Stone the Crow
The sexual battery verdict against Trump ... Further peril pending ... Clarence Thomas in the pocket of reactionary benefactor ... Secret gifts sink the remnants of SCOTUS' ethical standing ... Ousting the veto power of state governors ... Voting limitations run riot ... Roger Fitch in Washington
"Trump's selling point ... has long been his criminality. The MAGA base was compelled by the idea that only a true villain could get them what they want because he would flout all rules and laws in his pursuit of their authoritarian goals. So to claim Trump is 'innocent' is not to deny that he committed a crime, so much as it is to assert that he should be above the law" - Salon
"Evangelical leaders justified their support for Trump by comparing him to King Cyrus, who ... liberated the Jews from Babylonian captivity, despite himself being a Persian ruler who did not believe in the god of Israel ... Trump, like Cyrus, was seen as an 'imperfect vessel' ... God was using him for the greater good … to hand political and cultural power back to white conservative Christians" - Guardian
"The belief is that God uses a wicked man as a tool of divine destiny and will" - Salon
Donald Trump has been found liable for sexual battery and defamation in a New York civil damages case brought by the writer Jean Carroll. The events occurred in the mid-90s in a Bergdorf-Goodman dressing room.
The defence called no witnesses (Trump was, however, deposed), and it took the jury only three hours to find that he "sexually abused " and defamed Carroll, awarding $5 million in damages.
The wicked ex-president will soon face greater peril in another New York court: the hush-money criminal case. In an own-goal, Trump's D-list Florida lawyer foolishly sued NY State's star witness Michael Cohen, in a local federal court.
If that case proceeds, Cohen's discovery motions would likely produce damning evidence of Trump's direct participation in the hush-money scheme.
In addition to suing the witness, raging against the Manhattan prosecutor and insulting the judge hearing his case, Trump wants venue for his Manhattan indictment moved to Staten Island, the only New York borough he won in 2020.
In fact, Judge Juan Merchan seems abundantly qualified: in addition to his position as a judge of the state's Supreme Court (in New York, a trial court), he presides in mental health matters.
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Clarence Thomas is a lucky fellow.
Though born poor and black in a small Gullah community in Georgia, his first language Geechee, he's come a long way.
Assisted, perhaps, by the liberal affirmative action policies he so despises, he made it to Yale Law School. After graduation, he, like all the conservative members of the present Supreme Court, worked in Republican administrations.
Despite an undistinguished record as the Reagan-appointed chair of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the then 43-year-old Thomas was appointed by George Bush père to a lifetime appeals court position.
Then, after 19 months as an indifferent circuit judge, he was nominated for the supreme court seat of the retiring, and truly-distinguished, African-American lawyer Thurgood Marshall.
At this point Thomas's ascent hit turbulence, with numerous accusations of sexual improprieties during his spell at the EEOC, most notably, the complaint of one employee, the black lawyer Anita Hill.
Republicans played the colour-card to wedge him on the court, and the lucky judge squeaked in with the votes of 52 senators, at a time when there were 56 Democrats and only 44 Republicans.
On the court, Thomas has pursued a legal philosophy so reactionary that, until recently, he seldom found himself in the majority and rarely were his dissents joined by other justices. He was a lonely figure who famously never spoke at oral arguments.
Thomas did what he wanted ethically. He didn't report gifts or favours, as the law required, until 2004 when the LA Times disclosed his extraordinary gifts from Dallas developer Harlan Crow; thereafter, Thomas continued to receive Crow's favours, he just didn't disclose or report them - problem solved!
Clarence and Ginni Thomas: on the take
Now it seems Clarence Thomas's luck may have run out. A series of investigations by ProPublica has revealed that the connections of the justice and developer have only intensified over the years.
Slate called it quid pro Crow. Now, evidence is emerging that Harlan Crow has actually benefited from his gifts.
It's not just hospitality and holiday, yacht cruises or stays at Crow's tacky retreat in the Adirondacks, but things of more material value, e.g real estate and cash contributions for family members, like his wife Virginia "Ginni" Lamp. Justice Abe Fortas was forced-off the court for far less in 1969.
Thomas was only following in the footsteps of Nino Scalia, who chalked up 89 free hunting trips with rich donors (and litigants), and actually died in bed at an $800-a-night hunting lodge in Texas.
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There are now 28 states where the legislature has a veto-proof majority, and 21 of them are controlled by Republicans who pass legislation at will, e.g. Florida, where the Republican governor DeSantis and a rubber-stamp legislature create chaos while enacting blatantly unconstitutional legislation.
North Carolina may be the most outrageous state. It already had a Republican majority in both houses, but there's a Democrat governor, and the general assembly lacked the supermajority needed to overrule him.
Now, a previously-loyal Democrat has been persuaded to change sides, giving the Republicans the exact two-thirds supermajority needed to override vetoes by the governor. Did money (lots) change hands?
The only thing that stood in the way of complete Republican control had been the NC supreme court. In 2016 the justices began to be selected on a partisan basis, and at first Democrats and Republicans on the seven-seat court were evenly-balanced, with Democrat-endorsed justices recently holding a 4-3 majority.
Then, last November's elections gave Republicans a 5-2 court and quelle surprise, the newly-Republican court immediately revisited and retrospectively blessed the highly-partisan legislative gerrymanders that federal courts and the state's previous high court had found unlawful.
A little history. In 2018, the US supreme court ruled (in Rucho v Common Cause) that partisan gerrymanders were "non-justiciable political questions" best left to the states.
The then-Democrat-majority NC supreme court accordingly struck-down the Republican gerrymanders, based on the NC constitution's prohibition against partisan gerrymanders.
It is this precedent that the Republican-majority NC supreme court reconsidered and overruled.
The NC legislature had already collaterally attacked the previous court's decision by arguing in the US supreme court (in Moore v Harper, still pending), that, under a newly-contrived "independent state legislature theory", a legislature's election decisions are exclusive, trumping the governor and state administration, and even the state's constitution and supreme court rulings interpreting it.
The veto-proof state assembly can now confidently implement voting limitations from 2013 that the 4th circuit found "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision", as well as voting restrictions struck down in 2018 by North Carolina's state courts.
