The Trump/Pence Regime Wants to Take Our Laws Back to the 1930's

Trump advisers want to return the Supreme Court to the 1930's.

Anyone who was ill-served by the nation's laws in the 1930's - e.g., blacks, gays, women, other minorities, etc. - should be terrified at the prospect of where the Trump/Pence regime and its judge whisperer want to take constitutional law in America.  It was an era where white privilege reigned supreme and life was brutal - and much shorter - for a majority of the population and Jim Crow laws were alive and well.  A piece in Slate profiles one of Trump's top advisers on judicial appointments and the future that he envisions.  It is nothing less than terrifying and one has to wonder what type of sick and perverted individuals would want to return to laws that were harmful to so many.  What's frightening, is Leonard Leo, Trump's adviser already has three of his favored jurists on the U.S. Supreme Court: Roberts, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.  Here are article highlights:

Last week, the Washington Post published a profile of Federalist Society Executive Vice President Leonard Leo, focusing in part on a speech he gave to the Council for National Policy in which he warmly predicted the Supreme Court would soon return to the pre–New Deal era of “limited, constitutional government.” Leo believes, in other words, that the court’s view of the Constitution was better off 85 years ago than it is today.

“I think we stand at the threshold of an exciting moment in our republic,” Leo told the council at a closed-door meeting in February, audio of which was obtained by the Post. “This is really, I think, at least in recent memory, a newfound embrace of limited constitutional government in our country. I don’t think this has really happened since probably before the New Deal.”

The average American doesn’t know who Leo is, but as the Post piece makes clear, he‘s one of the most influential lawyers in the country. A longtime leader within the Federalist Society, Leo has had Donald Trump’s ear on judicial appointments and has been the main curator of the president’s list of Supreme Court candidates. Two of Leo’s personal picks, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch, have been elevated to the highest court in the country since Trump’s election. So when Leonard Leo says he wants to return to a pre–New Deal Constitution, you should listen. And you should be alarmed.

As Leo knows, constitutional law was very different in the 1930s from what it is today. And in a word, it sucked.

In the 1930s, the courts were fully complicit in maintaining the country as a thoroughgoing ethnocracy, governed openly for the benefit of white men. Public schools in 21 states were racially segregated by law. “Separate but equal” schools had been affirmed by the Supreme Court as late as 1927, in a unanimous decision allowing Mississippi to kick a Chinese American girl out of her local “white” school for being a member of the “yellow” race. The outlawing of segregation is settled law in our country, and nobody would dare dream of returning to those antiquated judicial interpretations, you might say? Several of Trump’s judicial nominees have conspicuously, outrageously, refused to say whether they thought Brown v. Board of Education, which ended legal school segregation in 1954, was correctly decided.

In the 1930s, through a combination of discriminatory literacy tests, poll taxes, “good character” requirements, and straight-up violence, less than 1 percent of black people in the Deep South—where they represented more than a third of the population—were registered to vote. The Supreme Court had blessed these intimidation practices for decades, ever since a 1903 decision in which the court said it couldn’t do anything about Alabama’s self-described effort “to establish white supremacy in this state” by refusing to register black voters. Discriminatory voting practices of this sort weren’t banned until the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the most significant provision of which was gutted six years ago in an opinion by Chief Justice John Roberts (whom Leo also helped elevate to the court).

In the 1930s, women had no constitutional right to equality. They could legally be kept off juries, given different work hours, paid less money, and imprisoned for using birth control. It would be another four decades before the Supreme Court struck down even a single law for discriminating against women. Kavanaugh and Gorsuch—again, both products of Leo’s vetting—recently dissented from the court’s temporary blocking of a Louisiana law that would have left the entire state with just a single doctor able to perform abortions.

In the first half of the 20^th century, the police could beat confessions out of arrestees. Poor defendants had no right to a lawyer. Evidence could be illegally seized and used in prosecutions. In 1944, for example, South Carolina executed a 14-year-old black boy named George Stinney for the murders of two white girls. He was questioned alone, without his parents or a lawyer present, and convicted by an all-white jury after a two-hour trial and 10 minutes of deliberation. He wasn’t allowed to appeal. He had to sit on books to fit into the headpiece of the electric chair. Only in 2014, 70 years too late, did a circuit court judge vacate the 14-year-old Stinney’s murder conviction. The Stinney case tells you all you need to know about criminal justice in the age Leo wants to bring back.

The post–New Deal court decisions Leo wishes to repudiate are the ones that gave the government the power to enact minimum wage laws, to create unemployment insurance and Social Security, to provide health insurance to the aged and destitute, and to give workers collective bargaining rights. In the 1930s, those too old to work and too poor not to could often expect a quick but painful death. This is the human toll of “limited government.”

If we’re looking for Reagan’s shining city upon a hill, we won’t find it in America’s now-distant past. Not most of us, anyway. And if it’s what Leo is promising us, we can only hope it’s not in America’s future.

Be very, very afraid.

Trump Picks Right Winger for SCOTUS

Trump just nominated the judge who will have to likely rule on Trump's claims to be above the law.

Der Trumpenfurher has nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court - the sole individual on the list of possible nominees who has a written record of arguing that a sitting president is immune from criminal indictment or investigation.  Two things that Trump well may face in the near term.  Some are already arguing that Trump "judge shopped" looking forward to his own possible legal problems that could come before the Court.  Others argue that Kavanaugh was chosen because of his extreme views on executive power and because he is a top choice of right-wing activists groups - the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society - who have spent decades working to take over the Supreme Court to push their own extreme anti-abortion, anti-gay rights, anti-minority voting rights agenda. Some are very concerned that Kavanaugh will further erode the concept of the separation of church and state.   An editorial in the Washington Post cautions Republican Senators to do their job and carefully scrutinize Kavanaugh - not that they will heed such common sense advice.  Here are editorial highlights:

Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to replace retiring Justice Anthony M. Kennedy on the Supreme Court comes at a tense moment. It could drastically shift the court’s tenuous ideological balance, and it comes not long after Senate Republicans disgracefully blocked President Barack Obama from making a court pick in his final year.  More than ever, the court is in danger of becoming viewed as an instrument of politics rather than an independent, nonpartisan branch of government.

That is why senators must be even more exacting than usual when they evaluate Mr. Kavanaugh. They should insist on a justice who would rule with modesty and genuine independence of mind — and a willingness to resist abuses of power by this and future presidents. Mr. Kavanaugh meets the basic qualifications for high court service. A Yale Law School graduate who clerked for Mr. Kennedy, he has served for 12 years on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The country certainly could have expected worse from President Trump. Yet Mr. Kavanaugh came from a list of potential nominees preapproved by conservative activist groups. Their goal is to tilt the court as far right as possible as quickly as possible. Mr. Trump’s first nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch, was, in his confirmation hearings, the least forthcoming Supreme Court nominee in recent memory. Mr. Kavanaugh must do better. Fortunately, he comes with a huge record.

On hot-button questions, Mr. Kavanaugh has trended conservative on issues such as abortion, indicating a narrow view of what constitutes an undue burden on a woman’s right to end her pregnancy, and the Obamacare contraception mandate, though his take on the mandate was somewhat more conciliatory than right-wing activists would prefer. A nemesis of the administrative state, he has frequently voted against the Environmental Protection Agency, arguing that programs to regulate greenhouse-gas emissions and cross-border air pollution went further than the law allowed; in each case he took an overly narrow view of the statute.  They should also press Mr. Kavanaugh on when, if ever, the court should overturn precedents. Because Federalist Society officials pre-vetted potential nominees, senators should inquire about concepts the society espouses, such as originalism and textualism. What happens when the original meaning of a law is not clear, or when there was dispute about its meaning at the time it was written? Most importantly, senators must extract an ironclad commitment that Mr. Kavanaugh will act as a check on the president. That’s a role he has not seemed comfortable playing in cases involving enemy combatants, or in a law review article suggesting that the president should not be subject to civil or criminal court proceedings while in office. There is always a danger that justices will be seen as loyal to the presidents and parties that installed them; that danger is particularly pronounced now, as Mr. Trump ignores traditional boundaries on presidential action and the Republican Party mostly enables his autocratic instincts. Just as Democrats should not have ruled out Mr. Trump’s pick before it was announced, Republicans should not duck their responsibility to bring a critical eye to the coming confirmation process.

Again, Senate Republicans should do their constitutional duty and be mindful of issues on which the majority of Americans have firm opinions - e.g., abortion, gay rights, minority rights, voting rights, and racial discrimination. Sadly, I doubt that they will do their duty.  Indeed, I predict that they will not.  

Abortion and LGBT Rights Are Next the Trump/Christofascist Hit List

Like many in the LGBT community, I felt physically ill when I heard the news that Justice Anthony Kennedy would be retiring from the U.S. Supreme Court at the end of the current term.  His retirement means that Der Trumpenführer, whose approval ratings remain in the toilet outside of Christofascist and white supremacist circles, will nominate another ideologue like Neil Gorsuch who will purse the Trump base's dream of outlawing all abortions, rescinding LGBT rights, and disenfranchising as many minority voters as possible.  Short of a miracle where moderate Republicans - if such a thing still exists - in the U.S. Senate buck Trump and their party and reject Trump's nominee, for at least a generation, the U.S. Supreme Court will be openly hostile to minority rights of all kinds. How bad will it be?  Likely, very bad and if "friends" who voted for Trump think I will forgive them, they are delusional.  They have stabbed so many of us in the back and deserve nothing but derision and ostracizing from the company of decent, moral people.  A piece in The Daily Beast, looks at the coming nightmare.  Here are highlights:

The judicial apocalypse is here, and there’s nothing Democrats can do to stop it.  Justice Anthony Kennedy, the swing voter in most of the Supreme Court’s close cases of the last decade, is retiring at age 81. President Donald Trump will choose his successor.

With the Senate filibuster of Supreme Court nominees eliminated last year by Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell, anyone Trump nominates will be rubber-stamped.  That has been the pattern so far, with 39 judges confirmed so far, often in an expedited process, with not a single Republican vote opposing any of them.

Moreover, Trump’s judicial nominees thus far have been chosen by the far-right Federalist Society, which has put forward extreme ideologues in the mode of Justice Clarence Thomas, whose ideas were once considered on the fringe but are now increasingly within the [GOP] mainstream. 

While Justice Neil Gorsuch replaced another conservative, the late Justice Antonin Scalia, whoever replaces Justice Kennedy will likely be a conservative firebrand replacing a moderate.  The shift will transform the Court for decades to come.

Among the Court’s precedents that will be on the chopping block are Roe v. Wade, protecting women’s rights to choose to have an abortion, and Obergefell v. Hodges, protecting gay people’s rights to marry.

Roe has been significantly limited in recent years, and all four sitting conservative justices have either opposed it directly, or opposed the doctrines on which it is based.

Justice Kennedy wrote the Obergefell decision, over a vigorous dissent by Chief Justice John Roberts, and the vote was 5-4.  Even the Court’s own doctrines of respecting precedent will not protect same-sex marriage; just this week, the Court directly overturned a precedent regarding public-section unions. 

It is quite likely that the both rights will come to an end within two to three years: there are cases pending that would further limit each, and more will soon follow.

In the case of abortion rights, Justice Kennedy was the swing vote striking down Texas’s junk-science regulations that would have shuttered most abortion clinics in the state; with him gone, other states will surely pass and litigate their own versions.  Iowa’s new law, known as the heartbeat bill, bans abortions once a heartbeat is detected, usually the sixth week of pregnancy – the lawsuit about that law will provide the next Supreme Court with an opportunity to further limit Roe, or overturn it entirely.

Likewise for marriage rights. There are already cases pending about whether same-sex spouses are entitled to spousal benefits, and numerous cases about when private actors may discriminate against gay people.  Each of these provide opportunities to limit or overturn Obergefell.

Assuming the Senate fast-tracks the nomination – as McConnell and Trump have already said will happen – the confirmation vote will take place before the November elections.

Democrats’ only hope is to somehow persuade moderate Republicans like Jeff Flake or Susan Collins to oppose Trump’s nominee, although they have been mostly unable to do in the first two years of the Trump presidency.  (Senator Flake recently said he would block Trump’s nominees if the Senate did not act to restrain Trump on tariffs.)

Understandably, the consequences for the Supreme Court, and civil rights as we know them today, are eclipsing, . . . Justice Kennedy turned out to be the unlikely hero of the LGBT equality movement, writing every major pro-LGBT opinion in the Supreme Court’s history, culminating in Obergefell in 2015.

n an ideal world, a responsible Republican president would nominate a thoughtful moderate-conservative who is respected by his colleagues and who lies within the judicial mainstream – basically, a conservative version of Merrick Garland.

But in the world we live in, Trump is likely to please his base by nominating an extreme conservative, like his recent picks who have compared abortion to slavery, called Justice Kennedy a “judicial prostitute,” and called transgender children “evidence of Satan’s plan at work.”  All of those nominees, by the way, were confirmed without a single Republican vote against.

I am not many years from retirement and, if my fears are realized, the husband and I may find ourselves looking to retire somewhere outside of the United States.

Trump's Damage to The Supreme Court May be Irreversible

The United States Supreme Court, despite some terribly wrong rulings over its history, has overall been the vehicle that has made Americans more equal and offered a protection of minorities from the tyranny of the majority.  Now, with Donald Trump poised to name a reactionary to fill the current open seat on the Court and Senate Republicans only too happy to confirm a misogynist, the Court could be irreversibly damaged for a generation of more.  Even if Trump/Pence are a one term nightmare, the damage done will long out last them.  A piece in Salon looks at this sickening reality.  Here are highlights:

Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver, published a piece for Pacific Standard arguing that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was smart to organize an unprecedented blockade of any hearings for Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee to the Supreme Court, because the choice likely helped give Donald Trump the presidential election.

“McConnell’s move made the Supreme Court seat an issue for the presidential election,” Masket wrote. “It motivated conservatives to stay on board with the Republican presidential nominee no matter who it was.”

A lot of conservatives, especially evangelical Christians, had their doubts about a glib, insincere libertine like Trump, especially someone who had a history of donating to Democratic politicians and no record of Republican loyalty. But that empty seat on the Supreme Court, Masket argued, tipped the scales.

The tendency to cite control of the court was particularly pronounced among Trump-skeptical Republicans I spoke with. Very few of them talked about the economy but the court came up over and over again. The opposite was true when I spoke with Democratic voters.

Trump understood that as long as he promised an anti-choice, anti-labor, anti-environmentalist philosophy when appointing judges, the Republican voter base would squelch its concerns about putting such a thoroughly unqualified man in charge of the nuclear codes and fall in line. Over the summer Trump took the highly unusual step of releasing a short list of judges he would consider, heavily advertising that the list was basically handed to him by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation, two far-right think tanks.

The move was brilliant precisely because Trump clearly doesn’t give two hoots about the Supreme Court or the judiciary in general, . . .

For the past week and a half, I’ve been covering what it means for Trump to have the power to fill the Supreme Court seat that was left open after the death of former justice Antonin Scalia in March — and the even more dire possibility that he’ll be able to replace one of the aging liberals on the court in the next four years. (Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 83 years old and Stephen Breyer is 78; Anthony Kennedy, the most moderate of the court’s conservative justices, is 80.)

It’s difficult to deny the conclusion that, in the end, Republican voters are more organized and focused on the long game than Democratic voters, and that ability to focus will pay off. Trump will likely be out in four years — possibly less, if the quickly mounting scandals result in enough legal troubles — but the damage he’s likely to do with his court appointments will last years and in some cases generations.

Using the courts to dismantle the right of workers to unionize, for instance, will pay off dividends for Republicans long after Trump leaves the White House in the inevitable cloud of shame and disgrace. 

It’s the same story with conservative lawyers’ chipping away at campaign-finance laws. Trump will do plenty of damage to both parties, but the free flow of money in politics means that the Republicans will be able to rebuild more easily than the Democrats, who have a much less wealthy donor base. Just as important, elevating the power and voice of the wealthy over everyone else will help Republicans continue to capture more state legislatures and congressional seats, reinforcing the horrific situation we have now, whereby a Republican minority is ruling over a Democratic majority.

The result is that Republican voters treated this election as if it were an urgent one, and millions of voters who turned out for Obama in the previous two presidential cycles couldn’t be bothered to cast ballots this time around. Perhaps if they had really understood that this election would determine the direction of the federal courts for a generation, they would have reconsidered their decision to stay home rather than vote for Hillary Clinton.

Conservatives Suffer Huge Loss at the U. S. Supreme Court

One of the consistent themes and agenda items of the Republican Party and those who euphemistically call themselves "conservatives" rather than racists or white supremacists has been to disenfranchise minority voters wherever possible and, as was attempted by plaintiffs in Texas, to skew voting district apportionment to favor Republicans.  With the white percentage of the overall population falling and the GOP make no effort to be more welcoming to those who are not angry, greed driven, racist whites, about all the GOP has to grasp onto is limiting and/or diluting the minority vote of all stripes.  Today, in Evenwel v. Abbott, the Supreme Court by a unanimous ruling killed for now an attempt to dilute the vote in urban and heavy minority districts.  A column in the Washington Post explains why the ruling is important.  Here are highlight:

The Supreme Court issued a decision Monday on the widely anticipated “one person, one vote” case, unanimously ruling that states can draw their voting districts based on total population as opposed to just the number of people who can vote.

The case, Evenwel v. Abbott, featured arguments on a pair of state Senate districts in the Dallas area. Because Texas draws its districts based on total population — including non-citizens who are not eligible to vote — some voters in the suburban districts argue that their votes are “diluted” compared with those of neighboring urban districts that are home to many immigrants.

The case essentially revolved around who should be represented by our lawmakers, and there was a lot at stake. If the Supreme Court ruled that drawing districts according to total population was unconstitutional — thereby mandating that virtually all states redraw their districts —experts projected that Republicans would have gained a signification advantage in state elections throughout the country.

The New Civil Rights Movement adds this:

Conservatives in Texas argued that only eligible voters should be relied upon when redistricting, claiming the U.S. Constitution forbids counting immigrants, children, and prisoners, who are not legally eligible to vote.

"The plaintiffs alleged the Texas legislative map effectively diluted the representation of citizens in rural, Republican-leaning areas in favor of Democratic-trending cities like Houston, where the population includes immigrants and children who are ineligible to vote," the Wall Street Journal reports.

"As the Framers of the Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment comprehended, representatives serve all residents, not just those eligible to vote," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg who authored the decision, wrote.

“As history, precedent, and practice demonstrate, it is plainly permissible” to use total population for state redistricting, Justice Ginsburg added, as Buzzfeed notes.  

Antonin Scalia’s Death has Changed the Supreme Court

As regular readers know, I was never a fan of Antonin Scalia and, in fact, on more than one occasion opined that he needed to be removed from the U.S. Supreme Court because of his inability to put aside his own religious, racial and male chauvinist prejudices when confronted with cases.  Nature - or God, if one is a Christofascist - stepped in and Scalia was removed from the Court in a manner I had not contemplated.  Now, if only Clarence Thomas would be removed, we might begin to see a Court with mostly responsible justices (Alito remains a boil on the Court, but might come around if sufficiently isolated).  A piece in Slate looks at how the passing of one bigot and opponent of modernity has changed the Court - most likely for the better, especially  if the Republicans fail to win the White House.  Here are column highlights:

Nobody quite knows what to make of it yet, but nobody disputes it, either: The Supreme Court of March looks nothing like the court we knew in February. The loss of a single justice, Antonin Scalia, has blown up the court and reshuffled everything. It’s the early days yet, and much of the evidence of newish, liberalish outcomes at the court lies in routine housekeeping matters: unsigned orders and withdrawn appeals. Still, it’s safe to say the high court is no longer going to be a candy store for pro-business and socially conservative litigants. What will rise in its place is still a work in progress.

The crazy new vibe at the court isn’t even limited to the raft of orders that have come down in the past week. Those include a critical and unanimous order affirming the right of same-sex partners to adopt children and the tossing of a death penalty conviction in Louisiana because the state withheld significant exculpatory evidence.

There was also last Friday’s unsigned order allowing several abortion clinics in Louisiana to reopen their doors, following an emergency decision from the 5^th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that would have shuttered all but one clinic in that state. In one sense, the order to keep the clinics open while the case progresses was not a massive surprise. Last June, the Supreme Court issued a similar last-minute stay of the 5^th Circuit’s Whole Woman’s Health decision that would have closed a significant number of clinics in Texas. . . . .   in choosing to reinstate the Louisiana abortion rules, the 5^th Circuit brushed aside the fact that the Supreme Court had prevented Texas’ clinics from closing last June. Faced with the snub, the court tartly reminded the 5^th Circuit that keeping the Louisiana clinics open is “consistent with the Court’s action granting a stay in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole.” In other words, says the Supreme Court to Louisiana, “We may be 4–4 now, but we are still here. Thank you.”

This week, the Wall Street Journal’s Jess Bravin also noted that a new alliance seems to have cropped up between the court’s two most conservative members, Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito. The emerging split between these two determined conservatives and their colleagues might be in reaction, writes Bravin, to Chief Justice John Roberts “apparently seeking consensus where he can on a court hobbled by potential 4-4 ideological splits.” By contrast, Thomas and Alito seem to be redoubling their efforts to form a bulwark against “the path set out by their six colleagues.” . . . . . The two conservatives also aligned in an effort to uphold the right of states to sentence juveniles to life in prison without parole.

But changes at the court itself are only half of it. There’s also a growing sense among conservative interest groups and litigation shops that the good times and rich bounty of the old Roberts court are no longer on offer and that it may be better to cut and run than stick around and lose.

In an incredibly short time frame we have seen, for instance, a major antitrust appeal from Dow Chemical settled for $835 million last month, when the company determined that it wasn’t worth the risk to spin the wheel at a 4–4 court. Having only last month granted a completely unprecedented stay in a challenge to President Obama’s new environmental regulations—before the case had even been adjudicated in a lower court—Roberts batted away a similar request challenging a different pollution regulation without comment last week. Not here, he seemed to be cautioning Michigan and the other states that wanted to challenge the law. Not anymore.

Consider, too, that in New York this week a key gun rights group opted to drop its challenge to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s SAFE Act—the big post–Sandy Hook gun control initiative—out of a concern that it could not prevail at the high court without Scalia on the bench. According to the New York Daily News, a National Rifle Association board member explained that the challenge had been halted en route to the court because “it’s just the wrong time.” His lawyers advised that “going forward could damage the case because the High Court at the very least would likely deliver a split 4-4 decision that would leave the law in place.”

This is a shocking turn from how the judicial landscape looked earlier this year. Going into this term, a number of important cases had been seen as likely to change the way we vote, the way we regulate abortion, and the way we fund public-sector unions. So certain were some plaintiffs of their likelihood of success that they had their appeals rocketed to the Roberts court on a fast track.

Suddenly, in a scenario where the conservative justices have been reduced to four, the high-speed pipeline looks far less attractive. It’s not at all clear these fast-track appeals will continue, so long as outcomes are uncertain and given the possibility of a long-term vacancy. By the same token, the tactics deployed to hustle last year’s big Obamacare challenge to the high court will likely lose their allure now. Nobody wants to rush a case to the court with even odds. Watch for a lot of hurry up and wait from conservatives groups that used to be all hurry.

Expect a lot more weirdness and subtle signaling from the court as the term rolls on. An institution that never wished to be an election issue has become one. What might have once been routine orders have now turned into a complex game of reputation management. Whether it’s the chief justice trying to appear apolitical, the conservative justices trying to fly the flag of ideology, or the liberals making hay while the sun briefly shines, nothing at the court these days is exactly what it appears to be, and it appears it will be that way for a while.

[T]he sudden frailty of the conservative bloc and the almost giddily emboldened left reveal how high the stakes will be in the general election. These past few weeks have proved to the right that its fears about the post-Scalia court are justified and tantalized the left with promises of a golden era with Ruth Bader Ginsburg tossing thunderbolts around from on high. Even as it tries to speak softly and subtly this month, the court reveals just how much now hangs in the balance. 

Martin Luther King’s Still Unfulfilled Dream Is Still

It has been nearly almost 46 years since Martin Luther King was murdered.   Yet significant aspects of his dream remain unfulfilled.  Some of the unfulfilled aspects tie directly to the decades long program of sabotage implemented by the Republican Party both at the state and federal level.  And if anything, the GOP sabotage effort has accelerated in recent years. Meanwhile, the GOP gives lip service to supposedly wanting more minority participation in the GOP's fictional "big tent."  For one who is a member of a minority demographic to be a supporter of today's GOP is akin to a Jew supporting Hitler's Nazi Party in the 1930's.  Think Progress highlights four initiative that King supported which are subject to consistent GOP sabotage.  Here are excerpts:

While the civil rights leader changed the conversation around race and justice in the U.S., many of his goals never came to fruition.   Here’s a look at four of the things King demanded but never saw completed:

1. A living wage. One of the demands protesters listed for the March on Washington was a minimum wage. “Anything less than $2.00 an hour,” King and his compatriots argued, fails to “give all Americans a decent standard of living.” In 2014 dollars, a $2 an hour wage would work out to about $15.27. But minimum wage is actually much, much lower — less than half of that — today. Forty-two percent of those earning minimum wage are people of color.

2. Desegregation. King hoped to see the end not just of legal segregation in the South, but also of the de facto segregation that existed in Northern businesses, housing, and schools. He even toured Chicago advocating for the end of this kind of segregation, saying civil rights leaders needed to “eradicate a vicious system which seeks to further colonize thousands of Negroes within a slum environment.’’ But today, public schools are more segregated than they were 40 years ago. The unemployment rate for black Americans has remained above 10 percent for most of the last half a century, and black workers earn on average $22,000 less a year than their white counterparts. Black homebuyers are shown significantly fewer homes than their white counterparts when shopping for a house. Ethnic identity is still the key factor in where people reside.

3. Fair voting. King campaigned extensively for legislation like the Voting Rights Act. And he lived to see it passed. But legislators, largely Republicans, have been working to roll back the rights protected under the VRA since its inception. Those efforts have become even more acute recently. More than half the states introduced restrictive voting legislation in 2013 alone, according to a review by the Brennan Center, at a total of 92 separate bills in 33 states. The Supreme Court also struck down a major portion of the Voting Rights Act in 2013, allowing states previously subject to the VRA to put voting laws on the books without federal oversight. Now a group of members of congress — including Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), who incidentally established the first official Martin Luther King Day — is working to undo the damage of that decision.

4. Unfettered unionization. King spoke out specifically about anti-union “Right to Work” laws. “[W]e must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as ‘right to work,’” he said in 1961. “Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone…Wherever these laws have been passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are fewer and there are no civil rights. We do not intend to let them do this to us.” Over 50 years later, right to work laws are still on the books. In fact, Michigan passed its own right to work law in 2012. But King’s assessment was right: No matter their unionized status, workers in “right to work” states today earn $1,500 less a year than their counterparts, and are less likely to receive other benefits like health care and pensions.

When I accuse today's GOP of being a de facto white supremacist party, I catch a lot of flack.   But, actions speak louder that words and a review of GOP actions and positions make it painfully clear that today's GOP is working incessantly to undermine Martin Luther Kings dream.

The GOP Fueled Driven Decline of North Carolina

The southern boundary of the Hampton Roads area is the North Carolina/Virginia border.  Indeed, my office is less than 25 miles from North Carolina and I've spent a great deal of time in the Outer Banks surfing.  Hence, I thought I knew the state.  Yet, since the Republican Party took control of the North Carolina legislature and governor's mansion, North Carolina has veered off into insanity.  One has to wonder how long it will be before its reputation as a moderate and pro-business state is destroyed by the GOP/Christofascist extremism.  An editorial in the New York Times looks at the rapid decline of that state.  Here are excerpts:

Every Monday since April, thousands of North Carolina residents have gathered at the State Capitol to protest the grotesque damage that a new Republican majority has been doing to a tradition of caring for the least fortunate. Nearly 700 people have been arrested in the “Moral Monday” demonstrations, as they are known. But the bad news keeps on coming from the Legislature, and pretty soon a single day of the week may not be enough to contain the outrage.

In January, after the election of Pat McCrory as governor, Republicans took control of both the executive and legislative branches for the first time since Reconstruction. Since then, state government has become a demolition derby, tearing down years of progress in public education, tax policy, racial equality in the courtroom and access to the ballot. 

The cruelest decision by lawmakers went into effect last week: ending federal unemployment benefits for 70,000 residents. Another 100,000 will lose their checks in a few months. Those still receiving benefits will find that they have been cut by a third, to a maximum of $350 weekly from $535, and the length of time they can receive benefits has been slashed from 26 weeks to as few as 12 weeks.

At the same time, the state is also making it harder for future generations of workers to get jobs, cutting back sharply on spending for public schools. Though North Carolina has been growing rapidly, it is spending less on schools now than it did in 2007, ranking 46th in the nation in per-capita education dollars. Teacher pay is falling, 10,000 prekindergarten slots are scheduled to be removed, and even services to disabled children are being chopped. 

Republicans repealed the Racial Justice Act, a 2009 law that was the first in the country to give death-row inmates a chance to prove they were victims of discrimination. They have refused to expand Medicaid and want to cut income taxes for the rich while raising sales taxes on everyone else. The Senate passed a bill that would close most of the state’s abortion clinics. 

And, naturally, the Legislature is rushing to impose voter ID requirements and cut back on early voting and Sunday voting, which have been popular among Democratic voters.

North Carolina was once considered a beacon of farsightedness in the South, an exception in a region of poor education, intolerance and tightfistedness. In a few short months, Republicans have begun to dismantle a reputation that took years to build. 

Two things strike me: (1) what the GOP is doing in North Carolina is a blue print of what the Virginia GOP wants to do in Virginia, and (2) while the GOP claims to be the party of Christian values, its actions are the antithesis to the Gospel message of Christ.

GOP Officials Already Ignoring RNC Autopsy of 2012 Loss

As noted yesterday, the Republican National Committee released a 97 page autopsy on the party's 2012 loss and an outline of what needed to be done to ensure better results going forward.  It appears that in addition to the Christofascists within the party base there is another obstacle to a revival of the GOP: the racists within the party base and in high elected office.  Yesterday  this phenomenon became apparent as two Deep South Senators attacked Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez who has been nominated by President Obama to be Secretary of Labor.  Perez's offense?  Bring laws suits to enforce voting rights laws and acting to protect minorities.  You know, members of demographic groups that the RNC says the GOP must attract even as the party base and GOP controlled state legislatures work to disenfranchise these groups.  Think Progress looks at yesterday's attack on Perez and the continued racism that is a pillar of the GOP.  Here are highlights:

Well, that didn’t take long.  This morning, the biggest political story in Washington was a Republican National Committee “autopsy” of the GOP’s 2012 election loss. In it, the RNC proclaimed that “[i]t is imperative that the RNC changes how it engages with Hispanic communities to welcome in new members of our Party” and that “the Republican Party must be committed to building a lasting relationship within the African American community year-round, based on mutual respect and with a spirit of caring.” Within a few hours, three top Republicans already took the first steps to doom this effort.

Earlier today, President Obama nominated Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez to be the next Secretary of Labor. Perez is eminently qualified for this job, having served in a similar role for the state of Maryland before becoming the top civil rights attorney in the Justice Department. As head of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Perez restored that office’s historic commitment to protecting voting rights,  .  .  .

Before the President even announced Perez’s nomination, Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III (R-AL) released a statement attacking him for serving as President of the Board of an organization that advocates on behalf of low-income immigrants and Latinos. The words “illegal immigrant” appear three times in Sessions’ statement, which is barely more than a paragraph long.

Not long thereafter, Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) raised the specter of Perez supposedly sticking up for scary black men. According to Vitter, “Thomas Perez’s record should be met with great suspicion by my colleagues for his spotty work related to the New Black Panther case,” an allegation that does far more to discredit Vitter than Perez. Two separate investigations, one of which was released just last week, concluded that DOJ acted entirely without improper motive when it dismissed this case.

It’s important not to exaggerate the importance of these two senators’ statements. Sessions has a long history of opposition to civil rights. Many of his future senate colleagues voted to reject his nomination to the federal bench after a DOJ attorney revealed that Sessions once called the NAACP and the ACLU “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.” 

Sessions and Vitter’s crusade against Perez is certain to have powerful supporters among the GOP’s most powerful messengers, however. Rush Limbaugh compared Perez to “Hugo Chavez” on his radio station today, and he claimed that nominating Perez to head Labor is the same thing as a Republican nominating the “Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan a cabinet position where he would be deciding on discrimination lawsuits.”

 The rank ugliness of today's GOP just continues to fester.  So much for renewed minority outreach.

 

The Virginia GOP Remains Obsessed with God, Guns, Gays and Social Issues

While the Virginia General Assembly did manage to confirm the judicial appointment of an openly gay judge - without much GOP support it should be noted - yesterday, that may have been the high water point for the Virginia GOP in terms of any future looking policies and actions.  Instead, and despite promises that it would not repeat last year's circus like extravaganza of batshitery, the Virginia GOP seems headed right back into the social issues swamp as it again swears fealty to the far right and religious extremists.  Virginia's real needs will again be ignored as the Virginia GOP seeks to drag Virginia back to the 1950's if not the 1850's.  A column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch - one of Virginia's more reactionary newspapers - looks at the unfolding asylum that is today's Virginia GOP. Here are highlights:

On the first day of the first full week of the 2013 General Assembly — in a span of about eight hours — Virginia Republicans juggled, shuffled and bungled their way through three issues that are aligning to further damage the party’s brand: gays, guns and the state’s changing demographics.

This from the same party whose legislative leaders, among them House Speaker Bill Howell of Stafford, predicted that Republicans would avoid this year the hot-button stuff that last year reduced them to a punch line.

With apologies to Marx — Karl, not Groucho — history is repeating itself. First, it was a tragedy. Now, it’s a farce. 

The more Republicans say they want to talk about issues of concern to all Virginians, such as transportation, education and the economy, the more they get bogged down on issues of concern to their Virginians: conservatives whose voting power is magnified by partisan redistricting and low-turnout elections.

Though Tracy Thorne-Begland would be approved Tuesday for a Richmond judgeship by a House that had rejected the openly gay former prosecutor last year, some GOP delegates insisted Monday on reprising their claim that his sexual orientation would somehow color his conduct in deciding traffic cases, shoplifting and other misdemeanors.

“Advocating for homosexual behavior, which violates at least four millennia of Western moral teaching, undermines the natural traditional family and does not serve the public good,” Del. Bob Marshall, R-Prince William, the legislature’s pre-eminent gay-basher, said in an email urging the House to again turn down Thorne-Begland.

Some Republicans, in particular those running statewide, were more than happy to oblige Marshall. After all, hostility for homosexuals is a non-negotiable demand among the activists who control the GOP’s caucus-and-convention nominating process.

Then, there is the GOP attempt at catch-up in the post-Newtown gun debate.  On Monday, Gov. Bob McDonnell convened for the first time a 45-member task force to consider ways to strengthen school safety and mental health care. It has barely two weeks to craft recommendations that McDonnell might press the General Assembly to adopt before the session’s close.  McDonnell may have had the best of intentions in initiating the study, but the panel’s work is likely to be overshadowed by the conversation Republicans can’t have: that because of the composition of the GOP coalition, even a modest tightening of Virginia’s firearms laws is out of the question.

Legislative Republicans are resisting the mildest effort by McDonnell to protect them from themselves: specifically, accelerating the process for restoring voting rights of nonviolent felons who have completed their penalties. McDonnell wants to make it automatic, ending an autocratic practice under which the governor decides to whom the vote is re-extended.  Republicans killed the McDonnell-backed proposal in a House subcommittee. They opposed it in a Senate panel.

On both sides of the state Capitol, Republicans refuse to concede what President Barack Obama’s repeat here in November made clear: that a state where political tensions were once black-white is now multihued; that in acknowledging Virginia’s diversity at its polls and in its prisons, there are friends to be made.  And maybe votes to be gained.

The GOP in its current incarnation needs to die because it now comprises the biggest obstacle to the future of Virginia and the nation's future, both economically and socially.  Gays, women, minorities and those who value logic and reason should hope that this death comes sooner rather than later.

Is There a Pattern: Chick Fil-A Locations and Past Bigotryeas

Click on image for larger and clearer view

I found the image above - watch it for a few moments - at The Immoral Minority, a blog that in my view makes the case for the proposition that morality is not determined by the church you attend or the faith you purport to embrace. Rather, it is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey.

As the rotating images indicate, Chick Fil-A is mostly concentrated in the South - a region notorious for past discrimination and bigotry against blacks, women voting rights, interracial couples and, of course gays.  Oh, and did I mention the very same region coincides with the Bible Belt, the home of countless modern day Pharisees who trash the Gospel message they purport to base their lives upon. 

Republican: Voter ID Laws Are ‘Gonna Allow Governor Romney To Win’

Even though there is virtually no data to support the GOP claim that voter fraud is a problem, GOP controlled legislatures - including the Virginia General Assembly - have been aggressively passing voter ID laws to fight the non-existent problem.  Now, one GOP Congressman has been honest enough to state what the real goal of these laws has always been: diminish minority voting so that the GOP candidates - particularly Mitt Romney - have a better chance of winning.  If you're black, Hispanic or some other non-white race, they simply do not want you voting.  Think Progress looks at this candid confession by Pennsylvania Republican House Leader Mike Turzai (pictured at left).  Here are highlights:

This weekend, Pennsylvania Republican House Leader Mike Turzai (R-PA) finally admitted what so many have speculated: Voter identification efforts are meant to suppress Democratic votes in this year’s election. 

At the Republican State Committee meeting, Turzai took the stage and let slip the truth about why Republicans are so insistent on voter identification efforts — it will win Romney the election, he said:

“We are focused on making sure that we meet our obligations that we’ve talked about for years,” said Turzai in a speech to committee members Saturday. He mentioned the law among a laundry list of accomplishments made by the GOP-run legislature.

“Pro-Second Amendment? The Castle Doctrine, it’s done. First pro-life legislation – abortion facility regulations – in 22 years, done. Voter ID, which is gonna allow Governor Romney to win the state of Pennsylvania, done.”

Voter identification efforts disproportionately affect low-income voters of color, a typically Democratic demographic. Despite insistence by Republicans that the efforts are needed to prevent misconduct on election day, voter fraud is less likely than being hit by lighting. 

Conservative Wants to Disenfranchise Yonger Voters

Demonstrating that conservative professions of a love for democracy is lip service at best, the National Review’s Jonah Goldberg has admitted that he wants the voting age increased to disenfranchise younger voters.  While he won't say what age he wants the minimum voting age increased to, he confesses that in his view it should be "much higher."   In short he wants to be able to send young soldiers to their needless deaths in fool's errand wars like the Iraq War, but these individuals who represent cannon fodder for old white men should have no vote concerning the nation's course.  One could argue that given the current state of the country, one might better argue that its the elderly who ought to be disenfranchised. Think Progress looks at this latest far right batshitery.  Here are highlights:

The National Review’s Jonah Goldberg is claiming that 18-year-olds should be denied the right to vote because they are “so frickin’ stupid about so many things.” In a video first posted by the Daily Caller, Goldberg laments the culture’s obsession with youth and argues that conservatives should “beat out” young people’s belief that “socialism is better than capitalism.” Goldberg is the third National Review writer in two months to face controversy:

GOLDBERG: Personally, I think the voting age should be much, higher, not lower. I think it was a mistake to lower it to 18, to be brutally honest….[I]t is a simple fact of science that nothing correlates more with ignorance and stupidity than youth. We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young. And yet there’s this thing in this culture where, ‘Oh, young people are for it so it must be special.’ No, the reason young people are for it because they don’t know better. That’s why we call them young people. [...]
The fact that young people think socialism is better than capitalism. That’s proof of what social scientists call their stupidity and their ignorance. And that’s something that conservatives have to beat out of them. Either literally or figuratively as far as I’m concerned.