A panel of three federal judges has told North Carolina’s Republican legislative bosses they don’t get unlimited do-overs correcting their unconstitutional, and racist, redistricting plans of 2011 and 2017. A special master- a Stanford law professor- has been told to fix what the GOP doesn’t want fixed, over their objections that the man is clearly biased: he favors greater voter turnout and systems in which voters pick their representatives, not the other way around.
The congressional froth to fill federal court vacancies thy delayed filling under the last president reflects the realization that an independent judiciary is, sometimes, the only thing between state residents and unaccountable one-party rule forever.
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Elizabeth Drew, the brilliant chronicler of Washington for decades, takes the measure of the Accidental *resident:
Trump not only didn’t have an alternative to Obamacare ready on his first day in office, he never offered one. Moreover, when House Republicans presented to him their own ideas about what should be in the health care bill, they found him to be an easy mark. This was in part because the president didn’t much care what was in the health care bill, he just wanted to sign one; he told aides that would make him look presidential. He’d said in the campaign that he’d produce a health care bill that was better and cheaper than Obamacare, but it turned out that Trump was unfamiliar with the substance of what was in the Affordable Care Act and didn’t grasp the import of proposed alternatives—and this crippled his ability to be a force on the subject. Or, as it’s turning out, most any subject. He keeps telling us what a fine mind he has, but if so he seems loath to exercise it much. His advisers on national security have been encouraged to put as much of their daily intelligence briefings in pictures and charts as they can.
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Former Clinton apologist and debate cheater Donna Brazile misses seeming relevant:
Before I called Bernie Sanders, I lit a candle in my living room and put on some gospel music. I wanted to center myself for what I knew would be an emotional phone call.
I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.
So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.
Debbie was not a good manager. She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party—she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired so she didn’t have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was. How much control Brooklyn had and for how long was still something I had been trying to uncover for the last few weeks.
By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart.
I had promised Bernie when I took the helm of the Democratic National Committee after the convention that I would get to the bottom of whether Hillary Clinton’s team had rigged the nomination process, as a cache of emails stolen by Russian hackers and posted online had suggested. I’d had my suspicions from the moment I walked in the door of the DNC a month or so earlier, based on the leaked emails. But who knew if some of them might have been forged? I needed to have solid proof, and so did Bernie.
So I followed the money. My predecessor, Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, had not been the most active chair in fundraising at a time when President Barack Obama’s neglect had left the party in significant debt. As Hillary’s campaign gained momentum, she resolved the party’s debt and put it on a starvation diet. It had become dependent on her campaign for survival, for which she expected to wield control of its operations.
Debbie was not a good manager. She hadn’t been very interested in controlling the party—she let Clinton’s headquarters in Brooklyn do as it desired so she didn’t have to inform the party officers how bad the situation was. How much control Brooklyn had and for how long was still something I had been trying to uncover for the last few weeks.
By September 7, the day I called Bernie, I had found my proof and it broke my heart.
*****
What a busy lad was the White House foreign policy coffee boy, George Papadopoulos!
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Last year, the *resident told Washington Post reporter Robert Costa,
“I’m going to surround myself only with the best and most serious people. . . . We want top of the line professionals.”
Which brings us to Energy Secretary Rick Perry, who presides over the government agency he couldn’t remember he wanted to abolish as a presidential candidate.
Full Perry quote on fossil fuels/sexual assault pic.twitter.com/KH6pyApIYU— Timothy Cama (@Timothy_Cama) November 2, 2017
Christianists can spin anything. Just the other day, another of the *resident’s best minds cited the law above the law:
Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt on Tuesday used the Bible to explain his major changes to the composition of the agency’s independent science advisory committees, which play an important role in guiding and advising the EPA’s regulatory work.
“In the book of Joshua there is a story about Joshua leading the people of Israel into the promised land after Moses passed away,” Pruitt said. “And Joshua says to the people of Israel choose this day whom you’re going to serve. And I would say to you this is sort of like the ‘Joshua Principle’ that as it relates to grants to this agency, you are going to have to choose either service on the committee to provide counsel to us in an independent fashion or you can choose grants, but you cannot do both.”
“In the book of Joshua there is a story about Joshua leading the people of Israel into the promised land after Moses passed away,” Pruitt said. “And Joshua says to the people of Israel choose this day whom you’re going to serve. And I would say to you this is sort of like the ‘Joshua Principle’ that as it relates to grants to this agency, you are going to have to choose either service on the committee to provide counsel to us in an independent fashion or you can choose grants, but you cannot do both.”
With Secretary Rick “Dinosaurs died to give us fossil fuels” Perry, the newly-not Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, who lets whiskers grow to help him find his chin.
What the “Joshua Principle” means for the EPA is that scientists who receive agency grants for their research are now barred from serving on any of its independent advisory boards. This opens the door to more industry and political representation on the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee, the Board of Scientific Counselors (BOSC), and the Science Advisory Board (SAB).
(Under Bush 2, Washington Congresswoman Linda Smith- who saw no contradiction between Christianist moralizing and raising her unmarried daughter’s baby, voted for a pork-filled GOP highway bill on grounds that it was pro-family: faster traffic meant Dad could spend more time in the burbs with his stay-at-home wife and heterosexual children).
Another God-botherer who couldn’t make the confirmation cut was added to the list of non-starters in the Trump Administration today.
Sam Clovis, a tub of lard from Iowa who co-chaired the *resident’s campaign, withdrew his nomination to be Chief Scientist at the US Department of Agriculture just before his hearing in the Senate was to begin.
A former Air Force pilot and Iowa right-wing AM radio jabbermouth who waddled his way from Trump’s Iowa caucus victory to co-hosting the campaign reality show with the indicted Paul Manafort, Clovis knew little, but he stuck to what he did know:
goodbye to sam clovis, the only man who truly understood the three pillars of american life pic.twitter.com/gtXMZyeu0Z— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) November 2, 2017
Clovis previously argued- long before actor Kevin Spacey took up the cause- that protections for LGBT people would lead to protections for pedophilia, and as a radio host and political activist, he promoted the hoax that former President Barack Obama was not born in the US. Likewise, he called Obama a "Maoist" and said Attorney General Eric Holder is a "racist black."
Already in trouble for knowing nothing about any agricultural science matters, Clovis blubbered into the news this week as it emerged he was not only a patron and supervisor of the Unknown George Papadopoulos but recently met with special prosecutor Robert Mueller and has testified before a grand jury in Mueller’s investigation. “Mr Clovis, were you given immunity?” was bound to be the first question Democratic senators asked.
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