Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passes at the age of 87. I'm not sure I'd describe her as a "cautious" or "moderate" judge (though The Guardian ain't the only ones doing so), not just because judges aren't firebrands by temperament or job description, but also because she fought sexism and discrimination wherever she saw it long before it was popular, founding the ACLU's Women's Rights Project over 30 years before becoming the dean of our Supreme Court's liberal wing. May her memory be a blessing.
America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, warns that our President could "win" re-election -- in the event of massive violent right-wing "protests" that prevent states from counting all the votes -- by invoking the 12th Amendment and throwing the election to the House. The House would vote for President by state under the 12th Amendment, and since Republicans hold majorities in 26 states even though Democrats have a 40-seat majority overall, our President would win. Mr. Palast's solution? Massive in-person day-of-election voting no matter how many Proud Boys show up, so as to make the results unmistakeable.
House Democrats have apparently decided to delay a vote on the MORE Act, a bill that would essentially legalize pot, until after the election -- supposedly to concentrate on a COVID-19 relief bill, even though they passed one of those (and a good one) in May and you have to wonder why haven't shouted that from the rooftops nearly enough, let alone slam Mob Boss Mitch for trying to pass a really crappy relief bill instead. This delay is cowardice, and stupid cowardice at that, since polls tell us pot legalization is actually popular. Democrats: so smart, they're stupid.
Upon learning that our Administration has threatened to defund Connecticut schools for participating in a trans-friendly athletic conference, I wonder how they would expect to win a lawsuit against such a thing, since such funding deprivation would affect all Connecticut students, but then I remember that a) his votaries think merely making the threat is "doing something" and b) folks can't sue them for every criminal act they perpetrate. About a) they're likely correct; about b) they're likely wrong, though all the bad judges they're putting in our federal courts might eventually change that.
In a peripherally-related note, our President says a COVID-19 vaccine will go out "immediately" to the public not because he really thinks that, but so people will say he "did something." A lot of his votaries won't even notice if they don't see a vaccine three days before Election Day -- which, given that it does actually take time to ensure a potential vaccine doesn't actually just shoot poison, seems far more likely than not. No matter, though -- if a vaccine doesn't come out "quickly enough," our President will just whine about how this is just more evidence that everyone's out to get him, which, strangely, doesn't seem offend all the "tough guys" who love him.
Finally, our President relates an MSNBC anchor getting shot by police at a protest thusly: "He got hit in the knee with a canister of tear gas and he went down. He was down. 'My knee, my knee.' Nobody cared, these guys didn’t care, they moved him aside. And they just walked right through...It was the most beautiful thing. No, because after we take all that crap for weeks and weeks, and you finally see men get up there and go right through them, wasn’t it really a beautiful sight? It’s called law and order." Ugh, first off: other people's suffering is not "beautiful"! Second, what "crap" did you take? Protesting police brutality hurts your fee-fees? Third, what a childish notion of "law and order" this is, one that merely worships raw power, and one our President would never, ever imagine includes putting polluters or banksters in jail.
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