The Conversation -- May 25, 2024
Lauren Egan of Politico: "President Joe Biden delivered the commencement address at the United States Military Academy on Saturday, leaning into themes about the importance of protecting democracy. Speaking on a sunny spring morning in an outdoor stadium..., Biden called the graduating class 'guardians of American democracy' and stressed that maintaining freedom required 'constant vigilance.'... Biden never mentioned former President Donald Trump by name. But his emphasis on duty, democracy and protecting the Constitution had clear political undertones and underscored a central message of his reelection bid." ~~~
~~~ Tyler Pager of the Washington Post: "President Biden reminded the graduating class of the U.S. Military Academy on Saturday that their oath is to the Constitution, not any political party or president, delivering an implicit rebuke of ... Donald Trump. In his 22-minute commencement address, Biden ... made clear that he was referring to his Republican opponent by pointing to a letter that was a clear reprimand of Trump's leadership. The open letter, signed by more than 1,000 West Point alumni, was addressed to the graduating class of 2020 before Trump delivered the commencement address here. It came just days after military police helped forcibly clear peaceful protesters outside the White House ahead of a Trump photo op. The alumni reminded that year's graduating class that they pledge service to 'no monarch; no government; no political party; no tyrant.' 'Remember what over 1,000 graduates of West Point wrote to the class of 2020 four years ago,' Biden said. 'The oath you've taken here "has no expiration date," they said.'"
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times on how Donald Trump is still stuck in the greed-is-good '80s.
RAS was wondering last week why it took more than three years to learn that Insurrectionist Sam & the Little Missus were flying a symbol of the January 6 rioters just days after the attempted coup. Well, that seems to be because the Washington Post decided not to tell us about it. So far, in all of our (okay, two) encounters over the years with Mrs. Alito, we have found that she is a highly-strung sort of person who does not handle questions well, so not well-suited to be the spouse of a public figure.
Signs of Distress. Justin Jouvenal & Ann Marimow of the Washington Post: "The wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a Washington Post reporter in January 2021 that an upside-down American flag recently flown on their flagpole was 'an international signal of distress' and indicated that it had been raised in response to a neighborhood dispute. Martha-Ann Alito made the comments when the reporter went to the couple's Fairfax County, Va., home to follow up on a tip about the flag, which was no longer flying when he arrived. The incident documented by reporter Robert Barnes, who covered the Supreme Court for The Post for 17 years and retired last year, offers fresh details about the raising of the flag and the first account of comments about it by the justice's wife. The Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice, and connected to a dispute with her neighbors, a Post spokeswoman said. It was not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics, the spokeswoman said....
"Barnes ... encountered the [Alitos] coming out of the house. Martha-Ann Alito was visibly upset by his presence, demanding that he 'get off my property.' As he described the information he was seeking, she yelled, 'It's an international signal of distress!'... Alito intervened and directed his wife into a car parked in their driveway.... The justice denied the flag was hung upside down as a political protest, saying it stemmed from a neighborhood dispute and indicating that his wife had raised it. Martha-Ann Alito then got out of the car and shouted in apparent reference to the neighbors: 'Ask them what they did!' She said yard signs about the couple had been placed in the neighborhood. After getting back in the car, she exited again and then brought out from their residence a novelty flag, the type that would typically decorate a garden. She hoisted it up the flagpole. 'There! Is that better?' she yelled.... One resident ... said the flag flew for between two and five days." ~~~
~~~ Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "If flying one of these two [insurrectionists'] flags was enough, along with his sympauthetic posture toward the insurrectionists in recent oral arguments, to raise suspicions about Alito's allegiances, then flying both is as close as we'll likely get to clear confirmation that he stands, ideologically, with the men and women who tried to overturn the Constitution for the sake of Donald Trump."
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Alan Feuer of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutors on Friday night asked the judge overseeing ... Donald J. Trump's classified documents case to bar him from making any statements that might endanger law enforcement agents involved in the proceedings. Prosecutors tendered the request after Mr. Trump made what they described as 'grossly misleading' assertions about the F.B.I.'s August 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago.... This week, the former president falsely suggested that the F.B.I. had been authorized to shoot him.... 'Those deceptive and inflammatory assertions irresponsibly put a target on the backs of the F.B.I. agents involved in this case, as Trump well knows,' prosecutors wrote.... The request to Judge [Aileen] Cannon was the first time that prosecutors in the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith, have sought to restrict Mr. Trump's public statements in the classified documents case.... Prosecutors did not seek to impose a gag order on Mr. Trump..., but instead asked Judge Cannon to revise his conditions of release to forbid him to make any public comments 'that pose a significant, imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation.'" CNN's story is here. ~~~
~~~ Marie: Apparently what most upset Trump's lawyers: prosecutors had filed their motion "on a holiday weekend."
Biden's DOJ authorized use of deadly force against President Trump in the Mar-a-Lago raid. -- Donald Trump, social media post, May 21
A shocking claim -- that President Biden ordered the assassination of his rival -- was allowed to take root on the flimsiest of evidence. The original citation was in a three-month-old filing by Trump's lawyers -- a filing that misleadingly quoted from standard FBI language in search-warrant instructions. As is typical in social media frenzies, quotes were taken out of context without due diligence or actual reporting. Then Trump used the outrage to gin up a fundraising appeal. Ironically, Trump in his effort to win immunity for his actions as president has suggested that ordering the killing of a rival would not be subject to criminal prosecution. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post (Also linked yesterday.)
This is just a way to turn the creepy immunity argument that a president has the right to order Seal Team Six to kill his political opponent inside out -- the 'I know you are but what am I' tactic they love so much. But it's also dangerous. This ratchets up the lie that Biden is the extremist who threatens democracy and the rule of law but the difference is that MAGA is full of violent, gun toting weirdos who have already shown a willingness to take matters into their own hands. It's as irresponsible as it gets. -- digby, who copied the WashPo's timeline of how the right wing makes up a shocking story (Thanks to RAS for the link.) (Also linked yesterday.)
Related story re: Merrick Garland linked yesterday.
~~~ Marie: I was surprised that Trump's assertion that President Biden had authorized his assassination received so little attention from authorities and from the media. Of all of the tens of thousands of lies Trump has told, this was surely the most outrageous -- and most dangerous. Fortunately, after some 24 hours, Merrick Garland caught up with me, and now so has Jack Smith.
Ryan Reilly of NBC News: "A Donald Trump supporter who attacked officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol while wearing a 'MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN' sweatshirt was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison on Friday, lashing out at the Trump-appointed judge who sentenced him. Federal prosecutors had sought 14 years in federal prison for Christopher Quaglin, saying the New Jersey man was one of the most violent Jan. 6 rioters and 'viciously assaulted numerous officers' after calling for 'Civil War' and boasting about armed patriots storming the Capitol. [After Judge Trevor McFadden imposed the sentence, Quaglin said, 'You're Trump's worst mistake of 2016.'... Trump [appointed McFadden] in 2017."
Ryan Reilly of NBC News: "A Jan. 6 rioter dubbed 'Sedition Panda' for the costume head he wore when he stormed the Capitol has been convicted on each of the eight charges he faced, including assaulting a police officer. Jesse James Rumson was convicted Friday of assaulting Prince George's County Cpl. Scott Ainsworth, a lifelong Republican who testified about the Jan. 6 riot during Rumson's trial last week.... Rumson opted for a bench trial before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Donald Trump appointee who has been one of the most lenient judges for Jan. 6 defendants."
Presidential Race
Karen Yourish & Charlie Smart of the New York Times: "... Donald J. Trump has baselessly and publicly cast doubt about the fairness of the 2024 election about once a day, on average, since he announced his candidacy for president, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Though the tactic is familiar -- Mr. Trump raised the specter of a 'rigged' election in the 2016 and 2020 cycles, too -- his attempts to undermine the 2024 contest are a significant escalation. Mr. Trump's refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election had historic consequences. The so-called 'Big Lie' ... led to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol and two of four criminal indictments against Mr. Trump, as well as his second impeachment. But Mr. Trump had planted seeds of doubt among his followers long before Election Day, essentially setting up a no-lose future for himself: Either he would prevail, or the election would be rigged. He has never given up that framing, which no evidence supports, even well after the end of his presidency. And as he seeks to return to the White House, the same claim has become the backbone of his campaign." (Also linked yesterday.)
Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "It cannot be overstated how Trump's deportation plan would surely rank as one of the worst crimes perpetrated by the federal government on the people of this country.... [The plan] begins, as [Stephen] Miller explained ... last year, with creating a national deportation forceBecause it would be beyond the capacity of the federal government to immediately return detainees to their 'home' countries, the Trump team also plans to build 'vast holding facilities that would function as staging centers' for immigrants on land near the Texas border. Internment camps, essentially.... On the first day of his second term, the campaign has let it be known, Trump will sign an executive order 'to withhold passports, Social Security numbers and other government benefits from children of undocumented immigrants born in the United States.'" (Also linked yesterday.)
So here is a bit of Michael Gold's New York Times report on Donald Trump's rally in the Bronx Thursday: "In front of [Trump] was a more diverse crowd than is typical of his rallies, with many Black and Hispanic voters sporting bright red 'Make America Great Again; hats and other Trump-themed apparel ordinarily scarce in deep-blue New York City. Still more people stood outside, waiting to get past security.... As he spoke, more than 100 protesters demonstrated outside the fenced-off area of Crotona Park where he had staged the rally.... As the protesters were demonstrating, the atmosphere became momentarily charged, with Trump supporters and anti-Trump protesters screaming obscenities at one another from across the street. The New York Police Department began separating both sides, lining the streets with metal barricades." Gold had one helper: Jeffery Mays. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: Okay, sounds as if the report could be realistic. Lots of Trump fans, but a smattering of protesters. HOWEVER, this might be a good time to emphasize that the New York Times is in New York City. So is the Bronx. So I do kinda wonder why the Times didn't see this: ~~~
~~~ Colby Hall of Mediaite: "... Donald Trump repeatedly boasted about the crowd size attending Thursday's political rally in the Bronx, as his custom. However, a local New York evening news report from ABC7's Jim Dolan revealed a different story about how many people attended and who actually made up the crowd.... But b-roll of the event shown to viewers during Dolan's report painted a remarkably different picture than what Trump boasted about regarding crowd size[.] Dolan then pivoted to the home states of the pro-Trump rallygoers in attendance, with the aid of an unnamed professor who said, 'They're all from out of state. Go out there. Look at all them. Call that a pocket check out of where they came from. Tennessee. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Texas.... It's just not clear that the people who attended were from the Bronx. The campaign controlled who got in, and the campaign, of course, picked only supporters." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
Image: Donald Trump speaking before a huge crowd in the Bronx on Thursday, like nothing anybody's ever seen.
Jada Yuan & Janay Kingsberry of the Washington Post: "A lawyer for ... Donald Trump has accused the filmmakers of 'The Apprentice' of defamation and illegal election interference in a cease and desist letter obtained by The Washington Post. The docudrama, which premiered to a huge standing ovation at the Cannes Film Festival on Monday, stars Sebastian Stan as the future president and tracks Trump's rise to power and malevolence as a New York real estate mogul in the '70s and '80s. It depicts Trump as a rapist, and has been broadly attacked by the former president's lawyers as a politically-motivated fabrication.... The U.S. Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that movies are protected under the free speech clause of the First Amendment.... The film, which [director Ali] Abbasi has said he hopes to release in mid-September during the presidential debates, still has no U.S. distribution."
Absolute Immunity, Everywhere. Carl Gibson of AlterNet: "... Donald Trump is reportedly laying the groundwork to make it so he can be effectively above the law if elected to a second term this November. According to a Friday report in Rolling Stone, Trump is reaching out to Republicans in Congress and urging them to pass legislation to make it essentially impossible for local district attorneys and state attorneys general to prosecute him in court. The bill is called the 'Stop Political Prosecutions Act,' and would shield all former presidents from all non-federal prosecutions by allowing a president to move local and state cases to federal court."
Senator/Veep Contender Flies Insurrection Flag. Proudly! Edith Omstead of the Daily Beast, republished by Yahoo! News Australia: "Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), who is reportedly a top contender for Donald Trump's vice presidential pick, has jumped on the bandwagon of flying the Christian nationalist 'Appeal To Heaven' flag. Cotton proudly announced on social media that he had installed the flag outside his Senate office. 'I stand with George Washington and Martha-Ann Alito over pearl-clutching libs at the New York Times and Democrats in Congress,' he wrote."
Note to Insurrectionist Sam: It's Simple, Stupid. Judge Michael Ponsor in a New York Times op-ed: "Flying those flags was tantamount to sticking a 'Stop the steal' bumper sticker on your car. You just don't do it."
Benjamin Weiser & Tracey Tully of the New York Times: "In a potential setback for the government, a federal judge on Friday blocked the introduction of certain evidence that prosecutors wanted to use to support their case that Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey accepted bribes in exchange for approving billions of dollars in aid to Egypt.... The ruling rests on protections afforded to members of Congress under the Constitution's 'speech or debate' clause, which bars the government from citing specific legislative actions in seeking to prove a federal lawmaker committed a crime." ~~~
~~~ Marie: The Supremes already have made it extremely difficult to prove public officials have been bribed. Invoking the speech and debate clause could make it impossible: if an official's corrupt acts are "official acts," as they are bound to be, and if those official acts are protected behavior, then there's no way to show the triers of fact that an official responded to a bribe by fulfilling the conditions of the bribe. Neat!
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Texas. David Goodman of the New York Times: "The families of schoolchildren who were shot at Robb Elementary School in 2022 filed two lawsuits on Friday accusing Instagram, the publisher of the popular 'Call of Duty' video game and a manufacturer of semiautomatic rifles of helping to train and equip the teenage gunman who committed the massacre. The unusual lawsuits were filed on the second anniversary of the elementary school shooting, in which 19 fourth-graders and two teachers were killed in their classrooms by an 18-year-old gunman who had purchased his weapon -- an AR-15-style rifle -- a few days before, as soon as he was legally able. While much of the attention in the aftermath of the shooting has been on the flawed police response, the two suits -- one filed in California, the other in Texas -- focus on the gunman and the companies that he regularly interacted with leading up to the shooting. Each company, the lawsuits claim, took part in 'grooming' the teenager to become a mass shooter."
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Haiti. Frances Robles & David Adams of the New York Times: "An Oklahoma-based missionary group working in Haiti's capital was attacked by gangs on Thursday night, leaving two Americans and the group's director dead, the organization, Missions in Haiti, announced on Facebook. Missions in Haiti runs a school for 450 children, as well as two churches and a children's home in the Bon Repos neighborhood in the northern outskirts of Port-au-Prince, which is widely known to be controlled by two local gangs.... The attack occurred Thursday, after two different groups of gangs descended on the organization's compound, attacked employees and stole the organization's vehicles."
Israel/Palestine, et al.
The New York Times' live updates of developments Saturday in the Israel/Hamas war are here.
** Mike Corder of the AP: "The top United Nations court ordered Israel on Friday to immediately halt its military offensive< in the southern Gaza city of Rafah -- but stopped short of ordering a cease-fire for the enclave. While Israel is unlikely to comply with the order, it will ratchet up the pressure on the increasingly isolated country. Criticism of Israel's conduct in the war in Gaza has been growing, particularly once it turned its focus to Rafah.... Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is also under heavy pressure at home to end the war, which was triggered when Hamas-led militants stormed into Israel, killing 1,200 people, most civilians, and taking some 250 captive. Thousands of Israelis have joined weekly demonstrations calling on the government to reach a deal to bring the hostages home, fearing that time is running out.... The International Court of Justice ... does not have a police force to enforce its orders." (Also linked yesterday.)
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The editor of the local paper has foolishly given me more space to rant (or sermonize). And whaddya know? Today's almost Sunday.
his in today's weekend edition:
Recent news of the flags flown at Supreme Court Justice Alito’s homes (he blamed his wife for one of them) has me thinking about shingles, the chickenpox virus that lurks in our bodies, ready to break out in painful rashes at any moment.
Displaying flags carried by the Jan. 6 rioters representing their belief that the 2020 election was stolen and that they had a God-given responsibility to rebel against unjust rule (nytimes.com; slate.com) is a comment on something other than Mr. and Mrs. Alito's mental states. Because Mr. Alito is a Supreme Court Justice , their actions have disturbing political implications. They both apparently share with Justice Thomas’ wife, Ginny, the thoroughly discounted “stop the steal” fantasy. As we know, Ginny Thomas actively participated in Republicans’ attempt to halt the House of Representatives’ certification of Biden’s 2020 victory.
Since Justices Alito and Thomas sit on the Supreme Court that is now delaying a decision on whether presidents are absolutely and always above the law, it is natural to wonder to what degree partisan politics is affecting the Court’s slow walk to a decision. After all, that same question was decided by the Magna Carta in 1215. Eight hundred years ago, even kings were not above the law.
In our own time, dozens of Republican Representatives and Senators objected to certifying the 2020 election, and the current Republican presidential candidate, still claiming the 2020 election was stolen, has repeatedly said he will not accept the results of the 2024 election if he loses. This anti-democracy infection has spread to vice-presidential hopefuls like Senator Marco Rubio, who just the other day said that he wouldn’t accept a negative election result.
Not liking the will of the people is one thing. Attempting to subvert it is another.
So, what’s happening? Whatever it is, it’s not new. Those who don’t like democracy have been with us since our beginnings. After a court martial and a stiff rebuke from George Washington, embittered and broke Benedict Arnold decided that working for the British King would salve his hurt feelings and fatten his empty purse. Because Benedict Arnold was the first famous traitor to the nascent United States, we still know his name.
But Arnold was just the first of many who over our history have allied themselves with anti-democratic forces here and abroad. During the Civil War, the South sought ties with England, which was still smarting over its lost colonies. In the last century, prominent Americans like Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford championed Adolph Hitler’s antisemitism and white supremacy. Some senators and congressmen willingly participated in the Nazi propaganda effort. They toed the non-interventionist Nazi line (“Europe for Europeans, America for Americans”) in their speeches, writings, and votes, and even made their postage-free franking privileges available for mass mailings of Nazi material, thereby cleverly billing the United States for its own destruction (npr.org).
That our elected or appointed servants, regardless of position or eminence, would act against the precepts of the Constitution and the will of the people is very disturbing, but they could never do so without support. Behind them are many others who don’t like democracy either.
We know one of our political parties has established increasingly cozy relationships with dictators around the globe.
Dictators don’t ask permission or abide by popular votes. They threaten, bribe, cheat, and punish, but they are never short on promises. They are always willing to step forward and say, “I alone can fix it.” History is rife with such characters and with the devastation their arrogance leaves behind.
Like shingles, the anti-democracy virus is always within us, ready to burst forth and take control. It has done so time and again in our history, and there are many signs we have entered another period when the rash of totalitarianism is visible on the body politic.
Some have said that those under stress are prone to a shingles outbreak. Though the evidence for that claim is unclear, there is little doubt that social turmoil and uncertainty invite despotism. Because we live in a time of anxiety and dissatisfaction heightened by unfounded and frequently hysterical reports about how bad things are, our democracy is again in peril.
GlaxoSmithKline makes an effective shingles vaccine, but medical science cannot protect us from despotism.
It is how we vote that can.
The master marketer who still sometimes brings up the Steele dossier himself decides to try to get his Congress critters to pass the Stop PP Act that is all centered on himself. Lol
Last week's news, I know:
But it's something other than comforting to know that the wife of a SCOTUS justice thinks the best answer to an irritating neighbor is a "neener--neenrer."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2024/05/25/alito-flag-martha-ann-washington-post/
The Alito's dinner table conversations must be a joy to hear. I'm guessing they would not be Holmesian.
FFS
These reporters support the Alito approach of just universally believing anything a powerful Republican tells you no questions asked.
"The wife of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. told a Washington Post reporter in January 2021 that an upside-down American flag recently flown on their flagpole was “an international signal of distress” and indicated that it had been raised in response to a neighborhood dispute.
Martha-Ann Alito made the comments when the reporter went to the couple’s Fairfax County, Va., home to follow up on a tip about the flag, which was no longer flying when he arrived.
The incident documented by reporter Robert Barnes, who covered the Supreme Court for The Post for 17 years and retired last year, offers fresh details about the raising of the flag and the first account of comments about it by the justice’s wife.
The Post decided not to report on the episode at the time because the flag-raising appeared to be the work of Martha-Ann Alito, rather than the justice, and connected to a dispute with her neighbors, a Post spokeswoman said. It was not clear then that the argument was rooted in politics, the spokeswoman said."
"Mock Paper Scissors" blog copied from Axios alist of To-Do priorities for DiJiT's 2nd (Turd?) term. Authors note that it contains no items concerning the economy, even though that subject is clearly high on many voters' anxiety charts.
If I were a debate coach for President Biden, I would use this or a similar list from which to choose topics to get DiJiT to display his ignorance and malevolence. Each item comes from DiJiT's word-like public utters. So for instance, "You said you'd round up, encamp and deport over ten million people. Should those camps all be in the border states, or spread around like defense contracts and federal prisons providing local jobs?