What a week. On today’s BradCast (audio link below), Republican legislators and Presidential candidates continue their demonization of Muslims and refugees from war-torn Syria and we pause from their madness to shed some light on a disturbing new scheme to block Democratic policymaking altogether.
First, with an unabashed rejection of facts (and reality and history), Republicans from the state level to the Presidential candidate level put forward stunning new rejections of the nation’s values. From the high-ranking GOP lawmaker in Tennessee who wants to use the National Guard to round-up and deport Syrian refugees in his state, to Donald Trump’s disturbingly Nazi-like call to force all Muslims to register as such with the federal government, we reach new, shameful lows following the Paris attacks one week ago today.
Also of note: CNN’s remarkable double standard in suspending a reporter for expressing sympathy for refugees. (Here’s that Don Lemon/CC item I mentioned from The BRAD BLOG in 2010.); And a precious few rays of light from one GOP Congressman (at least for one courageous moment) and then from Stephen Colbert.
Finally, even as that shameful “debate” bottoms out, rightwing schemes to further cripple the ability for Democrats to govern at all on the federal level continue. Ian Millhiser, journalist, Constitutional law expert and author of the new book, Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted
As reported in his recent article, “The Little-Noticed Conservative Plan To Permanently Lock Democrats Out Of Policymaking”, Millhiser explains the rightwing group’s broad new efforts to attack rule-making by federal agencies. He tells me how the group is now trying to “permanently hobble not just the federal rule-making process but the federal law-making process” itself.
“What groups like the Federalist Society are pushing,” he charges, “is ways to change the fact that elections matter. To make it so that they can permanently put into place structures — whether it’s declaring something unconstitutional, whether it’s changing the balance of power between the various branches of government — they’re looking to permanently put in place structures to make sure that only conservative policies can go into effect.”
“The basic idea is to shut down the agency’s power to regulate,” Millhiser tells me. “Between gerrymandering and so many other factors, it’s so difficult for Democrats to take the House [even when they win a majority of votes]. If they [the Federalist Society] can prevent [federal] agencies from regulating, then that means that, well, Democrats might be able to take the Presidency but they won’t be able to do anything with it when they have it. It effectively shuts the Democrats out of the policy-making process even when they win the Presidential election.”
That idea, he explains, absolutely dominated the group’s recent gathering and it’s one they hope to implement “by any means necessary”, whether in Congress or, more disturbingly, through judicial activism on the federal bench.
While four Supreme Court Justices (Scalia, Roberts, Thomas and Alito) are already dedicated Federalist Society members, “the big scary,” he reminds us, “is that there are four Supreme Court justices who are likely to retire in the next 5 or 6 years. So if the next President gets to replace four Justices, there’s going to be a massive shift in the law. If that next President appoints four very conservative Justices in the vein of Justice Samuel Alito, then whatever agenda the Federalist Society wants to be able to enact in this phase, they’re just going to enact it in the Court.”
Please take note. And please listen to the full, disturbing conversation on today’s BradCast.
THE PERVERSION OF LANGUAGE AS PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE
Destroying someone’s identity is a means of conquest. For those who do not know who they are offer less resistance.
First, the United States of America is a nation of immigrants. And a nation of immigrants, by definition, cannot be a h_ _ _land, which is essentially a curse word when applied to the USA. But that which mocks all those who fought against fascists and communists is now applied to what had always been referred to as the nation, the country, the continent, the Republic. And the self-styled “mainstream” press laps it all up and spits it back to the public without challenge.
Second, the Federalist Society is anything but. For here again the game is to give or take a name which does not apply. Just read THE FEDERALIST PAPERS by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay.
Third, all of this is being done by self-styled “conservatives.” Again, notice the twisted taffy. They take an oath to uphold the Constitution and then fail to do their jobs.
Finally, this country was founded on dissent. Just read the birth certificate called the Declaration of Independence. And it is time to resume calling things what they are. Those who shut down the government, threaten to destroy the nation’s credit, which Washington and Hamilton struggled to build, and who start wars for which they do not pay, should be described as radicals or reactionaries or possibly a combination thereof.