After reading about, then hearing, finally watching Trump’s “why would they” and accompanying remarks from the post-coital 7/16/18 Helsinki news conference, H.L. experienced a series of reactions that corresponded to 80% of the Kübler-Ross stages of grief. Acceptance being the one missing. […]
As H.L. Post 55 made clear, this hopeless liberal bids good riddance to Justice Anthony Kennedy. Among liberals that point of view is not widely shared and the laments keep coming, stoked by press on the left. Among the foremost and most knowledgeable in that camp is NPR’s Nina Totenberg, who upon Kennedy’s announcement commented “it’s the end of the world as we know it.” Immediately and repeatedly followed by her false history of the context of Kennedy’s nomination, the falsity of which is known better by Totenberg than anyone. She recites that in 1987 Kennedy was nominated by President Reagan, in the wake of the Senate’s rejection of Reagan’s nomination of Judge Robert Bork. Half true enough. Reagan in fact nominated Kennedy in the wake of another intervening nomination, of D.C. Circuit Judge Douglas Ginsburg. A nomination that Totenberg single handedly torpedoed. […]
In the two weeks before Justice Anthony Kennedy announced that he would retire, the high court issued five very bad decisions that will grievously harm many Americans and America for decades, at the very least. They are, one, National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, Attorney General of California involving “pro-life” unlicensed crisis pregnancy centers; two, Janus v. American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, involving agency fees paid by non-union members to unions for negotiating better compensation and benefits for them; three, Ohio v. American Express, involving an antitrust challenge to a credit card practice that raises merchant and consumer prices by $ billions annually; four, Trump v. Hawaii, involving our openly bigoted President’s third attempt to ban most Muslim aliens from entering the United States; and five, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, involving a bakers refusal, on religious grounds, to bake a wedding cake for a same sex couple. […]
Naked and Afraid H.L. spent Memorial Day weekend with living family and long deceased parents. Dad a waist gunner and bombardier in two of Rosie the Riveter’s B-24 Liberator Bombers. Mom a canteen girl who helped establish a USO in Clovis, New Mexico but met Dad on West 44th Street in ’44 at the Stage Door Canteen, while he furloughed to say goodbye to his mother. Rosie the Riveter One weekend activity was a group viewing and discussion of the reality/survivalist TV show Naked and Afraid. My kids gave the show a “C” for the genre but I experienced it as a good 2018 version of Father Knows Best and Amos and Andy. Those 1950s TV shows, while presenting stereotyped versions of [...]
Welcome back to Hopelessly Liberal after its long winter nap. Last year we tried to write about the “#MeToo movement” but each time HL’s advisory board vetoed the post. The sage and prescient advice was that the exemplars written about (Kevin Spacey was one, Bush 41 another) would soon attract additional accusers, named and anonymous, rendering the point we were trying to make incomplete, at best. The hits kept coming as most of us spent considerable and painful effort recalling episodes of sexual aggression that we were party to. The allegations and introspection continue, but some interim reflections are in order. Politics Skew Perception Among social conservatives in Alabama, Roy Moore’s alleged pursuit of teenage girls during his thirties was quickly compared to Joseph’s marriage [...]
Hopeless liberals of an age spent some of the 1960s debating which failed Eden, one resembling George Orwell’s “1984” or Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” was more likely in our future – pausing occasionally to ponder Robert Frost’s question of whether the world will end in fire or ice. […]
Most attention paid to the SCOTUS actions announced Monday (6/26/17) centered on the grant of certiorari for Trump’s petitions to reverse the Fourth and Ninth Circuit’s injunctions against his second travel ban. That and the Court’s partial stay of those injunctions pending a decision on the merits next term. Justice Gorsuch But the attention of SCOTUS watchers focused more intently on the work product of rookie Justice Neil Gorsuch, expansively revealed for the very first time in one tension filled hour, when the Court’s final day orders and decisions were announced. It proved a very ugly picture, confirmed many gloomy predictions about Gorsuch and surpassed some dire ones in previous HL posts. In these “pages” it was predicted that Gorsuch opinions and votes [...]
Four days after HL 36, titled “SCOTUS Refusal to Review North Carolina Voter Suppression Case Speaks Volumes” explained the real (and otherwise unreported) reason the Supreme Court declined to review the Fourth Circuit’s nullification of voting restrictions that “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision” the Court ruled unconstitutional North Carolina’s creation of two Congressional districts. The lines had been drawn to intentionally dilute the ability of African-Americans to elect candidates of their choice. North Carolina did this by packing as many blacks as possible into the two newly drawn districts and thereby reducing minority voting power in other adjacent districts. […]
The reflexive but understandable assumption is that most of President Trump’s personnel moves involve partially or wholly corrupt motives. However, criticism of his recent firing of United States Attorney Preet Bharara is much ado about nothing. Indeed, most noteworthy in this departure was the posturing of the Manhattan-based head federal prosecutor for the Southern District of New York. The U.S. Attorneys, one for each of 94 territories carved by statute, effectively serve at the president’s pleasure. Technically, the Attorney General’s, but we know about Jeff Session’s fierce integrity and independence. Much has been made, but it is of little moment, that Trump changed his mind after earlier asking Bharara to stay in his post. The fact that Bharara was not singled out, but one of [...]
Like many liberals I have great, if not boundless, faith in our constitution. There’s been a copy in my briefcase for 45 years. It’s on my smartphone and tablet home screens, frequently consulted and read in its entirety many times, including several during my current gig teaching con law at the New Paltz campus of New York’s State University. In all those readings I’ve never noticed any reference to the popular vote in the selection of POTUS. My first full review of the constitution was in 1968, getting ready to vote for the first time and also preparing to speak with 4th and 5th graders at Williamstown Elementary on School Street in Williamstown, Mass. The school had asked the Poli Sci department at Williams to [...]
