Trump Nominates Originalist Judge

For years conservatives have framed progressive or liberal judges as "activist judges" and suggesting that they use their political views to form their judicial decisions. However, for the last 30 years or so, conservatives have been working an agenda that does exactly what they purport the other side does. In nominating Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, the conservative movement has reason for patting themselves on the back. Kavanaugh, a United States Circuit Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit and a White House Staff Secretary under George W. Bush.  His confirmation hearings were contentious and stalled for three years over charges of partisanship. 

Where he stands in his words is "My judicial philosophy is straightforward. A judge must be independent and must interpret the law, not make the law. A judge must interpret statutes as written. And a judge must interpret the Constitution as written, informed by history and tradition and precedent.”  This puts him in the camp of the "strict Constitutionalists" or "Originalists."

Kavanaugh was part of Ken Starr's impeachment team against Bill Clinton and, according to Mother Jones,  "has so frequently inserted himself into high-profile political battles that during his confirmation hearing for his DC Circuit seat, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) called him the “Forrest Gump of Republican politics.”

For example, Kavanaugh represented former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in his fight to overcome constitutional hurdles to his controversial school voucher program that would direct public money to private religious schools. In the 2000 election came down to Florida, he worked on George W. Bush’s legal team.

While these qualities will not endear him to many Democrats, it is his legal record that is of issue.

Kavanaugh, has been cagey around the issue of abortion. According to Wikipedia:

During his confirmation hearing in 2006 for the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, Kavanaugh stated that he considered Roe v. Wade binding under the principle of stare decisis and would seek to uphold the ruling of the higher court. However, he also ruled in favor of abortion restrictions in several cases.

In May 2006, Kavanaugh stated he "would follow Roe v. Wade faithfully and fully" and that the issue of the legality of abortion has already "been decided by the Supreme Court". During the hearing, he stated that a right to an abortion has been found "many times", citing Planned Parenthood v. Casey. 

In October 2017, Kavanaugh joined an unsigned divided panel opinion which found that the Office of Refugee Resettlement could prevent an unaccompanied minor in its custody from obtaining an abortion. Days later, the en banc D.C. Circuit reversed that judgment, with Kavanaugh now dissenting. The D.C. Circuit's opinion was then itself vacated by the U.S. Supreme Court in Garza v. Hargan (2018).

He has also been a dissenting vote in preserving the Affordable Care Act,  In 2015, Kavanaugh found that those directly regulated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) could challenge the constitutionality of its design

There is more to be learned about Brett Kavanaugh and his hearings will likely go on for awhile.

Addendum: On-going list of articles that shed further light on his judicial background.

Trump’s Supreme Court pick: ISPs have 1st Amendment right to block websites (added 7/11/18)
Trump’s Supreme Court Nominee Is a Major Net Neutrality Opponent (added 7/11/18)
Brett Kavanaugh Has GOP Bona Fides, But a Surprising Record (Added 7/11/18)
Here’s How Kavanaugh Could Deal a Big Blow to Gun Control (Added 7/11/18)
How Brett Kavanaugh Would Change The Supreme Court (Added 7/12/18)
Judge Brett Kavanaugh: In His Own Words (Added 7/12/18)
A look at Brett Kavanaugh's opinions on guns, abortion and the environment (Added 7/12/18)
America Under Brett Kavanaugh (Added 7/12/18)

Trump Putting Hardworking Americans He Hired Out of Work

No one said being POTUS would be easy, but by his 365th day as president, 34% of Donald Trump’s "A" Team staff quit, changed roles or were fired, this according to the Brookings Institution’s Katie Dunn Tenpas. That statistic has now climbed upwards past 43 percent.  According to the National Journal,  this is "more than double every other administration since 1981."

As a comparison, Barack Obama lost 9% of senior staffers by the end of his first year, George W. Bush lost 6% and Ronald Reagan had the previous record of 17%.In 2018 alone, 58 officials have left, changed roles, or were fired from the White House and Executive branch departments like the State Department and the DOJ,

     Added to this, Trump has already accepted the resignation of or fired 5 cabinet officials, Scott Pruit just the latest in a line. According to the New York Times "analysis of 21 top White House and cabinet positions back to President Bill Clinton’s first term shows how unusual the upheaval is through the first 14 months of a presidency. Nine of these positions have turned over at least once during the Trump administration, compared with three at the same point of the Clinton administration, two under President Barack Obama and one under President George W. Bush."

   Perhaps in other segments of service industry jobs, this would not seem so out of the ordinary, but in terms of other presidencies, this is without parallel. Perhaps someday there will be an accounting of the reasons why these rats are leaving or being told to leave a seemingly sinking ship.

Obama Hits A Home Run

It is hard not to praise Barack Obama for his press conference last night, particularly when you compare him to his immediate predecessor. The difference in the level of candor he showed in addressing his presidency's first 100 days were markedly different than President Bush. In discussing the state of the economy, his views on abortion, whether "enhanced interrogation techniques" qualified as torture, concerns about the Taliban in Pakistan and on and on, Obama spoke openly and directly.

When a NY Times' journalist asked him to address the things that surprised him, troubled him, enchanted him, and humbled him, President Obama carefully wrote the request down and thoughtfully addressed each point.

Surprised: Obama professed surprise, and not a little dismay, by "the number of critical issues that appear to be coming to a head all at the same time." Most presidents he said deal with 2 or 3 things and his administration was dealing with 7 or 8 things.

Troubled: Obama said he was "sobered by,"The fact that change in Washington comes slow. That there is still a certain quotient of political posturing and bickering that takes place even when we're in the middle of really big crises." He added, "I would like to think that everybody would say, you know what, let's take a timeout on some of the political games, focus our attention for at least this year, and then we can start running for something next year. And that hasn't happened as much as I would have liked."

Enchanted: He and the press corp laughed at the word choice, but said he was "profoundly impressed and grateful" when he thought of his interactions with the men and women wearing the military uniform of this country from the "top brass to the lowliest private."

Humbled: He said his sense of imposed humility comes from the fact that the presidency, in all its glory, is only "part of a much broader tapestry" in a nation with many different centers of power. "And so I can't just press a button and suddenly have the bankers do exactly what I want, or, you know, turn on a switch and suddenly, you know, Congress falls in line."

For his critics who say that he wants the government to interfere with business he made the point around the government's current role with the automakers that he hoped to help them be competitive and said he really didn't want to be in that position for long because "I've got two wars I've got to run already." He went on to say that the government shouldn't micro-manage these companies it essentially owned, pointing out that he himself is not an auto engineer.

Finally, in summarizing he said "the ship of state is an ocean liner; it's not a speedboat." That he would work as hard in the next hundred days and all the hundreds of days to follow to put the country back on course.

Who's Going to Catch the Midnight Decider?

With George Bush's Administration getting ready to leave time, you'd think it would be hard to get anything done if you were a lobbyist. The video below by the American News Project says not so. It is truly Christmas time in the city.

Bad Seed Toussie?

Apparently the President, like me, learned that one of his pardons the other day might not have been warranted. CNN reports:

President George W. Bush on Wednesday ordered one of 19 presidential pardons granted earlier in the week to be re-examined before making a final decision.
President Bush ordered the pardon of Isaac R. Toussie to be re-examined.

President Bush ordered the pardon of Isaac R. Toussie to be re-examined.

The pardon was for Isaac R. Toussie, a 36-year-old New York developer who pleaded guilty in 2001 to making false statements in a Long Island mortgage fraud scheme.

Toussie and his father, also a developer, had previously been accused of conspiring with lenders and others to build and sell substandard homes -- a charge they denied.

According to a senior Bush administration official, the White House learned new information about Toussie's case Tuesday night -- only hours after announcing his pardon.

Specifically, the White House learned, according to the official, "additional information about the nature of fraud [Toussie] carried out."

The White House also learned Toussie's father made numerous contributions to leading Republican politicians.

In 2008, Toussie's father donated almost $40,000 to Arizona Sen. John McCain, Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman, Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith, and Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor.

"Based on information that has subsequently come to light, the president has directed the [Justice Department's] pardon attorney not to execute and deliver a grant of clemency to Mr. Toussie," White House Press Secretary Dana Perino said in a written statement.

Bush Up for Some Last 100 Day Shenanigans

Living up to his position as "Lame" Duck, President Bush is side-stepping the powers of Congress using his own imprimatur in making signing statements. The New York Times reports:

President Bush asserted on Tuesday that he had the executive power to bypass several parts of two bills: a military authorization act and a measure giving inspectors general greater independence from White House control.

Mr. Bush signed the two measures into law. But he then issued a so-called signing statement in which he instructed the executive branch to view parts of each as unconstitutional constraints on presidential power.

In the authorization bill, Mr. Bush challenged four sections. One forbid the money from being used “to exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq”; another required negotiations for an agreement by which Iraq would share some of the costs of the American military operations there.

The sections “purport to impose requirements that could inhibit the president’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations,” including as commander in chief, Mr. Bush wrote.

In the other bill, he raised concerns about two sections that strengthen legal protections against political interference with the internal watchdog officials at each executive agency.

One section gives the inspectors general a right to counsels who report directly to them. But Mr. Bush wrote in his signing statement that such lawyers would be bound to follow the legal interpretations of the politically appointed counsels at each agency.

Really. The White House Did Endorse Torture?

The Washington Post reports that, yep, the Bush White House did approve torture methods on suspects. It'll be a sad day to lose our Decider-in -Chief.

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaida suspects - documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.
The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.
The memos were the first - and, for years, the only - tangible expressions of the administration's consent for the CIA's use of harsh measures to extract information from captured al-Qaida leaders, the sources said. As early as the spring of 2002, several White House officials, including then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Vice President Dick Cheney, were given individual briefings by Tenet and his deputies, the officials said. Rice, in a statement to congressional investigators last month, confirmed the briefings and acknowledged that the CIA director had pressed the White House for "policy approval."

Adding Insult to Injury to Injustice?

Linda R. Reade, a federal judge in Cedar Rapids reduced a jury award for two women who were illegally strip searched after being arrested at a George Bush rally in 2004. According to Reade, the awards in the sums of $250,000 and $400,000 to the protesters--former teachers Alice McCabe and Christine Nelson--originally made in June, were "excessive." The judge ruled that the awards would be reduced to $25,000 and $50,000 respectively. McCabe and Nelson have five business days from the ruling date to appeal.

The women were arrested during a George W. Bush campaign rally in Noelridge Park. The pair brought a suit against Bruce Macauley, a Secret Service agent, and Michelle Mais, a former Linn County jailer. There was a directed guilty verdict against Mais for the illegal strip-search, but the jury found in favor of Macauley who arrested them for not moving from a secured area when he requested.

The women sued the defendants for violating their freedom of speech and assembly and equal protection rights. The eight-member jury deliberated almost four hours in the U.S. District Court of Northern Iowa civil case of protesters.

Pain in the Gas

FactCheck does a good job of explaining the problems with McCain, Clinton gas plan. Oh, and George Bush still wants to do oil exploration in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge...

Hillary Clinton and John McCain are offering overburdened motorists a federal "gasoline tax holiday." But economists say that the proposal is unlikely to actually lower the price of gasoline. McCain's plan would essentially give federal funds to oil refineries, while the net effect of Clinton's plan probably wouldn't be much at all, although it would create a lot of new administrative work.

President Bush took another tack, dusting off a couple of golden oldies that he said would help halt the escalation in motorists' costs: allowing companies to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and encouraging construction of more refineries.

But opening up ANWR would lead to a negligible bump in world oil supply, and would provide barely five percent of what the U.S. consumes today. The spigot wouldn't even be fully opened until the mid 2020's -- if Congress acts now, which isn't at all likely. And Bush fails to acknowledge that investors aren't interested in building refineries for strong business reasons that go beyond the tangled permitting process.

Analysis
In a week that saw furious truckers steer their rigs to the nation's capital for a horn-blaring war dance over escalating fuel prices, President Bush and two candidates who want his job were offering proposals that are unlikely to provide any real comfort to motorists.

More here

Two World Views About Iraq

From McClatchy News

As President Bush insisted Thursday that the Iraq government is making progress, noisy demonstrations filled the streets in Baghdad and the southern port city of Basra to protest the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki.

Protesters in Baghdad's Shiite Muslim Sadr City neighborhood carried a red coffin with Maliki's picture on it crossed out with a black marker. Under his face were the words "The New Dictator."

"They're trying to build a modern democracy on the rubble of three decades of tyranny, in a region of the world that has been hostile to freedom," Bush told an audience of about 1,000 people at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force in Dayton, Ohio , "and they're doing it while under assault from one of history's most brutal terrorist networks."

The protests came on the third day of a U.S.-supported Iraqi security offensive against Shiite militants in Basra that's spread to neighboring provinces and to Baghdad .

In Baghdad , the Green Zone where U.S. and Iraqi leaders live and work continued to come under heavy mortar fire. On Monday, Paul Converse , a U.S. citizen who works there, died from his injuries, and three other Americans and a Jordanian citizen are receiving treatment for their injuries.

In Sadr City, the death toll rose from 20 to 38, and in Wasit province 40 civilians have been killed since Tuesday, police chief Gen. Abdul Hanin Saleh said.

Death (Comparisons) Be Not Proud

A story that is widely circulating points out that there were more military deaths during the Clinton Administration than during the war in Iraq. Numbers don't lie, right? Well, it ain't necessarily so.

According to a CRS report to Congress from June 2007, during the 8 years of the Clinton Administration (including peacekeeping efforts in Kosovo and Somalia), the were 76 military personnel that died in battle or by terrorist attack, compared to 2,651 that had been KIA or by terrorist attack from 2001 to 2006 during the Bush administration during which we have been at war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

It is true that 7500 soldiers died from 1993-2000 (Clinton's 8 year administration), but 8792 have died in 6 years from 2001-2006 of G.W. Bush's. The important distinction is cause of death.

Many military personnel die in accidents, illness, homicide, and suicide and in the case of Clinton's administration, 1% were killed in action/terrorist attack, 52% died in accidents, 20% committed suicide, 6% by homicide, and 19% died by illness.

In the Bush years through 2006, 30% were killed in action/terrorist attack, 36% in accidents, 11% committed suicide, 6% by homicide, and 15% by illness.