Our Supreme Court just loves to save the best for last: they strike down California's big donor disclosure law, claiming that it exposes said big donors to harassment and intimidation, and they uphold a pair of Arizona voter restrictions, claiming that they don't oppress minority voters the way plaintiffs (and the Ninth Circuit) said they do. Remember when our Court said campaign finance disclosure ought to compensate for the problem of letting people donate whatever they like? That might have been BS, just like it was when Mitch McConnell said it over 20 years ago. And they're apparently prepared to wait until legislators are stupid enough to write down WE HATEZ TEH BLACKZ!!!!! directly into their laws before acting on vote suppression. Or maybe not even then! I guess those unorthodox 6-3 decisions were just to put us off our guard.
Jennifer Rubin, one of the Washington Post's many never-Trumpers, suggests that Republicans want the infrastructure fight to be "all about process" because the actual infrastructure projects are popular with Republican rank-and-file voters. But of course, this could all be drama: Republicans pitch a fit over the "bad faith" of Democrats, and then Joe Biden, to "reassure" them, gives up the reconciliation bill Democrats will pass afterward. Or maybe Kyrsten Sinema steps up to say she just can't in good conscience support whatever reconciliation bill Democrats come up with. No one snatches defeat from the jaws of victory like the Democrats, and there are still a million ways to lose this thing -- unless, of course, we make that impossible for them.
In a related note, Republicans are now fixating on the IRS funding provision as a reason to oppose the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal." After all, no one cares when Republicans go back on their word, but the mere appearance of going back on your word is of course fatal to Democrats! Hilariously, Sen. Graham wonders aloud how much good $40 billion more would do, when the first sentence of the article reminds us that everyone involved in the "deal" (including Sen. Graham) agreed that $40 billion would harvest about $100 billion in otherwise-undetected tax evasion. That's not the kind of stupidity that can stand very much sunlight. Right?
But if you're looking for a sign that Democrats actually do know how to do politics, the House plans to vote on removing Confederate statues from our nation's Capitol early next week. Republicans could be impaled on the horns of a trilemma here: if you want to be the objectively pro-Confederate statue Congressperson, you go right ahead, and if you want to alienate Trumphole voters by voting to remove them, you go right ahead, and if you don't want to take a stand either way but just want to complain about Democrats playing politics, you go right ahead. I'll admit that Kevin McCarthy's response -- "all the statues were Democrats" -- made me laugh.
You may have heard that a certain former President's corporation now faces charges of fraud (and its CFO faces charges of grand larceny) in New York state, and Donald Trump responds in, apparently, the only way he can, by saying that the charges are part of a "political Witch Hunt by the Radical Left Democrats" that is "dividing our Country like never before!" "Never before"? It's like we never fought a Civil War! Could this incessant whining be the reason 54% of the electorate in 2016 and 53% in 2020 voted for someone, anyone, other than him? (Ransom note-style caps, by the way, come from the original text, as always.)
Finally, Bush the Lesser Defense Secretary/Iraq war hawk Donald Rumsfeld has died at the age of 88. You know, I used to be sad when my enemies died -- sad when Ronald Reagan died, sad when William F. Buckley, Jr., died, sad when Antonin Scalia died, even -- but not now. Could it be that my enemies used to be formidable but have gotten so, so much more stupid and venal over the years? Could it be that I became a man and put away childish things like "respecting your enemy"? I suppose it could be both, but I'm pretty sure it's at least the former.
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