The Dam Is Barely Holding

Despite refusing to tell Senator Jon Ossoff (D-GA) who won the 2020 presidential election, Jay Clayton was confirmed to be Director of National Intelligence.  He's actually one of Trump's better nominees, his main qualification is that he is not Tulsi Gabbard.  

Meanwhile, there is another subject that I haven't commented enough if at all on, Trump's appointment of Todd Blanche (above) as Attorney General.  A handful of Republican senators - especially Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who decided that he'd rather be a lame duck than a dead duck (he evidently remembers what almost happened to Mike Pence  on January 6, 2021), and John Cornyn of Texas, forced into early retirement by the Lone Star State's Republican primary voters in favor of the horrible Ken Paxton.   Trump has even threatened to pull the Blanche nomination because of the lack of support.

So far, the dam against GOP election fraud is holding, but just barely.  But there are still dangers to free and fair midterm elections this year.  Clayton may have a little integrity, but he's likely willing to shred it to help Trump nullify votes in key battleground (don't you hate that expression?) states like Georgia (where Senator Ossoff is up for re-election), and even if he isn't confirmed as Attorney General, Blanche, who is all in on Trump's election conspiracy theories, is still acting Attorney General and it ready, willing and able to push for federalizing and rigging elections - with a blessing from a right-wing Supreme Court that supports the unitary executive theory of supreme presidential authority.  

By the way, remember when Madonna threatened to blow up the White House in January 2017?  At this point, I would be quite happy to see her blow up that now-degraded residence by committing an al-Qaeda-style terrorist attack and flying a Lear jet full of explosives and filled gasoline containers into the building with Trump in it. It would eliminate America's two most malignant narcissists at once.  There, I said it. 

The Scariest People in the World

I saw as much of the Ketanji Brown Jackson Supreme Court confirmation hearings as I could take.  After a few minutes of it, it became apparent that the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee were doing what comes naturally too them - trying to railroad a black woman for being responsible for  all of the cultural and societal failings of the world by, including but not limited to, representing terrorists in court, going leniently on child-porn offenders, being soft on crime overall, and possibly buying Mary J. Blige records when she was in college. 

Many of these GOP senators, in addition to a couple of current and former governors and a former President, are hoping to run for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, and they used these confirmation  hearings to show the right-wing base just how much they hate black women too.   Among the senators expected to run, along with a current governor and the previous President, are:  

Tom Cotton

Ted Cruz

Ron DeSantis

Josh Hawley

Marco Rubio

Donald Trump

I didn't have to think long for a list that was just as scary as that. It was the VIP list at the 1934 Nuremberg rally, which reads as follows:

Hans Frank

Joseph Goebbels 

Hermann Göring

Rudolf Hess

Heinrich Himmler

Adolf Hitler

When people talk about fascism taking over America, this is what they mean. And if - when? - America's homegrown Nazis goose-step their way down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, being the smartest person on the Supreme Court won't help Justice-to-be Jackson much. 😨

My apologies to Joe Queenan for ripping off his joke comparing the Nuremberg Rally VIP list to the cast of St. Elmo's Fire. 

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.      

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.)