Wednesday Reads: The Demolition of U.S. Democracy

Good Morning!!

This looks like a war zone.

I’m heartsick about what Trump is doing to the White House. The White House belongs to the American people, not to the current president. But Trump is doing whatever he wants to our government and to “the people’s house.”

Yesterday, at his substack, Law Dork, Chris Geidner posted the clearest photos of Trump’s demolition I have seen so far. From the photos, it’s clear that either the entire East Wing or most of it will be destroyed. The first photo shows the destruction of the front of the building, and the second shows the damage from above, show how far back the damage to the roof goes. I can’t post the photos here–they are protected–but you can see them at the link.

From the article:

Exclusive: Trump’s demolition of the White House East Wing is nearly complete.

Photos obtained exclusively by Law Dork on Tuesday show that President Donald Trump is completely demolishing the East Wing of the White House as part of his stated plan to build a ballroom befitting his standards on the White House grounds.

Although Trump earlier had said the ballroom “won’t interfere with the current building,“ this week it became abundantly clear that was a lie. And, this dramatic change to the governmental building, Trump says, is happening care of private money and outside of any governmental — and transparent — funding process.

After The Washington Post first reported on Monday that demolition had begun, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday night that Treasury Department employees next door to the demolition were told to “refrain from taking and sharing photographs of the grounds, to include the East Wing, without prior approval from the Office of Public Affairs.“

On Tuesday, Law Dork obtained these photographs taken of the ongoing demolition.

Although the Post’s initial story detailed the “East Wing facade“ being demolished and that teams on Monday were “demolishing a portion ofthe East Wing,“ the Tuesday photograph obtained by Law Dork makes clear that most if not all of the entirety of the East Wing is being demolished.

A second photo obtained by Law Dork from another angle shows the extent of the demolition has already reached all but the western and northern walls of the East Wing.

Geider links to this piece by Ryan Gottleib at ENR East: White House Ballroom Build Advances as Oversight Gaps Emerge.

Demolition crews began work Oct. 20 on the East Wing of the White House to clear space for a privately funded 90,000-sq-ft ballroom addition valued at roughly $200 million at the behest of President Donald Trump

The project, announced July 31 by the White House, will be built by Clark Construction Group with AECOM as engineer and McCrery Architects as designer.

Officials said it will create a larger venue for state and ceremonial events, financed entirely by the president and “patriot donors.”

The addition marks the most substantial change to the Executive Residence since the Truman reconstruction of 1948-52. Renderings depict a limestone-clad structure with tall arched windows, ballistic-resistant glazing and interiors described by the White House as “ornately designed.” [….]

The design calls for the addition to remain structurally distinct from the residence while echoing its neoclassical form. The press office said the ballroom “will be substantially separated from the main building… but its theme and architectural heritage will be almost identical.”

As for Trump gaining approval for the project, he took care of that by appointing a sycophant.

Regulatory filings show that as of Sept. 4 no submission had been made to the National Capital Planning Commission, which reviews major federal projects in the capital region.

Commission Chairman Will Scharf, who also serves as White House staff secretary, said during a public meeting that “what we deal with is essentially construction, vertical build,” explaining why demolition and site-preparation work began before commission review. The interpretation leaves design oversight unresolved, even as groundwork proceeds.

Under the Presidential Residence Act, the White House is managed by the National Park Service and operated by the Executive Office of the President’s Facilities Management Division.

While Section 107 of the act exempts the executive residence from mandatory review, Executive Order 11593, issued in 1971, directs federal agencies to consult with the U.S. Interior Dept. before altering historic structures.

Past administrations have voluntarily submitted major projects for review by the National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts. These measures, while not legally binding, form the preservation framework that has guided White House alterations for decades and remains relevant even for privately funded work.

More information on Trump’s vanity project from The Washington Post (gift article): White House expands East Wing demolition as critics decry Trump overreach.

A demolition job that began Monday with the disappearance of the White House’s eastern entrance advanced Tuesday with the destruction of much of the East Wing, according to a photograph obtained by The Washington Post and two people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the scene.

Photos of construction teams knocking down parts of the East Wing, first revealed by The Washington Post on Monday, shocked preservationists, raised questions about White House overreach and lack of transparency, and sparked complaints from Democrats that President Donald Trump was damaging “the People’s House” to pursue a personal priority.

“They’re wrecking it,” said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist and professor emeritus at Towson University in Maryland. “And these are changes that can’t be undone. They’re destroying that history forever.”

A White House spokesman said that the “entirety” of the East Wing would eventually be “modernized and rebuilt.”

WASHINGTON, DC – OCTOBER 20: Workers demolish the facade of the East Wing of the White House on October 20, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a nonprofit created by Congress to help preserve historic buildings, sent a letter Tuesday to administration officials, warning that the planned 90,000-square-foot ballroom “will overwhelm the White House itself,” which is about 55,000 square feet.

“We respectfully urge the Administration and the National Park Service to pause demolition until plans for the proposed ballroom go through the legally required public review processes,” Carol Quillen, National Trust’s CEO, said in a statement, citing two federal commissions that have traditionally reviewed White House additions.

White House officials dismissed the criticism as “manufactured outrage,” arguing that past presidents had pursued their own changes to the executive campus as necessary. They said that the privately funded ballroom will be a “bold, necessary addition” to the presidential grounds.

You can read more using the gift link.

After the backlash, Trump has decided to submit his plans for review–now that the work is in progress.

Reuters: White House says it will submit ballroom plans for review, with demolition already under way.

The White House said on Tuesday it will submit plans for President Donald Trump’s $250 million White House ballroom project to a body that oversees federal building construction, even though demolition work began earlier this week.

Trump reveled on Tuesday in the demolition sounds by construction workers for the ballroom addition to the White House, the first major change to the historic property in decades.

But critics, aghast about images of the White House walls crumbling after Trump had pledged the project would not interfere with the existing landmark, said a review process should have taken place before the work began.

This schematic from the Washington Post article shows the planned layout of the new White House complex.

The White House still intends to submit those plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, which oversees federal construction in Washington and neighboring states, a White House official told Reuters

“Construction plans have not yet been submitted to the National Capital Planning Commission but will be soon,” the official said, adding that the NCPC does not have jurisdiction over demolition work.

The commission is now led by Will Scharf, a White House aide.

Asked why the demolition of East Wing walls was occurring despite Trump’s promise that it would not affect the existing building, the official said modernization work was required in the East Wing and changes had always been a possibility.

“The scope and size was always subject to vary as the project developed,” he said.

Trump spokesperson Karoline Leavitt thinks the critics of the East Wing teardown are just jealous.

The Daily Beast: Karoline Leavitt Gives Wild Defense of Trump Destroying the White House.

Karoline Leavitt thinks Democrats are just jealous that Donald Trump is building a swanky $250 million ballroom at the White House.

The White House press secretary says that’s the only way to explain the “fake outrage” after part of the White House’s iconic East Wing was demolished to make way for the 90,000-square-foot structure.

The Trump administration has received widespread backlash for starting work on the event space that will eventually dwarf the White House itself. “It’s not his house. It’s your house. And he’s destroying it,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton posted on X.

But Trump officials have attempted to convince the public that it’s what presidents, administrations, and White House staff have longed for, for 150 years.

“Are the Democrats jealous that Trump is building this big beautiful ballroom?” Fox News host Jesse Watters asked Leavitt on Tuesday.

Leavitt replied that it “certainly appears that way.”

“I believe there’s a lot of fake outrage right now because nearly every single president who has lived in this beautiful White House behind me has made modernizations and renovations of their own,” she added.

I’m speechless at this point.

Another Trump outrage from yesterday: Trump is demanding that he be paid $230 million for the prosecutions against him.

The New York Times (gift link): Trump Said to Demand Justice Dept. Pay Him $230 Million for Past Cases.

President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department pay him about $230 million in compensation for the federal investigations into him, according to people familiar with the matter, who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by senior department officials who defended him or those in his orbit.

The situation has no parallel in American history, as Mr. Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by federal law enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the very government that must now review his claims. It is also the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts created by installing the president’s former lawyers atop the Justice Department.

Todd Blanche, the deputy attorney general; Attorney General Pam Bondi; and Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, with President Trump in the Oval Office last week.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

Mr. Trump submitted complaints through an administrative claim process that often is the precursor to lawsuits. The first claim, lodged in late 2023, seeks damages for a number of purported violations of his rights, including the F.B.I. and special counsel investigation into Russian election tampering and possible connections to the 2016 Trump campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the claim has not been made public.

The second complaint, filed in the summer of 2024, accuses the F.B.I. of violating Mr. Trump’s privacy by searching Mar-a-Lago, his club and residence in Florida, in 2022 for classified documents. It also accuses the Justice Department of malicious prosecution in charging him with mishandling sensitive records after he left office.

Asked about the issue at the White House after this article published, the president said, “I was damaged very greatly and any money I would get, I would give to charity.”

He added, “I’m the one that makes the decision and that decision would have to go across my desk and it’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.”

A bit more:

Lawyers said the nature of the president’s legal claims poses undeniable ethics challenges.

“What a travesty,” said Bennett L. Gershman, an ethics professor at Pace University. “The ethical conflict is just so basic and fundamental, you don’t need a law professor to explain it.”

He added: “And then to have people in the Justice Department decide whether his claim should be successful or not, and these are the people who serve him deciding whether he wins or loses. It’s bizarre and almost too outlandish to believe.”

The president also seemed to acknowledge that point in the Oval Office last week, when he alluded vaguely to the situation while standing next to the F.B.I. director, Kash Patel, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and her deputy, Todd Blanche. According to Justice Department regulations, the deputy attorney general — in this case, Mr. Blanche — is one of two people eligible to sign off on such a settlement.

Unbelievable.

Arizona’s attorney general filed a lawsuit against House Speaker Mike Johnson yesterday.

NBC News: Arizona AG sues to force House Speaker Johnson to seat Democrat Adelita Grijalva.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on Tuesday filed a lawsuit to try to force House Speaker Mike Johnson to swear in Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva, the Arizona Democrat who won her late father’s seat in a special election nearly one month ago.

Johnson, R-La., has said he will seat Grijalva once Senate Democrats agree to reopen the government. But the two parties haven’t been talking for weeks, and there is no indication when the shutdown might end.

The lawsuit, which Mayes threatened in a letter to Johnson last week, argues that the speaker’s delay is depriving the 813,000 residents living in Arizona’s 7th District of congressional representation. It lists the state of Arizona and Grijalva herself as plaintiffs and the U.S. House, as well as the House clerk and sergeant at arms, as defendants.

“Speaker Mike Johnson is actively stripping the people of Arizona of one of their seats in Congress and disenfranchising the voters of Arizona’s seventh Congressional district in the process,” Mayes said in a statement. “By blocking Adelita Grijalva from taking her rightful oath of office, he is subjecting Arizona’s seventh Congressional district to taxation without representation. I will not allow Arizonans to be silenced or treated as second-class citizens in their own democracy.”

As he left the Capitol on Tuesday evening, Johnson blasted the Arizona lawsuit as “patently absurd.”

Mayes, he said, has “no jurisdiction.”

We’ll see what the judge has to say about it.

At the Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth (Secretary of War) tells military officials they can’t talk to Congress without his approval.

AP: Hegseth changes policy on how Pentagon officials communicate with Congress.

Leaders at the Pentagon have significantly altered how military officials will speak with Congress after a pair of new memos issued last week.

In an Oct. 15 memo, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and his deputy, Steve Feinberg, ordered Pentagon officials — including the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — to obtain permission from the department’s main legislative affairs office before they have any communication with Capitol Hill.

The memo was issued the same day the vast majority of Pentagon reporters exited the building rather than agree to the Defense Department’s new restrictions on their work, and it appears to be part of a broader effort by Hegseth to exert tighter control over what the department communicates to the outside world.

According to the memo, a copy of which was authenticated by a Pentagon official, “unauthorized engagements with Congress by (Pentagon) personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives.”

It’s a departure from current practice; previously, Defense Department agencies were free to manage their own interactions with Capitol Hill.

But under Hegseth, the department has sought stricter control over messaging coming out of the Pentagon. Dozens of reporters turned in their badges and left the building last week, when most news agencies refused to sign unprecedented restrictions Hegseth imposed that threatened consequences for journalists who reported information he had not approved for release, even if it was unclassified.

The new directive, which would further curb information flow from the Pentagon to Congress, is designed “to achieve our legislative goals,” Hegseth and his deputy wrote in the memo.

“Unauthorized engagements with Congress by DoW personnel acting in their official capacity, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine Department-wide priorities critical to achieving our legislative objectives,” the memo says, using the initialism for the “Department of War,” the Defense Department’s secondary but unofficial name used by the Trump administration.

Why is Hegseth so paranoid? Is it because he’s incompetent and realizes the competent DOD people know that?

Two more articles to check out:

The Washington Post (gift link): Health insurance sticker shock begins as shutdown battle over subsidies rages.

Millions of Americans are already seeing their health insurance costs soar for 2026 as Congress remains deadlocked over extending covid-era subsidies for premiums.

The bitter fight sparked a government shutdown at the start of October. Democrats refuse to vote on government-funding legislation unless it extends the subsidies, while Republicans insist on separate negotiations after reopening the government. Now lawmakers face greater pressure to act as Americans who buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act are seeing, or about to see, the consequences of enhanced subsidies expiring at the end of the year.

Healthcare.gov — the federal website used by 28 states — is expected to post plan offerings early next week ahead of the start of open enrollment in November. But window shopping has already begun in most of the 22 states that run their own marketplaces, offering a preview of the sticker shock to come.

Premiums nationwide are set to rise by 18 percent on average, according to an analysis of preliminary rate filings by the nonpartisan health policy group KFF. That, combined with the loss of extra subsidies, have left Americans with the worst year-over-year price hikes in the 12 years since the marketplaces launched.

Nationally, the average marketplace consumer will pay $1,904 in annual premiums next year, up from $888 in 2025, according to KFF.

The situation is particularly acute in Georgia, which recorded the second-highest enrollment of any state-run marketplace this year and posted prices for 2026 earlier in October. About 96 percent of marketplace enrollees in Georgia received subsidies this year, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank that supports extending the subsidies.

Now Georgians browsing the state website are seeing estimated monthly costs double or even triple, depending on their incomes, as lower subsidy thresholds resume.

Use the gift link to read more.

It’s a shame this didn’t get more publicity. CNN: Democratic senator protests Trump’s ‘grave threats’ in marathon overnight floor speech.

Sen. Jeff Merkley has been speaking on the Senate floor for more than 12 hours after announcing he would protest what he called President Donald Trump’s “grave threats to democracy.”

The Oregon Democrat began his remarks at 6:24 p.m. ET Tuesday and was still speaking as of Wednesday morning.

Senator Jeff Merkley

“I’ve come to the Senate floor tonight to ring the alarm bells. We’re in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our republic since the Civil War. President Trump is shredding our Constitution,” he said at the start of his remarks.

The senator’s marathon speech stands as a symbolic show of Democratic resistance as his party remains in a standoff with Republicans over health care subsidies amid the government shutdown. The shutdown is expected to drag on with the impasse entering a fourth week Wednesday. Democrats have so far held their position, blocking the GOP stopgap bill to reopen the government 11 times until their demands are met.

Merkley in his speech pointed to the Trump administration’s previous halting of research grants for universities in its battle over campus oversight as well as the recent indictments of several of the president’s political opponents as well as his push to deploy National Guard troops to Portland.

“President Trump wants us to believe that Portland, Oregon, in my home state, is full of chaos and riots. Because if he can say to the American people that there are riots, he can say there’s a rebellion. And if there’s a rebellion, he can use that to strengthen his authoritarian grip on our nation,” he said.

Read the rest at CNN.

Those are my offerings for today. Sorry there’s not more good news.

Lazy Caturday Reads

Posted: March 15, 2025 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: just because | Tags: Alan Simpson, Columbia University, Donald Trump, government shutdown, House continuing resolution 2025, immigration, Justice Department, Kevin Drum, Ma Yang, Mahmoud Khalil, Rasha Alawieh, travel ban | 7 Comments

By Brian Laing

Good Morning!!

After Daknikat’s comprehensive post yesterday, it’s hard to imagine there could be any more news to report on today, but I’ve found a few things.

There were two notable deaths yesterday, pioneering blogger Kevin Drum and former Senator Alan Simpson, half of Simpson-Bowles, who created what came to be known as the “Cat Food Commission.”

The New York Times: Kevin Drum, Influential Early Political Blogger, Dies at 66.

Kevin Drum, who gave up his day job in software marketing to write online about politics, policy and his cats, quickly becoming a key figure in the vanguard of center-left bloggers during the genre’s heyday in the early 2000s, died on March 7. He was 66.

His wife, Marian Drum, announced the death on his website but did not say where he died or cite a cause.

Mr. Drum, who lived in Irvine, Calif., had been diagnosed with multiple myeloma in 2014 and had recently developed pneumonia. He blogged about those personal challenges openly and with the same insight that he brought to issues like health care policy and urban planning.

He spent most of his life in Orange County, Calif., which distinguished him from the majority of early big-name bloggers, many of whom hailed from the Washington-Boston corridor or from academic enclaves.

Mr. Drum began blogging in 2002 and quickly developed a large nationwide following. He helped shape what became known as the liberal blogosphere, populated by a broad amalgam of left-of-center thinkers who emphasized policy debates over political horse races.

His curiosity was broad, and he wrote on a variety of subjects from a variety of perspectives — sometimes casually observational, sometimes rigorously analytical — in a way that set him apart from the assorted camps that defined the blogosphere, including academics, politicos and ideologues.

Four years after that, Mr. Drum moved to Mother Jones, where he wrote not just blog posts but also extensive reported pieces for the magazine.

Most notable was a deep dive in 2013 into the theory that the crime wave of the late 20th century was driven in large part by childhood exposure to lead in gasoline and paint, a key factor in the development of behavioral problems and, in turn, delinquency. As lead was phased out, health outcomes improved and crime rates dropped.

“He was just able to unpack very complicated — particularly economically complicated — stories in an immensely readable way,” said Clara Jeffery, the editor in chief of Mother Jones.

The New York Times: Alan K. Simpson, a Folksy Republican Force in the Senate, Dies at 93.

Alan K. Simpson, a plain-spoken former Republican senator from Wyoming who championed immigration reforms and conservative candidates for the Supreme Court while fighting running battles with women’s groups, environmentalists and the press, died on Friday in hospice in Cody, Wyo. He was 93.

He had been struggling to recover from a broken hip that he sustained in December, according to a statement from his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a group of museums of which he was a board member for 56 years. The statement said his recovery had been hindered by complications of a case of frostbite to his left foot that he endured about five years ago and that required the amputation of his left leg below the knee.

By Matt Cauley

Folksy, irreverent and sometimes cantankerous, a gaunt, 6-foot-7 beanpole with a ranch hand’s soft drawl, Mr. Simpson was a three-term senator, from 1979 to 1997, whom school children and tourists in the gallery sometimes took for a Mr. Smith-goes-to-Washington oddball, especially during his occasional rants against “bug-eyed zealots” and “super-greenies,” as he liked to call environmental lobbyists.

The son of a former Wyoming governor and United States senator, Mr. Simpson had been a hell-raiser as a teenager. He and some friends shot up mailboxes, killed a cow with rifles and set fire to an abandoned federal property. He punched a police officer who arrested him. While no one had been seriously hurt, he faced prison. But he was put on probation for two years and paid restitution….

Mr. Simpson had love-hate relationships with the press. Many journalists liked his earthy humor and easy accessibility. But his language could be coarse and his tone contemptuous when he attacked the news media, sometimes singling out reporters by name. He crossed a line when he accused Peter Arnett of CNN of being an enemy “sympathizer” for his reporting from Iraq during the Persian Gulf war, and wrongly accused him of bias in the Vietnam War because he had married a Vietnamese woman.

His political positions sometimes seemed contradictory, or perhaps personal. He supported abortion rights and right-wing nominees to the United States Supreme Court who might overturn Roe v. Wade. And partly out of a friendship forged when he was a 12-year-old Boy Scout, he called on the nation to apologize to Japanese Americans who were interned as potential security risks during World War II.

Read more at the NYT if you’re interested. Frankly, I thought he was a horrible person, but what do I know?

Daknikat covered the Republicans’ horrific continuing resolution yesterday. Of course it pass with Democratic help.

HuffPost: Here Are The Democrats Who Advanced A GOP Bill To Avoid A Government Shutdown.

In the end, nine senators who caucus with Democrats joined with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) in voting to advance legislation to avoid a government shutdown, essentially giving up Democratic leverage over President Donald Trump for the foreseeable future.

Their support meant the bill was able to break the 60-vote threshold to avoid a filibuster, 62-38….

“The off-ramp is in the hands of Donald Trump and Elon Musk and DOGE. We could be in a shutdown for six months or nine months,” Schumer told The New York Times earlier on Friday, arguing a shutdown would be far too unpredictable.

Internal party critics have said Schumer gave up a rare moment of leverage far too easily, misplaying his hand after an often-fractious House Republican Caucus passed a party-line spending bill with Trump’s blessing.

Schumer suggested he was willing to face withering criticism from moderate House members to angry progressive activists: “I’ll take some of the bullets.”

These nine senators are likely to share in Schumer’s political suffering, though none of them are an obvious target for an immediate primary challenge.

Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.): The party’s leading contrarian at the moment, Fetterman has repeatedly said he will never vote for a government shutdown under any circumstances. He’s not up for reelection until 2028.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.): Cortez Masto said her vote was not an “easy decision,” but she was refusing to “hand [Trump and Musk] a shutdown where they would have free reign to cause more chaos and harm.” She’s not up for reelection until 2028.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.): Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in the party’s Senate leadership, is up for reelection in 2026 but is widely expected to retire.
Sen. Angus King (I-Maine): King’s state is heavily reliant on government funds, and he said in a statement posted to his Facebook page giving Musk and Trump power would be a “significantly greater danger to the country than the continuing resolution with all of its faults.” King is not up for reelection until 2030.
Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii): Schatz is known to have leadership ambitions, and taking this vote may show he’s willing to take a political hit for the rest of the caucus. Hawaii is also heavily reliant on federal employees. “Given the number of federal workers in Hawai‘i, mass furloughs would be deeply painful for people across the state,” he said in a statement. Schatz is up for reelection in 2028.
Sens. Maggie Hassan and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.): The Granite State duo are both moderates, and Shaheen is set to retire rather than run for reelection in 2026. Hassan is up for reelection in 2028. “Allowing the federal government to shut down with this President in charge is too dangerous to risk,” Hassan said in a statement.
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.): Peters has already announced his plan to retire in 2026. He said a shutdown under Trump would be “catastrophic”
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.): A close ally of her fellow New Yorker, Gillibrand is also the chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee this cycle. She’s not up for reelection until 2030.

I thought Schumer had some good arguments; but when we are facing a takeover by a dictator, it seems to me the Democrats should fight tooth and nail.

The Daily Beast: Dem Civil War Erupts With ‘Screaming’ and Primary Threats Behind Closed Doors.

Schumer’s politically dicey decision—ahead of a midnight Friday shutdown deadline—has infuriated Democrats to the point some are suggesting he step aside as leader. He explained on the Senate floor late Friday afternoon that his decision was “a Hobson’s choice,” conjuring images of a chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk.

”I believe that allowing Donald Trump to take even more power via a government shutdown is a far worse option,” he said. “The shutdown would allow DOGE to shift into overdrive. It would give Donald Trump and DOGE the keys to the city, the state and the country. And that is a far worse alternative.”

Vintage Lady with White Cat, by Sharyn Bursic

“Next question,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries answered Friday afternoon when a reporter asked if it was time for new leadership in the Senate. Jeffries said House Democrats are “strongly opposed to the partisan funding bill” that Schumer says he now supports.

Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi repudiated Schumer’s choice earlier in the day, saying, “I salute Leader Hakeem Jeffries for his courageous rejection of this false choice, and I am proud of my colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus for their overwhelming vote against this bill.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Schumer’s “unthinkable” acquiesce was a “betrayal,” adding she was “texting, calling, sending carrier pigeons” to Senate Democrats to beg them to not follow suit.

Democratic lawmakers are so “infuriated” with Schumer that some have spoken to Ocasio-Cortez, a New York progressive, about running against him in a Senate primary race, according to CNN, which noted even “centrists” are “so mad” at Schumer they are “ready to write checks for AOC for Senate” come 2028 when he is up for re-election.

Daknikat wrote quite a bit about the Democrats’ anger yesterday. They were even angrier, if possible, after the bill passed. Schumer should retire anyway. We have to get rid of these old fossils.

Remember the days when the Bush administration was disappearing people they decided were terrorists? It looks like Trump is going to follow a similar playbook. I just hope it doesn’t involve torture. The Trump gang are coming down hard on Columbia and other elite universities about protests against the Israel war on Gaza. As you know, they have basically disappeared former Columbia student and protest leader Mahmood Kahlil.

ABC News: White House allegedly asked for updates on arrest of activist Mahmoud Khalil, his attorney says.

Mahmoud Khalil — the pro-Palestinian activist and green card holder detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement this week — said he overheard federal agents say that the White House was asking for an update on his detention, his attorneys said.

“He was surrounded by many DHS agents, or people he believed to be DHS agents, and he believes that he saw or heard, during a call, one of them say that the White House wants an update on what’s going on,” Samah Sisay, a staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights who is representing Khalil, said at a press conference Friday.

“We have every reason to believe, as we allege in the petition, that many people within the executive branch of the government were involved, including the White House,” Sisay said.

Khalil took part in student protests at Columbia University calling for the institution to divest and cut ties with Israel, and he participated in negotiations with university administration.

“His one and only goal was to get Columbia University to divest from its complicity with Israeli government crimes in Gaza and the West Bank,” said Ramzi Kassem, the director of CLEAR, a group representing Khalil….

The Trump administration has claimed that Khalil distributed “pro-Hamas propaganda fliers with the logo of Hamas,” without providing evidence.

The First Amendment is dead, apparently.

AP: The Justice Department is investigating whether Columbia University hid students sought by the US.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether Columbia University concealed “illegal aliens” on its campus, one of its top officials said Friday, as the Trump administration intensified its campaign to deport foreigners who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations at the school last year.

Agents with the Department of Homeland Security searched two university residences with a warrant Thursday evening. No one was arrested and it was unclear whom the authorities were searching for, but by Friday afternoon U.S. officials had announced developments related to two people they had pursued in connection with the demonstrations.

A Columbia doctoral student from India whose visa was revoked by the Trump administration fled the U.S. on an airliner. And a Palestinian woman who had been arrested during the protests at the university last April was arrested by federal immigration authorities in Newark, New Jersey, on charges that she overstayed an expired visa.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, speaking at the Justice Department, said it was all part of the president’s “mission to end antisemitism in this country.”

What a bunch of bullshit.

“Just last night, we worked with the Department of Homeland Security to execute search warrants from an investigation into Columbia University for harboring and concealing illegal aliens on its campus,” Blanche said. “That investigation is ongoing, and we are also looking at whether Columbia’s handling of earlier incidents violated civil rights laws and included terrorism crimes.”

Blanche didn’t say what evidence agents had of wrongdoing by the university. It was unclear whether he was accusing the school itself of “terrorism crimes” or saying that people involved in the protests had committed such crimes.

Girl with a Cat, by Zakir Ahmedov

The Boston Globe has a scary immigration story today: R.I. doctor prevented from returning to US after visiting her parents in Lebanon.

A Rhode Island doctor who had traveled to Lebanon to see her parents was prevented from re-entering the United States at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Thursday evening, her lawyer and a colleague said.

Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, who lives in Providence, has been working at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease & Hypertension since last July, and she been part of the transplant service at Rhode Island Hospital, according to Dr. George Bayliss, the organ transplant division’s medical director. She has been studying and working in the United States for about six years, he said Friday.

The US consulate in Lebanon had issued her an H-1B visa, which is given to people in specialty occupations requiring expertise. The visa was valid through mid-2027, said Thomas S. Brown, an attorney representing her and Brown Medicine.

Alawieh was detained when she returned to Logan airport, and family members are afraid that she is about to be deported to Lebanon, he said.

“We are at a loss as to why this happened,” Brown said. “I don’t know if it’s a byproduct of the Trump crackdown on immigration. I don’t know if it’s a travel ban or some other issue.”

He said her phone has been seized and he has not been able to contact Alawieh.

Bayliss said a lawyer filed a petition with the US District Court in Massachusetts, and Judge Leo T. Sorokin issued an order saying Alawieh should not be moved outside of Massachusetts without 48 hours notice. But he said that message apparently did not reach immigration officials in time, and a plane carrying Alawieh left for Paris.

“This is outrageous,” Bayliss said in an interview. “This is a person who is legally entitled to be in the U.S., who is stopped from re-entering the country for reasons no one knows. It’s depriving her patients of a good physician.”

This is a creepy story from The Guardian: Pro-Israel group says it has ‘deportation list’ and has sent ‘thousands’ of names to Trump officials.

A far-right group that claimed credit for the arrest of a Palestinian activist and permanent US resident who the Trump administration is seeking to deport claims it has submitted “thousands of names” for similar treatment.

Betar US is one of a number of rightwing, pro-Israel groups that are supporting the administration’s efforts to deport international students involved in university pro-Palestinian protests, an effort that escalated this week with the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, an activist who recently completed his graduate studies at Columbia University.

This week, Donald Trump said Khalil’s arrest was just “the first of many to come”. Betar US quickly claimed credit on social media for providing Khalil’s name to the government.

Betar, which has been labelled an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a Jewish advocacy group, said on Monday that it had “been working on deportations and will continue to do so”, and warned that the effort would extend beyond immigrants. “Expect naturalized citizens to start being picked up within the month,” the group’s post on X read. (It is very difficult to revoke US citizenship, though Trump has indicated an intention to try.)

The group has compiled a so-called “deportation list” naming individuals it believes are in the US on visas and have participated in pro-Palestinian protests, claiming these individuals “terrorize America”.

A Betar spokesperson, Daniel Levy, said in a statement to the Guardian that Betar submitted “thousands of names” of students and faculty they believe to be on visas from institutions like Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, UCLA, Syracuse University and others to representatives of the Trump administration.

By Martin Pierce

Here’s another immigration horror story from The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee-area woman deported to Laos though she’s never been there, doesn’t speak the language.

A Hmong American woman who has lived in the Milwaukee area since she was 8 months old was deported last week to Laos, a country she has never visited, and says she is stranded in a rooming house surrounded by military guards.

Ma Yang, 37, a mother of five, said she does not speak the Lao language, has no family or friends in the country and that the military is holding all her documents. She was born in Thailand, the daughter of Hmong refugees after the Vietnam War, and she was a legal permanent U.S. resident until she pleaded guilty to taking part in a marijuana trafficking operation.

“The United States sent me back to die,” she said. “I don’t even know where to go. I don’t even know what to do.”

As President Donald Trump pushes the mass deportation of immigrants, Yang believes she is one of the first Hmong Americans to be deported to Laos in recent years. As of November, the U.S. considered Laos an “uncooperative” country that accepted few, if any, deportees. Zero people were deported to Laos in the last fiscal year, according to federal data.

Once she arrived in the Laotian capital of Vientiane on March 6, she said she was questioned by military authorities then sent to a rooming house, where guards did not allow her to leave or contact anyone for five days. She paced in circles around the compound and ate food the guards gave her.

A few days ago, she was taken to buy a cellphone and withdraw cash. She could finally reach out to her partner of 16 years, Michael Bub of South Milwaukee, a U.S. citizen. The military official in charge of her situation — she does not know his rank or title — then said she could leave if she wanted. But she is scared to venture out.

Trump is apparently planning a new travel ban. The New York Times: Draft List for New Travel Ban Proposes Trump Target 43 Countries.

The Trump administration is considering targeting the citizens of as many as 43 countries as part of a new ban on travel to the United States that would be broader than the restrictions imposed during President Trump’s first term, according to officials familiar with the matter.

A draft list of recommendations developed by diplomatic and security officials suggests a “red” list of 11 countries whose citizens would be flatly barred from entering the United States. They are Afghanistan, Bhutan, Cuba, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, the officials said….

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive internal deliberations, cautioned that the list had been developed by the State Department several weeks ago, and that changes were likely by the time it reached the White House.

Citizens on that list would also be subjected to mandatory in-person interviews in order to receive a visa. It included Belarus, Eritrea, Haiti, Laos, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, Sierra Leone, South Sudan and Turkmenistan.

See the full draft list of countries at the link. I can’t reproduce it here.

This is getting too long, but I need to touch on Trump’s speech at the “justice department” yesterday. The speech was supposed to be about fentanyl.

Mary Sauer, Figure with Black Cat

Hugo Lowell at The Guardian: Trump vents fury about his criminal cases in extraordinary speech at DoJ.

Taking over the justice department headquarters for what amounted to a political event, Donald Trump railed against the criminal cases he defeated by virtue of returning to the presidency in an extraordinary victory lap the department has perhaps never before seen.

The event was billed as a policy address for the administration to tout its focus on combating illegal immigration and drug trafficking, but the majority of the president’s freewheeling remarks focused instead on his personal grievances with the department.

Trump spoke from a specially constructed stage in the great hall of the main justice building, backed with blue velvet curtains that underscored the theatrics and symbolism of Trump cementing his control over the justice department, which had tried and failed to hold him to account.

The choice of venue carried additional resonance about how Trump has fully implemented his agenda at the justice department, doing away with the longstanding tradition of independence from partisan politics and instead turning it into an extension of the White House.

The great hall has historically been used for major law enforcement announcements by the justice department and its senior leaders, and when presidents have delivered speeches at the building, the remarks have been of a national security or non-political stripe.

In Trump’s hourlong speech, he repeatedly strayed from his prepared remarks to assail the criminal cases against him, various lawyers and former prosecutors by name and accused the Biden administration of trying to destroy him, declaring Joe Biden the head of a crime family.

“The case against me was bullshit,” Trump said with fury, in the building where the charges were approved.

But he heaped praise on his defense lawyers Todd Blanche and Emil Bove, whom he elevated to in effect run the justice department as the deputy attorney general and the principal associate deputy attorney general respectively, as well as the department’s chief of staff, Chad Mizelle….

Trump offered notable praise for the US district judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed his criminal case on charges of mishandling classified documents, over decades of legal precedent. Trump claimed criticism of her made her angry, although he also said he had never spoken to her.

“She was brilliant,” Trump said of Cannon, “the absolute model of what a judge should be.”

Liam Reilly at CNN: Trump baselessly accuses news media of ‘illegal’ behavior and corruption in DOJ speech.

President Donald Trump launched some of his harshest attacks yet on the media on Friday, using a speech at the Department of Justice to baselessly accuse outlets including CNN of illegal and corrupt behavior.

In his Friday speech, Trump praised Florida district court Judge Aileen Cannon, whom he appointed in 2020 and who sided with him in January, blocking the DOJ from sharing a report on Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents with members of Congress.

But Trump claimed news publishers had gone after Cannon because of the January ruling, alleging “they do it all the time with judges” and that they “will write whatever these people say,” without offering proof.

“The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and MSDNC, and the fake news, CNN and ABC, CBS and NBC, they’ll write whatever they say,” Trump said. “And what do you do to get rid of it? You convict Trump.”

“It’s totally illegal what they do,” Trump continued, addressing DOJ employees. “I just hope you can all watch for it, but it’s totally illegal.”

While Trump did not immediately clarify who “they” are, he later claimed that CNN and MSNBC are “political arms of the Democrat Party.”

“In my opinion, they’re really corrupt,” Trump said.

He’s doing everything in the dictator’s playbook, folks.

That’s it for me. What’s on your mind today?

Thursday Reads: Extreme Heat and Other News

Posted: July 13, 2023 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: Afternoon Reads, birth control, Climate change, just because | Tags: Chris Wray, cocaine in White House, extreme heat, Floods, heat dome, heat wave, House Judiciary Committee, January 6 prosecutions, Justice Department, Oath Keepers prison sentences, over the counter birth control pill, Secret Service, surfing sea otter, weather | 11 Comments

Good Afternoon!!

Extreme Heat, by Ronda Breen

Today will be another boiling hot day for millions of people in the U.S. and Europe. There has also been record flooding in many places in recent days.

We’ve had a relatively cool summer here in New England, until recently. Now we are also experiencing an extended period 90+ degree heat, pouring rain, and floods.

Is this extreme weather the new normal, as Dakinikat has suggested? I’ve been looking around this morning to see what experts are saying about this situation.

The Heat Wave and What it Means

Fortune Magazine: More than 1 in 3 Americans are under heat alert as there’s no relief in sight for the apocalyptic summer weather.

It’s hardly revelatory that summer is hot, but the summer of 2023 is standing out as records fall and thermometers push their breaking points. If you’re hoping for some sort of relief, it’s not coming anytime soon.

The South and Southwest will continue to face record temperatures for as much as the coming two weeks, forecasters have warned. A heat dome (another term for a ridge of high pressure) over Arizona, Nevada and parts of California could trap the hot air in place. Heat.gov, the government’s heat portal, says over 113 million Americans are under heat alerts. Given that the 2020 census put America’s population at about 331.5 million people, this heat alert means that you have a one in three chance of being under heat alert as an American this July.

It’s oppressive everywhere, but some areas are especially noteworthy. Phoenix has reported temperatures of over 110 degrees for 12 consecutive days. In the coming days, forecasters say that could climb to 118—and there’s no end in sight. Death Valley, Calif., meanwhile, is forecast to hit 123 degrees later this week.

Another heat dome over the South is keeping temperatures close to the 100-degree mark, with high humidity making it feel hotter. Heat indexes in the Lower Mississippi valley, for instance, are expected in the 110-115 range Thursday. That hazardous heat, in some regions, could last through July 20, forecasters say.

This is unreal news from Florida. Live Science: Florida waters now ‘bona fide bathtub conditions’ as heat dome engulfs state.

Coastal waters around Florida have reached alarming temperatures of 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) with no sign of cooling off anytime soon, experts say.

The Sunshine State is in the midst of its hottest year in modern history, with temperatures over land averaging in the mid 90s F (35 C) — 3 to 5 F (1.7 to 2.8 C) above normal for this time of year. Ocean waters have absorbed much of this heat, causing sea temperatures to soar to record highs, which could spell trouble for marine ecosystems and strengthen storms and hurricanes.

Józef Chełmoński, Indian Summer, 1875

“It’s an astounding, prolonged heat wave even for a place that’s no stranger to sultry weather,” Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami’s School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science, told the Washington Post. “It’s not something we like to see near land simply because it would allow a storm to maintain a high intensity right up to landfall or rapidly intensify as it approaches landfall.” [….]

The current bath-like conditions are consistent with a “severe” marine heat wave, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). The agency defines marine heat waves as “prolonged periods of anomalously high sea surface temperature” that can impact “a broad range of marine life.”

This includes coral bleaching, as reefs are “extremely sensitive to slight changes (just a few degrees) in water [temperature],” Berardelli wrote. NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch has designted an “Alert Level 1” area off the coast of Florida — the second-highest warning on the scale — with “significant bleaching likely.”

NBC News: Heat wave scorches millions as relief efforts strive to keep up.

Across a wide swath of the U.S. from Texas to Nevada, a major heat wave that is threatening to break temperature records continued to bake parts of the South and Southwest on Wednesday, sending people scrambling for relief and adding to what has become a series of weather extremes that researchers say fit the pattern of a warming environment.

Temperatures well into the triple digits are expected this weekend from California to Texas to Florida, with parts of Nevada forecast to reach 116 degrees Fahrenheit and cities in Arizona expected to hit a staggering 118 F.

“Today is Day 12 of 110-plus, and the exclamation on this event is yet to come,” said David Hondula, who directs the Phoenix Office of Heat Response and Mitigation, which was gearing up for a weekend spike in temperatures.

Last month was the warmest June globally since at least 1850, when record-keeping began, according to a new report by Berkeley Earth, a nonprofit research organization that focuses on climate data analysis. The report found that June 2023 broke the previous record, set last year, by a “large margin,” putting the planet on track for one of the warmest years on record — if not the warmest….

Hondula said his primary concern was the city’s population of people experiencing homelessness.

“We know there will be hundreds of people living on the street during this heat event and at much, much higher risk than everybody else,” Hondula said.

Last year, heat played a role in 425 deaths in Maricopa County, where Phoenix is, according to a report released this June. About 56% of the heat deaths involved people experiencing homelessness.

My god. Imagine being homeless and spending day after day outdoors in this heat!

One more article on the likely meaning of this heat wave from Sarah Kaplan at The Washington Post: Floods, fires and deadly heat are the alarm bells of a planet on the brink.

The world is hotter than it’s been in thousands of years, and it’s as if every alarm bell on Earth were ringing.

The warnings are echoing through the drenched mountains of Vermont, where two months of rain just fell in only two days. India and Japan were deluged by extreme flooding.

Heat Stroke, by Weshon Hornsby

They’re shrilling from the scorching streets of Texas, Florida, Spain and China, with a severe heat wave also building in Phoenix and the Southwest in coming days.

They’re burbling up from the oceans, where temperatures have surged to levels considered “beyond extreme.”

And they’re showing up in unprecedented, still-burning wildfires in Canada that have sent plumes of dangerous smoke into the United States.

Scientists say there is no question that this cacophony was caused by climate change — or that it will continue to intensify as the planet warms. Research shows that human greenhouse gas emissions, particularly from burning fossil fuels, have raised Earth’s temperature by about 1.2 degrees Celsius (2.2 Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. Unless humanity radically transforms the way people travel, generate energy and produce food, the global average temperature is on track to increase by more than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 Fahrenheit), according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — unleashing catastrophes that will make this year’s disasters seem mild.

The only question, scientists say, is when the alarms will finally be loud enough to make people wake up.

“This is not the new normal,” said Friederike Otto, a climate scientist at the Imperial College London. “We don’t know what the new normal is. The new normal will be what it is once we do stop burning fossil fuels … and we’re nowhere near doing that.”

The arrival of summer in the Northern Hemisphere and the return of the El Niño weather pattern, which tends to raise global temperatures, are contributing to this season of simultaneous extremes, Otto said. But the fact that these phenomena are unfolding against a backdrop of human-caused climate change is making these disasters worse than ever before.

What might have been a balmy day without climate change is now a deadly heat wave, she said. What was once a typical summer thunderstorm is now the cause of a catastrophic flood.

And a day that is usually warm for the planet — July 4 — was this year the hottest ever recorded. Earth’s global average temperature of more than 17 degrees Celsius (62.6 Fahrenheit) may well have been the hottest it has gotten in the last 125,000 years.

When will governments and corporations begin to take climate change seriously?

Other News – Odds and Ends

New this morning from The New York Times: F.D.A. Approves First U.S. Over-the-Counter Birth Control Pill.

The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved a birth control pill to be sold without a prescription for the first time in the United States, a milestone that could significantly expand access to contraception.

Summertime, by Mary Cassatt, 1804

The medication, called Opill, will become the most effective birth control method available over the counter — more effective at preventing pregnancy than condoms, spermicides and other nonprescription methods. Experts in reproductive health said its availability could be especially useful for young women, teenagers and those who have difficulty dealing with the time, costs or logistical hurdles involved in visiting a doctor to obtain a prescription.

The pill’s manufacturer, Perrigo Company, based in Dublin, said Opill would most likely become available from stores and online retailers in the United States in early 2024.

The company did not say how much the medication would cost — a key question that will help determine how many people will use the pill — but Frédérique Welgryn, Perrigo’s global vice president for women’s health, said in a statement that the company was committed to making the pill “accessible and affordable to women and people of all ages.” Ms. Welgryn has also said the company would have a consumer assistance program to provide the pill at no cost to some women.

“Today’s approval marks the first time a nonprescription daily oral contraceptive will be an available option for millions of people in the United States,” Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, director of the F.D.A.’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, said in a statement. “When used as directed, daily oral contraception is safe and is expected to be more effective than currently available nonprescription contraceptive methods in preventing unintended pregnancy.”

Tuesday Evening Reads

Posted: April 3, 2012 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2012 presidential campaign, Crime, SDB Evening News Reads, U.S. Politics, Violence against women | Tags: activist judges, Barack Obama, FBI, first amendment, Frank Taaffee, George Zimmerman, Justice Department, Mitt Romney, Natalie Jackson, Norman Wolfinger, Planned Parenthood bombing, Rick Santorum, Sanford PD, Scott Walker, separation of powers, Texas tornadoes, Trayvon Martin, Wisconsin prmary | 14 Comments

Good Evening. I’m filling in for Minkoff Minx tonight, as she prepares for her surgery tomorrow.

I just heard on MSNBC that NBC News has already called the DC and Maryland primaries for Mitt Romney. The polls close in Wisconsin at 9PM Eastern, but Romney is expected to win there also.

As I wrote this morning, folks in Wisconsin are much more excited about the vote to recall Governor Scott Walker, which takes place in June, than they are about today’s Republican primary. Along those lines, John Nichols has an interesting piece in The Nation about why Walker has been avoiding talking about or being seen with the Republican candidates, despite the fact that Romney and Santorum have been praising Walker’s anti-labor agenda to the skies in hopes of gaining votes.

Romney’s major appearance in the vicinity of the state’s second largest city, Madison, was on Saturday at a suburban call center where Walker backers are trying—in preparation for the recall race—to identify supporters of the governor. Romney used the event, as he has others across the state, to hail Walker as a “hero.”

Santorum, who actually made calls at a Walker office last week, has been even more effusive in his praise of the embattled governor, telling crowds they have to work to prevent the recalls of Walker and Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch. “Please continue to lead and defend these two great public officials,” he told the crowd in Waukesha County.

But you won’t hear Walker thanking the presidential candidates for their support. Even when the governor is in the vicinity of the GOP contenders—at party functions, for instance—he leaves a good distance between himself and Romney and Santorum. And as the primary approaches, Walker is scheduling himself away from the candidates.

Why? Because the governor recognizes that he is in the fight of his political life, and the last thing he wants is to reemphasize why that fight has developed by appearing with Republican presidential candidates who are highlighting precisely the policies that got Walker in political hot water.

Also in Wisconsin, police have identified a suspect in the yesterday’s Planned Parenthood bombing attempt, but they aren’t naming him yet.

Police say they have arrested the person they think placed a homemade explosive device that went off Sunday and damaged Planned Parenthood’s Gillett Street clinic.

Police said today they identified the man after reviewing surveillance footage.

The 50-year-old man Brillion man was jailed early Tuesday for violating his probation, though police haven’t yet sought charges stemming from placement of the explosive and subsequent fire at the clinic. The man has a lengthy criminal history that includes cocaine possession and delivery, resisting or obstructing police, bail jumping and disorderly conduct.

“The focus today is to determine what else we can discover that might link this person to the situation,” said Grand Chute Police Chief Greg Peterson.

There were some terrible tornadoes in the the Dallas, Texas area this afternoon.

Tornadoes and violent storms raked through the Dallas area Tuesday, crumbling the wing of a nursing home, peeling roofs from dozens of homes and spiraling big-rig trailers into the air like footballs. More than a dozen injuries were reported.

Overturned cars left streets unnavigable and flattened trucks clogged highway shoulders. Preliminary estimates were that six to 12 tornadoes had touched down in North Texas, senior National Weather Service meteorologist Eric Martello said. But firm numbers would only come after survey teams checked damage Wednesday, he said.

In suburban Dallas, Lancaster Police officer Paul Beck said 10 people were injured, two of them severely. Three people were injured in Arlington, including two residents of a nursing home who were taken to a hospital with minor injuries after swirling winds clipped the building, city assistant fire chief Jim Self said.

“Of course the windows were flying out, and my sister is paralyzed, so I had to get someone to help me get her in a wheelchair to get her out of the room,” said Joy Johnston, who was visiting her 79-year-old sister at the Green Oaks Nursing and Rehabilitation Center. “It was terribly loud.”

It sounds pretty bad, but so far no deaths have been reported. I sure hope it stays that way.

Can the judicial branch “order” the executive branch to do something? According to a Fox News headline, they can: Judges order Justice Department to clarify Obama remarks on health law case. Funny, I thought the three branches of government were independent of each other.

A federal appeals court is striking back after President Obama cautioned the Supreme Court against overturning the health care overhaul and warned that such an act would be “unprecedented.”

A three-judge panel for the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday ordered the Justice Department to explain by Thursday whether the administration believes judges have the power to strike down a federal law.

One justice in particular chided the administration for what he said was being perceived as a “challenge” to judicial authority — referring directly to Obama’s latest comments about the Supreme Court’s review of the health care case….

“Does the Department of Justice recognize that federal courts have the authority in appropriate circumstances to strike federal statutes because of one or more constitutional infirmities?” Judge Jerry Smith asked at the hearing.

Justice Department attorney Dana Lydia Kaersvang answered “yes” to that question.

Fine, but the President has the same first amendment rights as any citizen, and judges can’t tell him what to say or not say. These “conservative” justices are getting too big for their britches, if you ask me.

I wrote this morning that Florida states attorney Norman Wolfinger had accused Trayvon Martin’s parent of “outright lies” in their request for help from the Justice Department. Today the parents and their attorneys struck back: This family deserves answers.

[Natalie Jackson, a lawyer for Trayvon’s parents] said the family is “asking the same questions that the American people are asking.” She added, in a pointed rebuke of Wolfinger, who, an anonymous source told theGrio, personally met with the chief on the night of the shooting, February 26th, after which the decision to release Zimmerman was made: “the family is getting the same information the public is getting, through the media, and that’s not how it’s supposed to be. They should be getting it from the source.”

Jackson said Wolfinger’s office failed to keep the family informed when he had the case, and added, “the only source who can get answers for this family at this point, is the Justice Department.”

Jackson said Trayvon’s parents have a core question: “why was George Zimmerman not arrested that night? Why did [Wolfinger’s office and Sanford police] say there was no probable cause? We as Americans see there was probable cause. That is the core of the problem. If the state attorney had answered that question, we wouldn’t be here. But it’s not acceptable to ignore the family. So let’s not attack these parents when all they want to know is what happened to their dead child. Because no matter what, their child was walking home from the store. If George Zimmerman had stayed in his car, we wouldn’t be here. The lead homicide detective believed there should be an arrest. Why wasn’t [Zimmerman] arrested?”

Jackson said that since no local law enforcement representatives will answer the family’s questions, they don’t see any other way to get answers than through the Justice Department. MSNBC reported that FBI agents were interviewing witnesses today. I have a strong feeling that Sanford police and Wolfinger are going to get their comeuppance eventually.

Zimmerman’s strongest defender in the neighborhood, Frank Taaffee, isn’t doing his pal George any favors. He went on a “rant” about “young black males” in an interview with CNN’s Soledad O’Brien.

“Neighbor-hood, that’s a great word,” Taaffe said, chuckling. “We had eight burglaries in our neighborhood, all perpetrated by young black males in the 15 months prior to Trayvon being shot.”

O’Brien asked how many arrests and convictions there were, and Taffee said there was only one. So how does he know the burglaries were all committed by “young black males?” But despite the lack of arrests, Taffee claims to know.

“It sounds like you are saying that it made sense to you that George Zimmerman would be fearful of young black men,” O’Brien observed.

“No, it would be consistent that the perpetrators were all of the young black male ID,” Taaffe explained. “All of the perpetrators of the prior burglaries were young black males. … You know, there’s an old saying that if you plant corn, you get corn.”

“If you plant corn, you get corn. What does that mean?” O’Brien wondered.

“It is what it is,” Taaffe replied. “I would go on record stating, of the eight prior burglaries in the 15 months prior to the Trayvon Martin shooting, all of the perpetrators were young black males. … No disrespect to George Clooney, but it was a perfect storm. All the ingredients were set up. You know, the prior burglaries were committed or perpetrated by young black males, George was on his [neighborhood watch] rounds.”

Interestingly, Taaffe has a criminal history similar to Zimmerman’s. Taffee has been arrested for violating protective order against him for domestic violence.

Someone at DU posted Taafee’s full criminal record. He was arrested for beating up his wife (now ex-wife) in 1999, 2000, and 2008 and for harassing his children in 2002. They also got a restraining order against him. He was convicted of criminal trespass and petty theft in 2000 and sentenced to 9 months in jail. And he was charged with failure to pay child support in 1999. Nice guy, huh?

This will give you some news to chew on. The Wisconsin results should be coming in a few minutes.

Tuesday Reads: Romney Gets Women’s Health Questions in IL, Santorum Talks Brokered Convention, Manning and Tebow, and the Trayvon Martin Murder

Posted: March 20, 2012 | Author: bostonboomer | Filed under: 2012 primaries, birth control, Injustice system, morning reads, U.S. Politics, War on Women, Women's Healthcare | Tags: Bll Lee, Fl "Stand Your Ground" laws, George Zimmerman, hate crimes, Illinois primary, Justice Department, Mitt Romney, Sanford FL, self defense, Tim Tebow, Trayvon Martin | 17 Comments

Good Morning!!

Today is the Illinois primary, so I have a few links for you about that–even though I’m sure you’re as sick of reading about Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum as I am.

According to CNN, Romney leads Santorum by double digits as of last night.

The Caucus Blog (NYT): Before Illinois Primary, Santorum Talks of Brokered Convention

Mr. Santorum remains insistent that he and the other Republican challengers are in a position to deny Mr. Romney the 1,144 delegates he needs to claim the party’s nomination. In an appearance on CBS’s “Early Show,” Mr. Santorum said Mr. Romney could not win.

“The convention will nominate a conservative,” Mr. Santorum said. “They will not nominate the establishment moderate candidate from Massachusetts. When we nominate moderates, when we nominate a Tweedledum versus Tweedledee, we don’t win elections.”

Asked about the odds of a brokered convention, Mr. Santorum said, “Obviously, they are increasing.”

Washington Post: On eve of Illinois primary, Mitt Romney faces tough questions about women’s issues

PEORIA, Ill. — Mitt Romney wanted to talk about the economy, but Bradley University had other ideas.

The Republican presidential front-runner faced tough questions about his opposition to Planned Parenthood and mandatory birth control coverage as he met with students Monday night.

CNN (with video): Romney can’t escape birth control questions in Illinois

After Romney riffed for about 20 minutes on President Barack Obama’s management of the economy, he solicited questions from the large student-heavy audience.

As the first questioner made apparent, these voters were not pre-screened.

“So you’re all for like, yay, freedom, and all this stuff,” said the first woman to approach a microphone. “And yay, like pursuit of happiness. You know what would make me happy? Free birth control.”

….

“You know, let me tell you, no no, look, look let me tell you something,” he said, waiting for the crowd noise died down. “If you’re looking for free stuff you don’t have to pay for? Vote for the other guy, that’s what he’s all about, okay? That’s not, that’s not what I’m about.”

Romney also told the students that he would end government funding for Planned Parenthood and he didn’t know or care where women could go for health care after he ends the funding. What a guy.

Washington Post Politics: Romney, Santorum each claim conservative mantle before Illinois primary

On the eve of the hotly contested Illinois primary, each of the leading Republican presidential candidates drew inspiration from touchstones of conservatism on Monday and offered himself as the standard-bearer for the right’s fight against President Obama.

Mitt Romney traveled to the urban campus where Obama once taught constitutional law to lecture the president on the principle of economic freedom, paying homage to the University of Chicago’s legacy as the intellectual center of free-market economics.

A hundred miles west in Dixon, Rick Santorum tried to channel the spirit and vision of Ronald Reagan during a stop in the former president’s boyhood hometown, hoping to give his insurgent campaign a last-minute infusion of energy.

As they journeyed across Illinois, Romney and Santorum each cast himself as the rightful heir to Reagan’s conservative mantle…

As we’ve all noted previously, if Ronald Reagan ran today, he wouldn’t be nominated. He wasn’t anywhere near as far right as today’s Republicans.

In sports news, the Peyton Manning sweepstakes is over. Manning is going to the Denver Broncos, and Xtian fundamentalist weirdo Tim Tebow may be traded.

Unfortunately, Jim Clayton of ESPN started a rumor that the New England Patriots might want Tebow. I don’t know if I could take that. I don’t really think Tebow’s super-pious act would go over that well in Foxborough. I haven’t seen any of the Patriots players kneeling down and praising Jesus before games and after scoring. Ugh!

Dakinikat and I both wrote about the Trayvon Martin case yesterday, and I have a few more links on that.

First, Connie posted a link to this very informative Mother Jones article yesterday: The Trayvon Martin Killing, Explained. If you haven’t heard the 911 calls, the audio from all of them is posted in the piece. Florida’s “Stand Your Ground Law,” which gives very broad interpretations to “self-defense” is explained in the MJ article. Here’s a bit of it:

In 1987, then-Gov. Bob Martinez (R) signed Florida’s concealed-carry provision into law, which “liberalized the restrictions that previously hindered the citizens of Florida from obtaining concealed weapons permits,” according to one legal analyst. This trendsetting “shall-issue” statute triggered a wave of gun-carry laws in other states. (Critics said at the time that Florida would become “Dodge City.”) Permit holders are also exempted from the mandatory state waiting period on handgun purchases.

Even though felons and other violent offenders are barred from getting a weapons permit, a 2007 investigation by the South Florida Sun-Sentinel found that licenses had been mistakenly issued to 1,400 felons and hundreds more applicants with warrants, domestic abuse injunctions, or gun violations. (More than 410,000 Floridians have been issued concealed weapons permits.) Since then, Florida also passed a law permitting residents to keep guns in their cars at work, against employers’ wishes. The state also nearly allowed guns on college campuses last year, until an influential Republican lawmaker fought the bill after his close friend’s daughter was killed by an AK-47 brandished at a Florida State University fraternity party.

Florida also makes it easy to plead self-defense in a killing. Under then-Gov. Jeb Bush, the state in 2005 passed a broad “stand your ground” law, which allows Florida residents to use deadly force against a threat without attempting to back down from the situation. (More stringent self-defense laws state that gun owners have “a duty to retreat” before resorting to killing.)

The Florida courts have upheld the law and issued some truly shocking findings.

This has led to some stunning verdicts in the state. In Tallahassee in 2008, two rival gangs engaged in a neighborhood shootout, and a 15-year-old African American male was killed in the crossfire. The three defendants all either were acquitted or had their cases dismissed, because the defense successfully argued they were defending themselves under the “stand your ground” law. The state attorney in Tallahassee, Willie Meggs, was beside himself. “Basically this law has put us in the posture that our citizens can go out into the streets and have a gun fight and the dead person is buried and the survivor of the gun fight is immune from prosecution,” he said at the time.

One of those defendants ended up receiving a conviction for attempted voluntary manslaughter for an unrelated case, in which he shot indiscriminately at two people in a car.

The only hope Trayvon Martin’s family may have is for the U.S. Justice Department to step in and investigate the shooting as a hate crime. And I just saw the news breaking on Twitter that the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI have opened an investigation into the Trayvon Martin case.

Here are a couple of articles about the Florida “Stand Your Ground” law and its impact on the courts.

Miami Herald: Florida’s self-defense law could hamper efforts to prosecute Trayvon Martin shooter

Slate: Why Trayvon Martin’s Killer Remains Free: “Florida’s self-defense laws have left Florida safe for no one—except those who shoot first.”

Boy am I glad Massachusetts has tough gun laws! Florida college students held a rally yesterday in Sanford, FL, the Orlando suburb where the shooting took place.

College students around Florida are rallying Monday to demand the arrest of a neighborhood watch captain who fatally shot unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin.

Students rallied in front of the Seminole County criminal courts building in Sanford – the central Florida city where the shooting occurred – and on the campus of Florida A&M University in Tallahassee.

In the courts building is the State Attorney’s Office, where prosecutors will review the case and decide whether to file criminal charges against George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who killed Martin on Feb. 26.

Demonstrators are demanding the arrest of the 28-year-old Zimmerman, who authorities say shot the teenager during a confrontation in a gated community. Zimmerman has claimed self-defense; Florida law allows a person to use deadly force if the person believes he or she is facing a deadly threat.

The problem is that Zimmerman actually pursued Martin and had the boy pinned face down on the ground when he pulled the trigger. He wasn’t “standing his ground.” He initiated a confrontation with a boy who weighed 140 pounds, nearly 100 pounds less than Zimmerman.

Just a couple more links.

Al Sharpton at HuffPo announcing his rally in Sanford on Thursday.

On Thursday, March 22 at 7 p.m., National Action Network (NAN) and I will convene an urgent rally at the First Shiloh Baptist Church in Sanford, FL. to demand justice for Trayvon Martin. We will be joined by community leaders and concerned citizens from all ethnicities, backgrounds and walks of life that cannot even begin to comprehend this nightmarish situation. A young teenager walking home, armed only with candy and a drink, should never lose his/her life because someone in a gated community feels ‘threatened.’ George Zimmerman, the accused adult shooter, is roaming the earth freely while Trayvon’s mother, father and family members must bury their precious child. It is an atrocious miscarriage of justice, and we demand that authorities in Florida arrest Zimmerman immediately and charge him for the crime of murder. Anyone with sound reasoning cannot disagree.

Sharpton goes on to discuss the “Stand Your Ground Laws” and why they shouldn’t apply to what Zimmerman did. To me, the 911 calls are evidence that Zimmerman was the aggressor. At least five individuals saw the altercation and heard Trayvon’s screams for help while George Zimmerman lay on top of him.

At the Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates pulls a quote from the Miami Herald story I linked earlier:

“We are taking a beating over this,” said [Bill] Lee, who defends the investigation. “This is all very unsettling. I’m sure if George Zimmerman had the opportunity to relive Sunday, Feb. 26, he’d probably do things differently. I’m sure Trayvon would, too.”

Bill Lee is the Sanford police chief who let George Zimmerman go free without even taking a drug and alcohol text. He thinks Trayvon should have done things differently. What does that mean? That it was wrong for this boy to go to the corner store for some candy and a bottle of iced tea? There’s more about Zimmerman’s attitudes at the link.

I’ll end with this: What bothers me most is that Trayvon’s body was taken to the morgue as an unidentified person. The body was held there for three days, supposedly because the boy had no ID. But I learned last night that Trayvon had his cell phone with him. The boy’s father was calling the cell phone, and there certainly should have been a way to identify the boy from that phone. Why couldn’t they call the last number called? Why didn’t the police go door to door in the neighborhood and try to find out who the boy was? Surely that alone is evidence of profiling. The assumption was that the boy didn’t come from that neighborhood.

That’s it for me for today. What are you reading and blogging about?

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