Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Good luck with your asparagus.

We need fewer warriors in public service and more gardeners.

What fresh hell is this?

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

Let there be snark.

There’s some extremely good trouble headed their way.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

People are complicated. Love is not.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Reality always wins in the end.

Wetsuit optional.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

The house always wins.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Everybody saw this coming.

Nevertheless, she persisted.

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We are aware of all internet traditions.

I really should read my own blog.

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Activist Judges!

Wednesday Morning Open Thread: Summon the Heroes

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Full video at the bottom of this post:

If The Notorious RBG can deal, you can deal:

Happier news, for those of you who haven’t celebrated it already:

Former President Barack Obama will deliver a televised prime-time commencement address for the high school Class of 2020 during an hour-long event that will also feature LeBron James, Malala Yousafzai and Ben Platt, among others.

ABC, CBS, Fox and NBC will simultaneously air the special [Saturday] May 16 at 8 p.m. EDT along with more than 20 other broadcast and digital streaming partners, according to the announcement Tuesday from organizers.

Several high school students from Chicago public schools and the Obama Youth Jobs Corps will join, as will the Jonas Brothers, Yara Shahidi, Bad Bunny, Lena Waithe, Pharrell Williams, Megan Rapinoe and H.E.R…

“This high school graduation season will be anything but ordinary — but that’s all the more reason why the Class of 2020 deserves extraordinary advice, heartfelt encouragement, and hard-won wisdom about facing new challenges in an uncertain world,” Russlynn Ali, CEO and co-founder of XQ Institute, said in a statement…

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Breaking: Jill Karofsky Has Defeated Scott Walker Appointed Incumbent Dan Kelly!

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Wisconsin Needs Our Help

(Iron Brigade Forward – The 2nd Wisconsin Infantry Leg by Major General John Reynolds at Gettysburg painting by Mark Maritato)

We have some really good news out of Wisconsin this evening! Jill Karofsky, the liberal challenger, has defeated the Scott Walker appointed incumbent on the Wisconsin state supreme court!

Dan Kelly wasn’t just a conservative judge, whatever that actually means any more given what we’ve seen over the past several years, he was an unapologetic racist too.

The Wisconsin supreme court still has a conservative majority with 4 conservative justices to what will be 3 liberal justices once Justice-elect Karofsky is sworn in. Which is definitely better than the 5-2 conservative majority should soon to be former Justice Kelly been reelected to a ten year term.

For all the Wisconsites that braved the bad weather and potential exposure to COVID-19, well done!!!!

Open thread!

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Wisconsin Needs Our Help

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Wisconsin Needs Our Help

(Iron Brigade Forward – 2nd Wisconsin Infantry Led By General John Reynolds – Battle Of Gettysburg painting by Mark Maritato)

Earlier today the US Supreme Court, which has cancelled oral arguments for the first time since the 1918 FT Riley flu pandemic and can’t figure out how to use Zoom, Google hangouts, or the secure system that the Intel Community is using to telework, ruled 5-4 that Wisconsin would not be allowed to extend the deadline for absentee/vote by mail votes to be returned. The 5 Republican appointed justices overruled two lower Federal court rulings. In conjunction with the partisan 4-2 ruling from the Wisconsin Supreme Court that Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers does not have the power to unilaterally move tomorrow’s presidential primary, as well as state judicial, other state and local elections, this means that Wisconsin’s elections will go on as schedule tomorrow. No matter how deadly that may be. And no matter how many voters might be disenfranchised because they are either too scared to go out and risk infection to vote or because election officials have had to close the vast majority of Wisconsin’s polling places.

Wiscon needs our help. Ben Wikler, the chair of the Wisconsin Democratic Party has been doing yeoman’s work for months to prevent the created by an egregious partisan gerrymander Republican majority state legislature and state Supreme Court from screwing around with the elections for Republican partisan purposes. Both the presidential primary and state and local elections tomorrow and the general election in November. Wikler has put out an appeal for help. And you don’t have to live in Wisconsin to heed his call.

So if you have some time tomorrow and are willing to make some calls or texts, go to the links below and help out. The earlier the better would probably be most helpful.

This shouldn’t be partisan, but the Wisconsin Republican majority state legislature, the Republican state supreme court justices, and the Republican appointees on the US Supreme Court have decided that they, to quote President Lincoln from his Cooper Union speech, are only interest in ruling or ruining.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

To make phone calls, use this link.

To send texts, use this link.

What Wikler wants everyone to do who can make calls and/or texts is to tell Wisconsin voters:

If you have an absentee ballot in Wisconsin, you have to either put it in the mail so that it’s postmarked tomorrow, Tuesday 4/7, or drop it off in person by 8pm at your clerk’s office. It must arrive by Monday, 4/13.

Open thread!

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Justice Sotomayor Calls Out SCOTUS Bias

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The Trump administration has been a Category 5 shit-storm for three years and change, so if you didn’t notice its abnormally frequent reliance on “emergency” SCOTUS relief to enforce its shitty policies, it’s no wonder, what with the galloping authoritarianism and all. But Trump’s flunkies have run to their stacked court more than the Obama and Bush administrations COMBINED. Justice Sotomayor noticed. Here’s her dissent in the recent “can’t we just restrict immigration to white Europeans” case:

The Supreme Court unveiled a 5-4 decision on Friday to allow the Trump administration to deny entry or green cards to immigrants based on a “wealth test,” claiming that low-income immigrants were likely to become a “public charge” and use social programs such as food stamps or Medicaid. All four justices nominated by Democrats voted against the case. Justice Sonia Sotomayor authored the blistering dissent and accused the court’s conservatives of bias in favor of Trump.

Sotomayor said the administration has too quickly gone to the Supreme Court to appeal unfavorable decisions made by lower courts, and that by taking the cases, the Supreme Court is “putting a thumb on the scale in favor of” the president.

“Claiming one emergency after another, the government has recently sought stays in an unprecedented number of cases, demanding immediate attention and consuming limited court resources in each,” Sotomayor wrote. “And with each successive application, of course, its cries of urgency ring increasingly hollow.”

“It is hard to say what is more troubling,” she added. “That the government would seek this extraordinary relief seemingly as a matter of course, or that the Court would grant it.”

I suspect Chief Justice Roberts has no issue with Trump administration policies, but he cares very much about maintaining the fiction that the SCOTUS is above the political fray. Kudos to Justice Sotomayor for declining to participate in that ruse.

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Monday Morning Open Thread: Winter Is Here

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Former Senator Reid has no f**ks left to give:

… Senate Republicans have hijacked our Supreme Court. They stole a seat that should have been filled by President Obama in 2016 and they rushed to confirm Brett Kavanaugh last year despite ample evidence that he lied to Congress. The result is the Supreme Court is now a ticking time bomb, set to blow up any meaningful progressive reforms for decades to come. Yet, the court has been the subject of surprisingly little discussion so far in the presidential primary…

That is why any Democratic candidate serious about addressing the urgent crises facing our country needs a plan for dealing with the Supreme Court.

This starts with a public commitment to nominate bold, progressive lawyers to the court. Mitch McConnell’s elimination of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees means that, if Democrats win back the Senate next year, the next Democratic president will not have to cater to unreasonable Republicans to find a justice who can win 60 votes. Instead, there will be an opportunity to nominate justices who have spent their careers fighting for progressive values and can rebalance a Court that is now biased towards the rich and the powerful…

Demand Justice’s list includes brilliant women, people of color, and LGBT lawyers. It also prioritizes professional diversity to help rebalance a court currently made up almost entirely of former corporate lawyers and prosecutors. For example, our Supreme Court has not had a justice with criminal defense experience since Thurgood Marshall retired nearly three decades ago. Demand Justice’s list includes several former public defenders, including of Nevada U.S. District Court Judge Richard Boulware, whom I recommended to Obama in 2014…

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Honesty / Sanity Divide, Little Prince Rand (to paraphrase George Wallace) will not be out-liar’d:

And finally:

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RIP Originalism, 2019

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If you haven’t been following the impeachment hearings, apparently Democrats asked some expert witnesses what they believed the founding fathers would think of Trump’s behavior and whether or not they would find it an impeachable offense. This has Republican witness Jonathan Turley (LUL) and Republicans very het up, because as we all know, trying to figure out what is in the minds of the deceased is preposterous.

Unfortunately, that is the EXACT FUCKING judicial philosophy the Republicans have been pushing for the last forty years. RIP, originalism:

That meaning must be the objective meaning — not the reader’s subjective understanding or preferred reading. And that meaning must be the original meaning — that is, the meaning the Constitution’s words and phrases would have had to reasonably informed readers of the English language at the time they were used, in context, and accounting for any specialized usages or term-of-art phrases. Any other reading is pure anachronism, a misuse of language.

This single correct method of constitutional interpretation travels under many names. I call it “original-public-meaning textualism,” emphasizing the text and the requirement that it be taken in its known, original sense. A convenient (if imprecise) shorthand term is simply “Originalism.” It contrasts, sharply, with any of a variety of progressive theories under which the Constitution’s meaning shifts, morphs, evolves, or otherwise transmogrifies to suit the needs or circumstances of the moment — and, typically, to serve the interpreter’s desired political agenda.

There is functionally no distinction from going back in time and looking at Madison’s writings and applying them to whether or not Trump committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” and the judicial philosophy of originalism.

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Some Good News to End This Week!

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The Federal courts have worked diligently to make America great again and provided us with three items of good news to end this most infrastructure of weeks.

1:

2:

3:

Let’s all hope that next Infrastructure Week is as productive as this one.

Open thread!

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