You’ll recall that in the last session, Texas passed another stupid law, trying to make it illegal to take down inflammatory and false rhetoric from social media platforms.  They were targeting Facebook and Twitter, which, after years of comatose moderation FINALLY started taking down posts from white supremacists, insurrectionists, QAnon enthusiasts, and other weirdos pumping manure to the public.  The court blocked the law in a mixed opinion with the liberal justices, except for Kagen, plus Roberts making the ruling with the conservatives (and Kagen) voting no.  It was a relief, but it’s not over as the court sent the case back to the courts.

But that’s not the interesting part.  What’s interesting was Alito’s dissent.  He took the same side that he did in the Texas Bounty law on abortion, wanting to have a clearly unconstitutional law stand while it wound its way through the courts; but this time he said that the court will have to visit this case at some point. In his opinion he said:

“This application concerns issues of great importance that will plainly merit this court’s review,” he wrote. “Social media platforms have transformed the way people communicate with each other and obtain news. At issue is a groundbreaking Texas law that addresses the power of dominant social media corporations to shape public discussion of the important issues of the day.”

I agree that laws like this that threaten what little is left of civility in public debate are important, but I find it interesting that Alito is most concerned about social media moderation but is OK with taking away the right to vote and women’s rights to choose their own healthcare, while at the same time taking a completely hands off approach to gerrymandering, the greatest clear and present danger to the survival of our democracy.

The court’s problem is much larger than this particular opinion, and adds fuel to the fire that millions of Americans see the court now as illegitimate; I most certainly do, especially after the latest Trump/McConnell court packing that’s happened over the last decade.  The conservative super majority is cemented in now for future decades and that was accomplished by McConnell’s blatant cheating seeking retribution for Bork’s rejection by Democrats decades ago.  The court has transformed our country from a teetering and weak democracy to an oligarchy that protects the rich at the cost of everyone else.  The court now rules almost 90% in favor of corporations and has completely failed at its main responsibility, protecting the rule of law.

I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

Mariselle Quijano was running for reelection to our school board in position two. As an employee of the district we are somewhat dialed in to these things, but I don’t live in the district where I work. So, I try not to get involved. Quijano had served for 12 years, but it appears that the term is coming to an end. At least that is what we thought.

It was a 51/49 percentage account, so by all accounts it was close. Now, the school board president is refusing to seat the winner. The district has an official statement I have highlighted below, but it has turned nasty. Crystal Davila (the winner) has complained publicly about the process and if you simply read the statement below it would seem that the issue shouldn’t be in doubt.

When you go to the official school district website this is what they have on the election results. They have already had two meetings since the election. In one of those meetings the board voted to give all of us a three percent across the board raise. So, in other words, they are doing some pretty significant stuff.

This is where we get into the politics of it. Davila ran as part of a cohort of current and former educators that thought there should be more teacher representation on the board. Beyond that, labels of liberal and conservative rarely ever enter into it on this level. At least that’s true in Pasadena. Candidates never have a letter by their name and few mention anything that would hint of larger political issues. That changed during this race.

The school board president lobbied hard for the three incumbents in the race and labeled the three challengers as wanting to install a socialist agenda. I’m not exactly sure how one does that on a school board, but who knows. While she did not specifically label Davila as a socialist I suppose the implication was clear enough. Now, she is refusing to seat her. I can only wonder where they are getting this idea from about recounts. Is there anyone out there that they are deriving their inspiration from to stonewall the process? Can anyone think of anyone? Obviously, I don’t know if the current board are Trump supporters and that’s not my implication.

The implication is simple. When you see someone do something and it seems to be successful then it gives you rise to do it. That might be the most dangerous outcome from the 2020 election. Now, everyone has cause to challenge an election when the results come back differently they think they should have. Again, I’m an innocent bystander here. I didn’t vote in the election and really didn’t have an opinion until I was bombarded with talk about socialism. Now, it seems the citizens of Pasadena are not being adequately represented because a few on the board don’t like the results. That’s not how America works. At least that’s not how it’s supposed to work. Maybe the last presidential election will change all of that.

Dana Milbank has a great piece in the Washington Post this morning where he describes how Republican senators made a mockery of Trump’s impeachment trial, repeatedly violating their oaths and violating Senate rules.  Many didn’t even bother to show up during the House Managers’ presentations, or if they did, smacked on chewing gum or read magazines.  As I read these descriptions, what struck me was what a poor job Chief Justice John Roberts did, not even trying to get Republicans to follow their own rules in the trial.  Trump always whines about how everything is rigged against him; well, this trial was certainly rigged in favor of him even before it started.

In voting to block all witnesses and close the record, Republicans completed their corrupt mission of acquitting Trump even as they admitted that he is guilty.  Milbank’s best line of the the piece was when he described Lamar Alexanders illogical reasoning for refusing to hear any witnesses.  Alexander’s statement was whiplash inducing as described by Milbank:

“’There is no need for more evidence to conclude that the president withheld United States aid, at least in part, to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens; the House managers have proved this,’ Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) declared late Thursday. But the choice of ‘what to do about what he did,’ Alexander said, should be ‘in the presidential election.’ What an elegant solution! He accepts that Trump is guilty of cheating in the election — and, therefore, his fate should be determined by the very election in which he has cheated.”

Milbank nails it in those brief sentences by pointing out the idiotic reasoning behind not only Trump’s lawyers but his enablers in the Senate.  They admit Trump is guilty, yet either say it doesn’t rise to the level of impeachability or that the election should determine his fate.  How goddam stupid – if inviting, indeed extorting a foreign government to interfere in a presidential election is not impeachable, then nothing is.  Even more stupid is saying that the election he’s trying to rig is the one in which he should be punished.

The illogic is gobsmacking.

Anyone who bases their judgment on facts knew they were lying from the start.  In fact their entire strategy is based on massive lying.  What am I talking about? Voting.  Republicans figured out a long time ago that their demographic (old, white, angry) is shrinking.  Historically, this is a relatively recent phenomenon, started when the GOP went nuts after Goldwater lost in ’64.  Ultra conservative voices began rising during that time, really more Libertarian and Bircher, and when Reagan beat Carter, the calcification of the party really set in.  From those days to today, the GOP has pushed the entire country farther and farther to the right, pushing everyone not white, not old, not nuts out of the tent.  Trump’s takeover of the party has completed the calcification, adding white supremacy as just another adjective to describe the base.

The GOP base is so demographically narrow that it simply cannot fairly win anymore.  As the country becomes more diverse, our population is moving away from the radicalism and obvious insanity that is now the party.  So, how can they win on a national scale?  It’s two pronged: by keeping the base continuously whipped up and raging about dark-skinned people, and, of course, by cheating.  A lot.

That cheating comes in the form of radical gerrymandering and voter suppression.  Gerrymandering is a fact of life and several cases have been consolidated at the SCOTUS, but, unless Roberts has a sudden fit of rationality, I don’t have much hope.  Voter suppression, though, is just as insidious; keeping Americans from being represented in the Congress, the very basis of our republic.  Voter ID laws have been pushed now for twenty years, based on the lie that there is massive voter fraud occurring during our elections (by dark skinned people) that simply doesn’t exist.  Trump used that same blatant lie to explain away him losing the popular vote in 2016 by 3 million votes.

One of the Republicans pushing this lie is Chris Kobach, a white nationalist (who won’t admit it) and former Kansas Secretary of State.  Kobach was behind faked voter fraud studies in Kansas, and pushed anti-Muslim policies as well as strict voter ID laws.  After he lost the election for governor in 2017, he became an advisor to Trump, bringing his radical ideology to the WH.  And it’s not good.  In 2017 he lead Trump’s bogus voter integrity committee that quietly folded in 2018 after it couldn’t find one shred of evidence of massive voter fraud and being stopped by the states in amassing private data about voters.

One of the tactics Kobach pushed to Trump was adding a citizenship question to the US Census questionnaire.  Sounds benign, right?  Hardly.  The question is specifically designed to scare people who may have members of the family who are not citizens, have a green card, or are undocumented.  Why?  To undercount these populations and disproportionally increase representation to the GOP base (old and white).  Seats in state houses and in the US House are at stake.  Trump and crew have been lying about the reason for adding this question from the very first moment.  Their problem though, is that they’ve now been caught lying to Congress about it.

It turns out that Kobach pushed the citizenship question to the Trump campaign in 2016, long before Wilbur Ross claimed it was introduced in early 2017.  Yesterday, Elijah Cummings, chair of the House Oversight and Reform committee, disclosed details of a closed door interview with Kobach last Monday where he revealed this new detail.  Now we know why Trump has desperately been trying to expand executive privilege over even those who don’t actually work for him, but who just talked to him.  That effort failed and the administration is caught now in yet another lie.

So, Kobach lied until last Monday.  Wilbur Ross lied and stonewalled the House, likely earning a contempt of Congress vote just like Bill Barr did for refusing to testify.  This episode is yet another page in the encyclopedia of lies told by this administration.  Hopefully we can use this lie to shut down another of the GOP’s efforts to win by cheating.