;)
The Conversation -- August 19, 2023
Katelyn Polantz of CNN: "Prominent conservative legal scholars are increasingly raising a constitutional argument that ... Donald Trump should be barred from the presidency because of his actions to overturn the previous presidential election result. The latest salvo came Saturday in The Atlantic magazine, from liberal law professor Laurence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig, the former federal appellate judge and a prominent conservative who's become a strong critic of Trump's actions after the election. Not all in the legal community agree -- and what the scholars are proposing would need to be tested in court.... They and others base their arguments on a reading of part of the 14th Amendment, a post-Civil War provision that excludes from future office anyone who, previously, as a sworn-in public official, 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion ... or [had] given aid or comfort to the enemies' of the government.' The pair write: '... both of us concluded some years ago that, in fact, a conviction would be beside the point. The former president's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, and the resulting attack on the U.S. Capitol, place him squarely within the ambit of the [the] disqualification clause, and he is therefore ineligible to serve as president ever again.'"
More on Rudy's desperate pleas to the Biggest Deadbeat: ~~~
~~~ Maggie Haberman & Ben Protess of the New York Times: "Rudolph W. Giuliani is running out of money and looking to collect from a longtime client who has yet to pay: ... Donald J. Trump. To recover the millions of dollars he believes he is owed for his efforts to keep Mr. Trump in power, Mr. Giuliani first deferred to his lawyer, who pressed anyone in Mr. Trump's circle who would listen. When that fizzled out, Mr. Giuliani and his lawyer made personal appeals to the former president over a two-hour dinner in April at his Mar-a-Lago estate and in a private meeting at his golf club in West Palm Beach. When those entreaties largely failed as well, Mr. Giuliani's son, Andrew, who has an independent relationship with the former president, visited Mr. Trump at his club in New Jersey this month, with what people briefed on the meeting said was the hope of getting his father's huge legal bills covered.... For the better part of a year, as Mr. Giuliani has racked up the bills battling an array of criminal investigations, private lawsuits and legal disciplinary proceedings stemming from his bid to keep Mr. Trump in office after the 2020 election, his team has repeatedly sought a lifeline from the former president.... And even as the bills have pushed Mr. Giuliani close to a financial breaking point, the former president has largely demurred...."
~~~~~~~~~~
What Real Presidents Do
Toluse Olorunnipa & Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "President Biden sought to mark a 'new era' for one of the United States' most high-profile trilateral partnerships Friday, using a first-of-its-kind summit with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts at Camp David to announce new measures on defense, technology, education and other key areas of cooperation. 'This is the first summit I've hosted at Camp David, and I can think of no more fitting location to begin the next era of cooperation,' Biden said at a joint news conference, standing between Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol at his presidential retreat in Maryland and pledging that the commitments the leaders agreed to will stand the test of time. 'This is about decades and decades.' The summit was the culmination of what White House aides have described as a two-year effort to assist in a rapprochement between South Korea and Japan after decades of frosty relations. It also marked the beginning of what the White House hopes will be an extended stretch of three-way engagement, designed in part to counter China's military aggression and economic coercion and North Korea's growing nuclear weapons program." ~~~
~~~ Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Biden welcomed his counterparts from Japan and South Korea to Camp David on Friday morning as he seeks to cement a newly fortified three-way alliance, bridging generations of friction between the two Asian powers to forge mutual security arrangements in the face of an increasingly assertive China. Mr. Biden greeted Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan and President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea at the presidential retreat in Maryland, the first time he has invited foreign leaders there and the first time the leaders of the three countries will have met in a stand-alone session rather than on the sidelines of larger international gatherings.... Biden administration officials said the leaders would sign off on a formal 'commitment to consult,' an understanding that the three nations would treat any security threat to one of them as a threat to all, requiring mutual discussion about how to respond. The pledge would not go as far as the NATO treaty's Article 5, which obligates allies to 'take action' in the event of an attack on any member, but it would reinforce the expectation that the three would act in tandem." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ The White House has published the Camp David Principles here.
MEANWHILE, What Anti-Americans Do
Peter Baker & Zolan Kanno-Youngs of the New York Times: "While [Donald Trump]'s name appeared nowhere in the 'Camp David Principles' that the leaders issued at the presidential retreat, one of the subtexts was the possibility that he could return to power in next year's election and disrupt ties with America's two closest allies in the Indo-Pacific region. Both Japan and South Korea struggled for four years as Mr. Trump threatened to scale back longstanding U.S. security and economic commitments while wooing China, North Korea and Russia. In formalizing a three-way alliance that had long eluded the United States, [President] Biden and his counterparts hoped to lock in a strategic architecture that will endure regardless of who is in the White House next." MB: So, in a way, Trump -- or the Trump threat -- has improved Indo-Pacific relations.
I, Trumpius. Maggie Haberman & Jonathan Swan of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump plans to upstage the first Republican primary debate on Wednesday by sitting for an online interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.... 'Reagan didn't do it, and neither did others. People know my Record, one of the BEST EVER, so why would I Debate?' [Trump wrote on his knock-off social media site.]... If [the interview] goes ahead as currently planned, the debate-night counterprogramming would serve as an act of open hostility .... to both the R.N.C. and Fox News, which is hosting the event." CNN's story is here. MB: No normal person would publicly describe himself as the BEST EVER, even if -- like the Evil Queen in "Snow White" -- that's what he told the mirror, mirror on the wall.
Chauncey DeVega of Salon: Donald "Trump has shown a wide range of pathological behavior over the past seven years or so. He has an unhealthy fascination with violence. He lacks impulse control and empathy. He revels in cruelty. He compulsively lies and exhibits traits of malignant narcissism. He is a confirmed sexual predator and misogynist. He has a tenuous relationship to reality, and increasingly retreats into victimology and a persecution complex. He believes himself to be almost literally superhuman and often behaves like a cult leader.... Trump's pathological behavior is in no way separate from his role as leader of the neofascist MAGA movement and larger white right.... Sick societies produce sick leaders; sick leaders have sick followers; in combination, those forces produce sick political movements.... Donald Trump's poor mental health and aberrant behavior amount to a political, social and legal crisis for America and the world." DeVega interviews some psychiatrists, who describe Trump as a crazy (layman's interpretation) Orwellian character.
** The Architect, There at the Insurrection. Andrew Kaczynski, et al., of CNN: "When conspiracy theorist Alex Jones marched his way to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, riling up his legion of supporters, an unassuming middle-aged man in a red 'Trump 2020' hat conspicuously tagged along.... The man dutifully recording Jones with his phone as the bombastic media personality ascended to the restricted area of the Capitol grounds where mobs of ... Donald Trump's supporters eventually broke in... The man ... is attorney Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the scheme to subvert the 2020 Electoral College process by using fake GOP electors in multiple states. When asked by the House select committee where he was the first week of January 2021 and on January 6, Chesebro invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. But a CNN investigation has placed him outside of the Capitol at the same time as his alleged plot to keep Trump in office unraveled inside it. There is no indication Chesebro entered the Capitol Building or was violent. Jones did not enter the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or engage in violence, but he had warned of a coming battle the day before and urged his supporters to converge on the Capitol." The New York Times story is here. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ The Strange Career of a Latter-Day Revolutionary. Ken Chesebro went from a long post-doctoral gig as liberal Harvard Law Prof. Lawrence Tribe's aide to hanging out at the insurrection with crazed right-wing provocateur & conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. According to this report by Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post, what seems to have flipped Chesebro's politics was making several million dollars in a cryptocurrency investment. MB: Now, Ken may go from crypto king to inmate in the Fulton County Jail. (Also linked yesterday.)
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "It is not hard to find commentators asking a simple question about the events of the past few years:... How did 'America's mayor' -- the man who rocketed to national fame after the Sept. 11 attacks -- come to disgrace and debase himself in defense of Donald Trump?... But ... the line from 'America's mayor' to indicted co-conspirator is a straight one.... He is the same man he's always been.... If we think of [Rudy] Giuliani as the scowling demagogue who stoked the flames of chauvinism and racial hatred against New York's first Black mayor [David Dinkins] for his own gain, then there's little other than his carefully crafted image in the press that separates the Giuliani of '92 from the Giuliani of '23.... It is easy to see that [Giuliani & Trump] are of a type. They share the same demagogic instincts, the same boundless resentment, the same authoritarian manner -- it is not for nothing that Giuliani reportedly tried to get the 2001 mayoral election canceled so that he could stay in office beyond the limit on his term -- and the same willingness to indulge in racism and use it for their own political purposes." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: I have long associated Giuliani with the racist police attack on Dinkins. But recently, when I looked for contemporaneous stories about the incident, I didn't find anything that mentioned Giuliani, so I thought I must have been mistaken. I was not. Bouie spells it out. The stories I read also hedged on the racism expressed during the police protest with language like, "reported to have used the N word." I lived in Manhattan then, and I saw the video on a local TV channel and the audio was replete with cops using the racial slur. It confused me for a moment because I had forgotten that Dinkins was Black. He never made his race a feature of his mayoralty and there was no reason for anyone else too, either.
On the Lam. Daniel Barnes & Ryan Reilly of NBC News: "Christopher Worrell, a Florida Proud Boy convicted on seven counts stemming from his actions during the Jan. 6 riot, was scheduled to be sentenced today in Washington, D.C, federal court but is now missing, according to a spokeswoman from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.... Worrell had been initially detained pre-trial following his arrest in March 2021. However, [Judge Royce] Lamberth ordered Worrell released to home detention in November 2021 after finding that DC jail officials had failed to provide Worrell with adequate treatment for his non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and a broken hand that may have required surgery. As part of his conditions of release, Worrell surrendered his passport and was subject to GPS monitoring." (Also linked yesterday.)
Emily Davies of the Washington Post: "The U.S. Department of Justice has designated the death of D.C. police officer Jeffrey Smith -- who took his own life after helping defend the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riot -- as having occurred in the line of duty, granting his widow access to hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal benefits, according to the family's attorney. The Justice Department revealed the determination to the family Thursday. It did so under a law amended last year to make it easier for families of officers who die by suicide to access death benefits, marking a shift in how the government treats first responders who suffer mental health crises arising from what they encounter on the job. 'I could have given up. But I did not want any future widow, or widower, to ever go through what I went through in the aftermath of Jeffrey's death,' said Erin Smith, Jeffrey Smith's widow, in a statement. She spent years pressing local and federal officials to honor officers who die by suicide in the same way as any others who die in the line of duty."
Holly Bailey & Hannah Allam of the Washington Post: "The FBI has joined an investigation into a barrage of threats against Fulton County officials in recent days, including members of the Atlanta-area grand jury that voted to indict ... Donald Trump and 18 of his allies in a sweeping criminal case focused on alleged 2020 election interference."
Kathryn Watson of ABC News: "Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes' office is conducting an ongoing investigation of an alleged attempt to use alternate electors after the 2020 presidential election to benefit ... Donald Trump, a spokesperson for the attorney general confirmed." ~~~
~~~ Gideon Rubin of the Raw Story: "Rolling Stone reported that, 'Investigators have started asking questions about any potential contacts between false electors such as [for Arizona GOP chair Kelli Ward..., then-President Trump, and other out-of-state officials and lawyers working on his behalf to steal the election, one of the sources tells Rolling Stone. In recent discussions with possible witnesses and others, some investigators have asked or requested information related to a video -- tweeted by the Arizona GOP in December 2020 -- where Ward and other Trump allies sign documents falsely claiming to be the state's legitimate electors.'"
Marie: It strikes me that if the United States is headed for civil war -- and we may be -- the Supreme Court might be, if not the catalyst, at least a central player in the crisis. If no one institution is "the decider," then there is no rule of law and everyone is a decider. We would be living in a Rand Paulish dystopian/everyone-for-himself world. ~~~
~~~ Weekend Read. Garrett Epps in the Washington Monthly: "The precedent-smashing, highly political Roberts Court is likely to trigger outright defiance by the left and right. Just look at Alabama's failure to comply with a recent Court ruling.... By balking at producing a redistricting plan that can pass judicial muster, [Alabama's] legislature has refused to comply with a district court order and a Supreme Court Voting Rights Act decision in what may be a foretaste of future crises on the left and right. States on both sides of the red-blue divide are growing querulous about Supreme Court rulings. Even though it is now dominated by a radical-right majority, resistance to its precedent-shattering decisions seems at least as likely to come from the right as from the left.... The Court may even face something not seen since the Civil War -- defiance of a President of the United States.... [The Supreme Court] is not acting like a court; it will not be treated indefinitely by friend or foe as if it were one." ~~~
~~~ Marie: In his analysis of Alabama's definance of a Supreme Court decision, Epps concludes that "The question seems to be whether the Supreme Court will let Alabama back it off. The answer is by no means clear." You'll have to read the analysis to see why. But let's say the Supremes do not back off. It strikes me that a president could once again enforce a federal court order on the state, just as occurred when Gov. George Wallace infamously stood at the University of Alabama door to block Black students from entering, only to step aside when J.F.K.'s federalized National Guard confronted him. But that assumes a reasonable court order and a reasonable president. On the other hand ~~~
~~~ Here's Epps' example of defiance from the left: "The next debt-ceiling crisis is scheduled for January 1, 2025, or shortly thereafter. Imagine a re-elected Biden facing a Republican House that will not listen to reason this time. I have argued since 2011 that a President would have the constitutional duty to set aside the debt-ceiling statute and pay the nation's debt. Now imagine the Supreme Court telling him to stop paying it -- in effect, ordering him to preside over the economy's collapse. Honestly, reader, if you were President, what would you do?"
Kasha Patel of the Washington Post: "The richest 10 percent of U.S. households are responsible for 40 percent of the country's greenhouse gas emissions, according to a study released Thursday in PLOS Climate. The study, which looked at how a household's income generated emissions, underlines the stark divide between those who benefit most from fossil fuels and those who are most burdened by its effects.... Many of the ways people earn money are also linked to carbon pollution, including from how and where they earn their wages to where they invest parts of their income. These investments, especially if linked with fossil fuel-related industries, can seriously tip who is most responsible for the nation's greenhouse gas emissions, said ... Jared Starr, lead author of the study. 'It just seems morally and politically problematic to have one group of people reaping so much benefit from emissions while the poorer groups in society are asked to disproportionately deal with the harms of those emissions,' Starr, a sustainability scientist at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, said." The Raw Story's report is here. Thanks to RAS for the link.
Robert McFadden of the New York Times: "James L. Buckley, a conservative recruit from Connecticut who invaded the New York strongholds of Democrats and liberal Republicans in 1970 and against the odds won a United States Senate seat on the Conservative Party line, died early Friday in Washington. He was 100." (Also linked yesterday.)
~~~~~~~~~~
Kansas. Bill Chappell of NPR: "...Magistrate Judge Laura Viar, who signed the search warrant allowing police to seize the equipment [of the Marion County Record], was arrested at least twice for driving under the influence. Those 2012 arrests came months apart in two counties -- and it's not clear how much information was shared between officials at the time, The Wichita Eagle reports.... It was a confidential tip to the Record about the DUI history of Kari Newell, a local restaurant and catering company owner, that set incidents in motion." The city police chief Gideon Cody, who initiated the warrant request, previously had threatened to sue the newspaper because it had looked into disciplinary action taken against him in his previous job. MB: So small-town politics as usual.
News Ledes
New York Times: "As Hurricane Hilary heads north, Southern California and Mexico are bracing for a rare and powerful storm that could produce dangerous flash flooding and sustained winds that have not been seen for decades.... The Category 4 hurricane is so unusual that it has prompted the National Hurricane Center to issue a tropical storm watch for California for the first time in its history. Hilary is currently projected to make landfall in Baja California on Sunday and move northward as a tropical storm near San Diego and across the deserts and mountains east of Los Angeles -- though its path could still veer elsewhere."
Washington Post: "Dueling heat waves -- across Texas and the South, and in the Pacific Northwest to northern Plains -- are joining forces to deliver the hottest stretch of weather this year to the central Plains and parts of the Midwest." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Weirdly, I have run my A/C a total of no more than 36 hours this summer, not at all in August -- so far. As I write, the outside temp in lower New Hampshire is 58 degrees.
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Reader Comments (13)
The curious thing about privileged libertarians--for libertarians are necessarily privileged or they could not afford to be one*--is that they are always among the first to complain when they they think their right to do what they want is being infringed.
Libertarians don't grasp that individuals have no "rights" unless a collective grants them. Even if those rights pretend to derive from a god or a constitution the majority has had to agree to go along with the charade if those rights are to have any force at all.
*It is no accident that the "Atlas Shrugged" movers and shakers were rich.
From the Australian Independent Media:
Trump's cognitive capacity is that of a ten-year old. He must have
spent his youth in the wading pool at the local swimming pool, or
six years in grade 6 and never academically advanced.
We see a sick deluded man of no redeeming features, full of racial
hatred, ignorance, bile and misogyny. A deluded, pathetic liar
unsuitable for the highest office in the land.
Sounds about right to me.
https://theaimn.com/author/johnlord2013/
Two white supremacists walk into a bar…
So the Fat Fascist and KKK boy are salivating about sticking a finger in Fox’s eye. My question is “Who will watch the ‘debate’”? I wish they’d stop using that term. These things are nothing like a real debate.
But I’d be curious to see what online platform the white supremacist/liars use. X? Oh, please say yes. Remember the cluster fuck DeSantis “event” back in May? Poor audio, servers melting, dead air for 20 minutes?
Otherwise, where do they go? antebellum-plantation.com?
@Ak: The platform, people are saying, will be via Jewish Space
Lasers and can only be heard by persons like Marjorie Taylor Greene
and her ilk.
So I won't be tuning in since my antenna is programmed to not
receive BS from space, or Marred-a-Lardo.
I'm thinking about the upcoming Republican "debate" of competitive cruelty in which the candidates will attempt to convince their prospective followers that the genies of feminism and human rights for people who are "different" can be stuffed back into the bottle.
At the supermarket checkout a couple of days ago I noticed that my bagger was a person who identified female but looked male. I was so happy for her that she can be herself, even though I know that many defenders of past attitudes will at least want to cause her discomfort.
The Catholic religion in which I was raised was based on a simple principle: In order to feel good, I must make you behave correctly. Otherwise, I'm not doing my all for the community. Although we served and worshipped the ultimate Hall Monitor, we had to pitch in and make miserable those who did not play by the book.
Young people might not realize that back in those days, the government didn't ban books and movies; the Church did, and by doing so made it difficult for any art that offended it to pay for itself. Didn't need DeSantis. Didn't need Pence. Those were the days.
@Akhilleus: Antebellum-plantation.com? Nah. The fake debate is taking place at what will be the wee hours of the morning in Hungary, so Viktor Orban gave TuKKKer & Trumper time on Hungarian state teevee (subtitles in Magyar), pre-empting 5-year-old reruns of Hungary's version of "Dancing with the Stars."
(As a consolation nod to those Hungarian "Dancing" fans who miss their show: if they stay up really, really late or get up really, really early, after airing the interview, Hungarian state teevee will play the U.S. version of "Dancing" where "Star" Tukkker cha-chas right out of the competition.)
@Jack Mahoney: When I was in high school, and especially when I was in junior high, my parents didn't want me to read some of the books banned by the Catholic Church. Fortunately for me, my two closest friends, one of whom was a Roman Catholic and the other who went to Catholic school (but was Episcopalian) usually got the banned books and lent them to me.
The whole idea was that if the Church banned a book or movie, it must be worth our reading or seeing. As I recall, the Catholic mother of my Catholic friend got some Catholic tabloid newspaper that listed banned material, and both mother & daughter put the banned stuffed on the top of their reading & viewing lists.
I see nothing wrong with churches and parents banning books and stuff, though I wouldn't recommend it. I see plenty wrong with laws or government agencies banning reading material.
Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker signed into law last week a ban on
book banning in libraries and schools in Illinois. He stated that
all libraries and schools should have available any book on LGBTQ
issues or black issues. First state to do so.
https://apnews.com/article/book-ban-library-lgbtq-illinois-
f5516941473e474712eaaafda084de76
Here is an article from NPR about ICE detention centers. The abuses documented in the report are horrific.
"Government's own experts found 'barbaric' and 'negligent' conditions in ICE detention
In examining more than two dozen facilities across 16 states from 2017 to 2019, these expert inspectors found "negligent" medical care (including mental health care), "unsafe and filthy" conditions, racist abuse of detainees, inappropriate pepper-spraying of mentally ill detainees and other problems that, in some cases, contributed to detainee deaths."
This NYT article reports a poll in which non-trivial percentages of Rs and Ds respond that the U.S. is in danger of failing as a country.
But the neither the article not the polltakers provided a definition of "failed country." So results are about feelings, which is fair enough, but the NYT doesn't really do a good job of relating that, because a clear underlying premise of the reports is "both sides" agree on the problem (which, again, is undefined). In fact, even some rudimentary analysis would probably reveal that the spread of answers is just another example that Rs (conservatives) tend to think in reactive, fear-based modes, D's (liberals) tend to think in proactive, cooperative problem-solving modes (manymanymany psych studies indicate that these tendencies are almost hard-wired).
But the Times chooses to frame "both sides fear country may fail."
Sheesh.
In the article they did come sort of close to defining "failure", by quoting an R:
"... “We’ve moved so far away from what this country was founded on,” said William Dickerson, a Republican from Linwood, N.C. “Society as a whole has become so self-aware that we’re infringing on people’s freedoms and the foundation of what makes America great.”
He added: “We tell people what they can and can’t do with their own property and we tell people that you’re wrong because you feel a certain way.” ..."
Short version: I don't like learning things I don't like, and I don't think anyone can tell me not to do what I want with my mouth and my stuff. This country is failing me.
The guy must have a nasty HOA, I guess.
Jack,
As a kid in a parochial school, we got the word about banned books and movies, direct like. The list was updated and posted every month on the wall outside our classroom, which was great for us. We didn’t have to waste time searching through the library or drugstores looking for “the good stuff”. We took it as a kind of community service to hormone addled seventh and eighth graders. The funny thing is, had they never posted such a list, and because back then an internet was some kind of weird thing fishermen used, we’d have been lucky to find a tiny percentage of that stuff. Thanks, Jesus!
“Ho! Guys! Look at this title “Housewives on the Prowl”! Let’s check that out!”
“What are you boys doing?”
“Oh, hi, Father. Nothing. Just reading the list of bad stuff to see what to stay away from. See ya. We’re off to the drugstore.”
@Akhilleus: Have you never wondered whether or not Father Seditious posted that list of banned books & movies as a class syllabus? Not all priests are holier-than-thou.
Marie,
I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe a How To for kids.
Yikes.