Weekend Open Thread

23 thoughts on “Weekend Open Thread”

1. Fascist Mom's For Liberty. Heather Cox-Richardson.

   Moms for Liberty, which bills itself as a group protecting children, organized in 2021 to protest mask mandates in schools, then graduated on to crusade against the teaching of “critical race theory.” That, right there, was a giveaway because that panic was created by then-journalist Christopher Rufo, who has emerged as a leader of the U.S. attack on democracy. 

   Rufo embraces the illiberal democracy, or Christian democracy, of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, saying: “It’s time to clean house in America: remove the attorney general, lay siege to the universities, abolish the teachers’ unions, and overturn the school boards.” Radical right activists like Rufo believe they must capture the central institutions of the U.S. and get rid of the tenets of democracy—individual rights, academic freedom, free markets, separation of church and state, equality before the law—in order to save the country. 

   Because those central democratic values are taught in schools, the far right has focused on attacking schools from kindergartens to universities with the argument that they are places of “liberal indoctrination.” As a Moms for Liberty chapter in Indiana put on its first newspaper: “He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.” While this quotation is often used by right-wing Christian groups to warn of what they claim liberal groups do, it is attributed to German dictator Adolf Hitler. Using it boomeranged on the Moms for Liberty group not least because it coincided with the popular “Shiny Happy People” documentary about the far-right religious Duggar family that showed the “grooming” and exploitation of children in that brand of evangelicalism. 

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   1. https://youtu.be/tSBWmxwT8So

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   2. Qarens for a qaring 'murica

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   3. "which bills itself as a group protecting children"

      It's the second coming of Anita Bryant and her campaign to protect the children circa 1978.

      The more things change, the more they circle the drain.

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2. Holding a Grudge against the Supreme Court. Ian Milhiser

   Nor has there been some triumphant victory over racism in the United States that eradicates the case for affirmative action. Though incomes and college graduation rates have risen for all racial groups within the United States since Bakke, the median Black household still earns at least $33,000 less in annual income than the median white household.

   No, the Supreme Court did not strike down affirmative action because of any change in the law. It struck it down because racial conservatives organized. They recruited powerful institutions like the Republican Party and the Federalist Society to their cause. And then they made a deal with the devil, as Trump-skeptical legal conservatives agreed to back his bid for the presidency in return for a small army of Federalist Society judges.

   Men like Ed Blum held a grudge. And they held onto it for decades. Until they won.

   This is, of course, the same story that played out in the last Supreme Court term, when the Court eliminated the constitutional right to abortion, and when it drastically expanded the rights of gun owners. Again, there were no important new insights in any of the briefs filed in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) or in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen (2022).

   Those cases were decided the way they were because abortion foes and gun rights advocates organized, took over the Republican Party, and held onto their grudges. They have nothing whatsoever to do with “the law.”

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   1. The major questions doctrine, however, enables the Court to strike down programs, like Biden’s proposed loan relief under the Heroes Act, if a majority of the justices deem those programs too ambitious. As the Court has described this doctrine, it requires “Congress to speak clearly if it wishes to assign to an agency decisions of vast ‘economic and political significance.’”

      But this doctrine comes from nowhere at all. It is mentioned in no statute, and it certainly isn’t mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. As Justice Kagan has written, the major questions doctrine is nothing more than a “get-out-of-text-free card,” frequently used to strike down programs that are authorized by the explicit text of a federal law, but that a majority of the justices don’t like.

      Yet, while the major questions doctrine cannot be found in the text of any law, it is easy to tell the doctrine’s origin story. And that story is one about very powerful lawyers who decided to hold onto a grudge.

      As recently as the Ronald Reagan and George HW Bush administrations, when Republicans controlled the executive branch — and with it the power to wield any authority delegated to federal agencies by Congress — many of America’s preeminent legal conservatives were staunch defenders of the idea that courts should defer to those agencies. In 1989, no less of a Federalist Society eminence than Justice Antonin Scalia delivered an important lecture arguing in favor of such judicial deference.

      After President Barack Obama took office, however, and right-wing lawyers started to get a taste of what it looks like when Democrats wield executive power, all of this changed. By Obama’s second term, the Federalist Society’s annual meetings became a showcase of proposals to limit the power of executive agencies. According to a 2018 book by legal journalist David Kaplan, the reason the Trump White House chose Neil Gorsuch as their first Supreme Court nominee is because Gorsuch was an outspoken proponent of expanding the power of federal judges to strike down actions by federal agencies.

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      1. "the reason the Trump White House chose Neil Gorsuch as their first Supreme Court nominee is because Gorsuch was an outspoken proponent of expanding the power of federal judges to strike down actions by federal agencies."

         Reminding us of the gratitude we owe to Jill Stein for making his appointment possible. (Sarcasm intended)

         Maybe Cornel West will give a Republican president an opportunity to replace the septuagenarians Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito with Federalist Society candidates in their 40's.

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      2. The laughable notion that the conservative majority is not a completely unmoored activist bunch was put to rest this term.  I would love to resign from the Supreme Court bar in protest, but for certain mandatory job requirements have to stay on the rolls.  But I don't respect the court anymore.  Nor is the court worthy of respect anymore. 

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         1. 

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3. Report from Maryland on marijuana going recreational. It took over a decade for the Free State to follow Colorado, but it happened July 1.  The lines were long, the inventory ravaged and a lot of happy people.  It is the everything is $20, 25, 30, 35.  I avoided the openings and dropped in today and had an enjoyable time. 

   The other state I spend time in, Virginia, has had recreational marijuana for several years. There is no distribution system so you can possess but you cannot buy or import.  A couple more years and they get a new governor and might do the final steps.

   D.C. has recreational marijuana but it has some very strange regulations, including this gem:

   Although the District of Columbia has decriminalized possession of up to two ounces of marijuana for persons over the age of 21, federal law continues to prohibit the possession or use of any amount of marijuana. As a result, federal law enforcement officers may arrest anyone in the District of Columbia for possession or use of any amount of marijuana as a violation of federal law.

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4. Merika . Where anyone can grow up to be POTUS!!

   

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   1. I think that Hunter Biden should have taken the gun charge to trial and had Dudley Brown to appear for him pro hac vice to present a zealous Second Amendment defense.

      Sure, his dad's credibility with the gun safety organization might have taken a hit but both Bidens could assert that each is his own man when it comes to political issues.

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   2. Well, at least he can announce he's running for POTUS …

      There are 492 candidates on the Federal Election Commission's list. 

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5. Question for legal eagles on here

   Are the names of law school graduates, i.e., those with a JD degree, listed on a database in each state? If so, which database? 

   How about people who attempt, but do not pass, the bar exam? Those who pass it?

   I’m pursuing a con artist.

   Thanks in advance for your help.

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   1. And, on the subject of attorneys, this was in the Denver Post today. Rural parts of the state have a paucity of them. https://www.denverpost.com/2023/07/09/colorado-rural-attorney-lawyer-shortage-legal-deserts/

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   2. I don't know of any individual law school publishing a list of their graduates, let alone any sort of effort to coordinate graduates of multiple schools.

      The states I've lived in have lists of those with active practices.  Colorado's attorneys can be found from this page. 

      The United States District Court for the District of Colorado has a search function for attorneys within its jurisdiction here.  I've used something similar in a couple of other federal districts. 

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      1. assuming you have a name of the person, you can find whether they are a CO attorney here:  https://www.coloradosupremecourt.com/Search/AttSearch.asp

          

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         1. Thanks. The person in question was claiming a law degree from another state. I found this listing of graduates from major law schools.

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            1. That is far from a complete list. For example, the Colorado Law alumni list has only 240 names–the school graduates 150-165 J.D.s every year.

               As far as I know, there is no comprehensive list of who holds a J.D. If you know the school and year, you might get lucky and find a graduation program online. That is not 100% reliable, as someone might be tentatively allowed to walk but then fail to actually satisfy the graduation requirements.

               I don't know of a state that publishes the names of people who fail the bar exam; on the other hand, I think all states publish a pass list.

               I think all states have an online listing of admitted attorneys. It could be maintained by the state, the courts, or the bar association. Most probably also have an online database of disciplinary actions.

                

                

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6. 14th Ammendment. HCR (Always a good read).

   On July 9, 1868, Americans changed the U.S. Constitution for the fourteenth time, adapting our foundational document to construct a new nation without systematic Black enslavement. 

   In 1865 the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution had prohibited enslavement on the basis of race, but it did not prevent the establishment of a system in which Black Americans continued to be unequal. Backed by President Andrew Johnson, who had taken over the presidency after an actor had murdered President Abraham Lincoln, white southern Democrats had done their best to push their Black neighbors back into subservience. So long as southern states had abolished enslavement, repudiated Confederate debts, and nullified the ordinances of secession, Johnson was happy to readmit them to full standing in the Union, still led by the very men who had organized the Confederacy and made war on the United States. 

   Northern Republican lawmakers refused. There was no way they were going to rebuild southern society on the same blueprint as existed before the Civil War, especially since the upcoming 1870 census would count Black Americans as whole persons for the first time in the nation’s history, giving southern states more power in Congress and the Electoral College after the war than they had had before it. Having just fought a war to destroy the South’s ideology, they were not going to let it regrow in peacetime.

   Congress rejected Johnson’s plan for Reconstruction.

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   1. "States Rights" Goes back a long way.

      The amendment also addressed the Dred Scott decision in another profound way. In 1857, southerners and Democrats who were adamantly opposed to federal power controlled the Supreme Court. They backed states’ rights. So the Dred Scott decision did more than read Black Americans out of our history; it dramatically circumscribed Congress’s power. 

      The Dred Scott decision declared that democracy was created at the state level, by those people in a state who were allowed to vote. In 1857 this meant white men, almost exclusively. If those people voted to do something widely unpopular—like adopting human enslavement, for example—they had the right to do so. People like Abraham Lincoln pointed out that such domination by states would eventually mean that an unpopular minority could take over the national government, forcing their ideas on everyone else, but defenders of states’ rights stood firm. 

      And so the Fourteenth Amendment gave the federal government the power to protect individuals even if their state legislatures had passed discriminatory laws. “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” it said. And then it went on to say that “Congress shall have power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.” 

      The principles behind the Fourteenth Amendment were behind the 1870 creation of the Department of Justice, whose first job was to bring down the Ku Klux Klan terrorists in the South. 

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7. For campaign finance geeks interested in who's funding No Labels, here's a report with names and sums. I didn't recognize a lot of the names, but the list appeared pretty corporate.

   https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/06/no-labels-exposed-heres-a-list-of-donors-funding-its-effort-to-disrupt-the-2024-race/

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8. A radical idea: “All are welcome”. 
    

   This concludes my Sunday sermon. 
    

   A small-town Georgia preacher fills pews by leaving no one out

   In April, for instance, Myerholtz gave the opening prayer at the Hartwell Pride festival — which already had weathered a backlash from area churches over a proposed spring drag show. “There’s a community of people that guard their religion and say, ‘It’s not for you. You’re a sinner. You can’t love God like that,’” said the organization’s president, Collin Graham, who is trans. “So I think it was important to have [Grant] out there to show people that you can be a Christian and you can be gay or trans.”

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