Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News writes—GOP ramming unpopular Brett Kavanaugh down America’s throat is another democracy death blow:
Currently, I'm reading (actually listening to) a remarkable book called "Democracy in Chains" by Nancy MacLean that outlines a 60-year-long plot by right-wing libertarians — hatched by a relatively little-known Virginia economist but aided by billionaire backers like the Koch Brothers — to create a government structured not to carry out the will of the people but to thwart it. Not surprisingly, control of the judiciary is one of the main elements of the plot.
Not only have Trump and McConnell installed the doctrinaire conservative Neil Gorsuch,but their current coup maneuvering — replacing occasional swing vote Anthony Kennedy with his more reliably right-wing former law clerk Kavanaugh — will largely complete the mission.
Richard Wolffe at The Guardian writes—The madness is pouring out of the White House now, for all to see:
That scratching sound you can hear are the rats snatching their bags – and what’s left of their reputation – before scampering off their pirate president’s ship. It’s only slightly surprising the panic has set in before they even reached the half-way point on their voyage towards his promised treasure.
Perhaps it was the sight of the captain’s personal lawyer admitting to several five-year felonies that got them worried. Or perhaps it was the thought of a Democratic House firing subpoenas at them from the Cannon office building.
Either way, the sad excuses on public display this week are more self-incriminating than self-glorifying.
Let’s start with the bombshell anonymous op-ed in the New York Times, where a senior administration official claims to be part of a secret cabal trying to protect the nation – if not the world – from the worst impulses of the sociopathic man-child purporting to be the commander-in-chief.
Tell us something we don’t know. Actually, first tell us how long you’ve been experiencing these messiah delusions.
Pema Levy at Mother Jones writes—How Brett Kavanaugh Made Russian Election Interference Easier and Robert Mueller’s Job Harder:
In February, special counsel Robert Mueller handed down a stunning indictment against 13 Russians and three Russian companies for interfering in the 2016 election. The 37-page document laid out an expansive and well-financed influence operation to sow discord in the election and help elect Donald Trump. It included charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to commit bank and wire fraud, and aggravated identity theft.
To the surprise of many, there were no election-related charges. The reason is almost certainly a 2011 ruling by Brett Kavanaugh.
From the start, Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court has generated concern that the DC Circuit Court of Appeals judge, who has expansive views of presidential power, immunity, and secrecy, will protect Trump from the Russia probe if confirmed to the nation’s highest court. But little attention has been paid to a decision he wrote that already paved the way for foreign election interference and is making Mueller’s job harder—a decision that some election law experts view as sloppy and politically motivated. [...]
In Bluman v. Federal Election Commission, Kavanaugh wrote for a three-judge panel that people who are not citizens or legal permanent residents cannot contribute directly to campaigns or to “express advocacy” work, which explicitly asks voters to support or oppose a specific candidate. But he gutted the portion of the law that banned foreign spending that is not “express advocacy.”
Sean Wilentz at The New York Times writes—Why Was Kavanaugh Obsessed With Vince Foster?
Anticipating the imminent publication of Kenneth Starr’s memoir of the Clinton impeachment, I looked into Judge Kavanaugh’s files in the Office of Independent Counsel records, housed in the National Archives. What I discovered sheds light on how Mr. Kavanaugh made his way in his early career, and how he flagrantly breached his role as a neutral public servant and followed the imperatives of a political operative.
Mr. Kavanaugh served under Mr. Starr as associate independent counsel between 1994 and 1997, and then again in 1998. Although not yet a judge, he was charged with investigating impartially what Attorney General Janet Reno deemed substantial specific accusations of presidential misconduct arising from a failed real estate investment known as Whitewater.
Judge Starr’s predecessor as independent counsel, Robert Fiske, had looked into unfounded claims that White House Counsel Vincent Foster, who committed suicide in Fort Marcy Park in 1993, had in fact been murdered as part of an alleged White House cover-up related to Whitewater. After a thorough investigation, Mr. Fiske concluded in 1994 that there was nothing to the conspiracy theories and that Mr. Foster, who suffered from depression, had indeed killed himself. Official accounts by the United States Park Service in 1993 and by Republican Congressman William Clinger, the ranking member of the House Government Affairs Committee in 1994, came to an identical conclusion, as did a bipartisan report of the Senate Banking Committee early in 1995.
But shortly after the Senate report was released, Mr. Kavanaugh convinced Mr. Starr to reopen what he called a “full-fledged” investigation of the Foster matter, telling his colleagues, as justification, that “we have received allegations that Mr. Foster’s death related to President and Mrs. Clinton’s involvement” in Whitewater and other alleged scandals.
Peter Beinart at The Atlantic writes—Congressional Republicans Are the Real Authors of the Anonymous Op-Ed:
We don’t yet know which senior administration official authored today’s astounding New York Times op-ed suggesting that President Donald Trump’s aides are actively thwarting him in an attempt to protect the country. But in a sense, it doesn’t matter. Indirectly, the op-ed’s real authors are the Republicans of the United States Congress.
In theory, in America’s constitutional system, the different branches of the federal government check one another. When a presidents acts in corrupt, authoritarian, or reckless ways, the legislative branch holds hearings, blocks his agenda, refuses to confirm his nominees, even impeaches him. That’s how America’s government is supposed to work. But it no longer does. Instead, for the last year and a half, congressional Republicans have acted, for the most part, as Trump’s agents. Not only have they refused to seriously investigate or limit him, they have assaulted those within the federal bureaucracy—the justice department and the FBI in particular—who have.
So in the absence of this public, constitutional system of checks and balances, a secret, unauthorized system has emerged to replace it. Because Congress won’t check the president, the president’s own appointees are doing so instead. Evidence of such behavior has been leaking out since the beginning of Trump’s presidency.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—Boston couldn’t wait for change:
The day before Ayanna Pressley rattled national Democrats by overwhelming Rep. Michael E. Capuano, a popular 20-year incumbent, in Tuesday’s primary, she brought her youthful canvassers to the campaign’s Jamaica Plain headquarters to fire them up for the offensive to come.
Pressley always delivers fire in her public speeches, but the 44-year old Boston city council member is careful and quietly analytical in dissecting electoral imperatives. In the midst of her oration, she explained her coming victory in one sentence.
“The district has changed,” she said, “the needs have changed, and given what’s happening in Washington, the job description has changed.” [...]
Pressley’s feat is likely to be replicated only in safe Democratic seats with racially diverse makeups. But there are quite a few places like that, and more in which the party’s primary voters are eager to nominate women.
And Democrats everywhere need to take account of an argument she reiterated in her victory speech: that the problems of racial and economic inequality predate the rise of Donald Trump.
Being against President Trump will likely rally Democrats in November’s elections, but many in the party are not interested in a simple return to the pre-Trump status quo. “Change Can’t Wait” worked because it brought to life their sense of urgency.
Jill Filipovic at The Guardian writes—Are sexual harassers about to have free rein on American campuses?
Betsy DeVos’s education department is about to deal a major blow to sexual assault and harassment victims on college campuses.
According to proposed rules obtained by the New York Times, the updated sexual misconduct rules would tip the scales in favor of the accused and make it harder for those who say they were victimized to get justice. In a criminal proceeding, that’s acceptable – the burden of proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt should fall to the powerful state. But these aren’t criminal proceedings: they’re civil rights proceedings, fundamentally about the right of women to get an education without harassment or abuse. The DeVos rules will make that harder – without adequately addressing the legitimate due process concerns that have arisen over campus sexual misconduct investigations.
The new rules reportedly define sexual harassment according to such a high bar that it will be nearly impossible to bring a case: sexual harassment, in the DeVos rules, is based on a very restrictive US supreme court case that defines harassment as “unwelcome conduct on the basis of sex that is so severe, pervasive and objectively offensive that it denies a person access to the school’s education program or activity”.
In other words, you are only sexually harassed if the harasser goes so far as to make it impossible for you to learn – at which point your education has already been impacted, possibly irreversibly.
Jacob Bacharach at TruthDig writes—Contemporary Liberalism’s Worst Idea Yet:
David Remnick is the editor of The New Yorker. He is most notable for his vociferous belief that George W. Bush—whom he assured us that he, David Remnick, understood to be an absolute idiot—nevertheless should have been given the green light to blow up Iraq. “The price of being wrong yet again could be incalculable,” he wrote at the time.
In a better world, we would carve these words on a placard and hang it around Remick’s neck, as a warning to those who may encounter him among the herds of migrating thought leaders. In this fallen one, he is still running a prestigious magazine and organizing popular symposiums. For this year’s New Yorker Festival, he invited, and was then forced to disinvite, Steve Bannon, the president’s former campaign manager and the most malignant pile of week-old polo shirts this side of a flood-damaged Brooks Brothers.
The invitation was as confounding as the disinvitation was inevitable. Surely Remick must have expected it? Bannon is a notorious white nationalist and narcissist, as well as a colossal bore. I suppose, in keeping with the general tenor of middlebrow intellectualism so prevalent at these sorts of confabs, the latter two qualities outweighed the first. [...]
It points to contemporary liberalism’s fatal flaw. It has affect and etiquette but no content. It will disapprove if you use the wrong spoon, and it would not stand for hearing the N-word aloud, but it will politely ask Steve Bannon, or Richard Spencer if they really believe what they avowedly and publicly really believe. It still bleeps profanity, but it will permit an accessory to a murderous demonstration to literally list the “races” by relative intelligence on the air. The only thing that arouses its righteous fury and martial instinct is criticism of its own worst impulses. It howls with dismay when criticized for befriending its own executioner
Nick Turse at TomDispatch writes—Victory in Our Time:
Last August, President Trump unveiled his “Strategy in Afghanistan and South Asia.” Its “core pillar” was “a shift from a time-based approach to one based on conditions”; in other words, the “arbitrary timetables” for withdrawal of the Obama years were out. “We will push onward to victory with power in our hearts,” President Trump decreed. “America’s enemies must never know our plans or believe they can wait us out.”
The president also announced that he was putting that war squarely in the hands of the military. “Micromanagement from Washington, D.C., does not win battles,” he announced. “They are won in the field drawing upon the judgment and expertise of wartime commanders and frontline soldiers acting in real time, with real authority, and with a clear mission to defeat the enemy.” The man given that authority was General John Nicholson who had, in fact, been running the American war there since 2016. The general was jubilant and within months agreed that the conflict had “turned the corner” (something, by the way, that Obama-era Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta also claimed—in 2012).
Today, almost 17 years after the war began, two years after Nicholson took the reins, one year after Trump articulated his new plan, victory in any traditional sense is nowhere in sight. Despite spending around $900 billion in Afghanistan, as the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction determined earlier this year, “between 2001 and 2017, U.S. government efforts to stabilize insecure and contested areas in Afghanistan mostly failed.” According to a July 30, 2018, report by that same inspector general, the Taliban was by then contesting control of or controlled about 44% of that country, while Afghan government control and influence over districts had declined by about 16% since Nicholson’s predecessor, General John Campbell, was in command.
Daniela Senderowicz at Yes! writes—Ending the Secrecy of the Student Debt Crisis:
Gamblers and reality TV stars can claim bankruptcy protections when in financial trouble, but 44 million student loan borrowers can’t. Unemployed, underpaid, destitute, sick, or struggling borrowers simply aren’t able to start anew.
With a default rate approaching 40 percent, one would expect armies of distressed borrowers marching in the streets demanding relief from a system that has singled out their financial anguish. Distressed student debtors, however, seem to be terror-struck about coming forward to a society that, they say, ostracizes them for their inability to keep up with their finances.
When we spoke to several student borrowers, almost none were willing to share their names. “I can’t tell anyone how much I’m struggling,” says a 39-year-old Oregon physician who went into student loan default after his wife’s illness drained their finances. He is terrified of losing his patients and reputation if he speaks out about his financial problems. [...]
With an average debt of just over $37,000 per borrower for the class of 2016, and given that incomes have been flat since the 1970s, it’s not surprising that borrowers are struggling to pay. Student loans have a squeaky-clean reputation, and society tends to view them as a noble symbol of the taxpayers’ generosity to the working poor. Fear of facing society’s ostracism for failure to pay them back has left borrowers alienated and trapped in a lending system that is engulfing them in debt bondage.
Micah Uetricht at Jacobin writes—Today and Forever, Rahm Emanuel Is Garbage:
Rahm Emanuel will be remembered as a Chicago mayor who adored rich people and hated everyone else.
He has all but handed the keys to the city to corporate heads, tech start-ups, and wealthy developers. He has relentlessly attacked public education and the public sector as a whole. He covered up a brutal police killing of a black teenager. Even mainstream retrospectives on his tenure — written in the wake of his surprise announcement yesterday that he will not be seeking a third term as mayor — tried to sound fair and balanced yet couldn’t help but coming off as a long list of giveaways to the wealthy while the city’s poor and working class suffer or are pushed out.
Emanuel is the bête noire of the principled segments of Chicago’s labor movement, community groups, and the Left. He is “Mayor 1%.” All roads of evildoing lead back to him. Which makes his impending departure difficult to wrap my mind around. In many ways, he defined my adult political life in Chicago.
Nancy Le Tourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—A Rare Moment of Bipartisan Agreement Is Underway:
These days there’s not much that Republicans and Democrats agree on. So it might surprise you that there is a provision in the Farm Bill originally sponsored by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and co-sponsored by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Additional co-sponsors include Senators Joni Ernst (R-IA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Richard Burr (R-NC).
Originally titled the “Hemp Farming Act,” it would remove the form of cannabis known as hemp from the list of Schedule 1 federally-controlled substances and legalize its production under state or tribal regulation. McConnell initially introduced the bill as a stand-alone, but it was later incorporated into the Senate’s Farm Bill, which will begin the reconciliation process with the House bill today for possible passage by the end of the month. [...]
While some of you might know a little bit about the history of hemp in this country, I’ll simply point out that the first U.S. flag created by Betsy Ross was made from its fibers. But the production of hemp was halted by the 1970 Controlled Substances Act because of its genetic linkage to marijuana.
Isaac Stone Fish at The New Republic writes—Why are America's elite universities censoring themselves on China?
There is an epidemic of self-censorship at U.S. universities on the subject of China, one that limits debate and funnels students and academics away from topics likely to offend the Chinese Communist Party. This epidemic stems less from the hundreds of millions of dollars Chinese individuals and the Chinese Communist Party spend in U.S. universities, or the influx of students from mainland China—roughly 350,000 in the United States, up more than fivefold from a decade ago. Rather, it is that some people in American academia, too eager to please Beijing or too fearful of offending China and the Chinese people, have submitted to a sophisticated global censorship regime. This weakens not only their scholarship and integrity, but also their negotiating power with Beijing over issues such as access for research, conferences and other academic collaborations, and joint programs between American and Chinese institutions.
More than 100 interviews over the last six months with professors, students, administrators, and alumni at U.S. universities reveal a worrying prevalence of self-censorship regarding China. In a previously unreported incident, Columbia University’s Global Center in Beijing canceled several talks it feared would upset Chinese officials, according to a person familiar with the matter. Some graduate students admitted to regularly censoring themselves. “It has gotten to the point where I don’t engage with anything overly political relating to the Chinese state,” said a white graduate student at a top American university, who described her views as “middle of the road” for those studying China. “I would not willfully do anything that would endanger my ability to get a visa to China in the future,” she added. (Like many of the people I spoke to for this article, the student asked to remain anonymous, because of the real and perceived risks of openly discussing self-censorship. She also asked that I identify her race because she believes there is even less freedom for people of color and Chinese-Americans to speak openly about China.)