Last Call For A Winner Among Losers

The argument that the Hobby Lobby decision is somehow a "liberal" decision never fails to amuse me, but that's what Minneapolis Star-Tribune columnist Brett McDonnell posits in his article this week, chiding the left for being "close-minded" to the "freedoms" that the decision brings.

Is RFRA a conservative power grab giving religious lawbreakers a “get out of jail free” card?

History suggests otherwise. RFRA reversed Justice Antonin Scalia’s 1990 opinion that denied protection to Native Americans who used peyote in religious ceremonies. The dissenters in that case were Justices Harry Blackmun, William Brennan and Thurgood Marshall — three of the leading liberals in the court’s history. Those liberals lost in court, but Congress vindicated them three years later by passing RFRA.

Democrats controlled both the Senate and the House at the time, and RFRA passed by a 97-3 vote in the Senate and unanimously in the House. That is not a typo.

Bill Clinton signed RFRA into law.

Thus, liberal titans on the court, in Congress and in the White House vigorously supported RFRA’s strong protection of religious liberty.

Why? . Because RFRA reflects the core liberal values of toleration and respect for diverse viewpoints. In a world with a litter of laws and a rainbow of religions, even well-intentioned laws sometimes seriously burden some believers. If we can ease that burden by modifying the law while doing little damage to the law’s legitimate purpose, we make it easier for diverse groups to coexist.

The court plausibly found that a modest extension of an already-existing accommodation for some religious organizations to corporations like Hobby Lobby would avoid burdening religious beliefs without hurting the company’s employees.

What we have in Hobby Lobby is an opinion grounded in corporate social responsibility and respect for diverse points of view. The Supreme Court’s five conservatives have delivered a profoundly liberal opinion. Too bad so many liberals don’t seem to realize it.

Here's the problem that Prof. McDonnell clearly does not understand:  Hobby Lobby's religious freedom comes directly at the financial expense of female employees of the company.  They will now have to pay full price for contraception, something the the company itself gladly chose to cover while RFRA was in effect.  In fact, Hobby Lobby didn't change its tune until another law, the Affordable Care Act, was passed.  Only then did it become a "religious burden" to the company.

There is nothing "liberal" about the Hobby Lobby decision.  It penalizes financially only one class of employees -- women -- and does so in a way that allows multiple corporations to penalize employees at their direct expense, for a variety of reasons.

The decision has already been expanded to include all forms of female contraception, and leaves the door open for these "closely held" family owned companies to continue to push their beliefs upon employee at their monetary expense.

That's clearly unconstitutional, but what does an individual's right to freedom from religion?  It apparently no longer matters.

A Mess Of Your Own Making

Jewish Republicans are suddenly alarmed that with Eric Cantor gone, there won't be any Jewish Republicans in Congress anymore.  Keep in mind there are plenty on the Democratic party side, including DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz and NY Sen. Chuck Schumer, but Cantor was it.  And that's got Jewish Republicans kind of upset.

The stinging defeat last month of Eric Cantor, the House majority leader and the highest-ranking Jewish politician in American history, has created the possibility of Republicans having no Jewish representation in the House or Senate for the first time in more than a half-century.

“Sometimes, a Jewish person just wants to be able to go to Congress and speak with a Jewish person,” Beverly Goldstein, a Republican donor from Beachwood, Ohio, explained in the hotel lobby after a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

“And Chuck Schumer is not it for us,” she added, referring to the Democratic senator from New York.

Excluding the soon-to-be-retired Mr. Cantor, there are now 31 Jewish members of Congress — 30 of them Democrats and an independent senator from Vermont, Bernard Sanders, who generally votes with Democrats.

And of course, the party of right-wing Christian Dominionist theology is having trouble figuring out why there's no room for non-Christians in it.

Decades after a Reagan era that was relatively rich in Jewish representation on the Republican side of both the House and the Senate, Republican Jews are grappling with what it means for a party that casts itself as the protector of Israel to potentially not have a single one of its children in Congress. Some Democrats, of course, depict Mr. Cantor’s loss as the removal of a final fig leaf from what has become a homogeneously Christian party with little room for religious and ethnic minorities. Others said the loss of Mr. Cantor, a conservative standard-bearer deemed insufficiently conservative by voters who preferred a Tea Party challenger, revealed the Republicans’ exclusion of moderates of any stripe.

There are Jewish candidates running for Congress on the GOP side this year.  Meet Adam Kwasman, proud Tea Party Republican.

Mr. Kwasman, a product of Jewish day school in the Tucson suburbs who says he tries to make Shabbat dinners with his parents whenever possible, is the Jewish candidate most affiliated with the Tea Party, opposing gun control and any form of amnesty on immigration and talking about bringing “Kosher Tea” to Congress. He was endorsed by Joe Arpaio, the Maricopa County sheriff who has been the subject of a Justice Department investigation because of his crackdowns on undocumented workers. House analysts consider Mr. Kwasman the underdog against a more moderate Republican in the August primary.

No room for moderates here, regardless of your religious creed.  Maybe that's the message.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Four years after leaving the team for the Miami Heat in a highly publicized event, NBA star LeBron James says he will again return to the Cleveland Cavaliers.
• For the second time in as many years, California's state Supreme Court has lessened the state's "Three Strikes" sentencing law.
• Israeli airstikes in Gaza continue as the death toll among Palestinians reaches 100, with the possibility of a ground offensive if Hamas militants do not stop rocket attacks "soon".
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has paid a visit to Cuba to meet the Castro brothers as he's offered to write off 90% of the island nation's Cold War-era debt to Moscow.
• In response to a petition to allow electric carmaker Tesla to directly sell to customers nationwide, the White House says consumers will have to take it up with state regulators.

Last Call For The Price That Won't Be Paid

Doug Mataconis makes an honest attempt to fathom what the GOP is up to with impeachment:

Among the Tea Party and the hardcore GOP base, though, it seems as though impeachment is well on the way to becoming yet another one of those articles of faith, right along with absolute belief in the fact that Fast & Furious, Benghazi, and the IRS targeting story are the worst Presidential scandals in American history. In fact, notwithstanding the fact that the leadership opposes impeachment and knows that it would be a political disaster, it remains to be seen whether this impeachment talk remains something confined to the fringe of the GOP and the conservative or if it starts to become a more mainstream idea to the point where the leadership in Congress finds itself forced to “do something” in response to pressure from the base. That pressure could increase if the GOP captures the Senate in November and the base of the party finds itself energized in the manner it was after the 2010 midterms. It could also become an issue if and when the lawsuit that the House of Representatives intends to file against the President ends up going nowhere, as I fully expect that it will.

It will.  Expect the last two years to be nothing but chaos.  Your semi-regular reminder:  for all the damage that Republicans did to their "brand" in 1998, two years later Bush was President, and then two years after that, he allowed 9/11 to happen on his watch and America rewarded the GOP with total control of the government for 4 years, which led to the financial crisis of 2007-2008.

Republicans didn't exactly lose when they impeached Clinton.  They won, and handily.

Method To The Madness

Orange Julius's stupid stunt suing President Obama for not implementing the ACA employer mandate quickly enough seems not only moronic, but specifically designed to piss everyone off on both the left and the right.  I'm pretty confused about it too as nobody on the right will be happy without Boehner pulling a Mola Ram and ripping Obama's heart out on live TV, and the rest of us are just pretty much disgusted with Boehner's complete loss of control over his asylum patients as they loot the country.

Steve M looks for answers among the insanity and figures Orange Julius has managed to survive this long for a reason (where Cantor after all has not).

So Boehner's announcement that the suit will be just about the employer mandate lands as an intentional damp squib, making the whole thing seem like harmless stunt politics, while the draft resolution enables the House to participate in any Obamacare suit. And I do mean "participate in" -- the language of the resolution says that the House "may initiate or intervene in one or more civil actions on behalf of the House of Representatives" regarding Obamacare. So joining someone else's suit is a distinct possibility (or even joining multiple suits attacking multiple aspects of the law). 

The point is that the legal eagles of the conservative movement are attacking Obamacare from a lot of different angles, any one of which could be the Roberts Court's way of finally killing it. Unlike most liberals, I continue to think that Obamacare might ultimately be overturned -- though I think the strategy on the right at this point is to let the courts do it, rather than elected officials. The party as a whole probably doesn't want to run on the "accomplishment" of having thrown millions of people off the employment rolls -- but maybe members of the House, with their gerrymandered, blood-red districts, wouldn't mind running reelection campaigns after being parties to the suit that made Obamacare fall.

So that's where we are now on this front. I imagine the crazies will amend Boehner's legislative draft and add a few crazier provisions to it -- but he's started with a bid that lowballs the crazy. As I keep saying, he's got enough low cunning to have kept his job in this crazy environment, so I continue to think he knows what he's doing.

I admit I hadn't thought of this particular angle, mainly because on the scale of 1 to 10, the plan is completely bonkers with a side of crackpot.  If the goal was to have to courts destroy Obamacare, Chief Justice John Roberts had his opportunity to do so last summer when he had four SCOTUS votes calling the entire bill unconstitutional.  For whatever reason, he didn't do it.

Maybe Boehner's trying to force his hand again or something, but the plan seems to now be, as with abortion, to weaken the laws so badly through Congress and SCOTUS that it does collapse, and maybe then Roberts will come to bury it.

And then the GOP comes in with a 95% identical plan that doesn't have the GOP trying to destroy it, and lo and behold, Republicans fixed Obamacare.  I think that's the real, final plan.

Drawing The Lines, Then Crossing Them

In a giant case of "Well no kidding" a federal judge has determined that the completely GOP-controlled Florida state legislature purposely and illegally created congressional districts in order to benefit Republicans when they were redrawn in 2012.

In a ruling released late Thursday, Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis blasted the Republican establishment that created Florida's congressional map, saying they "made a mockery" of transparency, allowed for "improper partisan intent" and he ordered that two of the state's 27 districts drawn in 2012 violate the Fair District standards. 

In his 41-page ruling, the judge rejected challenges to districts in South Florida and that Tampa Bay but said that District 5, held by Democrat U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, and District 10, held by Republican U.S. Rep. Dan Webster, "will need to be redrawn, as will any other districts affected thereby."

Pretty straightforward stuff here.  You give one side all the power, it does what it can to maintain that power, through illegal means.  For all the screaming and whining from Republicans about DEMOCRAT TYRANNY and other such nonsense, it's Republicans who cheat to win.

Lewis blasted the role of the political consultants saying "they made a mockery of the Legislature's transparent and open process of redistricting" while "going to great lengths to conceal from the public their paln and their participation in it. 

"They were successful in their efforts to influence the redistricting process and the congressional plan under review here,'' he wrote. "And they might have successfully concealed their scheme and their actions from the public had it not been for the Plaintiffs determined efforts to uncover it in this case." 

He concluded, however, that the circumstantial evidence proved that the political operatives "managed to find other avenues...to infiltrate and influence the Legislature." He drew no conclusions that legislative leaders were aware of the scheme, but he noted that Legislative leaders destroyed almost all of their emails and other documents related to redistricting, as did the political operatives.

So there was most likely a conspiracy and e-mail evidence was destroyed.  Yet, you won't see this on FOX News.  Remember, Florida voted for President Obama in 2008 and 2012, but 17 of 27 districts --63% --have Republican representatives and registered Democrats outnumber Republicans in Florida 39%-35%, with 23% independent.

Somehow, like Ohio, and Pennsylvania, Florida has way more Republicans in the House than it should, and a judge finally called them on it.

Lewis also concluded that the trail of emails and secret documents, which GOP operatives fought to keep out of the record, proved that "Republican political consultants or operatives did in fact conspire to manipulate and influence the redistricting process. 

"They accomplished this by writing scripts for and organizing groups of people to attend the public hearings to advocate for adoption of certain components or characteristics in the maps, and by submitting maps and partial maps through the public process, all with the intention of obtaining enacted maps for the State House and Senate and for Congress that would favor the Republican Party."

So yes, the whole point is to win, regardless of what the people of Florida actually want.  This is what real "voter manipulation schemes" look like,a dn when it's done, it's done by Republicans, time and time again. Getting fair districts is the only way to get these clowns out of the House and out of our hair so we can get back to governing this country rather than setting it on fire.

StupidiNews!

• Researchers in Mississippi have discovered that the baby they believed was "functionally cured" of HIV after being treated has detectable levels of the virus once again in her system.
• Amazon is seeking FAA permissions to field test flying delivery drones outdoors near Seattle as founder Jeff Bezos wants to make the idea of "Prime Air" delivery service a reality.
• President Obama cautioned both Israeli and Palestinian governments about escalation and offered the services of the US as a third party to broker a cease fire.
• Gourmet cupcake chain Crumbs, which shuttered its stores on Tuesday, may get a new lease on life from reality TV show "The Profit".
• The White House has nixed its pick to head the US Patent Office after stiff political and corporate opposition emerged over former Johnson & Johnson intellectual property lawyer Philip Johnson.

Last Call For The Collapsing Collapsers

Jon Chait punches Reason Magazine's Peter Suderman in the mouth over the glibertarian denial of Obamacare working:

And yet, in another way, the conservative media has provided a useful lagging indicator of Obamacare’s progress. The message of every individual story is that the law is failing, the administration is lying, and so on. The substance, when viewed as a whole, tells a different story. Here is how Suderman, to take just one example, has described the continuous advancement of the law’s coverage goals: 

January 21: The prognosis was so grim that Obamacare might not have yielded any net reduction in the uninsured (“it appears possible that there has been no net expansion of private coverage at all”).

This is the ridiculous position Suderman took six months ago.   This is where he is now:

July 8: A New England Journal of Medicine report that 20 million Americans have gained insurance under Obamacare, argues Suderman, is probably too high (“it’s too early to say exactly how many so far — only that 20 million is almost certainly an overstatement”).

Chait finishes him off deftly:

We have gone from learning that the law has failed to cover anybody to learning it would cover a couple million to learning it would cover a few million to learning that it has probably insured fewer than 20 million people halfway through year one. The message of every individual dispatch is a confident prediction of the hated enemy's demise, yet the terms described in each, taken together, tell the story of retreat.

And yes, the "Obamacare will collapse/death spiral/massive premium spikes/groundswell for repeal!" people are wrong, because those clowns are always wrong about everything important.  And yet, people will still take Peter Suderman and Forbes's Avik Roy and US News's Jim Pethokoukis seriously, even though every ridiculous thing they said about Obamacare turned out to be so amazingly wrong, they should all be fired.

At least they can get affordable health care when that happens.

The Clock's Started On The Marriage Equality Endgame

With the state of Utah appealing the 10th Circuit's ruling overturning the state's same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional to the Supreme Court this week, the finish line is in sight for making marriage equality the law across the country.

Suddenly it's a possibility that experts are contemplating: marriage equality could be the law of the land all across the United States within one year. 

On Wednesday, Utah asked the Supreme Court to resolve its dispute with the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals which two weeks ago became the first U.S. circuit court to declare that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry.

Legal experts say the Supreme Court is likely to accept the case. With lawsuits piling up, and gay marriage on an undefeated legal streak since the Court axed the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, the justices may plausibly hear the case in next term and decide it by June 2015. 

"I think the Court will take the case. Since [U.S. v.] Windsor, all of the lower courts that have ruled have struck down laws prohibiting same sex marriages," said Erwin Chemerinsky, the Dean of the University of California, Irvine School of Law. "Perhaps without a split in the lower courts, the Supreme Court will wait. My prediction, though, is that the Court knows the issue needs to be resolved and will take it." 

And if the Court does hear the case, all eyes will be on Justice Anthony Kennedy, not simply because he's the traditional swing vote, but because he has written all three decisions in Supreme Court history that advanced gay rights. 

"I also predict that the five justices in the majority in Windsor will be the majority to declare unconstitutional laws that deny marriage equality to gays and lesbians," Chemerinsky said.

And yes, it would be a 5-4 Justice Kennedy decision, certainly.  I can't imagine any of the other justices, save maybe Chief Justice Roberts, wanting to be on the right side of history, morality, and humanity for once.  We'll see how it shakes out, but it's entirely possible that sometime next June, a whole lot of people are going to be very, very blessed.

Well, and the massive wailing and gnashing of teeth from the God Squad certainly won't hurt either.

Still, let's not get ahead of ourselves, Kennedy and friends will completely ignore decades of precedent if it's an opportunity to put Obama "in his place".

We'll see.

Orange You Glad You're Not This Guy

Seems House Speaker John Boehner is taking a page from the Nancy Pelosi playbook as he's studiously avoiding any talk of impeaching President Obama for being president in the ol' "off the table" move.

Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) on Wednesday said he doesn't support calls from members of his party to impeach President Obama. 

Asked about former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's comments that Obama should be impeached over the influx of child migrants illegally crossing the border, Boehner said, “I disagree.”

Then asked about members of the House GOP who have also urged for impeachment, Boehner repeated, “I disagree.”

But for how long is he going to be able to "disagree" and hold out?  The guy isn't exactly known for his ability to keep his caucus from doing stupid, self-destructy things like "shutting down governments" and stuff, unlike Pelosi and her exercised control over the Democrats.

A number of House Republicans have also called for Obama's impeachment, including Reps. Lou Barletta (Pa.), Kerry Bentivolio (Mich.), Paul Broun (Ga.), Michael Burgess (Texas), Blake Farenthold (Texas), Michele Bachmann (Minn.) and Louie Gohmert (Texas). 

But many Republicans are wary of the calls, worried they could hand Democrats a compelling issue that might help the party retain its majority in the Senate during a tough election year. 

The impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton backfired badly on the GOP in 1998, when Democrats against odds picked up seats in the House. 

The House is expected to vote later this month on a lawsuit against Obama for his use of executive actions. Boehner said at the weekly House GOP press conference that he was considering including Obama's action on immigration in the House GOP lawsuit.

Then again, Orange Julius here seems to like doing stupid, self-destructy things himself.

StupidiNews!

• A new round of Israeli airstrikes slammed Gaza Thursday leaving 81 dead and Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu warns a ground offensive is imminent unless Palestinian terrorists stop firing rockets.
• Colorado officials say the annual yearly demand for newly legalized marijuana weighs in at 130 tons.
• Congressional Republicans now want House hearings on June's anthrax scare at the CDC in Atlanta, including information as far back as October 2007.
• The Lake Mead reservoir that provides water to Las Vegas and the surrounding area has fallen to its lowest level since it was created in 1937.
• New measurements of solar particles confirm that legendary space probe Voyager 1 has indeed reached past the edge of our solar system.

Last Call For A Tale Of Two Mayors

One former Democratic mayor is on his way up:

The Senate easily confirmed San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro on Wednesday to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development, boosting the national profile of a Democrat with a compelling biography who’s considered a vice presidential contender in 2016. 

The 71-26 vote makes the 39-year-old Castro one of the government’s highest-ranking Hispanics, a growing group of voters who lean solidly Democratic. His ascension comes two years after he got his first broad national exposure when President Barack Obama picked him to deliver the keynote address at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. Senator Ted Cruz voted against confirming Castro. Senator John Cornyn voted to support the confirmation, after publicly backing Castro during a Senate hearing last month.

And another former Democratic mayor is on his way down.

Former New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin was sentenced on Wednesday to 10 years in federal prison for corruption during the critical years of rebuilding after Hurricane Katrina devastated the city in 2005. 

A jury in February found Nagin, a Democrat, guilty on charges including bribery, wire fraud, conspiracy, money laundering and tax evasion. 

Nagin, 58, stirred national controversy with his erratic behavior after Katrina breached floodwalls and inundated New Orleans in 2005, killing at least 1,500 people and leaving tens of thousands homeless. 

Citing Nagin's devotion to family and commitment to helping New Orleans, U.S. District Judge Helen Ginger Berrigan said a shorter prison term than that recommended under federal sentencing guidelines was warranted.

She ordered Nagin to turn himself in to begin serving his sentence by Sept. 8. With good behavior, and barring any appeals, Nagin could get out of prison after about 8-1/2 years.

Just a reminder that sometimes, regardless of party, there are good politicians, and bad ones.  Julian Castro is definitely a rising star, as is his twin brother Joaquin.  Ray Nagin, on the other hand, got caught red-handed.  I hope to hear a lot about the former.  The latter, not so much.

Well, There's Definitely A "By Proxy" Problem Here

Here's your daily epistemic closure 101 for you: Republicans have now shouted "Obama has caused this border crisis on purpose!" enough times to their followers that they've deluded themselves into no believing America has accepted this as fact, and they've moved on to "For what sinister, evil reason has Obama caused this border crisis on purpose?"  This is their favorite part, because they get to use up all of Grandma's tinfoil from the most recent holiday dinner and then attempt to come up with a solution.

Today's contestant on Conspiracy Challenge is Texas Republican Larry Smith, who turns to the DSM-V for his diagnosis of derpitude.

Iraq War vet Larry Smith is the Republican nominee to take on Rep. Filemon Vela (D-Texas) in November. He's also, it turns out, an armchair psychiatrist. According to Smith, Barack Obama's handling of the child refugee crisis along the Mexican bordersuggests the president is suffering from Münchausen syndrome by proxy, a rare psychological condition that causes caretakers to abuse kids. 

"Today, we hear of reports that children are being abused, being used by drug cartels, and even dying," Smith said in a statement on his website last Thursday. "If a high school administrator prompted such mass abuse, that person would quickly be without a job and perhaps even found behind bars. The mental stability of the school administrator would be in question. Is a President of the United States who does such horrific acts deserving of less scrutiny and accountability?…People who intentionally hurt children for attention can be accused of Münchausen Syndrome by Proxy."

That's right, Obama is torturing kids because he's bonkers.  This is where we are with conservative intelligence these days, using plot devices stolen from Law and Order episodes.

Also, who taught this clown how to Google things?

We Gratefully Request To Be Allowed To Discriminate

Welcome to the "post-Hobby Lobby FREEDOM for all the kids" era, where thanks to SCOTUS, religiously affiliated companies that hire federal contractors are happily asking the President to allow them to discriminate against those awful, awful gay people because MURICA.

After a setback in the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case, President Obama is facing mounting pressure from religious groups demanding to be excluded from his long-promised executive order that would bar discrimination against gay men and lesbians by companies that do government work. 

The president has yet to sign the executive order, but last week a group of major faith organizations, including some of Mr. Obama’s allies, said he should consider adding an exemption for groups whose religious beliefs oppose homosexuality. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the court ruled that family-run corporations with religious objections could be exempted from providing employees with insurance coverage for contraception.

I talked about this some last week, but this is precisely what Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor warned about in their dissents on this ruling.

To give an example, faith leaders said a Catholic charity group that believes sex outside heterosexual marriage is a sin should not be denied government funding because it refused to employ a leader who was openly gay. Gay-rights groups countered that it would be unacceptable to allow religious organizations receiving taxpayer money to refuse to hire employees simply because they were gay, and said they did not expect the White House to provide such an exclusion. On Tuesday they stepped up their calls for Mr. Obama to quickly complete and sign the order.

I do hope the President remembers who voted for him in the first place, and what the right thing to do is both morally and legally.  I know he will, because I trust him.  That's why I voted for him in two elections.

StupidiNews!

• At least five people are dead and 300,000 lost power Tuesday as severe storms hit the Mid-Atlantic states, including 4 dead in a building collapse in Syracuse, NY.
• The West Virginia chemical company that polluted drinking water for tens of thousands in January in a chemical spill will receive a mere $11,000 fine from OSHA, according to sources.
• In one of the most lopsided matches in World Cup history, home team and favorite Brazil was dismissed by Germany with a 7-1 semifinal crushing.
• Mortgage giant Citigroup is said to be near a $7 billion settlement deal with the government over subprime mortgage manipulation that led to the 2008 financial crisis.
• A new climate change report from Colombia University says in order to limit global warming to just 2°C, the 15 largest carbon-emitting nations must cut emissions by 70% by 2050.