Congressional Cowardice

I am unforgiving of GOP Congressional cowardice. They pledged an oath to support and defend the Constitution. They have historically sent millions into war, the sometimes-tenuous justification being a need to defend our way of life. There is now a coup afoot and it falls to Congress itself to defend us.

Any in Congress sustaining the coup because they fear for their job, their safety or the safety of their family are committing treason.

Protecting and defending the US is not optional, something to do if it's convenient. It is a sworn duty.

Their paid job is to represent the citizens who elected them—not party, not billionaires, not the President.

Why may Congress be more selfish than soldiers they send to battle?

Why are their families entitled to protection at the expense of our nation?

We know they speak privately of being afraid, but we citizens are afraid, too, and we have no recourse.

These people swore to act on our behalf.

These treasonous cowards of the GOP Congress, by their corrupt, selfish, and dishonorable action and inaction are, at every opportunity, unilaterally surrendering the Constitution they swore to protect, willfully ignoring that it leads us inevitably to authoritarian rule.

The cowardly GOP Congress plainly hope that passively turning a blind eye to a coup, ignoring their oath and instead pledging fealty to a would-be dictator, will leave them spared his wrath.

Yet dictators need neither Congress nor Courts. They make their own laws and brook no checks on their power.

We are all afraid. I do not forgive the GOP Congress their fear. I expect them to rise above it. Selfish action now is beyond shameful, beyond corrupt. Traitorous. No better than a deserter, AWOL from a post at a time when necessity and duty requires defending the Constitution and the nation.

If the GOP Congress won't do their job, they should step down and go cower in their basement as private citizens.

Even an empty seat could change the balance of power, allowing others to do THEIR job, tipping things enough to save us from autocracy.

Please, do at least that for the Constitution.

 

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Author's Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

This post originated as a thread on BlueSky. I've done very light editing of content and formatting, but the essential content is mostly unchanged.

The image of the Constitution is in the public domain, and was obtained from Wikipedia. The flames overlaid on it were added by me using Gimp. The flames were created from Abacus.ai using Claude Sonnet 3.5 and Flux 1.1 Ultra Pro, though I had such great difficulty getting it to give me a real-looking Constitution, without confabulating other text, that I had to just ask for the flames and merge things myself.

Vance Notice

It's in the news that Trump is “exhausted,” and that's supposedly why he's been canceling appearances.

Maybe.

There's a lot of attention paid to him seeming to nod off. But, you know, he's been doing that all along. and it's never been portrayed by him or his team as exhaustion. What is happening more often are incoherent rambles, which some of the media has tried to paper over. And that has led to accusations of “sanewashing.”

Numerous stories have suggested that his aids are hiding him. Such a story in The Wrap quotes political commentator Tara Setmayer from an appearance on MSNBC's The ReidOut as saying, “The more he’s out there, the more people are repelled by him, and his advisers are smart enough to know that.”

The Mental Decline Scenario

Let's consider, just for a moment, the mental decline hypothesis. We have two reasons to take this seriously. One is that he accused Biden of it, and he's long been accused of projection. But the other is that there's a lot of evidence that his campaign rallies are getting weirder and weirder, to the point where Harris is straight out suggesting that people watch or attend her opponent's rallies, just to see it for themselves.

Consider, for example, the recent town hall that he turned into a “musical fest” playing his Spotify favorites list after declaring “Let's not do any more questions, let's just listen to music. … Who the hell wants to hear questions, right?“ Yeah, at a town hall. Why would anyone expect questions there? Surely they just came to hear Pavarotti sing Ave Maria.

It probably won't surprise anyone that some artists have threatened legal action over the unauthorized use of their music. No, I didn't think so.

People, including medical experts, have credibly accused him of mental decline, not just because of this event, but for other reasons as well.

Around the same time as this musical incident, a story ran on CBS News saying that “More than 230 doctors, nurses and health care professionals, most of whom are backing Vice President Kamala Harris, are calling on former President Donald Trump to release his medical records, arguing that he should be transparent about his health ’given his advancing age.’” Of course, some will point to these being Harris supporters. But if you were a doctor alarmed about the mental health of one of the candidates, would you be still voting for him? So it's not clear that this statistic disqualifies those people. And it's not helpful that there isn't transparency of his medical records, which we've asked of other candidates and Presidents.

Prison Looms

But Trump is pending sentencing on the hush money case. And there are several other trials pending as well. It doesn't reliably work his favor to drop out of his candicacy. And it really doesn't help Vance either, because the GOP made the argument that if Biden dropped out, that invalidated the ticket. They suggested Kamala had never won a Presidential primary. Vance has never won a Presidential primary either. Both have been Senators. But Kamala has been on a winning ticket in the general election, and Vance has not. Would that sway GOP voters? Maybe not. OK, almost certainly not. But it's a bad look. It might influence some independents.

It's pretty clear that Trump's path to steering clear of jail is to get elected, turn the US into a dicatorship, and cancel anything that looks like a prosecution. And it's pretty clear that anyone else claiming to be a GOP leader is really just a sycophant. They want the power of a Republican presidency at all costs, and this is as close to “all costs” as one could really imagine. It may cost us the survival of democracy, and perhaps the survival of the human species on planet earth. But they want power that badly, so they're on board with what they hope is the Trump juggernaut.

After Election

If elected, he might serve 4 years and then gracefully step down. The Constitution would not permit him to run again. What are the chances he wouldn't try to overcome that?

He might live that long, but he's old enough that he could die of poor health during that time. I wouldn't bet money on it, but I also wouldn't bet money against it. Who ever knows?

But is he mentally agile enough to lead for four years? Again, we don't have the advice of a doctor who's examined him to really say. Though we do have reason to think we might never get the full story .

Reporters often mention that, behind the scenes, Republicans don't like or respect Trump. It seeems they just won't go on the record about it. Mitt Romney comments on this in his book. In a recent biography of Mitch McConnell, the book's author says the same of McConnell. The common theme seems to be that they recognize Trump as their ticket to power.

A Second Trump Presidency

It's no secret I'm hoping sanity prevails and that Harris is elected. But let's consider the case that Trump is.

Do the Republicans still need him? My guess is that even they would see strong grounds to remove him, sooner or later. Probably sooner, given that he toys with the idea of dispensing with the Constitution. After all, both the Impeachment Power and the 25th Amendment need the Constitution to still be in play.

I'm guessing you worry I'm exaggerating, but Newsweek fact-checked one such claim in 2023 and found Trump had indeed called to suspend the Constitution. Moreover, there is his claim that he wouldn't be a dicator “except for day one.”

Here's the thing, though. There is no procedure for becoming a temporary dictator. If he can pronounce himself a dictator on Day One, and get away with it, he can do it any day. At that point we'd just be relying on him to use self-control on all other days. Is that really something we can expect of him?

So let's take a moment to assess where we are, shall we? It's day one. The President wants to be a dicator. The same guy whose staff didn't think they could show him in public during the end of the election for fear people would see he was, perhaps, faltering mentally. At this point, the Constitution has a 25th Amendment. But he's planning strong-arm tactics to make the Constitution less effective. Republicans want to have power, but is that even meaningful in what's to come in this scenario? A few may imagine they'll have posts in a coming dictatorship, but I think most haven't thought that far ahead. The power most of them seek still relies on the Constitution.

After Trump's Presidency

But whether on Day One or some day soon after, I think its sufficiently possible that the 25th will get used that we dare not overlook that fact in considering the political consequences of this election.

In plain terms, the ordinarily-rare issue that a Vice President might take over seem unusually possible.

In even plainer terms, we had better be seriously contemplating the significance of a President Vance.

For example, if Vance becomes Acting or Actual President, would the world return to normal? I think not. I think it will just trade one source of dangers for another.

If you're thinking otherwise, perhaps you have missed a recent episode of The Rachel Maddow Show (TRMS) on MSNBC. Lately she's only doing it Monday nights, but it's really essential viewing. Set your DVR. In this case, I'm referring to an episode where she said this of JD Vance (and offered video to back up her claims):

«JD Vance says not only do conservatives need to, in his words, “wake up” but what they need to wake up to is the fact that most of American life and culture should be, in his words, “ripped out like a tumor.”»
  —Rachel Maddow on The Rachel Maddow Show (Sep 30, 2024)

Maddow goes on to say:

«When JD Vance says stuff like “we're in a late Republican period,” which is something he says all the time, he doesn't mean anything about the Republican Party, he means we're at the time right before the Roman Republic collapsed. And what happened after the Roman Republic collapsed? Well—whoo!—a dictator, Caesar, came in—and wasn't that better?»
  —Rachel Maddow on The Rachel Maddow Show (Sep 30, 2024)

The piece makes a decent case that he's not only comfortable with, but excited about, the idea of America having a dictator. Watch it in its entirety. Outtakes here cannot do it justice. It's well-researched and compellingly told. Typical Maddow.

There's so much more to be said from here, but I'll only sketch it. Project 2025, for example. It's a product of the Heritage Foundation, and Vance has in some forums tried to distance itself from it, as has Trump, but as Simon J. Levien, a political report for The New York Times, writes in an article titled What to Know About JD Vance and Project 2025:

«Mr. Vance … has connections to Project 2025 and its authors. Vance wrote the foreword for a book by Kevin Roberts, who oversaw Project 2025. “In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon,” Mr. Vance wrote in the foreword for “Dawn’s Early Light,” a forthcoming book by Kevin D. Roberts, the leader of the Heritage Foundation and the man who oversaw Project 2025. The book was set for publication in September, but after Project 2025 drew national scrutiny, that was postponed until after Election Day.»

The ACLU also offers a summary of Project 2025's dangers. And the Center for American Progress (CAP) offers a useful comparison with how other dictatorships have taken hold.

It may also be worth a look at Timothy Snyder's book On Tyranny.

This long nightmare has seemed to be about Trump. With him lately ailing, maybe you thought it was over. But if Vance takes over, and that seems likely if the election goes “Trump's way,” this could just be the start of something even worse.

My point here is that you can't say you didn't know.
You've been given Vance notice.

 

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Author's Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

If you'd like to read or listen to this warning in Seuss-style poetry form, check out my recent epic poem The Fraud Who Stole Freedom.

You might also like these recent posts by me:

• Political Terraforming
• A to-do list for repairing US democracy
• American Dictatorship
• The Pace of Political Evil

Also, although I count myself a political independent, not a Democrat, while democracy is hanging in the balance, I'm voting all-blue. If you're a US Citizen able to vote, I'm recommending the same for you. Please not sit it out. Please do not vote for a third party. Such actions leave the outcome to chance, which could have dire consequences this time around. This is not a normal election.

For the sake of Democracy,
please vote Democrat in 2024.

The graphic of Vance with the 25th Amendment in the background was created by me using a screenshot of text of the 25th Amendment to the US Constitution that I typeset in LibreOffice with a mix of Papyrus and Goudy Old Style fonts, then overlaid with the public domain photo of Vance from Wikipedia, and blended with layer effects using Gimp.

A to-do list for repairing US democracy

 

If we're lucky enough  not to spiral down into dictatorship during this fall's Presidential election in the US, we need to have a ready-made to-do list for repairing democracy.

To start off a conversation on that, here's my current thinking…

Draft Proposed “Freedom Amendment” to the US Constitution

(Rationales, in green, are informational, not part of the amendment.)

In order to solidify and preserve democratic rule within these United States, these changes are hereby ordered to all United States policies and procedures:

1. Voting

1. No Electoral College. The Electoral College is hereby dissolved. Presidential elections shall henceforth be determined directly by majority vote of all United States citizens who are eligible to vote.

2. No commercial interference in elections. No for-profit corporation or company, nor any non-profit corporation or company that as their primary business offers products or services for commercial sale, may contribute to campaigns or other activities that could reasonably be seen as trying to affect election. (The ruling in Citizens United v. FEC is vacated.)

3. Restore the Voting Rights Act. The ruling in Shelby County v. Holder that voided section 4 is hereby reversed, restoring this Act to its full form and asserting full Constitutional backing to the Act. Preclearance is hereby required for all 50 states equally.

4. No “gerrymandering.” The practice of gerrymandering while drawing district boundaries at the federal and state levels is hereby disallowed.

5. Ranked-choice voting. All federal elections shall be handled via a ranked-choice voting process.

2. Ethics & Oversight

1. Supreme Court Ethics Code. The Supreme Court shall henceforth be governed by the same ethics code that binds all federal courts.

2. Congress and the Supreme Court shall be subject to term limits.

   1. Senators may be elected to no more than 3 terms.
   2. Representatives may be elected to no more than 5 terms.
   3. Supreme Court Justices may serve no more than 18 years.

3. No one is above the law. Elected members of all three branches of government are subject to all laws, just like any other person, even though prosecution of such a person for crimes must wait until that person leaves office. In cases where immediate prosecution might be important, impeachment is an option.

4. Senate impeachment votes are not optional. If the House impeaches someone, the Senate must immediately perform all business necessary to assure a timely vote on that impeachment; this process is not optional and may not be postponed. Once an actionable concern has been raised that a public official might have committed a crime, the public has an interest in swift resolution.

5. House and Senate impeachment votes are temporarily private. Impeachment votes by both House and Senate will be recorded and tallied privately, preferably electronically, with only the aggregate result reported immediately. Individual votes will be held securely in private for a period of ten years, at which time all such votes will be made a public part of the historical record.

6. Public office is not a refuge to wait out the clock on prosecution. Any clock for the Statute of Limitations does not run while prosecution is not an option. This applies for all elected persons for whom indictment or prosecution is locked out due to participation in public office, but in particular for POTUS. It may be necessary to the doing of orderly public business not to prosecute a President while in office, however public office is not a refuge in which someone may hide out until the clock runs out on otherwise-possible prosecutions, whether that clock began before or during time in office.

7. Pardon power is subject to conflict-of-interest (COI) restrictions. It is necessary to the credibility of all public officials in a free society that there be some reasonable belief that rules of law do not create options for corrupt officials to abuse the system. Presidents and other state and federal officials embued with the pardon power may never apply such power to themselves, their families, or any other individuals with whom there is even an appearance of conflict of interest. No such person may solicit any action by anyone on promise of a pardon. Any single such action, attempted action, or promise of action where there is a conflict of interest that is known or reasonably should have been know to the party exercising pardon power is an impeachable offense and a felony abuse of power subject to a penalty of ten years in prison.

8. Independence of Department of Justice. The head of the Department of Justice shall be henceforth selected by a supermajority (2/3) vote of the House of Representatives, without any special input from or deference to the Executive.

   Rationale: Assure DOJ operates independently of the Executive, its mission being to fairly and impartially uphold Law, not to be a tool of partisan or rogue Presidential power.

9. Independence of the Supreme Court. Justices of the DOJ shall be henceforth selected by a supermajority (2/3) vote of the House of Representatives.

   Rationale:

   1. When SCOTUS must rule on the validity of Presidential action, a conflict of interest is created if those Justices might be appointed by that same President or even a majority party.

   2. Since the Constitution requires a supermajority to change its intent, an equivalent degree of protection is essential for choosing those will will interpret that intent. Recent history has suggested that it was easier to change the Court than to change the Constitution, with catastrophic effect decidedly unfair to the majority of citizens.

   3. A President is more than Appointer of Justices, yet that singular capability is so powerful and lasting that it often dominates election campaigns. Citizens need to be free to hire Presidents for other reasons more unique to the moment, such as good judgment; logistical, management, or negotiating skill; expertise in technical or scientific matters; or even just empathy with public issues.

3. Rights of People

1. Corporations are not people. Corporations are legal constructions, nothing more.

   Rationale: To say that they are independent people, is to give some actual people (those who own or control them) unequal, magnified, elitist, or otherwise distorted power over others. There is no place for this in a democracy that purports to speak of all people being created as equals.

   1. No Implicit Rights of Corporations. Any powers and duties of corporations must be explicitly granted to them, as coporations, whether by the Constitution or by legal statute, and henceforth must never be derived from any implication of imagined personhood.

   2. Explicitly Enumerated Rights of Corporations. Long-standing legal powers and duties of corporations such as the right to sign contracts, the right to own property, the responsibility to pay taxes, and any legal responsibility under tort law are hereby acknowledged by express enumeration in support of demonstrated corporate need and are no longer intended to be inferred as part of any preposterous fiction that corporations are just another kind of person.

   3. Non-Rights of Corporations. Alleged rights such as, but not limited to, rights of free speech and religious rights for corporations are hereby clarified to be nullified and without basis. A corporation has no automatic rights of people extending from any metaphor of being person-like. Politics is the province of individual persons, not corporations. Corporations exist for sales, subject to the rules of laws made by individuals, not vice versa.

2. Bodily autonomy right. All mentally competent people have a right to autonomy over choices of medical procedures affecting their own body.

   1. No Forced Pregnancies. From the time of conception to the time of birth, no government nor any other person may have a superseding say over a pregnant person as to any matter relating to a fetus.

      Rationale: This should already follow from the Religious Freedom Clarification, but it is too important to leave to chance. To say that any other person could make such choices would be to allow their religious freedom to infringe the religious freedoms of the pregnant person.

      Also, the term “pregnant person” is used here intentionally to include that adulthood is not a requirement of bodily autonomy. In general, any person who has not been legally ruled mentally incompetent is entitled to self-determination on matters like this. Not even a parent should have superseding control, since a parent will not have to live a lifetime with the consequences.

   2. Fetal Disposition is a Private Matter. Whether a pregnant person wishes to refer to a fetus as simply a fetus, a potential life, an unborn child, or an actual child is a personal religious choice to be made by that pregnant person. No law shall impose a policy on this.

      Rationale: To say otherwise would be to deny the obvous fact that people simply differ on this matter. To assume there were some single right way that everyone must adhere to would be to give dominance to some religious philosophies over others.

      It's a compromise, but the only one that it allows each person the best guarantee of at least some autonomy in a society where not everyone agrees and we are not likely to change that fact by fiat.

      Also, and importantly, some pregnancies are not successful and even in a society where we permit abortion for those who weren't wanting to be pregnant, it would be callous and undignified not to acknowledge the legitimate loss to others who sincerely wanted to carry a pregnancy to term but were unable. It is possible to be respectful in both situations, by feeling the grief of someone who wanted a child and not manufacturing grief for someone else who did not.

3. Right to Choose a Marital Partner. Among consenting adults, the choice to choose who to marry must not be restricted due to race, religion, gender or sexual orientation.

   Rationale: This has been accepted already and it is not appropriate to roll that back. It was a good idea anyway, though, because happy families add an extra level of safety net protection to society. Family members try to take care of one another during sickness and other hard times, and this hopefully reduces some amount of stress on public safety nets.

4. Religious Freedom Clarification. The right to religious self-determination is a basic human right.

   1. Religious Choice. All people have the right to explore religous choice on their own timeline and terms. No one is required to pick any particular philosophy, or any philosophy at all, or even to make a choice.

   2. Religious Equality. Religious protections span all religious choices (and non-choices), and hence are accorded equally to all people. No person may be accorded second-class legal status on the basis of their religious philosophy—or lack thereof.

      Rationale: So atheists, agnostics, etc. are still due religious freedom protection. Answers to “Is there a God?” are still due religious protection if the answer is “no” or “I don't know” or “I haven't decided” or “I don't know what that means” or “This is not a binary question.”

   3. No State Religion. The so-called “establishment clause” of the First Amendment is hereby clarified to mean that the United States takes no position that might give the appearance of preferring one religon over another.

      Rationale: We are not, for example, a Christian nation. Nor a Jewish nation. And so on. And yet the US is a nation that intends to treat each religion and non-religion in the same supportive and respectful way, and expects each of these religions to be respectful of others. This is how balance is maintained in pluralistic society.

   4. Religion is not a Popularity Contest. The fact that one religious philosophy might at any given point be more common than another does afford that philosophy a greater or lesser status.

   5. No Bullying in the name of Religion. The freedom of religious choice is not a right to bully or coerce, nor to violate law. Each person's right of religious choice extends only to the point where it might infringe on the equivalent rights of others.

Yes, this could be done by separate amendments. But it would be a lot of them, and the discussion would be much more complex. I say do it all at once because every one of these things is absolutely needed.

If anything, there might be a few things I left out.

 

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Author's Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

This post was catalyzed by a single tweet by me on ex-Twitter, but it has been hugely elaborated since, after all, this venue does not have a 280 character limit.

The odd graphic of the scales of justice under repair was created by Abacus.AI's ChatLLM facility, using Claude Sonnet 3.5 and Dall-E and the prompt:

Draw a picture of a grayscale statue of a woman holding the scales of justice in one raised hand and a small wrench and a pair of needle-nose pliers in the other hand, lower, at her side. part of the statue should include a toolbox next to her feet that is open and presumably where she's taken the wrench from. the woman should be wearing a flowing gown, as is traditional for this kind of statue, but she should have a pair of goggles on her head, as one would use in a metal shop to protect one's eyes. The woman should have a pair of protective goggles, like one would use for metal working, over her eyes.

And, yes, I'm aware I did not get the needle-nose pliers got left out. And on this iteration I didn't ask for her to be seated, though I had been thinking of requesting she be seated at a work bench to resolve some unwanted aspects of previous attempts, so I went with this as the best of several tries.

The Pace of Political Evil

US politics has lost its civility. Civility kept progress on the Conservative agenda slow, and it created time and opportunity for opposition response. In recent years, this pressure has intensified in speed and scope, making it hard to respond effectively in any civil way.

Trump is not the only player in this. Others, working patiently over decades, laid a foundation that was ripe for the arrival of someone like him. The system has been weakened over time. Gerrymandering, the Citizens United ruling, and the stacking of the Supreme Court are examples.

But Trump has been a definite innovator in the sociopathic governance space. His two primary innovations, either one of which would be sufficient to explain the reverence of the rich and power-hungry, have been:

1. 

   The outright shredding of shame, and the important social safeguard that shame had previously provided. Prior to this, there were a great many things no politician would dare try because of fear of being found out; Trump showed that fear to be a waste of time. Far too many voters are willing to turn a blind eye to shameful behavior that comes from a politician that otherwise serves them, which has allowed the GOP to very rapidly morph into the Party of Machiavelli.

2. The observation that massive numbers of voters don't check truth or consistency. Prior to this, politicians feared injuring their own supporters, which led to a natural reserve in how nasty a policy could be; Trump has shown that it's a productive strategy to create policies actively hurtful to one's own base, who will notice the pain but not bother to find out where it comes from, preferring to just be blindly angry, without direction, and to just wait to be told by tribal leaders who they should be angry at.

The consequences of these shifts are legion, far too numerous to discuss here in detail, but they include corrupt behavior to acquire and keep office, and the open incitement of and condoning of political violence, even to include outright insurrection. These also include ever more blatant acts of judicial activism by a questionably seated and plainly corrupt majority of the Supreme Court. Openly scornful of any suggestion that they be bound by an ethics code, they are apparently bent on taking a buzz saw to long-standing readings of the Constitution in favor of uglier ends—probably to include the present trend of the Republican party toward White Christian Nationalism.

The basic problem is that the founders did not anticipate this speed and scope. The safeguards they built in were few, and the presumption was that the system would be self-correcting, patching small holes on a one-off basis as they came up. The Supreme Court was designed for perhaps a challenge or two per Presidential term. Even if it was still functioning in a properly ethical way, it would not be up to the present onslaught of challenges—as I had warned about in a tweet on ex-Twitter a month before the 2016 election:

"Trump…involved in a startling 3,500 legal actions".

Visualize 3,500 Constitutional challenges by a #bully #President flexing his muscles. https://t.co/6HffNXKA7y

— Kent Pitman 🌎 (@KentPitman) October 13, 2016

 

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Author's Note:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

The graphics were created at abacus.ai via its ChatLLM facility.

The prompt for the paperwork graphic, created by FLUX.1 was "create a black and white graphic that shows someone with a xerox machine that is rapidly spewing out legal documents in the direction of a model of the supreme court". I'm not sure what I expected as a result of that. A smaller court building, for one. But I guess this was sort of responsive.

The prompt for the shame graphic, created by DALL-E, was "create a simple black and white graphic sketched graphic of a man whose face is vaguely like donald trump, but feeling shame with one hand over his face and the other hand extended into the foreground, palm up and out, in a stop gesture intended to hold nearby people at bay." You can see it ignored parts of my request.

The Sudden Importance of Truth

Out of Context and Out of Line

It is disingenuous and preposterous to nitpick Tim Walz over remarks that weren't even about him but about gun availability. It's doubtful he intentionally lied, hoping to mislead folks unchecked—he's a teacher. He knows that would never stand. But we all say things that don't come out exactly right, and if it's not our focus, we press on.

He did, after all, carry weapons. And there was a war going on. And his remarks here are not trying to suggest he's a war hero, they're trying to say he has sufficient experience and perspective to understand the difference between military need for assault rifles and civilian needs.

It's legitimate to debate the correct interpretation of the Constitution. Some people think that the Second Amendment is a right of the people to have sufficient firepower that they can take down an out-of-control government. I don't happen to agree with that. Taken seriously, it would amount to a right of private citizens to have nuclear weaponry, so I think the idea that citizens can keep parity with the government, if that's what it ever meant, was lost long ago. But it's a legitimate policy debate we could have. Debate Walz on that, if you want to, because that's what he was speaking to. This was not a discussion about his military record. It merely mentioned it in passing, in shorthand, to give context.

Likewise on the issue of when he retired, plenty of people retire at 20 years. It was his right to retire. He received an honorable discharge. That's really all that needs to be said.

No one's decision to retire after 24 years needs to be questioned. Full credit to Walz for answering graciously pointing this out.

Rules of Engagement

And, just to be clear on the debate rules here, what is the standard for misstatements? How many times does a candidate have to repeat a single ill-shaped, questionably worded, or not-quite-true statement, much less a Big Lie, in order that their honor is put in doubt or their campaign be disqualified?

Asking for a few friends (the US).

Because if there's a sudden renewed interest in the truth here, that is the real story. I was starting to think truth had atrophied from disuse.

Due Diligence

You know where I'm going. The Washington Post estimated 30,573 false or misleading statements by Trump while in office. Is that disqualifying? Is anything like that alleged of Walz?

Are we just talking military issues, JV? Should we talk bone spurs?

Exceptional Vision

Perhaps we should revisit Trump's later remarks about 9/11, as described in an ABC News article (bold mine for emphasis):

Trump Tower is located on 5th Avenue between 56th and 57th Streets, a little more than four miles away from ground zero.
…
“I have a window in my apartment that specifically was aimed at the World Trade Center, because of the beauty of the whole downtown Manhattan. And I watched as people jumped, and I watched the second plane come in,” he said then. “Many people jumped, and I witnessed that. I watched that.”

And from that same article (again, bold mine):

At the time, he noted “many of those affected were firefighters, police officers, and other first responders,” and then claimed, “and I was down there also, but I’m not considering myself a first responder. But I was down there. I spent a lot of time down there with you.”

And from an article linked by that one (bold mine):

Trump's claim that he saw television reports of people in New Jersey celebrating the attacks has been discredited. He stood by that claim on the campaign trail last year.

There is probably more I could say if The Washington Post’s “30,573” number is even remotely right. (Will we be holding them to the same precision as you want to hold Walz to, or the relaxed precision you reserve for your boss?)

But maybe we could pause here for a response.

 

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Author's Notes:

If you got value from this post, please “Share” it.

This essay originated as a thread on the ex-bird site. It has been edited to fit the richer format of this venue, and expanded to include additional content not in the original thread.

About the Kamala Candidacy

I have some thoughts on the sudden shift Sunday from a Biden/Harris ticket to a Harris ticket. I'm just going to bundle them all together here.

An Unusual Transition

I think it's going to be difficult for Kamala to develop a different position from Biden on issues where she disagrees. Her position as VP has required that she echo Joe's position, not make her own policy, but as the Democrats' primary candidate, she must feel free to differ.

It's important that Joe give her express permission to disagree publicly on matters. He can still be the decider for the present administration, but they need to understand that she might differ, so they must be explicit about this.

In some cases, he may want to shift positions. In others, they might need a transition plan. In others still, they should give people a heads up that there will be a difference. This is how democracies work. It's odd, but we should be proud, not embarrassed or ashamed, that there is some complexity to it. That we can do it in a civil way is exactly the kind of thing we want to preserve, and to keep the Republicans from destroying.

Residual Biden Baggage

Biden was not just laggging in the polls because he was old. He had taken other actions that alienated voters that Kamala can get back if she is careful.

One example is the Gaza genocide. Many felt Biden was complicit in this by continuing to send weapons and not pushing harder on Israel to stop. Frequent references were made by Netanyahu to the idea that it must defend itself, but no rational person thinks you have to kill an entire society, every last man, woman, and child in order to defend yourself. Many have defensibly called this a genocide, even though a formal ruling on the matter will take longer than most of these people have to live. In February, however, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that Israel must take steps to prevent any acts of genocide in Gaza, and many took this as a clear hint that what they were doing was in range to be considered a genocide.

It is important that Kamala not follow in Biden's footsteps in appearing to be complicit in this, and in fact work with President Biden to make sure the US has taken a hard stance on that even now. Not only is this important for a purely humanitarian reasons, but she's running on law & order, and it's a bad look to be aiding and abetting someone who may later be charged with war crimes.

Moreover, within the US, there have been peaceful protests of the treatment of people in Gaza that have been summarily labeled as antisemitic. Police forces have had a far too strong hand. There is a Constitutional right to peaceful assembly that some say has been intentionally violated. There is a block of voters who are outraged and have been blaming Biden for that. This is a chance for a reset.

Democracy Now produced an excellent video on this matter, interviewing Annelise Orleck, former chair of the women's and gender studies department and the Jewish studies department at Dartmouth College, who suffered a violent arrest and said in the interview "People have to be able to talk about Palestine without being attacked by police." Kamala needs to adopt a more discussion-friendly position, again because this kind of hard line approach is more appropriate to the GOP.

Certainly I have had discussions with people about why it's important to vote Democrat in this election, to avoid a monster getting into office. Rightly or wrongly, there are voters who in good faith have concluded that the policies so far under Biden are those of a monster as well. Trying to discuss degrees of monsterness is not likely to be Kamala's path to success in such discussions.

Democrats need to stand for the idea that political problems are resolved by discussion, which may sometimes involve peaceful protest as protected by the Constitution.

To navigate this, I think Kamala establish some clear guidelines to clarify Democratic policy on this. I suggest at least these rules of thumb, which seem to me to be fair to both sides in this debate:

• Israel has a right to defend itself.
• Genocide goes well beyond mere “defense” of Israel.
• One can challenge Israeli policy without being antisemitic. (A US State Department web page explicitly clarifies “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic”)
• Engaging Palestinians in a civil way does not imply one is pro-Hamas or antisemitic.
• Peaceful protest is Constitutionally protected.

Picking a Vice President

Not because he is Jewish, but specifically because (as discussed above), he's taken hard line stances against protesters, Shapiro would not be a good choice of of Vice President. Picking him would not be healing. It would open questions of Constitutional violations and police brutality that would distract from a clean campaign.

I have been swayed by the large amount of support I've seen from others, and the observations that he's an excellent speaker and debater, that Pete Buttigieg is the right choice for Kamala's VP.

I'm not 100% sure that Pete is being considered, though I definitely feel he should be. Among those that the media seems to think are being considered, I see Mark Kelly as my second choice. Mark doesn't seem like a bad guy, but he's not as dynamic and engaging as Pete, who I really think could bring a lot more real energy to the campaign.

Skeletons in Kamala's closet?

At this point I really don't care if there are skeletons in Kamala's closet. She checks enough boxes right now that I'm ready to back her in spite of bumpiness that might come up.

I've seen various claims in news articles and on social media that Kamala's past record will soon be seen by the public as its own kind of baggage, that the Democrats are in a euphoria, not paying attention to her past record, and about to be surprised. I'm not especially worried about most of that, even where I might disagree.

Of course, I reserve the right to complain and to suggest she modify policies I don't like. But that's consistent with my real concern, which is that she stand for civility and especially peaceful resolution of disputes through civil discussion, and for the Constitution as we have traditionally known it before the GOP recently started to challenge and dismantle it.

Democracy is under attack. Honestly, if Liz Cheney had registered Democrat and was Biden's VP with the necessary popular support, I'd probably vote for her. Not because I want her policies. I disagree with most of what I've seen of her taste in social policy. But because right now at this point in history, our biggest concern is to stabilize our democracy, and I know she would reliably do that. Fortunately, I know that Kamala will keep the Constitution safe and will have better policies—even if I might still disagree with a few. Once we're safe from Project 2025, and better safeguards are put in place, we can get back to ordinary partisan bickering.

My biggest concern is Climate Change, but even that has no chance without a functioning democracy. So we have to fix democracy first. Science cannot function without an open exchange of ideas, free of censorship or the injection of propaganda. Project 2025 is putting the unfettered exchange of ideas in severe jeopardy, so we have to definitively stop that.

I do hope we hurry, though, because the Climate Change is not waiting.

 

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Author's Notes:

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The photo of Kamala is a size-reduced version of the public domain Official portrait of Vice President Kamala Harris at Wikipedia.

Supreme Challenge

Just days ago, the United States Supreme Court said that Presidents are Kings, that their actions are largely immune to prosecution for things that would be crimes if done by others.

This is an amazing amount of power, as we are on track to learn once Biden finishes wasting this power doing nothing and leaves us with Trump as his successor.

“This nation was founded on the principle that there are no kings in America. … Each of us is equal before the law. … No one is above the law, not even the President of the United States. With today’s Supreme Court decision on Presidential immunity, that fundamentally changed. … For all practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a President can do. This is a fundamentally new principle and it’s a dangerous precedent because the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the Law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self-imposed by the President alone.”

—US President Biden
in a July 1, 2024 address

Trump is not just Biden’s adversary, but he is the adversary of free society. He has said so. He has promised to be a dictator on day one, and he means it. He will not waste this newly conjured kingly power doing nothing, but rather undoing what Biden has done for gun safety, gender equality, environment, etc. Alongside all that, he will proceed immediately to do rampant evil, as laid out in detailed published plans that his ultra-conservative allies are calling “Project 2025.”

But Trump does not yet have this superpower—not until we elect him in the fall, if we are foolish enough to do that. And the polls say we are on track to being just that irredeemably foolish.

For a few months, though, such extraordinary power resides in Biden. And what will he do with this power? He rushes to promise us that he will not use it, not even for good, not even to assure that we do not end up with Trump as dictator. Nor to assure that these ridiculous changes by the Court are rolled back.

Note also that We The People are helpless here, glued to our TVs and phones, sifting news and social media for clues about what will happen to us. Give any one of us the power that the Supreme Court gave Biden, and we could do a lot of good, fix a lot of problems, and make the US safer for democracy than Biden is promising to do. We know that because Biden is promising to do nothing with this extraordinary power. That’s a pretty low bar for any one of us to exceed.

Failing to Protect Us

Biden wants to do things in the same old tired way. He wants to use his centrist tools of inaction, treating any real opportunity to make a difference as something not to do. Something too radical. Not his preferred way.

He’d rather labor slowly, expecting consensus with the MAGA crowd when there is none to be had, and he would rather not use the new tool, a tool that Trump and the MAGA-majority Supreme Court are counting on him not to use. They have given him a loaded weapon and are counting on him to deliver it, still loaded, still unused, to his successor, who will not leave it unused, who will in all likelihood use that weapon to assure he does not ever have a successor, that he just stays in power for life.

“At the outset of our nation, it was the character of George Washington, our first President, that defined the Presidency. He believed power was limited, not absolute, and that power always resides with The People. Always. Now, over 200 years later, with today’s Supreme Court decision, once again it will depend on the character of the men and women who hold that Presidency that are going to define the limits of the power of the Presidency because the Law will no longer do it. I know I will respect the limits of the Presidential powers that I have for three and a half years. But any President, including Donald Trump, will now be free to ignore the Law. I concur with Justice Sotomayor’s dissent today. … She said, ‘In every use of official power, the President is now a King above the law. With fear for our democracy, I dissent.’ So should the American people dissent. I dissent. ”

—US President Biden
in a July 1, 2024 address

We are in danger. Biden sees the danger, but does not see that he is part of the planned delivery mechanism for that danger, and that he is willingly and complacently accepting that role.

It's like Biden sees someone coming at him with a club or a knife in a dark alley and decides to use debate to protect himself even as someone is trying to hand him a pistol. All well and good if he's by himself and can take full personal responsibility for that ridiculous choice, but he is charged here with protecting the Constitution and the nation.

We Need Real Action

Strong language, politely delivered, will not protect us here. An offer of centrist consensus-building with the MAGA right will not protect us either. Oh, sure, he can probably find something to collaborate with MAGA about, but it will amount to mere distraction, one of those inconsequential things that still loses us our democracy even as it adds to his list of accomplishments.

Part of the problem is that Biden thinks that the doing of everyday horse trading is his job. At this point, it is not. He doesn't need more legislative successes. If the successes he has are not impressing anyone, adding more will not fix that. He has a lot of experience as a Senator, but at this point, we need him to stop being some kind of Senator in Chief and just be the Commander in Chief.

He needs now to secure democracy. That is his job. And it cannot be done by compromising with the party that seeks to disassemble democracy. It must be done by actually confronting that party, using any and all tools at hand. He thinks he's doing all he can, and maybe he is doing all he can. But he is not doing all that could be done. Inaction at this point is dangerous.

The tool he's been given, this new superpower, may not be Biden's preferred tool, but it IS adequate to the task. He is just choosing not to use it because he doesn’t like the look of it. That alone is sufficient reason for We The People to want a different leader, both now while that power exists and in the next Presidential term if possible.

Coaxing the Genie back into the Bottle

It’s good that Biden knows this new Presidential immunity poses a danger to democracy, but it’s not enough to just know it. He needs to insist that the Court take back that power now, not taking “no” for an answer.

Inaction is insufficient. Fortunately, given this new superpower, better options are available. I’ll offer a hypothetical, just for conversation, but hopefully it will demonstrate that stronger and more effective action is possible, and that it is neither necessary nor advisable to wait until the election.

After all, the election could go very awry. It is reckless to wait and hope it will not. This new reality entitles him to not just suggest but insist it be dealt with now. He can insist that the Supreme Court create ethics rules, term limits, and accountability.

So here is my hypothetical scenario for discussion:

Biden could explain that, in order to preserve Democracy and hold Monarchy at bay, he is ordering poor old Seal Team Six to hunt down and execute all conservative justices on the Supreme Court so that he can install judges with better sense, but that he has stayed execution of that action—for which he has absolute immunity—by 3 weeks, just in case the Court can move (expeditiously, for once) to find a better way to protect the Constitution and the nation with less bloodshed, for example by vacating their recent extraordinarily ill-advised and outright reckless ruling, removing the power of Presidents to take such actions confident of their immunity.

I like to think that such an approach would end with better accountability for Presidents and no one injured. It might seem an extreme way to get there, but it absolutely pales by comparison to what we should expect if Trump is elected.

Supreme Blind Spot

An action with parameters such as I’ve described would also help SCOTUS see the very real danger they’ve created. Fixing the problem would allow a happier outcome for us all, even SCOTUS themselves. They may not realize it, but they are in danger due to their own ruling in ways that they’re not taking seriously enough. They blithely discuss a President authorizing SEAL Team Six to take out political rivals, yet fail to see that they themselves might be such rivals?

It leaves me questioning not just their lack of neutrality, but their competence. It is short-sighted and dangerous, and poor judgment to the point of recklessness. I expect more of Supreme Court Justices.

Biden Isn't The Leader We Need

This is no time for Biden to sit on his hands. It’s a time for bold actions proportional to the danger, actions suddenly well within the scope of Biden’s new powers, and capable of being done with noble purpose, not that the new Supreme Court ruling requires noble purpose for President acts any more. That's part of the problem.

The Court has given Biden this power, so they must intend him to use it, right? Or maybe they just intended the power for Trump and calculated that Biden was too wimpy to use it.

I'd concur with them on that calculation, by the way. He is too wimpy. He's confirmed that by prematurely promising not to use it. That's a self-inflicted wound. He didn't have to say that, for the same reason that Presidents don't say “we won't strike first with atomic weapons.” It's not that we plan to, but we don't want our adversaries relying on our self-restraint.

I don't think Biden wargamed this. I think he just tied his own hands without thinking. Now, if he uses the power, even to help eliminate it, he'll have people fussing at him.

But so be it. I see it as dereliction of duty if he declines to use it. Letting his successor, probably Trump, be the first to explore this unlimited power is terrifying because it will be too late at that point for the public to react in any meaningful way to defend itself. It was reckless even just to say out loud that he wouldn't use the power.

I get why he wanted to. I get why it's uncomfortable. But right now he is the one we have elected to do the uncomfortable things. Better him than Trump. He, at least, is acting in the nation's best interests, not just his own.

Sadly, I’m pretty confident Biden isn't up to it. I think he'll disappoint us. Not just disappoint us, but outright fail us. He sees its use as lacking decorum, even as somehow he sees no lack of decorum in abrogating his responsibility to protect us and leaving us at material risk of a Trump presidency with unlimited power still in full effect.

He thinks by saying these are the stakes that surely no one will elect Trump. That's a dangerous game and one we're all too likely to lose.

Our Weakened Voting System

A partisan SCOTUS has weakened the Voting Rights Act enormously. States bent on voting rights abuse, bolstered by SCOTUS, have indulged gerrymandering and other actions that injure fair voter participation. Trump has raised baseless questions about election integrity. Republican media has echoed him to the point that Republican voters and lawmakers do, too. Fake electors were conjured using illegal schemes. Some have been brought up on charges or sent to jail, but Republican state lawmakers have worked to make it easier to do the same shady things legally this time around. Trump and GOP are mustering armies of lawyers to challenge elections this time around. Election 2024 will be about procedural tricks and challenges. That's a problem.

Telling us to go vote is just not adequate. Assuring us that we have the final say would be laughable if not so serious.

It will be great to rely on voting once a proper democracy is restored, but right now there is no guarantee of the vote’s outcome, or that the outcome won't be challenged, ultimately winding up in the Supreme Court to be overturned by the same folks that brought us the recent Presidential immunity ruling. They have meddled in elections before, and nothing stops them from doing it again, especially now that they have lost all shame.

Immediate action is needed to put things to right, while Biden has the power. He must use that power. Carefully. But he must use it. The safety of the Constitution and the nation demands it.

I doubt he is up to this most important of tasks. But I'll be happy to be surprised.

A Nation of Laws

Our nation needs to be a nation of laws. For everyone. No exceptions.

We already make exceptions for acts that are necessary. We have laws against murder, but we let people off if it’s self defense. We have laws about copyright violation, but we let people off for fair use. But we have not had laws that expressly said that people could walk free merely for who they are, only laws that insist they are doing things for good motive.

Will that scare some Presidents? It’s never scared them in the past. Or maybe the ones that it did scare didn't run for office. Good for them.

Presidents have always had to fear that breaking laws might get them in trouble and yet the nation has functioned well for two and a half centuries. Let Presidents continue to fear the Law. Let them continue to have to justify deviations.

If a President hesitates to start a war or authorize a covert action or explode a weapon of mass destruction, well, that’s good. Hesitation isn’t bad. I want a President to know that breaking the law cannot be a casual decision. It cannot be just another day on the job. They must be prepared to later justify questionable actions.

Having to account is part of the job. It is what makes us a democracy. The President is accountable to The People, not the other way around. Let Presidents assume that We The People understand these are hard decisions, and that we’ll make exceptions for technical breaches of law that are justly done in the best interest of the nation. But let them sweat a bit. That’s healthy.

By contrast, this newly conjured law, brought into existence out of nowhere Monday by a rogue Court, not Congress, that says Presidents must not be made to sweat, must not be asked to account, is not healthy.

Some have advanced the fairytale notion that voting is how Presidents should be called to account. But it is not a crazy hypothetical to think that a President might try to stay illegally in power. We’ve seen evidence that Trump might do this. He’s said aloud that it’s something he thought about.

And, anyway, there is a lot of damage that can be done in the four years between elections, if we're lucky enough to ever have them again after a President decides he wants to be a dictator. So elections are not an appropriate check. We need better.

Let Presidents sweat. We’ll be safer for it.

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Congressional Pardons

Perhaps Congress should allocate itself the power to both grant pardons and/or to review&veto Presidential pardons.

I see it as a misdesign that the President has an exclusive, unchecked power to pardon, and without a corresponding power held by the people. In a Democracy, an unstated meta-rule is that a consensus of the people through its representatives in Congress, its consensus body, should always dominate decisions by the Executive.

The Executive is just one person, and subject to whim. As I see it, we grant them power not because we think it safer to put all that power in one place, but because we fear Congress might not achieve consensus fast enough or at all in some cases, and we might find ourselves crippled and unable to react fast enough for everything that comes up in the world. However, in any matter of disagreement between Congress and the Executive, if Congress does muster consensus, it seems to me that's generally preferable as a statement of what We The People should want.

A “review and veto” power would be useful as a check just in case there was ever a lawless President promising collaborating criminals a Get Out of Jail Free card. Whether or not one agrees that Congress should always win every contest of wills with the President, it's clear that the unchecked power to pardon fellow criminals must be reconsidered in at least some way.

As for issuing pardons directly, I'd not expect Congress to issue a lot of them itself because each would require a lot of politicians to agree about a single individual, and usually it would not seem worth the risk. But in the case of malicious prosecution by the DOJ, consensus of We The People should ‘trump’ executive power.

It might also have occasional value in other situations. For example, if Congress decides that marijuana possession, use, or even sale should not be criminalized after all, perhaps regretting that it ever was, then along with a change in the law, it could order blanket pardons of those convicted under prior law, rather than waiting for the Executive or the courts to sort that out, and assuring a more uniform application of new social understanding.

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Author's Notes:

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The essay which became this post started as a tweet thread by me earlier today.

Our much-touted checks and balances have proven slow and ineffective at fending off attacks on the Constitution and our system of Democracy. We need to find ways to strengthen the power of the people against tyranny. That begins with discussions like these.