DL Open Thread: Friday, July 29, 2022

AIPAC Goes After Jewish Congressman Because He Supports Palestinian Rights:

It is in Andy Levin’s nature to pick fights.

The forthright Detroit congressman and former trade union leader has built a political career on confronting big oil, the gun industry and anti-abortion campaigners.

But as the scion of a distinguished Jewish political dynasty, a committed Zionist and the former president of his synagogue, Levin has been stung by the largest pro-Israel lobby group’s campaign to paint him as an enemy of the Jewish state because he has spoken up for the Palestinians.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) has spent more than $4m to defeat Levin in next Tuesday’s Democratic primary for a congressional seat in north-western Detroit with a twin strategy to discredit him within the city’s sizable Jewish community while funding an advertising blitz aimed at the wider electorate that avoids mention of the Israel lobby’s involvement.

Looks like AIPAC will prevail on this one as the district has changed.  I recommend that you read this piece.  Although, of course, it’s depressing.

How Six States Could Overturn The Election.  Yes, this could really happen:

Late last month, in one of its final acts of the term, the Supreme Court queued up another potentially precedent-wrecking decision for next year. The Court’s agreement to hear Moore v. Harper, a North Carolina redistricting case, isn’t just bad news for efforts to control gerrymandering. The Court’s right-wing supermajority is poised to let state lawmakers overturn voters’ choice in presidential elections.

To understand the stakes, and the motives of Republicans who brought the case, you need only one strategic fact of political arithmetic. Six swing states—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina—are trending blue in presidential elections but ruled by gerrymandered Republican state legislatures. No comparable red-trending states are locked into Democratic legislatures.

The poison pill?  The so-called ‘Independent State Legislature Doctrine (ISL)’:

Republican lawyers, taking note of their structural advantage among battleground-state lawmakers, set forth the “independent state legislature” (ISL) doctrine. The doctrine is based on a tendentious reading of two constitutional clauses, which assign control of the “Manner” of congressional elections and the appointment of presidential electors in each state to “the Legislature thereof.” Based on that language, the doctrine proposes that state lawmakers have virtually unrestricted power over elections and electors. State courts and state constitutions, by this reading, hold no legitimate authority over legislatures in the conduct of their U.S. constitutional functions.

Looks like four Supreme Court justices are on board, with Amy Coney Barrett and Chief Justice Roberts holding the balance of power.  Just something else to worry about.  But not on the scope of this:

Oh No’s!  Another Endangered Species–Emojis.  Did you know that emojis have to be approved by something called the Unicode Consortium?  I didn’t:

In a new feat for humanity and art, it seems that we have finally reached peak emoji.

After countless rounds of new additions that included flora and fauna, as well as the valiant cowboy emoji, the amount of new symbols that will be added this year is a fraction of the numbers from years past.

The Unicode Consortium, the nonprofit organization that approves new emojis, approved just 31 this year, a quarter of the 112 from last year, and 10 times fewer than the approved amount from 2020, according to emojipedia.com.

Oh, well, we’ll always have emoticons–or will we?  As alternatives, might I suggest–words?

What do you want to talk about?