Devin Nunes and the Love Cow of Perfidy

So, if you aren’t aware – as you are probably not – there is an in-joke at Wonkette about Devin Nunes, the incompetent House Intel ranking member (and former committee chair) who lied about the state of the Russia investigation in order to defend Trump. The joke doesn’t really have much of a basis. There’s no “there” there. But years ago Nunes opposed a real estate deal, which if I understand correctly was a land swap of an on-campus parcel on the side of his college closest to neighborhoods for more land on the side of campus farther away. The point of the land swap from the school’s perspective was to get more land, with the immediate purpose of expanding or improving their Ag program and for long term flexibility in building facilities as needed. His opposition appeared to be based on his appreciation for the ag program as it then existed and included laudatory comments about the current ag facilities, which happened to include cows. On top of this, his family owned a dairy farm and he frequently refers to himself and his connection to dairy farming and loving his cows and loving the land of his farm in his campaigns. He did not stop when his family sold the dairy farm & moved to Iowa. This seemed to indicate some serious attachment to the mooers. And, finally, the degree he got in between episodes of protest against the forced relocation of cows was “Animal Husbandry”.

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OMGOMGOMG, Have You Heard Trump Talk Lately?

This quote from a Pi Day press conference is just precious:

if we had a proper wall, which we’re building now as we speak, and we’re getting a lot more funding for it, as you know, with what we’re talking about with the vote today, whether it’s positive or not, I’m vetoing it, unless I don’t have to veto, I think that’s unlikely, I’ll do a veto, it’s not going to be overturned. But we have done a great job at the border through apprehension.

The whole thing is a glorious clusterfuck of rhetorical fail, but I love the bit that benefits from interpretation as a Freudian admission he’s using fear mongering: “we have done a great job at the border through apprehension.”

And, of course, “whether it’s positive or not, I’m vetoing it, unless I don’t have to veto, I think that’s unlikely, I’ll do a veto”. Seriously. Every single day is like a celebration of the 25th to this guy … and I’m not talking Christmas.

 

 

Ireland and Michael Nugent Win One – A Good One & A Big One.

So, the Irish constitutional provision authorizing the criminalization of blasphemy has now been repealed. This means that to the extent that the constitution of Ireland protects speech, it will now protect it just as extensively when that speech has religious content as it previously did when the content was other than religious. The Guardian notes that, while this is a win for all of Ireland (with 65% voting on the winning side and all Irish gaining in freedom), Michael Nugent and Atheist Ireland have been advocating for this for a long time:

“It means that we’ve got rid of a medieval crime from our constitution that should never have been there,” said Michael Nugent, chairperson of Atheist Ireland, which had campaigned for years to have blasphemy taken out of the constitution.

…

Nugent said the result was another important step towards realigning national laws with contemporary Irish life.

“The population has moved on, [people are] no longer controlled by the Catholic church, but a lot of the laws that were put in place are still there,” he added. “We have to chip away at them and get the state to catch up with the people.”

I know nothing about Irish politics, but this bit sounds good too:

Voters also returned president Michael Higgins to office, giving the 77-year-old poet and human rights campaigner another seven-year term by a comfortable margin.

65%+ voted a few months ago to repeal the Irish constitutional ban on abortion. 65% voted to repeal the Irish constitutional blasphemy exemption from free expression protections. And 55% voted to reelect a “human rights campaigner” to the office of the Irish presidency.

Of course, there is a snake in the grass, Ireland or no. The 2nd place finisher in the presidential election was Peter Casey who was polling dismally just days ago, but shot up to 20%+ by throwing hatred and demeaning stereotypes at Irish travelers, then defending his prejudice by insisting that it can’t be that bad, because it’s not racism, because the travelers don’t constitute a race.

The fact that Casey got more than 20% should be an embarrassment as well as a check on the potentially pacifying exuberance that can easily come in the wake of successful campaigns for positive change.

So congratulations, Ireland, but please don’t get overconfident.

 

 

Plausible Theory Wednesday: Donald Trump Sent Bombs To Political Enemies

I feel compelled to note that evidence has not yet ruled out the theory that Trump ordered close family members to send bombs to prominent elected democrats, democratic fundraisers, and media outlets Trump considers unfriendly. The theory that Trump did so in order to assassinate political opponents and usher in a permanent Presidential revolution must be the subject of investigation.

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Must. Not. Reference. Princess. Bride.

Oh, holy heck Mike Pence: you would leave me no choice except for the fact that you’re so damn obvious about it that I don’t have to write the (now tired and old) joke myself. From the Washington Post, when Pence was asked if Trump might not be telling the actual literal truth about that migrant caravan:

Well, it’s inconceivable that there are not people of Middle Eastern descent in a crowd of more than 7,000 people advancing toward our border

He went on to give folks an important lesson in geography, at least according to the more extensive RawStory reporting of his remarks:

“There are statistics on this,” Pence insisted. “In the last fiscal year we apprehended 10 terrorists or suspected terrorists per day at our southern border — from countries that are referred to as ‘other than Mexico,’” the vice president said. “That means from the Middle East region.”

Ah, yes. The administration that struggles to define sex and gender now struggles to define Mexico – that country which includes, apparently, every land on earth that is not the United States or the Middle East.

fFs: I can haz kompuhtent leedr nao?

Blackstone, Crip Dyke, & The Next Nomination

William Blackstone once wrote:

all presumptive evidence of felony should be admitted cautiously: for the law holds, that it is better that ten guilty persons escape, than that one innocent suffer.

The latter part has been deemed The Blackstone Formulation, being a restatement of a principle of law that goes back much further in time than the 1760 date on which Blackstone’s Commentaries on the Laws of England was published. It has reappeared frequently in different times and places, typically reworded slightly but with the numbers rarely changed. What is often lost is that we’re not actually talking here about things like whether a woman should accept a marriage proposal from a man credibly accused of beating the fuck out of his past partners. We’re talking specifically about the criminal law and whether the government is or should be empowered to end or suspend someone’s freedoms, and under what conditions that power can be exercised. The point is to encourage us to think about the consequences of acting under the guise of justice to punish those whose guilt is less than certain.

During the Kavanaugh hearings, I often found myself screaming that the presumption of innocence is not for confirmation hearings. But while the Blackstone formulation helps us understand why we might set a high standard for conviction (beyond reasonable doubt), simply screaming at the internet that the PoI is for criminal trials and not for confirmation hearings doesn’t explain why we should have different standards.

To this end, I want to ask a new question that might help. You can call the this “Crip Dyke’s Question” but the rule being questioned should, I think, clearly be named, “The Lindsey Graham Formulation”:

Is it better to place ten rapists on the Supreme Court than have one innocent man serve his lifetime appointment in honor and privilege on a court of appeal one level below?

Tweet the fuck out of #CripDykesQuestion. Call your senators and ask their staff members this question. Go to debates and use the audience question time (or pre-submission of questions mechanism) to place this question before your senators.

This isn’t too late. This is what we have to do before the next confirmation hearing, and if we want the question to penetrate the public consciousness, we must start now.

Hold My Beer: Kavanaugh Gets Support From A Catholic Bishop

Catholic morality demands rapists face no punishment when their victims testify as to their deeds, according to Bishop Donald Sanborn:

…what should we think about Judge Kavanaugh?

Moral theology — indeed the law of God — requires us to not think any evil of him beyond what is evident. If there is insufficient evidence to make a certain judgement of guilt, then we must hold him guiltless. If there is sufficient evidence to cause suspicion of guilt, then we may lawfully suspect him. To think evil of someone without sufficient evidence is a sin of rash judgement, and it is a mortal sin if the matter is serious. This matter is certainly serious.

In this case, however, it is Judge Kavanaugh’s word against Dr. Ford’s word. Moral law requires us, in that parity of contradictory testimony, to take the word of the superior, which in this case would be that of Judge Kavanaugh.

Emphasis mine.

It’s hard, penis, of course, to determine what makes Kavanaugh the “superior” penis of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, but I’m sure that Catholic penis theology probably has some opinions on that as well. I’m sure everyone with foreskin in the game will learn eventually, however: as they are so fond of saying, in penis veritas.

Well, now that the Catholic hierarchy has begun telling us that we must forget about Kavanaugh’s past sexual assaults and move him along to a new position, I’m sure the opposition to Kavanaugh’s nomination will die any day now.

Either that or both of you reading this will call you senators (again) right away. I can’t guess which is more likely.

 

That’s what I thought: Senators don’t care about sexual assault, but they might about perjury

I’ve been talking for the last few days about how I consider Kavanaugh’s likely history of sexual assault to be disqualifying, but that his perjury potentially foreshadows even greater threats to justice in SCOTUS, and also that it is more likely to cause Senators to vote against his confirmation.

Jeff Flake (R-I don’t give a shit) has now affirmed exactly that latter view on 60 Minutes when he and Chris Coons were interviewed together. From RawStory describing and quoting from the interview:

In an interview beside Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), the two men also agreed that there’s no way they’ll be comfortable confirming if Kavanaugh was found to have lied.

“Nomination’s over?” they were asked.

“I would think so,” Coons said at the close of their interview.

“Yeah,” Flake agree.

I think it’s pathetic that so many Senators think that credible allegations of rape and sexual assault should not even be investigated, but there you are. The real hope for stopping the nomination is making sure the FBI seriously investigates the accuracy of his testimony.

Don’t stop talking about the sexual assault, but the next time you call your senator, make sure you also mention Kavanaugh’s plentiful perjuries.

 

Dishonest or Incompetent?

I’ll make clear again from the outset that I believe Dr. Blasey Ford’s allegation of an attempted sexual assault by Judge Brett Kavanaugh. I further believe that this is entirely sufficient to deny him confirmation to SCOTUS.

That said, I think that the more effective tactic to take in the media if one wants to get the sexist Republican Party senators to vote against his confirmation is not to stress Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony more than it has already been stressed. No, it should continue to be covered at similar levels to now, but what needs to be ramped up isn’t that. It’s the argument that Kavanaugh’s testimony is by itself also sufficient reason to deny his confirmation. The Intercept (a publication for which my respect declined in proportion with the decline in my respect for Glenn Greenwald, but which nevertheless does publish some – perhaps many – good things) has taken a similar tack. In a recent piece, Intercept authors Briahna Gray and Camille Baker attempted to demonstrate to non-lawyers and non-law students just how damaging Kavanaugh’s testimony on its own ought to be:

KAVANAUGH’S APPARENT WILLINGNESS to perjure himself over accusations of underage drinking or sexual innuendo — which, alone, don’t necessarily bear on his suitability for the bench — is troubling both because of what it implies about his integrity, and because of what it suggests about his reasoning as an adjudicator.

How should we judge someone who, during his testimony, repeatedly misrepresented facts and dissembled when pressed for detail? Should we understand these moments as lies, or as misinterpretations rooted in substandard analytical rigor? And given the importance of the position at hand, which is worse?

Note that here, if you’re not certain since they weren’t explicit, they’re trying to say that the excuse of misunderstanding a question does not save Kavanaugh. If he can’t parse the meaning of the questions as asked because of his own filters, then he won’t be able to parse other questions or statements that are necessary to resolve the questions at issue in cases that come before SCOTUS. Back to the Intercept:

Some of this may seem like parsing hairs, but the law, in large part, is parsing hairs. Easy questions don’t make it to the Supreme Court. Slam dunk cases settle out. Outside of constitutional issues, the Supreme Court only agrees to hear cases that are so subject to interpretation, they’ve been inconsistently decided between states or federal circuits. Analytical precision, therefore, is a big part of the job.

That being the case, it was concerning to hear a federal judge clamor for “due process” as he sidestepped an opportunity to call witnesses, hear evidence, or have his name cleared by a federal investigation. How should we view a federal judge who seems not to understand, or who for political reasons ignores, that he is not, in fact, on trial, but at a job interview? Who, either due to a lack of understanding or a surfeit of political ambition, emotes as though the stakes were that of a criminal proceeding where the high burden of proof would militate in his favor?

“DUE PROCESS” MEANS fair treatment under the law — that an accused person has notice of the proceedings being brought against them and an opportunity to be heard before the government takes away their life, liberty, or property. The fundamental goal of due process is to prevent the state from depriving people of their most precious freedoms. But Kavanaugh isn’t threatened with any of those deprivations. He’s not facing jail time, a fine, or any confiscation of personal goods. The stakes are these: whether he will go from sitting on the bench of the second most prestigious court in the land, to the first.

What matters, then, is whether Kavanaugh is of sufficiently fit character to fairly and ethically interpret the law. Thursday’s hearing, perhaps as much as the allegations against him, has thrown that into serious doubt.

Aside from the terrible phrase “parsing hairs”, Gray and Baker are dead on here. I expect the Republicans to ramble on about how bitches dems be lyin, and I think that they’ve frankly committed themselves to the fallout of their overt sexism and their overt stand against the idea that committing sexual assault might make one less fit for a seat on SCOTUS. However, I don’t think they’ve yet taken a stand to the effect that dishonesty under oath should not make one less fit for a seat on SCOTUS, nor do I think they’ve even thought about the ramifications of attempting to deploy the excuse of Kavanaugh misunderstanding questions.

Hammer your senators on the import of Blasey Ford’s testimony. However, if you’re calling your senators, I think you should also hammer them on these important issues of Kavanaugh’s dishonesty and his inability to parse important questions when the stakes are high.

[h/t to Mano for bringing the Intercept piece to my attention. I don’t normally read the website except when another outlet links to it and would never have found it without the writing of my FtB colleague.]