti-Americanism”.

“There are two types of books in particular to which they are eager to award the Indoctrination Trophy. One is anything with a gay or trans character, or that even makes reference to a gay or trans character….Such books, they…warn, are indoctrinating kids into the gay ‘lifestyle’…”

A huge problem is banning books that have too much truth about racism. If you write about the horrors of our shameful past, you can expect to be branded as someone who “hates white people”. One of the books removed for “review” was a biography of baseball legend Roberto Clemente because it mentioned the racism he encountered in baseball. Above all is the complaint that so much literacy will indoctrinate our kids into wokeism or leftism — or whatever FOX says is the equivalent du jour.

Saturday’s Hot Links

The Daily Escape:

Grand Canyon, South Kabab Trail, AZ – February 2024 photo by Lynsey Schroeder

We’ve made it to Super Bowl weekend, but not without bumps and a few bruises caused by this week’s edition of America’s dysfunctional politics. Today, let’s do a lightning round of mostly bad and a few good stories from the past week.

First up, Special counsel Robert Hur has released his report declining charges against Biden in his classified documents case but finding he did willfully retain information. In the report, Hur goes out of his way to paint a damning portrait of the President. He cites several examples of memory lapses and describes Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Hur’s message boils down to this: a well-intentioned, forgetful old man took the wrong stuff home from work. He “willfully retained” it, but we’re gonna let him go. Not because he’s president, but because we’re nice guys. Sotto voce: (because we probably couldn’t prove criminal intent). Maybe the DOJ felt Trump needed a win after 91 felonies.

There’s a pattern to the DOJ’s appointments of special counsels:

What’s amazing is that Biden now faces more heat from the media for being found innocent than Trump will if he’s found guilty. The multiple questions by reporters at Thursday night’s Biden press conference showed just how difficult it is for America’s media to focus on what’s important. The White House Press Corps should collectively be ashamed of its behavior during the press conference. They behaved like a pack of rabid hyenas.

Why the horrible behavior toward Biden, and the deference to Trump? Mainstream media outlets have long been obsessed with Biden’s age. They have not, however, given the same attention to Trump’s age or to his gaffes and incoherent comments. It’s sad that we’re in a situation where Trump’s multiple indictments seemingly are politically advantageous to him, and Biden’s exoneration is politically terrible for him.

Given the media’s obsession, it won’t matter how well Biden does in public. If he makes one mental slip it becomes confirmation that the biggest concern about him is true. He can’t be perfect every day for the next nine months. Nobody can.

Next, Reuters reported that the Hawaii Supreme Court has upheld the state’s laws that generally prohibit carrying a firearm in public without a license. In the process, they criticized the US Supreme Court’s rulings that have expanded gun rights:

“The history of the Hawaiian Islands does not include a society where armed people move about the community to possibly combat the deadly aims of others.”

This is a direct attack on the US Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling in “New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen” which recognized for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual’s right to carry a handgun in public for self-defense. More:

“The Government’s interest in reducing firearms violence through reasonable weapons regulations has preserved peace and tranquility in Hawai’i. A free-wheeling right to carry guns in public degrades other constitutional rights….The right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness encompasses a right to freely and safely move in peace and tranquility. Laws regulating firearms in public preserve…liberty and advance these rights….There is no individual right to keep and bear arms under Article I, Section 17. So there is no constitutional right to carry a firearm in public for possible self-defense.”

Hawaii for the win!

Third, on February 9, 1964, 60 years ago, Ed Sullivan hosted the Beatles on his show. If you’re a member of the baby boomer generation, chances are you were sitting in front of a television that night. Seventy-three million Americans joined in to watch something they had never seen before. You can wake up old memories by watching “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” here.

Fourth, after blocking the border bill on Wednesday, Senate Republicans allowed a clean funding bill for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan to advance toward a vote. In the meantime, Ukraine is close to losing Avdeevka, a major eastern city to the Russians.

Fifth, disinformation watchdog groups have uncovered a covert, coordinated Russian effort to spread disinformation via Telegram and X/Twitter across the Texas border about a US Civil War:

“The disinformation campaign…expanded after Russian politicians spoke out when the US Supreme Court lifted an order by a lower court and sided with….Biden’s administration to rule that US Border Patrol officers were allowed to take down razor-wire fencing erected by the Texas National Guard…..There also appear to be a number of Russian accounts on X posing as pro-Texas groups, in another echo of 2016 when an account that claimed to be run by Tennessee Republicans was outed as Russian-run.

One of the suspect accounts is the Texan Independence Supporters, which has already been called out for spelling errors and constantly referencing Ukraine and Russia. On Sunday, the account claimed “we are a Texan organization, not Russian. We can definitely assure ya’ll [sic] that we’re not Russian.”

Another reminder that the internet is a cesspool.

Enough! It’s time for our Saturday Soother, where we stop obsessively scrolling through our news feeds and take a few moments to chillax and gather ourselves for another week hearing all the reasons why it’s necessary to continue bombing Palestinians.

Here at the Mansion of Wrong we’re preparing to host a small Super Bowl viewing party with as many high-calorie, high-fat appetizers as we can eat.

To help you relax, find a spot near a south-facing window and watch and listen to George Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue”. February 12^th is the 100^th anniversary of this work that combines jazz and classical origins into an iconic American work. Here it is performed by Leonard Bernstein conducting the New York Philharmonic while playing solo piano in 1976 in Frankfurt, Germany:

(hat tip to Marguerite S.)

Wrongo was struck by how Bernstein was able to conduct and play. Maybe multi-tasking IS possible.

What America’s Nazi Period Tells Us Today

The Daily Escape:

Lenticular clouds over Mt. Washington, with Mt. Washington Hotel in foreground, Bretton Woods, NH – January 2024 photo by Terri Stinn

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.“– George Santayana

“We are the United States of Amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.” – Gore Vidal

Wrongo and Ms. Right watched an American Experience offering on PBS called “Nazi Town USA”. The video tells the story of the German American Bund, (Bund) a pro-fascist, pro-Nazi organization that at its peak in the late 1930s, had some 100,000 US members.

The Bund (bund is German for “organization”), was founded by German immigrant Fritz Kuhn in Buffalo in 1936. His vision was to create a pro-Nazi ideology within the US. Kuhn and his people used patriotic images of George Washington and the American flag to attract Americans of German descent as members. But the organization’s goals were wider: To create a “socially just, white gentile-ruled United States” and a “gentile-controlled labor union free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination.”

He sounds nice. The US in the 1930s was a hotbed of the fascist-curious. Coming out of WWI and heading into an international economic depression, America was as polarized as it had been since the Civil War. There were racist, antisemitic, anti-Catholic, anti-immigration and anti-democratic viewpoints that weren’t quietly whispered but were yelled. America’s greatest threat, many feared, were the Communists. Millions, (including members of Congress), belonged to the KKK. Father Coughlin was on the radio. Henry Ford had financed the publication of “The International Jew,” an antisemitic tract. And in New York, the Bund was fomenting a coup, and filling Madison Square Garden with followers. In Yaphank, a town on Long Island, tract homes for Bund members were going up on Adolf Hitler Street.

According to historian Bradley W. Hart, who gives commentary in the documentary:

“This was a period of incredible turmoil in the US. You have the Great Depression, you have people who have lost everything….At this moment…you have…people like Hitler and Mussolini, who are preaching hate and preaching that they have a solution to the real pain that people are feeling, it’s inevitable, unfortunately, that some will be attracted to that message.”

The Bund was just one of hundreds of right-wing and fascist-friendly groups in the US in the 1930s. The video linked above includes a chilling clip (@12:39 minutes) of Italy’s then-Prime Minister Mussolini, reaching out to his fascist friends in America: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“I am very glad to be able to express my friendly feelings towards the American nation, my fellow citizens who are working to make America great…”

For Wrongo, that revealed a shocking throughline to 2016, and then on to America today.

The Bund had chapters all across the country. Their high point was holding a Swastika-bedecked rally attended by 20,000 at Madison Square Garden in 1939. FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, despite instructions from FDR, had little interest in investigating the Bund’s head, Fritz Kuhn. Hoover was far more concerned with Communism. Back then, “Jewish Communism” was a catchphrase used by Kuhn.

The documentary uses scenes from the Academy Award-nominated short documentary “A Night at the Garden,” of the 1939 “Pro-American Rally” at Madison Square Garden held by the Bund. When Kuhn takes the stage at the rally, an announcer says:

“We love him for the enemies he has made…”

Doesn’t that sound disturbingly familiar? And you then learn that Kuhn supporters beat up a demonstrator who ran on stage, are you surprised that we see the same at Trump rallies today? Subsequently, Charles Lindbergh emerged as head of a supposedly non-partisan group, “America First” that urged the US not to oppose Hitler’s war in Europe.

Trump embraced the “America First” rubric starting right after his inauguration.

After Nazism and Fascism were defeated in Europe in WWII, there wasn’t much of a reckoning inside the US with those who were Fascists or Nazis. There was a wish to simply forget about the fractious politics of the 1930s. Kuhn was deported to Germany, and the Bund collapsed.

But the Bund members and fellow travelers didn’t disappear. They simply blended back into the social fabric of America’s towns. And the ideas certainly didn’t disappear, they’re still with us today. We’re seeing them re-emerge not just in the US but also throughout Europe. There will always be citizens who when they see a threat, prefer having a strongman around to uproot it.

Tom Nichols, a Never Trump conservative who writes for the Atlantic, offers this:

”Early last month, he echoed the…language of Adolf Hitler by describing immigrants as disease-ridden terrorists and psychiatric patients who are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Nichols quotes from Trump’s talk in Claremont, NH:

“We will drive out the globalists, we will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country….On Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, that lie and steal and cheat on elections and will do anything possible…legally or illegally to destroy America and to destroy the American dream.”

As the New York University professor Ruth Ben-Ghiat said in the WaPo about the same speech, Trump is populating this list of imaginary villains (which she sees as a form of projection) in order “to set himself up as the deliverer of freedom. Mussolini promised freedom to his people too and then declared dictatorship.”

It’s possible that Trump doesn’t really understand what he’s saying. But when he uses terms like “vermin” and expressions like “poisoning the blood of our country”, we’re not required to spend a lot of time trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

And you can be certain that the people around Trump completely understand what he’s saying.

Time to face up to the truth. Trump is a fascist, even if he’s too ignorant to label what he is. He’s naturally gifted at propaganda and he’s demonstrated amazing political power with his Big Lie. Others on the extreme Right have noticed and see the potential of using him for fascistic purposes.

Fascism is back in America, whether we call it by its name or not.

Americans Dread The Future

The Daily Escape:

Manhattan Beach Pier, CA – December 31, 2023 photo by Michael Franich

Welcome to Wrongo’s first column of 2024. Let’s dispense with the reviews of last year and the forecasts of this year. Let’s try to describe what we’re all feeling as we say so long to the presidential campaign of 2023, and welcome in the presidential campaign of 2024.

What’s the overwhelming feeling that comes to mind for Americans when thinking about the upcoming presidential election? Dread, according to a Yahoo News/YouGov poll:

“The survey of 1,636 US adults…offered respondents seven emotions — three positive, three negative, one neutral — and asked them to select any and all that reflect their attitude toward the 2024 campaign.

Dread, the most negative option, topped the list (41%), followed by exhaustion (34%), optimism (25%), depression (21%), indifference (17%), excitement (15%) and delight (5%).”

Here’s the relevant chart:

“In total, a majority of Americans (56%) chose at least one of the three negative feelings (dread, exhaustion or depression), while less than a third (32%) picked at least one of the three positive feelings (optimism, excitement or delight).”

Wrongo test marketed the idea that “dread” was the watchword for 2024 at a New Year’s breakfast with people who span the political spectrum. They universally hated it, but after a short discussion felt it was arguably, the dominant feeling that they had about what will/might happen in 2024.

From the issue:

“We are feeling an acute sense of loss….But what do you call the feeling of watching your society being taken over by fanatics, monsters, and lunatics? How about the feeling of watching democracy crash and burn—remember, it’s declining by the stunning rate of about 10% a decade, putting its extinction within our lifetimes.”

Psychology Today gives us a frame to think about dread in their 2023 article, “How to Overcome the Sinking Feeling of Dread”: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“A sense of dread may be due to an abstractly internalized experience of external volatility called “disembedding”….This phenomenon refers to our ability to interact with one another without having to make face-to-face contact. The result is an overabundance of information that comes our way. It becomes abstracted and metaphorically slips through the fingers of our minds in trying to grasp what it is. With a few clicks through an Instagram feed, scrolling through Twitter, or even just opening your web browser to search for something, your brain becomes a dartboard for world news.”

“When one experiences this, there are often repeated attempts to secure a firm base. People will reassert their values as moral absolutes, declare other groups as lacking in value, draw distinct lines of virtue and vice, be rigid rather than flexible in their judgements, and punitive and excluding rather than permeable and assimilative….Another consequence of disembedding is the possibility of scapegoating: the underclass, racial minorities, new-age travelers, addicts, people with unusual behaviors, and other vulnerable social groups risk being singled out and demonized as the source of society’s problems.”

Dread makes us less tolerant of differences, and as a result, we punish them. This is the emotional backdrop for 2024, and the road ahead looks murky as hell. And facts increasingly don’t matter, since whichever side posits a fact, the other has a prepared rebuttal that says the source (even if its official statistics) are misleading if not outright lies.

The NYT’s Krugman notes that overall, the country’s in pretty good shape. The challenge is that people so far continue to blame Biden for the chaos and ugliness that Trump and his cult are creating: (brackets by Wrongo)

“The big question…was whether America would ever fully recover from that shock. In 2023 we got the answer: yes. Our economy and society have, in fact, healed remarkably well. The big remaining question is when, if ever, the public will be ready to accept the good news….America’s resilience in the face of the pandemic shock has been remarkable, [but] so has the pessimism of the public.”

The big question going forward is whether the grim narratives will prevail over our relatively sunny reality when we get to the 2024 election. Unfortunately, we are bathing in the hideous cultural nastiness caused by the Republican Right and it’s spread despair throughout the country.

Overcoming that mood (and the dread people feel) isn’t going to be easy, but disaster is certain if you give up. Individually, we each can do more than we think we can to keep America in good hands.

Start by no longer buying into the bullshit spewed by the mainstream media, in particular, the NYT. Their both sides coverage of Trump’s crooked behavior demonstrates their inability to let us know how real his threat is to the public.

The rest of the corporate media’s coverage is the same, with a few exceptions. Don’t overlook outlets abroad which had good reputations for thorough and unbiased reporting. In the age of the internet with translation capability at your fingertips, it’s not absurd to look outside of the US news rut for different perspectives.

As long as the GOP can paint the Democrats as the bigger enemy, Independent and anti-Trump Republican voters have an out; they can justify staying on the sidelines. The mainstream media’s complicit role in broadcasting the GOP strategy can’t be overstated. And the Democratic Party leadership’s long-term paralysis in the face of this simple equation is one reason why we’re in the situation we are in now.

Stop ascribing superpowers to the GOP. The Republican Party is a hot mess.

No matter what you read, act! Make a plan and act. It can be surprisingly easy to become a thought leader on the local level. Inside both Parties, the leaders are the people who show up and do the work. That’s it, that’s all it takes to begin making change happen. Show up, do the work.

We’re heading into what will be the toughest part of an existential fight for this democracy. It’s going to be an ugly, messy show, one that is certain to add to those feelings of dread. Plan on it and then show up to do the work it will take to beat back the fascists.

Think about the toll Americans will endure in 2024. How many women will die of complications from a pregnancy they couldn’t end? How many trans persons will give up because they can’t live as human beings with autonomy over their bodies? How many persons will die from Covid this coming year because of right-wing propaganda supported by elected GOP officials? How many futures will be shortened because children may not get the food, health care, or education they need?

How many families will be split up because they couldn’t find shelter?

Our message when we’re doing the work has to be about unity. It’s clear right now that Democrats are splintering in all directions. Some don’t want Biden because he’s pro-Israel. Young people find Biden to be too old. Some feel he’s too middle-of-the-road. We all need to remember American novelist Rebecca Solnit’s mantra:

“Voting is a chess move, not a valentine.”

The Wrongologist

Geopolitics, Power and Political Economy

Category: Constitutional Issues

Americans Have No Idea How Deep Our Illiberal Roots Are

Should Dems Worry About Students Disrupting Their Convention?

Update On Book Banning

Saturday’s Hot Links