😎🗽⚖️ HAPPY THANKSGIVING FROM COURTSIDE & THE NDPA!

Happy Thanksgiving Vegan Turkey
Happy Thanksgiving Vegan Turkey
By Cathy Schmidt

Today’s Thanksgiving message from Elliott Kirschner & Dan Rather @ Steady: 

https://open.substack.com/pub/steady/p/happy-thanksgiving?r=330z7&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post

Happy Thanksgiving

Gratitude for so much

Dan Rather

and

Elliot Kirschner

13 hr ago

577

241

Happy Thanksgiving
Happy Thanksgiving
Illustration: Daria Mikhaylova

Illustration: Daria Mikhaylova

Happy Thanksgiving

Gratitude for dreams, learning, and our diversity.

For our country’s most noble ideals.

For science.

Appreciation for the beauty of our planet.

For the wonders of music.

For the mysteries of our consciousness.

Recognition of the persistence of injustice.

Of the struggles for so many.

Of the contagion of hate.

Indebtedness to the support of friends and family.

To the inspiration of teachers.

To all those who refuse to look away from need.

Understanding that civic engagement requires ongoing effort.

That suffering should not be accepted.

That divisions induce weakness.

Praise for the poets who help us understand life, death, and everything in between.

For those whose courage protects us.

For those who came before us determined to make the world a better place.

Blessings for the children who can fix our damaged planet.

For the helpers who provide shoulders on which to lean.

For the leaders who refuse to abandon hope.

A deep and heartfelt thankfulness to all of you who have created a community of care, support, and steadiness.

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Thankful for:

  • The courage, determination, skills, and humanity of migrants of all kinds who enrich our nation with their presence;
  • Family, friends, and colleagues;
  • Pets, particularly Smokey the Cat, “Dunky Dog,” his friends   ( canines & humans) from the “7 AM, 711 Dog Club,” and the extended “Schmidt Family Menagerie;”
Duncan “Dunky Dog” Schmidt
Duncan “Dunky Dog” Schmidt
  • My wonderful colleagues @ The Round Table, AYUDA, Georgetown Law, and the rest of the NDPA for their tireless efforts to guarantee due process and fundamental fairness for all!

🇺🇸Happy Thanksgiving and Due Process Forever from Courtside!

PWS

11-24-22

🇺🇸 RATHER & KIRSCHNER @ THE STEADY: Trump, Insurrectionist GOP An Existential Threat To America’s Future! 

Dan Rather
Dan Rather
American Journalist
PHOTO: Creative Commons

Breaking The Republic

January 6 wasn’t an accident

Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner
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▷  LISTEN
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(Photo by Brent Stirton/Getty Images)

“That, my fellow citizens, breaks the republic.”

This was the chilling conclusion of Liz Cheney today at the January 6 hearings over what would have happened if the guardrails of our democracy, exposed for their frailty in 2020, had buckled to an autocrat determined to hold onto power. And the danger remains. “Without accountability, it all becomes normal, and it will recur,” Cheney warned.

Cheney’s statement is striking in its simplicity and its power. Her audience is her “fellow citizens,” the ones who will be going to the polls in less than a month to decide who should lead this nation going forward. Her fellow Republicans have cast Cheney as a pariah for having the courage to state the truth: that their leader wanted to destroy America as we know it.

What the committee presented today shed a spotlight on the authorship of this historic tragedy. It is Trump who is the playwright, conjuring and casting the roles of those who would act out his destructive intentions. It was he who dreamt up and directed a frontal attack on American democracy. But he couldn’t have done it without his willing accomplices.

Today, we saw footage of members of Congress grappling in real time with a deteriorating situation on January 6 that could have ended with more bloodshed and the decimation of governmental order. We could feel a visceral fear in their actions and words, not only for their own personal safety but for the safety of the nation they had sworn an oath to serve. Those who could have intervened, starting with the president but including his top aides inside the White House, were absent. And that is just as the president wanted it. We heard today evidence that Trump knew he had lost, and he didn’t care what it would take to retain power.

This man who shamelessly pounds his chest with protestations of patriotism, who literally wraps himself in the American flag, who demonizes his political opponents as haters of America is really the one who views our imperfect experiment in self-governance with disgust. Elections. The rule of law. Peaceful transfers of power. The will of the people. These are the pillars of our nation’s foundation. But for Trump, that’s all just for suckers. He had the presidency, and he didn’t plan on relinquishing it, no matter what the voters or the Constitution said.

January 6 wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t a rally that spun out of control. It was a dangerous and violent storm threatening our nation’s core principles and our whole system of representative democracy. Stop and ponder that. Then remember that it should have been no surprise. The committee has made clear that the plan had been on the radar for weeks. There was plenty of evidence in advance that Trump and his cronies were planning to disregard the verdict of the election if it went against him.

But details and evidence uncovered since have been stunning, including documentary footage of longtime Trump loyalist Roger Stone played today. Here is what Stone had to say even before Election Day (excuse the language, please): “I say fuck the voting, let’s get right to the violence.” Was what we saw on January 6 a Plan B, or really a Plan A?

One of the great attributes of this committee is expert storytelling, laying out, with gripping detail, a narrative — a true story — about the attempted destruction of our democratic order. They have carefully traced the origins of this horror to before the election. They have shown the rising danger and threats of violence. They have identified villainy, led by the president. They have explained with breathtaking intimacy what took place on January 6. And they have made very clear that that day’s actions, while dramatic, were not a denouement. How this story ends is currently unknowable. We will have a better sense after the midterm elections and with the Department of Justice’s decision if, how, and whom to prosecute.

There is a lot about what we heard today, and in the previous hearings, that is infuriating. It also is hard not to feel a deep sadness about the precariousness of our democracy. But we can find hope in the service of this committee. They are saying to all of us, “This happened. Let us not let it happen again. And let us hold those responsible, accountable.”

They believe that most Americans cherish our self-governance, our stability, and our rule of law. They believe that if we know the truth, that we will do everything in our power, as a people, as a nation, to protect against its recurrence.

Does that belief still hold? Or are we now so divided that we can no longer be sure? This is the overriding question as our beloved America evolves in the first quarter of the 21st century.

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You can subscribe to Rather’s Steady newsletter for free here: https://steady.substack.com/subscribe?utm_source=ready-for-more

When indisputable truth becomes a matter of partisan political “opinion,” we’re all in deep trouble!

The GOP’s cowardly failure to convict Trump twice despite overwhelming evidenced against him was despicable. But, it looks much worse in retrospect. Obviously, lack of accountability encourages the “Trumps of the world!”

The first Steady comment on this post “hit the nail on the head:”

There is something that can’t be repeated enough:

*The outcome of next month’s election is up to US.*

Not the January 6th Committee, the Department of Justice, the New York State AG, or investigators down in Georgia.

No amount of scandal, indictments, whistle blowing, bombshells or leaks will make “MAGA” Republicans stay home, or change their minds.

We — I’m speaking to progressives, sane Republicans, independents, and everyone else who values democracy — need to hit the streets. Knocking on doors, dropping literature, waving campaign signs, phone banking, and talking to neighbors, friends, and relatives.

Time is running out to register to vote and to verify that your registration is still valid. (https://www.vote.org can help with both.) Once you are sure you are registered, make a game plan. Know your polling place! Know your options for early voting and voting by mail. Know what you need to vote (IDs, etc.). Make a fool proof game plan for election day.

And HELP OTHERS. Offer rides to polling places.

 

🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!

PWS

10-14-22

🇺🇸🗽⚖️DAN RATHER: FIGHT THE ANTI-DEMOCRACY, ANTI-INDIVIDUAL-RIGHTS FAR RIGHT MINORITY 🏴‍☠️  — BEFORE IT’S TOO LATE:  “To all who feel bereft of hope, I offer the lessons of social movements of the past. Perseverance is power. Organizing inspires optimism. Resilience breeds results.”

 

Dan Rather
Dan Rather
American Journalist
PHOTO: Creative Courtside

FROM “STEADY” FOR July 1, 2022:

A HARD RIGHT TURN

By Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner

As the United States Supreme Court wrapped up its spring term today, its marbled halls risked representing the setup to an ironic joke — albeit one not funny but rather cruel, dangerous, and foreboding.

The building is supposed to symbolize stability, fairness, and temperance. Instead, it has become headquarters for a majority group of highly partisan, reactionary players who make clear that they are uninhibited by history, precedent, or the will of the majority of the American people.

Their black robes are meant to convey modesty, humility, and wisdom. Yet this collection of politicians demonstrates the direct opposite.

This Supreme Court term will be remembered as the moment a cynical and anti-democratic movement, decades in the making, reached its zenith, empowered by bad faith and opportunism. Now the cabal lords its power over a broken political system from a perch of increased influence and lack of accountability.

This is power politics by unelected actors, appointed largely by men who lost the popular vote for president. Its path was paved by Mitch McConnell’s Machiavellian exploitation of the deaths of two justices. He was a master of shamelessness with a single purpose — to accomplish via judicial appointment what he could never have achieved through democratic means.

The damage he and his hard-right radicals have wrought touches all aspects of society, from abortion rights to commonsense gun control to the environment to what I believe is an overlooked evisceration of the separation of church and state. What we have are the ruins of what many took for granted as our constitutional rights. And nothing suggests these justices are anywhere near sated.

We have now firmly left behind the realm of the theoretical. This is real, and it will get only more so. For years there were those who warned that Roe wasn’t safe, and neither was anything else, that these justices were licking their chops to devour a modern America and spit out a distorted version of the past. Too many of these prophets were dismissed as hysterical, their fears histrionic and overblown. Surely, they were lectured, precedent matters. Certainly there would have to be some legal basis to rewrite America’s social contract and decades of settled rights.

Wrong.

All of you who spoke up, who tried to get others to pay attention, you deserve an apology.

There can be no hiding from it now. All of this is out in the open. The justices aren’t even trying to obscure what they are doing and where they intend to go. But in their transparent power plays, there are still faint glimmers of hope.

I hear from people who in the past had rarely talked about the court. Now, they are suddenly enraged. Many are focused on how, just today, the justices accepted a case for next year that could allow state legislatures to take a torch to fair elections. How many people in the past got so riled up about an upcoming court docket?

The Supreme Court relies on its reputation, and these days, its reputation for humility, fairness, and wisdom is in tatters. Its rulings increasingly seem to be far outside where most Americans are. Wait until they tackle contraception and the privacy of one’s bedroom.

To all who feel bereft of hope, I offer the lessons of social movements of the past. Perseverance is power. Organizing inspires optimism. Resilience breeds results.

In order to solve a problem, you first have to see it, name it, contend with its truth. That is the stage many are in now. But many others have already been there for a long time. This is a movement that already has leadership. Now it has momentum born from a desire to ensure that America goes forward, toward progress, and true to the Constitution and the will of its people.

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The righty Supremes: “an ironic joke — albeit one not funny but rather cruel, dangerous, and foreboding.”

🇺🇸Due Process Forever! Take Back Our America From The Far Right Minority That Seeks To Suppress Human Rights & Individual Rights!

PWS

07-01-22

DAN RATHER & ELLIOTT KIRSCHNER: 🇺🇸⚖️🗽👩🏾‍⚖️CELEBRATING JUSTICE KETANJI BROWN JACKSON: “As much as the Republicans tried to undermine Justice Jackson with epithets of being an extremist, it is they who I believe history will judge as out of touch with the heart of this nation, and especially its future.” YUP!

Justice Katenji Brown Jackson
Judge (now Justice) Ketanji Brown Jackson, honoree at the Third Annual Judge James B. Parsons Legacy Dinner, February 24, 2020, University of Chicago Law School. Photographer Lloyd DeGrane.
Creative Commons License

A New Justice

Welcome Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court

Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner
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It is official. There is a new justice on the United States Supreme Court, and a justice unlike any in our nation’s history.Despite all the problems this nation faces, despite the sordidness of the confirmation process, despite the rank hypocrisy, bombast, and lies Republican senators and their media echo chambers employed, let us not allow any of this to distract from a celebration of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and her moment.

Justice Jackson is not only a symbol, she is a person. And like so many trailblazers before her, she has had to weather attacks on her character, her values, her intelligence, her right to be part of a society still plagued by the legacy of centuries of oppression and injustice.

If ever there were a live demonstration of judicial temperament, it was Justice Jackson’s testimony in her confirmation hearings. She was in a position known all too well to marginalized segments of American society, particularly Black women. She had to be better, do better, be more poised, absorb more outrage, and bite her tongue while those with privilege are given benefits of doubt she will never be offered and allowed to act in ways that never would have been tolerated from her. Indeed, we have seen exactly this double standard in recent Supreme Court confirmation hearings.

Justice Jackson persevered. And she did so in a way that should give us confidence as to what kind of justice she will be. In a court that has been highly politicized by the actions of Republicans in the Senate and the White House, her voice will represent a very different perspective: an America of diversity, of obstacles and opportunity, of the rule of law, of humility, and of justice broadly defined.

Every Supreme Court justice represents to some extent a leap into the unknown. But recently, we have seen the entire judicial system increasingly become a competition between teams of judges whose actions are highly predictable. This is regrettable. The act of judgment should be one of listening, reading, and weighing the arguments. Everything we saw from Justice Jackson suggests she will embrace this role.

Even with the addition of Justice Jackson, we will still have a Supreme Court out of balance. It tilts heavily toward a far-right worldview that, if the polling is to be believed, is out of step with the majority of the American public.

As much as the Republicans tried to undermine Justice Jackson with epithets of being an extremist, it is they who I believe history will judge as out of touch with the heart of this nation, and especially its future.

Now, going forward, Justice Jackson will bring a new voice to those marbled halls, one who can bear witness to what this nation is, and where it is going.

Her presence itself will not fix the myriad problems we face; our challenges defy easy answers or simple remedies. But Justice Jackson personifies the hope that change is possible, that progress can be our path going forward. We celebrate her today as a unique legal mind and as someone whose service to this nation and its best traditions can give us a reason for new flickers of optimism. If she hasn’t given up on what America can be, then neither should we.

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Many, many congrats to Justice Jackson, one of our greatest living jurists, whose career exemplifies that to which the Federal Judiciary should aspire!

Justice Jackson is exactly the type of judge we need not only on the Supremes and the lower Article III Courts, but also on the Board of Immigration Appeals and on the nation’s Immigration Courts!

But, in this case, the obstacle isn’t Republicans! No, it’s the Dems — the Biden Administration and AG Garland! They stubbornly refuse to treat the U.S. Immigration Courts, which they control 100%, as if THEIR lives and futures depended upon it! 

I fear that in the Biden Administration’s rather half-hearted effort to restore asylum law at the border, we will see the consequences of not having acted timely to appoint a BIA of “real judges.” That is, asylum experts with the credibility, courage, independence, scholarly credentials, and practical experience in Immigration Court to establish fair, practical precedents to guide both Immigration Judges and Asylum Officers in the fair, consistent, and timely adjudication of claims for protection at the border and in the interior. They are also necessary to bring due process and best practices to a system that for years has openly mocked both — and largely gotten away with it, at the expense of the rule of law and the good of humanity.    

You can be sure that the next GOP AG won’t new so hesitant and stumbling about finishing the job of “weaponizing” the Immigration Courts as a tool to be used to “Dred Scottify the other” in American society!

I have no doubt that in the future, Justice Jackson will speak out against “Dred Scottification” when it comes before her on the Court — albeit likely in dissent, given the Supremes’ far right swing. Ironically, however, the appointment of “more Justice Jacksons” to the U.S. Immigration Courts would have a much greater substantive effect than her appointment to the Supremes! Not only would such “real judges” upgrade the practice of law — throughout the nation and in all Federal Courts — but they would stop the practice of “Dred Scottification” at the retail level — where it literally affects millions of lives. It would be “outcome determinative” in thousands of cases now being incorrectly decided — or not decided at all.

That Garland is too blind and/or disinterested to understand the cosmic importance of the Immigration Courts to American justice and the need to act boldly and rapidly to reform his dysfunctional and flagrantly unfair “courts” is nothing short of a national tragedy — one for which the most vulnerable and those fearlessly assisting them continue to pay a high price! 

🇺🇸Due Process Forever!

PWS

04-07-22