The People v. the U.S. Senate

Anti-majority Senate Republicans.

The structure of Congress was a pragmatic deal struck by the authors of the U.S. Constitution to induce smaller states to ratify the document and create the United States of America.  The principal carrot for small states was the U.S. Senate which would give small states equal power with large states.  Its very structure was anti-democratic, but it was the sweetener needed to achieve ratification.  Fast forward to today and the imbalance of power in control of legislation and important confirmations is now firmly controlled by a minority of the population that has little acceptance for changing demographics, social norms and/or a fast changing economy.  The recent Kavanaugh confirmation underscored the problem.  The result: some are calling for abolition of the Senate or a major restructuring to end small state obstructionism.  Here are highlights from a piece in The Atlantic:  

Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the United States Supreme Court by a vote of 50–48, with one senator absent and one abstaining. Only one Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, voted with the solidly Republican majority, which represented just 44 percent of the country’s population. Indeed, when Americans last voted for their senators (over a period of six years), Democrats won the popular vote by more than 8 percent. It’s that disproportionality—and the reality that a majority of the country’s population is represented by just 18 senators—that is driving concerns about the Senate’s ability to function as a representative body in a changing America.

The Senate is embedded within the Constitution as few other institutions are, with a special clause that some believe makes it immune to the standard amendment process. Adding more diverse states is one solution — Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, and other U.S. territories would likely send Democrats to Capitol Hill if they gained representation, somewhat balancing the chamber.

And both Puerto Rico and D.C. seem agreeable: Last month, Puerto Rico’s governor, Ricardo Rosselló, stepped up his campaign for statehood, while the district’s congressional delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton, is a passionate advocate of admitting D.C.

[B]oth those who want abolition and those who want more modest, but nonetheless significant, changes agree: The Senate is increasingly unrepresentative of the American populace.

The Republican Party has an inbuilt advantage in Senate races. Since Democratic voters tend to cluster in cities and their inner suburbs, Republicans are more spread out over large geographic areas. While rural strength in a state like New York or California counts for little in Senate races dominated by large coastal cities, the abundance of sparsely populated, geographically vast states in the West and Midwest is a big help for Republican domination in the chamber. Wyoming, for instance, reliably returns GOP senators despite having about as many people as Albuquerque.

There’s also demography: The states Trump won, which tend to be more Republican in general, are also whiter. In the political world of 2018, that makes them harder to win for Democrats, though the party holds numerous safe seats in heavily white northeastern states in which the GOP is not seriously competitive. The most diverse states are also the largest, and, therefore, the most underrepresented on a per capita basis.

Senate critics also contend that smaller states tend to be more conservative, while larger ones are more likely to back Democrats, though this argument is belied by the nine largest states, which are represented by an even number of Democrats and Republicans. Yet even if partisanship is put aside, those nine account for more than half of the country’s population.

While other countries have disproportionately selected legislatures—Norway intentionally allocates extra voting power to rural areas, for instance, and Canada’s provinces have stark differences in parliamentary representation—the Senate’s extreme imbalance is essentially unique in the global pantheon of representative democracy.

On June 11, 1787, Roger Sherman rose in a Philadelphia room filled with other landowning men and recommended a bicameral legislature for America, with one house apportioned by population and the other apportioned equally among the states. This deal—the Connecticut Compromise, as it would later be known—has organized American legislative governance for nearly two and a half centuries. Sherman’s original proposal was not, of course, designed to boost popular representation.

The Senate would express the interests of the states, conceived of as sovereign entities unto themselves rather than as a wholly cohesive nation. Until the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified in the spring of 1913, senators were elected by the legislature of their respective state.

Those who want to eliminate the Senate wholesale argue that the ship has sailed on states as sovereign entities. The federalism, they contend, fundamentally undermines basic democratic due process and the voting rights of actual people.

Daniel Lazare, a journalist who specializes in American politics and has written three books on constitutional issues, argued in Jacobin in 2014 that the Senate is “one of the most cockeyed systems of minority rule in history, one that allows tiny coteries to hold the entire country ransom until their demands are met.”

Senate abolition, no matter its support among left-wing groups, remains a remote prospect in the near term. Constitutional and political hurdles are massive, and despite gaining traction among many in the left-wing commentariat, popular support would likely be more elusive. However, stopgap measures—subdividing large states, for instance, or adding U.S. territories and the District of Columbia to the union—may be more viable and could address some Senate critics’ most immediate concerns.

But calls for radical reform can be useful in themselves. Issues of voting rights and disproportionality generally gain traction when attention is turned toward issues like the relative representativeness of the Senate. Electoral change—including measures to combat voter suppression and gerrymandering, or even more fundamental changes like instituting a proportional voting system for House elections—may become more palatable to the electorate at large as massive systemic changes like Senate abolition are discussed. “It’s always good to have a John the Baptist out there, painting a picture of what could be, but people change their minds relatively slowly,” Beyer says.

But in the near term, Democrats may not need John the Baptist—what they need may be Puerto Rico, the District of Columbia, and time. To rearrange electoral geography, American history would suggest that time is the most critical.

Trump in Puerto Rico - The Race-Baiter As Kindly Monarch

It is no secret to regular readers that I view Donald Trump as an exceedingly foul human being.  Ultimately, he seemingly cares about no one other than himself.  But then, we were warned long ago that Trump is a malignant narcissist.  His supporters, who thankfully represent a minority in America, failed to heed this warning and/or were so swept up by his race-baiting that they simply did not care. Trump's visit to hurricane devastated Puerto Rico represented yet another display of Trump's self-centered world.  Rather than truly focus on American citizens in dire need, the trip largely became yet another scene for Trump to laud himself and denigrate his detractors even when those detractors were 100% correct in their criticism.  Sadly, Trump is little better than a petulant monarch of old who expects no complaints from the rabble who in his mind should be happy for whatever scraps he might throw their way.  That evangelical Christians remain his most stalwart supporters speaks volumes about the foulness that has taken over a large segment of Christianity.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at the spectacle of Trump in Puerto Rico.  Here are excerpts:

The aftermath of Hurricane Maria has inspired President Trump to say a number of weird, creepy, and resentful things. In this way, of course, it is not a completely unique event. But the particular creepiness of Trump’s utterances has revealed something more profound about his worldview than previous events have managed to draw out of him.

Trump’s view of the role of government has always diverged from standard-issue Republican dogma. (This is one of the reasons he defeated the 17 standard-issue Republicans who opposed him in the primary.) That dogma was recently articulated by Wisconsin Republican senator Ron Johnson, who recently told an audience he does not see access to medical care, or any material human need, as a basic right. “I think it’s probably more of a privilege,” Johnson said. “Do you consider food a right? Do you consider clothing a right? Do you consider shelter a right? What we have as rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have the right to freedom. Past that point, everything else is a limited resource that we have to use our opportunities given to us so that we can afford those things.” . . . . The role of the state is to provide open markets, and if you fail to earn enough for food, clothing, or a roof over your head, that is your own fault.

Puerto Rico’s disaster has made Trump think about the role of the state in furnishing basic survival goods. He quickly adopted positions far to the right of even the most hardened libertarian ideologue. Trump assailed “ingrates” who “want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort.” How could people possibly take personal responsibility when they lack access to electricity, drinking water, and even their own money? He mused that Puerto Rico is “throwing our budget out of whack,” a strange complaint from a man who frequently calls for the “the biggest tax cut we’ve ever had.”

The Trump who complained about lazy Puerto Ricans who needed to pick themselves up by their bootstraps rather than drain the Treasury was the familiar race-baiter. But there was also another dynamic on display: Trump’s habit of personalizing every case to an almost pathological degree. What set off the president was less the formal position of Puerto Rican politicians and their constituents (that they needed help to recover from a natural catastrophe) than the fact that they complained about it.

Trump views his powers as president in near-absolute terms. “I will give you everything,” he promised during the campaign. “I will give you what you’ve been looking for for 50 years. I’m the only one.” In this sense, Trump occupies the opposite end of the ideological spectrum from the small-government conservatism of his party. He imagines himself as a monarch, dispensing favors to grateful subjects and punishing the ungrateful. He has promised to give the people “everything,” but if he sees them expecting to be given “everything,” he will rage at them.

When Puerto Rican officials grasped the dynamic, and dutifully praised their commander-in-chief for his attentive and not-at-all-incompetent handling of the disaster, it set the stage for Trump to flip from scornful race-baiting autarch to generous favor-dispensing autarch.

“I am your redeemer. It is by my hand you will rise from the ashes of this world!” is not something Trump would say — but only because the language is too elegant to have come out of his mouth. The sentiment is perfectly his own. The subject who gives Trump his gratitude will have everything. And the unappreciative one will have nothing.

The Ugliness that is Donald Trump (and His Base)

Last night the Saturday Night opening skit summed up Donald Trump's view of America, some people and their lives matter and many do not.  Alex Baldwin delivered perfectly on Trump's view that Puerto Ricans are not "real Americans" when he said the line “We want to help you but we have to take care of America first.”  In Trump world, "Americans" are white, heterosexual, conservative Protestants who preach division and dislike, if not open hatred towards others that are different be it due to race, national origin, language or sexual orientation. That mindset is shared, in my view, by a majority of Republican elected officials and most certainly by must of the GOP base.  The live and weelbeing of small children or the elderly of other races or ethnicity simply do not matter.  Yet surely this morning many of theis Trump supporters will be packing church pews and underscore their total hypocrisy.  The truth is that not a single one of us had the least bit of influence on what race were born into, what country were born in, or even our sexual orientation according to modern medical and mental health knowledge (knowledge which is, of course, rejected by the ignorance embracing GOP base).  Two pieces in the Washington Post look at this sad reality.  The first looks at the SNL skit while the other looks at a true leader, the Mayor of San Juan.  Here are highlights from the first:

In the sketch, Baldwin’s Trump returns from a golfing outing in Bedminster, N.J., to take a call from the mayor of San Juan. “I’m sure she wants to tell me what a great job I’m doing,” Trump tells Sarah Huckabee Sanders, played by Aidy Bryant.

She does not. “I”m begging you. Puerto Rico needs your help,” says Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz (Melissa Villaseñor).  “I know that things are, as the locals say, ‘despacito,'” Trump says, adding that help will arrive by Tuesday, “Wednesday at the latest.” 

When Cruz tells him “that’s not good enough,” Trump responds, “Well you should have paid your bills.”

“Ma’am, I don’t know if you know this but you are in an island, in the water. The ocean water, big ocean with fishies and bubbles and turtles that bite,” Trump continues. “We want to help you but we have to take care of America first.”

Cruz asks, “Wait, you do know we’re a U.S. territory don’t you?”  Baldwin’s Trump contorts his mouth and holds it open for several seconds before stammering, “I mean I do, but not many people know that.” He then hangs up on Cruz after she asked for help again, and tells Huckabee Sanders, “Wow, that woman is so nasty.”

The second piece looks at Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz and her efforts to save American citizens in Puerto Rico even as Trump's fat ass spent yet again at one of his golf resorts.   Here are excerpts:

She once went before Congress to ask that Puerto Rico — crippled by debt — be able to reorganize under bankruptcy laws, and thereafter enter into commercial agreements with other countries.

"Puerto Rico has been denied these tools far too long," Cruz said in 2015. "And as long as our options are defined by the powers of this Congress, we will always be at your mercy. The measure of our success will always be limited by the vastness of your control over our affairs."

Two years later, Hurricane Maria has made the island's many dependencies all too apparent.

Cruz worked nearly nonstop on the ground — walking the capital's streets and doing what she could for those she met. In an interview with a Washington Post reporter just three days after the storm, she described what she was seeing. 

"There is horror in the streets," she said at the time. "Sheer pain in people's eyes."  The city's hospitals had no power. Much of the country would not have electricity until 2018, she said. Looters were already taking over some streets after dark. The few residents who still had gasoline and drinking water were quickly running out.

"I know we're not going to get to everybody in time," she said. All she could do was try.  She said that on her way to talk to the reporter, a man had asked her for a favor: "To tell the world we're here."  As tears filled her eyes, Cruz obliged. "If anyone can hear us," she told the reporter, "help." 

Her people were resilient, she said. Residents had taken the streets back from criminal gangs. But if the federal government did not step up its response, she feared, "people will die."  "I don't know if Trump's comment shows an utter lack of understanding of the political situation in Puerto Rico, or if it's just a cover to rally his base," said Yarimar Bonilla, an anthropologist at Rutgers University. "It makes no sense. 

 

"Complaining about people on the island not having food, electricity, water is not partisan. That's just basic human necessity."

 

On Saturday, Cruz dismissed Trump's tweets with a smile. She was dressed in combat boots and cargo pants as she oversaw the distribution of supplies from San Juan.  "The most powerful man in the world is concerned with a 5-foot-tall, 120-pound little mayor of the city of San Juan," she said.

Asked whether there was anything political in her barbed remarks, Cruz denied it.  "I don't have time for politics," she said. "There is a mission, and that is to save lives."  Then in the middle of an interview, the mayor got a call about a generator catching fire at San Juan hospital. She quickly mobilized her staff, barking out orders like a general.  And, within minutes, she was rushing once more out into her city.

Contrast Trump with Cruz and decide who is the true leader who cares about their citizens.  I posit that it is not the foul bigoted, lard ass in the White House. 

San Juan Mayor: "Close to Genocide"

I increasingly find myself ashamed to be an American. Back in August when we were in Great Britain, we had to constantly make apologies for America's seeming insanity in having elected Der Trumpenführer to the White House.  Now, witnessing a Katrinaesque response from the White House and Trump appointed officials to the nightmare unfolding in Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, I find my shame growing.  The sharp contrast in the reactions after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma and what we have witnessed in delayed aid to Puerto Rico leave me unable to believe that anything other than rank racism and bigotry is responsible.  It took Der Trumpenführer eight days to waive the Jones Act for Puerto Rico whereas it was waived almost immediately for Texas and Florida.  And then there is the slowness of the military aid response.  The Navy hospital ship Comfort, with its 1000 hospital beds and 12 operating rooms and 600 personnel finally left Norfolk yesterday.  When it arrives in Puerto Rico, roughly two weeks will have transpired since Maria's direct hit to the island home of 3.5 million AMERICAN CITIZENS.   San Juan's mayor has called the situation "close to genocide" and I have to agree with her.  Der Trumpenführer's response?  To slander the mayor.  The man is utterly foul, as noted by the Post piece:

Anybody who is surprised at this from a president who attacked a former prisoner of war for being a prisoner war, criticized a Gold Star family and made fun of a reporter's physical disability has a short memory. This is who Trump is.   

Here are excerpts on the plight of Puerto Rico and San Juan's mayor's justifiable complaints from The Guardian:

The mayor of San Juan lashed out at Trump administration on Friday, decrying its relief effort in the wake of hurricanes Jose and Maria and saying if it doesn’t solve the logistics “what we we are going to see is something close to a genocide”.

“We are dying here,” Carmen Yulín Cruz said at a press conference, speaking with tears in her eyes. “I cannot fathom the thought that the greatest nation in the world cannot figure out the logistics for a small island of 100 miles by 35 miles. So, mayday we are in trouble.”

Cruz appealed directly to the president, saying: “So, Mr Trump, I am begging you to take charge and save lives. After all, that is one of the founding principles of the United States of … America. If not, the world will see how we are treated not as second-class citizens but as animals that can be disposed of. Enough is enough.”

The situation in Puerto Rico remains dire as residents face shortages of food, water and fuel. The electric grid was badly damaged by the two storms, leaving many without power and reliant on gas-powered generators. The hurricanes crippled the island’s already weakened waste and water treatment plants while fallen trees and strewn debris block roads and cellphone service remains limited.

Trump has complained that the coverage of the government response has been unfair. But he has faced criticism for raising the issue of the country’s debt crisis as it reels from the impact of two hurricanes.

In her conversation with reporters in San Juan on Friday afternoon, Cruz gestured to two large binders filled with paper and said: “Fema asks for documentation, I think we’ve given them enough documentation. They had the gall this morning … of asking me: ‘What are your priorities, mayor?’

“Well, where have you been? And I have been very respectful of the Fema employees. I have been patient but we have no time for patience anymore.

“So, I am asking the president of the United States to make sure somebody is in charge that is up to the task of saving lives.

“They were up the task in Africa when Ebola came over. They were up to the task in Haiti [after the earthquake of 2010]. As they should be. Because when it comes to saving lives we are all part of one community of shared values.

“I will do what I never thought I was going to do: I am begging. I am begging anyone that can hear us to save us from dying. If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying. And you are killing us with the inefficiency and bureaucracy.”

Continuing to cry, Cruz said: “I am done being polite, and I am done being politically correct. I am mad as hell because my people’s lives are at stake.

“…I’m asking members of the press to send a mayday call. We are dying here. If we don’t solve the logistics, we are going to see something close to a genocide.”

Earlier in the day, Cruz was strongly critical after acting homeland security secretary Elaine Duke said the relief effort in Puerto Rico was a “good news story”. “Dammit, this is not a good news story,” Yulín Cruz told CNN. “This is a people are dying story. This is a life-or-death story.”

Cruz implored Duke to visit the ravaged island. “This is a story of a devastation that continues to worsen because people are not getting food and water,” she said. “When you’re drinking from a creek, it’s not a good news story. When you don’t have food for a baby, it’s not a good news story … I’m sorry. That really upsets me and frustrates me.”

Would the response have been different if the citizens were all white, English speaking Protestant Christians?  I believe it would have been starkly different.  Sadly, in Trump's America, if you are not white, heterosexual, and conservative Christian, you are deemed at best second-class citizens and at worse, as the mayor noted, deemed to be animals to be disposed of.  I hope every American who is a member of any minority group is watching and paying attention.  There is a way to strike back: vote Democrat in every election you can and send Der Trumpenführer, the GOP and their foul supporters a loud message. 

What's Behind the Trump Regime's Shameful Treatment of Puerto Rico?

Take a good look at the people - Trump sees them as less than human. Disgusting!

Numerous news outlets - Fox News not included (its current storm coverage focuses on Maria and the Outer Banks which will see minimal impact - have reported on the horrific conditions and Puerto Rico and the pathetic aid effort being marshaled by the regime of Der Trumpenführer.  The failures in aid range from failing to send the U.S. Navy hospital ship Comfort (so far it has not yet sailed from Norfolk), not sending sufficient numbers of military troops to assist in the recovery, to refusing to lift the Jones Act restrictions against foreign flag ships bring cargo to U.S. ports.  Combined, these failures and the stark contrast with what was done for Texas and Florida after Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, it is becoming difficult to attribute the Trump regime's behavior to anything but racism and anti-Hispanic bigotry.   A column in the Washington Post  helps put the crisis in perspective and also looks at what sadly seems to be Trump's motivation for abandoning Puerto Rico.  Here are excerpts:

Suppose that the entire San Diego metropolitan area had lost electrical power, and it wouldn’t be restored for months.

Or, suppose that most of the ports, roads and cellular towers in the Seattle metropolitan area had been destroyed, and a major dam had failed.

Or, that most of the homes in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota were either damaged or destroyed in one day.

Or, that the combined populations of New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont had seen much of their forests and agricultural land wiped out.

Or, that the residents of Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wyoming — combined — had lost access to food and clean water, leaving them vulnerable to cholera. And imagine that overflowing hospitals, without power, had no capacity to deal with an outbreak.

Now, imagine that in response to any of these scenarios, the president of the United States variously ignored the plight of the affected Americans (in all of the above cases about 3.4 million people, give or take), blamed them for their own troubles and provided inadequate help. This is precisely what is happening right now to the 3.4 million U.S. citizens of Puerto Rico, an island territory more populous than about 20 states. Hurricane Maria essentially wiped out these Americans’ ports, roads, electricity, communications, water supply and crops and many homes. Yet, a week after the storm, the response from the American mainland has been paltry. There is no rush, as there was after Hurricane Harvey hit Texas, to approve the emergency funds that Puerto Rico will surely need. There has been no massive movement of military personnel and equipment to Puerto Rico: no aircraft carrier (one was sent to the Florida Keys in response to Hurricane Irma), no hospital ship (finally on Tuesday afternoon the Navy said it was sending one). President Trump, so visible when Harvey and Irma hit, all but ignored the devastation that Maria brought to Puerto Rico, devoting more attention to respect for the flag at NFL games. When he did turn his focus to Puerto Rico on Monday, it was to say that the island “was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt” and that its “old electrical grid, which was in terrible shape, was devastated. Much of the Island was destroyed, with billions of dollars . . . owed to Wall Street and the banks which, sadly, must be dealt with.” And the Trump administration said it would not assist Puerto Rico by waiving the Jones Act, which restricts the use of foreign cargo ships, after waiving the act in response to Harvey and Irma. Phillip Carter, a military specialist with the Center for a New American Security, wrote a piece for Slate likening Trump’s “anemic” response in Puerto Rico to President George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina. Carter told me Puerto Rico conservatively needs a response of 50,000 U.S. troops. Even Haiti — a foreign country — got the help of more than 20,000 troops after its 2010 earthquake. Trump, he said, “is more interested in the NFL than Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.”

No question the logistics are harder in Puerto Rico. But the 3.4 million U.S. citizens there have long endured second-class status: no voting members of Congress, no presidential vote, unequal benefits and high poverty. Now, the Trump administration’s failure to help Americans in Puerto Rico with the same urgency it gave those in Texas and Florida furthers a sad suspicion that the disparate treatment has less to do with logistics than language and skin color.

Sadly, what we are witnessing in Puerto Rico is much the same as occurred under Bush following Hurricane Katrina.  To Republicans, especially Der Trumpenführer, non-whites, non-straight, non-English speakers and non-Christians simply do not matter. I am ashamed to have ever been a Republican.  I hope  people will send a message by voting Democrat in Virginia in 2017 and across the country in 2018.

Damage in Puerto Rico

Trump Administration Shamed Into Send USNS Comfort to Aid Puerto Rico?

The Comfort

Recently, I noted in a Facebook post that Der Trumpenführer could find the time to generate a tweet storm for more than 5 days over NFL players allegedly disrespecting the American flag, but he seemingly could not find time to direct his administration to focus the same level of aid to Puerto Rico as was focused on Texas.  I suggested the reason why: The majority of residents of Puerto Rico are brown skinned and worse yet in the mind of Trump and his supporters, a majority do not speak English.  In Trump world and the world of today's GOP that means these people in Puerto Rico are simply not fully human and, therefore, disposable trash.  Yes, I am livid, but it's similar to the mindset that I confronted when I was fired for being gay and had no legal resource under either Virginia or federal law.   I simply did not matter because I was "other." Worse yet, neither did my children.   Ironically, it may have taken tweets by Hillary Clinton to get the Trump administration to get off its ass and order the USNS Comfort - currently docked directly across Hampton Roads harbor from my home - to head to Puerto Rico with its 1000 hospital beds and 80 bed ICU and 12 operating rooms to aid in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria which left many hospitals without power and literally causing people to die:  

President Trump, Sec. Mattis, and DOD should send the Navy, including the USNS Comfort, to Puerto Rico now. These are American citizens.

A piece at Daily Kos looks at the travesty.  Here are highlights:

Eight hundred and ninety-four feet long, 106 feet wide, and weighing 69,360 tons, USNS Comfort is a complete ocean-going medical facility with 1,000 patient beds including 80 for intensive care patients. Along with 12 operating rooms she boasts a complete dental clinic, optometry lab and pharmacy, X-ray machines, CT scanners, oxygen and fresh water production plants, capacity to store 5,000 units of blood, laundry operations, and a morgue.

She’s the size of a 20th century supertanker. Indeed, she was a supertanker — the SS Rose City — until purchased by the Navy in 1987 and converted to serve her current lifesaving mission. She and her sister ship in the Pacific, USNS Mercy, are among the rare few assets of the obscenely wealthy US military devoted exclusively to saving, rather than to taking, lives.

But today, as Puerto Rico and its 3.4 million American citizens slowly die with the island’s hospitals without power and in ruins, Comfort remains snugly berthed in her home port of Norfolk, Virginia.

Thomas LaCrosse, the Pentagon’s director of defense support to civil authorities, said U.S. officials discussed deploying the USNS Comfort to Puerto Rico over the weekend but decided that it should stay in Norfolk because it could not get close enough to any port to avoid using helicopter support to get patients to and from the ship.

True enough, the behemoth ship’s deep draft of 30+ feet bars it from San Juan harbor’s 32 to 35 foot channels even at the best of times (and these are far from San Juan’s best times). But, unmentioned in the WaPo article quoted above, that’s nothing new for the Comfort, which routinely anchors a mile or two offshore to serve disaster sites, as it did following Haiti’s devastating earthquake or, again, as it fearlessly did in 2007 in the teeth of a “storm of a decade” off Corinto, Nicaragua, where it anchored 1.5 miles offshore to receive patients. It is such a common fact in the life of this ship of mercy that militaryfactory.com notes as a mere aside that

Comfort has a deep draft and, in many ports, she has to stand offshore at least a mile. To receive wounded, Comfort has a large day-and-night helo pad.

Puerto Ricans, like all other American citizens, should be deeply chilled by the Trump administration’s stubborn refusal to deploy the Comfort, buttressed by such a transparently flimsy excuse. Because if they’re lying about the reason for their decision, then we must ask what the real reason is...and the answer is terrifying.

It can only be this: Trump intends to abandon Puerto Rico at the first opportunity, leaving its 3.4 million American citizens in their current Stone Age hell forever.

Trump is leaving the Comfort safe in Norfolk’s harbor because he does not intend to devote the years of effort, and the hundreds of billions of dollars, it will require to lift Puerto Rico back out of the Stone Age. And he doesn’t want to make that too obvious when the quiet pull-out soon begins. . . This is #TrumpsKatrina
 UPDATED: As of 3:30 PM Eastern, NBC is now quoting FEMA administrator Brock Long announcing, in a reversal of last night’s DOD comments, that USNS Comfort has just been ordered to sail for Puerto Rico. For those who are wondering, Comfort is normally required to be able to sail within 5 days after receiving the order, although it has occasionally done so within 3 days (there are about one thousand mostly civilian medical personnel + merchant seamen to mobilize, plus enormous stores of perishable medical supplies to load, plus all the usual ship’s stores to support a full complement of 2,000 souls). Comfort’s top speed is about 20 MPH, and it is (very roughly) about 1,200 miles from Norfolk to San Juan. So we’re looking at another 6-8 days before it arrives in Puerto Rican waters.

Ranting Federal Judge Upholds Puerto Rico Marriage Ban

Other than one federal district court judge in Alabama, every federal court to rule on the constitutionality of state bans on same sex marriage has struck such bans down.  Now, in a somewhat unhinged opinion that attacks judges who have found that the 14th Amendment protects LGBT citizens, a federal judge in Puerto Rico has upheld that commonwealth's gay marriage ban.  Like Justices Thomas and Scalia, Judge Juan Perez-Gimenez seemingly believes that his personal views over ride the U.S. Constitution.  The next stop for the case will be the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit where it is thought the district court ruling faces a high probability of being reversed.  Think Progress looks at the ruling itself.  Here are highlights:

In an opinion that frequently crosses the line from visible rage to outright belligerence towards his judicial colleagues, a federal judge in Puerto Rico became one of just two federal judges to deny equal marriage rights to same-sex couples on Tuesday. Judge Juan Pérez-Giménez’s opinion accuses the overwhelming majority of federal judges who have sided with marriage equality of “inexplicable contortions of the mind or perhaps even willful ignorance.” At one point he appears to mock his colleagues, claiming that while the supposed fact that “this Court reaches its decision by embracing precedent may prove disappointing . . . there are some principles of logic and law that cannot be forgotten.” At another point, he claims that, if gay couples enjoy the same rights as straight couples, that will lead to a world where “laws barring polygamy, or, say the marriage of fathers and daughters” are “now of doubtful validity.”

The concluding section of Judge Pérez-Giménez’s opinion reads less like a judicial opinion than it does like a press release from the anti-gay National Organization for Marriage:

Recent affirmances of same-gender marriage seem to suffer from a peculiar inability to recall the principles embodied in existing marriage law. Traditional marriage is “exclusively [an] opposite-sex institution . . . inextricably linked to procreation and biological kinship,” Windsor, 133 S. Ct. at 2718 (Alito, J., dissenting). Traditional marriage is the fundamental unit of the political order. And ultimately the very survival of the political order depends upon the procreative potential embodied in traditional marriage.
Those are the well-tested, well-proven principles on which we have relied for centuries.

Notice the citation in this passage. Judge Pérez-Giménez relies on a quote from Justice Samuel Alito’s dissenting opinion in United States v. Windsor. Dissenting opinions are, by definition, not the law because they reflect the views of the judges or justices who were unable to persuade a majority of their colleagues.

Few judges believe, however, that Baker v. Nelson has any bearing on whether federal courts may consider marriage equality cases today. Indeed, Pérez-Giménez acknowledges this fact with a lengthy citation to other court decisions holding that Baker is no longer binding on lower courts. The list of cases that disagree with him is so long that it takes up nearly an entire page of his opinion.

So, while Pérez-Giménez clearly holds very passionate views on the question of whether same-sex couples are entitled to the same rights as everyone else, his views are unlikely to persuade many of his fellow judges. It’s even possible that his opinion could ultimately wind up bolstering the case for marriage equality. That’s because his decision will appeal to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, a court dominated by Democratic appointees (although, it is worth noting that Pérez-Giménez was appointed to the bench by President Jimmy Carter). All four of the states that comprise the First Circuit — Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island — are already marriage equality states, so a decision out of a federal court in Puerto Rico is the only path to bring a marriage equality case before this circuit.

Given the makeup of the First Circuit, the overwhelming consensus among federal judges in favor of marriage equality, and the belligerent tone of Pérez-Giménez’s opinion, it is unlikely that his decision will be upheld on appeal.

 It bears repeating that NONE of the Courts of Appeal that have ruled to date have found Baker v. Nelson to have any remaining precedent al relevance, particularly in light of the 2013 ruling in United States v. Windsor.

Apostolic Nuncio to Dominican Republic Investigated for Sexual Abuse

The news media - and Catholics who are eager to engage in wishful thinking that the Catholic Church is changing - have given Pope Francis the benefit of the doubt if not a free pass entirely since his elevation to the Papacy.   Sadly, nothing has changed substantively not withstanding Francis' more humble conduct and statements that have been misread to believe gays can perhaps hope for kinder treatment at the hands of the Church.  Another thing hasn't changed either: there still has been no thorough house cleaning of clergy and members of the Church hierarchy that aided, abetted, covered up, and in some instances engaged in sexual abuse of children and minors.  Bringing this reality into focus is the news that the Apostolic Nuncio to Dominican Republic (pictured above) is under investigation for sexual abuse.   The UK's Catholic Herald looks at the development.  Here are excerpts:

The Dominican Republic’s top prosecutor has said that he plans to investigate claims of sexual abuse allegedly committed by the apostolic nuncio to the Caribbean country, just a day after the Vatican confirmed its own investigation into the allegations.

Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, appointed as nuncio in 2008, was removed from the post on August 21, and a Dominican bishop confirmed in early September that the dismissal was due to the sexual abuse scandal unfolding in the country.

Days after Archbishop Wesolowski’s removal, a television news programme aired allegations that he had paid for sex with minors and was connected to a Polish priest accused of sexually assaulting at least 14 underage boys.

The programme, “Nuria”, claimed that Archbishop Wesolowski regularly visited Santo Domingo’s historic center, where he allegedly drank alcohol and paid for sex with underage boys in an abandoned monument nearby.

Attorney General Francisco Dominguez Brito said he plans to open an investigation, although it was unclear if he had legal jurisdiction over the case since it involves a diplomatic representative.

Archbishop Wesolowski arrived in the country in January 2008 and also served as apostolic delegate to neighboring Puerto Rico. He drew praise from Cardinal Nicolas Lopez Rodriguez of Santo Domingo, who called him a “great friend and promoter of peace” as recently as last week.

The cardinal’s press office said it had no comment on the claims against Archbishop Wesolowski and that Cardinal Lopez had no immediate plans to make a statement on the situation.

The Church hierarchy remains a foul cesspool.  Catholics who continue to give deference to these horrible men are complicit in the crimes they have committed and are either utter fools or prefer to keep their heads buried in the sand rather than face the face that they have been duped by the Church.

Puerto Rico Legislature Passes Sweeping LGBT Nondiscrimination Bill

Virginia, which at the time of the founding of the United States was the home of some of the most enlightened thinkers in the country, now finds itself falling further and further behind the modern world and now upstaged by Puerto Rico in terms of protecting the rights of all its citizens.  Of course, if the GOP triumvirate of insanity gets elected in November, things will be even more reactionary and opposed to religious freedom.   Once again, who would have believed 20 or 30 years ago that Latin America and now Puerto Rico would have more respect for freedom that one of the cradles of the American Revolution.    Huffington Post looks at events in Puerto Rico.  Here are highlights:

International lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights advocates are praising Puerto Rico's decision to advance "sweeping" nondiscrimination measures.

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's blog reports that the Puerto Rican House of Representatives approved the bills May 24, which protect LGBT people in employment, housing, governmental services and public accommodations, as well as add sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to the island’s domestic violence laws, respectively. 

Anti-discrimination bill SB 238 and HB 488, the domestic violence measure, now move to Gov. Alejandro García Padilla, who has vowed to sign them into law, according to the Washington Blade.

Among those to support the bill beforehand was Ricky Martin.   "The same rights for each and every citizen of Puerto Rico, that's what we are asking and that's what we hope to achieve, the country's justice and peace that we want to achieve," the singer said in a statement cited by E! Online. "Puerto Rico has to join all the countries in the world that are at the forefront of the issue of human rights and equality."

In Virginia in contrast, LGBT citizens have ZERO - that's right, ZERO - nondiscrimination protections.  It's a travesty, not to mention an embarrassment.  Yet, The Family Foundation and it's knuckle dragging, moronic followers pat themselves on the back for their piety and religiosity.  These people are horrible!!