brainiac conspiracy

Today's Worst Persons

The Roberts Court.

Have we always been governed by monsters, or is this a fairly recent development?

---Baron V

Down Memory Lane

I wasn't surprised when the deal went down, but the thing that's really astounding about the Supremes' latest ruling on campaign finance legislation is that, basically, they ignore the reason how and why campaign-finance legislation came into being in the first place. It wasn't because some government bureaucrat was bored at work one day, and decided to deprive some billionaire of his free-speech rights for the simple fun of it! At the time, the amount of money and influence-peddling that was going on at the Nixon White House was so all-pervasive that it mortified people from both political parties. Of course, it's par for the course now, but it was not ever thus.

---Baron V

No Limits

Can't say I'm the least bit surprised at how the Supreme Court ruled today---"money = speech" is their story, after all, and they're stickin' to it---other than to say that it underscores the fact that the only way we can possibly get the Big Money out of our political process will be by way of Constitutional amendment. That's going to be a heavy---impossible?---lift, obviously, but one way we can increase our odds of success is to elect people to represent us in Washington who will pledge to support such an amendment. That's one reason (among many) why I'm supporting this person to represent me in Congress. If you live in the district, please consider voting for her. If you don't, consider sending her some money. We need 535 people exactly like her working on Capitol Hill.

---Baron V

Plessy v. Hobby Lobby

We've been there before, it could happen again. It all comes down to how much damage the Chief Justice wants to wreak on the commonweal. In this case, I am guessing plenty. Would love to be proved wrong!

---Baron V

Always Happens This Way

After five men on the Supreme Court strip women's contraception out of the Goldberg Act, I'd be willing to bet that'll be the last we'll ever hear on the subject. Because compromising with the forced-birthers has worked so well up to now. If only Sandy O'Connor were still on the bench . . .

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

Barack Obama.

I know the serious persons of official Washington love this centrist post-partisan shit, but it's not as though right-wing ideologues are underrepresented on the federal bench. So, why then?

---Baron V

Hidden History II

Elaborating on the previous, amazing what we learn---or aren't allowed to---years after the fact:

As soon as he had heard the devastating news from Dallas on the afternoon of Nov. 22, 1963, Attorney General Robert Kennedy immediately suspected that his brother had been the victim of a plot. RFK believed that the shadowy assassination operation against Fidel Castro---a dark alliance between the CIA and the Mafia---had somehow been turned against President Kennedy. When Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby stunned the nation by shooting Oswald on national TV while he was being escorted through the basement of the Dallas Police Department, Bobby and his Justice Department investigators quickly turned their attention to Ruby. Within hours, RFK’s men found that Ruby had numerous connections to organized crime.

Your humble blogger came to the same exact conclusion some time ago, and as horrific as it sounds, it's the most plausible explanation for what happened in Dallas. The fact that the CIA still continues to keep so much of what it knows under wraps, even after 50 years, would tend to suggest that they fear the political fallout that would ensue if the classified info ever saw the light of day. What other conceivable reason could there be for withholding it after all this time? Regardless, the single-bullet bullshit (coined by a major bullshit artist, no surprise) has never passed the sniffer test, so we'll need another Snowden if we are ever to get at the truth.

---Baron V

Arcs of History

One of the more depressing---okay, maybe "sobering" is a better word---elements of our politics today is the realization that what we refer to as social "progress" is not some inevitable thing: in other words, after decades of fighting for minority voting rights, women's reproductive rights, workers' rights, immigrants' rights, etc., that these gains in social equality would automatically usher in a social order that was ever-increasingly fairer and more just over time when we can see, in our own time, that this is clearly not the case. Yes, we're seeing great progress in some policy arenas---marriage equality and gay rights, obviously---but also a great deal of regression in many others. To those of us who came of age during some of 20th-Century liberalism's greatest policy triumphs, it seemed at the time that many of them---like voting rights and reproductive rights---were matters of settled law. But of course, policy written can also be policy unwritten/repealed, and many of us---present company included---naively overlooked the possibility that there might be a stubborn claque of wealthy and privileged people in this country who had no intention of ever sharing the spoils of empire with the blahs, the sluts and the queers, and that they would go to great lengths to roll back the gains made in the first three decades of the postwar era.

What I'm trying to get at here is: even when you "win" a progressive policy battle, you never truly win in the final and ultimate sense because there will always be some people---most of them with lots of money and power---who will never respect the legitimacy of your claim to power and who will work ceaselessly to deprive you of it. We've seen this most nakedly in the field of abortion rights. That's why, when you have your foot on the reactionaries' throats---as Team Democrat had four years ago---you'd damn well better stomp down hard instead of helping them back onto their feet as a gesture of bipartisan comity. That's just how the game is played. And since Team Democrat may very well be in that same position soon, we can only hope that they've learned the lesson that bipartisanship-for-its-own-sake is a recipe for failed government because the other side doesn't respect their ability to govern. The best way to ensure women's reproductive rights or workers' union rights is not to try to make deals with people who want to destroy those rights. It is, after all, only common sense.

---Baron V

No Money for Bridge and Levee Repairs

Because there's too much money to be made guarding our freedoms.

Not to accuse anyone of any improprieties here, but there are some pretty obvious ways you could get rich off this kind of portfolio when your agency can hack and crash most of the major players. They should seriously think about selling their shares before anyone starts to think that they're just more freeloaders on the security gravy train, and that with very rare exceptions, we don't need them at all.

---Baron V

Legacy Hires

Governing isn't simply about debating and interpreting legislation right now, it's also about debating and interpreting legislation years into the future. And the best way to ensure that both current and future interpretations of legislation are in harmonious accord is to make sure you have people working in government many years hence who are in accord with your agenda right now. That won't happen, however, as long as Team Democrat insists on playing nice with crazy people who have no intent on playing nice in return, and who have been planning for years to turn the nation's appellate court system into the legal arm of the Chamber of Commerce:

This year’s The Federalist Society: How Conservatives Took the Law Back From Liberals, by Michael Avery and Danielle McLaughlin, says, “Every single federal judge appointed by President George H.W. Bush or President George W. Bush was either a member or approved by members of the Federalist Society,” a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers formed in 1982 to counter the influence of “orthodox liberal ideology which advocates a centralized and uniform society.”

---Baron V

Just Like Pro Wrestling

Their alternating please-the-right, then please-the-left decisions this week have left some folks shaking their heads in puzzlement, but your humble blogger thinks the Federalist Five have, as a rule, been altogether predictable in an overwhelming number of their judgments. Generally speaking, they favor the individual over the state (as with marriage equality); state and county governments over the federal government (as with voting rights); and corporations over, basically, everyone. They did it with Citizens United, of course, and they did it again this week. Like I said, they're sticking to the script they've been given, and they've memorized their lines exceedingly well.

(Via.)

---Baron V

Not Completely Unexpected

And truth to tell, it's not the worst thing that could have happened since they acknowledged the necessity and legitimacy of pre-clearance, i.e., federal oversight of local elections. That's a big fucking deal! And given that voter disenfranchisement scams have gone nationwide and are no longer confined to the Old Confederacy, the pre-clearance protocol really needs to be extended to every county in every state. So the next time Team Democrat has a working majority in both Houses of Congress, they should consider writing a new Voting Rights Act that does exactly that. In the meantime, of course, the other side will do everything in its power to keep de colored folks from exercising their citizenship rights, but they can be expected to keep doing that anyway. That's just how they roll.

Either way, however, it's another gentle reminder that when the voters give our side a mandate to govern, we should do our best to, you know, actually govern, and not waste our time kvetching and moaning about not having 60 votes.

---Baron V

Today's Worst Persons

The Roberts Court:

Karen Bartlett suffered horrific injuries as a side effect of the generic drug sulindac, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. She sued the drug manufacturer under New Hampshire law, alleging strict product liability. The jury found that sulindac was unreasonably dangerous, and awarded Bartlett $21 million in damages. The manufacturer challenged the award, arguing that it was impossible for it to simultaneously avoid liability under New Hampshire law and comply with the FDA’s design and labeling requirements. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit rejected that argument, holding that the manufacturer could comply with both sets of law by simply not selling sulindac in New Hampshire, or by paying the small number of patients who suffer the adverse side effects.

The Supreme Court reversed.

Sometimes they rule in favor of the individual, and sometimes they rule in favor of the government. But when it comes to issuing rulings on the corporation, these guys know exactly what's expected of them, and they sure know how to deliver the goods. Most freedoms evah!

---Baron V

Our Freedoms

As your humble blogger has been reminding you all week, most of them are, in fact, fake.

---Baron V

Court Jesters

Looking back, it's fortunate that the President got to make two Supreme Court appointments fairly early into his first term, i.e., before the Teabilly freshman class rode the crazy train to Congress. Because, cautious notes of optimism aside, I am willing to bet he gets no more court appointments for the remainder of his tenure. Zero. Yes, that could change---drastically!---if Team Democrat follows through on its many sternly worded warnings and decides that they only need 51 votes, not 60, to confirm federal judgeships. But they've been playing that tune for the last four years, and there's been nothing to stop them from doing it all the while. If they couldn't muster the courage to pull the trigger for legislation that just about everyone in the country supported, why should anyone think they'll show the requisite spine on something as profound as a lifetime judicial appointment? I guess what I am saying is, I'll believe it when I see it since it's been a sucker's bet the last couple of years to pick the crazy people to stay crazy and the gun-shy to remain gun-shy. Would love it if they proved me wrong, though.

---Baron V

Bullshit

This:

Democrats are preparing to escalate the dispute this summer by scheduling numerous confirmation votes in a short period of time. If, as Democrats expect, Republicans block those nominations, Mr. Obama and his allies hope the public will notice. With enough public pressure, some Democrats hope that they could change the Senate rules to prohibit filibusters on judicial nominations and in some other areas. "A single blocked nomination may not generate much publicity, but by blocking so many nominees at once, the Republicans are overplaying their hand," Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, told reporters on Thursday. "The other side must be careful. If they think they can win a debate over whether the Senate should change its rules, they might very well be mistaken."

This is just another excuse to do nothing. The public doesn't pay attention to circuit-court appointments or cloture motions---most people don't even know what the hell they even are. Most people don't even get what the damn filibuster is all about.

You want to confirm some judges, then confirm some judges. I've never been too sanguine about filibuster reform, but if that's what it takes, then that's what it takes. But stop waiting for "public pressure" to change the game. We already saw how much good "public pressure" did to achieve some sensible background-check legislation, didn't we?

---Baron V

More Worst Persons

Today, in fact, there are nine of them:

If someone could copy Monsanto’s product, “a patent would plummet in value after the first sale of the first item containing the invention,” Kagan wrote. “And that would result in less incentive for innovation than Congress wanted.”

This may be a correct reading of the law---hey, it was unanimous!---but health and safety issues aside, it completely ignores the reality that the Monsanto business model is built on stifling innovation it can't control by acquiring a monopoly on crop seeds. Perhaps this was the wrong case to challenge their dominance of the market, but the fact is, for all intents and purposes they have acquired a monopoly on crop seeds, and farmers who don't get with the program get put out of business. In another day, this would have been cause for concern, but I guess we don't live in those days anymore. It would be nice if it was, though, because once this patent power over the global food supply is officially written into established law, it's only a matter of time before the critters who eat the crops and the people who eat the critters get patented, too. On the other hand, that would be some awesome innovation!

---Baron V

Today's Worst Person

She had to remind us that she's still alive:

Looking back, O’Connor said, she isn’t sure the high court should have taken the case.

“It took the case and decided it at a time when it was still a big election issue,” O’Connor said during a talk with the Chicago Tribune’s Editorial Board on Friday. “Maybe the court should have said, ‘We’re not going to take it, goodbye.’”

The case, she said, “stirred up the public” and “gave the court a less-than-perfect reputation.”

Meanwhile, reputations.

And 100,000 people said "goodbye" to their lives!

Also too, stirring up the public.

Gee, decisions sure have consequences, don't they?

We should never stop remembering that the many evils that America has visited upon the world---and upon itself---over the last decade or so would likely never have happened absent an assist from five of the most awful human beings to have ever walked among us. Tramp the dirt down, and all that.

---Baron V

Stuff I Learned Today

Basically, that hetero couples should be allowed to marry and homo couples shouldn't be allowed to marry because hetero couples can make babies when they have sexytime and homo couples can't, and because the only meaningful purpose for people to get married is, well, to make babies.

Which might come as a bit of a surprise to these people, and these people, and these people.

I think what really amazes me about this issue is that we are still litigating it in the 21st fucking century. One would think that an enlightened nation would have put this matter to rest decades ago, so I guess we can conclude that we don't live in a particularly enlightened nation.

---Baron V

Also Not Evil

As mentioned earlier, there is little political price to pay anymore for calling bullshit on the bullshit-slingers, so before the members of Team Democrat go stampeding to make a Grand Bargain with the bullshit-slingers, perhaps they would be better served by viewing this as a teachable moment:

Justice Kagan: Well, suppose a State said, because we think that the focus of marriage really should be on procreation, we are not going to give marriage licenses anymore to any couple where both people are over the age of 55. Would that be constitutional?

Mr. Cooper: No, Your Honor, it would not be constitutional.

Justice Kagan: Because that's the same State interest, I would think, you know, if you are over the age of 55, you don't help us serve the Government's interest in regulating procreation through marriage. So why is that different?

Mr. Cooper: Your Honor, even with respect to couples over the age of 55, it is very rare that both parties to the couple are infertile, and the traditional---

Justice Kagan: I can just assure you, if both the woman and the man are over the age of 55, there are not a lot of children coming out of that marriage.

---Baron V