In a CNN report on Donald Trump’s eleventh-hour pardons for his cronies and corrupt Republican politicians like former U.S. Rep. Rick Renzi of Arizona was this remarkable revelation: So, too, was Trump warned that pardons for Republican lawmakers who had sought them for their role in the Capitol insurrection would anger the very Senate Republicans … Read more
When the government does something that it doesn’t want the public to pay too much attention, it announces it in a Friday night news dump. If it occurs on a Friday before a long holiday weekend, even better. The U.S. Supreme Court has clearly learned this tactic. A few minutes before midnight on Wednesday, before the … Read more
One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian regime is to attack independent media and to replace it with state-run media. No one has been more relentless in attacking the news media than the demamgogue Donald Trump. First Amendment Watch reports, The Alarming Rise in Verbal and Physical Threats to the Press: “[T]he animosity towards the … Read more
All the way back in 2015 I told you about the attempt by the fringe far-right to revive the long-discredited Lochner Era of Supreme Court jurisprudence. George Will’s radical ‘litmus test’ for a return to the Lochner era (excerpt): There is a revival of a long-discredited legal doctrine among conservatives, mostly among Libertarian lawyers, some … Read more
First Amendment religious liberty was intended to be a shield from government control over religion in response to the state religions of Europe, and the centuries of sectarian conflict from which many colonists had fled Europe. The government was prohibited from establishing a state religion, and all religions were free to exercise their beliefs. But … Read more