The Shortsighted GOP Push for Kavanaugh

As I have often noted, for eight (8) years I was a precinct chair member of the City Committee for the Republican Party of Virginia Beach.  I even filed the articles incorporating the body with the State Corporation Commission.  Back in those days, part of the Party agenda was planning for the long term future of the Party.  Those days are long gone and now, perceived short term expediency trumps all else - no pun intended - and there seems to be no thought of what short term actions may trigger in the long term.   The trend began back shortly before I resigned from the GOP when Christofascists were voted onto local city and county committees with the short term view of rallying "conservative Christians" to support the Party.  Since then, white supremacists have been welcomed in and, in the figure of Brett Kavanaugh, anti-women misogynists have been welcomed to the GOP fold.  Meanwhile, the younger voters, Hispanics, college educated voters and minorities - the growing segments of the electorate - have been driven into the arms of the Democrats.  A piece in The Atlantic looks at the long term repercussions Republicans may suffer if the ram through Kavanaugh's confirmation.  Here are excerpts:

By refusing to call other witnesses, or enlist the FBI in a fact-finding investigation, or summon relevant witnesses, Senate Republicans have systematically steered the hearing into a cul-de-sac of competing memories between Ford and Kavanaugh. The plan to vote on the nomination within days gives away the game: No one would schedule votes that quickly if they were committed to fully evaluating whatever testimony Ford provides on Thursday, much less the other charges confronting Kavanaugh.

The allegations from Avenatti’s client, Julie Swetnick, could scramble Republicans’ decision making. But even if the Senate pushes forward and confirms Kavanaugh, the battle over his selection is virtually guaranteed to continue. Indeed, it’s already possible to identify at least four distinct rounds of future electoral and legislative conflict over Kavanaugh if he’s confirmed.

The 2018 election: The Kavanaugh controversy erupted as polls were already showing a threat to GOP candidates this fall, in the form of an intense backlash against Donald Trump that’s fueling unprecedented deficits among college-educated white women and energized turnout among African American women. Democrats have positioned themselves to benefit from that energy by nominating a record number of women in House, Senate, and gubernatorial elections.

Republicans have feared that if they don’t confirm Kavanaugh, they will depress turnout among their base supporters. But elevating him to the Supreme Court amid these allegations risks compounding their problems with the female voters already most hostile to Trump (partly for his own history of alleged sexual abuse). Even before Ford testifies, nearly three-fifths of college-educated white women opposed Kavanaugh’s confirmation in a recent Fox News poll. . . . The fierce recoil from Trump among college-educated white women is the single greatest source of Republican vulnerability in House races this year; if the party’s defenses among blue-collar white women also crack, a difficult election night could turn disastrous.

A House investigation: Democrats frustrated that Republicans have refused to fully investigate the allegations against Kavanaugh—or examine evidence suggesting that he provided false or misleading testimony on multiple issues in previous confirmation hearings—would get another chance to revisit those questions if the party wins the House majority in November. Brian Fallon, the executive director of Demand Justice, a Democratic group that advocates on judicial nominations, says he is “100 percent certain” a Democratic-controlled House Judiciary Committee “would seek to reopen investigations that Republicans during this process have refused to conduct.” . . . at the very least, Kavanaugh could face a more searching examination than Senate Republicans have conducted if he’s confirmed.

The 2020 election: Republicans expect Kavanaugh to tip the Court’s balance by providing a more reliably conservative vote than Anthony Kennedy, the justice he would replace. The paradox is that the more a Justice Kavanaugh would fulfill these expectations, the more he would renew the animosity over his confirmation. “It won’t just be something that will be easily forgotten, because you will have decisions coming out that he will be the fifth vote for,” Fallon notes. The clouds shadowing Kavanaugh would intensify the backlash on the left if he were to provide decisive votes on contentious issues. That would potentially raise the Court’s relevance in the 2020 presidential election, particularly if the legal right to abortion is rescinded or hollowed out by five male, Republican-appointed justices, two of whom (Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas) have been accused of sexual misconduct.

After 2020: If Kavanaugh is confirmed, he will cement a Republican-appointed Court majority whose oldest member (Thomas) is only 70. That means, health permitting, the majority could function into the 2030s as a barricade against Democratic priorities, such as strengthening environmental regulation, protecting voting rights, or expanding civil-rights protections around race, gender, and sexual orientation.

If Democrats regain unified control of the White House and Congress in 2020 or thereafter, that prospect could inspire the first serious effort to enlarge the Court’s membership since Franklin D. Roosevelt tried and failed in his second term. Lingering resentment over the GOP’s refusal to consider Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Court under former President Barack Obama has already spurred discussion about a future effort to add more justices, which Congress can do without a constitutional amendment. It won’t ever be easy to pass legislation changing the Court’s structure. But the hardening Democratic belief that Kavanaugh’s nomination was tainted could increase pressure to explore the option in the years ahead if he is confirmed.

As to Lindsey Graham's bizarre behavior in supporting Kavanaugh, my comment is as follows:  I wish Graham would come "out of the closet" so that Trump or whoever in the GOP could no longer blackmail him. 

Trump Signs "Executive Order" Ending His Own Policy

In a moment of staged theater aimed no doubt to his intellectually and morally challenged supporters, Der Trumpenführer signed an executive order ending the current family separation policy implemented by his own regime.  Up until now, Trump has lied - yes, lie is the correct term - that the policy was the fault of Democrats even though neither the George W. Bush or Barack Obama administrations , operating under the same congressional legislation had never ripped children, some as young as infants, from their parents.  What likely pushed Trump to for the most part rescind his own policy was the growing outcry of Republicans facing reelection in less than five months and the storm of international condemnation raining down on Trump's regime that shows about as much empathy for others as Adolph Hitler's regime.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at Trump's theatrical and false and fraudulent gesture to deflect responsibility from himself.  Here are story excerpts:

Trump abruptly reversed course Wednesday, signing an executive order ending family separations at the U.S.-Mexico border after a public uproar over the impact of his administration’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy.

The plan would keep families together in federal custody while awaiting prosecution for illegal border crossings, potentially violating a 1997 court settlement limiting the duration of child detentions.

Trump had repeatedly defended his immigration crackdown, including forcibly separating migrant children from their parents after they crossed the border. But images of young children in tears, housed in metal cages, set off an international outcry.

The inaction sparked international outrage, including criticism from Pope Francis and opposition from world leaders.

Trump’s action came shortly after House Republican leaders vowed to bring broader immigration legislation up for votes Thursday to address the crisis, despite widespread skepticism that a bill could pass.

Separately, Attorney General Jeff Sessions [who is facing a move within his own church to charge him with child abuse] met with Senate Republicans privately amid GOP fears about the political fallout from the separation policy. Upon leaving that meeting, Sessions said he had been “working with the White House and others all morning” on the family separation issue.

Trump’s executive order instructs DHS to keep families in custody “to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations,” language that points to the government’s deficit of detention space for parents with children.

But placing children in those facilities would run afoul of the 1997 “Flores Settlement” agreement that limits the government’s ability to keep children in detention and orders them to be placed in least-restrictive setting possible.

An administration official with knowledge of the plan indicated that the Trump administration was anticipating lawsuits and preparing to litigate Flores [which places limits on child incarcerations] in court, particularly if lawmakers fail to approve a legislative fix.

Some Senate Republicans began publicly and privately pressuring the administration this week to change how the zero-tolerance policy was being enforced. Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) and a dozen other Senate Republicans urged Sessions in a letter to pause the family separations unilaterally.

Hatch’s staff also privately lobbied Ivanka Trump — the president’s daughter and senior adviser — and told her that they wanted to help Trump find a way out of the border crisis, according to a person familiar with those discussions. A handful of Senate Republicans, including Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), also reached out privately to various administration officials to halt the separations.

“I don’t like it,” Hatch said of the family separation crisis during an interview at the Capitol. “They can’t ignore what I’m saying because I’ve been the president’s strongest supporter, and they know that I’m the middle of everything.”

International condemnation of the Trump administration policy has also continued to build.   Pope Francis is criticizing the separation of migrant families at the U.S.-Mexican Mexico border and saying that “populism” and “creating psychosis” are not the way to resolve migration problems, according to an interview published Wednesday.  Speaking to Reuters news agency, the pope said, “It’s not easy, but populism is not the solution.”

Answering questions from Parliament, meanwhile, British Prime Minister Theresa May said Wednesday that “the pictures of children being held in what appear to be cages are deeply disturbing. This is wrong. This is not something we agree with.”

Large potential continues to exist for the abuse of immigrant children and there families. Time will tell if Trump's feigned concern has any reality in fact.  Meanwhile, it is crucial to oppose Trump's efforts to blame his own policies on Democrats or Congress.  Likewise, the ugliness of Trump and his policies must be kept in people's minds up through the 2018 midterm elections. 

Trump Nemesis Mitt Romney Seen to Replace Orrin Hatch

With the announced retirement of Senator Orrin Hatch yesterday, one of my reactions is good riddance.  The man long overstayed his welcome - a view of 75% of Utah voters who did not want him to run for reelection - as evidenced by his rant that he supported working Americans even as he assisted in the passage of the Trump tax bill, perhaps the largest give away to the very wealthy and large corporations (few of which plan in increase employee salaries) in the history of the nation.  The other possible good news is that Mitt Romney will like run for the seat being vacated by Hatch and be elected.  Romney is one of the few Republicans who has maintained his attacks on Trump, perhaps because Trump is very disliked in Utah where Mormons, despite hypocrisy on a number of issues, find the amoral Trump distasteful.  While hardly my favorite individual, unlike most congressional Republicans, Romney still holds to at least a minimal sense of morality.  A Romney win would mean a GOP Senator could continue to bash Trump as has been the case with retiring Senators Corker and Flake.  A piece in Politico looks at the likely fun spectator sport that may exist if Romney takes Hatch's senate seat.  Here are excerpts:

Donald Trump had just returned from Utah last month when the president placed a call to his longtime nemesis Mitt Romney.

Trump was ostensibly trying to ease tensions between the two men, after a trip dominated by news reports that he was courting Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) to run for reelection in order to keep Romney from seeking the seat. But the 10-minute chat only further raised suspicions within Romney’s inner circle that the president was out to stymie the former GOP presidential nominee’s political ambitions.

The conversation highlighted the fraught relationship between the Republican heavyweights — one that will now take center stage as Romney prepares a Senate bid in the wake of Hatch’s announcement Tuesday that he won’t seek another term, contrary to Trump's wishes. Should Romney run and win, as many expect, he will be poised to be Trump’s most prominent GOP foil, representing the wing of traditional Republicanism that the president has purposefully cast aside.

Romney has made little secret that he will be unafraid of taking on the president. The 2012 GOP nominee has informed a series of Republican Party donors, senators and power brokers in recent weeks that, while he isn’t looking to pick a fight with Trump, he is more than willing to speak out against him. During the 2016 campaign, Romney derided Trump as a “phony” and “fraud” and implored the party to nominate someone else.

Romney is also guided by frustration with the president, which he has long spoken about openly. In June, during an appearance at his annual Park City donor retreat, the former governor grew emotional when he implicitly criticized Trump’s “America First” approach to foreign policy, arguing that the U.S. had an important humanitarian role overseas. In June 2016, speaking at the same event, Romney choked up while describing then-candidate Trump as often hurtful.

The former governor slammed the president over his handling of the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer, and broke with Trump after the president endorsed accused child molester Roy Moore in the Alabama Senate race.

Romney is wasting little time preparing for a Senate bid, though aides say an official announcement is likely several weeks away. Among his tight-knit circle, there is already talk about who will oversee his campaign, a job that will likely fall to longtime top aides Matt Waldrip, Spencer Zwick and Beth Myers.

Several other Republicans, including state Auditor John Dougall and state Rep. Daniel McCay, have been mentioned as potential candidates. But many Republicans in the state believe Romney, who is well-liked in Utah and has a sprawling fundraising network, would enter the race as the heavy favorite.

His needs would be minimal,” said former Utah Republican Party Chairman Bruce Hough, who has been in touch with Romney. “He would be as close to a consensus candidate as you can get.”

I continue to believe that the Republican Party is beyond saving, but should Romney be elected, he might at least slow the GOP's complete descent into something hideous. 

Senate GOP Tax Bill Hurts Poor More than First Thought

The Congressional Budget Office ("CBO") has further analyzed the GOP Senate tax proposal and surprise, surprise - well, actually not surprising at all - the impact of the bill would hurt the poor more than originally believed.  Sadly, the bill is typical of the Republican Party's reverse Robin Hood agenda of taking from the poor and middle class and giving lavish tax cuts to the wealthy.  So much for Orrin Hatch's disingenuous lie that he works to benefit the poor and working class.  His rant at Sen. Sherrod Brown is definitely an example of he doth protest too much.  Here at the holiday season, the GOP is showing that its claimed deference to "Christian values" is nothing more than a charade. Indeed, Republicans like Hatch are little more than self-laudatory modern day Pharisees. A piece in the Washington Post looks at the new CBO analysis and its unsurprising consequences.  Here are article highlights:

The Senate Republican tax plan gives substantial tax cuts and benefits to Americans earning more than $100,000 a year, while the nation’s poorest would be worse off, according to a report released Sunday by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

Republicans are aiming to have the full Senate vote on the tax plan as early as this week, but the new CBO analysis showing large, harmful effects on the poor may complicate those plans. The CBO also said the bill would add $1.4 trillion to the deficit over the next decade, a potential problem for Republican lawmakers worried about America’s growing debt.

Democrats have repeatedly slammed the bill as a giveaway to the rich at the expense of the poor. In addition to lowering taxes for businesses and many individuals, the Senate bill also makes a major change to health insurance that the CBO projects would have a harsh impact on lower-income families.

By 2019, Americans earning less than $30,000 a year would be worse off under the Senate bill, CBO found. By 2021, Americans earning $40,000 or less would be net losers, and by 2027, most people earning less than $75,000 a year would be worse off. On the flip side, millionaires and those earning $100,000 to $500,000 would be big beneficiaries, according to the CBO’s calculations.

The main reason the poor get hit so hard in the Senate GOP bill is because the poor would receive less government aid for health care.

The CBO has calculated that health insurance premiums would rise if this bill becomes law, leading 4 million Americans to lose health insurance by 2019 and 13 million to lose insurance by 2027.

The Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT), the other official nonpartisan group that analyzes tax bills, put out a similar report showing how lower-income families are hurt by the loss of the health-care tax credits. But the CBO goes a step further than the JCT. The CBO also calculates what would happen to Medicaid, Medicare and the Basic Health Program if the Senate GOP plan became law. The CBO is showing even worse impacts on poor families than the JCT did.

Republicans, including Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah), have argued that their bill helps Americans across the income spectrum. . . .  They also argue that lower-income families are not losing any money in their wallets.

But Democrats and advocates for the poor say these lower-income Americans are going to be worse off if they no longer have health insurance.

Nowadays, like the Christofascists who dominate the GOP base, if a Republican elected official's lips are moving, the safest assumption to make is that they are lying.  The biggest irony is that evangelical Christians who park their sanctimonious asses in church pews each week are the ones most loyal to the GOP which pushes policies that are the antithesis of Christ's social gospel message.   It is long past time that the media stop giving these people deference and maintaining the myth that they are decent people. 

The Republican Created Health Crisis for 10 Million Children

GOP Senator Orrin Hatch

Recently GOP Senator Orrin Hatch ranted when Democrat Senator Sherrod Brown suggested that Hatch and GOP policies were harming millions of regular Americans.  Hatch basically lied and said that he had worked to benefit poor Americans throughout his career. Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans are working to take from the poor and middle class and lavish tax cuts on the extremely wealthy and large corporations. A case in point is Republican refusal to renew funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a program that benefits poor children otherwise lacking health coverage.  A piece in Think Progress looks at this latest Republican travesty.  Here are excerpts:

Fifty-six days after Congress failed to fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), some American children are at risk of losing their health insurance. The deadline to renew the program’s funding was Sept. 30, and Congress hasn’t granted the program $15 billion to continue.

As a result, the popular state-level insurance program for low-income children and pregnant women is facing a funding cliff. While some states may be able to keep the program going through some of next year, half a dozen are projected to run out of funding by late December or early January.

States closest to the funding cliff are preparing to warn customers that funding might disappear, leaving kids in the lurch. There are a few options for those families who rely on CHIP once the funding disappears.

States decide if those families could be enrolled in Medicaid or covered through Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace offerings. But Republicans — Trump in the executive and members of his party in Congress and at the state level — have tried hard block access to both of those alternatives, by sabotaging Obamacare, eliminating support for enrollment, blocking Medicaid expansion, etc.

The program has historically enjoyed bipartisan support, but Republicans, in control of both chambers of Congress and steering a massive tax bill through a lightning-fast approval process, are now unable to the program the funds it needs to survive.

At the center of both House and Senate Republicans’ tax bills is a giant, unnecessary tax cut for corporations: a 20 percent corporate tax cut at a price tag of nearly $1.5 trillion dollars. The Senate has decided one way its bill will raise enough money to fund this is by repealing the ACA’s individual mandate provision, a move that would leave nearly 13 million Americans uninsured.

Trump’s tax proposal would sharply reduce the federal government’s ability to match state funds (the ACA expanded matching) and would cut billions from CHIP’s funding.

During a heated exchange with Sen. Sherrod Brown over the facts of the GOP tax plan, Brown highlighted that it doesn’t include any funding for CHIP, and any tax plan that truly wasn’t geared towards wealthy individuals would include that funding. Hatch replied sharply, “I’m not starting with CHIP.” 

Increasingly, voting Republican is to me a sign of one's moral bankruptcy.  Children don't matter, impoverished elderly do not matter.  No one matters except the wealthy and right wing Christian extremists.  

Republican Lies, Rage and Tax Cuts for the Very Rich

Paul Ryan - one of the biggest liars in Congress

One of the main characteristics of today's Republican Party is the willingness of those who pretend to care about the lives of average Americans to outright lie as they push an agenda that harms the majority while piling benefits on the 1%.  The brazenness of the lies seemingly increases by the day and Republicans like Paul Ryan simply care nothing about the truth. Perhaps the most disingenuous statements came from GOP Senator Orrin Hatch exploded when confronted by his Democrat counterpart Sherrod Brown with the reality of what the GOP tax cut plan would do.  Hatch whined and ranted about not coming from wealth and claimed that he has always fought for the benefit of working class Americans  even though the facts show a very different story. I'm sorry, but feigned indignation and shouted lies do not magically turn untruths into something else.  A column in the New York Times looks at the very dangerous and untrue agenda driving the GOP lie machine.  Here are excerpts:

One thing you can count on in 21st-century U.S. politics is that Republicans will lie about taxes. They did it under George W. Bush, they did it under Barack Obama and they’re still doing it under Donald Trump.

Yet this time is different. It’s not just that the lies have gotten even more brazen. There’s now a combination of incoherence and rage that we, or at least I, haven’t seen before. These days, they can’t even seem to get their fake story straight — and they literally start yelling obscenities when someone tries to point out the facts.

G.O.P. lies about taxes generally involve two issues: who is hurt or helped by tax changes, and what these changes will do to the budget.

As in the Bush years, Republicans are claiming to be offering a middle-class tax cut. But where Bush truly was cutting taxes on the middle class, just much less than he was on the wealthy, current Republican plans would raise those taxes on many lower- and middle-income families, even as they go down for the wealthy. (Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, claims that only “million-dollar earners” would see tax increases. This is the opposite of the truth.)

[A]nd a memo to journalists: If you play it safe by reporting this as “Democrats say” that middle-class taxes will go up, you’re misleading your readers: Those estimates come from the Joint Committee on Taxation, Congress’s own nonpartisan scorekeeper.

How can Republicans like Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, pretend to be helping the middle class? It depends crucially on a new kind of budget gimmick: Both the House and Senate tax-cut bills do contain some middle-class tax breaks — but only for the first few years. Then they expire.

Take one of Ryan’s favorite examples, a family with two children and earning $59,000 a year. That family would indeed get a tax break next year. But the break would rapidly dwindle and turn into a tax increase by 2024.

Not long ago, leading Republicans claimed to be deeply concerned about budget deficits. Only fools and centrists took the Republicans seriously. Still, the abrupt shift to nonchalance about adding trillions to the debt in order to cut taxes on corporations and the wealthy is causing a bit of whiplash even among cynics. How do they justify the shift?

Well, they don’t seem to have settled on a story. Mnuchin keeps asserting that tax cuts will pay for themselves, going so far as to claim (falsely) that Treasury has released a study showing this. Mick Mulvaney, the budget director, cheerfully acknowledges that they’re using gimmicks to pass a bill that permanently cuts taxes on corporations, and not to worry. Whatever works, it seems.

So we’re really looking at an unprecedented level of dishonesty here. But what happens when you try to explain what’s going on? When Senator Sherrod Brown tried to point out, correctly, that the Senate G.O.P.’s tax bill heavily favors the rich, Senator Orrin Hatch exploded, calling it “bull crap” and asserting that he grew up poor (which is relevant why, exactly?).

Sorry, but this isn’t the righteous anger of a man falsely accused of wrongdoing. It’s the rage con men always exhibit when caught out in their con.

But what’s the con about? The very incoherence of the arguments Republicans are making for their plans shows that it’s not about helping the economy, let alone ordinary families. It really is about making the rich richer, at everyone else’s expense. If this be bull crap, make the most of it.

Could We End Up With President Orrin Hatch?

Where the Russiagate investigation will lead is anyone's guess at this point, but I for one hope it ends with the removal of both Donald Trump and Mike Pence from office.  That scenario then leads to the question of which morally bankrupt Republican would end up in the oval office.  A piece in The Week conjectures that it could be Senator Orrin Hatch given that Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell may prove to be tainted in the Russiagate scandal since indications exist that Mitch - and likely Ryan - knew of the collusion and looked the other way in their zeal to have the GOP win the White House at literally any cost.  It is an interesting conjecture and the piece and certainly has some possible plausibility in America's insane political nightmare.  Here are highlights:  

The Republican Party holds the White House and both houses of Congress. A majority of the justices on the Supreme Court have been appointed by Republican presidents. The GOP controls a majority of state governments. Yet members of the president's senior staff and immediate family are under investigation, and the president himself may well come to face impeachment and/or calls to resign, not to mention indictment and prosecution for charges ranging from violations of election laws to obstruction of justice and even treason.

The Trump-Russia scandal may well come to be the biggest in American history. There's nothing funny about that.

And yet ... there is something a little amusing about the prospect of the Republican leadership in Washington attempting to replace a President Trump who's been taken down by the Russian scandal. The fact is that if the scandal grows wide enough to topple the president, it's quite likely to touch a number of other high-ranking Republicans, several of whom stand in the line of succession. What happens then?

Let's start with Vice President Mike Pence, the man who would be tapped first to take over in the event that Donald Trump doesn't complete his term. A Pence spokesperson appeared uncertain on Wednesday when asked whether the vice president had ever met during the presidential campaign or transition with representatives of the Russian government. By Thursday morning, the uncertainty had been replaced by assurance that no such meeting ever took place. It would be nice to think that this is true, though the Trump administration's record is somewhat … spotty when it comes to forthrightness about Russian contacts.

But let's assume it's true: Pence never met with Russian officials. Good! But is it also the case that he knew nothing about meetings and conversations that clearly did take place between a prominent Russian attorney and Donald Trump's eldest son, son-in-law, and one-time campaign manager? And between the Russian ambassador and Mike Flynn? And Jeff Sessions? On several (vaguely remembered) occasions? Unless Pence can show that the Trump circle made concerted efforts to keep him out of this rather large and permeable loop, the claim sounds implausible on its face. Or at least implausible enough that leading Republicans are likely to consider it ill-advised to allow Pence to succeed Trump as commander-in-chief when he could end up having to govern under the same cloud of Russian suspicions.

That's how we could easily end up with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, second in the line of succession, ascending to the presidency (as some intelligent commentators have already begun to predict).

There's just one problem with that scenario: Reports have indicated that Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell may have known about Russia's attempts to meddle in the election on Trump's behalf as early as last summer, more than two months before Election Day. That means it's possible, and perhaps likely, that Ryan and his Senate counterpart will end up tainted by the Russian scandal as well — at least enough to raise concerns about allowing anyone from the Republican leadership to take over for a disgraced President Trump.

And that brings us to the third person in the line of succession: the president pro tempore of the Senate, who just so happens to be … the 83-year-old Republican from Utah, Orrin Hatch.

That's right: There is a non-negligible chance that at some point prior to the 2020 election, we could see President Hatch in the White House. And here's the thing: Given the available options and the still-unclear scope of the Russian scandal, Hatch may well be the best choice around. If you doubt it, take a look at who comes immediately after him in the line of succession: Secretary of State Rex "Russian Order of Friendship" Tillerson. And he's followed by a series of other Trump Cabinet members, all of whom could end up tainted by the scandal as well. Only Hatch is sufficiently distant from both the White House and the Republican leadership on Capitol Hill to be a safe bet.

There's another compelling wrinkle in the Hatch thought experiment, too: He's a devout member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and Mormon folklore includes an 1843 prophecy by church founder Joseph Smith according to which a Mormon will one day become president of the United States at a moment when the Constitution is "hanging by a thread," thereby saving the country from calamity. Mormons call this the "White Horse Prophecy."

Could the deeply pious octogenarian be America's gallant knight riding in on a white steed, sent by God himself to save us from civic doom? Sure, it's unlikely. But then again, two years ago the idea of America electing a septuagenarian reality-show star and transparent con artist to the highest office in the land sounded like a bad joke.

Far Right in GOP And Christofascists Attack Obama for ENDA Executive Order

The text of President Barack Obama's proposed executive order barring employment discrimination against LGBT employees has not even yet been released and already the Christofascists and their political whores in the GOP are shrieking and carrying on.  Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah is demanding that any executive order contain a religious exemption that is so broad that it is tantamount to a grant of special rights to Christofascists.   The Washington Blade looks at the exemption that Hatch supported in the Senate version of ENDA:

Under the current version of ENDA before Congress, religious institutions, like churches or religious hospitals and schools, could continue to discriminate against LGBT workers in non-ministerial positions even if the bill were to become law. The religious exemption is broader than similar exemptions under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 for categories of race, gender, religion and national origin. 

In my view, the larger problem with such an exemption is that it bears no relation to the intention behind the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution which sought to guarantee that no citizen would (i) be forced to support a religion that they did not adhere to or (ii) find limitations placed on their right to freely worship.  In fact, an exemption such as what Hatch wants would allow the Christofascists to trample of the religious freedom rights of LGBT citizens who have a constitutional right to NOT adhere to Christofascist and far right Muslim beliefs. 

Meanwhile, the hate merchants at Family Research Council are beside themselves over Obama's partial end run around the bar to ENDA that their boot licking GOP members of the House of Representatives have maintained to date.  Right on cue, FRC is whining that the proposed executive order is an attack on Christians and an attack on free speech.   As is ALWAYS the case with FRC it wants special rights for Christofascists.  Here is a sample of the disingenuous drivel and lies on its blog page:

[T]he detrimental impact on employers' and employees' constitutional freedoms of religion, speech, and association.  

Today's announced executive order will give activists a license to challenge their employers whenever they feel aggrieved, exposing those employers to threats of costly legal proceedings and the potential of jeopardizing future contracts. Furthermore, by requiring federal contractors to consider characteristics and behaviors related to a person's sexual orientation or gender identity, this policy will make contractors liable for protecting actual or perceived self-disclosed and fluid identities that may not even be known.  

I'd suggest that if FRC doesn't want protections for LGBT employees, let's open the door for employers to fire far right Christians because  their behavior is clearly a "choice" and is not an immutable characteristic.    Let's treat the "godly folk" the same way that they demand to be allowed to treat others.  I may sound peevish, but I am SO OVER the undeserved deference that religion is afforded even though it has caused more wars, deaths and unbridled hatred than almost any other thing across history.