Literal election rigging

Elena Kagan is obviously correct. 

She went into the details of the two cases in front of the court — challenges to a Democratic-drawn map in Maryland and GOP-drawn map in North Carolina — and how the legislatures were able to draw districts that ensure that their respective received a number seats disproportionate to the state wide vote.

“Is that how American democracy is supposed to work?” Kagan said. “I have yet to meet the person who thinks so.”

“Free and fair and periodic elections are the key” to the framers’ vision of democracy, Kagan said.
“And partisan gerrymandering can make [elections] meaningless,” Kagan said. “At its most extreme — as in North Carolina and Maryland — the practice amounts to ‘rigging elections.'”

Not sure it's any kind of earth shattering observation or anything but it is the correct one.  Also not sure what to do about it.  Anyway, so what now?  If we operate from the premise that elections are rigged and pointless, then the way to proceed must involve pursuing power by means other than the pointless and rigged elections, right?  So then where are we?

A great country

Congratulations to the Nation of... wait, that isn't right... the Country of Islam?

In arguing in favor of President Donald Trump’s travel ban on citizens from several Muslim majority countries, United States Solicitor General Noel Francisco slipped up and described Islam as a “country.”

Also, it looks like the court considered that a winning argument. People wonder why I can't take credentialed professionals who are in charge of important things seriously.  This is the reason.

Just like national signing day

Trump is going to announce his SCOTUS nominee exactly the way you would expect him to.

Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, a federal appeals court from the Denver-based 10th Circuit, and Judge Thomas M. Hardiman of the Third Circuit, sitting in Pittsburgh, were both traveling to the capital ahead of an evening ceremony at the White House to unveil Mr. Trump’s choice, according to a person familiar with the plans. The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said Mr. Trump, who declared on Monday that he had settled on a nominee, was “excited” for the announcement, a dramatic reveal for a lifetime appointment to the nation’s highest court by a president who prizes showmanship above tradition.

They'll all sit at a table and talk about whether or not women are people for half an hour. Then, at the end, one judge puts on the MAGA hat and the other one is "fired."  Ideally this is a joke but no this is how we do things now.

Free Dollar Bill

Let's get in the wayback machine and revisit the Bill Jefferson follies for a moment.  Today we're going all the way back to 2009 when some of us, learning the specific nature of the charges against ol' Dollar Bill, started to ask what's the big deal.  Or at least, we wanted to know how exactly this was different from the day to day legalized bribery that happens in Washington.

If a Congressman can be convicted for soliciting bribes even if the so-called bribery payments are unrelated to the Congressman's official duties, then doesn't that mean every former Congressperson/Senator who goes to work for a lobbying firm selling his or her influence and connections is guilty of the same thing? If so, how soon can we indict John Breaux, Billy Tauzin.... pretty much all of K Street?

Those other guys continue to enjoy status as respected (and wealthy) former statesmen.  Mary Landrieu has since joined them in the pantheon of (legal, of course) influence peddlers. Bill Jefferson is still in jail.

But this week, a new Supreme Court ruling suggests that maybe he doesn't have to be. 

Both had those dramatic details that make a corruption case scintillating to the media and the public. For (former Virginia Governor Bob) McDonnell, it was a Rolex watch and a Ferrari ride. For Jefferson, it was the $90,000 the FBI found in his freezer.

But the true parallels lie in what McDonnell and Jefferson were doing that attracted the scrutiny of federal prosecutors. Neither McDonnell nor Jefferson was writing legislation or changing laws or issuing orders in exchange for gifts or money.

They were peddling their influence.

The court ruled in the McDonnell case that selling an "official act" can be illegal. But, according to the opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, it "must involve a formal exercise of governmental power that is similar in nature to a lawsuit before a court, a determination before an agency, or a hearing before a committee."

That would seem to narrow the definition most people have of what constitutes public corruption and bribery and raise doubts about whether Jefferson's efforts to broker deals for a company were, in fact, an "official act."

They experts interviewed for the article suggest that the McDonnell decision is sufficiently narrow to keep Jefferson in prison. But the principle in play here seems even murkier than it did in 2009. If the Court isn't going to put McDonnell much less Breaux or Landrieu in jail, why are Bill Jefferson and Ray Nagin, even, there right now?

How seriously are we supposed to take the SCOTUS nomination?

If the Republicans have the capacity to block the Merrick Garland nomination then they should do so if they really believe it is in their interest to. It might not be. But maybe it is. Maybe they'll all be fortunate enough to approve President Trump's nominee next year. Surely they are rubbing their hands in anticipation of that prospect.

Or maybe their position is as pointless as it seems and they'll have to either cave or face the possibility of Hillary nominating someone less to their liking. Even in this more likely scenario, it's conceivable that individual Senators still stand to gain politically in the eyes of their home state constituents by defying Obama one last time. Not all of them, though. For example, Mark Kirk here is getting nervous.

In a further blow to Senate Majority Mitch McConnell's efforts to hold a hardline on not even considering the confirmation of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) has gone from breaking ranks with McConnell to calling him and other GOP senators out on it.

During an interview on Illinois radio show "The Big John Howell Show," the host told Kirk that the Senate should consider the nominee and hold a vote on Merrick Garland, President Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court.

"Right," Kirk replied. "Just man up and cast a vote."

"The tough thing about these Senatorial jobs is you get yes or no votes," Kirk continued. “Your whole job is to either say yes or no, and explain why."

Kirk's problems probably aren't the same as most of his colleagues, though.  He's up for reelection this year in what's expected to be a close race in Illinois. Running against Obama there isn't the golden strategy it might still be for Republicans elsewhere.

Either way they can do whatever they want limited only by what they have the votes to get away with. The pearl clutching over the "incivility" of it all is just stupid. The point of engaging in politics has nothing to do with achieving civility. It has everything  to do with winning stuff for your side.

Along those lines, I'm never clear on why Obama and the Democrats behave the way they do.  The Garland nomination itself is a Peak Obama move. It's conceived mostly as a play to catch some Republicans in a minor semantic bluff. They said they would not support Obama's nominee. Obama nominates a guy they actually like just to be a troll. In the best case, the Republicans, true to their word, do not support the nominee. In the worst case, they approve the guy they like anyway.  Seems like someone needs to rerun their cost/benefit analysis.

Most likely, the Republicans will end up being as bullheaded as they say they are so no harm, no foul. But in an election year when mainstream Democrats are preaching relentlessly their gospel of The Supreme Court Is The Only Issue Worth Caring About At All, it's strange that the President would this all important matter for the sake of petty gamesmanship.

Meanwhile back at the not-at-all liberal SCOTUS

They're about to completely blow up public sector unions.

For decades, as private sector unionism has steadily diminished, public sector unions have grown. Traditionally, public sector unions have been easier to organize because the employer—federal, state, and local governments—is in a poor position to bust unions. The government cannot secretly spend millions on anti-union consultants, violate workers’ rights, and discipline or fire workers for their union sympathies. The result is that a third of public sector workers are currently members of a union, whereas only six percent of their private sector counterparts are similarly union members.

Now the Supreme Court has accepted for review a case, Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, brought by the rightwing Center for Individual Rights, that takes direct aim at public sector unions. In the case, a handful of California teachers argue that mandatory union fees violates their First Amendment rights. If successful, it would serve to sap union funds, further silence workers’ voices on the job and in the political arena, and would require unions to make radical changes to the ways they expend resources.

Too little too late

I don't doubt that an independent redistricting commission is constitutional.  I'm not sure it's the best way to deal with the gerrymandering problem, though. Certainly is not the most democratic way to handle it, anyway. Also.. horse is way way out of the barn.

Republicans employed an enormously successful strategy to take advantage of the 2010 census, first by winning state legislatures and then using that control to draw House districts to maximize their power. One measure of their success: In 2012, Republicans achieved a 33-seat majority in the House, even though GOP candidates as a group got 1.4 million fewer votes than their Democratic opponents.

Independent commissions such as Arizona's "may be the only meaningful check" left to states that want to foster more competitive elections, the Obama administration said.

QOTD

Presidential candidate Bobby Jindal's measured, constitutionally sound response to today's Supreme Court ruling in the Obergefell v Hodges gay marriage case.

"The Supreme Court is completely out of control, making laws on their own, and has become a public opinion poll instead of a judicial body," he told the crowd, as quoted by The Advocate newspaper. "If we want to save some money lets just get rid of the court."

"If we want to save some money?" Was that even the question, though?  Bobby, we're on marriage equality here. The money stuff ended when you signed the budget last week, remember? Besides, I don't think you can just line-item veto all of Article III of the constitution like it's some made up tax credit.

You'd think that a smart guy like Bobby who's spent so much time trying to be President would learn a few things about how the country runs.  It's really hard to "just get rid of" Supreme Court justices. Technically, Congress could impeach them but that's, like.. a whole thing. And it's never happened, anyway. (Once. It's happened once. Unsuccessfully.)  But you don't get to just fire them because you don't like the decisions they make. We know that's how it worked with the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority but this different.  Is he sure he knows how this job works?

What did it all even mean?

After all the rancor and stupidity visited on everyone during the Obama years, from the deranged apoplexy of the right, to the resigned disappointment of the left, to... all the whiny politicos whose hurt feelings we're supposed to care about... after all the scorched Earth and noise pollution, the one thing we were supposed to take some solace in was the fact that some form of modest health insurance reform was somehow extruded through that sphincter.

What happens if they take that away?

Free-riderdom isn't free

Well, OK, maybe it is a little bit moreso now.

The Supreme Court dealt a limited blow to organized labor on Monday by ruling that some government employees did not have to pay any fees to the unions representing them. But the court declined to strike down a decades-old precedent that required many public sector workers to pay union fees. Writing for the 5-to-4 majority, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. concluded that there was a category of government employees — a partial public employee — who can opt out of joining a union and not be required to contribute union fees.

Not quite as bad as it could have been, from the looks of it. 

Heathers

The new bosses are always just a worse version of the old bosses.  Somehow we keep not figuring that out.

The theme is familiar to anyone who’s tried to join a country club or high-school clique. It’s not supposed to make sense. The Culture can’t really be written about; it has to be experienced. You are expected to conform to the rules of The Culture before you are allowed to demonstrate your actual worth. What wearing a suit really indicates is—I am not making this up—non-conformity, one of the gravest of sins. For extra excitement, the rules are unwritten and ever-changing, and you will never be told how you screwed up.

Clothing is the least of it. Your entire lifestyle and outside interests are under examination, as is your “commitment”. Say you’re asked out for coffee on short notice, which you decline because you’re busy. Is that a “ding”? Did that lose you the job? Who knows? Maybe it did. You’re still trying to figure out what they mean by “wowing” them. Should you ask? Maybe you’ll seem desperate if you ask. Oh, shit!

Again Max Levchin: “PayPal once rejected a candidate who aced all the engineering tests because for fun, the guy said that he liked to play hoops. That single sentence lost him the job.”

The obscurity and arbitrariness are very much by design, and is why explainer posts are supposed to be so valuable. Having engineered an unfair situation, insiders then offer secret guides to winning it.

Once upon a time, young go-getter douchebags wore suits to job interviews.  But that was "disrupted" by  a new kind of "culture fit" involving young go-getter douchebags who do not wear suits to job interviews.  And the difference is... what, exactly?

Well, mostly nothing of course, except nowadays the pressure to conform to the company culture can extend deep into the employee's personal and social life.  This happens for various reasons some having to do with popular fashion others having to do with the way technology has eroded personal privacy. 

But there comes a point where we have to decide where the boss's purview over our individual lifestyle choices ends. And we're pushing  the line in an uncomfortable direction. 

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance coverage for contraception under the Affordable Care Act violated a federal law protecting religious freedom. It was, a dissent said, “a decision of startling breadth.”

The 5-to-4 ruling, which applied to two companies owned by Christian families, opened the door to many challenges from corporations over laws that they claim violate their religious liberty.

It's bad enough if failing the "culture fit" test means the company doesn't like to have coffee or play hoops with you. But sometimes it's also the company doesn't care for your unapproved fucking activities.  And, see, that's much more of an obvious downer but it's really the same principle at work. 

Here's to getting nothing done for the forseeable future

SCOTUS ruling today on recess appointments.

The short of  it is the Senate can stifle as many as it once by holding pro-forma (fake) sessions every 3 days during a recess. Also Obama's NLRB appointments are invalidated.

But what about other recess appointments in the future?  The short answer is that it really will depend on which parties are in power.  Right now Democrats control both the White House and the Senate.  With the decision by Senate Democrats back in November to invoke the “nuclear option” – which allows them to confirm the president’s nominees with a simple majority – right now the president doesn’t need to use recess appointments to fill judgeships or senior positions in the executive branch.  But that could change if the Republicans gain control of the Senate this November (a prospect that many believe is increasingly likely):  a Republican Senate could not only block the president’s nominees, but prevent the president from making recess appointments by ensuring that it never recesses for more than a few days.  And, of course, the shoe could be on the other foot if – after the 2016 elections — the Democrats were to control the Senate but lose the White House.  So even if the president’s recess appointments power may not factor into many voters’ decision-making process, it certainly could hang in the balance in the next two elections.

The iDrop

 The most powerful nine people in the United States:

But during April's oral arguments on the cases, the justices broadcast their own lack of technological expertise. Antonin Scalia didn't realize HBO was cable. During a line of questioning involving Dropbox and iCloud, Sonia Sotomayor referred to "the iDrop." And Stephen Breyer said that he wasn't sure if he owned an iPhone, "because I can never get into it because of the password."

$peech

Let the freedom flow over everything.

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court took another step Wednesday toward giving wealthy donors more freedom to influence federal elections.

The justices ruled 5-4, in a decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that limits on the total amount of money donors can give to all candidates, committees and political parties are unconstitutional. The decision frees the nation's wealthiest donors to have greater influence in federal elections.

In a related matter

The next time U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu gets down over all those television ads attacking her for supporting President Barack Obama’s health care reform law, at least she can take comfort in the fact that she’s not Kay Hagan.

Hagan is Landrieu’s North Carolina counterpart, a Democrat who backed the Affordable Care Act who’s now facing the fight of her life to win another six-year term. And like Landrieu, Hagan has landed in the crosshairs of Americans For Prosperity, the Koch brothers-backed advocacy group that’s spending this election season pummeling ACA backers on the air.

But that $2.9 million AFP’s spent so far on anti-Landrieu ads? That’s relatively small potatoes compared to the whopping $7 million the group has invested in its effort to unseat Hagan, or 44 percent of the $16 million AFP has spent so far to knock out ACA supporters in the Senate, according to the Washington Post.

In other words, not only can it get worse for people on the wrong side of the oligarchy, thanks to this decision, it most likely will.  

So that was quite a day

First there was this.

Let's be clear about what has just happened. Five unelected, life-tenured men this morning declared that overt racial discrimination in the nation's voting practices is over and no longer needs all of the special federal protections it once did. They did so, without a trace of irony, by striking down as unconstitutionally outdated a key provision of a federal law that this past election cycle alone protected the franchise for tens of millions of minority citizens.

And then tonight, hundreds of thousands of people watched a YouTube feed (because all of cable news was busy running repeats of its talking heads shows) of the Texas Legislature. There Republicans decided to shut down a 10 hour filibuster of a draconian crack down on women's right to reproductive health care by arguing that comparing it to other draconian crack downs on women's right to reproductive health care isn't "germane" to the topic.

After that, it got wacky.  I'm fading right now and I'm sure you'll read about this somewhere by tomorrow anyway.  Basically the last ten minutes of the session involved legislators struggling like a hurried football team to get a vote off before the clock ran out at midnight as they were being disrupted by deafening crowd noise. Nothing could be more Texas than that, when you think about it.

As I type this nobody knows what happened.  The Senate hasn't even officially adjourned. I'm sure they'll get around to that sooner or later. And then the whole thing will be argued in some court somewhere. I'm sure this will come up at some point.  The legislative website originally recorded the vote on the abortion bill as taking place on June 26... which would mean after the deadline.



But then this was altered to read June 25.

Suffice to say the clock has been turned back in more ways than one today.  From the looks of things there are still plenty of protesters left at the capitol in Austin.  (Of course nothing on cable news about that still.) But I'm too tired to stay up and watch them get arrested so I'm turning in.

Can't wait to see what happens with DOMA tomorrow.

Signs of the times

Or any other kind of sign now banned from the US Supreme Court grounds.

Technophobia

Justice Alito:

Justice Samuel Alito described gay marriage as newer than such rapidly changing technological advances as cellphones and the Internet, and appeared to advocate a more cautious approach to the issue.

"You want us to assess the effect of same-sex marriage," Alito said to Solicitor General Donald Verrilli. "It may turn out to be a good thing. It may turn out to be not a good thing."

If you get gay married to AT&T, the reception is terrible and the pre-nup contract does not work in your favor, so.. maybe he's on to something. 

Serpas Signal

This is another instance of NOPD sending out the notice late in the evening the night before the checkpoint is scheduled to take place and then writing "tomorrow night" in the text of the message instead of a date so as to create confusion among people seeing it in their inboxes on the morning of the event.  It says.

Sobriety Checkpoint

New Orleans, LA - As required by the Louisiana Supreme Court, the New Orleans Police Department is issuing a public advisory regarding a sobriety checkpoint that will be conducted tomorrow night. 

The New Orleans Police Department’s Traffic Division will conduct a sobriety checkpoint in the Orleans Parish area beginning at approximately 9:00 P.M., and will conclude at approximately 5:00 A.M.  Motorists will experience minimal delays and should have the proper documentation available if requested, i.e., proof of insurance, driver’s license, etc.

Because this message was sent at 10:14 PM on Wednesday January 9, we must assume that "tomorrow night" refers to the evening of Thursday January 10 beginning at 9 PM although there is some doubt.  I'm sure that's intentional.

Anyway it hardly matters if you're downtown since the entire CBD and much of the French Quarter is one big roadblock right now due to the gilding of the streets so that they may please His Majesty Goodell when he arrives.

Meanwhile, in a related story, here's a report on arguments before the Supreme Court of the United States over whether or not Serpas has the authority to randomly bleed you without a warrant.

Update: Checkpoint is indeed tonight (Thursday Jan 10 into Friday morning) Location is Carondelet and Calliope. Drive safely.

America doesn't want to be Jack Kingston's friend anyway

The conservative freak out over the Supreme Court ruling is pretty funny. Maybe they'll all up and move to Canada where health care policy actually makes some semblance of sense.

Update: Also "Traitors!" and also "Nullification!" and, of course, "911!"

Unlearning what we already knew

Stephen Breyer:

“Even if I were to accept Citizens United, this Court’s legal conclusion should not bar the Montana Su­preme Court’s finding, made on the record before it, that independent expenditures by corporations did in fact lead to corruption or the appearance of corruption in Montana,” Breyer wrote. “Given the history and political landscape in Montana, that court concluded that the State had a compelling interest in limiting independent expenditures by corporations.”

The Montana case specifically refutes the  Citizens United  assertion that unchecked corporate spending does not lead to corruption by providing a real life example of precisely that having happened.  But the court chose to unlearn that lesson.