The Carpentariat

Amy's Dominion

That you will always keep in mind that your legal career is but a means to an end, and as Father Jenkins told you this morning, that end is building the kingdom of God.

—Amy Coney Barrett in a 2006 speech to Notre Dame graduates

Now that's some scary stuff — just whose kingdom? — which has as much business sitting on the US Supreme Court as Trump has in the White House.

This nation is the world's oldest representative democracy precisely because it was founded on secular grounds, thereby avoiding the kinds of combative religious fanaticism that had plagued and bloodied Europe for centuries. A failure or refusal to embrace such fundamental historical background belies her Scalia-mentored reputation of "intellectual rigor."

Sen. Dianne Feinstein put it perfectly in 2017 at Barrett's appeals court hearing: "When you read your speeches, the conclusion one draws is that the dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern when you come to big issues that large numbers of people have fought for years in this country."

The senator's remark was a sober, religiously unprejudiced opinion directed only at intoxicated religious bias, which had no business on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, either.

Yet Senate Republicans will, as they are invariably wont to do, battle Democrats' conscientious, dispassionate objections to Barrett's peculiar beliefs "by daring liberals to demonize a religious woman," writes the Times.

Such is the essence of cheap demagoguery, without which the Republican Party would cease to exist. Let us pray.

​​​​​I have discontinued seasonal fundraisers, but that doesn't mean I can do this without you. These posts don't write themselves. They take time and investment, the first of which I supply in abundance, the second of which I can meet only so far. You are the critical bridge, the essential lifeline, between this site's survival and no more. So please click "Donate" and do what you can. It is most appreciated.

Thank you —PM

Hot damn, a possibly possible conspiracy theory

Fareed Zakaria recaps a Trump-election-stealing theory — in effect, a possibly legitimate conspiracy theory — that is growing in speculative weight, which I'll compress even further:

* Post-Election Day, Republicans contest thousands of mail-in ballots, causing a blizzard of Democratic countersuits.

* This creates such mayhem, confusion and delay that states must choose their presidential electors themselves.

* Eight of the nine swing states have Republican legislatures, which choose Republican electors; Democratic governors or perhaps Democratic secretaries of state choose a competing, equally partisan slate of electors.

* Now we have twice the confusion when some of the electors' legitimacy are challenged; hence when Congress meets on 6 January to add up the Electoral votes, the votes of those states hopelessly enmeshed in legal conflict are simply not counted.

* This deprives both nominees of the 270 Electoral-vote threshold.

* The election goes to Congress, as mandated by the Constitution.

* Each state has one vote, among whom there are presently 26 Republican delegations, 23 Democratic delegations, and one tied.

* Thus another soul-killing four years of Trump's hell, at the end of which we are irretrievably toast.

Trump, suggests Zakaria, is knowingly, premeditatively involved in the GOP strategy, or conspiracy, if you like; the columnist notes this remark at a 16 September presidential press conference: "At a certain point, it goes to Congress. You know, at a certain point, it goes to Congress. You know that."

No, we don't. That's just one possible outcome among several. Plus we can't be entirely sure that Republicans' three-vote edge in Congress (as of today) would hold. If the nation votes overwhelmingly for Biden — which I believe it will — leaving no doubt whatsoever as to the victor, we could see an honest-to-God mass insurrection in this country were Republicans to ruthlessly dictate the loser-as-winner. And that might be enough of a haunting spectre for merely three Republican delegations to say, no thanks.

Or, Melania leaving the White House, Jan. 20th

One can dream.

Danger! GOP warns of one-party rule!

Two weeks ago, NeverTrumper Tom Nichols amused us and himself by recalling the duplicity of his former comrades:

"Would-be Madisonians among the Republicans warn that no party should have untrammeled access to the levers of power—and especially not the Democrats…. If Joe Biden is allowed to run the executive branch without a Republican Senate, America will become a one-party state that sooner or later will fall under the boot of the dreaded Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez…. This faux constitutionalism is naked hypocrisy: I do I do not recall, during my days in the GOP, anyone on the right ever pleading that Americans should leave at least a few Democrats in office so that we Republicans would not go crazy and start force-feeding Ayn Rand or Friedrich Hayek to impressionable schoolchildren."

Not that the Washington Post's hysterical, pseudoconservatively saturated Marc Thiessen is even a would-be Madisonian; nevertheless he did laughably affirm, of late, Nichols' spoofing of these clowns:

"If Biden wins, Democrats will likely keep the House and retake the Senate, though without the 60-vote majority needed to break a Republican filibuster. That means the only check on their absolute power will be the GOP minority."

The America-First, Trump-Second healthcare plan

It's an extraordinary thing to witness: Trump's hate-filled, inexhaustible obsession with President Obama.

In his latest demonstration of fixating on a man a thousand times his superior, yesterday he signed an executive order "to affirm it is the official policy of the United States government to protect patients with preexisting conditions." That's how Trump put it in a speech. And this is how the Washington Post dryly put it: Yes, Trump said what he said, "despite the fact such protections are already enshrined in law."

But Obama was the first to enshrine the protections in law, so in Trump's fevered brain all memory of "Obama"-care had to go. "Obamacare is no longer Obamacare, as we worked on it and managed it very well," continued Trump. "What we have now is a much better plan. It is no longer Obamacare because we got rid of the worse part of it — the individual mandate."

Then, just to top things off, just to finish replacing the sublime with the ridiculous, he said "We’ve really become the health-care party — the Republican Party."

If Trump actually believed that, I'm rather sure he would have blathered his speech in something more than a monotonal, sleep-inducing tone. Here's a sample, though I doubt you'll endure its entire two minutes.

Quote of all times

It’s impossible to underscore how absolutely extraordinary this situation is — there are really no precedents in our country. This is a president who has threatened to jail his political opponents. Now he is suggesting he would not respect the results of an election. These are serious warning signs.

—Chris Edelson, American University presidential historian

No more seasonal fundraisers …

Just occasional reminders that:

I can't do this without you. That's something of a cliché, I know, but it's a truthful one. Some readers may find this shocking, but the posts herein don't write themselves. They take time and investment, the first of which I supply in toto; the second of which I can meet only so far. You are the critical bridge, the essential lifeline, between this site's survival and no more. So please click "Donate" and do what you can. It will be most appreciated. Thank you. —PM 

The GOP's enormous stamina

Axios reports that several congressional Republicans — from Rep. Liz Cheney, "The peaceful transfer of power is enshrined in our Constitution," to Sen. Ben Sasse, "We’ve always had a peaceful transition of power" — have pushed back against … who, why, for what reason?

Notes Axios: "None of the statements issued so far directly mention Trump by name — or why they're speaking out on the issue now."

Not even the president's threat to overturn American democracy can compel these cowards to condemn Trump by his gilded, disgraced name. One can already hear them — passive voice — on 21 January, as His Bloatedness clings by his nails to the Resolute Desk: "The peaceful transfer of power was enshrined in our Constitution" … shhhh, "but hey, life is all about change; let's not hold grudges."

Can we live without "You'll have a very transfer" Trump?

I'm a trifle befuddled about yesterday's media uproar over Trump's refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power should he lose November's election, which he will.

His Charles I approach to a graceful exit from the White House — an approach I'd love to see completed to the same end — has been his go-to position for months. What, pray tell, differentiated yesterday's tommyrot from August's, July's, June's, or for that matter, 2016's?

"We’re going to have to see what happens," he said in his usual, insightful way. This he followed with extraordinary eloquence: "Get rid of the ballots, you’ll have a very transfer — you’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly, there’ll be a continuation."

President Eisenhower had to work at such word jumbles, but to Trump, they come naturally — just as the proper truth comes naturally to Joe Biden. "Look, he says the most irrational things," responded the next president of the United States when asked about nincompoop POTUS' remark. "I don‘t know what to say," he added.

How 'bout, "You're fired, and by the way off with your head, you lowlife mass of malodorous content."

The camel's nose

This is no defense of social media sites' management of political posts, but one chillingly imagines what the internet would become under administrations such as Trump's with the power to unleash federal agencies and corrupt attorneys general on whatever sites they dislike — and at the behest of some pipsqueak authoritarian person of pastel color or a failed intellectual. Progressive and even center-left writings would morph into a kind of American samizdat.

Gradually the censorship of legitimate online liberalism would turn to regulating cable, then broadcast television, then the press. Breitbart.com and One America News, among other neofascist or Stalinist cauldrons of hysteria, would emerge as official sources of state propaganda — Pravda rather than the NY Times.

Gun manufacturers should have no liability for thousands of guns deaths, but dissenting words can be more powerful than assault rifles. Thus that is what authoritarian regimes fear most.

The Washington Post:

"The Justice Department asked Congress on Wednesday to adopt a new law that would hold Facebook, Google and Twitter legally accountable for the way they moderate content on the Web…. The new request from the Justice Department came in the form of a rare, legislative proposal that specifically seeks to whittle down … a decades-old provision of federal law that spares websites from being held liable for content posted by their users — and immunizes some of their own decisions about what posts, photos and videos to leave up or take down [emphasis mine]….

"For years, President Trump and other top Republicans have accused tech giants … of censoring conservatives online, something the U.S. government now may have the ability to police if the Justice Department’s proposal were to become law."

Twitter makes sure that Trending on Twitter is anything bad, Fake or not, about President Donald Trump. So obvious what they are doing. Being studied now!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 17, 2020

Mitch McConnell's KY: ground zero of racial injustice

A short post, since anyone of conscience already knows of the Kentucky attorney general's travesty of justice today.

I listened on the radio to his astonishing justification of his refusal to press criminal charges against the Louisville police who murdered Breonna Taylor in her home as she posed no threat to those policemen whatsoever. His overall justification seemed to be — Hey, that was the grand jury's decision, not mine. But who doesn't know that grand juries are carefully directed by prosecutors?

Daniel Jay Cameron, Kentucky's Republican AG, could not have made the silent collusion between prosecutors and law enforcement more clear. His afternoon press conference was among the most repulsive of all time — since 1910, anyway. A young black woman can be asleep in her bed one minute and find herself dead the next, only to see from perhaps the other side her overaggressive, incompetent perpetrators walk.  

Those of us, of all colors, exhausted by seemingly never-ending systemic racism have abundant reason to reenergize. Because Kentucky's US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is sure to concur with the state's attorney general, in political support of America's most notorious and influential racist, the president of the United States.

Let us throw Trumpism and its enablers out of office in every forthcoming election, from now till our return to human and political decency. 

How many 2016 Trump voters are left to persuade?

I suppose David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report could be spot on when he writes that "there's potential for the Roe v. Wade/abortion issue and the Affordable Care Act to drive a wedge in Trump's coalition. In 2016, much of his support came from voters who disliked Hillary Clinton, liked Trump's rhetoric on trade and immigration, but consider themselves pro-choice — especially non— evangelcial, blue-collar women. And, these voters remain up for grabs in 2020."

Yet I question how "up for grabs" these voters are. They tend to possess interests well outside news, public affairs and current events — that is, they are those frightful "low-information" voters. So how well informed will they be about Trump's nominee choice and what that portends for American jurisprudence? They're far more likely to hear Trump' lie about prohibiting insurance bans on covering preexisting conditions than to read a 1,000-word NYT piece on the subject.

There's also Wasserman's somewhat inadvertent admission against interest that these voters "consider themselves pro-choice." It may be that every last one of them is indeed soundly pro-choice — but that didn't stop them in 2016 from voting for a phony pro-lifer who was bound to appoint only authentic pro-lifers to the Supreme Court.

So while there is always "potential" for a pivotal Trump-coalition wedge, my guess is that those who've been persuaded by Joe Biden's message and returned to Democratic ranks have already pretty well maxed out their numbers.

"The Ukrainian Connection," starring Sens. Johnson and Grassley

Republican Sens. Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley's barely anticipated report on Hunter Biden's involvement with the Ukrainian firm Burisma was released this morning, so I know you'll want to race to whatever .gov site contains it.

In lieu of wading through the report, its summary is that "'Hunter Biden’s position on Burisma’s board was problematic and did interfere in the efficient execution of policy with respect to Ukraine,' while charging that he and other Biden relatives 'cashed in on Joe Biden’s vice presidency.'"

That second finding is particularly rich, given the commercialization of the presidency by the present titleholder's offspring. But what makes the GOP report a real yawner is its overall finding that Hunter's seat on Burisma's board was "problematic." This, the Biden camp has openly admitted time and again; not once has it claimed anything but. But for the GOP, why not stage a costly Senate investigation into the obvious?

What's both rich and amusing, however, is that Johnson-Grassley's report surreptitiously came together, in part, from the "laundering [of] Russian disinformation" by two Ukrainian nationals, one of whom has been identified as an "active Russian agent." The other, a former Ukrainian diplomat, "has advanced the theory that Ukraine interfered in the 2016 election to boost Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump."

Good, solid, unbiased, KGB-like evidence — what today's GOP relies on.

"The grim reality"

"We're fucked."

That, were I a US senator, is what I'd tell the Beltway press and folks back home about my party's chances of overcoming Mitch McConnell's highly malodorous move to confirm another of Trump's Supreme Court nominees before Election Day.

And that, among a hundred other reasons, is why I'll never be a US senator. I lack the verbal dark artistry to wantonly bamboozle with audacious bullshit. For years I've watched politicians being questioned on national television, and the number of straightforward answers I could count on one hand. It's an impressive political skill, of which I am barren.

"Senate Democrats and their liberal allies," reports the Washington Post, "confronted the grim reality Monday that they have no path to blocking [the SC] nomination other than a political pressure campaign that peels away a minimum of four GOP votes." Which is but a feel-good pat on the rank-and-file's head. Within the impermeable Republican personality cult of Trump, just who would these Senate Democrats "peel away"? Even Mitt Romney joined the nutters.

Minority Leader Chuck Schumer took a faintly different approach on the Senate floor Monday. Relates the Post: "He sought to shame his GOP colleagues by holding up their previous words about election-year Supreme Court nominations to suggest they were being insincere."

I kid you not. When I first read that, I chortled. 'Twould be simpler to breed a rat with a pig than to ever shame that gang of the professionally shameless. But that's politics for you; politics for the doomed — stiff upper lips soldering forward and all that, what-what?, even if into Gallipoli.

I'm only surprised that a nominee — even a blank to be filled in later — wasn't sworn in by last Saturday morning.