Last Call For Immigration Nation

While Trump's executive order on punishing sanctuary cities by withholding tens of billions in federal law enforcement grant money remains tied up in the courts, House Republicans are moving forward to try to put the regime's immigration crackdown actions into federal law.

House Republicans are preparing to take up a pair of bills next week that crack down on illegal immigration, according to leadership sources, in a bid to carry out President Donald Trump's promise of tougher enforcement. 

One of the bills to see a floor vote, dubbed Kate's Law, boosts penalties for immigrants who try to re-enter the United States after being deported. It is named after Kate Steinle, a young woman who was shot and killed in San Francisco by an immigrant who had been deported repeatedly yet returned. Trump frequently discussed the killing on the campaign trail last year.

The second is legislation that goes after so-called sanctuary cities — localities that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, including by refusing to hold an immigrant in jail longer just so federal officials can pick him or her up to be deported. Sanctuary cities, usually liberal jurisdictions such as New York, have also been a major Trump target. 

The "No Sanctuaries for Criminals Act" would toughen penalties for sanctuary cities in multiple ways. For example, it would require that cities and counties comply with orders from federal immigration officials, such as "detainers" that keep immigrants in jail so they can be picked up for deportation. It would also bar Homeland Security and Justice Department grants from sanctuary cities that don't comply.

No shocker here, especially since the reasoning behind the judiciary holding up Trump's sanctuary city punishment order was the legal argument that he was exceeding his authority under the laws Congress has passed.  Simple solution: pass laws that give Trump the authority to do just that and render the argument moot.

Of course getting such a measure through the Senate may be a different matter, but for now, this is just the latest salvo in a a long, long battle.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

As widely expected here in Cincinnati, the retrial of Sam DuBose's killer has resulted in a second mistrial declaration as jurors were unable to reach a verdict for the charges against former UC police officer Ray Tensing.

For a second time, a jury has been unable to agree on whether Ray Tensing was justified when he fatally shot Sam DuBose during a traffic stop. 

Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Leslie Ghiz on Friday shortly after 2 p.m. declared a mistrial, after the jury of nine women and three men said they could not agree on verdicts for either murder or voluntary manslaughter. 

"We are almost evenly split regarding our votes," the jurors wrote to Ghiz. 

Tensing’s first trial last year also ended with the jury deadlocked. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters must now decide whether to seek a third trial. 

Jurors deliberated more than 30 hours over five days. They asked three questions during that time, court officials said. 

The last question came Friday morning, when the jury told Ghiz they were unable to reach a unanimous decision on either count. “How should we proceed?” they asked.
Ghiz called them into the courtroom and ordered them to continue deliberating, saying, “Hopefully you’re able to resolve your deadlock.” 

Jurors couldn’t resolve that deadlock in a case involving the 2015 fatal shooting of DuBose, an unarmed African-American man who tried to drive away from a traffic stop. Tensing, then a 25-year-old University of Cincinnati police officer, said he feared for his life after his arm became trapped inside DuBose’s car.

At this point I would expect County Prosecutor Joe Deters to pack it in and not seek a retrial.  It's pretty obvious that Tensing will never be convicted, as 99% of police officers charged with killings simply skate on the "feared for my life" defense.

If the victim isn't white it seems, police can kill with impunity.

But black lives matter.  I will never stop believing in that, or stop saying it, even if I'm the only one.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Today's major Trump/Russia story comes courtesy of the Washington Post, who has put together a comprehensive timeline of Moscow's interference in America's 2016 elections that involves multiple major scoop stories.  First, the basics: We know Vladimir Putin himself ordered an assault on the vulnerable US election system in order to help elect Donald Trump.

Early last August, an envelope with extraordinary handling restrictions arrived at the White House. Sent by courier from the CIA, it carried “eyes only” instructions that its contents be shown to just four people: President Barack Obama and three senior aides.

Inside was an intelligence bombshell, a report drawn from sourcing deep inside the Russian government that detailed Russian President Vladi­mir Putin’s direct involvement in a cyber campaign to disrupt and discredit the U.S. presidential race. 

But it went further. The intelligence captured Putin’s specific instructions on the operation’s audacious objectives — defeat or at least damage the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and help elect her opponent, Donald Trump. 

At that point, the outlines of the Russian assault on the U.S. election were increasingly apparent. Hackers with ties to Russian intelligence services had been rummaging through Democratic Party computer networks, as well as some Republican systems, for more than a year. In July, the FBI had opened an investigation of contacts between Russian officials and Trump associates. And on July 22, nearly 20,000 emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee were dumped online by WikiLeaks.

But at the highest levels of government, among those responsible for managing the crisis, the first moment of true foreboding about Russia’s intentions arrived with that CIA intelligence. 

The material was so sensitive that CIA Director John Brennan kept it out of the President’s Daily Brief, concerned that even that restricted report’s distribution was too broad. The CIA package came with instructions that it be returned immediately after it was read. To guard against leaks, subsequent meetings in the Situation Room followed the same protocols as planning sessions for the Osama bin Laden raid. 

It took time for other parts of the intelligence community to endorse the CIA’s view. Only in the administration’s final weeks in office did it tell the public, in a declassified report, what officials had learned from Brennan in August — that Putin was working to elect Trump. 

Over that five-month interval, the Obama administration secretly debated dozens of options for deterring or punishing Russia, including cyberattacks on Russian infrastructure, the release of CIA-gathered material that might embarrass Putin and sanctions that officials said could “crater” the Russian economy. 

But in the end, in late December, Obama approved a modest package combining measures that had been drawn up to punish Russia for other issues — expulsions of 35 diplomats and the closure of two Russian compounds — with economic sanctions so narrowly targeted that even those who helped design them describe their impact as largely symbolic. 

Obama also approved a previously undisclosed covert measure that authorized planting cyber weapons in Russia’s infrastructure, the digital equivalent of bombs that could be detonated if the United States found itself in an escalating exchange with Moscow. The project, which Obama approved in a covert-action finding, was still in its planning stages when Obama left office. It would be up to President Trump to decide whether to use the capability. 

In political terms, Russia’s interference was the crime of the century, an unprecedented and largely successful destabilizing attack on American democracy. It was a case that took almost no time to solve, traced to the Kremlin through cyber-forensics and intelligence on Putin’s involvement. And yet, because of the divergent ways Obama and Trump have handled the matter, Moscow appears unlikely to face proportionate consequences.

President Obama chose to trust the American people to do the right thing.  Despite all the evidence against Trump, America failed Obama, and we failed ourselves.  It's easy to say Obama should have done more, should have revealed Trump's perfidy months before, should have shown the country that Putin wanted chaos.  You can make the argument that doing so could have gotten Putin exactly the results he wanted.

But what you cannot argue is that in the end, sixty million plus people thought Donald Trump would make a good president.  It is those voters who truly failed us, and who did the real work of destroying our democracy beyond anything Putin could have possibly dreamed.

Trump voters helped destroy this country.  Period.  This was a brazen, full-blown assault on our country, and we had a fifth column a mile-high, and right now our lawmakers are happily deciding how many millions of us will lose health care coverage so that the richest of us can get even more tax breaks.  And they enabled this.

We've seen the enemy, as the old Pogo adage goes.  They are us.

StupidiNews!

• Former President Barack Obama has delivered scathing criticism of the Senate GOP health care bill, calling it a "massive transfer of wealth" from middle-class Americans to the rich.
• Saudi Arabia has delivered demands to Qatar's government in order to end the blockade of the Gulf State, including closing the Al Jazeera TV network and severing all ties with Iran.  
• London police officials say the deadly Grenfell Tower housing block fire that killed at least 79 started with a faulty freezer and spread quickly thanks to the cladding on the building.
• Canada's legalized marijuana market has a unique problem among most countries: it has massive demand, but a major shortage of reliable supply.
• The armed man who invaded a Washington DC pizza parlor looking for evidence of a "massive Pizzagate conspiracy" has been sentenced to four years in prison.

Last Call For Automation Nation

First Wendy's announced a pilot program already under way, now McDonald's is going to replace thousands of cashiers with automated kiosk terminals.

McDonald's shares hit an all-time high on Tuesday as Wall Street expects sales to increase from new digital ordering kiosks that will replace cashiers in 2,500 restaurants.

Cowen raised its rating on McDonald's shares to outperform from market perform because of the technology upgrades, which are slated for the fast-food chain's restaurants this year.

McDonald's shares rallied 26 percent this year through Monday compared to the S&P 500's 10 percent return.

Andrew Charles from Cowen cited plans for the restaurant chain to roll out mobile ordering across 14,000 U.S. locations by the end of 2017. The technology upgrades, part of what McDonald's calls "Experience of the Future," includes digital ordering kiosks that will be offered in 2,500 restaurants by the end of the year and table delivery.

"MCD is cultivating a digital platform through mobile ordering and Experience of the Future (EOTF), an in-store technological overhaul most conspicuous through kiosk ordering and table delivery," Charles wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. "Our analysis suggests efforts should bear fruit in 2018 with a combined 130 bps [basis points] contribution to U.S. comps [comparable sales]."

He raised his 2018 U.S. same store sales growth estimate for the fast-food chain to 3 percent from 2 percent.

The analyst raised his price target for McDonald's to $180 from $142, representing 17.5 percent upside from Monday's close. He also raised his 2018 earnings-per-share forecast to $6.87 from $6.71 versus the Wall Street consensus of $6.83.

"MCD has done a great job launching popular innovations within the context of simplifying the menu, while introducing more effective value initiatives that have recently begun to improve the brand's value perceptions," he wrote.

Of course Wall Street loves replacing several thousands of jobs with machines.  More profit!  Of course, if everyone automates, who's going to actually have money to pay for things?

Thirteen years ago, two prominent U.S. economists wrote that driverless cars couldn’t execute a left turn against oncoming traffic because too many factors were involved. Six years later, Google proved it could make fully autonomous cars, threatening the livelihoods of millions of truck and taxi drivers. Throughout much of the developed world, gainful employment is seen as almost a fundamental right. But what if, in the not-too-distant future, there won’t be enough jobs to go around? That’s what some economists think will happen as robots and artificial intelligence increasingly become capable of performing human tasks. Of course, past technological upheavals created more jobs than they destroyed. But some labor experts argue that this time could be different: Technology is replacing human brains as well as brawn.

When politicians talk about jobs, they tend to focus on iconic, goods-producing industries, such as mining, steel production and auto making, that have traditionally been the hardest hit by global competition and technological progress. Lately, though, the loss of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. pales in comparison to the much larger losses in parts of the services sector.

Overall, services accounted for three-fourths of the job losses among more than 350 sectors of the private economy in the last year. That’s a big shift from previous decades, when goods-producing categories tended to suffer the most losses.

In the U.S., for example, department stores employ 25 times more workers than coal mining companies. And as customers increasingly purchased goods via the internet, average employment in the first four months of 2017 was down 26,800 from the same period a year earlier, against just 2,800 job losses in coal.

The effect on labor markets of free-trade agreements and increased immigration has already caused significant political upheaval, as the resurgence of populism in the U.S. and Europe demonstrates. But some economists believe that the world is on the cusp of much bigger change, on the scale of the revolution brought about by industrialization in the 18th and 19th centuries. Researchers at the University of Oxford estimate that nearly half of all U.S. jobs may be at risk in the coming decades, with lower-paid occupations among the most vulnerable.

What jobs will today's kids actually have twenty years from now?  Odds are very good the answer will be "they won't have one."  Doctors, dentists, and CEOs will still be with America for decades, but any job that requires say, analysis, repetitive motion, or lots of math?  Kiss it goodbye.  Bookkeepers, actuaries, insurance underwriters, loan officers, and short-order cooks?  Not going to be a lot of those a couple decades from now.  If your job involves a computer and a phone, and you never meet face to face with anyone, I've got bad, bad news for you.

It's going to be a mess for the rest of my lifetime, and probably that of your kid's lifetime as well.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

As I've been saying for a while, Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump and Russia has three components: one, possible collusion with Russian hackers to damage our elections, two, long-time money laundering through Russian firms, and three, obstruction of justice in attempting to cover up one and two.

It's that second one, the money laundering, where we have the most evidence so far.  Tim O'Brien at Bloomberg covers this angle of the story, and it's very grim for Team Trump.

Trump has repeatedly labeled Comey's and Mueller's investigations "witch hunts," and his lawyers have said that the last decade of his tax returns (which the president has declined to release) would show that he had no income or loans from Russian sources. In May, Trump told NBC that he has no property or investments in Russia. "I am not involved in Russia," he said. 

But that doesn't address national security and other problems that might arise for the president if Russia is involved in Trump, either through potentially compromising U.S. business relationships or through funds that flowed into his wallet years ago. In that context, a troubling history of Trump's dealings with Russians exists outside of Russia: in a dormant real-estate development firm, the Bayrock Group, which once operated just two floors beneath the president's own office in Trump Tower. 

Bayrock partnered with the future president and his two eldest children, Donald Jr. and Ivanka, on a series of real-estate deals between 2002 and about 2011, the most prominent being the troubled Trump Soho hotel and condominium in Manhattan. 

During the years that Bayrock and Trump did deals together, the company was also a bridge between murky European funding and a number of projects in the U.S. to which the president once lent his name in exchange for handsome fees. Icelandic banks that dealt with Bayrock, for example, were easy marks for money launderers and foreign influence, according to interviews with government investigators, legislators, and others in Reykjavik, Brussels, Paris and London. Trump testified under oath in a 2007 deposition that Bayrock brought Russian investors to his Trump Tower office to discuss deals in Moscow, and said he was pondering investing there. 

"It's ridiculous that I wouldn't be investing in Russia," Trump said in that deposition. "Russia is one of the hottest places in the world for investment." 

One of Bayrock's principals was a career criminal named Felix Sater who had ties to Russian and American organized crime groups. Before linking up with the company and with Trump, he had worked as a mob informant for the U.S. government, fled to Moscow to avoid criminal charges while boasting of his KGB and Kremlin contacts there, and had gone to prison for slashing apart another man’s face with a broken cocktail glass. 

In a series of interviews and a lawsuit, a former Bayrock insider, Jody Kriss, claims that he eventually departed from the firm because he became convinced that Bayrock was actually a front for money laundering. 

Kriss has sued Bayrock, alleging that in addition to laundering money, the Bayrock team also skimmed cash from the operation, dodged taxes and cheated him out of millions of dollars. Sater and others at Bayrock would not comment for this column; in court documents they have contested Kriss's charges and describe him, essentially, as a disgruntled employee trying to shake them down.

These are the guys Trump has worked with for years, and now he's pretending he never did.  What sort of leverage Bayrock -- and by logic, Russia -- now has on him, well, I hope Mueller gets to the bottom of all this and soon.  That Bayrock to Sater to Putin line is blood red, emphasis on blood.

Only fitting that Trump is caught up in all this.

The Senate GOP Trumpcare Bill Is Awful Too

As widely expected, the Senate Republican version of Trumpcare is also a raging dumpster fire that will kick tens of millions off their current insurance and wreck the market for tens of millions more. In several ways it may actually be worse than the House GOP version of the bill.

Senate leaders on Wednesday were putting the final touches on legislation that would reshape a big piece of the U.S. health-care system by dramatically rolling back Medicaid while easing the impact on Americans who stand to lose coverage under a new bill. 

A discussion draft circulating Wednesday afternoon among aides and lobbyists would roll back the Affordable Care Act’s taxes, phase down its Medicaid expansion, rejigger its subsidies, give states wider latitude in opting out of its regulations and eliminate federal funding for Planned Parenthood. 

The bill largely mirrors the House measure that narrowly passed last month but with some significant changes aimed at pleasing moderates. While the House legislation tied federal insurance subsidies to age, the Senate bill would link them to income, as the ACA does. The Senate proposal cuts off Medicaid expansion more gradually than the House bill,\ but would enact deeper long-term cuts to the health-care program for low-income Americans. It also removes language restricting federally subsidized health plans from covering abortions, which may have run afoul of complex budget rules. 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) intends to present the draft to wary GOP senators at a meeting Thursday morning. McConnell has vowed to hold a vote before senators go home for the July 4 recess, but he is still seeking the 50 votes necessary to pass the major legislation under arcane budget rules. A handful of senators, from conservatives to moderates, are by no means persuaded that they can vote for the emerging measure.

Aides stress that the GOP plan is likely to undergo more changes to garner the 50 votes Republicans need to pass it. Moderate senators are concerned about cutting off coverage too quickly for those who gained it under the ACA, also known as Obamacare, while conservatives don’t want to leave big parts of the ACA in place.

So it wouldn't be as stridently anti-women as the House version, but it would make deeper cuts to Medicaid over a longer period of time, resulting in even more long-term damage.  At this point calling your local Senate office is a really smart idea, because if this passes, tens of millions of Americans are going to lose coverage outright, will be unable to get new coverage thanks to "pre-existing conditions" and millions more will be locked out by lifetime or annual limits on treatments on group plans.

In other words, we'll be back to the bad old days of the Bush era, only with Medicaid block grants and one in five Americans not having insurance.

And believe me, my two Senators will absolutely vote to take insurance from half a million here in Kentucky and won't lose a wink of sleep.  Your state may fare better, so make those phone calls.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump attacked Democrats at a campaign rally in Iowa yesterday, telling the crowd that Senate Democrats were standing between them and "a good heathcare plan".
• The FBI say it is treating the apparent stabbing attack by a Canadian man on an airport police officer in Flint, Michigan as an act of terrorism.
• A car bomb attack on a crowded bank branch in the Afghan city of Lashkar Gah has killed at least 20 people and injured more than 50.
• Tropical Storm Cindy has made landfall on the Louisiana Gulf Coast, the storm could dramatically raise gasoline prices nationally by disrupting up to half of US refinery capacity.
• Senate Democrats are still hoping that the Justice Department will block a proposed mega-merger between AT&T and Time Warner as harmful to consumers.

Last Call For A De-Pressing Development, Con't

Buried in this NYT story on Trump regime mouthpiece Sean Spicer being horrible at his job is another nasty Dear Leader trial balloon: decreeing that the daily press briefing be limited to weekly state-run propaganda blurbs with pre-approved topics only.

The biggest shift Mr. Trump is discussing is a dramatic change to the briefing room schedule, including limiting briefings that he has described as a “spectacle” to once a week and asking reporters to submit written questions. Some of Mr. Trump’s outside advisers, including the Fox News host Sean Hannity, have urged him to curtail the freewheeling — and often embarrassing — barrage of questions. Mr. Trump has been particularly irked by CNN, and other allies such as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich have suggested banning the cable network.

“Donald Trump might as well get behind the podium himself, as the press coverage is the part of his presidency he cares the most deeply about,” said Tim Miller, who was communications director for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign. “You can’t be a credible press secretary when your boss makes you tell preposterous lies. You can’t be a credible press secretary when you don’t know what your boss thinks on key issues because he changes his mind depending on the last person he talked to.”

And even with Spicer being "promoted" out of the job, finding a replacement to read the weekly Trump regime press release is still pretty hard.  Trump doesn't want a press secretary, he wants a FOX News talking head.

Among the candidates: Laura Ingraham, the conservative radio host, about whom Trump advisers remain “iffy”; Kimberly Guilfoyle, the Fox News commentator who said publicly that Mr. Trump had called her in recent weeks (she said she didn’t want the job); and David Martosko, an editor for The Daily Mail who was briefly considered for the role during the transition and has been talked about for other roles now (White House aides said he was liked by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, but was never under serious consideration and put out a statement withdrawing his name).

So we're about one more major Trump-Russia leak from Tang the Conqueror reducing the White House to being, well, the Kremlin.

But maybe he'll pivot, right press flacks?

We'll Pass, Thanks

Looks like the Congressional Black Caucus has seen the light (or the darkness in this case) as the Trump regime has consistently rolled back civil rights and voting rights protections for African-Americans, and now the caucus isn't going to let Trump bait it into being used for feel-good photo ops anymore.

The Congressional Black Caucus is expected to reject an invitation to meet with President Donald Trump, according to four sources close to the group. 

The Trump administration, sources said, has done nothing to advance the CBC's priorities since the group's executive board first met with Trump in March. And members are worried the request for a caucus-wide meeting would amount to little more than a photo op that the president could use to bolster his standing among African-Americans.

“No one wants to be a co-star on the reality show,” said one senior Democratic aide. 

Lawmakers in the 49-member group each received an invitation last week from Omarosa Manigault, the-reality-TV-star-turned-White-House-aide who has pitched herself as an unofficial liaison to the CBC. 

“As requested by the president, we would like to schedule a follow-up meeting with the entire membership of the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss issues pertinent to your members,” Manigault wrote in the invitation, obtained by POLITICO. 

But multiple CBC members said they were put off that she signed the invitation as “the Honorable Omarosa Manigault,” saying she hasn’t earned that title nor has she helped raise the profile of CBC issues within the White House as promised.

Considering how Trump treated HBCU presidents earlier this year by inviting them to meet with him and then turning around and proposing massive education budget cuts to colleges and universities, I don't blame the CBC one bit.  They should loudly oppose Trump's plans as a group and make sure that voters everywhere know exactly how much damage this regime is doing to black communities through the destruction of voting rights, civil service jobs, infrastructure scams, public housing and education cuts, Medicaid and Obamacare repeal, and stripping executive branch civil rights offices.

This is the first useful thing the CBC has done in year, frankly.  Bet you wish you had Obama back, huh?

Still Close, Still No Cigars

Democrats got awfully close last night in two special House elections, one in Georgia-06, the other in SC-05, but Republicans kept their seats in districts that voted for GOP incumbents by more than 20 points in November.  Democrats have gone 0-4 in these districts in special elections this year now, and that's prompting some to say that just running against the increasingly unpopular Trump is no longer an option.

To win in 2018, Democrats will have to find opportunities to do better, but it’s certainly an achievable goal. The fact that the district was competitive is a sign that the GOP majority is at risk; the question is simply what can Democrats do to put themselves over the top?

One thing they might want to try is developing a substantive policy agenda to run on. They came close this time, and they’ll just need to put forth an attractive package for voters in the 2018 midterms.

Ossoff, like so many losing Democratic candidates over the years, was brought down fundamentally by arguments grounded in identity politics.

Karen Handel didn’t argue that the Republican Party’s health care bill is a good idea (it’s very unpopular) or that tax cuts for millionaires should be the country’s top economic priority (another policy that polls dismally). Instead, her campaign and its allies buried Ossoff under a pile of what basically amounts to nonsense — stuff about Kathy Griffin, stuff about Samuel L. Jackson, stuff about his home being just over the district line, stuff about him having raised money from out of state — lumped together under the broad heading that he’s an “outsider.”

Much of this was unfair or ridiculous. And the stuff that wasn’t unfair — like the location of his home — is honestly pretty silly. None of this has anything to do with the lives of actual people living in the suburbs of Atlanta or anywhere else.

Ossoff’s team was aware, of course, that the district is not accustomed to voting for Democrats and that he was vulnerable to this kind of attack. They attempted to counter this move by positioning Ossoff as blandly as possible — just a kind of nice guy who doesn’t like Donald Trump — and dissociating him from any hard-edged ideas or themes. It’s a strategy that makes a certain amount of sense, but it also makes it hard to mobilize potential supporters. And by lowering the concrete stakes in the election, it also makes it easier for trivial and pseudo-issues to end up dominating in the end.

I hate to say that Yglesias has a point here, but he does.  Outrage will bring Republicans to the polls every time.  Democrats need more to bother to show up to vote.

Yes, there's no such thing as a safe seat for the GOP this year, but it still means that Democrats need more than "Trump sucks" to win in a lot of these districts where Republicans have a massive advantage due to gerrymandering.

Still, a district where the GOP won by 20 in November was only 6 now.  In a closer district Ossoff would have won.  And there are 70 or 80 closer districts out there for next year.

StupidiNews!

• Tropical Storm Cindy is bearing down on the Gulf Coast this week and could bring as much as a foot of rain to parts of Texas and Louisiana by Friday.
• Senate GOP majority leader Mitch McConnell says Republicans will release a draft of their health care bill on Thursday after heavy pressure from Democrats and voters.
• Saudi King Salman has named his son Mohammed the kingdom's new crown prince, shuffling the line of succession as tensions between Saudi Arabia and Qatar remain extremely high.
• Rideshare giant Uber says that CEO and co-founder Travis Kalanick has resigned under pressure from investors and board members after a number of high-profile scandals.
• The Supreme Court will not take up a ten-year old "Dancing Baby" copyright fair-use lawsuit, leaving the 9th Circuit's decision in place regarding takedown notices.

A De-Pressing Development

The Trump regime is now in the full paranoid style as Tang the Conqueror's approval ratings crash into the mid 30's and are still falling, and that means that like most proto-fascist autocracies, we're into the "information control by the state press" era.

Over the course of the Trump administration, the White House’s daily press briefings have been pared progressively further back; they are now shorter, less frequent, and routinely held off-camera.

The daily briefing is a venerable Washington tradition, though one that has often been a target of criticism. Media critic Jay Rosen has called for media outlets to “send the interns,” arguing that the briefing is a largely useless exercise in grandstanding. President Trump himself has publicly mused about canceling them, tweeting “Maybe the best thing to do would be to cancel all future "press briefings" and hand out written responses for the sake of accuracy???”

But instead of canceling them entirely, the White House has appeared to embrace a different strategy: simply downgrading them bit by bit, from “briefings” to “gaggles,” and from on-camera to off-camera. Guidance for the briefings have begun to include a note that audio from them cannot be used. Additionally, though Trump has held short press conferences when foreign leaders visit, he has not held a full press conference since February.

The changes haven’t gone unnoticed, although reporters are still attending the gaggles. A clearly exasperated Jim Acosta, CNN’s chief White House correspondent, said on Monday that White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer had become “kind of useless.”

“It feels like we’re slowly but surely being dragged into what is a new normal in this country, where the president of the United States is allowed to insulate himself from answering hard questions,” Acosta said on CNN. “I don’t know why we covered that gaggle today, quite honestly Brooke, if they can’t give us the answers to the questions on camera or where we can record the audio. They’re basically pointless at this point.”

Asked for further comment, Acosta said in an email, “Unless we all take collective action, the stonewalling will continue.”

“If the WH is going to place unreasonable demands on our newsgathering, we should walk out,” he said.

What’s not clear is how much the White House would care if this happened. Reporters’ demands for access have not been a top priority for this administration, and though Trump is an avid media consumer and did a large number of interviews as a candidate and earlier in his term, he has begun to hold the press at arm’s length, skipping the White House Correspondents’ Dinner and doing fewer interviews lately.  

I respect Acosta's position and he is correct, but I hope that he also understands that the media boycotting these laughable kabuki events gives Trump the excuse to start declaring the "lamestream liberal media" as de facto enemies of the state, and that is precisely what Trump wants right now as the Mueller probe threatens to blow the whole sorry state of affairs open like a rotten melon dropped off of a rooftop.

The Trump regime is trying to couch this as Sean Spicer getting "promoted", but they definitely want to prove that if our media dares to make this political and not cover the daily "press briefings", well, then maybe America doesn't need an adversarial media...

Believe me when I say that step is coming sooner rather than later.  The nonsense about "going around the press to get the truth to the people" is propaganda of the the worst sort, an obvious manipulation, but in the kayfabe Trump era of convenient fictions, it's one that will go from perception to reality with frightening speed if allowed.

Last Call For Not Having The Energy For Climate Change

The Trump regime embarrasses America again, this time with Energy Secretary Rick Perry spouting climate denier nonsense as the official position of the Klep-Trump-cracy.

Energy Secretary Rick Perry told CNBC on Monday he does not believe carbon dioxide emissions from human activity are the main driver of climate change, joining the EPA administrator in casting doubt on the conclusion of some of the government's top scientists.

Asked whether CO2 emissions are primarily responsible for climate change, Perry told CNBC's "Squawk Box": "No, most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in."

"The fact is this shouldn't be a debate about, 'Is the climate changing, is man having an effect on it?' Yeah, we are. The question should be just how much, and what are the policy changes that we need to make to effect that?" he said.

In March, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt told "Squawk Box" he does not believe carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming.

Those statements contradict the public stance of the Environmental Protection Agency, at least until recently.

We're still "having the debate" so of course any action taken by our new government would be "rash" at this point, despite decades of data and literally dozens of other countries choosing to take action that we now refuse to.

The EPA's webpage on the causes of climate change used to state, "Carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas that is contributing to recent climate change." The EPA recently took down the web page containing that statement.

Perry and Pruitt's views are also at odds with the conclusion of NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Despite those conclusions, Perry said, "This idea that science is just absolutely settled and if you don't believe it's settled then somehow you're another neanderthal, that is so inappropriate from my perspective."

Being a skeptic about climate change issues is "quite all right," he said, suggesting that skepticism is a sign of a "wise, intellectually engaged person."

Gravity isn't "settled science" and neither is the earth being round, so questioning that makes me smart like Rick!  At least, that's how the logic goes.  If you don't believe in science, it still doesn't give a damn about you personally but it still goes about working anyway.

Vile Speech Must Be Allowed To Exist

In a sweeping 8-0 ruling that could potentially apply to a massive number of situations, the Supreme Court issued arguably the largest First Amendment ruling in years, that the government cannot restrict trademark or copyright protections of the law on vile speech. Eugene Volokh at the Washington Post:

That’s what the Supreme Court just held this morning, in Matal v. Tam. The court was unanimous on the result and some basic principles, though split 4-4 (Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wasn’t yet on the court when the case was argued) on some details. I’ll blog more on the case throughout the day, but here are the core pillars on which the justices agreed:

1. By denying registration to trademarks that allegedly disparage certain kinds of groups, the federal trademark law (the Lanham Act) discriminates based on viewpoint:

Our cases use the term “viewpoint” discrimination in a broad sense, and in that sense, the disparagement clause discriminates on the bases of “viewpoint.” To be sure, the clause evenhandedly prohibits disparagement of all groups. It applies equally to marks that damn Democrats and Republicans, capitalists and socialists, and those arrayed on both sides of every possible issue. It denies registration to any mark that is offensive to a substantial percentage of the members of any group. But in the sense relevant here, that is viewpoint discrimination: Giving offense is a viewpoint.

We have said time and again that “the public expression of ideas may not be prohibited merely because the ideas are themselves offensive to some of their hearers.” Street v. New York, 394 U. S. 576, 592 (1969). See also Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 414 (1989) (“If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable”) [more cases omitted] …

That’s from the majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Stephen G. Breyer; but a concurring opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, agreed:

[The Government argues] that the law is viewpoint neutral because it applies in equal measure to any trademark that demeans or offends. This misses the point. A subject that is first defined by content and then regulated or censored by mandating only one sort of comment is not viewpoint neutral. To prohibit all sides from criticizing their opponents makes a law more viewpoint based, not less so. … The logic of the Government’s rule is that a law would be viewpoint neutral even if it provided that public officials could be praised but not condemned. The First Amendment’s viewpoint neutrality principle protects more than the right to identify with a particular side. It protects the right to create and present arguments for particular positions in particular ways, as the speaker chooses. By mandating positivity, the law here might silence dissent and distort the marketplace of ideas.

The Government next suggests that the statute is viewpoint neutral because the disparagement clause applies to trademarks regardless of the applicant’s personal views or reasons for using the mark. Instead, registration is denied based on the expected reaction of the applicant’s audience. In this way, the argument goes, it cannot be said that Government is acting with hostility toward a particular point of view. For example, the Government does not dispute that respondent seeks to use his mark in a positive way. Indeed, respondent endeavors to use The Slants to supplant a racial epithet, using new insights, musical talents, and wry humor to make it a badge of pride. Respondent’s application was denied not because the Government thought his object was to demean or offend but because the Government thought his trademark would have that effect on at least some Asian-Americans.

The Government may not insulate a law from charges of viewpoint discrimination by tying censorship to the reaction of the speaker’s audience. The Court has suggested that viewpoint discrimination occurs when the government intends to suppress a speaker’s beliefs … but viewpoint discrimination need not take that form in every instance. The danger of viewpoint discrimination is that the government is attempting to remove certain ideas or perspectives from a broader debate. That danger is all the greater if the ideas or perspectives are ones a particular audience might think offensive, at least at first hearing.

What this means is that as Eugene Volokh points out, the government cannot restrict trademark protections on something offensive, like the Washington Redskins.  The Washington NFL team has already declared victory and is immediately pressing the Supreme Court for relief from the Patent Office.

The 4-4 part of the ruling deals with the scope: Alito, Thomas, Roberts and of all people, Justice Breyer wanted very badly to say that the government could not weigh in on deeming commercial speech offensive at all, which would have been the largest SC ruling in decades.  It would have effectively reversed the "shouting fire in a crowded theater" precedent, rather that, the people themselves have to determine what commercial speech was unacceptable through the "discourse of regular democracy".

For now at least, the ruling is limited to what punitive actions the government can take through non-application of third-party patent protections.  In the future, well, we could have a Citizen's United-type ruling where commercial free speech is limited only by what corporate shareholders are willing to tolerate.