If two New Hampshire men aren't a match for the Devil, we might as well give the country back to the Indians. -Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943)
Trump is not immune from prosecution for bid to subvert the 2020 election, appeals court rules (KYLE CHENEY and JOSH GERSTEIN, 02/06/2024, Politico)
The unanimous 57-page decision from a three-judge panel of the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals is a major win for special counsel Jack Smith, who is seeking to put Trump on trial this year on federal felony charges stemming from his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
Goofy ‘God’s Army’ convoy on Texas border shows Trump’s MAGA movement is just one long con (Rex Huppke, 2/05/24, USA TODAY)
In Texas, the MAGA movement again reveals its impotence
So God’s Army’s foot soldiers came, in underwhelming numbers, and accomplished little beyond showing everyone how tragically gullible they are and making the locals twitchy. That’s MAGA in a nutshell: loud, threatening and, in the end, impotent.
…they lack manhood.
Federal Regulations: The “Administrative State” in Context (Federalism Index Project)
Federal agencies are tasked by Congress to create rules (“administrative laws”), which have the effect of law. Each year, regulatory agencies produce a significantly higher number of rules than laws passed by Congress. According to regulations scholar and historian Clyde Wayne Crews, agencies, rather than elected Congressional officials now do the vast majority of lawmaking today – raising questions not only about the economic cost of regulation, but the constitutionality of the regulatory process as it has evolved over time. Crews has monitored the number of rules passed in relation to laws, and produced a measure which he terms – somewhat playfully – “the Unconstitutionality Index.”
The Unconstitutionality Index measures the ratio of rules issued by agencies relative to laws passed by Congress and signed by the president. The following chart is based on Crews’ original research, and provides a summary view of public laws as a ratio of final rules. While Crews acknowledges that his formula is “somewhat lighthearted” and that there are “unavoidable complexities” in trying to measure the Unconstitutionality of rules, his work does provide empirical validation of the claim that there has been a significant shift in lawmaking from Congress to agencies.
In the last decade, there have been – on average – 22 final rules for every law passed by Congress and signed by the President:
How many regulations?
Measuring and tracking the real size or growth of regulatory activity over time has proved to be difficult. In part, this is because researchers lack consistent measures across time and across jurisdictions. In 2014, researchers at George Mason University published a database that attempted to quantify federal regulation, using the best available data going back to 1970. Using a novel method they termed “restrictions analysis”, the authors created a tool that helps to give a sense of the volume of regulatory restrictions. As the following chart shows, the total number of restrictions in the Code of Federal Regulations more than doubled from 1970 to 2022:
Sikh Americans, citing ‘transnational repression,’ vote for an independent homeland (Richa Karmarkar, 2/01/24, RNS)
Last Sunday (Jan. 28), more than 120,000 Sikhs of all ages and occupations took part in a historic referendum in San Francisco on the creation of an autonomous homeland in northwestern India. They braved hourslong lines after already long commutes, in many cases from neighboring states, to reach the polling place in the City by the Bay.
These Sikhs, almost all of them U.S. citizens and residents, were voting aspirationally for the creation of Khalistan — a hoped-for but nonexistent “land of the pure” that would stand separate from the nation of India.
Organized by Sikhs for Justice, an activist group that is banned in India, the vote was aimed at raising the profile of Sikh efforts to convince the government of India to allow Punjab, the state where the Sikhi faith was born, to secede.
There is no India
I will be a first minister for all’: Sinn Féin’s Michelle O’Neill marks historic moment for once unionist state (Rory Carroll, 3 Feb 2024, The Guardian)
The chamber’s ornate ceiling remained blue, red and gold, and Portland stone still held up the Stormont edifice, but the beaming Sinn Féin faces declared this was a historic moment for Irish nationalism.Michelle O’Neill became Northern Ireland’s first nationalist first minister in a day of symbolism and pomp that restored devolved government and etched an epitaph on the tomb of what was once a unionist state.
The union endured – Northern Ireland remains part of the UK and a referendum on Irish unity is not on the horizon – but when the assembly nominated O’Neill at 2.33pm yesterday for republicans the countdown to potential unification ticked louder.
Once we faced no external threats our allies in South Africa, Northern Ireland and Israel had to settle their internal issues in favor of democracy.
The nitty-gritty of freedom: a review of Everyday Freedom: Designing the Framework for a Flourishing Society; By Philip K. Howard (Robert VerBruggen, February 1, 2024, Washington Examiner)
Howard believes these actors need greater authority to use their own judgment, coupled with norms of reasonableness and subject to oversight through clear lines of authority, to solve problems — and that this type of freedom, which he dubs “everyday freedom” or the “freedom to do what’s right,” has disappeared as individual rights, written regulations, and legal liability have expanded.The change began in the 1960s, when “the social and legal institutions of America were remade to try to eliminate unfair choices by people in positions of responsibility,” rooted in a growing distrust of authority and a desire to confront very real abuses of power. One effect of this shift, alas, was to suppress basic judgment and common sense, replacing them with rules so detailed no one could possibly learn them all and demands for officials to justify each decision they made, with lawsuits from private parties waiting in the wings.
This led to a sense of alienation. Human beings thrive when they draw on their intuitions and talents to solve problems, and the new system discourages exactly that. It also led to massive inefficiency, dysfunction, and distrust as people in what should be positions of power shied away from doing their duties, focusing instead on compliance and lawsuit avoidance.
HOW 95% OF JEWISH ISRAELIS SUPPORT A ‘PLAUSIBLE’ GENOCIDE (ZACHARY FOSTER, FEBRUARY 2, 2024, Religion Dispatches)
Jewish Israelis, however, see things differently: 95% of Jewish Israelis believed the Israeli military had used either the “appropriate” amount of force or “too little” force in Gaza, according to a mid-January 2024 poll. That’s 95% support for a plausible genocide:
Polling data from the Agam Institute suggests that some 60% of Israeli Jews oppose allowing humanitarian aid into Gaza. That is, 60% of Jewish Israelis believe all 2.2 million people in Gaza should die of dehydration and starvation.
Israel’s problem is not its lunatic fringe, as Gideon Levy said earlier this week, “Israel’s problem is its mainstream.”
Texas border showdown is far-right magnet, hate trackers warn (Arelis R. Hernández and Hannah Allam, February 2, 2024, Washington Post)
EAGLE PASS, Tex. — A motley crew is gathering here this weekend: militia-style groups invoking 1776 and the Civil War. Christian nationalists praying for the chance to confront evil. Racists stoking fear about the “replacement” of White people. Election deniers, anti-vaccination crusaders, conspiracy theorists.Sign up for Fact Checker, our weekly review of what’s true, false or in-between in politics.
And, at the center, a prominent Republican figure whose fiery rhetoric acts as a magnet.Right-wing extremists are dusting off the blueprint for the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol and using it to rally support for their cause du jour: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s showdown with the federal government over border enforcement. Monitoring groups warn that Abbott’s posturing, like Trump’s “Stop the Steal” effort, heightens the risk of political violence as supporters converge on Eagle Pass, a frontier outpost of 28,000.
Where’s Janet Reno when we need her? The hard part of fighting insurgencies is getting them to cluster and these guys are making target-acquisition easy.
‘Senator, I’m Singaporean’: TikTok CEO Faces Off Against Tom Cotton (Oscar Gonzalez, 1/31/23, Gizmodo)
Wednesday’s hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee got a little spicy as senators took turns bashing the CEOs of the biggest social media platforms. While well-deserved for the most part, it was Sen. Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, who decided to go down a weird path with TikTok CEO Shou Chew.“Have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party,” Sen. Cotton asked Chew after taking a dramatic pause from asking the CEO multiple questions about what country he was a citizen of.
“Senator, I’m Singaporean. No,” Chew replied with a smirk as if maybe this was a joke told by the gentlemen from Arkansas.
“Have you ever been associated or affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party,” Cotton asked seriously, clearly showing he was not joking.
“No, Senator. Again, I’m Singaporean,” Chew answered giving a quick glance forward as if to say, “Oh, he was serious about this.”
Historians support voters against Trump in Colorado ballot case: The GOP-majority court claims to care about history when interpreting the Constitution. If it does so here, that’s a problem for Trump’s eligibility. (Jordan Rubin, 1/29/24, MSNBC)
The historians recalled that an influential backer of the amendment noted that the section incorporated the president, replying: “Let me call the Senator’s attention to the words ‘or hold any office civil or military under the United States.’” The initial senator “admitted his error” and no other senator “questioned whether Section 3 covered the President,” the historians wrote.