Out of Sessions

I've never seen so many liberals shed tears not of the crocodile variety over the forced resignation of a racist, reactionary Attorney General.  Jeff Sessions was not an icon of equal justice under law, but he showed integrity in recusing himself from the Russia investigation, allowing for the appointment of Robert Mueller as special prosecutor in the investigation.  Now this new clown Matthew Whitaker, a Trump loyalist and a Mueller critic,  is the acting Attorney General and is poised to find a way to undermine Mueller in a way that Trump never could before Sessions was forced out.

Popular wisdom is that if the Democrats had gained control of the Senate - which was never going to happen - Trump wouldn't have forced Sessions out the day after the election.  That's correct.  If the Democrats had taken back the Senate, Trump would have forced Sessions out a week after the election.  The possible expansion of the Senate Republican majority, depending on how elections in Arizona and Florida turn out, only emboldened Trump, as his belligerent attitude in his last press conference ("Did you see Trump's last press conference?"  "I hope so!") demonstrated.

But Democrats have just regained control of the House (I'll talk about that later), and they are getting ready to pick up where Mueller may be forced to leave off.  I'm not for impeaching Trump for as long as there's no evidence to warrant impeachment, but I am all for the investigation.  Just because there may not be any evidence of Trump colluding with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election doesn't mean Mueller and the Democrats don't have to look.  

Waiting For the Worms

As someone I know likes to say, the worm turns.

Donald Trump now has has two allies - tabloid publisher David Pecker and Trump Organization financial officer Allen Weisselberg, both Pace University graduates - talking to federal investigators under protection of immunity about hush money in connection with Michael Cohen to keep damning information about his extramarital affairs from getting out . . . and leaning to violations of not just campaign finance laws but possibly of money laundering in all sorts of business transactions by the Trump Organization.  And state and local authorities are likely to investigate the matter further.

So, after all of Trump's efforts to undermine Robert Mueller's Russia collusion investigation, it turns out he was focused on the wrong investigation.  There's still no evidence that he illegally colluded with Russians to win the 2016 presidential election.  But there's plenty of evidence that he illegally colluded with Americans.  Like Michael Cohen.

By the way, Mr. Cohen, I heard that today is your birthday.  Mr. Potter called to wish you a happy birthday - in jail!  Go on home, they're waiting for ya!

Be that as it may, Trump is feeling the heat, and he's no doubt planning to pull another trick in his book to save himself, like campaign in the midterms against illegal immigrants who commit crimes or start a war with North Korea after canceling further denuclearization talks.  Also, he's ready to fire Jeff Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia investigation, and replace him with an Attorney General who can kill it.  Sessions angrily defended his record as Attorney General and his respect for the law in response to these reports, but other Republicans are beginning to abandon him; his only defenders at the end of the day may be Democrats.  Imagine that - Trump has made a hero out of Jeff Sessions.  Jeff Sessions!

The only thing that can stop Trump now is a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives, but despite Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com site currently giving the Democrats a 72 percent chance of taking back the House, it's not in the bag.  And if the GOP keeps the House in November, then that's it.  The Democrats deserve to go full Whig.  

Remember reading about the anarchy of the 1850s in history class - Bleeding Kansas, the Dred Scott decision, Know-Nothingism, Harpers Ferry?  That will be nothing compared to what happens in 2019 if the GOP retains full power in Washington.

Get ready for Civil War II.

Anything else?  Yeah, don't send your kids to Pace.

Summits and Nadirs

So what's my takeaway from the Trump-Kim summit?  I think that they established an excellent framework for President O'Malley to use to strike a deal with North Korea in 2021.

Seriously, though, it's a good thing that Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un are talking and have agreed to eventually denuclearize the Korean peninsula and lessen tensions between the one-and-half countries.  It's good that two megalomaniacs who threatened to annihilate each other are now talking to each other.  But the statement over how to achieve this was too vague, sort of like the deal Roosevelt and Churchill negotiated with Stalin on what to do with Berlin after the war ("We'll figure it out later!"), and Trump's promise to cancel U.S.-South Korean military exercises will make South Korea less secure and less ready to fend off another North Korean invasion.

Even more troubling is that Trump is treating Kim like a buddy even as he alienates Justin Trudeau and Emmanuel Macron over trade while disrespecting Angela Merkel and Theresa May over the fact that they're women.  Even though they're all - you know - democratically elected leaders?  Trump, of course, was not democratically elected, as 54 percent of the American electorate voted for someone else but Trump won in the Electoral College.   But even the 46 percent of the American electorate that did vote for him, and certainly the 50 percent of Americans of voting age who stayed home on Election Day 2016, couldn't possibly approve of separating migrant children from their parents and keeping them incarcerated in an abandoned Wal-Mart and keeping them inside 22 hours a day with two hours of regimented yard activities like they're criminals.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions quotes the Bible to justify this action by referencing in Romans 13:1, to obey the laws of the government: "Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God."  Aside from the fact that this quote was used to justify slavery before the Civil War and pro-British loyalism before the Revolution, he completely ignored the compassion emphasized in Romans 13:10: "Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law."  And Sarah Huckabee Sanders defends Sessions.

And the GOP is going to win the 2018 midterms because of a robust economy and a booming stock market? 

Trump's only worthy accomplishment, apart from reducing tensions with North Korea, is breaking the Bush-Clinton dynasty continuum with his election victory.  But it's long since time to fight back and stop him from doing more damage.  And then, in 2020, we work for . . . new leadership.

Meanwhile, Paul Manafort is going to jail.  It's a start.

Scout's Dishonor

A Boy Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent. Donald Trump is none of these things, but he is the President of the United States (don't remind me), and so he got to address the annual Boy Scout jamboree this past week in West Virginia.  And what transpired was a speech that many observers said was not unlike the sort of speech Adolf Hitler used to give boys in the Hitler Youth, the Third Reich's version of Scouting.

Trump, in short order, bashed Barack Obama and attacked his predecessor, a former Boy Scout, for not addressing a jamboree in person (Obama addressed the 2010 jamboree by remote), and he also coaxed the boys into booing his arch-nemesis Hillary Clinton, giving children with Y chromosomes license to lash out at adult without one.  And the hated Democrats weren't the only targets of Trump's barbs.  He chided Attorney General (and Eagle Scout) Jeff Sessions for recusing himself in the Russia investigation and not backing up the President - not by name, but by riffing on the Scouting credo.

"As the Scout Law says, a Scout is trustworthy, loyal - we could use some more loyalty, I will tell you that," Trump said as a veiled reference to Sessions' rare moment of integrity.

The Boy Scouts certainly weren't prepared for this.

But Randall Stephenson, president of the Boy Scouts of America, should have been.  Stephenson, who is also the chief executive officer of AT&T, knew that Trump couldn't keep politics and petty grievances out of his speeches, yet he invited him to speak anyway.  Needless to say, the Boy Scouts - already regarded as an organization out of step with the times for its culturally conservative values - are under fire for letting Trump come and speak to "the little fellows," and some parents are threatening to pull their little fellows out of the organization.   

Camp Fire USA, lads?     

The Scouts have survived - barely - charges of homophobia and the controversy of support from the Mormon Church (which has recently pulled support for the Boy Scouts' teen programs in response to, of course, the Boy Scouts' efforts to accommodate gays).  They're going to have a tough time recovering from this. 

Failure to Communicate

Commenting on the Trump administration is like multitasking.  Just when you think you know what you're going to talk about, along comes another bombshell of a story to push aside (possibly for good) the story you were going to talk about previously.

This time it's the shakeup in the White House press office.  Anthony Scaramucci, a slick Italian-American Wall Street investment banker from Long Island who seems to live up to every negative stereotype about Italian-Americans from Long Island and Wall Street investment bankers, became the White House communications director in an effort to get Trump's White House on message.  (He can't get it back on message because it never was on message in the first place.)  He's the type of guy who worships Trump and is the consummate yes-man for his, umm, ideas.  Which means that Scaramucci will never have a disagreement with Trump, always assuming that Trump is right even when he's wrong (and he usually is).

This appointment infuriated White House press secretary Sean Spicer, who resigned.  (Sarah Huckabee Sanders, daughter of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee and deputy White House press secretary, will replace Spicer.)  White House chief of staff Reince Preibus, also said to be frustrated with the yes-men around Trump, may be the next to go, though he is safe for now.  Indeed, Scaramucci will be less concerned with the staff and more concerned with how to spin the loss of one of Trump's lawyers as the investigation into his business dealings heats up - and Robert Mueller wants some answers about Trump's finances that Trump will likely fire Mueller over before he answers them.

And the Republican health care bill will have to include subsidized antacid for members of Congress.

As if all of this weren't enough, it was reported that Attorney General Jeff Sessions - whom Trump excoriated for recusing himself from the Russia investigation rather than showing the sort of loyalty that Trump craves -  is reported by the Washington Post to have discussed campaign-related matters, especially policy issues of concern to the Kremlin, with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak despite earlier insistences from Sessions that he did no such thing.

What we have here is a failure to . . . you know the rest.

I'm ready to give up commenting on Trump.  It's too much goshdarned work, and I'm not getting paid to do this blog.  (You probably figured that out from the typos that have slipped my attention in the past.)  

The Female Barack Obama?

I'm not going to comment on Attorney General Jeff Sessions' answers to questions about the Russians at his Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, or his recollections of meetings with Russian officials.  Because he offered neither.  I'm instead going to comment on the star of the hearings,  U.S. Senator Kamala Harris of California.

Kamala Harris became a rising star in the falling Democratic Party the second she was elected to the U.S. Senate in November 2016.  A tough prosecutor of South Asian and Jamaican descent, she served as District Attorney of San Francisco and then as Attorney General of California and was known for her tenacity and her lack of moderation in the pursuit of justice (such moderation, as Barry Goldwater once told us, is no virtue).  She's brought that no-nonsense attitude to the Senate, grilling witnesses in the Trump investigations such as Jeff Sessions to get to the heart of the matter.  But she's had a hard time getting her questions out; Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr (R-NC) keeps cutting her off.

Now why is that?  Because she's a woman?  Because she's a person of color?  Or is it because Republicans are afraid of her aspiring to a federal elective office higher than the Senate?

I'll come right out and say it - Kamala Harris is being talked about for the Presidency in 2020.  And Burr and other Republicans may be trying to silence her because they see her as a threat down the road.  

She's a dream candidate for many Democrats, someone who could forge a new coalition of women, people of color, and white male liberals, and maybe drawing in the same Trump voters in the Rust Belt who had voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012.  Indeed, she is seen as a female Obama - biracial, educated abroad (she lived in the Canadian province of Quebec as a teenager), liberal on social issues, a seasoned lawyer, and a first-term U.S. Senator.  She's also married to a lawyer, California attorney Douglas Emhoff.  As a presidential candidate, she'd be unstoppable.

But as President?  Well, that's the problem.  She'd come into office with the same drawbacks as Obama. While she has more state and local government experience than Obama had before he entered the Senate, she will by 2020 have only been in the Senate for four years, like Obama, and she'd likely enter the Presidency as unfamiliar with Washington as Obama proved to be.  How could she get things done?  And how effective would she be at building up the Democratic Party?  These questions about Harris need to be answered.  I would expect her to be more effective than Obama as a President and as a party leader, if her relentless grilling of Sessions is any indication.  But is this another play by the Democrats at identity politics, which Obama eschewed, preferring to be the candidate who happened to be black, not the black candidate -  but which Hillary Clinton, as a woman, so shamelessly exploited to the detriment of the party and her own career?  If the answer is yes, then Harris would be wise not to take the bait and not to run as "the non-white female candidate."  Because playing with identity politics is the same as playing with fire, and when Hillary played the "gender card," she, the Democrats, and the whole country were burned.

But don't count out Kamala Harris in 2020.  She could be a formidable presidential candidate then and scare the Republicans silly.  Guys like Burr understand that.

Out of Sessions

Everyone who thought that Trump had gained his footing and put Democrats on the defensive with his well-received speech to Congress and who feared  a successful, focused administration from that moment on can now relax.  They're in trouble again thanks to the Attorney General, Mr. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.

At his Senate confirmation hearing to become Attorney General, Sessions was asked by Senator Al Franken (D-MN) if he ever had any contact during the 2016 presidential campaign with the Russians, given the troubling suspicion that the Russians helped to rig the general election in favor of Trump.  Sessions said he did not.  Now it turns out he spoke to the Russian ambassador not once, but twice in 2016.

Did Sessions perjure himself?  Maybe not.  He said he met with the Russian ambassador as a courtesy due to his service on the Senate Armed Services Committee and does not not remember any "political" conversations with the ambassador.  Be that as it may, he's had to recuse himself from any current and future investigations into Trump's Russian ties, as many Republicans wanted him to do, but Democrats are calling for his resignation.

Let's make something abundantly clear: Sessions isn't resigning.  Democrats routinely call for Republican appointees to resign - I remember Jesse Jackson in the 1980s calling for the resignation of Chester Crocker, President Reagan's Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, that was based more on policy differences toward South Africa and Namibian independence than on any charges of malfeasance - and Republicans also routinely call for Democratic appointees to resign, provided they'll even let them take office in the first place.  So the Democratic response is pure politics.  And the Sessions affair may turn out to be nothing.  But I don't think so.  I think there's something to this, and it won't be long before Sessions finds himself in even hotter water.  But in the meantime, it's fun to watch Trump and his neanderthal White House twist in the wind again.

As for the charge from Trump that Obama taps his phones at Trump Tower . . . apart from having mentioned it, I'm not even going to dignify that with a comment.

Explaining the Trump Administration

"Hey Rube!"

"Hey, Elvin, it's been awhile.  I was out of the country, I was in France teaching the locals how to grow genetically modified tomatoes."

"The French don't eat genetically modified tomatoes, Rube." 

"Oh, they don't want them to eat.  They want to grow these really big tomatoes to throw at politicians.  Speaking of which, I ain't kept with politics back here  in the States.  So how's President O'Malley doin'?"

"I got bad news for you, Rube.  Our candidate never even got the Democrat nomination.  Hillary done got it and lost in the electoral college despite winning the popular vote."

"Serves her right, nasty woman, the way she made fun of Marty at the debate.  So a Republican's President, eh?  That don't bother me none, so long as it ain't Donald Trump."

"Rube, I got bad news for ya . . .."

"Trump is President, Elvin?"

"Didn't ya read them French papers?"

"I don't understand French."

"Anyway, Rube, Trump done all sorts of foolish things, but the biggest damn fool thing he done is ban people from seven countries where everyone's a Moslem from comin' here."

"He can't do that!"

"That's what the courts said.  So he appealed."

"Ugh."

"It gets worse here, Rube.  He done nominated that old bigot Jeff Davis Sessions as attorney gen'ral, even though he don't know nothin' bout no civil rights."

"Triple negative there, Elvin."

"Well, so is Sessions.  Also Betsy DeVos, dumb as cow pie, big Republican donor got to be Secretary of Education."

"And the Democratic Senate approved all these 'pointments?"

"How do I break this to you, Rube?  Dem Dems was supposed to get back the Senate but they done lost it again, 52 Republicans to 48 Dems.  They gonna vote for confirmin' Sessions, see, but Liz Warren wasn't allowed to speak on it because of some letter from Coretta Scott King she read, about Sessions being a threat to civil rights when he was appointed to be a judge but didn't get the seat.  Disrespectful to Senate colleagues, they told her."

"Geez!"

"But she persisted to get the letter out in the open.  And, Rube, Dems got a chance to stop DeVos when two lady GOP senators came out against her.  They needed one more Republican to stop her, just one more."

"Well I'm glad they stopped her."

"They didn't, they tied on her, Vice President Pence cast the tie-breaking vote--"

"Mike Pence, that fool from Indiana?"

"The same, Rube, now we got an idiot running the Education Department.  And Sessions is in the Justice Department on a party-line vote!  And we may get a new Supreme Court justice to replace Antonin Scalia, he died last year."

"Last year?  Why din't Obama fill that seat then, Elvin?"

"You don't wanna know the story about that, Rube.  Anyone, Trump's choice, Neil Gorsuch, is a purty rightie kind of guy, but when the court ruled aginast Trump's travel ban, Trump blasted the judge that done handed down the rulin,' and even Gorsuch didn't like that.  Seems this guy may have a conscience at least.  Folks in the White House sure as hell don't.  One White House aide done endorsed Trump's daughter's clothing line, violatin' gubmint rules.  Even the GOP chairman of the House Oversight Committee was appalled.  N Trump's press secretary, he lies like a dog, makes up terror attacks in America to justify this here travel ban . . . Rube, I tell you, it's a mess."

"I knowed itted be, Elvin. Worse than I ever thought."

"Just a minute, Rube, my cell phone done pinged . . ..  Well!  That's good news.  Trump lost his appeal on the travel ban!  The system works!  By the way, you got one of those genetically modified tomaters on ya, I'm hungry."

"Here, Elvin, but you shouldn't eat genetically modified vegetables."

"First of all, tomaters are fruit, Rube.  Secondly, genetically modified fruits and veggies are done good fer ya, I read it in a book."

"What was the book called, Elvin?"

"'Alternative Facts.'"

Lock And Load

The Supreme Court is never more entertaining than it is when it gets a decision completely wrong. As expected, the Court overturned a thirty-year handgun ban in Chicago, insisting that the right to self-defense is constitutionally guaranteed and cannot be denied. Justice Samuel Alito - of course - was the key point man in the 5-4 decision, and though he stated that the ruling allows for some sensible bans that address local concerns involving crime and violence in places like, say, Chicago, no one is really buying that. Gun control advocate Sarah Brady is vowing to continue the fight for sensible firearms legislation, and I'm sure she'll explain her case on CNN, or perhaps on Bonnie Hunt's show.

I fear that our cities are going to become much more dangerous and that economically depressed communities are going to become war zones that make Baghdad look civilized. Right now, I suspect Justice Alito is reading this and shaking his head, muttering, "Not true, not true."

Meanwhile, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are feeling their oats in their efforts to keep the Court as far to the right as possible. Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has indicated that GOP filibuster of Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan is possible, citing her capacity to inject politics in the Court and create rights from whole cloth not specified in the Constitution, as well as her lack of experience as a jurist. Will anyone point out the the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court is legislating from the bench and his immediate predecessor (for whom he clerked) had no experience as a judge before he was first appointed to the Supreme Court as an associate justice? Probably not.

Here's an update on Robert Byrd's Senate seat: Because he died five days before the thirty-month threshold before the end of his term, it would appear that there will in fact be such an election. However, there is an ambiguity in the West Virginia law regarding special Senate elections that set that threshold. Because West Virginia already held its primary elections in May, there may not be election after all, and whomever Governor Joseph Manchin appoints will likely serve out the remainder of Byrd's term. Also, because West Virginia allows the governor to wait ten days before declaring a vacancy for a congressional seat, and because that clause might also apply to a Senate seat, that would in fact, as noted earlier on this blog, take the term beyond the 30-month threshold.

The Democrats are likely hoping that a special election is not needed, although such an election is still theoretically possible. For the record, West Virginia hasn't elected a Republican to the Senate since 1956 (ironically, in a special election), but in the current political climate, anything can happen. After all, look at the success of Scott Brown in Massachusetts - who according to a new poll, is more popular in the Bay State than either President Obama or Senator John Kerry.

The guns of politics are ready to fire.

I think I'll stop commenting on politics for awhile, it's too much goddamned work.

Wise Latinas and Foolish Honkies

Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings for her Supreme Court appointment begin today, and although Republicans lack the votes and power to stop her, they hope to gain some political clout with the American people by depicting her as a judge out of the mainstream and prone to decisions that place her out of sync with the American public.

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, is still irked by her "wise Latina" comment. "She has criticized the idea," the dumb cracker said, "that a woman and a man would reach the same result. She expects them to reach different results. I think that's philosophically incompatible with the American system."

Republican opposition to Sotomayor is now being seen as less based on her Hispanic background, however, than her moderate, slightly left-leaning judicial philosophy. As E.J. Dionne explained in his column today, the right is now emboldened by a conservative majority now on the Court bent on overturning years - decades, even - of judicial precedent in favor of an agenda that favors wealthy and powerful interests. Sotomayor will not change the balance of the Court, but in the possible scenario of a conservative justice retiring or dying, the GOP wants to make opposition to Sotomayor a test run for stopping an Obama Supreme Court nominee who really could upset the balance of power against the right.

Dionne has noted that the "conservatives" have made radical breaks with precedent, while Sotomayor's rulings on the lower courts reflect a desire to conserve it. Maybe a wise Latina would, in some cases, reach a better decision than a white male. She certainly would reach a better decision in any case than a black male if the black male in question is Clarence Thomas. But this fight the Republicans are waging is not about suspicion of Latina judge. It's about fear of more wise judges like Sotomayor, regardless of race, ethnicity or gender, joining the Court and stopping the current Gang of Five from turning the judiciary into a pocket of the vested interests that make America a meaner place for the rest of us. The GOP wants us to believe that their radical right-wing judicial agenda is good for the country, and they hope to use these hearings to persuade more people to buy that.

As for Jeff Sessions, his gripes are more likely personal than political; I only need to remind you that he's likely still bitter about his failure to get a federal judgeship when, after appointed to one by Ronald Reagan in 1986, he was rejected by the Senate. When Sessions finds offense in Sotomayor's assertion that a wise Latina would make a better decision than a white male who hasn't lived the same life, he's the hypothetical white guy she's most likely talking about.)