More to ignore, Book 71.......
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Saturday, Jun 25, 2022 · 6:58:54 PM EDT · Mark Sumner
There have been a lot of images and videos this week of Ukrainian helicopters and planes operating near the front lines.
There have been a lot of images and videos this week of Ukrainian helicopters and planes operating near the front lines.
Hey Federalist Society, I got your 'Federalist' right here
Dartagnan
The right-wing “Federalist Society” is one of the most colossal scams ever perpetrated on the American people. An organization borne of disgruntled right-wing extremists with Yale law degrees, apparently unhappy with the idea that people of a different class or skin color might enjoy the same privileges as their mommies and daddies who paid for their pricey educations, the Society grooms its fellow malcontents from tony and less-tony law schools, feeding them a contrived “jurisprudence” that just happens to fulfill every whim of its (mostly fossil-fuel oriented) deep-pocket donors. Then it churns them through its think-tanks and legislators until they can pop out untrammeled, like a legal abomination, into the welcoming arms of a Republican-dominated Judiciary Committee for automatic elevation to our federal courts.
Even their name is a crock. These people aren’t Federalists. Federalists — as in James Madison, for example -- supported a strong central government in order to unify the country. These pretenders of the “Federalist Society” have, from the 1980’s onward, preached the doctrine of “state’s rights,” because they found that when the federal government did things that benefitted the American people as a whole — such as environmental or workers’ protection, for example — well, it just didn’t sit too well with the people writing their paychecks (That is the very definition of an Anti-Federalist, but I guess that name just didn’t sit right with their donors).
But you don’t have to take it from me. Let’s see what another “Federalist” had to say about the massive and probably irreparable damage currently being wreaked by people appointed to the Supreme Court in his and his 18th century colleagues’ names. As explained by Max Boot, writing for the Washington Post, the real “Federalists” were completely against everything that the current Supreme Court — with its majority installed by the “Federalist Society” — happens to embody and stand for:
As it turns out, Hamilton was absolutely right. Except he couldn’t imagine sparsely populated states like “Wyoming,” “Idaho” or “North Dakota” exercising their will over the millions of people in the (reality-based) real American “heartland,” that is, those who lived in or adjacent to the country’s largest population centers.
As Boot points out, the American people by large majorities want some semblance of control over automatic and semi-automatic firearms. The American people want abortion to be available to those become pregnant. They’ve wanted these things for a long time. But these “Federalists” on the Supreme Court have decided for us that whatever the public wants is less important than the people who put them into power, even if those people represented a palpable minority of Americans.
That’s your “Federalism,” twisted into knots by the modern Republican Party.
The following point has been stated many times, but it bears emphasizing: this is not the way the Founders of this country believed things should be done. In fact they are probably rolling over in their graves at the way their legacy has been corrupted. Neither Madison nor Hamilton would have ever countenanced rule by a minority of the population, which is exactly the outcome we have with the current Supreme Court, a creature of the so-called “Federalist Society”.
As Boot writes:
It’s bad enough that these creeps and fanatics owe their positions to the fossil fuel industry and the white evangelical right, a population that does not represent any semblance of what America actually is.
But it’s doubly atrocious when they try to claim some mantle of historical authenticity. They have none. They’re just a group of extremists who found themselves in the right place at the right time, and found a whole lot of right-wing money to back them up.
Dartagnan
The right-wing “Federalist Society” is one of the most colossal scams ever perpetrated on the American people. An organization borne of disgruntled right-wing extremists with Yale law degrees, apparently unhappy with the idea that people of a different class or skin color might enjoy the same privileges as their mommies and daddies who paid for their pricey educations, the Society grooms its fellow malcontents from tony and less-tony law schools, feeding them a contrived “jurisprudence” that just happens to fulfill every whim of its (mostly fossil-fuel oriented) deep-pocket donors. Then it churns them through its think-tanks and legislators until they can pop out untrammeled, like a legal abomination, into the welcoming arms of a Republican-dominated Judiciary Committee for automatic elevation to our federal courts.
Even their name is a crock. These people aren’t Federalists. Federalists — as in James Madison, for example -- supported a strong central government in order to unify the country. These pretenders of the “Federalist Society” have, from the 1980’s onward, preached the doctrine of “state’s rights,” because they found that when the federal government did things that benefitted the American people as a whole — such as environmental or workers’ protection, for example — well, it just didn’t sit too well with the people writing their paychecks (That is the very definition of an Anti-Federalist, but I guess that name just didn’t sit right with their donors).
But you don’t have to take it from me. Let’s see what another “Federalist” had to say about the massive and probably irreparable damage currently being wreaked by people appointed to the Supreme Court in his and his 18th century colleagues’ names. As explained by Max Boot, writing for the Washington Post, the real “Federalists” were completely against everything that the current Supreme Court — with its majority installed by the “Federalist Society” — happens to embody and stand for:
As it turns out, Hamilton was absolutely right. Except he couldn’t imagine sparsely populated states like “Wyoming,” “Idaho” or “North Dakota” exercising their will over the millions of people in the (reality-based) real American “heartland,” that is, those who lived in or adjacent to the country’s largest population centers.
As Boot points out, the American people by large majorities want some semblance of control over automatic and semi-automatic firearms. The American people want abortion to be available to those become pregnant. They’ve wanted these things for a long time. But these “Federalists” on the Supreme Court have decided for us that whatever the public wants is less important than the people who put them into power, even if those people represented a palpable minority of Americans.
That’s your “Federalism,” twisted into knots by the modern Republican Party.
The following point has been stated many times, but it bears emphasizing: this is not the way the Founders of this country believed things should be done. In fact they are probably rolling over in their graves at the way their legacy has been corrupted. Neither Madison nor Hamilton would have ever countenanced rule by a minority of the population, which is exactly the outcome we have with the current Supreme Court, a creature of the so-called “Federalist Society”.
As Boot writes:
It’s bad enough that these creeps and fanatics owe their positions to the fossil fuel industry and the white evangelical right, a population that does not represent any semblance of what America actually is.
But it’s doubly atrocious when they try to claim some mantle of historical authenticity. They have none. They’re just a group of extremists who found themselves in the right place at the right time, and found a whole lot of right-wing money to back them up.
As Russian troops press ahead with a grinding campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to resist the onslaught depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials.
Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the vast amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.
At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine. The United States withdrew its own 150 military instructors before the war began in February, but commandos from these allies either remained or have gone in and out of the country since then, training and advising Ukrainian troops and providing an on-the-ground conduit for weapons and other aid, three U.S. officials said.
Few other details have emerged about what the C.I.A. personnel or the commandos are doing, but their presence in the country — on top of the diplomatic staff members who returned after Russia gave up its siege of Kyiv — hints at the scale of the secretive effort to assist Ukraine that is underway and the risks that Washington and its allies are taking.....
Thread by @WarintheFuture on Thread Reader App
@WarintheFuture: This map from @War_Mapper demonstrates the incremental nature of the Russian gains, and the significant resistance offered by Ukrainian defenders, over the past two weeks. 1/14 🧵 2/ Remember, since ...…
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End Book 71
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