DL Open Thread: Thursday, June 30, 2022

Filed in Featured, Open Thread by on June 30, 2022

Yep. Played hooky.  Saw my youngest daughter get her Masters in Sustainable Landscape Planning & Design. Went to the Green River Music Fest.  Saw Allison Russell and Waxahatchee, among others. Read two whole books!  Didn’t know I needed a break, but I did.  I’m refreshed.  Let’s see what intrigues my freshened brain…

Wisconsin Court Keeps Rethugs In Power.  Rules that Senate can simply refuse to act on Democratic Governor’s nominations:

The court’s 4-3 opinion, which fell along ideological lines, turned on a technical question of when the seat on the board would be legally vacant. But its practical effect was to affirm a strategy devised by the State Senate to keep Republican board members in office simply by refusing to confirm replacements nominated by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat.

“What this opinion means in reality, and the court undoubtedly knows this, is that officials appointed by a Democratic governor serve exact terms and no longer, and officials appointed by Republican governors serve indefinitely,” he said.

“The only way to fix this would be for the legislature to change the law,” he added. “This Legislature is not going to do that, and because of partisan gerrymanders, there’s no prospect for another Legislature to do that.”

Anti-Abortion Rethugs Seek To Enslave/Imprison Those Seeking Abortions.  By preventing them from crossing state lines:

The Thomas More Society, a conservative legal organization, is drafting model legislation for state lawmakers that would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a resident of a state that has banned abortion from terminating a pregnancy outside of that state. The draft language will borrow from the novel legal strategy behind a Texas abortion ban enacted last year in which private citizens were empowered to enforce the law through civil litigation.

The National Association of Christian Lawmakers, an antiabortion organization led by Republican state legislators, has begun working with the authors of the Texas abortion ban to explore model legislation that would restrict people from crossing state lines for abortions, said Texas state representative Tom Oliverson (R), the charter chair of the group’s national legislative council.

“Just because you jump across a state line doesn’t mean your home state doesn’t have jurisdiction,” said Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel for the Thomas More Society. “It’s not a free abortion card when you drive across the state line.”

How long until the Supreme Court agrees?

Supreme Court Changes America As We Know It.  With yet another eviscerating opinion on environmental regulations due today:

The final batch of opinions due out Thursday includes a case about the Environmental Protection Agency and climate change that could, as HuffPost’s Paul Blumenthal wrote earlier this year, “crush the ability” of the federal government to regulate everything from toxins in the water to the safety of consumer products.

Coup Attempt Failed Due To The Laziness Of Its Poopetrator:

Coup leaders usually fail visibly, definitively, unambiguously. You don’t need committees to verify who led a coup when the plotters declare their seditious intent, as Hitler did in the beer hall, by punctuating it with a gunshot into the ceiling. I hope it does not sound like I am diminishing the gravity of January 6 when I say that it was among the dumbest coup attempts in history—not because it was destined to fail but because of the trivial reason it was destined to fail. That reason is Trump’s incredible laziness and complete aversion to personal risk. I struggle to think of another putsch that was doomed in quite this way. A whole party prostrated itself before its leader. Lawyers confected idiotic, barely-even-trying justifications. And thousands of people stood ready in the streets to escalate the violence and stop legitimate politics from proceeding. But Trump himself, the one plotter whose vigorous participation was absolutely necessary, seems to have spent most of that day watching TV and ignoring texts.

I suspect that Trump committed serious crimes in the days or weeks after the election, and that no one would call those crimes sedition were it not for what came later. What came later was January 6, a real coup attempt, and on that day Trump outsourced all overt criminality. He avoided firing his own gun at the ceiling. He had bullied allies and enemies and made bad-faith arguments, and now welcomed the murder of the vice president. According to Hutchinson, he asked the Secret Service to remove obstacles to a coup. Does this act amount to insurrection? The Department of Justice, busily investigating Trump’s associates, seems to think the answer is maybe. The House committee has so far declined, wisely, to say either way.

Some people confront these facts and see a stone-cold political criminal. I see a lazy bastard who could not believe his luck—that he had yet again managed to get others to do what he dared not do himself. Maybe Trump will be charged, and maybe those charges will stick. My worry is that what saved American government from existential disaster was not its political institutions (which nearly collapsed) or the honor of its people (who were as nutty and bestial as any). It was the lassitude and cowardice of a single orange-tinted individual who spent most of the coup doing … nothing. The next bastard might not be quite as gutless.

AG Jennings Wins One.  Chancery Court rules that Seaford can’t enact ‘fetal remains’ ordinance:

The Attorney General’s Office was celebrating a win Wednesday over its challenge of a Seaford ordinance which would have forced anyone in the town having a surgical abortion or who had a miscarriage to have the fetal tissue interred or cremated at their own expense.

On June 29, 2022, Delaware Court of Chancery Vice Chancellor J. Travis Laster ruled that the city of Seaford, a “junior sovereign,” cannot enact a law directly conflicting with law established by the “senior sovereign,” the state of Delaware.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has unleashed a wave of extremist, draconian laws across our country. That wave stops here,” said Attorney General Kathy Jennings. “This ruling firmly rejects a clearly illegal and harmful attempt to nullify State law and to use dark money to return us to the Dark Ages. It protects residents and visitors of Seaford from a cruel and frankly hateful policy. And it makes clear that Delaware remains a safe haven for choice and reproductive freedom exactly when those sanctuaries are needed most. I am grateful to the Court for its wisdom and to our team for their quick response and tireless work on this case.”

What do you want to talk about?

About the Author ()

Comments (9)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. puck says:

    Liz Cheney, please stop making me love you. But not now:

    https://news.yahoo.com/cheney-trump-jan-6-committee-014840676.html

  2. Alby says:

    The best solution to the Supreme Court problem was outlined in “The Pelican Brief.”

  3. bamboozer says:

    A brief observation: Who needs Texas for far right stupidity? We’ve got Seaford.
    Re the Pelican Brief: Don’t rule it out, I’m surprised the bullets have yet to fly.

  4. Alby says:

    Who needs Republicans for giveaways to corporations? Our Demorats do the job just fine.

    https://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/politics/2022/06/30/where-promised-union-jobs-private-investment-port-wilmington-john-carney/65364992007/

    Note all the fine Democrats who refuse to talk about yet another giveaway, which they also refuse to enumerate.

    Some of us decried this deal even under the original terms back when it was announced. Yet people still wonder why some of us hate Democratic officeholders just as much as we hate Republicans.