The Electoral College - the Founders' Biggest Mistake?

As posts on this blog noted back in 2016 after the 2016 presidential election, the Founding Fathers were fearful of direct election of the office of the presidency, being fearful that an unfit demagogue who would not put the interests of the nation first might be able to win the popular vote.  In retrospect, its as if they had a premonition of Donald Trump 227 years later. Their solution was the Electoral College that would have electors - individuals of knowledge and discernment - who could ignore the popular vote choose someone unfit.  That is not how things have worked out over American history with the most glaring failure occurring in 2016.  Equally troubling, as noted in a post yesterday, the structural advantage to Republicans under the Electoral College and the design for members of the U.S. Senate, opens the prospect that the loser of the popular vote and states with a smaller percentage of the nation's population will continue to win the presidency and thwart the will and interests of the majority of Americans.  A piece in the New York Times looks at this situation and pending Supreme Court cases which will confirm whether electors are free to act as envisioned by the Founders.  Personally, I deem it time for the Electoral College to be eliminated.  Here are article highlights:

The American people cast their ballots on a Tuesday in early November, but on a national level that vote is legally meaningless. The real election happens about six weeks later, when 538 presidential electors — most of them average citizens chosen by local party leaders — meet in their respective state capitals and cast their ballots.

Nearly always, the electors vote for the candidate who won the most popular votes in their state. But do they have to? That’s the question that the Supreme Court has agreed to answer in two related cases it will hear this spring. The cases — one from Colorado and one from Washington — raise an alarming prospect: Can presidential electors vote for whomever they please, disregarding what the voters of their state said?

More than 160 “faithless electors” have chosen to go this route since the nation’s founding, a tiny fraction of all electoral votes in history. But the issue has become freshly relevant because of a concerted effort to persuade dozens of Republican electors in 2016 to switch their votes to prevent Donald Trump from taking the White House. In the end, 10 electors voted or tried to vote for someone other than their state’s popular-vote winner — the most in a single election in more than a century.

Last May, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled that the state had the power to impose a $1,000 fine on its four faithless electors, on the ground that the Constitution gives the states total authority to decide how to appoint their electors.

Three months later, a federal appeals court in Denver went the opposite way, ruling that the founders clearly intended for electors to act independently and vote according to their consciences, not to the dictates of any political party. Once a state appoints an elector, the court said, its power over that elector ends. They cannot punish someone, or replace him or her, for voting a certain way.

The framers of the Constitution, and the states that ratified it, clearly expected electors to vote as they pleased. In Federalist No. 68, Alexander Hamilton wrote that electors would be men “selected by their fellow-citizens from the general mass” and “most likely to possess the information and discernment requisite to such complicated investigations.”

And yet, the Electoral College has almost never worked that way in practice. Less than a decade after the Constitution was drafted, the framers’ idea of an independent elector was effectively kaput. As soon as national political parties took shape, elections became a partisan competition, and it was only logical that electors would start to take sides. In the election of 1796, electors were already pledging themselves either to John Adams, the sitting vice president and Federalist, or to Thomas Jefferson, the former secretary of state and Democratic-Republican.

Even the term “faithless” is revealing: What faith is an elector who votes his or her conscience breaking? Didn’t the founders intend electors to be faithful above all to the country?

Yes — and yet they are not now and essentially never have been. For this reason, however the Supreme Court resolves the issue, which it will do by early summer, little will change in practice. Political parties and their candidates, who currently choose their own slate of electors in each state, are already careful about selecting people for their partisan loyalty.

And faithless electors are unlikely to affect the outcome even if the Electoral College tally is very close, as it was in 2000, when as few as three Republican electors could have broken their pledges and handed the presidency to the Democratic nominee, Al Gore, who won the most votes nationwide. None did.

Americans would rightly revolt if a handful of people they’d never heard of ignored their votes and decided the election for themselves. It’s almost as if we believe that we, the people, should be voting directly for the president — the only official whose job it is to represent all of us equally, wherever we live. Which raises the question of why we still have an Electoral College at all.

When Does Republican Partisanship Become Treason?

In my view, the Republican Party long ago lost any shred of basis for claiming to be the party of morality, patriotism or Christian values.  Ditto for evangelical Christians who have betrayed Christ's gospel message and support GOP policies of slashing the social safety net for the poor and elderly, empowering racists and white supremacists, separating families and literally putting children in cages, and embracing the most vile and immoral individual to every occupy the White House.  Now, however, as a column in the Baltimore Sun, Republican partisan ship is moving into a new and treasonous phase as Republicans, especially in Congress who have sworn an oath to defend the U.S. Constitution and protect the nation from foreign enemies, embrace Russian propaganda, attack America's allies, and weaken the nation both domestically and internationally.  The Grand Old Party is fast becoming the party of Putin.  Here are column highlights:

It bears repeating: Donald Trump was not only press-ganging Volodymyr Zelensky in an illegal scheme for partisan gain. He was rewriting the history of 2016 in order to wound enemies (Democrats) and help friends (Vladimir Putin) — as well as to give Kremlin operatives room to strike again.

It is in no way overstating the case to say [Trump] the president of the United States is the head of an international conspiracy to defraud the American people. It has remained to be seen how far the Republican Party is willing to go in defense of Mr. Trump’s conspiracy. Senate Republicans quickly conceded that Russia sabotaged Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, but stopped short of saying the president benefited (because admitting that would be admitting Mr. Trump is an illegitimate president.)

But now, as the impeachment process enters a new and dangerous phase, we are seeing new GOP behavior, though we have witnessed plenty of hints. One reporter wrote recently that Republicans decided the best way to defend the president is to embrace “the claim" of Ukrainian interference in the 2016 election. Let’s be clear. There was no Ukrainian interference. That’s according to the special counsel’s report, which cited one and a half dozen national security agencies. That’s according to the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report. That’s according to every career official in the State Department who testified under oath last month.

The idea that the Democrats, not Mr. Trump’s campaign staffers, conspired with foreign operatives is more than “conspiracy theory.” It is a fascist ploy to turn lies into truth. This is why I said recently that Mr. Trump’s crime is so much worse than abuse of power. It’s treason. And the Republicans, like lemmings, are heading for a cliff.

Now, it’s one thing to follow the party wherever it goes. Ordinary partisan activity, however vile, isn’t something I care to debate now. It’s quite another thing, however, to know what you’re doing is wrong and do it anyway. The Republicans can’t not know.

First, because intelligence officials briefed Senate Republicans, telling them explicitly the Ukraine-attacked-us story is pure Putin disinformation. Second, because Fiona Hill, a former member of the White House National Security Council, and a Russia authority, was clear about what House Republicans were already doing. She said: “In the course of this investigation, I would ask that you please not promote politically driven falsehoods that so clearly advance Russian interests.

And now we have another reason why the Republicans can’t not know they are participating in conspiracy to defraud the American people. Rudy Giuliani, who is not regarded for his discretion, confessed to knowing the Ukraine-attacked-us story was bunk. Not only that, the president’s personal attorney actually said he decided to pursue “evidence” of Ukraine’s attack in order to undercut Robert Mueller’s report. . . . . I can go prove someone else committed this crime. So to defend Mr. Trump is to defend Russia.

Is that where the Republicans want to go? Well, yes, if Tucker Carlson is any indication. The Fox News host is on the bleeding edge of attempts by Trump partisans to expand what the American people think is acceptable behavior. On his show recently he said: “I’m totally opposed to these [US] sanctions [on Russia] and I don’t think we should be at war with Russia and I think we should take the side of Russia if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine.”

[I]t’s fair for some conservative writers, like Charlie Sykes and Matt Lewis, to characterize the Republicans as dupes and stooges or parroting the Kremlin line. But at some point, we must face what it means for Republicans to know the truth but to advance Kremlin lies anyway, even when doing so slowly burns down the republic.

At some point soon, we must stop calling them dupes, and start calling them the enemy.

Personally, I have seen them as the enemy since Trump's election. Things have only gotten worse since January 2017.

Congressman Leaves GOP Over Trump, Party Moral Bankruptcy

I left the Republican Party many years ago at this point because I no longer believed I could support a political party that had lost its moral compass and increasingly posed a threat to values enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.  Little did I know back then how much lower the GOP would fall and that the party would become little more than a cult following of extremists and white supremacists.  Sadly, far to many Republicans continue to put party over country and seemingly have no limit to what moral bankruptcy they will countenance. I have said it before and will say it again: one cannot be a decent moral person - much less a true follower of Christ - and remain a Republican.  Any pretense to the contrary is self delusion and lying to those around you. The crisis of what is being done to children along the nation's southern border has removed any option other than to leave the GOP or declare one's own moral bankruptcy.  Add Trump's effort today to put on his own equivalent of a Nuremberg rally (I am hoping for severe thunderstorms in DC), and the choice becomes even more stark.   Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) announced he's leaving the Republican Party and becoming an independent, taking the only course someone moral can take.  The GOP cannot be reformed from within - I figured that out close to two decades ago - now that it is in the hands of white supremacists, "Christian" extremists, and lead by the most foul individual to ever occupy the White House.  In an Op-ed in the Washington Post, Amash explains why he has taken this action of leaving the GOP.  While he takes a few shots at Democrats, there is no equivalency between the two parties despite the efforts of a lazy media to pretend otherwise. Here are op-ed excerpts (read the entire piece):

When my dad was 16, America welcomed him as a Palestinian refugee. It wasn’t easy moving to a new country, but it was the greatest blessing of his life.

Throughout my childhood, my dad would remind my brothers and me of the challenges he faced before coming here and how fortunate we were to be Americans. In this country, he told us, everyone has an opportunity to succeed regardless of background.

Growing up, I thought a lot about the brilliance of America. Our country’s founders established a constitutional republic uniquely dedicated to securing the rights of the people. In fact, they designed a political system so ordered around liberty that, in succeeding generations, the Constitution itself would strike back against the biases and blind spots of its authors.

My parents, both immigrants, were Republicans. I supported Republican candidates throughout my early adult life and then successfully ran for office as a Republican. The Republican Party, I believed, stood for limited government, economic freedom and individual liberty — principles that had made the American Dream possible for my family.

In recent years, though, I’ve become disenchanted with party politics and frightened by what I see from it. The two-party system has evolved into an existential threat to American principles and institutions.

George Washington was so concerned as he watched political parties take shape in America that he dedicated much of his farewell address to warning that partisanship, although “inseparable from our nature,” was the people’s “worst enemy.” . . . . sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty. …

True to Washington’s fears, Americans have allowed government officials, under assertions of expediency and party unity, to ignore the most basic tenets of our constitutional order: separation of powers, federalism and the rule of law. The result has been the consolidation of political power and the near disintegration of representative democracy.

These are consequences of a mind-set among the political class that loyalty to party is more important than serving the American people or protecting our governing institutions. The parties value winning for its own sake, and at whatever cost.

With little genuine debate on policy happening in Congress, party leaders distract and divide the public by exploiting wedge issues and waging pointless messaging wars. These strategies fuel mistrust and anger, leading millions of people to take to social media to express contempt for their political opponents, with the media magnifying the most extreme voices. This all combines to reinforce the us-vs.-them, party-first mind-set of government officials.

[W]e owe it to future generations to stand up for our constitutional republic so that Americans may continue to live free for centuries to come. Preserving liberty means telling the Republican Party and the Democratic Party that we’ll no longer let them play their partisan game at our expense.

Today, I am declaring my independence and leaving the Republican Party. No matter your circumstance, I’m asking you to join me in rejecting the partisan loyalties and rhetoric that divide and dehumanize us. I’m asking you to believe that we can do better than this two-party system — and to work toward it. If we continue to take America for granted, we will lose it.

Republican Appointees Are Corroding the Foundations of Democracy.

The main agenda of today's Republican Party is to retain power while thwarting the will of the majority of voters in the USA.  This agenda is being pushed in multiple ways, including voter disenfranchisement, gerrymandering and, increasingly, by politicizing the federal judiciary with unfit appointees who place political partisanship ahead above the U.S. Constitution and the rule of law.  Frighteningly, with the U.S. Senate controlled by Republicans - who seemingly hold as much regard for American democracy as the Vichy French did for maintaining the democracy of the French Third Republic - it is near impossible for Democrats to block these ideologues who are set on thwarting the will of the people. A column in the New York Times looks at this insidious assault of democracy itself and the ruling of GOP appointee U. S. District Court Judge Reed O'Connor who issued a ruling striking down the Affordable Health Care Act.  O'Connor has previously issued rulings (i) upholding anti-transgender "bathroom bills," (ii) barring same sex couples from family medical leave benefits and (iii) and allowing physicians to refuse to treat LGBT individuals.  Here are column highlights:

The midterm elections were, to an important extent, a referendum on the Affordable Care Act; health care, not Donald Trump, dominated Democratic campaigning. And voters delivered a clear verdict: They want Obamacare’s achievements, the way it expanded coverage to roughly 20 million people who would otherwise have been uninsured, to be sustained.

But on Friday, Reed O’Connor, a partisan Republican judge known for “weaponizing” his judicial power, declared the A.C.A. as a whole — protection for pre-existing conditions, subsidies to help families afford coverage, and the Medicaid expansion — unconstitutional. Legal experts from both right and left ridiculed his reasoning and described his ruling as “raw political activism.” And that ruling probably won’t be sustained by higher courts.

But don’t be too sure that his sabotage will be overturned. O’Connor’s abuse of power may be unusually crude, but that sort of behavior is becoming increasingly common. And it’s not just health care, nor is it just the courts. What Nancy Pelosi called the “monstrous endgame” of the Republican assault on health care is just the leading edge of an attack on multiple fronts, as the G.O.P. tries to overturn the will of the voters and undermine democracy in general.

Rule of law depends not just on what is written down, but also on the behavior of those who interpret and enforce that rule. If these people don’t regard themselves as servants of the law first, partisans second, if they won’t subordinate their political goals to their duty to preserve the system, laws become meaningless and only power matters.

And what we’re seeing in America — what we’ve actually been seeing for years, although much of the news media and political establishment has refused to acknowledge it — is an invasion of our institutions by right-wing partisans whose loyalty is to party, not principle. This invasion is corroding the Republic, and the corrosion is already very far advanced.

I say “right-wing” advisedly. There are bad people in both parties, as there are in all walks of life. But the parties are structurally different. The Democratic Party is a loose coalition of interest groups, but the modern Republican Party is dominated by “movement conservatism,” a monolithic structure held together by big money — often deployed stealthily — and the closed intellectual ecosystem of Fox News and other partisan media. And the people who rise within this movement are, to a far greater degree than those on the other side, apparatchiks, political loyalists who can be counted on not to stray from the party line.

Republicans have been stuffing the courts with such people for decades; O’Connor was appointed by George W. Bush. That’s why his ruling, no matter how bad the legal reasoning, wasn’t a big surprise.

[I]t’s not just the courts. Even as Trump and his allies spin fantasies about sabotage by the “deep state,” the reality is that a growing number of positions in government agencies are being occupied by right-wing partisans who care nothing, or actively oppose, their agencies’ missions. The Environmental Protection Agency is now run by people who don’t want to protect the environment, Health and Human Services by people who want to deny Americans health care.

The same takeover by apparatchiks is taking place in politics. Remember when the role of the Senate was supposed to be to “advise and consent”? Under Republican control it’s just plain consent — there is almost literally nothing Trump can do, up to and including clear evidence of corruption and criminality, that will induce [GOP] senators from his party to exercise any kind of oversight.

So how do people who think and behave this way respond when the public rejects their agenda? They attempt to use their power to overrule the democratic process.

When Democrats win despite election rigging, they strip the offices Democrats win of power, as they did in Wisconsin. When Democratic policies prevail despite all of that, they use apparatchik-stuffed courts to strike down legislation on the flimsiest of grounds.

As David Frum, the author of “Trumpocracy,” warned a year ago: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” That’s happening as we speak.

So Pelosi was right about Reed O’Connor’s ruling being a symptom of a “monstrous endgame,” but the game in question isn’t just about perpetuating the assault on health care, it’s about assaulting democracy in general. And the current state of the endgame is probably just the beginning; the worst, I fear, is yet to come.

Senate Republicans Put the Integrity of the Supreme Court at Risk

If Kavanaugh is innocent, why isn't he demanding an investigation to clear his name?

The circus that has become of the Senate hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme continues to raise additional doubts as to the character and the veracity of Donald Trump's nominee.  Having worked as an attorney for 41 years and earned admission to the state bars of Virginia, Alabama and Texas, I take judicial appointments VERY seriously since the quality and character of presiding judges can greatly impact the dispensing of justice.  Indeed, a biased or unfit judge can deprive a litigant of a fair trial or appeal. Moreover, unfit or questionable judges put the legitimacy of the judicial system in question.  The U.S. Supreme Court is the highest court in the land and the court of last resort for those seeking justice.  The allegations against Kavanaugh, if true, are serious and, in my view, disqualifying for a lifetime appointment. 

So why the Republican rush to confirm Kavanaugh in light of such serious allegations? I see two possible explanations.  The first is that the Senate - at least the Republican portion of it - remains a "good old boys club" that believes women are like children and should be seen and not heard.  They exist to serve as arm candy for their male companions.  The second is equally cynical: important cases are coming up the litigation pipeline and without Kavanaugh a four-four split on the Supreme Court will leave the anti-conservative position Circuit Court of Appeals ruling controlling.  That is the only urgency from the GOP perspective.  Never mind that the Supreme Court was left with only eight justices for 10 months after Justice Scalia died and Mitch McConnell stonewalled against holding hearings on Barack Obama's nominee.  A main editorial in the New York Times looks at the harm being done by Senate Republican intransigence and denigration of women.  Here are highlights:

Enough.  With a third woman [actually, a fourth at this time] stepping forward with accusations that the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh committed sexual assault as a young man, this destructive stampede of a confirmation, driven so far by partisan calculation, needs to yield at last to common sense: Let qualified investigators — the F.B.I. — do their job. Let them interview the many witnesses whose names are already in the public record, among them Judge Kavanaugh’s close high-school friend Mark Judge, then weigh the credibility of the various claims and write a report for the White House and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

To jam Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation through now, without seeking to dispel the darkening cloud over his head, would be to leave the public in doubt about his honesty and character — and to set an even lower standard for taking claims of sexual abuse seriously than the Senate did 27 years ago in considering the accusations against Clarence Thomas by Anita Hill.

Yes, partisan games have no doubt been played on both sides. But the only reason for so much urgency about this confirmation is politics; the same cannot be said about calls for holding a fair and thorough investigation.

To recap: On Wednesday morning, the bomb-throwing lawyer Michael Avenatti made public an affidavit from Julie Swetnick, a woman who grew up in the Washington suburbs and claims to have traveled the same 1980s social circuit as Judge Kavanaugh. Ms. Swetnick says that he drank excessively at many parties she attended; that he was verbally abusive and physically aggressive toward young women, fondling and grabbing them; and that he was part of a group of young men who would spike the punch at parties with alcohol or illicit drugs with an eye toward incapacitating the female attendees, including Ms. Swetnick herself, and then abusing them. These are grotesque charges — and, like the previous ones, they leave oceans of room for speculation and doubt. This is precisely why the Senate needs to stop trying to ram through this nomination by some arbitrary deadline and arrange for a thorough and nonpartisan inquiry.

Unlike Christine Blasey Ford or Deborah Ramirez, Ms. Swetnick is not claiming to have been assaulted directly by Judge Kavanaugh. But her accusations directly speak to his repeated insistence that he never behaved in a demeaning or disrespectful manner toward women. In his recent interview on Fox News, the nominee, seated primly beside his wife, presented his teenage self as a virtual choir boy, chastely focused on academics and sports and weekly church attendance. The nominee even said that he remained a virgin throughout high school and “for many years thereafter.”

That was a risky defense, and Judge Kavanaugh seems to be reconsidering it. In an opening statement prepared for him to deliver at his appearance before the Judiciary Committee on Thursday, the nominee now allows that he was “not perfect” in high school. He admits that he may have drank too much on occasion (though rarely on school nights) and that he may have said and done things that now make him “cringe.”

In saner times, the Senate would have paused in its mad rush to confirm Judge Kavanaugh when the first credible allegations of sexual assault surfaced. As things stand, Chuck Grassley, the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has shrugged off these latest accusations and asserted that the show will go on without further inconvenience or delay.

This is dereliction of the Senate’s duty — and it is now up to senators who know better, who prize the dignity and duty of their chamber, to demonstrate that they are indeed something more than partisan tools.

This is not, as Republicans have claimed, a matter of demanding the destruction of a man’s career based on vague or unsubstantiated claims. It is a matter of treating such allegations with the proper gravity. There is no other way to protect the integrity of the nominating process — and of the nation’s highest court.

The one question I keep coming back to is this:  If Kavanaugh is innocent, why is he not demanding a delay in the Senate process so that an investigation can be done that would clear his name.  I'm sorry, but his failure to make this demand suggests that he knows what the investigation would reveal, namely, that he IS guilty as alleged.  If I were him, I would want to clear my name. His failure to demand this speaks volumes to me. 

The Anonymous White House Official Is a Collaborator,

Perhaps it was the way I was raised, but when one sees and evil and danger, one has a moral duty to remove it, if possible, not merely collaborate with it and play mental gymnastics rationalizing that you are somehow restraining the evil.  The author of the anonymous op-ed run by the New York Times is, in my view, a collaborator with the evils of the Trump?pence regime and willing to engage in harming the country on a long term basis all so that the very rich can enjoy huge tax cuts which are ballooning the national debt and so that regulations constraining the worse inclinations of large corporations can be rolled back.  The lives and future of average Americans are nowhere within this toxic agenda.  Frank Rich has a spot on piece at New York Magazine that looks at the Vichy Republicans and the equally toxic and hypocrisy-filled Brett Kavanaugh.  Here are excerpts (for Fox News viewers, "Vichy Republicans" is a comparison with the French who collaborated with the Nazi's in France in WWII):

For once Trump is right: the “anonymous” Times op-ed is “gutless.” The anonymity allows its author to do what every other cowering administration figure and Republican leader has done since Inauguration Day — duck any responsibility for what is happening and retreat from any real pushback against Trump. If we are to believe Mr. (or Ms.) Anonymous, he and his fellow in-house Trump resisters are the “adults in the room” and “unsung heroes” who are “working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.” This is no doubt how Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, and all the rest of the president’s Vichy Republicans see themselves too. But which of Trump’s “worst inclinations” have any of them frustrated? The ripping apart of immigrant families? The nonstop race-baiting and the condoning of white neo-Nazis at Charlottesville? The assaults on Americans’ health care, on LGBT rights, on the press? The nonstop ethical abuses and kleptomania of the Trump family and Cabinet members? The wholesale effort to sabotage the rule of law?
 The anonymous author, like every other Trump enabler, essentially says don’t worry, we have the country’s back, and any White House horror is worth it in exchange for “effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more.” At least when those like Lindsey Graham espouse such a rationale they attach their names to it. Mr. Anonymous is a coward so lacking a moral compass that he doesn’t realize that the best way to “preserve our democratic institutions” (as he claims to be doing) is to identify himself, resign, and report any criminal activity he has witnessed by the president or his colleagues. [T]he piece could also be viewed as a P.R. strategy for its author. It reads like a defense document that’s being put on the record should that rainy day come when Mr. Anonymous, no longer anonymous, will have to defend his own actions in a Nuremberg-like legal reckoning once the king of Crazytown has been carted off. As any student of Vichy knows, there was no shortage of French collaborators who falsely claimed to have been secretly part of the underground Resistance to the Pétain regime once the war was over. Kavanaugh also stands ready to help Trump evade the law. He refused to say whether he believes the president can defy a subpoena or pardon himself, and he refused to recuse himself from any forthcoming cases which might involve Trump. He even refused to condemn Trump’s tweet attacking the nation’s top law-enforcement officer, Jeff Sessions, for permitting the indictments of two Republican congressmen accused of wholesale financial theft. [H]ere’s what I would ask Kavanaugh if I were a Democratic senator on the Judiciary Committee: “Explain your thinking when you wrote a legal memo to the independent counsel Kenneth Starr proposing that President Clinton be asked this question and nine others like it: ‘If Monica Lewinsky says that on several occasions in the Oval Office area, you used your fingers to stimulate her vagina and bring her to orgasm, would she be lying?’” And in further keeping with the ethos set by the “grab ’em by the pussy” president who nominated Kavanaugh, I would ask that question aloud before the nominee’s family. The answer might well illuminate the future justice’s view of women and their right to govern their own bodies with a specificity missing in his obfuscating filibusters about Roe. My favorite take on it all was from Tim Miller, a Never-Trump Republican political operator who’d worked for Jeb Bush in 2016. “Here’s my problem with saying a eulogy is an ‘implicit critique of the president,’” he wrote on Twitter. “It is impossible to praise someone’s commitment to American values or highlight admirable character traits without implicitly criticizing Trump bc he doesn’t believe in them and he has none.”

The Moment of Truth Has Arrived for Republicans

A column in the Washington Post calls on Republicans working in and abetting the Trump/Pence regime to resign and save themselves and, hopefully, the nation. I would argue that this same moment of truth has arrived for Republicans up and down the political spectrum to make a choice.  Either (i) the United States and its Constitution and democracy are placed first, or (ii) subservience to Trump and the selling out of America to an enemy foreign power are embraced by Republicans.  There really is no middle ground given Trump's seeming commission of treason as defined by the United States Code.  If Republicans fail to act, they will be complicit in every crime and act of treason by Donald Trump - and his feckless puppet, Mike Pence. I have at times referred to "Vichy Republicans" likening them to the French who collaborated with Hitler and held positions on the fake Vichy French government.  Now, these parallels are real.  Republicans either rein in - or preferably jettison - Trump/Pence and their sycophants and hold them accountable or they are just as guilty as the Vichy French when it collaborated with the Nazis.  A piece in The Atlantic makes this argument.  Here are excerpts: 

There are exactly two possible explanations for the shameful performance the world witnessed on Monday, from a serving American president.

Either Donald Trump is flat-out an agent of Russian interests—maybe witting, maybe unwitting, from fear of blackmail, in hope of future deals, out of manly respect for Vladimir Putin, out of gratitude for Russia’s help during the election, out of pathetic inability to see beyond his 306 electoral votes. Whatever the exact mixture of motives might be, it doesn’t really matter.

Or he is so profoundly ignorant, insecure, and narcissistic that he did not  realize that, at every step, he was advancing the line that Putin hoped he would advance, and the line that the American intelligence, defense, and law-enforcement agencies most dreaded.

Conscious tool. Useful idiot. Those are the choices, though both are possibly true, so that the main question is the proportions.

Trump’s answers were indistinguishable from Putin’s, starting with the fundamental claim that Putin’s assurances about interference in U.S. democracy (“He was incredibly strong and confident in his denial”) deserved belief over those of his own Department of Justice . . . .

I am old enough to remember Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon telling lies on TV, about Vietnam in both cases, and Watergate for Nixon. I remember the travails and deceptions of Bill Clinton, and of George W. Bush in the buildup to the disastrous Iraq War.

But never before have I seen an American president consistently, repeatedly, publicly, and shockingly advance the interests of another country over those of his own government and people. Trump manifestly cannot help himself. This is who he is.

Those who could do something are the 51 Republican senators and 236 Republican representatives who have the power to hold hearings, issue subpoenas, pass resolutions of censure, guarantee the integrity of Robert Mueller’s investigation, condemn the past Russian election interference, shore up protections against the next assault, and in general defend their country rather than the damaged and defective man who is now its president.

For 18 months, members of this party have averted their eyes from Trump, rather than disturb the Trump elements among their constituency or disrupt the party’s agenda on tax cuts and the Supreme Court. They already bear responsibility for what Trump has done to his office.

But with every hour that elapses after this shocking performance in Helsinki without Republicans doing anything, the more deeply they are stained by this dark moment in American leadership.

If Republicans remain Trump's lap dogs, it is imperative that true patriots get registered to vote and go to the polls in November, 2018, and vote against any and every Republican possible. We need a popular uprising to take back America from the false patriots who will have placed Trump and Russia over their country.  The GOP must literally be destroyed if it remains complicit in treason. 

Quotes of the Day: Jennifer Rubin and Jeff Flake

Real news outlets - which excludes Fox News and Breitbart - is covered with coverage today that looks at the denunciations of Donald Trump by GOP Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and GOP Senator Bob Corker.  However, the rebukes actually went beyond Donald Trump.  By extension they applied to every Republican office holder and even to those who voted for Trump and revel in his misogyny and dangerous narcissism.  One of the best summations of this indictment of those who are complicit in Trump's ugliness, bullying, racism and  damage done to America's democracy is in a column in the Washington Post by former conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin.  Here are excerpts:

The message to the GOP and the rest of the country is sobering. If you are going to speak out, as Flake did in a blistering book criticizing Trump, and remain loyal to principles like free trade, immigration and fiscal sobriety, there is no place for you in Trump’s GOP. Moreover, remaining in Trump’s GOP means tolerating, if not enabling, Trump’s noxious mix of dishonesty, bullying, protectionism and racism. It is not a party that tolerates questioning of Trump — or, apparently, our generals. It is not a party that defends the First Amendment or the independence of the courts. 

Many of my Republican "friends" keep trying to keep their heads firmly burrowed into the sand, but the time has come where each of must decide if we are on the side of truth, honesty, morality and decency or  on the side of Trump and the hideous thing that the Republican Party is becoming.

As for Flake's comments today, here are some excerpts via CNN:

We must never regard as "normal" the regular and casual undermining of our democratic norms and ideals. We must never meekly accept the daily sundering of our country - the personal attacks, the threats against principles, freedoms, and institutions, the flagrant disregard for truth or decency, the reckless provocations, most often for the pettiest and most personal reasons, reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with the fortunes of the people that we have all been elected to serve.

None of these appalling features of our current politics should ever be regarded as normal. We must never allow ourselves to lapse into thinking that this is just the way things are now. If we simply become inured to this condition, thinking that this is just politics as usual, then heaven help us. Without fear of the consequences, and without consideration of the rules of what is politically safe or palatable, we must stop pretending that the degradation of our politics and the conduct of some in our executive branch are normal. They are not normal.

It is often said that children are watching. Well, they are. And what are we going to do about that? When the next generation asks us, Why didn't you do something? Why didn't you speak up? -- what are we going to say?
 Mr. President, I rise today to say: Enough. We must dedicate ourselves to making sure that the anomalous never becomes normal. With respect and humility, I must say that we have fooled ourselves for long enough that a pivot to governing is right around the corner, a return to civility and stability right behind it. We know better than that. By now, we all know better than that.

When we remain silent and fail to act when we know that that silence and inaction is the wrong thing to do -- because of political considerations, because we might make enemies, because we might alienate the base, because we might provoke a primary challenge, because ad infinitum, ad nauseum -- when we succumb to those considerations in spite of what should be greater considerations and imperatives in defense of the institutions of our liberty, then we dishonor our principles and forsake our obligations. Those things are far more important than politics.

Acting on conscience and principle is the manner in which we express our moral selves, and as such, loyalty to conscience and principle should supersede loyalty to any man or party. We can all be forgiven for failing in that measure from time to time. . . . . . But too often, we rush not to salvage principle but to forgive and excuse our failures so that we might accommodate them and go right on failing—until the accommodation itself becomes our principle.

I have children and grandchildren to answer to, and so, Mr. President, I will not be complicit. . . . . giving in to the impulse to scapegoat and belittle threatens to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking people. In the case of the Republican party, those things also threaten to turn us into a fearful, backward-looking minority party.

We were not made great as a country by indulging or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorying in the things which divide us, and calling fake things true and true things fake. And we did not become the beacon of freedom in the darkest corners of the world by flouting our institutions and failing to understand just how hard-won and vulnerable they are. 

When I resigned from the Republican Party more than a decade and a half ago after 8 years as a precinct captain and City Committee member, I did so for the reasons Flake enunciated.   Adhering to principles and morality and Constitutional values always supersedes loyalty to Party.  Yet, that is not the case with a majority of Republicans nowadays. Moral and decent Republicans need to exit the GOP and vote Democrat whenever possible to blunt the hideousness that is flowing through the GOP from the White House down. 

The GOP War to Discredit the Steele Dossier

With so much constant coverage on hurricanes - first Harvey, now Irma, and perhaps Jose  if it does a loop and turns back towards the U.S. Southeast coast - Russiagate coverage has been lost in the process. Yet, Robert Mueller's investigation is continuing and more and more details from the so-called Steele Dossier that contained sensational allegations, including the alleged existence of a Trump "golden shower" tape, are proving to be accurate. Naturally, the response of many Congressional Republicans is to attack the Steele Dossier and those connected to it rather than admit that they have backed a dangerous and unfit individual in the White House. One leading the charge is the always despicable Trey Gowdy, best known for his Benghazi obsession.  Imagine what Gowdy would be doing if the Steele Dossier had involved Hillary Clinton rather than Der Trumpenführer.  A piece in Vanity Fair looks at Gowdy's quest to avoid the truth.  Here are highlights:

In January, a dossier about Donald Trump’s possible Russia ties, prepared by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, which had circulated like samizdat among certain journalists and politicians for months, got a spectacular unveiling by BuzzFeed. Since then, though, the 35-page document’s highest profile has been as a source for Stephen Colbert’s wishful jokes about the existence of a Trump “pee pee tape.” Yet more and more of the dossier’s less-salacious raw intelligence, if not every detail, is turning out to be prescient and surprisingly accurate: that the Russians were peddling dirt on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, for instance. A fresh sign of the dossier’s explanatory force is that, increasingly, it has become a target itself. Congressional Republicans appear to be trying to discredit Steele’s work as a way of undermining special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

The House Intelligence Committee’s Republican majority has suddenly been firing subpoenas at the F.B.I. and its director, Chris Wray, plus the Department of Justice and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, demanding documents relevant to the F.B.I.’s relationship with Christopher Steele and to the bureau’s attempts to verify the information in Steele’s Trump-Russia dossier, which was originally compiled as oppo research for one of Trump’s Republican primary rivals.

Trey Gowdy, a South Carolina Republican, has claimed the subpoenas were necessary because the F.B.I. and D.O.J. haven’t cooperated with the committee’s less-formal requests. Some of his colleagues, however, believe they see a darker motive. “It’s an attempt to both delegitimize the dossier and delegitimize the F.B.I., particularly the work that was done under James Comey,” says Jim Himes, a Connecticut congressman who is the committee’s second-ranking Democrat. . . . . “This is the latest installment of ‘don’t look there, look over here!’ ” Himes says.

Why all this new high-stakes maneuvering? Time and events have bolstered the dossier’s credibility. “The outline of Russian interference in the election that Steele had assembled by June 2016 was months ahead of what anybody else had gathered,” says John Sipher, a 28-year veteran C.I.A. officer who was stationed in Moscow at the same time Steele worked for British intelligence in Russia, and who wrote a detailed analysis of the dossier’s credibility for the blog JustSecurity. “Steele had raw, contemporaneous reports about meetings prior to June, and predicted stuff in the future he would have had no way to know. There’s some weird stuff in there, and things that can’t be verified. But Steele’s report identified multiple elements of the Russian operation including a cyber campaign, leaked documents related to Hillary Clinton, and meetings with Trump affiliates to discuss the receipt of stolen documents well before there was any public knowledge of these events. And the notion that the F.B.I. brought Steele in and was willing to pay him means they took his information seriously and that maybe it fit with some of the other things the bureau had collected.” 

Gowdy’s tactics could have multiple ramifications for Mueller. “If you really have people who are seeking to undermine the F.B.I’.s investigation, even if they’re doing it for their own political reasons, it will help the Russians,” says Asha Rangappa, a former special F.B.I. agent who is now a dean at Yale’s law school. “There might be parts of the dossier that the F.B.I. has corroborated independently, and if you have a leaky committee, the Russians can try to cover their tracks and fabricate things to say, ‘Hey, that’s not true.’ They are not above that.” 

Yet Rangappa’s greater concern is long-term, and about national security. “There’s a misconception that this is something that happened and it’s done,” she says. “The Russian active measures are ongoing. . . . . So you don’t want them to know what you know, because they’ll change tactics and dry up your sources.” 

For the moment, however, some Democrats on the committee are trying to stay focused on one classic theme of investigations: following the money. Steele’s dossier makes reference to possible illicit foreign payments flowing to former Trump campaign head Paul Manafort, and it alleges that longtime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen provided cash to Russian hackers. Manafort and Cohen have vehemently refuted those claims. Investigators are still looking, though, and their interest was further piqued by Cohen’s efforts to cut a deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow, even as Trump was running for president.

Regrettably, most Congressional Republicans put their party ahead of the nation - even when it involves assisting Vladimir Putin. 

More and More American Cities Join Call for Trump Impeachment

Given the reality that today's Republicans - in sharp contrast to those of the Watergate era - put their party over the best interests of the nation (even possible treason is willingly overlooked), a growing number of localities and cities are working to increase the political pressure on Republicans and other members of Congress to begin impeachment hearings against Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer.  (I do not refer to this foul, amoral man as president because he will never be my president).  I have my doubts that the effort will make much head way with Congressional Republicans who put the retention of power over all else, including honor and decency.  Nonetheless, anything that will ratchet up pressure for a full investigation of Trump's ties and possible collusion with Russia is welcomed.  Moreover, if Trump ultimately falls, history will remember who were focused on acting as apologists rather than upholding the U.S. Constitution and their oath of office.  Here are highlights from Politico on the growing trend:

Congress may not be ready to launch impeachment proceedings against Donald Trump, but a growing number of cities and towns are trying to push members in that direction.

Brookline, Mass., became the 10th and latest local government Thursday to pass a resolution calling for impeachment, a step designed to add pressure on the state’s congressmen to launch a formal investigation that could ultimately lead to the president’s removal from office.

The Massachusetts towns of Cambridge, Amherst, Pelham and Leverett have already made the call, and Newton has a proposal up for consideration.

California is another hotbed of impeachment. The Los Angeles city council in early May overwhelmingly passed a measure asking for impeachment proceedings to begin. Richmond, Alameda and Berkeley did the same.

In Chicago, the city council drafted an ordinance that quickly drew 31 sponsors. Alderman Ameya Pawar, who introduced the resolution, said Trump’s firing of FBI Director James Comey was the tipping point.

“Donald Trump is a racist, a bigot, and a misogynist, and he is attempting to enact policies around his beliefs. But that’s not why I introduced the resolution calling on Congress to begin impeachment proceedings,” Pawar said. “I introduced this resolution because President Trump continues to obstruct the investigation into Russian influence over his administration, in his business dealings, and the alleged collusion during the 2016 election. It is time for a full and thorough investigation led by the United States Congress.”

The goal behind the local government movement, which has no authority in the matter, is to convince Congress to take the first step toward impeachment — launching the investigation necessary to determine if impeachment charges are warranted. If Congress concludes they are, the articles of impeachment are drafted and voted on by the House. A simple majority vote in the House sends the articles to the Senate, which holds a trial and needs two-thirds agreement to convict.

[T]here is an element of politics in the budding local impeachment movement. Pawar is running for governor, and his opponents in the Democratic primary — including Chris Kennedy and state Sen. Daniel Biss — have made similar calls, as has billionaire J.B. Pritzker, who cited a story about an Israeli intelligence leak to Russian officials.

“We’re calling on members of Congress to support and introduce the impeachment process in House of Representatives,” said Bonifaz, whose group is behind impeachdonaldtrumpnow.org, which gives local communities a how-to guide on passing a resolution backing impeachment.

Bonifaz said asking the House to investigate is not in lieu of the special counsel investigation, which would explore whether there were violations of criminal statute. It’s intended to run on a parallel track.

“If decisions are getting made that this isn’t politically the right way to go, then we’re putting party over country here,” Bonifaz said. “Frankly, history will judge us in this moment on how we act … I would hope that the Chicago City Council takes up this again and votes on what is at stake — that no one is above the law — even the president of the United States.”

Vulnerable Republicans Flee from Trump

According to a new piece in Politico, the rats are starting to flee the hopefully sinking ship that is the Trump/Pence regime.  My one fear is that Pence will not be sufficiently implicated to also be removed from office.  That said, the fact that some Republicans now see Trump as toxic to their political future is a positive.  Of course, they should have known he was unfit for office from the beginning of his campaign and that no one would be able to control his worst character/psychological flaws.  Jeff Greenfield summed it up well:

What last week’s Oval Office love fest with the Russians demonstrated was that the adults are not, in fact, in charge: a 70-year-old man-baby named Donald Trump is. There are just too many ways in which the president—any president, but especially this one—is beyond the restraints of those who serve him..  

No one should be surprised at Trump's behavior.  His entire life and career has demonstrated his moral bankruptcy and self-absorption.  Now the chickens are coming home to roost and those who were power hungry and willing to betray the nation's interest by supporting Trump are worried that their betrayal may have much deserved consequences.  Here are article highlights:

House Republicans facing tough reelection bids are running for cover from Donald Trump — an early sign that they believe the president’s deepening scandals could cost them their seats and even put the House in play.

More than 10 centrist Republicans over the past 48 hours have criticized Trump for reportedly sharing classified information with Russian officials or allegedly trying to quash an FBI investigation. Many joined Democrats in calling for a special prosecutor to take the reins of the Justice Department investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Moscow. (The DOJ named a special counsel on Wednesday.) Others want a select congressional committee to be appointed.

One swing-district lawmaker, Rep. Carlos Curbelo of Florida, raised the possibility of impeaching Trump if it turns out to be true that he leaned on FBI Director James Comey to drop an investigation of former national security adviser Michael Flynn. But in case it wasn’t clear how Curbelo felt about the matter, his office called reporters to make sure they emphasized Curbelo was the first Republican lawmaker to utter the “I-word.” The break from Trump among centrist Republicans is especially notable because some of them had stuck by the president through the brutal fight over Obamacare repeal legislation two weeks ago, backing an unpopular bill despite great political risk at home. Case in point: Rep. Steve Knight of California, a top target for Democrats in 2018. Hillary Clinton carried his district by nearly 7 points, and Cook Political Report moved his reelection rating from “lean Republican” to “toss-up” after he voted for the health care bill.

But on Tuesday, after reports that Trump shared classified intelligence with Russia, Knight backed a special prosecutor to take over the ongoing FBI investigation, arguing that “there is so much conflicting information from many sources.”

[T]he most endangered GOP incumbents believe that loyalty to the White House could cost them their jobs.

“Any member of Congress who represents a marginal or swing district better develop their own brand very quickly,” said Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.), who leads the moderate Tuesday Group. “It wouldn’t be too hard to figure out what the opposition’s attacks on them will be: They’re going to call everybody a rubber stamp” for Trump.

While polls suggest that Republican voters give Trump the benefit of the doubt when it comes to the Russia investigation, the issue has energized the Democratic base. That’s why moderates from districts with large Democratic or independent populations are most exposed as the scandals unfold.

 Frankly, I hope these spineless Republicans go down with the Trump ship.

2016: House Majority Leader Says "I Think Putin Pays Trump"

The vast majority of Congressional Republicans willingly sold their souls to Donald Trump in their quest to put their party over the best interests of America.  Seemingly, positioning themselves to give a trillion dollar tax cut to the wealthy outweighed all else.  The result was that they backed a morally bankrupt, narcissistic liar and serial sexual predator despite reservations about Trump's possible allegiance to Vladimir Putin.  The best interests and welfare of the majority of Americans simply did not matter.  Now, a tape of a conversation between House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and House Speaker Paul Ryan has come to light in which McCarthy states that he believes that Trump was on Putin's payroll.  After initially lying and claiming the conversation never happened, Ryan and McCarthy are trying to say it was all a joke.  Sadly, what they have foisted on America is no joke and the nation and the world are now threatened by the sociopath in the White House.  The Washington Post looks at Ryan - in my view one of the most despicable and amoral men in Washington - being caught trying to lie about this and how he puts party above country.  Here are excerpts:

A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

Before the conversation, McCarthy and Ryan had emerged from separate talks at the U.S. Capitol with Ukrainian Prime Minister Vladi­mir Groysman, who had described a Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undercut Eastern European democratic institutions.

News had just broken the day before in The Washington Postthat Russian government hackers had penetrated the computer network of the Democratic National Committee, prompting McCarthy to shift the conversation from Russian meddling in Europe to events closer to home.

Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”

Ryan instructed his Republican lieutenants to keep the conversation private, saying: “No leaks. . . . This is how we know we’re a real family here.” The remarks remained secret for nearly a year.

The conversation provides a glimpse at the internal views of GOP leaders who now find themselves under mounting pressure over the conduct of President Trump. The exchange shows that the Republican leadership in the House privately discussed Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election and Trump’s relationship to Putin, but wanted to keep their concerns secret. It is difficult to tell from the recording the extent to which the remarks were meant to be taken literally.

Evan McMullin, who in his role as policy director to the House Republican Conference participated in the June 15 conversation, said: “It’s true that Majority Leader McCarthy said that he thought candidate Trump was on the Kremlin’s payroll. Speaker Ryan was concerned about that leaking.” McMullin ran for president last year as an independent and has been a vocal critic of Trump.

When initially asked to comment on the exchange, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan, said: “That never happened,” and Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, said: “The idea that McCarthy would assert this is absurd and false.”

After being told that The Post would cite a recording of the exchange, Buck, speaking for the GOP House leadership, said: “This entire year-old exchange was clearly an attempt at humor. 

 I guess Ryan's idea of being a "family" is akin to a Mafia family.  The man is a liar and reprehensible.  He is just as dishonest as Trump.