DL Open Thread: Thursday, May 30, 2024

Filed in Featured, Open Thread by on May 30, 2024

RIP, Lonnie George:  I’ll leave it to others to examine the Del-Tech aspect of the story.  For me, Lonnie was the Speaker of the House during my first two years working for the Delaware General Assembly.  Much to everyone’s surprise, likely including Lonnie and Bob Gilligan, the Democrats won control of the House in 1982.  This followed a gerrymander led by the R leaders in the House.  While our brief stay in the majority lasted only two years, they were two great years.  Lonnie and Bob had assembled a great team, led by Chief-of-Staff Paula Lehrer.  Mark Brainard was her top assistant.  Maryellen Quinn was Lonnie’s executive secretary, and she set very high standards.  Doris Dayton was our Chief Clerk and, since I was the Reading Clerk, she taught me a lot, especially on how to eavesdrop on the Speaker (who had a phone on the podium) without appearing that we were eavesdropping.  They kept giving me more stuff to do, and I flat-out loved those two years.  I shudder to think what it might have been like had my first two years been under the Schwartzkopf/Longhurst team.   Anyway, Lonnie set the tone–professional but creating a work environment where people could thrive.  I thank him for two of the best years of my life and for helping me realize that my peeps were in Leg Hall.  My deepest sympathies to his family.

Alito Vs. Alito.  Spoiler Alert:  He doesn’t care that he’s full of shit.  Not gonna recuse, either.  Nothing you can do about it:

For the moment, let’s just assume the facts are as the justice lays them out: Martha-Ann Alito, embroiled in an acrimonious dispute with a neighbor — a dispute related to the election, something that Alito notably neglects to say — took to semiotics, in the extreme form of an upside-down U.S. flag, to convey her distress.

Thus saith her husband the justice: “I was not even aware of the upside-down flag until it was called to my attention. As soon as I saw it, I asked my wife to take it down, but for several days, she refused.”

“My wife and I own our Virginia home jointly,” Alito wrote the two senators. “She therefore has the legal right to use the property as she sees fit, and there were no additional steps that I could have taken to have the flag taken down more promptly.” As to the second flag, an “Appeal to Heaven” banner at their New Jersey vacation home, that property “was purchased with money she inherited from her parents and is titled in her name.”

Alito wrapped himself in an unconvincing blend of faux feminism and free speech, with an Alito-esque helping of victimhood. “My wife is a private citizen, and she possesses the same First Amendment rights as every other American,” he wrote. Yes, she does — and, like other spouses of prominent individuals, she has an independent responsibility, to her spouse and his institution, to behave appropriately.

More Alito: “She makes her own decisions, and I have always respected her right to do so.” As I’ve written about Clarence and Virginia Thomas, each of them gets to have their separate career, but when one impinges on the other, something’s got to give. To say that isn’t anti-feminist — it’s pro-ethics.

Texas Rethugs Move Towards Death Penalty For Women Who Have Abortions…:

The Republican Party of Texas is considering a platform that appears to endorse the death penalty for abortion providers and patients.

Texas delegates voted on a 2024 platform at the state’s GOP Convention on Saturday and aim to tally the votes by Wednesday to finalize their platform for the coming year. The proposal called for new legislation to solidify fetal personhood ideology into law, define abortion care as homicide and criminalize in vitro fertilization, first reported by feminist writer Jessica Valenti.

…while Texas Rethug AG Turns Consumer Protection Law On Its Head:

Consumer protection laws give attorneys general broad legal authority to request a wide range of records when investigating businesses or charities for allegations of deceptive or fraudulent practices, such as gas stations that hike up fuel prices during hurricanes, companies that run robocalling phone scams and unscrupulous contractors who take advantage of homeowners.

But attorneys general have increasingly used their powers to also pursue investigations targeting organizations whose work conflicts with their political views. And Paxton, a Republican, is among the most aggressive. “He’s laying out kind of like the blueprint about how to do this,” said Paul Nolette, an expert in attorneys general and director of the Les Aspin Center for Government at Marquette University.

An analysis by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune shows that in the past two years, Paxton has used consumer protection law more than a dozen times to investigate a range of entities for activities like offering shelter to immigrants, providing health care to transgender teens or trying to foster a diverse workplace.

Not a single one of the investigations was prompted by a consumer complaint, Paxton’s office confirmed. A complaint is not necessary to launch a probe.

The consumer protection cases that Paxton and like-minded attorneys general are pursuing today are virtually unrecognizable from the historically bipartisan and apolitical ones their counterparts undertook even 20 or 30 years ago, said James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general.

“The people that the laws were designed for were working-class people who were getting ripped off when they bought a used car,” said Tierney, who directs the attorney general clinic at Harvard Law School. While many attorneys general still do that work, consumer protection laws are also increasingly “being used to obviously move social agendas.”

Of course, Paxton saves his most vile tactics for  going after transgender youth.  Hey, it’s a ProPublica article, so it’s well-researched.  Read it.  Please?

What do you want to talk about?

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  1. MonteCristo says:

    Another great story from Karl baker in spotlight Delaware about the states use of unclaimed property money to pay for the port. Well worth the read.

  2. Jason says:

    Alito and Thomas could both be forced to recuse on J6 cases under recusal statutes ( https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/28/455# ) that apply to federal judges including the SC. But it would take Garland actually doing his job, so that ain’t happening.

    https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/05/its-illegal-for-alito-and-thomas-to-hear-the-january-6-cases

  3. Larry Nagengast says:

    RIP Lonnie George.
    I got to know Lonnie pretty well over the years, and had a pretty good relationship with him. I’m sure some DL readers/commenters have expressed varying degrees of outrage over his compensation as Delaware Tech president, but he did build the school to what it is today, and he wasn’t the one who approved his salary.
    My connection with Lonnie goes back to 1972, before he was elected to Wilmington City Council, when he was just an auctioneer’s son who was teaching math at the original Delaware Tech Wilmington campus at 30th Street and North East Boulevard. I went out there to meet with several teachers who were trying to form a faculty union, as part of DSEA. And who was sitting in the middle of the group as I conducted my interview — none other than Lonnie George.
    Over the years, and especially after he became president of the college, Lonnie would recoil a bit when I reminded him of our first meeting. Not that he wasn’t proud of it, but as he grew older his image as a unionizing firebrand didn’t fit his public persona.
    But I’m convinced that his experience as a union organizer helped him develop the public presence that facilitated his election to the General Assembly, the negotiating skills that enabled him to get past a massive state budget controversy with Pete du Pont to broker the passage of significant legislation for two decades, and an understanding of the challenges educators face every day of their working lives.

  4. paul says:

    Nothing legal, you mean…there’s the extra-legal…

  5. Andrew C says:

    GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY….!!!!