Wednesday Morning Male Beauty

U.S. Supreme Court: How to Preserve White Power in Four Easy Steps

With Donald Trump's two appointments to the U,S. Supreme Court - Neil Gorsuch, who believes right wing Christian beliefs trump the civil rights of others, and Brett Kavanaugh -having shifted the balance of the Court to the far right, the Court now stands poised to implement the pro-white, pro-right wing Christian, bigotry of the Trump/GOP base.  Somewhat incredibly, conservative Chief Justice John Roberts is now the swing vote.  As a column in the Washington Post notes, a series of cases have the potential to preserve disproportionate white power thanks in no small part to the peevish Bernie Sanders who refused to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016. Whatever legal horrors may be forth coming, responsible citizens never forget to remember that these Sanders voters and Jill Stein voters ushered in this potential nightmare (something 20% of Sanders supporters have said they will do again in 2020 if their cult leader is not the Democrat nominee);  Here are column highlights from the Washington Post on today's oral arguments and what may be forthcoming:

The Trump administration and Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices Tuesday held a legal seminar on how to preserve white hegemony in four easy steps.

Step 1: Devise a discriminatory policy.
In this case, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, after consulting with Stephen Bannon, who was then President Trump’s nationalist “alt-right” adviser, resolved to put a citizenship question on the 2020 Census for the first time in 70 years. This would have the well-documented effect of reducing responses to the census by Latinos (from citizens and noncitizens alike), resulting in the undercounting of that population for purposes of congressional apportionment and $900 billion in federal funding.

Step 2: Create a pretext.
In this case, Ross lied to Congress, saying the Justice Department wanted  the citizenship question added to help enforce the Voting Rights Act — a claim three lower courts dismissed as pretextual. In fact, emails showed that Ross (with White House encouragement) was the one who pushed for the citizenship question and quietly dragooned the Justice Department into asking for the question to be added.

Step 3: Muddy the waters.
In this case, Solicitor General Noel Francisco and conservative justices raised doubts about the statistical capabilities of the Census Bureau, claiming it couldn’t accurately “quantify” the damage that would be done by adding a citizenship question because the alternative way to get such information was an “untested statistical model.” Why “untested”? Because the administration denied its experts’ requests to run tests before leaping to a decision.

Step 4: Blame the victim.
Francisco, the top Trump administration lawyer, saved this nastiness for the final minute of the 80-minute argument. If the court disallows the citizenship question, he said, “you are effectively empowering any group in the country to knock off any question on the census if they simply get together and boycott it,” he said, raising the possibility of a boycott by gender-nonbinary people.

For decades, the decennial census sent to each household hasn’t included a citizenship question (it’s instead asked on surveys), and for good reason. Latino residents — legal or illegal — tend to resist such questions out of an (unfounded) fear the government might use the information against them or their relatives. Census Bureau research has projected a drop of at least 5.1 percent from noncitizen households if the question is added, part of an estimated undercount of 6.5 million people. This contradicts the Constitution’s requirement for an “actual enumeration of the people” — not just citizens.

But the conservative justices seemed willing to overlook Ross’s lie and the administration’s dubious justifications.

Francisco began with a deception, saying the citizenship question “has been asked as part of the census in one form or another for nearly 200 years.”

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg asked Francisco the same question three times before he acknowledged that the citizenship question had been abandoned in 1960, in part, because it would depress the count of noncitizens. . . . So the administration is free to disregard millions of Latinos in the census — and the courts have no say.

This seemed to be fine with Republican-appointed justices. Justice Samuel Alito said he was satisfied that the accuracy would be 98 percent if the citizenship question were asked (never mind those 6 million or so left out).

Trump’s two appointees developed a newfound fondness for foreign law: Justice Brett Kavanaugh pointed out that the United Nations recommends a citizenship question, and Justice Neil Gorsuch said “virtually every English-speaking country” asks one.

More disturbing were their counterfactual theories claiming some other, unknown variable might cause Latinos not to answer the census. (No such notions appeared in the case record, and census experts had already controlled for other variables.)

The justifications all sounded a bit “contrived,” as Justice Elena Kagan put it, like so much “post-hoc rationalization” of a decision made for another reason.

When you consider that the indisputable effect of adding the citizenship question will be to suppress Latinos’ census participation — and by extension to suppress their political clout — it is difficult not to be cynical about what that reason is.

That's right, a 6.5 million person under count.  To put that in easily understood terms, that is more than 10 times the population of Wyoming or larger than the populations of the Washington, Houston, Miami or Philadelphia metropolitan areas. 

My big complaint with the column - and the mainstream media in general - is that it persists in using the word "conservative" to describe justices and others who are in fact outright racists and bigots.  In the context of the upcoming LGBT employment non-discrimination cases before the Court this term and next term, no doubt "conservative" will be used instead of homophobic and anti-LGBT bigots.  It is far past time that the media begins to call out judges, justices, elected officials and candidates for office for what they truly are and throw away the false and deceptive term "conservative" once and for all. 

Biden Reportedly Delays Alleged Campaign Announcement

As the number of Democrat presidential nominee candidates still increasing - some I have to say I have no idea why they are even running other than out of vanity - word on the street is that Joe Biden's supposed announcement of his candidacy tomorrow is going to be delayed. While some see him as able to challenge Trump, his history of gaffes and failed primary runs - and his age - make me wonder if he doesn't suffer from the same vanity syndrome as the other largely unknowns who have thrown their hats in the ring and gained zero traction.  Like Sanders, I simple do not see Biden having the ability to unify Democrats and successfully challenge Trump in a battle between geriatrics. A piece in New York Magazine looks at the apparent delay which I for one wish would become permanent.  Here are article excerpts:

On Wednesday, former vice-president Joe Biden was expected to announce his candidacy for president with a video shot in part in his hometown of Scranton, followed by either a rally in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, or Charlottesville, Virginia. But according to Edward-Isaac Dovere, the Atlantic reporter who initially broke the details of Biden’s announcement, the campaign tip-off may be delayed.

The Philadelphia Inquirer also reported on Monday that Biden would not be traveling to Charlottesville on Wednesday, and that “considerations” involving the sites in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh had been “scuttled.”

“Things are fluid,” a Biden adviser told Time on Friday. Despite that fluidity, Biden is still accepting campaign donations prior to his reportedly pushed-back announcement.

A former Biden aide also spoke with Time on Friday, with a level of candor that suggests they wouldn’t have been surprised by the shuffling of the announcement: “I’ve never seen anything so half-assed. They’re improvising and doing last-minute planning. The guy has been running for President since 1987 and can’t figure the basics out, like where to stand on his first day? This should make everyone very nervous.”

Politico reports that Biden could announce on Thursday, while noting that the timing is still “in flux.” Also in the report is a “battle plan” for the former veep, whose campaign intends to secure key union endorsements, like the International Association of Firefighters, and to rally around Biden’s support within the backbone of the party Establishment.

Despite allegations of unwanted physical contact, Biden has led the Democratic field throughout most of the primary race’s early months — he’s leading with 30 percent in the most current Morning Consult poll, six points ahead of the next contender, Bernie Sanders. But another Biden insider who spoke to Time expects that Biden’s lead during his non-campaign will be harder to maintain post-announcement: “This guy’s best day is the day he announces. Everything after that gets worse.”

Biden needs to NOT run.

Tuesday Morning Male Beauty

Supreme Court to Take Up Cases on LGBT Workplace Rights

Currently there are no express federal non-discrimination protections for LGBT employees in the workplace.  Similarly, over two dozen states - including Virginia - have no state law employment non-discrimination protections for LGBT citizens.  Given this void, some federal agencies and two of the U,S. Circuit Courts of Appeal have held that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in banning sex discrimination, also bans sexual orientation discrimination.  Yet another court held that the Act did not afford such expansive protections.  Now, the U.S. Supreme Court -stacked with Trump appointed anti-gay justices - will take up the question.  It is an issue that I am passionate about given my own experience more than a decade ago of being forced from a Virginia Beach law firm for being gay. That event, combined with an anti-gay divorce court judge forced me into bankruptcy. After being force to maintaining my own firm for eight years due to the homophobia in the local legal community, for the last five years I have been with gay accepting firms and have largely recovered financially.  I know first hand what religious based bigotry and hatred can do to harm lives.  A piece in  Politico looks at the appeals:

The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a set of high-profile cases involving gay rights and the rights of transgender people in the workplace.

The justices announced Monday that they will consider whether existing federal law banning employment-related sex discrimination also prohibits discriminating against individuals on the basis of sexual orientation or because they are transgender.

The Supreme Court said it will hear a pair of cases in which federal appeals courts split over whether LBGTQ employees are protected by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The justices also accepted a case involving a transgender funeral home employee, saying they will consider whether being transgender is protected in itself or whether it falls within existing law against “sex stereotyping.”

The cases are expected to be argued in the fall.

A piece in The Advocate gives more details on the posture of the three cases to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Court and the impact the ultimate decision will have on millions of LGBT Americans:

The Supreme Court has agreed to take up a set of high-profile cases involving gay rights and the rights of transgender people in the workplace.

The justices announced Monday that they will consider whether existing federal law banning employment-related sex discrimination also prohibits discriminating against individuals on the basis of sexual orientation or because they are transgender.

The Supreme Court said it will hear a pair of cases in which federal appeals courts split over whether LBGTQ employees are protected by the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The justices also accepted a case involving a transgender funeral home employee, saying they will consider whether being transgender is protected in itself or whether it falls within existing law against “sex stereotyping.”

The cases are expected to be argued in the fall.

One involves Donald Zarda, a skydiving instructor who was fired from his job in 2010 after telling a client he was gay. His employer, New York-based Altitude Express, contended he was fired for touching the client inappropriately. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, while not ruling on the merits of the case, did rule last year that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, in banning sex discrimination, also bans sexual orientation discrimination. Altitude Express appealed to the Supreme Court, saying that the scope of the law should be decided by legislators, not the courts.

In the other sexual orientation case, Gerald Bostick, a social worker employed by Clayton County, Ga., said he was fired for being gay. County officials said his firing was for other reasons. In his case, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals said Title VII did not apply because it did not explicitly address sexual orientation. The Supreme Court often agrees to hear cases where there is disagreement between circuits, known as a "circuit split."

In the gender identity case, funeral director Aimee Stephens was fired from a Michigan funeral home company in 2013 after she began presenting as a woman at work. The company, R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes, said she violated its dress code by wearing women’s clothing; her boss, Thomas Rost, also said she violated his religious beliefs about gender being God-given and immutable. The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that companies cannot arbitrarily fire trans people and that discrimination based on gender identity is inseparable from discrimination based on sex. The funeral home operator, represented by the anti-LGBTQ Alliance Defending Freedom, appealed to the Supreme Court, objecting to that expansive interpretation of sex discrimination law.

In hearing these cases, the high court, which now has a conservative majority, could have a huge effect on LGBTQ rights. Civil rights groups said the matter underscores the need for the Equality Act, recently introduced in Congress, which would amend existing law to explicitly ban discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity, in employment and other facets of life.

Greg Nevins, senior counsel and workplace fairness program strategist for Lambda Legal, noted, “Title VII obviously requires equal treatment of men and women, so it was wrong to treat Donald Zarda (or Gerald Bostock) differently because of his attraction to men, when a Donna Zarda or Geraldine Bostock would not have endured discrimination for liking men. And when Aimee Stephens’ employer fired her after learning that she was undertaking a gender transition, her employer discriminated against her because of sex. These arguments couldn’t be more straightforward, and we are hopeful that the court will confirm that they are correct.”

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Keeping Trump in Office will Destroy the Republican Party

As Democrats in the House of Representatives debate what action to take in the wake of the release of the Mueller report, some are arguing that impeachment would be a foolish move and could harm Democrat prospects in 2020, especially f the party fails to nominate a viable candidate and the cultist in the Sanders camp keep their vow to vote for Trump if Bernie Sanders is not the nominee (a move, in my view, that shows they are irrational at best).  Instead, continued investigations of Trump under the guise of Congressional oversight, a constitutional duty, and allowing Trump to further alienate more and more of the populace could be the Democrats' best bet at destroying the Republican Party - or more aptly, allowing Trump and his knuckle dragging base to destroy it. For decades the GOP has had no long term plan and Trump is accelerating the GOP's self-inflicted suicide.  Here are highlights from an op-ed in the New York Times that makes this argument:

In the fall of 1998, Erskine Bowles, the White House chief of staff, traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with the speaker of the House. Mr. Bowles enjoyed a better relationship with Speaker Newt Gingrich than anyone in the Clinton White House, partly based on a shared Southern heritage and commitment to fiscal conservatism. At the end of the meeting, Mr. Bowles put a very direct question to Mr. Gingrich: Why were the Republicans intent on impeaching Bill Clinton? The speaker replied, “Because we can.”

Just as Speaker Gingrich did in 1998, Speaker Nancy Pelosi could direct the impeachment of President Trump because she can. Unlike in 1998, she stands on firmer ground: The Clinton case involved an egregious personal mistake and purported steps to cover it up; the Trump case involves an effort to thwart an investigation into a foreign attack on our democratic system.

Inevitably the news media and the political chattering class, of which I count myself as a card-carrying member, have focused on the party politics of impeachment. With the benefit of hindsight, impeaching President Clinton was a disaster for the Republicans. Mr. Clinton’s job approval was at a record 73 percent the month he was impeached, Democrats defied the odds and picked up seats in the midterm elections and Mr. Gingrich returned to the private sector.

Impeaching Bill Clinton was wholly a political decision; the substance mattered little in 1998. Two decades later, Democrats face almost the exact opposite dynamics.

For Democrats, leaving Donald Trump in office is not only good politics — it is the best chance for fundamental realignment of American politics in more than a generation. Mr. Trump is three years into destroying what we know as the Republican Party. Another two years just might finish it off. Trumpism has become Republicanism, and that spells electoral doom for the party.

Mr. Trump has abandoned most of the core principles that have defined Republicans for the past century. . . . What’s left of the party [GOP] is a rigid adherence to tax cuts, a social agenda that repels most younger Americans and rampant xenophobia and race-based politics that regularly interfere with the basic functioning of the federal government.

Republicans today are the party of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson — a coalition that, in the face of every demographic trend in America, will mean the long-term realignment of the federal government behind the Democrats.

[K]eeping President Trump in office is the best way to cement Trumpism’s hold on the Republican Party.

Republicans themselves know it, and that simple fact is a huge problem for them: By and large they don’t like him, and they know he’s a long-term problem for the party — but in the short term they know they can’t get re-elected without his voters. For Democrats, it’s the dream scenario — as long as he completes his term.

President Trump should be impeached because he is unfit for the presidency. . . . But if Newt Gingrich taught us anything, impeaching the president is likely to be bad politics.

Nothing will unite an increasingly fraying Republican Party more than trying to remove the president anywhere but at the ballot box. Democrats risk the kind of overreach that doomed the Republicans 20 years ago. And in any case Democrats are not likely to succeed in getting votes in the Senate to convict the president. And in politics, a loss is a loss — there are no moral victories.

I fully understand the historical imperative of holding the president accountable for his behavior. I also share the sentiment of so many Americans who want to punish him for what he’s done to the country. But I believe there is something bigger at stake.

Allowing Mr. Trump to lead the Republican Party, filled with sycophants and weak-willed leaders, into the next election is the greater prize. Democrats have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to realign American politics along progressive lines, very much like Ronald Reagan did for Republicans in the 1980s.

Trumpism equals Republicanism as long as Donald Trump is at the top of the ticket. And a real shift to progressivism in America will be delivered by a devastating rebuke of the president and his party, a rebuke that will return control of the Senate and state houses across the nation. Politics is always a gamble — and this is the best bet we’ve had in a long time.

The argument makes good sense. Pray that the Democrats come up with a credible 2020 presidential nominee - someone other than Warren and Sanders - and Biden.

What Next for the Democrats?

It is becoming increasingly clear that Attorney General William Barr basically lied about much of what is contained in the Mueller report and as more details emerge, Trump is clearly a lawless and dangerous force in the White House.   That said, rushing to impeach him - like the usually suspects, including Elizabeth Warren are already doing - could prove counterproductive and politically damaging.  Before any such effort is made  (if made at all), House Democrats need to carefully undertake further investigations and make the case for (i) Trump's unfitness for office, and (ii) why impeachment rather than merely voting Trump out of office in 2020 is the responsible move.  The goal would be to convince non-politically voters, including soccer moms more worried about PTA events and children sporting events that the destruction of America's democracy, why impeachment would not be a raw political exercise and put pressure on Republicans to belatedly stand to protect the constitutional order.  A column in The Atlantic makes the case for this reasoned and judicious approach.  Here are highlights:

What next? The substance of the Mueller report is only now beginning to penetrate through the fog of lies and distortions coming from the Attorney General William Barr, backed by his loyal lieutenant Rod Rosenstein. Even the redacted version makes visible the despicable behavior that emanated from the Trump campaign and the Trump White House, not to mention Trump himself, and the shocking penetration of Russia into our elections—with no visible response then or now from Republicans in power. But most Americans will not read or even get the gist of the Mueller report, or know much of what is in it, as they lead their own lives largely unfocused on politics and government.

So what should Democrats do? There is ample evidence of behavior on the part of the president that fits any reasonable definition of high crimes and misdemeanors—and most likely there will be a lot more, when the Southern District of New York and other jurisdictions of the Justice Department finish their work—at least if Barr does not stymie them. There is a constitutional responsibility for the House to follow up.

But a formal impeachment inquiry in the House Judiciary Committee would be politically perilous—and while politics cannot override duty, Democrats cannot risk the kind of 2020 backlash that would come if a large share of the voting public came to see the House as Javert-like, abandoning its focus on health care, jobs and the other issues that dominate most Americans’ lives in a monomaniacal quest to get Trump. A quick move to impeachment would be used by Trump and his acolytes, from the Senate to Fox and talk radio, to incite and outrage the GOP base.

That said, a failure to act, to do anything meaningful to bring this president and his gang of corrupt miscreants to heel, would rightfully enrage most liberal voters. Remember that the rage Republican primary voters felt at their party establishment in 2016, over broken promises to bring Obama to his knees, led to the nomination of Trump. A parallel rage among Democrats could lead to a deeply divided party and a disastrous presidential nomination.

There is, I believe, a reasonable path forward that, besides being politically palatable, has the added advantage of being the right thing to do. It starts with a coordinated and in-depth examination of the Mueller report by the House.

What we need is for the Judiciary, Intelligence, and Homeland Security Committees to conduct a series of deep dives into the areas of communication and coordination between Trump and his campaign with Russians and their surrogates, like Wikileaks; the multiple categories and areas of obstruction of justice that Mueller outlined; the threats to our intelligence operations and our justice system from Trump and his operatives; and the moves by Russia to interfere in and influence our elections used by Trump and unchecked by Republicans. Other committees, such as Ways and Means and Banking, need to be ready to do the same thing as more information emerges from the SDNY and the New York Attorney General, among others, about Trump’s financial dealings, including with the Russians, and about Russian money-laundering.

Democrats need to stage and coordinate hearings across committees and subcommittees, to make sure they do not overload Americans’ ability to pay attention. Most important, they need to structure the public hearings in a dramatically different way than usual. Each committee needs to use experienced counsel—a good examples might be former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara—and limit if not abandon opening statements, except from the chairs. No five-minute rounds of questions going down the line of every committee member, . . .

Give the counsel an hour to set the frame and ask in-depth questions. Either follow that with another round for the counsel or have a small group of committee members take 15 or 30 minutes to ask questions in a sustained way with coordinated themes. This system might cause hard feelings among members who will not get their five minutes in the sun—and would reduce the public role for chairs—but it is better-suited to accomplish the larger goal. And that larger goal is to build a compelling record, through vivid testimony, of what Trump and his people, including his children, did and did not do, said and did not say truthfully, that are the core of Mueller’s report.

That kind of forum should be supplemented by another. Committees should do a series of roundtables, discussions with leading experts with deep experience in the Justice Department, including the FBI, in the White House, in the intelligence world, and elsewhere, to discuss in depth whether the behaviors they have seen in the Trump administration are typical or unusual, acceptable or unacceptable.

All of this is, in my view, a necessary predicate to the formal impeachment inquiry that could then follow. If done well—even as the House brought up measures to shore up the Affordable Care Act, to protect children from family separation, to improve the lives of working families, to begin to address infrastructure needs and clean energy, along with oversight of failures in disaster relief, border activities, college loan policy, and corruption in many departments—then impeachment would look powerfully more like a logical and necessary step, less like a vindictive, partisan move.

Democrats should not jump the gun on impeachment. But it would be a serious dereliction of duty if they did not move now to set the stage for what should happen when the time and setting are right.

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