Your Last Call Chart Of The Week

Here's the chart of average job openings per job since 2000.



In other words, we're back to an employee's labor market rather than the employer's. Thanks Obama!

"The ratio of the unemployed to the level of job openings has decline to 1.43x, far below the near-7x peak at the worst part of the Great Recession and a place we have been at just two other times before (since the JOLTS data were first published.) 

This may well be the most accurate measure of just how tight the labor market is — we are heading to an environment where we are down to one person competing for one job. 

The sands have shifted towards this being a sellers' market for labour. 

Wage acceleration either starts real soon or we can simply take the laws of supply and demand and throw them in the dustbin."

Of course, a well-timed extended government shutdown might cause some problems there with the economy...

That would be a shame, wouldn't it?

United, We Fall

Things are looking pretty bad for United Continental (the parent company of United Airlines, which recently completed a merger with Continental Airways) as CEO Jeff Smisek has suddenly quit his job.  The reason?  The Feds are closing in on Smisek as evidence grows of a bribery scheme where the airline created flights specifically to keep the now former head of the Port Authority of NY/NJ happy.

Jeff Smisek’s sudden exit as United Continental Holdings Inc.’s chief executive officer deepens questions about whether he was more than simply a victim of pressure by Port Authority officials who made demands during business negotiations with the carrier in 2011. 

Prosecutors are looking into whether United’s creation of the so-called
chairman’s flight amounted to a bribe by the airline or a shakedown by then-Port Authority Chairman David Samson, according to people familiar with the matter. They said the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey is investigating United’s decision to launch twice-weekly flights between Newark Liberty International Airport and Columbia, South Carolina, near Samson’s weekend home after Samson pressed United to do so. At the time, United was seeking millions of dollars in investments from the authority. 

Samson first mentioned his interest in the flights a year before they began, at a September 2011 dinner in Manhattan attended by Smisek and two other United executives who also resigned Tuesday, Bloomberg News reported in April, citing people familiar with the event.

United said the resignations were tied to an ongoing internal inquiry “related to the federal investigation associated with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey.”
U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, who is leading the probe in Newark, is probably weeks from deciding whether to charge anyone from the airline, according to a person familiar with the case who isn’t authorized to discuss it publicly. 

“The easiest knee-jerk reaction is he stepped down because criminal charges are imminent,” said Michael Koenig, a former federal prosecutor now with Hinckley, Allen & Snyder LLP who isn’t involved in the case. But Smisek and the two others may have violated a company policy, or it may be a situation where “the very existence of an investigation brings unnecessary publicity on the company -- and someone has to pay the price.”

One hell of a bribe, eh?  Getting an airline to create a twice-weekly flight to your hometown from work?  That's nice if you can get it, especially since oil prices (and jet fuel prices) are a lot lower, and airlines are still charging passengers fees for everything from carry-ons to peanuts.  The airline industry looks like it'll have their best year ever in 2015 too, with $30 billion in profits alone as taxpayers are expected to pay for airport improvements and subsidize the airlines as they continue to cut flights and pack in as many people like sardines in cans.

But hey, if you're in charge of an airport, airlines will like you.  A lot.

Taxing America's Patience

If you're still wondering how Jeb! Bush is hovering around the 5% mark in GOP polls, it's because he's trying to sell his brother's policies with all the charisma of Mitt Romney with a head cold. Greg Sargent:

Time magazine reports that a new analysis from the Dem-aligned Center for American Progress calculates that Jeb Bush’s new tax plan would cut his own taxes by $773,000. This suggests that Democrats will try do to Jeb what they did to Mitt Romney: Cast him as a walking symbol, and personal beneficiary, of GOP priorities that seek to preserve or even exacerbate a tax code rigged for the rich and against the middle class. 

What’s interesting here is the Bush campaign’s response to charges that his tax plan would result in a huge windfall for the rich: It is arguing that his plan would nonetheless increase the share of the overall tax burden that the wealthy bear.

Buttressing the argument that people like Jeb would make out very well from Jeb’s plan, the Wall Street Journal reports that a new analysis from a business-backed tax group concludes that the biggest boost in after-tax income under his plan goes to the top one percent of earners, that is, people making more than $406,000:

They would see their after-tax incomes increase on average by 11.6%, according to the analysis. That’s the biggest change for any income group. 

The average for all income levels would be a 3.3% increase in income. The second-biggest beneficiaries would be folks in the top 10%, those making more than about $117,000. Their incomes would go up by 4.7%. 

The Bush campaign responds that his tax plan also cuts taxes for tens of millions of middle class families, and eliminates income taxes entirely for a range of lower income families. In sum, a Bush campaign spokesman told the Journal, the Bush plan means that “the highest earners actually pay a greater share of the tax burden than they did before.”

Even stupid Republican voters are figuring out that a tax plan that would save the one percent billions in taxes means somebody's got to pay for schools and roads and water pipes and things, and that if the one percent isn't paying for it, somebody else has to.

More and more are finally realizing that "somebody else" = "me".  Only took them 40 years to figure that out, too.

The West's Katrina Moment

It's time to come to terms that with all the idiocies flying around with President Obama's various "Katrinas", policy decisions that somehow evoke the disastrous response of the Bush administration to New Orleans ten years ago, the one single thing in the Obama presidency that actually qualifies as a true humanitarian disaster on his watch is our response to the Syrian refugee crisis.  Emily Hauser:

The numbers are almost unfathomable. What does more than 11 million people look like? It looks like the entire population of Ohio. It looks like Boston, Detroit, Milwaukee, New York City, and Washington, D.C., rolled into one. In relative terms, Syria's 11 million refugees and IDPs are the equivalent of 155 million Americans fleeing death and chaos, more than half of them children. 

Of the the four million or so who have escaped Syria, about 50 percent are being hosted by Turkey. Jordan has taken in 630,000, which, given that country's population of six million, means one out of every 13 people in Jordan today is actually Syrian. Lebanon has absorbed 1.7 million refugees — a number that translates to about one out of five people currently in Lebanon. 

To repeat: This has been going on for four years. More than four years, actually, as it all began when Assad turned his armed forces on peaceful protesters in March 2011. Remember the heady days of the Arab Spring, when news out of the Middle East was actually inspiring? The current Syrian horror show is a big chunk of what happened when the news stopped being so inspiring. When the Syrian "Spring" became all-out war and it got so complicated that seemingly no one knew what to do, so most of the West stopped paying attention and an entire nation imploded. 

During all that time, the U.S. has taken in 1,434 Syrian refugees; the U.K. a total of 216; and the fabulously wealthy Gulf states have sheltered none.

And here, President Obama is not alone.  It's not just his Katrina, but Europe's Katrina and the Gulf States's Katrina as well, Canada and the UK, Germany and Saudi Arabia.  It's Katrina for dozens of world leaders, of which President Obama is one.  He didn't cause this mess, that's all Bashar Al-Assad's fault.

But the response has been an utter, shameful failure on our part, and the failure has been absolute. Half the population of Syria has fled.  Half.

We screwed up on Syria, big time.  As much as this administration has done wonders for America and the world, this is the one subject on which I believe the Obama administration has been totally incompetent to the point of near criminal negligence.  Several other world leaders, from Angela Merkel to King Salman to Stephen Harper and more deserve the blame, and at the top of the list of Bashar Al-Assad.  He is the monster who caused this mess.

And whether or not we should have invaded Syria and deposed Assad is a moot point, we chose not to do that...but we also chose to do nothing as 5 million people lost their homes.  And yeah, times were tough here and we still have our own millions of homeless, but at least here they have some support mechanism which Obama has fought for keeping and improving, unlike the GOP.

It's not going to be a popular sentiment around here, but our response to Syria has been complete indifference and as Emily says, shameful.  It is the world's Katrina.  And we're going to have to live with this for a very long time.

Last Call For Goobye, Governor Goodhair

And Rick Perry is the first out of the clown car.

Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) said Friday he is suspending his presidential campaign, becoming the first casualty in a 17-person Republican presidential field.

Perry announced the news on Friday at an event in St. Louis, Missouri.

"I am suspending my campaign for the presidency of the United States," he said Friday at an event in St. Louis, according to prepared remarks sent out by his campaign.

The former governor's campaign has struggled in recent weeks after he failed to qualify for the Fox News main stage debate in early August.

Perry also failed to qualify for the second main stage Republican debate, which will be held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California, next week.

Get used to that losing feeling, Republicans.   You'll get to experience a lot more of it soon.

Reporting A Failure

The independent report commissioned by the University of Cincinnati on the shooting death of Sam Dubose by campus officer Ray Tensing was released today, and it puts the blame for Dubose's death squarely on Tensing's shoulders.

The fatal shooting of motorist Samuel Dubose by a University of Cincinnati police officer was "entirely preventable," according to an independent investigation of the incident. 

The investigation found that Officer Ray Tensing, who killed Dubose during a traffic stop July 19, used poor judgment and improper police tactics prior to the shooting. 

Investigators said Tensing acted appropriately when he pulled over Dubose's car, but he made several critical errors that caused the situation to spiral out of control. 

Those errors include Tensing's decision to draw his gun and reach into the car as Dubose attempted to drive away. Instead of escalating the encounter, the report said, Tensing should have let the unarmed Dubose go. 

"Tensing set in motion the fatal chain of events that led to the death of Dubose," the report said. "This incident, which resulted in a tragic loss of life, was entirely preventable."

There should be no question at this point if Tensing was responsible for the death of Sam Dubose. It's up to a jury to decide whether or not that rises to the charges of murder leveled against the officer. Personally, given what I've seen, I don't see how it couldn't be murder, but I'm not on the jury.

We'll see what happens, but this is yet another call for Cincinnati to fix its policing citywide.

Making Sure Black Lives Don't Matter

If there was ever proof that the Black Lives Matter movement is scaring the hell out of the establishment, you have to look no further than this week's Jason Riley piece in the WSJ brutally trashing it.

The great lie of the summer has been the Black Lives Matter movement. It was founded on one falsehood—that a Ferguson, Mo., police officer shot a black suspect who was trying to surrender—and it is perpetuated by another: that trigger-happy cops are filling our morgues with young black men.

The reality is that Michael Brown is dead because he robbed a convenience store, assaulted a uniformed officer and then made a move for the officer’s gun. The reality is that a cop is six times more likely to be killed by someone black than the reverse. The reality is that the Michael Browns are a much bigger threat to black lives than are the police. “Every year, the casualty count of black-on-black crime is twice that of the death toll of 9/11,” wrote former New York City police detective Edward Conlon in a Journal essay on Saturday. “I don’t understand how a movement called ‘Black Lives Matter’ can ignore the leading cause of death among young black men in the U.S., which is homicide by their peers.”

Riley goes on at some length, blaming BLM for basically everything wrong in the black community, raving that we wouldn't get shot if only we were good little negroes, and accusing the media of wanting to make America's police look bad.  After all, the only victims here are cops.

And let's not forget that crime involving white Americans still encompasses the majority of violent crimes in the US, but anything and everything has to be done to paint BLM suppoerters are thugs, criminals, radicals and dangerous lunatics for daring to say "Hey, in 2015 America still has structural racism issues that are leading to the execution of black people at the hands of our government."

The only reason any of us black folk exist is because we haven't been killed yet.

StupidiNews!

• One Marine was killed and 18 injured when a military vehicle rolled over in a training accident at Camp Pendleton, California yesterday.
• At a ceremony marking the beginning of $15 an hour wages for New York fast food workers, Gov. Andrew Cuomo voiced support for making that the state's minimum wage for all workers.
• President Obama has said that the US will take in at least 10,000 Syrian refugees by the end of 2016, but some in Congress want to see a much larger number taken in.
• Vice President Joe Biden appeared on the Late Show With Stephen Colbert and remarked on how the death of his son Beau from cancer is impacting his decision to run in 2016.
• Google will be rolling out monthly security updates to Android devices starting this week after a major flaw was discovered over the summer that allowed a device to be hijacked by texting.

Last Call For Climate Of Backbiting

I'm old enough to remember when the President was able to conduct foreign policy without the opposition party publicly telling foreign allies exactly how they will undermine that policy at every turn.  Of course, that was before the Age of Black Guy in the White House.

Top Republican lawmakers are planning a wide-ranging offensive — including outreach to foreign officials by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office — to undermine President Barack Obama's hopes of reaching an international climate change agreement that would cement his environmental legacy.

The GOP strategy, emerging after months of quiet discussions, includes sowing doubts about Obama's climate policies at home and abroad, trying to block key environmental regulations in Congress, and challenging the legitimacy of the president's attempts to craft a global agreement without submitting a treaty to the Senate.

A top policy aide to McConnell (R-Ky.) has had conversations with a select group of representatives from foreign embassies to make it clear that Republicans intend to fight Obama's climate agenda at every turn, sources familiar with the efforts say.

Sources say the aide, Neil Chatterjee, hasn't tried to persuade other countries to oppose a climate deal, though he is informing them about the GOP's options for undercutting it. He has had conversations with officials representing both developed and developing countries. Environment & Energy Publishing first reported on his efforts.

McConnell himself warned foreign leaders last spring to "proceed with caution before entering into a binding, unattainable deal” with Obama, noting that "two-thirds of the U.S. federal government" — Congress and the Supreme Court — hasn't signed off on the president's plans.

It's amazing stuff.  Aides to members of Congress actively and openly conducting foreign policy in opposition to the President. I can't really recall that happening before.

But then again, Obama.

Iran Out Of Orange Julius

John Boehner continues to be the most incompetent House Speaker in decades, as now the House vote on the Iran nuclear has completely collapsed because he can't control his own little monsters in the GOP caucus.

GOP leaders had to change course after hearing an earful from rank-and-file members during a morning conference meeting.

Members of the conservative House Freedom Caucus are demanding that the Obama administration send side deals between Iran and international nuclear inspectors to Congress as part of the Iran deal now under consideration. Opponents of the deal have argued that the clock on congressional consideration of the deal has not even begun until these side deals are submitted.

Under legislation approved earlier this year, Congress has 60 days to review the deal before the White House can begin lifting sanctions on Tehran, as required under the nuclear deal.

Rep. Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) has offered a resolution that would prevent a vote on the Iran deal until all of the documents of the international agreement — including the deals between Iran and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) are provided to Congress for review.

“We had a very healthy conversation with our members this morning. There is some interest in the idea offered by Mr. [Mike] Pompeo, Mr. Roskam. We're going to continue to have those conversations,” Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) said after a GOP conference meeting.

I don't blame them.  Orange Julius really did sell them out, like he always does, and yet House Republicans continue to let him take the blame because none of the rest of them want the job.

Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) predicted that the procedural vote on the rule would fail if it were held Wednesday. But neither he nor other members of the House Freedom Caucus who believe Congress lacks all the information it needs to vote on the deal would commit to voting against the rule on the floor.

“If we take a vote prematurely, then we’re saying it doesn’t matter. And again, that’s another form of approval. Why do we want to approve anything here when it’s a bad deal and we don’t even know the worst part of it?” Fleming said.

Fleming suggested that allowing lawmakers to review the side agreements between Iran and the IAEA could even flip some Democrats to oppose the deal.

“Let’s say that something comes out that’s so hideous and so egregious that even Democrats wouldn’t dare go along with this deal,” Fleming said. “You don’t know what you don’t know. We didn’t know that the NSA was doing bulk collection of emails until we found about it.”

But other Republicans say it's too late to try to stall the vote when Congress's 60-day review period will close on Sept. 17.

“You know what, I think it’s pretty clear that a month and a half ago we understood that Sept. 17 would be the drop-dead date. And the week we’re doing it is a little bit late to bring up the argument,” said House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-Texas).

It's too late the change the rules of the game, kids. You lost, and there's no way out of this mess.  After the sixty days are up, Republican lose regardless.

And they know it.

Cincy Police Chief Blackwell Fired

It was inevitable that somebody's head had to roll after two Cincinnati police stories made national headlines this summer: first, the death of Officer Sonny Kim in the line of duty, and second, the death of Sam Dubose by a UC campus officer.  On Wednesday the hammer fell on Cincinnati Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell as he was blasted in a 35-page report by City Manager Harry Black in front of City Council and Mayor Cranley, and then summarily dismissed.

Cincinnati's city manager has fired Police Chief Jeffrey Blackwell. 

In a 35 page document, City Manager Harry Black cites "lack of sufficient and proper communication" and "consistent and pervasive disregard for chain of command." 

Morale in the department, Black wrote, "is at an unprecedented low level, and the general sentiment throughout the department is that Mr. Blackwell's leadership has created a work environment of hostility and retaliation."

Assistant Chief Eliot Isaac has been named Interim Chief. 

Documents included in the city’s release outline myriad problems with the chief and his leadership style. He is depicted as unprofessional, uncommunicative, and disrespectful to officers and other staff. There are repeated instances of the chief reportedly berating co-workers. 

In a statement, Captain Paul Broxterman says the chief asked him, on several occasions, to use his contacts with the Cincinnati Reds and Bengals to get free game tickets. 

Broxterman says the chief often made promises he wouldn’t fulfill. He adds the assistant chiefs were frequently frustrated over a lack of communication and direction from the chief. “They clearly felt powerless in the day-to-day operations of the department.” Broxterman does praise the chief for being passionate about community outreach, especially reaching out to the city’s youth. 

Now Interim Chief Eliot Isaac says rank and file officers repeatedly told him they felt unsupported by Chief Blackwell. 

Other complaints include the chief allegedly using profane language and harsh, berating language with co-workers, and taking 'selfies' along the funeral procession route for Officer Sonny Kim.

Blackwell got thrown under the bus by everyone in Cincy: his own officers, Mayor Cranley, the police unions and the press. Harry Black did praise Blackwell for his outreach program ti Cincinnati's black neighborhoods, but that was literally the only nice thing anyone's had to say about Chief Blackwell in months.

His days were numbered since Cranley was elected Mayor and Black appointed City Manager, but the deaths of Officer Kim and Sam Dubose were the final straws.  The Cincy FOP was going to give Blackwell a no confidence vote next week, and everyone couldn't wait to get rid of the guy.

Blackwell did have his supporters, most notably City Council members Chris Seelbach and Yvette Simpson, but that wasn't enough to save his job.  What's clear is that Blackwell was summarily fired because the police union and Cranley wanted him gone, and badly.

At City Hall, the former chief, Jeffrey Blackwell, told reporters he had not seen or read City Manager Harry Black's report. He said, Wednesday morning, he was "escorted out like a criminal."

"I've had the support of the White House, the attorney general, the national media, all the national think tanks, but I could never get the support off John Cranley or Harry Black and because I have never had their support, ever, I could never command the department the way it was supposed to be led."

Last week, Council Member Wendell Young, a former police officer, said he thought it was time for Blackwell to go. But, at Wednesday's council meeting, he said he did not like the way it was done, with no opportunity for Blackwell to respond.

"This has been bad theater here,'' Young said, directing his remarks to Cranley. "Mr. Mayor, you created this atmosphere; this is on you."

And you can't tell me that having an African-American police chief didn't have a role to play in why Blackwell never got the support he needed to run the department responsibly.  His job was to clean up the department that's had race issue for decades.

Instead, the CPD cleaned him out and trashed him.  This whole thing stinks, and there's more to it than Blackwell's behavior or going to Reds games.

StupidiNews!

• A major archaeological find in South Africa has revealed the bones of an ancient species of a previously unknown human ancestor dubbed 'Homo naledi'.
• The latest Republican lawsuit against Obamacare has survived a federal court, which will allow the suit claiming the Obama administration improperly allocated Obamacare funds to continue.
• Russian ground troops are now involved in Syria's civil war according to a Reuters report, supporting the Assad regime against Islamic State rebel forces.
• Puerto Rico's government has unveiled a debt restructuring plan that forces creditors to take less than what is owed in order to keep the US territory solvent.
• The major reveal at Apple's event this week is the 12.9 inch iPad Pro and accessories including a smart keyboard and a stylus dubbed the Apple Pencil.

Last Call For Shutdown Watch '15

Forbes's Stan Collender ups his GOP government shutdown forecast to 67% from last month's 60%, saying that President Obama getting the 41 votes he needs to filibuster the GOP's attempt to derail the Iran nuclear deal makes it all the more likely that Republicans will exact revenge.

Because the CR will include appropriations for all cabinet departments, it’s very likely – if not almost certain – that there will be at least one attempt in the House and Senate to include language that prevents from using any of the funds to implement the deal. 

That’s not to say this proposed language will survive, but the process will further slow down a debate on the CR that already was pushing against the time limit. 

Even more important is that an effort to stop the Iran deal in the CR will provide a second take-no-prisoners issue that will further intensify the politics for many Republicans. When combined with the expected efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, it will add significant highly emotional fuel to the partisan fire and make a government shutdown far more politically palatable. 

If that wasn’t enough, neither Iran implementation nor Planned Parenthood funding has anything to do with the big budget issue — military vs. domestic spending — that still must be resolved in the continuing resolution. There doesn’t seem to have been any progress whatsoever on the dispute between Republicans, that want to increase military and cut domestic programs, and the White House, that wants to increase them both.

And somehow this all has to be worked out quickly. Yes, there are only three weeks between now and the start of fiscal 2016, but the debate and votes on the CR have to be completed in the 10 days Congress will be in session before October 1. But because several of these days will be devoted to the Iran deal and Pope Francis’ visit to Washington, Congress and the White House really only have about seven days left to get all of the work done.

I would put the likelihood at 90% or higher.  Once again, there's no way John Boehner will be able to deliver his caucus for a continuing resolution in the House, and with Sens. Cruz, Paul and Rubio all looking for a way to get back into the race, whoever shuts down the government first wins in the Age of Trump.

It's going to be a meltdown, and Republicans will get blamed again.

Whether or not that actually hurts the GOP, well, who knows.  It certainly didn't hurt them in 2014.

Bush Tax Cuts Forevah

Jeb Bush is tired of getting 5% in the polls, so he's going to amaze people with something they've never seen before:  more Bush tax cuts!

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush convened an hour-long gathering in Manhattan on Tuesday morning with three longtime advocates for sweeping tax cuts, seeking their counsel at the office of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson and sharing the details of his campaign’s economic plan, which will be formally unveiled Wednesday in Raleigh, N.C. 

The trio of supply-side conservatives — Heritage Foundation economist Stephen Moore, publishing executive Steve Forbes and CNBC contributor Larry Kudlow — met with Bush alongside Johnson, Bush’s national finance chairman, according to two Republicans familiar with Bush’s schedule. 

Those Republicans, who requested anonymity to discuss the private session and the Bush campaign’s outlook, said the former Florida governor hopes his tax offering will jumpstart his candidacy, which has lagged behind GOP front-runner Donald Trump for months, by proposing lower corporate and personal tax rates while also eliminating a number of deductions that favor Wall Street investors.

Courting the party’s tax-cut enthusiasts Tuesday was the first step in that effort, the Republicans said, calling it a gesture of goodwill and a signal to the party’s business wing that in spite of the rollicking race so far, Bush is mounting an aggressive fall campaign built around traditional GOP principles. Later Tuesday, Bush will visit the offices of The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, whose writers have for decades been ardent proponents of smaller government and lower taxes.

Yay tax cuts for the rich!  That'll totally fix all of America problems.

Well, it will for the rich.  Until the economy collapses again, but hey, rich people can survive that, so no problemo, dude!

Seriously, do you get the feeling that the Jeb Bush campaign might be out of ideas?

Jailhouse Rockhead

Judge David Bunning has released Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis from jail for contempt with the instructions that she no longer interfere with her deputy secretaries in issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Guess who's bad at instructions?

Just minutes after a judge ordered Kim Davis released from jail on Tuesday, her lawyers told CNN that she would violate a court order by forcing her clerks to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

An order from U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning said on Tuesday that Davis would be released after serving six days in jail on the condition that she “shall not interfere in any way, directly or indirectly, with the efforts of her deputy clerks to issue marriage licenses to all legally eligible couples.”

CNN correspondent Martin Savidge, who was at the jail, explained following the order that her attorney, Harry Mihet, said that the judge had ordered the release because her office had satisfied the court by issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples while she was behind bars.

“The problem here is that the attorney says she has not changed her mind, that Kim Davis is adamant that as long as her name appears on those marriage licenses, she objects and she will attempt to stop those licenses from being distributed,” Savidge reported. “Which means if she goes back on the job as is expected, she will bring the process to a halt. That’s what her attorneys believe.”

“They have said they expect her to go by her conscience which means we may go through this all again,” the CNN correspondent noted.

If that actually happens, well, we'll find out pretty soon should Davis burst forth from her office like the evil Kool-Aid Man and tackle the next same-sex couple that comes in the door.

Which necessitates the question being asked: if it's so obvious to Davis's lawyers that she'll violate the court order, how did she get released in the first place?

Won't last long, I'm thinking.

Meanwhile both Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz showed up at the County jail, and Huckabee especially went on with dangerous rhetoric about openly defying the Supreme Court on same-sex marriage.

"We do not want this country to become the smoldering remains of what was once a great republic, where the people rule," the former Arkansas governor told the crowd. That vision of America should not be "exchanged for a place where five unelected lawyers think that they can rule," he said.

"We're here to say, 'No, they cannot,'" Huckabee declared.

Once again, Republican running for President openly saying that Supreme Court rulings he doesn't like are simply invalid.  Somehow, it's  Democrats who are the extremists.  Probably something about Black Lives Matter, I'm sure.

Nodding to the separation of powers and "the genius of our Constitution," Huckabee told Davis supporters on Tuesday that the Supreme Court's power is "limited" and that it "can only review a law." Reasonably true.

But then came his warning that "the founders never gave that one branch of government the power to make a law."

Huckabee added, "That is reserved for the representatives of the people. Our founders were so concerned that they said that should we ever come to the place that we allow a court to run amok of its purpose, then we would be living under what is no less than judicial tyranny."

That's not how it works, the Supreme Court is the final arbiter over what is Constitutional or not, and they have found that laws banning same-sex marriage are unconstitutional.  What Huckabee is proposing, that the Executive Branch can simply ignore the Judicial Branch, is actual tyranny.

And yet, he's still considered a serious candidate for the GOP nomination rather than a dangerous lunatic.

Spoilers: he's not alone in this view, either.