Politics, Everyday, All day... morning, noon and night....II

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

The principles behind the Fourteenth Amendment were behind the 1870 creation of the Department of Justice, whose first job was to bring down the Ku Klux Klan terrorists in the South.

Those same principles took on profound national significance in the post–World War II era, when the Supreme Court began to use the equal protection clause and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment aggressively to apply the protections in the Bill of Rights to the states. The civil rights decisions of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, including the Brown v. Board of Education decision outlawing segregation in public schools, come from this doctrine. Under it, the federal government took up the mantle of protecting the rights of individual Americans in the states from the whims of state legislatures.

Opponents of these new civil rights protections quickly began to object that such decisions were “legislating from the bench,” rather than permitting state legislatures to make their own laws. They began to call for “originalism,” the idea that the Constitution should be interpreted only as the Framers had intended when they wrote it, an argument that focused on the creation of law at the state level. Famously, in 1987, President Ronald Reagan nominated Robert Bork, an originalist who had called for the rollback of the Supreme Court’s civil rights decisions, for a seat on that court.

Reacting to that nomination, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) recognized the importance of the Fourteenth Amendment to equality: “Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of the Government, and the doors of the Federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is—and is often the only—protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy….”

From the perspective of 2024, Kennedy’s comments seem prescient, but the country could go even further backward. The 2024 Republican Party platform, released today, calls for using the Fourteenth Amendment not to protect equal rights for Americans from discriminatory laws, as those who wrote, passed, and ratified the amendment intended. Instead it calls for using the Fourteenth Amendment to protect the rights of fetuses from the time of fertilization. It says that states should start passing laws protecting those rights: so-called fetal personhood laws that have their roots in the 1960s and were considered a fringe idea until about fifteen years ago. Those laws prohibit all abortion, in vitro fertilization (IVF), and several forms of contraception.

Saying states should pass such laws echoes the language Trump has used to try to avoid the Republicans’ extreme and unpopular abortion stance by claiming, as the Supreme Court did in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, that states alone should write laws covering abortion. But in its reaction to the Republican platform today, the antiabortion Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America organization made it clear that the platform’s reference to the Fourteenth Amendment was designed to open the way for a national abortion ban. The Fourteenth Amendment, after all, gives Congress “power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.”

“It is important that the [Republican Party] reaffirmed its commitment to protect unborn life today through the 14th Amendment,” the organization said in a statement. “Under this amendment, it is Congress that enacts and enforces its provisions. The Republican Party remains strongly pro-life at the national level.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... uly-8-2024

[Simon of the Playa]

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

In June 2023 a federal grand jury indicted Trump on 37 criminal counts under the Espionage Act, including scheming to conceal documents; three more charges were added the following month. Trump allegedly compromised national security documents from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, the National Security Agency, the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (surveillance imagery), the National Reconnaissance Office (surveillance and maps), the Department of Energy (nuclear weapons), and the Department of State and Bureau of Intelligence and Research (diplomatic intelligence). He was a one-man wrecking ball, aimed at our national security.

The case fell randomly to Cannon, who has appeared to be trying to delay the case since it came into her hands. Today, she threw it out altogether.

Former attorney general Eric Holder called Cannon’s dismissal “so bereft of legal reasoning as to be utterly absurd.” Legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern called it “an extreme outlier view with no basis in precedent” and noted that “Cannon’s indefensible opinion will still serve its purpose of delaying this trial indefinitely.”

Global politics scholar Brian Klaas wrote “Trump appoints judge. Trump does something that virtually all legal experts—including Trump’s own former Attorney General—see as a clear-cut felony. Judge that Trump appointed dismisses case.” Washington Post global affairs columnist Ishaan Tharoor wrote: “if this happened in another country, the DC establishment would immediately point to the erosion of the rule of law and the independence of the judiciary.”

Special Counsel Jack Smith has said he will appeal Cannon’s ruling.

Trump responded to the news exactly as yesterday’s Republican demands that Trump’s opponents stop calling out his lawlessness suggested he would. He posted: “As we move forward in Uniting our Nation after the horrific events on Saturday, this dismissal of the Lawless Indictment in Florida should be just the first step, followed quickly by the dismissal of ALL the Witch Hunts—the January 6th Hoax in Washington, D.C., the Manhattan D.A.’s Zombie Case, the New York A.G. Scam, Fake Claims about a woman I never met (a decades old photo in a line with her then husband does not count), and the Georgia “Perfect” Phone Call charges. The Democrat Justice Department coordinated ALL of these Political Attacks, which are an Election Interference conspiracy against Joe Biden’s Political Opponent, ME. Let us come together to

END all Weaponization of our Justice System, and Make America Great Again!”

The Thomas opinion on which Cannon relied was his concurrence in the July 1, 2024, decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States. In that decision, the Supreme Court overturned the central principle of American democracy when it said that the U.S. president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of a president’s “official duties.” Cannon’s decision echoes the idea that Trump cannot be held accountable even for what is allegedly the most serious breach of our national security in our history. Indeed, MAGA Representative Matt Gaetz (R-FL) posted a picture of Cannon on social media with the heading: “Future Supreme Court Justice Cannon.”

Legal analyst Keith Boykin listed the many excuses and arguments Trump enablers have made over the years. “He can’t be prosecuted in office,” Boykin wrote. “He can’t be impeached because the courts should decide. He’s immune from prosecution after office. He can’t be prosecuted by Biden’s DOJ because that’s ‘lawfare.’ And he can’t be prosecuted by a special counsel. We have created a dictator.”

https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ly-15-2024

[Simon of the Playa]

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https://open.substack.com/pub/heatherco ... ly-18-2024

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[some seeing eye]

Harris is winning the meme war

Dark Brandon Never Had the Meme Capital Kamala Harris Does Right Now
Kamala’s brat summer is here.

https://slate.com/technology/2024/07/ka ... memes.html

A breakdown of the biggest Kamala Harris memes, for those who just fell out of a coconut tree

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2024/07/22/ ... ened-brat/

Brat campaign: Harris team swiftly embraces Gen Z memes about VP

https://www.axios.com/2024/07/22/kamala ... onut-memes

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

holy fucking shit.

watch this hot mess flaming garbage train wreck.

watch all of it if you can.


https://x.com/jeffstorobinsky/status/18 ... 4542590012

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

stolen from killbuck:

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[BBadger]

Ann Coulter is only a couple steps removed from being one of those "single cat ladies" that her vice-leader demonizes. I am happy she chose not to have children though.

[Simon of the Playa]

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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 10042.html

[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

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[Simon of the Playa]

[Simon of the Playa]

russia , russia, russia...


https://www.reuters.com/world/us/fake-k ... 024-09-17/

[some seeing eye]

Today I learned a new term: DARVO. "Deny, Attack, and Reverse Victim and Offender." Don't do it!

[Simon of the Playa]

and then, there is this...

https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/19/politics ... index.html

[some seeing eye]

Frank Luntz is a very smart polster and studies voters deeply in focus groups. He is a master framer. Always worth listening to, no matter what your politics. All of his videos are worth a watch.

[Simon of the Playa]

if frank luntz is so smart why is he still a republican?

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