US Constitution

The real ‘national emergency’ may be a politicized U.S. Supreme Court (Updated)

As was expected from the first time the idea was first floated, 16 States Sue to Stop Trump’s Use of Emergency Powers to Build Border Wall: A coalition of 16 states, including California and New York, on Monday challenged President Trump in court over his plan to use emergency powers to spend billions of dollars … Read more

The media is again failing the American public in its early coverage of the 2020 presidential campaign

If you want your news from a Republican perspective, there is Mike Allen, co-founder and executive editor of Axios and former chief political reporter for Politico. Today he has a post with Jonathan Swan who covers the Trump presidency and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill for Axios. The GOP grabs socialism as 2020 lifeline: For the … Read more

‘The Enemy of The People,’ Mitch McConnell, surrenders the Senate to ‘Dear Leader’

With his executive order declaring a national emergency so that he can do an end-run around the congressional power of the purse in the Constitution, Trump’s national emergency declaration once again highlights his affinity for strongmen — and authoritarianism, the authoritarian wannabe tinpot dictator Donald Trump Is Trying to Hollow Out the Constitutional System of … Read more

GOP scaremongering over socialism – going back to an old playbook

In his State of The Union Address, President Trump rolled out a “new” 2020 campaign theme that in actuality is a very old campaign theme that the GOP has been using in campaigns since the 1936 election — that Democrats are “socialists” (this is in response to self-described Democratic Socialists like Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez).

Keep in mind this is coming from the political party which has abandoned traditional Republican values and transformed itself into an authoritarian personality cult of Donald Trump, and which has openly embraced all the early warning signs of fascism. Donald Trump is a Russian asset and puppet of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi accurately diagnosed, Donald Trump engages in psychological projection. Trumpism, the new American fascism is the genuine threat to America.

Franklin D. Roosevelt ran on traditional economics in 1932, the New Deal only emerged during his first term. Franklin D. Roosevelt: Socialist or “Champion of Freedom”?:

The use of such tactics to discredit those who believe in government intervention in the economy is not new, of course. Franklin Roosevelt faced similar charges when he ran for re-election in 1936. Like President Obama and those in Congress who favor government programs to put people to work and ensure that all Americans can enjoy a healthy and productive life, FDR’s New Deal — including his passage of unemployment insurance and Social Security — was attacked as “undisguised state socialism” by one senator. Others went so far as to insist that FDR was a communist, including FDR’s erstwhile colleague Al Smith, who, as one of the founders of the right-wing American Liberty League, warned in the 1936 election that “the people could either breathe the clear fresh air of America, or the foul breath of Soviet Russia.”

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The GOP has weaponized the courts in undermining our democratic institutions

20 GOP attorneys general hand-picked a conservative activist judge known for his political activism from the bench to conspire to overturn the Affordable Care Act. One can fairly say that the process was “rigged” to produce the desired result. Judge Reed O’Connor should be impeached, and the 20 GOP attorneys general held to account for their unethical professional misconduct.

The New York Times reports, In Weaponized Courts, Judge Who Halted Affordable Care Act Is a Conservative Favorite:

In the 11 years Judge Reed O’Connor has been on the federal bench, he has become a favorite of Republican leaders in Texas, reliably tossing out Democratic policies they have challenged.

The state’s Republican attorney general appears to strategically file key lawsuits in Judge O’Connor’s jurisdiction, the Northern District of Texas, so that he will hear them. And on Friday, the judge handed Republicans another victory by striking down the Affordable Care Act, the signature health law of the Obama era.

Judge O’Connor, who was appointed by former President George W. Bush, has been at the center of some of the most contentious and partisan cases involving federal power and states’ rights, and has sided with conservative leaders in previous challenges to the health law and against efforts to expand transgender rights.

No one questions his expertise on the law. But his rulings illustrate the ways in which the federal district courts have become politically weaponized, as Republicans and Democrats alike try to handpick judges they see as ideologically friendly to their cases.

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