Richard Wolffe at The Guardian deftly rips our nation’s neo-Confederate Attorney General a new one in Jeff Sessions: a poor, misunderstood man exempt from normal rules:
Time and again, his many critics fail to understand his selfless commitment to the law, to ethics and to the United States itself.
Anyone watching Sessions testifying before his former Senate colleagues – as he liked to call them, before they hurled all kinds of calumnies in his direction – was surely shocked by how often the attorney general has had to endure such indignities.
Who could expect this fine man to live by the common standards of recusal? It’s quite outrageous to think that recusal from the Russia investigation means he had to recuse himself from firing someone for the Russia investigation.
The normal rules do not apply to Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III.
Charles M. Blow at The New York Times writes—Rhetoric and bullets:
In 2011, after Representative Gabby Giffords of Arizona was gravely injured and six others were killed by a shooter in Tucson, I was moved to commit an entire column to condemning the left for linking the shooting so closely to political rhetoric. [...]
Now, here I am again, only this time extending the same condemnation to the right for doing the same after four people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, were shot at an Alexandria, Va., baseball field where Republican members of Congress were practicing in advance of a charity game. [...]
The very real possibility that the shooting was politically motivated was clearly on the minds of many, including Representative Rodney Davis, Republican of Illinois, who was at the baseball field during the shooting: “This could be the first political rhetorical terrorist attack, and that has to stop.”
Let me be clear: I don’t have a problem with viewing these incidents through a political lens. Not to do so is naïve and ridiculously self-blinding in a way that avoids reality.
Martin Longman at Washington Monthly writes—Fox News Drops Claim to Be Fair and Balanced:
The rise of Donald Trump has been almost as disruptive to Fox News as it has been for the country and the world. Add in the disgrace and death of Roger Ailes, the firing of Bill O’Reilly, and the departure of Fox staples Megyn Kelly and Greta Van Susteren, and the faux news network hardly resembles its old self. The latest development drives home the contrast.
As Fox News moves further into the post–Roger Ailes era, the network is shedding one of its most iconic elements. According to network executives, Fox News has abandoned the marketing slogan “Fair & Balanced.” The decision was made last August after Ailes’s ouster by Fox News co-president Jack Abernethy, because the phrase had “been mocked,” one insider said.
Of course, the “Fair and Balanced” motto has been mocked from the beginning. What’s changed is some kind of self-consciousness about being ridiculous. The network will remain far right, at least for now, but it’s not going to go to such absurd lengths to pretend otherwise. What they’re going to do is stick with “Most Watched. Most Trusted.”
We could ask “most trusted by whom?” but a better challenge might be to examine if they remain the most watched.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—The GOP’s fantastically anti-democratic quest to kill health care in the dark:
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell once had passionate views about how carefully Congress should consider sweeping changes to the health-care system.
“Fast-tracking a major legislative overhaul such as health care reform or a new national energy tax without the benefit of a full and transparent debate does a disservice to the American people,” McConnell said in 2009, referring to the two big issues of the moment. Democrats using such means, he added, “would make it absolutely clear they intend to carry out their plans on a purely partisan basis.”
Republican hypocrisy is now so rampant that it’s typically ignored or, worse, granted the political class’s all-purpose form of absolution: “Everybody does it.”
But everybody doesn’t do it. McConnell is trying to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act using methods completely at odds with how the law was originally brought to life in the early Obama administration. The ACA was debated for more than a year and went through an elaborate hearing and amendment process that included some changes urged by Republicans.
By contrast, the bill Senate Republicans are writing is being held as close as the nuclear codes
William M. Buzbee at The New York Times writes—Regulatory ‘Reform’ That Is Anything But:
After decades of failed efforts to enact “regulatory reform” bills, Congress appears to be within a few votes of approving reform legislation that would strip Americans of important legal protections, induce regulatory sclerosis and subject agencies that enforce the nation’s laws and regulations to potentially endless litigation.
This is not reform. These bills would sabotage agency regulation with legislative monkey wrenches. Key compromises about agency power and procedures, worked out under the 1946 Administrative Procedure Act, would be discarded by these overwhelmingly anti-regulatory bills. And because they would be statutory changes, not mere presidential edicts, these changes would likely long outlive the Trump administration.
It is easy to complain about regulation, of course, and much could surely be improved. But government rules are the foundation of the safety net that protects Americans.
Joshua Matz at The Guardian writes—Trump is ushering in a kleptocracy. That's why he is being sued:
When Donald Trump announced his Muslim ban on 27 January, pandemonium erupted. Lawyers everywhere raced to airports. Galvanized by Trump’s threat to liberty, they rapidly assembled legal theories and commenced a still unbroken siege of Trump’s bigoted policy. As attorneys stockpiled caffeine, the American people rallied by moonlight outside terminals and federal courts.
The legal response to Trump’s emoluments clause violations has taken shape more slowly. And understandably so: until recently, most Americans had never heard of “emoluments”. Only in the past few months – aided by creative public artand a high-profile lawsuit – has the public come to appreciate that Trump’s conflicts of interest are forbidden by the constitution.
It’s no coincidence that this arcane issue has newfound salience. We’re now witnessing kleptocracy on an unprecedented scale in America. And there’s barely even a fig leaf of cover. Trump has openly enmeshed his private financial interests in national policy. To say that this creates an appearance of corruption would be far too polite. This is the real deal: sketchy dealings all the way down. [...]
Anti-kleptocracy cases initially got off to a slow start under Trump. But the pace of suits attacking his conflicts will increase as these issues move to the core of our national agenda. With private plaintiffs, states and federal legislators before them, courts will soon have to decide whether to order Trump to follow the constitution.
Susanne Ramirez de Arellano at The Guardian writes—Puerto Rican statehood is sold as a cure-all. That's a pipe dream:
Puerto Ricans went to the polls last Sunday in yet another attempt to find a solution to the dilemma that has plagued the island for more than two centuries of colonial rule: should the US territory put all its eggs in one basket and seek to become the country’s 51st state?
The 11 June plebiscite status vote was the fifth since 1967. All of them were nonbinding referendums that sought to find a permanent solution to the status of the island – a US colony since 1898. None of them pushed the needle forward at all. It is doubtful that this latest incarnation will.
Jeet Heer at The New Republic writes—How Congress Can Fight Political Violence:
As Lois Beckett argued in the Guardian earlier this year, “In one mass shooting after another, some gun control advocates and journalists see a common thread: when domestic violence is not the immediate cause of a mass shooting, it was there as a warning sign in the history of the perpetrator.” New York magazine’s Rebecca Traister, writing last year after the cargo-truck attack in Nice, France, argued that if Republicans “are truly looking to stem terrorism and mass violence of the sort that happened in Nice, they might do better to look to a different kind of litmus test: domestic violence and grievances against women.”
If this analysis is right, then there are reasonably bipartisan policy options available to elected officials in Congress—allocating funds for anger management programs, for instance, and restricting gun ownership to those with a history of domestic violence. Since some of these killers also have a history of mental illness, Republicans should support policies that improve access to affordable mental health services.
America is a Darwinian society where troubled individuals too easily fall through the cracks rather than get the treatment they need. It’s also a society where guns are readily attainable and affordable. Finally, it’s a society where politics is becoming increasingly polarized. Thus, it shouldn’t be surprising that people prone to violence are latching onto political rhetoric to give meaning to their anger. But if there is no solution to such polarization, and limited solutions to the prevalence of guns, then the least America’s lawmakers can do is propose policies to help troubled people.
Alexandra Petri atThe Washington Post discovers an alternative version of J.B. Sessions’ memory-”loss” testimony:
Sessions: Hello. I have come here to challenge the Senate to a duel for impugning my HONOR! Here is my rapier! Where may I toss this gauntlet? Whom may I strike with a cane? Indeed, throwing a gauntlet would be too good for you.
Mark Warner: What year were you born? It says 1946, but that literally cannot be right. You just announced that your honor had been impugned scurrilously.
Sessions: Sir, sir, I must protest! You dishonor this elegant marble hall. You call yourself a Virginian? Fiddle-dee-dee! I do not think you have earned the name.
Richard Burr: So you were on President Trump’s foreign policy team?
Sessions: Frankly, I think calling it a coordinated foreign policy team is a little strong. I would call it more of a — are you familiar with the term “garbage fire”?
George Zornick at The Nation writes—Progressive insurgents should take note of what worked for Tom Perriello in Virginia—and what didn’t:
In the grand sweep of things, Tuesday night’s Democratic primary in Virginia was an enormous victory for the left. Former representative Tom Perriello came out of nowhere late in the process, staked out a starkly progressive agenda predicated on fighting inequality and racism, and racked up 41 percent of the vote. The winner, Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam, moved left throughout the primary and is likely the most progressive Democratic nominee in the history of Virginia.
Perriello’s run directly moved Northam to the left on several issues. When Perriello announced he was running on a $15 minimum wage, he was the the first candidate for statewide office ever to make that pledge—and Northam quickly became the second just one day later. Perriello made free community college a centerpiece of his campaign very early on, and Northam later came out with a free-community-college proposal for certain high-demand jobs.
When Northam went after Perriello, it was usually to ding the former congressman for being insufficiently progressive on both gun control and abortion rights. Northam wasn’t the preferred candidate of many activist left groups, but still stands in stark contrast to past Democratic nominees and governors.
Brian Beutler at The New Republic writes—Trump’s Scandals Are Making Republicans More Dangerous:
The odor of corruption and criminality engulfing the Trump administration has forced Democrats in Congress to oppose the president on two fronts—one in the realm of legislation, and another in the realm of oversight.
Complicating matters further is the fact that the nature of the two fights are thematic opposites. The investigations of the Trump Organization and Russian meddling in the 2016 election are overwrought with dramatic tension. Explosive new details spill out on a near-daily basis, as one witness after another—former FBI Director James Comey last week, Attorney General Jeff Sessions this week—testifies before the Senate. Legislation and oversight are equally important congressional prerogatives, each of enormous public interest, but only the latter is producing big news at the moment.
That is in large part due to the extraordinary, scandalous steps Republicans are taking to advance legislation that would take health insurance away from millions. Senate Republicans have all but completed a secret bill, the precise contents of which are only known to the 13 men who drafted it, the analysts at the Congressional Budget Office (who are duty-bound not to leak), and, in all likelihood, health industry lobbyists, whose influence in this instance is as opaque as the legislation itself.
The process is secretive precisely to limit the number of bombshell stories that can be told about it—to keep the media in the dark so that public pressure is held at bay until the bill becomes law, and it’s too late.
Tom Englehardt at TomDispatch writes—America Last Will Trump Set a Record for the History Books?
In its own inside-out, upside-down way, it’s almost wondrous to behold. As befits our president’s wildest dreams, it may even prove to be a record for the ages, one for the history books. He was, after all, the candidate who sensed it first. When those he was running against, like the rest of Washington’s politicians, were still insisting that the United States remained at the top of its game, not an -- but the -- “indispensable nation,” the only truly “exceptional” one on the face of the Earth, he said nothing of the sort. He campaigned on America’s decline, on this country’s increasing lack of exceptionality, its potential dispensability. He ran on the single word “again” -- as in “make America great again” -- because (the implication was) it just isn’t anymore. And he swore that he and he alone was the best shot Americans, or at least non-immigrant white Americans, had at ever seeing the best of days again.
In that sense, he was our first declinist candidate for president and if that didn’t tell you something during the election season, it should have. No question about it, he hit a chord, rang a bell, because out in the heartland it was possible to sense a deepening reality that wasn’t evident in Washington. The wealthiest country on the planet, the most militarily powerful in the history of... well, anybody, anywhere, anytime (or so we were repeatedly told)... couldn’t win a war, not even with the investment of trillions of taxpayer dollars, couldn’t do anything but spread chaos by force of arms.
Meanwhile, at home, despite all that wealth, despite billionaires galore, including the one running for president, despite the transnational corporate heaven inhabited by Google and Facebook and Apple and the rest of the crew, parts of this country and its infrastructure were starting to feel distinctly (to use a word from another universe) Third Worldish.