"The Voice of the New Due Process Army" ————– Musings on Events in U.S. Immigration Court, Immigration Law, Sports, Music, Politics, and Other Random Topics by Retired United States Immigration Judge (Arlington, Virginia) and former Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals Paul Wickham Schmidt and Dr. Alicia Triche, expert brief writer, practical scholar, emeritus Editor-in-Chief of The Green Card (FBA), and 2022 Federal Bar Association Immigration Section Lawyer of the Year. She is a/k/a “Delta Ondine,” a blues-based alt-rock singer-songwriter, who performs regularly in Memphis, where she hosts her own Blues Brunch series, and will soon be recording her first full, professional album. Stay tuned! 🎶 To see our complete professional bios, just click on the link below.
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel was unanimously reelected on Friday for another term. Her message to the party: “I am mad and I’m not going to let socialism rule this country.”
. . . .
Newsflash: It wasn’t the radical left that stormed the doors of the Capitol on Wednesday. It wasn’t the radical left that told a group of known white nationalists to “stand by” during a nationally televised presidential debate. It wasn’t the radical left that addressed the soon-to-be rioters and declared to members of Congress that “we’re coming for you.” It wasn’t the radical left who on the eve of the Capitol siege announced their plans to walk the path to sedition.
The only “radical” elements America sees now are the words and actions of the Republican Party. Yet Republicans have forever gotten away with throwing around the label “radical” to characterize the Democratic Party.
How many times in political ads have Republicans used the words “radical” and “dangerous” to describe their Democratic challengers? How many Fox News segments have Sean Hannity and friends devoted to the Democrats’ “radical extreme socialist agenda”?
What happened on Wednesday was an inevitable culmination of years of extreme and alarmist rhetoric from the Republican Party and their propaganda platforms. Watching Republicans act shocked that the people they have relentlessly and unapologetically pandered to for years is appalling.
With every tweet, every soundbite, every campaign ad, Republicans have been signaling to their supporters that it’s time to take matters in their hands. When you label something as “radical” or “extreme” or “dangerous,” you are telling people they need to defend themselves against a threat. You are telling them they need to be ready to fight. You are telling them their impulse to resort to violence and destruction is justified and righteous.
There is absolutely nothing radical or extreme about protesting racial inequality, social injustice and a culture of police brutality in America. There is nothing radical or extreme about speaking out for gender equality and women’s rights. There is nothing radical or extreme about advocating for universal healthcare coverage. There is nothing radical or extreme about supporting action to address the growing threat of climate change. There is nothing radical or extreme about wanting corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. There is nothing radical or extreme about embracing the need for gun reform in the wake of mass shootings. There is nothing radical or extreme about wearing a mask and social distancing amid a global pandemic that has taken the lives of more than 365,000 Americans.
The extremists are the ones who egged on the insurrectionists with four years of lies. Republicans may be abandoning the sinking Trump ship, but don’t let this 11th-hour maneuver fool you. That even after Wednesday’s events Republicans in Congress and in the media are still clinging to the “radical socialist agenda” narrative shows they haven’t changed — though they are scurrying to launder their tattered reputations.
Don’t believe me?
Just watch how many of them will vote to support articles of impeachment if the Democrats bring those to the House floor next week.
Kurt Bardella is a senior advisor to The Lincoln Project. He is a former aide to California Republican Congressmen Darrell Issa and Brian Bilbray and was an aide in the California State Senate and Assembly. @KurtBardella
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Read the complete op-ed at the link.
The opposition to be sure! “Loyal” — no way! The “Party of Treason” — the GOP — is exactly what its lies, vile rhetoric, lack of values, and insurrectionist actions tell us it is — the gravest existential threat to our nation and our national security since the Confederacy of Traitors.
Beware and be prepared for their continuing assaults on our democracy, our nation, truth, and humanity!
I’m angry, too, Ronna, about your lies, false narratives, and scurrilous attacks on my country! I’ll do everything possible to insure that your party of cowardice, immorality, treason, disloyalty, studied stupidity, racism, and insurrection is removed from political power at every level of our democracy. Clearly, American democracy and equal justice under law are “radical” concepts to you, Cotton, and rest of your party of lying, cowardly Putinist puppets and traitors!
Published Dec. 27, 2020
Updated Dec. 29, 2020, 10:07 a.m. ET
Last Wednesday, I broke the news to Heather Cox Richardson that she was the most successful individual author of a paid publication on the breakout newsletter platform Substack.
Early that morning, she had posted that day’s installment of “Letters From an American” to Facebook, quickly garnering more than 50,000 reactions and then, at 2:14 a.m., she emailed it to about 350,000 people. She summarized, as she always does, the events of the day, and her 1,120 words covered a bipartisan vote on a spending measure, President Trump’s surprise attack on that bill, and a wave of presidential pardons. Her voice was, as it always is, calm, at a slight distance from the moment: “Normally, pardons go through the Justice Department, reviewed by the pardon attorney there, but the president has the right to act without consulting the Department of Justice,” she wrote. “He has done so.”
The news of her ranking seemed to startle Dr. Richardson, who in her day job is a professor of 19th century American history at Boston College. The Substack leader board, a subject of fascination among media insiders, is a long way from her life on a Maine peninsula — particularly as the pandemic has ended her commute — that seems drawn from the era she studies. On our Zoom chat, she sat under a portrait that appeared as if it could be her in period costume, but is, in fact, her great-great-grandmother, who lived in the same fishing village, population a bit over 600.
She says she tries not to think too much about the size of her audience because that would be paralyzing, and instead often thinks of what she’s writing as a useful primary document for some future version of her historian self. But there was no ignoring her metrics when her accountant told her how much she would owe in taxes this year, and, by extension, just how much revenue her unexpected success had brought. By my conservative estimate based on public and private Substack figures, the $5 monthly subscriptions to participate in her comments section are on track to bring in more than a million dollars a year, a figure she ascribes to this moment in history.
“We’re in an inflection moment of American politics, and one of the things that happens in that moment is that a lot of people get involved in politics again,” she said.
Many of those newly energized Americans are women around Dr. Richardson’s age, 58, and they form the bulk of her audience. She’s writing for people who want to leave an article feeling “smarter not dumber,” she says, and who don’t want to learn about the events of the day through the panicked channels of cable news and Twitter, but calmly situated in the long sweep of American history and values.
Dr. Richardson’s focus on straightforward explanations to a mass audience comes as much of the American media is going in the opposite direction, driven by the incentives of subscription economics that push newspapers, magazines, and cable channels alike toward super-serving subscribers, making you feel as if you’re on the right team, part of the right faction, at least a member of the right community. She’s not the only one to have realized that a lot of people feel left out of the media conversation. Many of the most interesting efforts in journalism in 2021, some of them nonprofit organizations inspired by last summer’s protests over racism, will be trying to reach people who are not part of that in-group chat. One new nonprofit, Capital B, plans to talk to Black audiences, while another well-regarded model is Detroit’s Outlier Media, which is relentlessly local and often delivered by text message. For Dr. Richardson’s audience, it’s an intimate connection. She spends hours a day answering emails from readers. She spent most of Saturday sending thank-you notes for Christmas presents.
The challenge for many of those efforts, and for nonprofit news organizations in general, has been reaching large numbers of people. Dr. Richardson, whose run of short essays began when she was stunned by the response to one she posted last September, has done that by accident, though she credits her huge audience of older women to the deepening gender gap in American politics.
“What I am doing is speaking to women who have not necessarily been paying attention to politics, older people who had not been engaged,” Dr. Richardson said. “I’m an older woman and I’m speaking to other women about being empowered.”
Dr. Richardson confounds many of the media’s assumptions about this moment. She built a huge and devoted following on Facebook, which is widely and often accurately viewed in media circles as a home of misinformation, and where most journalists don’t see their personal pages as meaningful channels for their work.
. . . .
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Read Ben’s full article at the link.
Dr. HCR is certainly a favorite at our house! Her writing is very “accessible” — you don’t have to be a scholar or an academic to understand her “info packed” daily letters.
She also illustrates the important role of history and the liberal arts at promoting critical thinking and informed analysis at all levels of our educational system.
“Conspiracy theories,” intentionally false narratives, myths, racial bias, inequality, and hatred all flourish in the dark.
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump‘s senior adviser Stephen Miller has fleshed out plans to rev up Trump’s restrictive immigration agenda if he wins re-election next week, offering a stark contrast to the platform of Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
In a 30-minute phone interview Thursday with NBC News, Miller outlined four major priorities: limiting asylum grants, punishing and outlawing so-called sanctuary cities, expanding the so-called travel ban with tougher screening for visa applicants and slapping new limits on work visas.
The objective, he said, is “raising and enhancing the standard for entry” to the United States.
Some of the plans would require legislation. Others could be achieved through executive action, which the Trump administration has relied on heavily in the absence of a major immigration bill.
AUG. 25, 202005:51Some of the plans would require legislation. Others could be achieved through executive action, which the Trump administration has relied on heavily in the absence of a major immigration bill.
“In many cases, fixing these problems and restoring some semblance of sanity to our immigration programs does involve regulatory reform,” Miller said. “Congress has delegated a lot of authority. … And that underscores the depth of the choice facing the American people.”
Miller, who serves in a dual role as an adviser in the White House and to Trump’s re-election campaign, stressed that he was speaking about second-term priorities only in his capacity as campaign adviser.
Immigration has been overshadowed by surging coronavirus case numbers and an economy shattered by a nearly yearlong pandemic, but it was central to Trump’s rise to power in the Republican Party, and Miller has been a driving force for the administration’s often controversial policies to crack down on illegal migration and erect hurdles for aspiring legal immigrants.
Miller has spearheaded an immigration policy that critics describe as cruel, racist and antithetical to American values as a nation of immigrants. He scoffs at those claims, insisting that his only priority is to protect the safety and wages of Americans.
And he said he intends to stay on to see the agenda through in a second term if Trump is re-elected.
In the near term, Miller wouldn’t commit to lifting the freeze on new green cardsand visas that’s set to expire at the end of the year, saying it would be “entirely contingent” on governmental analysis that factors in the state of the job market.
Asked whether he would support reinstating the controversial “zero tolerance” policy that led to families’ being separated, Miller said the Trump administration is “100 percent committed to a policy of family unity,” but he described the policy as one that would keep families together in immigration detention by changing what is known as the Flores settlement agreement.
Over the past year, the administration has sought to amend the Flores agreement, which says children can’t be held over 20 days in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. If it succeeds, immigrant families could be detained indefinitely as they await their day in immigration court.
On Trump’s watch, asylum grants have plummeted. Miller wants to keep it that way. He said a second-term Trump administration would seek to expand “burden-sharing” deals with Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador that cut off pathways to the U.S. for asylum-seekers.
“The president would like to expand that to include the rest of the world,” Miller said. “And so if you create safe third partners in other continents and other countries and regions, then you have the ability to share the burden of asylum-seekers on a global basis.”
. . . .
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Read the complete report at the link.
Kids in cages, refugees returned to torture and death, ethnic communities terrorized, lives destroyed, an economy and a society (make no mistake about it, immigrants will be essential to America’s recovery, future prosperity, and competitiveness) in tatters, tens of millions wasted on unnecessary and counterproductive Gulags, walls, and cruel enforcement while the Gruppenfuherer and his fellow human rights criminals remain at large and and an existential threat to our nation and our world!
To state the obvious, this has little or nothing to do with protecting American workers. Trump has shown that he couldn’t care less about the health, safety, and welfare of American workers (or frankly anybody except himself) except at election time. Immigration and immigrants create jobs and economic prosperity for America.
Also, even Miller couldn’t possibly believe that the Democratic House will pass any part of this racist manifesto. Truth is, Trump failed to pass any meaningful immigration legislation in four years, even when the GOP controlled all the political branches! In fact, Miller’s nativist legislative game-plan “poisoned the well” and was soundly defeated in both Houses of Congress! So, he intends to use Executive misrule, bureaucratic corruption, and a fascism-enabling, racially tone-deaf GOP Supremes’ majority to rule without Congress (as has been the case for the last four years.)
But make no mistake: the real “Reichsplan” here is directed at further institutionalizing racism, spreading hate, and targeting Americans of color. That’s what the regime’s “Dred Scottification” is really about. Reducing or eliminating YOUR Constitutional rights! Immigrants are the “usual suspects.” But, by no means will they be the only victims of Gruppenfuhrer Miller’s White Nationalist, racist, hate extravaganza.
As reported at the link above, The Biden-Harris campaign immediately and forcefully condemned the Gruppenfuhrer’s plans for “ethnic cleansing:”
“We are going to win this election so that people like Stephen Miller don’t get the chance to write more xenophobic policies that dishonor our American values,” Molina said. “Unlike Trump, Vice President Biden knows that immigrants make America stronger and helped build this country.”
America is immigration! It’s our past, present, and future! When we deny those truths, we deny ourselves and betray our own humanity!
Get out the vote for Joe, Kamala, and the Dems! Top to bottom of the ballot! Our lives and the future of American Democracy depend on it! Don’t let Gruppenfuhrer Miller and his neo-Nazi agenda, the GOP’s dark vision of the future, destroy our democracy! Vote the party of corruption, hate, and neo-fascism out!
To Trump and his core enablers and supporters, the laws of Trump Nation authorize him to do whatever he wants. Anti-Trump Nation’s laws constrain him, but they’re illegitimate because they are made and enforced by the people who reject him.
If he loses the election, Trump will not accept the result because it would be the product of Anti-Trump Nation
So Trump’s call to the president of Ukraine seeking help with the election was “perfect”. It was fine for Russia to side with him in 2016, and it’s fine for it to do so again. And of course the justice department, postal service and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should help him win re-election. They’re all aiding Trump Nation.
By a similar twisted logic, Anti-Trump Nation is dangerous. Hence, says Trump, the armed teenager who killed two in Kenosha, Wisconsin, acted in “self-defense”, yet the suspected killer of a rightwinger in Portland deserved the “retribution” he got when federal marshals killed him.
It follows that if he loses the election, Trump will not accept the result because it would be the product of Anti-Trump Nation, and Trump isn’t the president of people who would vote against him. As he recently claimed, “The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
In the warped minds of Trump and his acolytes, this could lead to civil war. Just this week he refused to commit to a peaceful transition of power. His consigliere Roger Stone urges him to declare “martial law” if he loses. Michael Caputo, assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services, warns “the shooting will begin” when Trump refuses to go.
Civil war is unlikely, but the weeks and perhaps months after election day will surely be fraught. Even if Trump is ultimately forced to relinquish power, his core adherents will continue to view him as their leader. If he retains power, many if not most Americans will consider his presidency illegitimate.
So whatever happens, Trump’s megalomaniacal ego will prevail. America will have come apart over him, and Trump Nation will have seceded from Anti-Trump Nation.
Perhaps ironically, the pro-democracy, pro-health care, pro-environment, pro-jobs, pro-science, more fiscally responsible Government promoted by Biden & Harris will help “Trump Nation” much more than anything in Trump’s tiny and overwhelmingly negative book of “achievements.” Even the pre-pandemic economy that Trump and his cult like to tout was as at least as much Obama as Trump.
Vote like your life and our future depend on it. Because they do!
President Trump promised in 2016 that he would protect the Constitution’s “Article I, Article II, Article XII.” (There is no Article XII.) Instead, he has shown how fragile the constitutional order can be when a president does not respect the rule of law. He has not grown into the office; instead, he has learned how to more effectively abuse its powers. The damage of a second term might be irreparable.
Our Democracy in Peril
Part seven of a series of editorials on the damage President Trump has caused — and the danger he would pose in a second term.
A president’s core responsibility is to use the awesome power of his office fairly and with neutrality. Mr. Trump has shown that he has a different understanding: The law is a weapon with which to reward loyalists, punish enemies and frighten everyone else to fall in line.
His distortion of the criminal justice system began within months of his inauguration. When FBI Director James B. Comey tried to explain the proper relationship between the president and the FBI, Mr. Trump demanded loyalty and asked the FBI director to go easy on his former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Mr. Comey declined to promise the former or do the latter, and the president fired him.
The tumult that Mr. Comey’s dismissal elicited might have taught a lesson to a more sensible person: There is substance and expectation behind the presidential oath’s pledge to faithfully execute the laws. Mr. Trump did not learn that lesson. His pick for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, properly recused himself from the federal investigation into Russia’s attack on the 2016 U.S. presidential election — and any coordination with the Trump campaign — leading to the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. So Mr. Trump viciously attacked Mr. Sessions, and then fired him, too.
In part because the president’s staff more effectively restrained him back then, the special counsel was allowed to complete his investigation relatively unhindered. But Mr. Trump had no patience for standard Justice Department procedure — recusal when conflicts of interests may exist, special care to avoid even the appearance of impropriety. He reportedly complained that he needed a “Roy Cohn” at the Justice Department — that is, an aggressive protector of his personal interests. So, after firing Mr. Sessions, he hired an attorney general with no apparent concern about the appearance or reality of impropriety, William P. Barr.
Whether out of ideological fervor or fear of Mr. Trump’s wrath, Mr. Barr has aided the president’s friends, hurt his enemies and vociferously attacked anyone who has found these actions untoward. Mr. Barr sicced handpicked prosecutors on the Russia probe, despite independent investigations concluding it was warranted. Then Mr. Barr intervened to lessen the charging recommendation for Trump friend and convicted felon Roger Stone. Mr. Barr also ordered charges against Mr. Flynn, the admitted felon whom Mr. Trump had asked Mr. Comey to help, to be dropped. Yet another Justice Department official, FBI General Counsel Dana Boente, was fired after he opposed cooperating with the plot to clear Mr. Flynn.
Mr. Trump waited until after Senate Republicans voted to dismiss articles of impeachment in February to do more of his own dirty work. His White House already had issued illegal orders to prevent current or former executive branch officers from turning over documents or giving testimony to Congress, betting correctly that lawmakers would not be able to litigate the issue in time for the information they sought to matter. Free of the threat of removal, he committed revenge firings of impeachment witnesses who had only done their jobs and followed the law, including patriots such as Army Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman — and, for good measure, Mr. Vindman’s brother, who had nothing to do with impeachment.
Mr. Trump fired intelligence community inspector general Michael Atkinson for forwarding to Congress a whistleblower complaint that had implicated the president in his scheme to use public funds to extract political help from a foreign government. The message was clear: The lawful performance of one’s duties is secondary to protecting the president.
Mr. Trump commuted Mr. Stone’s sentence so that his friend would not have to serve one day, mocking the notion of equal justice before the law. He fired the inspector general tapped to monitor the administration’s coronavirus response programs, for reasons that are unclear, beyond his aversion to authentic oversight. The White House has inquisitors dedicated to rooting out federal staff who are insufficiently loyal to Mr. Trump, and they appear to be planning a broader purge after the November election.
Because the courts move slowly, the president discovered that he can sustain even the most egregious stonewalling and violations for years. The remaining checks would be Congress, but Republicans have almost uniformly chosen subservience to Mr. ‘Trump over fealty to the Constitution, and the executive branch, but Mr. Trump has sought to fire or cow anyone who would stand in the way of his lawlessness.
Last month brought two bright warning signs that the president feels ever-less inhibited. The Government Accountability Office found that Chad Wolf’s appointment as acting director of the Department of Homeland Security is illegal, yet Mr. Wolf is still there, overseeing a department that assisted in Mr. Trump’s alarming overreaction to protesters in Portland, Ore. Mr. Trump then used the White House for his Republican National Convention acceptance speech, which almost certainly resulted in violations of a law that prohibits federal resources from being used for political purposes. The New York Times reported that Mr. Trump “relished the fact that no one could do anything to stop him.”
Americans have long been taught that the U.S. political system has effective checks and balances. But in the past years, a frightening truth has emerged. Much of that balance has depended on the good character of the president, and there are surprisingly few ways to check a malign president from abusing the enormous powers of his office. Mr. Trump is committed to using those powers for his own personal ends, and he has slowly but surely chipped away at any limitations. How many would remain after four more years?
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One reason it’s taken some folks so long to raise the alarm is because they lack understanding of our immigration and human rights laws and their foundational relationship to our democracy. Those of us who do, sounded the alarm early on!
The lack of progressive immigration and human rights expertise and influence across all three branches of our Government and in much of the media has been a major factor in the rapid deterioration of our democracy. The progressive talent is out there in abundance; it’s just in the wrong place, outside of the power structure.
While I agree with the Post’s “bottom line,” I disagree somewhat with the analysis of why our Judicial System has failed so miserably when we most needed it. It’s not just an institutional weakness of “slowness;” it’s a defect in the qualifications, ideology, and character of too many GOP-appointed Federal Judges including the majority of our Supremes.
Yes, the wheels of justice can grind slowly. But, there is no institutional bar to integrity, creative emergency responses, or putting ideology aside to “do the right thing” for the rule of law and for human decency and human dignity. It’s happened before; but not this time around, with our nation in peril.
We saw an early example of the lack of legal and moral leadership on our highest Court with the invidious and blatantly unconstitutional and outright fraudulent “Muslim Ban.”
The lower Federal Courts reacted immediately with proper urgency to “just say no” to this invidious, unconstitutional, dishonest political gimmick. Because their answer clearly was correct, the Supremes had only to reinforce that message to the regime — that Trump would be required to operate within the law and to conduct himself with professionalism, honesty, and the same modicum of human decency exhibited by all other Presidents. This should have been “a piece of cake” and a golden moment for the Court to assert its independence and reinforce human decency regardless of ideology.
Rather than upholding and reinforcing this courageous and timely conduct by their subordinate jurists, the Supremes improperly and incorrectly undermined them. Then, after unnecessary delay, they let the Trump bigot/scofflaws/liars off the hook. The rout of honesty, human dignity, and our Constitution was on!
Since then, the Roberts Court has engaged in a “pattern or practice” of improper intervention to disable timely actions by the lower courts and thereby aid the White Nationalist regime’s illegal, racism-driven actions and unethical legal tactics. Nowhere has that been worse than in the gross and deadly erosion of immigrants’ rights and human rights. Real human beings continue to suffer grotesque degradations and die because some Justices wouldn’t do their jobs!
Roberts & Co. should spend some time suffering with their fellow humans in the squalid camps in Mexico they helped create; in dangerous and disgusting DHS detention that falls below standards we would inflict on convicted felons; in “baby jails;” on flights returning refugees to danger after not even taking the time to fairly listen and evaluate their claims; in “safe” third countries that are actually functionally war zones without functioning legal systems, let alone asylum systems, where corrupt regimes have neither the interest nor the ability to protect those being persecuted; or in our “Modern Star Chambers” known as “Immigration Courts” where maliciously incompetent management and a systemic contempt for due process actually threatens the lives of not only migrants, but also lawyers on both sides, the “judges,” and “court” staff.
Too many “righty judges” exist outside the reality of the daily human misery inflicted on others by their intransigence and warped anti-humanity ideology! Even some so-called“liberal” judges too often live in an “intellectual bubble” far removed from the unending ugliness and human despair daily unfolding at the “retail level of our justice system” — known as Immigration “Courts” that these days are nothing remotely resembling actual “courts.”
Those rights of the most vulnerable among us being ground into mush are all of our rights to equal justice and fundamental fairness under law. The failure to stand up for equal justice under law and social justice for all is currently ripping our nation apart and fueling a resurgence of Jim Crow racism.
Life tenure insures that our judiciary will only change over time. But, more anti-democracy, right wing jurists on our Federal Bench will exponentially decrease our chances of saving our republic. And, we can be sure that the Trump/Mitch pick to replace Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will push American Justice to the precipice.
We need fundamental changes in what type of persons with what type of values control and comprise all three Branches of our Government. Wemust start now, before it is too late. No system will stand up to the actions of individuals who don’t believe in its fundamental Constitutional guarantees of due process, fundamental fairness, and equal justice for all persons under law!
It’s also long past time for future Democratic Administrations aggressively to embrace and elevate the pool of tremendous legal expertise, administrative talent, moral and intellectual courage, and proven problem solving ability now out there in the private, academic, and NGO human rights and immigrants’ rights community!
These are the “anti-Stephen-Millers,” “anti Billy-the-Bigots,” and “anti-Wolfmans,” who would strive to make our Constitutional promises finally come alive for all Americans, insure equality for all before the law, and make our nation a better place for everyone, not just the privileged and powerful. Government utilizing the skills of smart, practical, humane problem solvers would also be much more efficient in spending our tax dollars than the current Government of bigots and incompetents driven by extreme bias, an exclusive vision, and highly counterproductive ideologies!
This Fall, vote like your life and the future of our Constitutional republic depend on it. Because they most certainly do!
Scenes from “The Beautiful Vision” of U.S. racial history:
Gathering the dead after the Colfax massacre, published in Harper’s Weekly, May 10, 1873, Public Realm
Public Realm
“At least they weren’t asked to wear masks or socially distance; now that would have been a real crime against humanity,” says Billy the Bigot. Public realm
From The Levin Report by Bess Levin:
. . . .
At this point, there are thousands of examples underscoring the need to remove the president from society, but the most recent is his unhinged response to the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which he wants abolished in schools and replaced with a revisionist history of America that teaches children how white people have only ever had their Black peers’ best interest at heart, including when said white people literally owned slaves.
Speaking at the National Archives Museum on Thursday, Trump announced that he would be signing an executive order establishing the “1776 Commission” to promote a “patriotic education.” Apparently attempting to reach his white nationalist supporters, Trump said that the left is “attempting to destroy [the] beautiful vision” that the founding fathers had for America, and that things like the 1619 Project, which teach children about systemic racism and reframe the country’s history by examining the consequences of slavery, are “toxic propaganda” and “ideological poison” that “if not removed, will dissolve the civic bonds that tie us together” and “will destroy our country.” Then he claimed liberals want to tear down Mount Rushmore . . . .
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Read the rest of the article and the full Levin Report here:
Trump’s view of America is unrelentingly bogus. racist, unethical, and unpatriotic! This is “Dred Scottification” in action. And, we must never forget the disgraceful failure of Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supremes’ majority to take a strong stand against the very overt White Nationalist racism of Trump, Miller, and the GOP. They are indeed promoters of “Dred Scottification,” racial divisiveness, inequality, and the breakdown of the rule of law and ethical and moral norms that should guide 21st Century governance.
American democracy is indeed “on the ropes.” But, we still have a chance to save our republic this Fall. Don’t blow it!
This Fall, vote like your life and the future existence of our nation depend on it. Because they do!
Don Ayer American Lawyer Former U.S. Deputy Attorney General — Photo www.ali.orgDahlia Lithwick Supreme Court Reporter Slate Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain
Has Bill Barr Broken the Department of Justice Forever?
Bill Barr is not simply doing the president’s bidding, he is following his long-held beliefs about America.
What is Bill Barr doing, and why is he doing it? Donald Ayer, former U.S. attorney and principal deputy solicitor general in the Reagan administration and deputy attorney general under George H.W. Bush, on the attorney general’s ideology, how it predates Trumpism, and why it’s so dangerous.
In the Slate Plus segment, Mark Joseph Stern breaks down the latest voting breakdown in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, the latest Census case dead end, and the stupidity of Trump’s latest SCOTUS list.
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How timely! Just yesterday on Courtside, I gave Billy the Bigot the nod over Jeff “Gonzo Apocalypto” Sessions and “John the Con” Mitchell in the hotly contested race for “The Worst AG in Modern American History.”
I still think that Gonzo could have pulled it out if he had only been given some more time! His overt racism, misogyny, intellectual dishonesty, fraud, stupidity, bias, and “crimes against humanity” set a standard for morally corrupt officials that seemed unassailable until Billy the Bigot went into “full destructo mode.”
As someone who started working at the DOJ in 1973, I witnessed (if only from the crowd standing outside the Great Hall) the “voluntary departure” of Elliot Richardson following the “Saturday Night Massacre,” where he resigned rather than carry out President T. Dick Nixon’s inappropriate demand that he fire the Watergate Special Prosecutor. Could you imagine Billy the Bigot refusing any demand from “His Don,” no matter how illegal, unethical, and/or outrageous? When it comes to the history of Government corruption and the DOJ, I know what I’m talking about.
Heck, I even survived long enough to get “purged” myself by Ashcroft in 2003, during my “DOJ reincarnation.” So, I’m no stranger to the imperfections and shortcomings in the supposed “independence” of the DOJ.
Nevertheless, I heartily agree with Don Ayer that the dishonesty, deceit, bias, bigotry, racism, and scofflaw attitudes installed into DOJ operations by Gonzo and Billy are light years beyond prior abuses I have witnessed during my nearly five decades in the law.
Don Ayer, my former DOJ colleague and partner at Jones Day DC, confirms what I have been saying for a long time on Courtside about Billy the Bigot’s unconstitutional and unethical control of the Immigration Courts.
Listen to this podcast and ask yourself: “How could any foreign national, particularly an asylum seeker, non-Christian, or person of color get a fundamentally fair and impartial hearing before ‘judges’ selected, directed, evaluated, and governed by Billy?” If that’s not enough, if the foreign national does happen to win, Billy just unilaterally intervenes and changes the results, even in cases completed back in the Bush II Administration!
Obviously, this isn’t justice; to use Don Ayer’s term, this is “Banana Republic” authoritarian injustice.
So, how have Congress and the Roberts-led Supremes let Billy get away with this disgraceful unconstitutional mockery of everything our nation stands for? Good question with no happy answer.
During Watergate, it took a concerted effort by a bipartisan Congress, the Federal Courts including the Supremes, and independent lawyers and investigators working for the Watergate Special Prosecutor within the DOJ to bring about Nixon’s forced resignation in the face of inevitable impeachment and conviction.
By contrast, today’s GOP Senate and the GOP-appointed “JR Five” on the Supremes have shown themselves to be shameless toadies, sycophants, and enablers in the face of clearly abusive Executive overreach and tyranny. The post-Watergate ethical reforms, checks, and balances put in place by former GOP-appointed AG Ed Levi, cited by Don, have been completely dismantled in broad daylight by the Trump regime with no pushback from Congress or the Supremes. This serious, entirely preventable, deterioration and abandonment of the rule of law and ethical norms cuts across all three Branches of Government and threatens the very foundations of our democracy.
Assuming (by no means a certainty) that our nation puts it together this Fall to remove the Trump kakistocracy, we need a careful and thoughtful re-examination of the types of individuals we are rewarding with life-tenured judicial appointments and why those now on the bench, as a group, failed so miserably to uphold the Constitution, protect human dignity and decency, and thwart the outrageous scofflaw agenda of Trump and his cronies like Billy the Bigot and neo-Nazi Stephen Miller.
Don Ayer specifically mentions the outrageous “Wall Charade” where Trump illegally and unethically steamrolled legislation, the Constitution, the public purse, and common sense to divert money to his “Political Wall” using a patently bogus and fabricated “national security” pretext.
But, here’s the rest of the story: When Trump-owned Solicitor General Noel Francisco presented this “false claim” to the Supremes, disingenuously asserting a clearly fabricated “emergency” he got the JR Five to roll over! Instead of upholding the lower court’s correct injunction and referring Francisco to bar authorities for unethical conduct, they actually approved this farce, by a 5-4 “party line vote.” Of course, that spineless performance has greenlighted other racist-driven White Nationalist policies and an aura of impunity among the Trump regime kakistocracy.
Gee wiz, a Federal Court actually determined some time ago that DHS honchos Chad “Wolfman” Wolf and Ken “Cooch Cooch” Cuccinelli are both illegally serving in their current positions. But, in the “no consequences no accountability” atmosphere established by the Roberts Court, Cooch and Wolfie continue to abuse migrants with arrogant impunity. They obviously have no fear of accountability. Even if they got in trouble, Trump would simply run over the Constitution to pardon them.
As I constantly say, “it’s not rocket science.” There are scores of talented courageous lawyers out there in the private, NGO, and academic sectors who could have out-performed the “JR Five” in protecting our republic. Why are they stuck in the trenches rather than sitting on the Federal Benches?
When Congress and the Executive fail, the nation turns to the supposedly independent Article III Courts as democracy’s last defender. But, Roberts & Co. have been more than “MIA” — they have actively contributed to the downfall with outrageous derelictions of duty on voting rights, civil rights, and grotesque, unconstitutional “Dred Scottifiction” of migrants of color that actually harms, maims, and kills innocent humans almost every day.
Think that “Dred Scottification” couldn’t happen to you? Guess again! Don Ayer says all of our freedoms and democratic norms will be on the line if Billy and “His Don” get another four years to complete their destruction. Believe him!
This Fall, vote like your life depends on it! Because it does!
Great work, Eddie (and, of course artist Scott Scheidly for the enduring image of our “Clown Prince” reproduced, with permission, above)! Many congrats! Can’t see why the RNC rejected this masterpiece!
Another four years of Trumpism threatens not only the livelihood of hard-working professional clowns, but also is guaranteed to bring unnecessary suffering, lasting harm, and otherwise avoidable death to many. Perhaps you, your family, or your loved ones will be among the kakistocracy’s victims!
Better get out the vote for Joe, Kamala, and their better, more humane, more unifying program for America!
This November, vote like your life depends on it. Because it does!
As he seeks a second term, [Trump has] also made it clear that he hasn’t finished. He still wants to end the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program once and for all, drive out the millions of unauthorized immigrants living in the US and curb their political power, enact what he calls “merit-based” immigration reform, and pursue a slew of restrictive immigration regulations.
The US has already seen the harms of Trump’s first-term immigration policies, which could cut deeper if he’s given another four years: Legal immigration is plummeting, stymying growth in the labor force and threatening the US’s ability to attract global talent and recover from the coronavirus-induced recession. The US has abdicated its role as a model for how a powerful country should support the world’s most vulnerable people. And the millions of immigrants already living in the US, regardless of their legal status, have been left uncertain of their fate in the country they have come to call home.
Other concerns — including the coronavirus, racial justice, and unemployment — have recently eclipsed immigration as a top motivating issue for voters. But for Trump, who currently lags former Vice President Joe Biden in the polls, restricting immigration proved a winning message in 2016, and he will likely try to replicate that strategy again.
“It’s the thing he keeps going back to,” Douglas Rivlin, director of communication at the immigrant advocacy group America’s Voice, said. “It is his comfort zone — to go after people of color and turn them into sort of the specter of scary, violent people as a political strategy.”
. . . .
Whether any version of that proposal will get traction would largely depend on the makeup of the next Congress and whether Democrats win a majority in the Senate. Most immigration policy experts aren’t convinced that Trump will see success in negotiating with Democrats, but the political calculus could change if Democrats control both chambers of Congress and need Trump to sign their legislation.
It also depends on Republicans acting as a unified front on immigration. So far, pro-business Republicans aren’t challenging the restrictions and travel bans Trump has imposed during the pandemic, and as the US continues to grapple with its worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and more than a million Americans are out of work, they will likely continue to follow the president’s lead. But in the long term, they might find themselves at philosophical odds with the anti-immigrant wing of the party.
“I think the reality of the economics of immigration and the sort of more ideological agenda are going to come into conflict,” Rivlin said.
But if Trump can overcome those hurdles, the prize would be substantial: the ability the leave his mark on the immigration system beyond a series of executive actions that could be reversed by the next Democrat who assumes office.
“Merit-based immigration reform would be a legacy for him on immigration, more so than a border wall,” the Bipartisan Policy Institute’s Cardinal-Brown said. “That would have impacts on the future of immigration for decades.”
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Read the rest of Nicole’s gloomy yet (as always) well-written outlook at the link.
Don’t be fooled. In “Trumpspeak” the term “merit-based” means “race-based” (favoring, of course, White guys, preferably rich, English speaking, and prospective GOP toadies). Again, to state the obvious, a “kakistocracy” by definition lacks the ability to recognize and reward true “merit.” That’s why it’s a “kakistocracy,” not a “meritocracy!”
America is a nation of immigrants. To change that, Trump will have to destroy America, which, as this week’s “clown show of hate, fear, loathing, and complete nonsense” (a/k/a “The GOP Convention”) shows, he and his followers are perfectly willing to do.
This perverted “vision” of America also ties in well with the Trump/GOP approach to racism and social justice: Ignore injustice and double down on violence administered by the largely White power structure against communities of color. Kill, maim, blame, punish, jail, intimidate, disenfranchise, and dehumanize the victims rather than looking for cooperative ways to solve the problems. Sow fear, hate, and division to insure that institutionalized racism and White grievance will be indelibly ingrained in America! As these self-inflicted grievances play out, the Trump family and its cronies will use the ensuing chaos as a diversion to loot the Treasury and use what remains of “government” to further their own personal interests, without regard to the common welfare. Nice folks!
It’s doubtful that America as the majority of us have envisioned it can survive another four years of Trump’s corruption, racism, and malicious incompetence. Despite some liberal wishful thinking, our democratic institutions and apparently overrated “checks and balances” are crumbling before our eyes.
The “JR Five” on the Supremes and the GOP Senate already have reached “Penceian levels” (“Pence” rhymes with “incompetence”) of mindless sycophantic subservience to the “Clown Prince” and his entourage. None of them would be able to extract their collective heads from the more than ample Presidential rear to see any daylight during a second term. Trump’s re-election would inevitably convert the “City on The Hill” to a “wealthy universally despised third world kleptocracy.” That’s the real “vision” of Trump and the GOP. (I think that Nicole’s “hypothetical” of a Trump victory and a Dem Senate is the “least likely scenario.”)
This November, vote like your life and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do!
Equal Justice & A Diverse America For All! Trump’s Dark, Evil, Dishonest Vision Of America, Never!
This is what American “Government” is these days. An absurdist parody where the architect of death, disorder, hate, inequality, international ridicule, unemployment, and White Supremacist violence blames a former Vice President for the absolute mess the incumbent has made of our nation! And, guess what — a crowd of sycophants actually has the audacity to cheer and (apparently) believe this evil, absurdist fantasy and to claim that their selfish, tone-deaf, dishonest minority views represent the “real America!”
In other words, Trump is essentially “running against his own record” while taking no responsibility for the mess he has made. In a pure Kafka/Twilight Zone moment, his GOP toadies let him get away with it. Worse yet, they contemptuously and arrogantly think the rest of us are stupid or clueless enough to believe this fantastic nonsense!
But, maybe there is some historical reason for this contempt. Trump’s mess is also to some extent the fault of the majority of us who “failed to make the sale” and get out the vote in 2016. We won a clear majority of the votes, but were’t smart, motivated, or diligent enough to turn our majority into political power. Some would call that the height of ineptitude and failure of resolve! That, in turn, has unleashed great, unnecessary, pain, suffering, death, and despair on America and the world.
Even allowing for the unreliability of polls, Trump apparently has never had the support of the majority of Americans, let alone voters. Yet, he “governs” as if the minority he represents are the only Americans! And, the rest of us have let him get away with it!
Do we really want to be remembered as the generation that ended “The American Experiment” and replaced it with “The American Kakistocracy?” We have a chance this Fall to get it right and to put America back on track to fairness, decency, humanity, equality, and a better life for all Americans — to take America to another level and to resume a positive position of world leadership. To address racial and economic inequality and to improve and value the lives of all Americans (including, of course, Trump supporters). The chance might not come again.
So, don’t blow it! Put Joe Biden in office, a decent, experienced, highly competent, thoughtful, caring, forward looking human being with a positive vision for all Americans and a commitment to a better world. Give Joe and his able and inspirational partner Kamala Harris a Democratic-led Senate that will help them govern for the common welfare, rather than for the benefit of one family and a few of their cronies at their top!
This November, vote like your life and the world’s future depend on it! Because they do!
Due Process Forever! Kafka, The Twilight Zone, and the Marx Brothers, Never!
It is not news that the Republican Party has a stagnant governing agenda cobbled together from the long-discredited dogmas and shibboleths of the conservative movement. “The current iteration of the G.O.P. is indifferent to the substance of government,” Steve Benen, a political writer and producer for The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, writes in “The Impostors: How Republicans Quit Governing and Seized American Politics”:
It is disdainful of expertise and analysis. It is hostile toward evidence and arithmetic. It is tethered to few, if any, meaningful policy preferences. It does not know, and does not care, about how competing proposals should be crafted, scrutinized or implemented.
What is news is the extent to which the Republican Party has embraced the trappings of its leader, which is to say, the trappings of a right-wing cable news network: a nonstop parade of conspiracy, demagogy and grievance, in service to a cult of personality, all for the sake of a politics of plunder, theft and extraction.
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Read the rest of Jamelle’s op-ed at the link.
Pretty good explanation of The Party of Trump (formerly known as “The Party of Lincoln”).
My question is why the so-called “mainstream media” (excluding Jamelle and a few others) handles with “kid gloves” folks like Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and Melania, who go on national TV and present knowingly bogus, totally disingenuous, fabricated portraits of Trump as a benign presence in U.S. politics. In a vain, continuing search for “normalization” of overt 21st century Jim Crow nationalist fascism, the “mainstreams” appear ready to credit speaking in complete, largely grammatical, sentences in the English language and not screaming racist tropes or absurdist internet conspiracy theories as all that is necessary to be considered “credible” and a “moderating force” in today’s “Trumpized” GOP!
The disingenuous treatment by the “mainstreams” of dishonest attempts to “soften” Trump’s true “Mini-Mussolini” persona as election-season gimmick is a gross dis-service to the public welfare and the abdication of the duty of courageous independent journalism to provide critical coverage — not just regurgitate RNC propaganda!
Why are “the mainstreams” rolling over for the RNC?
This November, vote like your life and the future of the world depend on it! Because they do!
This past weekend, the Republican National Committee caved to white supremacist and other hate groups by adopting a resolution titled Refuting the Legitimacy of the Southern Poverty Law Center to Identify Hate Groups.
The focus of the resolution is that “the SPLC is a radical organization” that harms conservative organizations and voices through our hate group designations.
This attack on our work is an attempt to excuse the Trump administration’s pattern and practice of working with individuals and organizations that malign entire groups of people — immigrants, Muslims and the LGBTQ community — while promoting policies that undermine their very existence. It comes from the same vein as Trump’s claim that there were “very fine people” on both sides of the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Simply put, it’s an audacious attempt by Trump and the GOP to paper over the bigotry and racism that has been allowed to infect their policies.
This resolution comes at a moment when Trump will argue at the Republican National Convention that he will combat hate and bigotry, despite welcoming the support of QAnon. It also comes days after the indictment of Stephen Bannon, reminding us that Bannon was once the White House chief strategist and senior counselor and CEO of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. And it comes just after our special investigation shined a light on One America News Network’s Jack Posobiec, a reporter at Trump’s favorite network who is aligned with white supremacy and has used his platform to further hate speech and propaganda.
Trump should sever these ties to hate groups and extremists instead of doubling down through this RNC resolution.
The Trump administration has filled its ranks and consulted with alumni and allies from the Federation for American Immigration Reform, an anti-immigrant hate group that has ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists. They include Julie Kirchner, Kris Kobach, Jeff Sessions and, most notably, Stephen Miller.
The Trump administration has worked with hate groups like the Family Research Council (FRC) to roll back LGBTQ rights. FRC was designated an anti-LGBTQ hate group for decades of demonizing LGBTQ people and spreading harmful pseudoscience about them. Over the years, the organization has published books, reports and brochures that have linked being LGBTQ to pedophilia, claimed that LGBTQ people are dangerous to children and claimed that LGBTQ people are promiscuous and violent.
Anti-Muslim groups have also been welcomed into the administration, including the Center for Security Policy (CSP). Fred Fleitz, a longtime staffer, was appointed the executive secretary and chief of staff of the National Security Council. For decades, CSP has peddled absurd accusations that shadowy Muslim Brotherhood operatives have infiltrated all levels of government.
These extremists are seeking a license to continue spreading their bigotry and will do anything to undermine those — like the SPLC, which tracks and monitors hate groups — who expose their extremist views and oppose their attacks on communities. With this resolution, Trump and members of the GOP have shown the extent to which they will carry their water.
This past weekend, the RNC also released a resolution titled Resolution to Conserve History and Combat Prejudice – Christopher Columbus. It’s a remarkably transparent statement that hate and bigotry stem from Black Lives Matter protesters. The RNC and Trump did not denounce organizations that promote antisemitism, Islamophobia, neo-Nazis, anti-LGBTQ sentiment or racism. It only criticized the SPLC for challenging those groups.
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Pretty much says it all about today’s GOP and the Trump Administration.
· No platform
· No values
· No truth
· No humanity
· No decency
· No America
· No inclusion
· The party of “Dred Scottification,” Jim Crow, and White Supremacy
Sure “Sounds Like Hate” to me!
This November, vote like your life and the future of our world depend on it! Because they do!
In 2016, presidential candidate Donald Trump pledged sweeping changes to immigration policy. As president, Trump has succeeded — despite a broad public outcry and many legal roadblocks — in implementing many of his proposed restrictions through a series of executive orders.
Now Congress is pushing back. On Wednesday the House passed the No Ban Act, legislation introduced last year by Sen Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.). The act aims to repeal Trump’s ban on arrivals from majority-Muslim countries and prevent future presidents from issuing discriminatory bans on foreign nationals or followers of specific religions.
“Throughout the history of the U.S., we’ve had a series of tragic nativist chapters in our history,” Coons told me this week. “Did I think we’d be facing another one? No. But when Donald Trump announced his candidacy, I remember thinking I am so glad I live in a country where a man like this couldn’t be president. I was wrong, and we’ve seen how damaging that has been.”
In recent months, the novel coronavirus pandemic, the associated economic downturn, and protests over police killings of African Americans have diverted public attention from Trump’s immigration policies. But they must not be forgotten.
Trump’s plans for an immigration ban have inspired widespread outrage. Some dismissed Trump’s words as empty threats, noting that they were probably unconstitutional. But Trump pressed ahead as soon as he took office.
The first iteration of what became known as the Muslim ban halted entry into the United States of citizens from seven countries, five of which are majority-Muslim.
Since then we’ve watched as immigration officials have separated kids from their parents in detention centers, with at least one of them dying in custody. The images of children in cages provoked an intense backlash and could end up costing Trump at the polls — to the extent that his policies have led his own voters, especially college-educated white Republican women, to question his xenophobic and racist policies.
. . . .
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Read the rest of Jason’s op-ed at the above link.
Somewhat like Sen. Coons, I originally thought that there would be some institutional integrity and moral courage even among the more conservative members of our Judiciary, particularly among the Supremes. After all, there have been at least a few times in our history when judges across the ideological and political spectrum have stood together against the evils of racism, religious bigotry, and hate.
It’s not like Trump, Miller, Bannon, Sessions, Ross, and their hate-mongering cronies were ever particularly subtle about their invidious intent (although, to be fair, I was at the very beginning willing to give Sessions “the benefit of the doubt,” until I saw that his assurances to the Senate were lies under oath in the face of the deep moral corruption and bigotry that infected his whole being).
Boy was I wrong! Right from the git go, even with the advantage of clear evidence of invidious intent, ridiculously transparent and overtly dishonest “pretexts,” (some publicly contradicted by Trump in mid-stream) and the vast majority of lower Federal Court Judges pointing the way with cogent opinions standing up to the Trump charade and endless parade of hate, the Supremes majority tanked. Where the rights of “the other” particularly Muslims and persons color are concerned, they fully embraced Trump’s unconstitutional and tyrannical program of hate and bias thinly disguised as legitimate exercises of Executive Power. They became willing “Dred Scottifiers!”
Perhaps just as seriously, the Supremes’ “normalized” demonstrable lies, false narratives, and dishonesty as attributes that were to be expected and tolerated from our Chief Executive. What a crock! Ordinary persons are held to basic standards of honesty and candor when dealing with the Government and with Government tribunals. But the President is above it all. While, later on, the Supremes fecklessly claimed that “nobody is above the law,” their actions have shown a disturbing and intellectually dishonest unwillingness to require Trump and his regime to comply with the basics of the rule of law and to act with even a minimal level of candor and honesty.
We can’t vote the “JR Five” out of their lifetime sinecures. But, our democracy does enable us to take the actions necessary to insure that folks like the “JR Five” and other Federal Judges who embrace racism, bigotry, and political corruption over the “equal justice and real due process for all persons” required by our Constitution are not selected to serve in the future in positions requiring legal experiences and moral qualifications that they so obviously lack.
Better judges for a better America. This November, vote like the future of humanity depends on it. Because it does!
WE MUST DEFEAT THE “END OF AMERICA” CAMPAIGN: Lacking Constructive Ideas, Positive Achievements, or Human Values, Trump Makes Hate, Racism, & Lies His Message — It’s Joe Biden’s Time to Shine!
By Paul Wickham Schmidt
Courtside Exclusive
July 5, 2020
Upon hearing Donald Trump declare his candidacy for President, I turned to my wife Cathy and said “The guy is totally without values and redeeming qualities.” While I didn’t get the outcome of the election right, I nailed the Trump kakistocracy. If anything, it’s been much worse than my bleak outlook.
Who would have thought that our un-President would dance on the graves of 130,000 dead Americans while urging his followers to “drink the Kool-Aid?” Who would have believed thatour supposed leader would urge the maximum spread of deadly disease, intentionally overload an already stressed healthcare system, while looking to insure thousands of unnecessary deaths and disabilities by maliciously seeking to ax health insurance for some of America’s most vulnerable? With a “Jim Jones style” false leader like this, who needs enemies?
But, speaking of “enemies,” why not suck up to Putin while turning against long-time allies like the EU, Canada, and Mexico? Why not give the PRC an opening to subsume Hong Kong, while increasing its influence in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean as U.S. foreign policy crumbles?
Worldwide pandemic — embrace it. Climate change — deny it. Inevitable increase in worldwide migration driven by the preceding — build walls and prisons. High unemployment — end the Federal supplement. Failing bridges and unsafe highways — who cares. Falling revenues — cut taxes for the rich and services for the poor. Institutional racism — double down and glorify past racists. Voting rights — suppress them. Police brutality — enable it. Free speech —punish it. Environmental degradation — deregulate. Truth — be damned. Human decency — mock it. Justice — only for some. Reports of bounties on American soldiers — look the other way. Hate crimes — encourage them. Trump’s “malicious incompetence,” cruelty, corruption, and downright stupidity is endless and on public display every day.
Now, with no message of hope, healing, improvement, or a better future for all Americans and the world, Trump spews and babbles the only things he actually stands for (other than his own self-aggrandizement): hate and racism. Is this “Know Nothing/KKK Redux” really the message on which the GOP seeks to govern in 21st Century America? Outrageously, the answer clearly is “yes,” even if the Tim Scotts, Clarence Thomases, Herman Cains, and Ben Carsons of the world feign ignorance or believe that their privileged positions will save them, if not their souls.
For the rest of us, the time has come to rise up and throw the imposter out. Joe Biden might not be the “perfect candidate.” Has there ever been such a thing? As humans, we all have our warts and past mistakes. But, unlike Trump, Biden has a message and a plan for healing America, correcting long-standing injustices, and moving forward.
Biden’s July 4 message emphasized the positives that will make a better future for all in America, regardless of race, religion, status, or economic power:
Enhancing voting rights and maximizing participation in elections;
Safeguarding elections from Putin and other corrupt foreign governments leaders;
Reversing inhumane and counterproductive asylum, visa, “baby jails,” and family separation policies;
Reaffirming our identity as a proud nation of immigrants;
Protecting and enhancing judicial independence;
Honoring freedom of the press and independent journalism;
Rooting out institutionalized racism from every part of society where it is now embedded;
Leading the world to better times by example, encouragement, and mutual assistance, rather than constantly issuing threats, reacting with childish petulance to every perceived slight, and spewing the ugly, disproven gospel of selfish nationalism, that has nearly destroyed our world in the past, as the vision of the future.
Joe Biden is an accomplished public servant, capable leader, decent human being, and advocate for true American values. He will restore our humanity, reinvigorate our democratic institutions, bring Americans of goodwill together, rebuild our economy, protect our health, care about our environment, address racism and inequality, maximize everyone’s human potential, and reestablish our international political, economic, and moral leadership.
This is our chance to join together to retake our Government from the forces of darkness and hate and to finally achieve that which our Constitution has demanded for the last century: Equal justice for all. This November, vote like your life, the life of every American, and the future of our world depend on it. Because they do!
