Supreme Consequence

The Supreme Court began hearing arguments last week on whether or not the Affordable Care Act is constitutional without the individual mandate, which the Republicans repealed in an effort to weaken the law so it could be killed.

But Chief Justice John Roberts took issue with the idea that taking out a part of the law to make it violate the Constitution.  He strenuously opined that the Democratic Congress that passed it never intended to allow such a thing to happen, even as the Republicans never repealed (or replaced) that whole damn law to begin with.   

"I think it's hard for you to argue that Congress intended the entire act to fall if the mandate was struck down when the same Congress that lowered the penalty to zero did not even try to repeal the rest of the act," Roberts told the attorney representing the state of Texas, which is one of several states pursuing the case against the law. "I think, frankly, that they wanted the Court to do that, but that's not our job." 

And whether or not newly appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett agrees with that, one Trump appointee apparently does - Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who seemed to concur with the Chief Justice over the intentions of the legislative branch.

For obvious reasons, I'm not sure I can trust Justice Kavanaugh, at least not completely, at this moment, but Chief Justice Roberts, despite his ideological leanings, has proven himself to be a decent and fair man, and he holds a lot of sway in prickly issues like regulating health care.  After all, he saved the law in 2012.  Right now, it looks like the law may be upheld, mandate or not.  And President-elect Biden will almost certainly try to restore the mandate and build further on the law . . . even as Mitch McConnell, who is likely to remain Senate Majority Leader, will almost certainly to have a problem with that.  A compromise deal between Biden and McConnell could stave off the case by reinstating the mandate and allowing Congress to set the penalty.  Whatever happens, those who benefit from the Affordable Care Act can probably breathe a little more easily than the could in October.     

Kava-NUTS!

Brett Kavanaugh is a Supreme Court justice.

We all laughed, didn't we?  We all chortled when Kavanaugh lost his cool and made himself look like a bigger jerk than he was with the way he lashed out at his detractors.  But it led to the Republican base rallying behind him as ferociously as the Democratic base has rallied against him.  Democratic chances of taking back the House, while still good, have slipped a bit, and the Democrats' already slim chances of taking back the Senate have slimmed even further.  Some of the most odious incumbent GOP senators and GOP Senate candidates might end up winning after being behind in the polls.  And I don't even want to look at the polls in the gubernatorial elections.

Judge K - I've decided to call the new Supreme Court justice by his gangsta name from now on - was confirmed in the Senate by a vote of 50 to 48, tying Clarence Thomas for having the highest negative vote for a confirmed justice and getting two positive votes fewer than Thomas.  (Republican Steve Daines of Montana was at his daughter's wedding and Republican Lisa Murkowski of Alaska abstained, as she had voted against having the confirmation vote at all.)  When Thomas was confirmed in 1991, he at least offered regret for the contentiousness of the hearings stemming from Anita Hill's allegations of sexual harassment, standing out in the rain under an umbrella on the very night he was confirmed and expressing hope that the country could heal. Judge K didn't even do that. I'll come right out and say it; he's a prick.  

Judge K's confirmation comes on the heels of a good week for Donald Trump, having received a report of the lowest unemployment rate in nearly fifty years (not to mention the lowest wages) and a renegotiation of NAFTA with Canada and Mexico (not so much a renegotiation as it was the diplomatic equivalent of putting a different sleeve on a Blind Faith album), so he and the Republicans go into the final month of the midterm campaign with the wind at their backs.  That wind may very well be their own.  The Republican base has been fired up, yes, but the Democratic base - women, people of color, white men who don't have grievances against women and people of color and whose biggest complaint about today's America is that it's getting hard to find a decent radio station - is already fired up and will be fired up even more.  Now is the time to stop protesting Judge K's elevation to the Supreme Court - it's done.  Now instead is the time to start organizing the the November midterms and get out the vote.  Instead of marching in the streets, it's time to march to the polls.  And if the Democrats blow this one . . . you know the rest.          

Kavan-UGH!

I didn't watch Thursday's Senate Judiciairy Committee hearings on Brett Kavanaugh, but seeing the highlights on the evening news, particularly the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford, made me wonder if it was time not for America to pack the Supreme Court but for America to pack it all in.

Dr. Ford - I know I called her Mrs. Ford before, but it turns out that she's a psychiatrist, so she's an M.D., hence the change of salutation - was credible and calm in discussing her story of how Trump's Supreme Court nominee assaulted her. Kavanaugh - who does not deserve a salutation - went on a partisan rant, blaming the Democrats for smear campaign against him and suggesting an attempt to get even for Hillary Clinton's loss to Trump.  The joke's on him - it was revenge for what happened to Merrick Garland, the Obama nominee who never got a hearing, and as far as revenge for Hillary, those of us who supported Bernie Sanders or Martin O'Malley have been pining for revenge against Hillary.  Or at least against Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

Anyway, Kavanaugh came across as a mean, vicious, self-absorbed preppie snob who is all too happy to point the finger at someone else when he's held to task for his swinish behavior.  Some people compared his testimony to Clarence Thomas' response to sexual harassment charges in 1991, but I saw the Thomas hearings, and I'm here to tell you - and as someone who believed Anita Hill - that Thomas' response was measured and firm by comparison. Thomas, for all his pseudo-righteous pseudo-indignation, did not come across as someone who was about to fly off the handle.  Kavanaugh came across as an anger-management course dropout.

And, given his obvious fondness for beer, how many brewskis did he have before the hearing?

Things would have gotten even worse yesterday, when the Senate Judiciary Committee voted to recommend Judge K's nomination to the full Senate, but Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona made it clear that he wouldn't vote for final confirmation unless the FBI did a background check on Kavanuagh - which should have been done long ago and which Trump did not want. There will be a background check, and the confirmation vote will be delayed for at least a week.

Hope springs eternal for those seeking to stop Judge K with enough votes in the Senate against him.   But should he be confirmed, the only way to get him off the Court is to force him to resign after more crap about him comes out.

And it will. 

But whatever happens, I'm glad I have a passport.      

Stormy

Nothing to do with Stephanie Clifford.

Brett Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court is in greater jeopardy after a second woman, one Debbie Ramirez, claims to have been sexually harassed by Kavanaugh while they were both at Yale, at a dorm.  He apparently flashed her.  Kavanaugh may only have two allegations against him as opposed to dozens (I wonder if you all know who I'm talking about?), but two allegations may indeed be two too many when you're talking about a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land.  (I'm not referring to the Lake County Courthouse in Leadville, Colorado, perched at an altitude of 10,145 feet above sea level.)  This could blow up big time.

Rod Rosenstein went to the White House after allegations were made  that he suggested involving the 25th Amendment too remove Donald Trump from office for being an idiot.  Rosenstein, who's no idiot himself, denies the charges and said he was being sarcastic in talking to then-acting FBI director Andrew McCabe.  Apparently Trump and White House Chief of Staff John Kelly didn't think he was being very funny, because he got a dressing-down at the White House yesterday and has been told to return to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue when Trump returns from the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Thursday.  A big-time blow-up, given the precarious state of the Russia investigation that Rosenstein oversees as Deputy Attorney General, is inevitable.

And if you think that's explosive, wait until Trump addresses the United Nations General Assembly today.  We could be in a war with Iran before long. :-O

Meanwhile, a strong cold front running into warm, humid air across the Northeast tomorrow could produce storms so severe, I could once again lose my electricity for I don't know how long . . . and end up with a tree in my living room.

Thursday's weather is supposed to be much better. :-p

Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a (very) bumpy ride!         

Ford Tempo

Here's how the issue of Christine Blasey Ford's attempt to testify against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh  stand at this point.  After Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Charles Grassley set an arbitrary deadline for Mrs. Ford to agree to a time to testify and she and her attorney held out for demands to benefit her ability to present her case, the chairman kept setting the deadline further back.  And further back,.  And further back.  And so on and so on, until Mrs. Ford finally agreed to testify, and now she and her attorney are in the process of negotiating the particulars. 

What caused Grassley to be more accommodating? Probably Donald Trump's tweet in which he wanted to know why the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which would investigate Mrs. Ford's claims of sexual assault against Kavanaugh, didn't hear from the accuser in the early 1980s, when the assault was supposed to have taken place.  Once reminded that the FBI doesn't involve itself in sexual-assault cases involving people who have not been appointed to the judiciary due to the fact that they are teenagers, Trump then asked in a follow-up tweet why she and her "loving parents"  (his words) didn't report the assault to local authorities in Maryland, where Kavanaugh and Mrs. Ford lived.  Well - thousands if not millions have people who had been sexually assaulted took to Twitter to explain why they never reported cases of assault - because they involved family members, a star student, an employer . . . and fear of retribution was a common factor in all of these cases.  They feared not being believed or having the blame deflected to them if they were believed.

Nevertheless, the Senate Republican caucus seems hell-bent on getting Kavanaugh confirmed, and with a couple of renegade Democrats, they're likely to pull it off.  But Christine Blasey Ford can still pursue a case against Kavanaugh even if he makes it onto the Court, and what might ultimately happen is that Democrats can "Fortas" him.  I refer to what happened to former Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas. who in 1969 was shown to have accepted a $20,000 retainer and was believed to have entered into a tax evasion scheme with other judges.  Fortas resigned from the Court under pressure, rather than face lengthy impeachment proceedings, to save his family grief.  If Kavanaugh is confirmed and the charges against him don't go way, he could be forced off the Court like Fortas was, resigning to spare his wife and daughters further grief.

But then he'll have more time to devote to charity.

I've been led to understand that the Senate Judiciary Committee didn't do a good job the last time it looked into a sex scandal, when many of its members didn't take seriously Anita Hill's charges of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas in 1991.  The full Senate did a better job of that. Thomas was confirmed by a vote of 52-48 - the highest negative vote ever received by a confirmed Supreme Court justice.

When The Levee Breaks

The remnants of Hurricane Florence are expected to reach my area late tonight into tomorrow, and even though we'll get a lot of rain and maybe a thunderstorm, it won't be nearly as bad as what people in the Carolinas have been getting from the storm in its full fury.  And Trump is reacting to this catastrophic hurricane by bitching about the reports surrounding the last catastrophic hurricane.  He's trying to deny that three thousand people - about the same number of people that perished on 9/11 - died in Puerto Rico as a result of the aftereffects of Hurricane Maria.  The government is only beginning to deal with Florence, and Trump is responding to the last storm as if he were fighting the last war.

The dam is breaking, and I'm not talking about the Santee Dam holding back Lake Marion in South Carolina.  I'm talking about Trump's "Presidency."  Trump has had to deal with Paul Manafort confessing to every campaign finance violation he's been charged with, and Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is dealing with allegations of sexual harassment dating back to - really - his high school years.  (Kavanaugh tries to present himself as a nice guy, but how is this possible with a charge like this?)  Kavanaugh is facing charges from one Christine Christine Blasey Ford, a professor in California who claims that he assaulted her so hard that he could have killed her by mistake.

Oh dear . . .. Despite all that, Kavanaugh may still have the votes in the Senate (courtesy of a power-hungry Republican caucus) to squeak through and get on the Court, but once on the Court he could be forced out by the Me Too movement, and hopefully they'll also take out Clarence Thomas in the process.  All of this pressure on Trump's associations and his attempts to bend the will of the judicial system to his own will is only making it more likely that the Democrats are going to win back the House in the 2018 midterms . . . and possibly the Senate.

And Trump wants to re-litigate Maria?

When the levee breaks, America will be a far different country than it is today. 

More Comings and Goings

Environmental Destruction Agency chief Scott Pruitt is out, the victim of his own lavish spending and influence peddling.  But those who think they can literally breathe easier ought to remember that Andrew Wheeler, the acting EDA administrator, is a former coal lobbyist.  Pruitt's departure treated a symptom.  The disease goes merrily on.

And Brett Kavanaugh, the new Supreme Court nominee?  I think his record says all you need to know about him, so I won't do more than cite it . . . and mention his opinion that sitting U.S. Presidents can't be indicted while in office.

Ironically, he worked for Ken Starr on the Whitewater investigation.

Please note that I didn't mention the current President's name.  I'm taking Martin O'Malley's advice and not talking about him. 

Oh yeah, Kavanaugh's another Catholic . . . are we ever going to see a Protestant on the High Court again??