rule of law

(Update) A sham hearing and a denial of due process

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This. Is. Not. Normal.

This is unprecedented for a confirmation hearing.

The eleven privileged white male Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are going to hide behind the skirts of a hired gun female prosecutor to question Christine Blasey Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh because they cannot contain their obvious contempt for a woman who is the victim of a sexual assault and express their view that the real victim here is privileged white male Brett Kavanaugh.

Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) concedes that GOP men can’t be trusted to treat Dr. Ford appropriately during hearing:

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) is praising the move by GOP Judiciary Committee members to use outside counsel to question the accuser of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during Thursday’s hearing. It’s pure genius, he said, because, frankly, GOP men simply can’t be trusted to act culturally appropriate toward a woman.

“I think it’s really smart of them to get outside counsel,” Corker told reporters on Capitol Hill Tuesday. When asked why he thought the all-male Republican members of the panel shouldn’t handle the questioning of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford themselves, Corker responded:

“Somebody will do something that you guys will run 24/7 and inadvertently somebody will do something that’s insensitive.”

Gee, “insensitive” like calling Dr. Blasey Ford “mixed up” such as Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT) did or saying her sexual assault claims have been a “drive-by shooting” of Kavanaugh like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) did? Both are members of the Judiciary Committee but, really, how could any man be expected to know that dismissing a PhD and trauma victim as “this woman” or “that lady” is sexist? C’mon, give the fellas a break—people are so touchy touchy these days about basic human decency.

“Gee, what could possibly be more sexist than hiring a woman to do the dirty work while the men ultimately continue to retain all the power?”

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It is time for Congress to act to protect the Special Counsel investigation

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Axios reported Monday morning that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein  “has verbally offered to resign to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, according to a source close to Rosenstein, but as of now, it’s unclear whether his resignation has been accepted.”

Well, that set off a cable news frenzy, so I hear. Headlines blared that Rosenstein had been summoned to the White House where he ws expected to resign or be fired. Rosenstein was filmed arriving and departing the White House.

It now appears that all the excitement was a bit premature: Rosenstein will meet with Donald Trump on Thursday to discuss his future at DOJ.

This all has to do with a New York Times report from Friday, citing sources who were not participants in the room at the time of the conversations reported. Rod Rosenstein Suggested Secretly Recording Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment:

The deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, suggested last year that he secretly record President Trump in the White House to expose the chaos consuming the administration, and he discussed recruiting cabinet members to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove Mr. Trump from office for being unfit.

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Mr. Rosenstein made the remarks about secretly recording Mr. Trump and about the 25th Amendment in meetings and conversations with other Justice Department and F.B.I. officials. Several people described the episodes in interviews over the past several months, insisting on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. The people were briefed either on the events themselves or on memos written by F.B.I. officials, including Andrew G. McCabe, then the acting bureau director, that documented Mr. Rosenstein’s actions and comments.

The Washington Post, which cites participants who were in the room for the conversations says the remark was sarcastic. NBC News also had a competing account, which includes Rosenstein “joking when he discussed wearing a wire.”

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GOP collaborators in Congress aid and abet Trump’s obstruction of justice in the Russia investigation

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While the news media was fixated on yet another mass shooting yesterday (“If it bleeds it leads“),  a more significant act of terrorism was occurring just miles away in the House Judiciary Committee, where Trumpkins in the ironically named House GOP Freedom Caucus (they are actually authoritarians who want an autocracy), were collaborating with the Trump legal defense team to defame the Department of Justice and the FBI, and aiding and abetting  Trump’s conspiracy to obstruct justice in the Russia investigation.

These authoritarian Trumpkins are requesting to see the prosecutor’s evidence in an active ongoing criminal investigation of  the president and his associates, information they are not entitled to receive in the oversight function, so they can then turn that evidence over to Trump’s legal team and to selectively leak it to the GOPropagandists at FAUX News aka “Trump TV,” as they have already done with information the DOJ has previously inappropriately turned over to the committee under unprecedented threats from these authoritarian Trumpkins.

If the DOJ appropriately and lawfully refuses to turn over prosecutorial evidence in response to this improper subpoena, these authoritarian Trumpkins have set in motion a scenario in which Rod Rosenstein can be removed as Deputy AG, to allow Trump to appoint a loyalist stooge as Deputy AG, who will then terminate the Special Counsel’s Russia investigation.

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A referendum on democracy itself is on the ballot

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Let’s be perfectly clear: if a Democratic president had done what Donald Trump is currently doing in foreign policy, that president would be the subject of an impeachment proceeding right now as we speak. Republicans would have drafted an article of impeachment for treason, without doubt. But as always, IOKIYAR.

David Leonhardt of the New York Times sums it up nicely. Trump Tries to Destroy the West:

President Trump is trying to destroy [the Western] alliance.

Is that how he thinks about it? Who knows. It’s impossible to get inside his head and divine his strategic goals, if he even has long-term goals. But put it this way: If a president of the United States were to sketch out a secret, detailed plan to break up the Atlantic alliance, that plan would bear a striking resemblance to Trump’s behavior.

It would involve outward hostility to the leaders of Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Japan. Specifically, it would involve picking fights over artificial issues — not to win big concessions for the United States, but to create conflict for the sake of it.

A secret plan to break up the West would also have the United States looking for new allies to replace the discarded ones. The most obvious would be Russia, the biggest rival within Europe to Germany, France and Britain. And just as Russia does, a United States intent on wrecking the Atlantic alliance would meddle in the domestic politics of other countries to install new governments that also rejected the old alliance.

Check. Check. Check. Check. Trump is doing every one of these things.

He chose not to attend the full G-7 meeting, in Quebec, this past weekend. While he was there, he picked fights. By now, you’ve probably seen the photograph released by the German government — of Trump sitting down, with eyebrows raised and crossed arms, while Germany’s Angela Merkel and other leaders stand around him, imploring. Shinzo Abe, Japan’s prime minister, wears a look of defeat.

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GOP sabotage of ‘Obamacare’ now in the courts

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The Trump administration in a brief filed Thursday night says that it will not defend the Affordable Care Act against the latest legal challenge to its constitutionality — a dramatic break from the executive branch’s tradition of arguing to uphold existing statutes and a land mine for health insurance changes the ACA brought about. Trump administration won’t defend ACA in case brought by GOP states:

In a brief filed in a Texas federal court and an accompanying letter to the House and Senate leaders of both parties, the Justice Department agrees in large part with the 20 Republican-led states that brought the suit. They contend that the ACA provision requiring most Americans to carry health insurance soon will no longer be constitutional — because The GOP Tax Bill Repealed Obamacare’s Individual Mandate — and that, as a result, consumer insurance protections under the law (e.g. preexisting conditions) will not be valid, either.

The three-page letter from Attorney General Jeff Sessions begins by saying that Justice adopted its position “with the approval of the President of the United States.” The letter acknowledges that the decision not to defend an existing law deviates from history but contends that it is not unprecedented.

The bold swipe at the ACA, a Republican whipping post since its 2010 passage, does not immediately affect any of its provisions. But it puts the law on far more wobbly legal footing in the case, which is being heard by a GOP-appointed judge [in what was a shameless case of forum shopping] who has in other recent cases ruled against more minor aspects.

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