Rethugs Bully, D’s Cower. The story of one progressive judge and his predictable fate:
This country has no more devoted a public servant than Judge Todd Edelman of the D.C. Superior Court. While other law graduates joined white-shoe firms,Edelman, a friend of mine since college, spent years as a public defender, as a labor union lawyer and, for the last 14 years, on the D.C. bench, where he is now presiding judge of the civil division.
Yet few have been so abused by the Senate’s broken judicial confirmation process as Edelman.
President Barack Obama nominated him in 2016 to fill a vacancy on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. But this was during then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s blockade of Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, and Edelman, caught up like other nominees in the Republicans’ refusal to move Obama’s judicial picks, never got a vote, or even a hearing.
President Biden nominated Edelman to the same court in 2022. Republicans struck again, this time with an ugly, Willie-Horton style smear campaign. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) fabricated an outrageous lie, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that a man Edelman released in a pretrial hearing “went on to murder — to murder — an 11-year-old.” In reality, the man in question hadn’t murdered anyone, but Blackburn badly distorted the facts of a case to suggest that Edelman was to blame for a child’s death.
This time, Democrats controlled the Senate. They could have, and should have, called out Blackburn’s nonsense and confirmed Edelman. Instead, they cowered. They shied from defending Edelman, or even pointing out the facts; during the 15-month ordeal, not one Democratic senator said one public word in support. The months dragged on, and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) refused to schedule a vote before the Senate recessed for Christmas break. Two weeks ago, the White House pulled the plug rather than resubmit the nomination for the new session of Congress.
Edelman was an important pick for progressives. Only 6 percent of federal judges have been labor-union lawyers or otherwise came from the “economic justice” sphere, the progressive Alliance for Justice has found. The number of judges who were public defenders is not much higher. Edelman, in addition to his years defending those who couldn’t afford lawyers, served the Service Employees International Union, the United Food and Commercial Workers, the United Mine Workers, the United Steelworkers, the International Association of Firefighters and the AFL-CIO.
“Everybody knows the war is over, everybody knows the good guys lost.” Hey, at least we can look forward to Sen. LBR equating opposition to Netanyahu with anti-semitism. Which reminds me:
Netanyahu Tells Biden To Fuck Himself:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he has told the United States that he opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state once the conflict in Gaza comes to an end.
In a news conference, a defiant Mr Netanyahu vowed to press on with the offensive in Gaza “until complete victory”: the destruction of Hamas and return of the remaining Israeli hostages, adding that it could take “many more months”.
With almost 25,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry, and 85% of the Strip’s population displaced, Israel is under intense pressure to rein in its offensive and engage in meaningful talks over a sustainable end to the war.
Supreme Court Will Overturn Regulatory Protections. Not even a question as to the outcome. This is what the Koch Brothers and Citizens United dark money has sought. No turning back:
“This court seems to have a clear agenda to weaken or perhaps entirely dismantle the administrative state and make it as difficult as possible for agencies to do their work,” said Clare Pastore, professor of the practice of law at the USC Gould School of Law. “Many people, even those who don’t tend to reflexively defer to agencies, have concerns about the Supreme Court eliminating Chevron and either taking control itself of critical regulatory decisions or stopping agencies in their tracks by sending everything back to Congress.”
“The court seems to be prepared to embrace a longtime goal of conservative scholars and activists, and replace Chevron not with the former framework, but with either an unprecedented judicial power grab (rejecting vast numbers of rules) or an impossibly high standard for Congress (requiring Congress to anticipate and address every possible ambiguity),” she said. “Either way, the court would control the administrative state and be able to stop, delay or eliminate any rule it disfavored, no matter how sensible the rule or how consistent with Congress’ intent.”
An absence of regulatory guardrails could benefit banks and other such businesses. For agencies such as the EPA, FDA and Department of Health and Human Services, which have regulations intended to protect public health and the environment, a lack of oversight can be problematic, however.
Max Aung of the Keck School of Medicine of USC, whose work has revealed the health hazards posed by PFAS or “forever chemicals,” said that removing protections for the sake of free enterprise is an unacceptable trade-off.
“We need to keep our scaffolding of public health regulations strong to actively protect environmental health, prevent outbreaks, safeguard marginalized and vulnerable populations, and maintain society’s overall health and safety standards,” said Aung, an assistant professor in the Division of Environmental Health at the Keck School of Medicine. Aung recently spoke about the risks of forever chemicals at a news conference where California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced the state is enforcing new requirements for companies to disclose forever chemicals.
This is why the Koch Bros and the dark money groups paid to elevate Federalists to the bench. Ain’t gonna be any compromise on this one.
Another Crooked Cop. Gee, I wonder how quickly LEOBOR will surface as a defense?:
A Delaware Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Enforcement officer has been charged with trading cigarette cartons for drugs and money, the state Department of Justice said.
Cpl. Joseph Dominic, 33, faces five felony counts and one misdemeanor charge following a joint investigation by the state Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Enforcement and Delaware State Police.
Dominic, who was hired by DATE on Sept. 5, 2016, had been division’s agent of the year in 2022 when he was a corporal and in 2018 when he was a patrolman, according to the agency’s website. A statement by the Delaware Department of Justice said Dominic is suspended from the force.
DATE enforces Delaware’s state liquor and youth access to tobacco laws.
“Nobody is above the law or beneath justice,” Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings said in a statement. “Misconduct by public officials is not just wrong by virtue of the crime itself — it also erodes public trust and dishonors the good work of the overwhelming majority of law-abiding public servants.
Well, yes, police officers are generally above the law and beneath justice. Because of LEOBOR. Even Kathy knows it. Perhaps they’ll make an example of this guy just to promote the fiction that police are being held accountable. Beats passing legislation requiring police officers to be held accountable.
What do you want to talk about?