DL Open Thread: Thursday, August 17, 2023
When You’ve Lost The Cato Institute…: We’re talking yet another Koch Bros enterprise dedicated to their version of ‘libertarianism’, aka unfettered freedom for oligarchs:
Up until now, I’ve been hesitant to predict how the various prosecutions of Donald Trump are likely to turn out. But no longer. I believe yesterday’s indictment in Georgia sealed Trump’s fate, and it is now all but certain that he will be convicted of multiple felonies in one or more of the four pending cases against him. Here’s why.
The Georgia indictment is a bombshell—the equivalent of a Texas Hold’em poker player shoving their entire stack of chips into the middle of the table and declaring, “All in.” In sum, the Georgia indictment alleges that Trump orchestrated a sprawling criminal conspiracy (or “enterprise,” in the language of the indictment and Georgia’s state RICO statute) involving more than 20 named and unnamed co‐conspirators ranging across half‐a‐dozen states for the purpose of unlawfully changing the result of the November 2020 presidential election. There is nothing subtle or nuanced about this indictment—in effect, it accuses Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, Sidney Powell, and a dozen others of staging an unsuccessful coup. If the case goes to trial, which seems likely, the jury will either believe that characterization or they will not. I think they will, for three reasons.
What this really means is that the surviving Koch Bro is looking elsewhere for someone to protect and expand his ill-gotten gains. Interesting…
Free Speech Doesn’t Extend To Death Threats. The Feds should track down every single one of them, and throw these bastards in jail. One Texas woman has already been arrested:
A Texas woman was arrested and has been charged with threatening to kill the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Washington and a member of Congress.
Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, called the federal courthouse in Washington and left the threatening message — using a racist term for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — on Aug. 5, court records show. Investigators traced her phone number and she later admitted to making the threatening call, according to a criminal complaint.
In the call, Shry told the judge, who is overseeing the election conspiracy case against Trump, “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” the documents said. Prosecutors allege Shry also said, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you,” and she threatened to kill U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat running for mayor of Houston, according to court documents.
Trump is leading the threats. He, too, needs to be sent to jail b/c he’s not gonna stop, and I fear there will be inevitable violence as a result.
Montana Teens Win Right To Healthy Climate:
A healthy climate is included in your constitutional rights, at least if you live in Montana. On Monday, District Court Judge Kathy Seeley sided with the 16 young plaintiffs who sued Montana three years ago, arguing that its pro–fossil fuels legislation violated their right to a safe environment. Seeley ruled in the case, Held v. Montana, that “plaintiffs have a fundamental constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment, which includes climate as part of the environmental life support system.” She continued that “Montana’s emissions and climate change have been proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment and harm and injury.” The case was only the third climate-related lawsuit ever to go to trial, and the first to focus on a state’s constitution.
And with Seeley’s ruling, Held v. Montana became the first ever lawsuit to link climate change to the constitutional right to a healthy environment. The magnitude of this ruling cannot be overstated. “I think this is the strongest decision on climate change ever issued by any court,” Michael Gerrard, the founder and faculty director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University, told me this morning.
Poor Senator Feinstein Alleged Victim Of Elder Abuse. Not in control of her finances, but 100% capable of carrying out her Senatorial duties.
Just What We Need–Another Christian Radio Station. WJBR (‘Just Boring Radio’) to become part of a Christian broadcasting juggernaut. No local programming, just all Christ, all the time:
WJBR, one of Delaware’s most popular music stations, has been sold to a nonprofit Christian ministry radio network.
The deal, announced Tuesday, will mark the end of the station’s adult contemporary programming, capping a six-decade run that spanned multiple owners. The purchaser, VCY America, is a Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based nonprofit that hosts Biblical teachings and call-in programs on Christian issues and plays Christian music.
In an interview Wednesday, VCY America Executive Director Jim Schneider said his organization is thrilled to be entering the Wilmington and Philadelphia markets as it continues to fulfill what he described as its mission: to evangelize and affect lives. He has previously called VCY America, “God’s continuing miracle.”
My take? Radio is dead and will not be resurrected.
What do you want to talk about?
I havent listened to terrestrial radio in 24 years, with the exception of wjbr at christmas time. i will miss the 35 songs they have on rotation.
“the surviving Koch Bro is looking elsewhere for someone to protect and expand his ill-gotten gains”
Or for third-party spoiler candidates to ensure Republican wins. Joe Manchin, check your messages.
Hey, if Manchin runs and wins West Virginia, it wouldn’t hurt Biden…
Not just Manchin, but front outfits like No Labels. Even one or more self-funded wealthy candidates could play spoiler in the key counties that will decide the election.
I dunno. I mean, does anybody care what Joe Lieberman is up to these days? Just a buncha has-beens yearning for some pub.
Anybody who votes for any of them wasn’t going to vote for Biden anyway. If you must worry over things you can’t control, you could at least find something more salient.
Money buys everything in America, high political office included. The billionaires are now flexing their monetary muscle in public and make few, if any, efforts to hide it. Thanks to the games of the supremely bad court bribery is now above board, and proclaiming it’s newfound king Clarence Thomas. Interesting, and profoundly foolish times we live in.
” nonprofit Christian ministry radio network.
Nonprofit my ass.
On Trump’s upcoming 100-page exoneration report and press conference:
“Sources tell ABC News that Trump’s legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it.”
Now I’m definitely going to watch it.
Although I don’t think Trump can produce 100 pages of anything, even allowing for his giant block printing in Sharpie.
It is bound to be a shit show. Can you imagine who, at this point, would be willing to put their name on anything Trump was involved with?
Absolute shit show, the best shit show etc. Trump’s almighty announcement will be a festival of lies, insanity and a rerun of his favorite enemies list, now featuring prominent Republicans as well in a truly sad effort at hatred diversity.
Also, by leaking that to ABC I wonder if his current lawyers are creating pretext to vamoose.
James Ho, a federal judge appointed by Trump in 2018 has weighed in with an opinion in the mifepristone case. He claims anti-abortion doctors suffer moral and aesthetic injury when forced to abort fetuses. (this injury is why sales of mifepristone should be aborted) They suffer further injury when they do not get to treat pregnant women, and miss the joy they would have experienced bringing those fetuses to term. (I kid you not) Where was all this feverish conscience activity when young men were conscripted to fight in viet nam…indeed, the national guard troops who were forced overseas by Chaney, et. al. when we decided fighting in Afghanistan and especially Iraq was necessary? Looney!
You forgot to say “the aptly named James Ho.”
The entire quote from Heather Cox Richardson…”In April 2023, Trump appointee and longtime abortion opponent Texas judge Matthew Kacsmaryk issued a preliminary ruling invalidating that approval. The federal appeals court yesterday said the drug should be legal, but significantly limited its use by saying it could not be sent through the mail or prescribed without an in-person visit to a doctor, cutting midwives and other healthcare providers out of the process.
Judge James Ho, who was sworn into office by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in his billionaire benefactor Harlan Crow’s library in 2018 (Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz was also there), wrote his own opinion in the case in order to expand on what he sees as “the historical pedigree of Plaintiffs’ conscience injury, and to explore how Plaintiffs suffer aesthetic injury as well.”
Antiabortion doctors suffer a moral injury when they are forced to help patients who have complications from the use of mifepristone, Ho wrote, because they are forced to participate in an abortion against their principles.
Those doctors also experience an aesthetic injury when patients choose abortion because, as one said, “When my patients have chemical abortions, I lose the opportunity…to care for the woman and child through pregnancy and bring about a successful delivery of new life.” Indeed, Ho wrote, “It’s well established that, if a plaintiff has ‘concrete plans’ to visit an animal’s habitat and view that animal, that plaintiff suffers aesthetic injury when an agency has approved a project that threatens the animal.”
In cases where the government “approved some action—such as developing land or using pesticides—that threatens to destroy…animal or plant life that plaintiffs wish to enjoy,” that injury “is redressable by a court order holding unlawful and setting aside the agency approval. And so too here. The FDA has approved the use of a drug that threatens to destroy the unborn children in whom Plaintiffs [that is, the antiabortion doctors] have an interest.”
“Unborn babies are a source of profound joy for those who view them,” Ho wrote. “Expectant parents eagerly share ultrasound photos with loved ones. Friends and family cheer at the sight of an unborn child. Doctors delight in working with their unborn patients—and experience an aesthetic injury when they are aborted.”
The decision will be on hold until the appeals process is completed.”
The difference, of course, is that there’s no threat of human extinction. More’s the pity.
“The FDA has approved the use of a drug that threatens to destroy the unborn children in whom Plaintiffs [that is, the antiabortion doctors] have an {aesthetic} interest”
Such horseshit. It speaks direct to the fact that the rightwing nutjobs who bring these lawsuits have NO STANDING because they have no injury to address. It’s through the looking glass legal reasoning.
So yeah. Trump’s current lawyers said they would quit if he went through with his exoneration press conference. And seeing no other lawyers clamoring to represent him, he cancelled it.
SO those Trump lawyers all took the “over” (More than 8 Additional Felony Charges) – on our current poll.
Don’t worry, he will find other ways to commit new crimes. Probably when he does whatever he is planning as counter-programming during the GOP debates, which will be immensely triggering for him.