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Omarosa was wholly created, as a media personality, by Donald Trump. He absolutely loved her backstabbing and underhanded play on his reality show, The Apprentice. He loved her act so much that he brought it with him to the White House. Now that she's turned against him, however, he isn't loving her act quite so much anymore. Sad!
I am not an "enemy of the people." I am not an enemy of The People. Parse it or capitalize it however you like, I am still not an enemy of the people.
This weekend, decent people -- and by that, I mean people who are not white supremacists -- took back the streets, in both Washington D.C. and Charlottesville, Virginia. One year after the tragic deaths in Charlottesville (one at the hands of the white-supremacists, two from a police helicopter crash), the neo-Nazis were shamed and shouted down successfully. Thus proving the old adage: "the answer for free speech you don't agree with is more free speech." This time, the voice of decency was louder, which is entirely as it should be.
We certainly can't claim authorship for that rather brilliant title. It was seen on a protest sign in the midst of the 100,000 people who marched in London in opposition to President Donald Trump's visit to Britain. Accompanying the march was a giant "Trump Baby" blimp floating in the breeze, which depicted Trump in diapers with a cell phone in his tiny, tiny hand. The wranglers of the blimp all wore outfits with "Trump Babysitter" written on them, for extra emphasis. Where is Mary Poppins, when you need her the most?
I normally prefer optimism over pessimism when writing about politics, and I always try to steer completely clear of downright defeatism. I think my work over the years would prove this to be generally true. At the same time, I always strive to be realistic, which leads me to the sad conclusion that Democrats are almost sure to lose the upcoming battle over Donald Trump's most-recent Supreme Court nomination. Democratic politicians and their supporters should be mentally prepared for this outcome, because it is far and away the most likely to occur. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this is probably going to be a fight Democrats are going to wage unsuccessfully on the Senate floor.
We are (of course) not drawing any onomatopoetic comparisons to Scott Pruitt's last name with that title -- perish the thought! -- because it is merely a reference to two political stories which bookended this week. That's all. Ahem.
We begin with a little history. Benjamin Franklin was a funny guy, and was [...]
Liberals had a very bad week at the Supreme Court last week. There's no denying it. Almost all of the final decisions of the year went against them, and that was before the news of Justice Anthony Kennedy's impending retirement hit Washington like a bombshell. Fears that President Donald Trump will pick an ultra-conservative to replace him mean that bedrock decisions such as Roe v. Wade are now hanging in the balance. Democrats are vowing to fight hard against the next justice's confirmation, but this is quite likely a fight they are going to lose.
I realize there is bigger news from the Supreme Court today, but since I wrote about them yesterday I'm not going to address Anthony Kennedy's retirement yet. Instead, I'd like to focus today on the latest round of primary election results, specifically from New York, Maryland, and Colorado. Because some big news was made within the Democratic Party last night.
Gerald R. Ford once famously pointed out that the practical definition of what constituted grounds for impeaching a president (since it is only vaguely defined in the Constitution itself) consisted of whatever a majority of the House of Representatives decided were valid grounds for impeachment (Ford, on the House floor, before he became Nixon's vice president: "The only honest answer is that an impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at a given moment in history"). Likewise, it almost appears self-evident that defining what is constitutional and what is not can be similarly reduced to whatever a majority of the Supreme Court decides is constitutional, at the present time. Dred Scott was constitutional -- right up until it wasn't -- because a Supreme Court had determined it was. It took a shift of opinion on the highest court to reverse this. Again, this should all be pretty obvious to even the most causal observer of American history. Which is why, in fact, the conservative movement has focused so intently on the judicial branch for the past three decades and more. This began at the height of the anti-abortion movement during Ronald Reagan's time in office, and it continues today on the right side of the spectrum. But for some unfathomable reason, liberals have never matched this level of political fervor about judicial appointments. But now the stakes are higher than ever.
President Trump probably thought that a decisive move from him would end all the fuss over his "zero tolerance" policy on immigration. He signed an executive order, therefore the problem would thus go away. But this isn't how things work in the real world, where the fallout is going to continue for the foreseeable future. There will be two major arenas where this is going to play out: in the courtroom, and on the political stage.