Saturday, November 30, 2019

Todd on Parkinson, 'The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution' | H-Early-America | H-Net

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He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
- Declaration of Independence (1776)

So is the empire that we call America an Empire of Liberty as Gordon Wood tells us?  I've been kind of settling in on the notion that (as one presumably abolitionist New Yorker) I would have been persuaded by the colonial royal governor Dunmore's Proclamation promising of freedom for slaves to stay with the Loyalists and defend my neighborhood Fort - Tryon from the independentista defenders of slavery. 
I am bolstered in this by the discovery of Binghamton University historian Robert Parkinson's The Common Cause.  Below are a review and a couple of interviews with Parkinso
Todd on Robert Parkinson, 'The Common Cause: Creating Race and Nation in the American Revolution' | H-Early-America | H-Net

Ben Franklin's World: Robert Parkinson podcast

Interview with Robert Parkinson - Society for U.S. Intellectual History

Interview with Robert Parkinson, author of The Common Cause | Society for US Intellectual History

Interview with Robert Parkinson, author of The Common Cause | Society for US Intellectual History

An interview with historian Gordon Wood on the New York Times’ 1619 Project - World Socialist Web Site

An interview with historian Gordon Wood on the New York Times’ 1619 Project - World Socialist Web Site
Brown University historian Gordon Wood takes a skeptical view of Nicolle Hannah Jones and the Times 1619 project.

Friday, November 29, 2019

Here's the Proof that Trump's "No Quid Pro Quo" Call Never Happened

Image result for trump notes no quid pro quo
Very careful, lawyerly reconstruction of the facts: Gordon Sondland is not to be trusted.  "No quid proquo" wasn't a denial but a demand - Trump rejecting an offer as insufficient. - gwc
Here's the Proof that Trump's "No Quid Pro Quo" Call Never Happened  Just Security
by Susan Simpson (@TheViewFromLL2) is a host of the Undisclosed and 45th podcasts, and of counsel to Clinton Peed PLLC in Washington, DC.

At the heart of the impeachment inquiry, members of Congress may have been mistakenly led to believe that there were two phone calls between President Donald Trump and Ambassador Gordon Sondland in early September—with the second call having the possibility of helping the President’s case. That’s not what happened. There was only one call, and it was highly incriminating.
The call occurred on September 7th. In this call, Trump did say there was “no quid pro quo” with Ukraine, but he then went on to outline his preconditions for releasing the security assistance and granting a White House visit. The call was so alarming that when John Bolton learned of it, he ordered his’ deputy Tim Morrison to immediately report it to the National Security Council lawyers.
Sondland has testified there was a call on September 9th in which Trump said there was “no quid pro quo,” but that he wanted President Zelenskyy “to do” the right thing. A close reading of the publicly available evidence shows that the latter call was actually the very one that sent Morrison to the lawyers, and that Ambassador Bill Taylor foregrounded in his written deposition to inform Congress of the quid pro quo.
****
IV. The “No Quid Pro Quo” Call Was In Fact a Demand for Quid Pro Quo
Whether due to a faulty memory, or due to intentional deceit, Sondland’s testimony about the “no quid pro quo” call omitted the most critical part of the conversation: President Trump’s rejection of the compromise offer for the Prosecutor General to announce the investigations, and his demand that Zelenskyy himself do it. The “no quid pro quo” call was, in reality, a “here is the specific quid pro quo I want” call. And, by erroneously placing the call on September 9th, Sondland helped obscure these omissions from his testimony, by divorcing the call from its actual context in the ongoing negotiations with Ukraine over what form of quid pro quo would be acceptable. More importantly, it also gave the appearance that the call Sondland was describing was somehow different from the call that was described by two other witnesses – both of whom testified that the call included an explicit demand by Trump for a quid pro quo.

Tuesday, November 26, 2019

Understanding the Two Mazars Subpoena Cases Before the Supreme Court [UPDATED to reflect 11/25 stay of mandate] - Just Security

Understanding the Two Mazars Subpoena Cases Before the Supreme Court [UPDATED to reflect 11/25 stay of mandate] - Just Security
by Marty Lederman [Georgetown Law]
Two cases currently before the Supreme Court involve whether the Constitution prohibits subpoenas issued to Donald Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, LLP, requiring Mazars to provide non-privileged financial records relating to Trump and certain of his business entities.
The first of those cases, Trump v. VanceNo. 19-635, involves a subpoena issued to Mazars by a New York grand jury.  The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit rejected Trump’s constitutional objection, and Trump has petitioned for certiorari.  Trump will file his cert.-stage reply brief later today—thereby completing the briefing—and the Court could consider the petition as early as December 6, at the Justices’ next conference.  [UPDATE: Here’s the reply brief. Nothing new of note in it.]
The second case, Trump v. Mazars USANo. 19A545, involves a subpoena the House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform issued to Mazars back in April. (The New York grand jury subpoena is almost identical to, and was patterned upon, the House’s earlier subpoena.) The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit rejected Trump’s constitutional objection, and Trump will likely petition for cert. in that case any day now.  In the meantime, Trump has filed an application to the Chief Justice asking for a stay of the court of appeals’ mandate.  If the Chief Justice and/or the Court declines to issue such a stay, Mazars will be required to turn over the records to the House imminently, i.e., upon issuance of the mandate.  (The Chief Justice issued an interim “administrative stay” last week to enable the Court to consider the mandate-stay motion.)  
The Court will probably issue its decision on Trump’s application for a stay in Mazars shortly, perhaps as soon as today.  [UPDATE, evening of 11/25:  The Court, without recorded dissent, granted the application to stay the mandate, and gave Trump until noon next Thursday, December 5, to file his petition.  The House should be able to file its opposition in time for the Court to consider the petition at its December 13 Conference.]
There’s a third, related case, too, which hasn’t yet reached the Court but might be there soon:  In August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (Hall, Livingston & Newman, JJ.) heard oral argument in Trump v. House Committee on Financial Services, which involves Trump’s constitutional challenge to subpoenas that two House committees issued to two of Trump’s banks (Deutsche Bank and Capital One), requiring them to turn over financial records of Trump and two of his children.  The court of appeals still has not issued its decision in that case, but when it does so the losing party almost certainly will quickly ask the Supreme Court to hear that case, too.
In this post, I’ll address three things: (i) the importance of the three cases; (ii) the weakness of Trump’s constitutional arguments in the two Mazars cases before the Court; and (iii) what the Court is likely to do with those two cases.
How Important Are the Cases?

Monday, November 25, 2019

Trump tax returns: Supreme Court Stays Oversight Committee Turnover Order

Torts Today: Trump tax returns: Supreme Court Stays Oversight Committee Turnover Order
The issues are assayed today in a typically lucid manner by Texas law professor Steve Vladeck at SCOTUSblog

Mayor Pete brings his youth and old, tired ideas to the Democratic race | National Catholic Reporter

Mayor Pete brings his youth and old, tired ideas to the Democratic race | National Catholic Reporter: Pete Buttigieg is now leading in polls in Iowa, which holds its first-in-the-nation caucus Feb. 3, 2020. Iowa launched the candidacy of Barack Obama, and the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, likes to tel...

I am sure Mayor Pete thinks he really could do the job: People who run for president tend to think highly of their abilities. Vice President Joe Biden, however, brings more than self-confidence to the race. He brings a wealth of experience. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren bring ideas about how to make America a more just society. Mayor Pete brings his youth and his old, tired ideas, and the conviction that he is a man of destiny.   
[Michael Sean Winters covers the nexus of religion and politics for NCR.]

Sunday, November 24, 2019

'Allow no escapes': leak exposes reality of China's vast prison camp network | World news | The Guardian

Workers walk by the perimeter fence of what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Dabancheng in Xinjiang.
'Allow no escapes': leak exposes reality of China's vast prison camp network | World news | The Guardian
by  and 
The internal workings of a vast chain of Chinese internment camps used to detain at least a million people from the nation’s Muslim minorities are laid out in leaked Communist Party documents published on Sunday.
The China Cables, a cache of classified government papers, appear to provide the first official glimpse into the structure, daily life and ideological framework behind centres in north-western Xinjiang region that have provoked international condemnation.
Obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and shared with the Guardian, the BBC and 15 other media partners, the documents have been independently assessed by experts who have concluded they are authentic. China said they had been “fabricated”.
However, the documents are consistent with mounting evidence that the country runs detention camps that are secret, involuntary and used for ideological “education transformation”.
When reports surfaced of mass internments without trial, authorities in Beijing initially denied the existence of the detention centres, whose inmates are mostly Uighurs and other ethnic minorities.
After satellite photos and a flood of testimony from former detainees and relatives became impossible to ignore, the party insisted they were for voluntary “vocational training”.
The cables provide apparent confirmation from within China’s bureaucracy that the camps were envisaged from the start as brainwashing detention centres, to be constructed on a massive scale, with inmates confined by multiple layers of security.

Can the Supreme Court Save Itself? Linda Greenhouse - NY Times

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Linda Greenhouse predicts the Supreme Court will refuse to hear the tax return cases.
The DACA case? G*d only knows. My guess is remand...kick the bloody consequences of Trump's cancellation of DACA back into his own lap.  That is based on the assumption that Roberts is the `institutionalist' many observes claim he is.  Their best evidence is his Medicaid compromise and tax power ruling in the ACA case (Sebelius v. NFIB).  That saved him from throwing millions off health coverage they had gained from ~Obamacare'; while allowing him to create a majority for gutting the Congress's commerce clause power. - gwc

Can the Supreme Court Save Itself?  Linda Greenhouse - NY Times

****
The Trump lawyers’ Supreme Court petition, referring to Mr. Vance as “politically motivated,” “a lone county prosecutor,” instructs the court that “a sitting president should be categorically immune from state criminal process.” The subpoena “threatens the balance of power between the national and state governments,” the lawyers assert, adding that criminal prosecution would impose “a distinctive and serious stigma” on a sitting president. Someone who had not read Chief Judge Katzmann’s careful opinion might suppose that the case actually presents these issues. But the opinion is only 29 pages long, and the justices will surely read every word.

The other case, Trump v. Mazars USA, is not yet a formal appeal. The president’s private lawyers are asking the justices for a stay of a decision by the federal appeals court in Washington to enforce a similar subpoena issued to the same accountants by the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. A stay would give the lawyers time to file a formal petition; without it, the accountants have said they would comply with the subpoena. On Monday, Chief Justice Roberts put the appeals court’s decision on a brief hold and gave the House committee until Thursday to respond to the stay request.

Whether the Supreme Court ultimately grants review in these cases is purely discretionary. In their preliminary posture, and in the absence of conflicting opinions from other courts, the cases don’t satisfy the justices’ ordinary, if loosely defined, criteria for cases worthy of their attention. The president’s lawyers appear to recognize this, compensating with their hyperbolic language about the dire consequences to the presidency and the country if the subpoenas are enforced.

I remember similar arguments in the Paula Jones case, when President Bill Clinton’s lawyers went to the Supreme Court with the claim that a sitting president should not be subject to a lawsuit. Mr. Clinton lost that argument by a vote of 9 to 0. What should the court do with the Trump tax cases? If the justices play by their ordinary rules, they will turn them down. (Whether to grant a stay is a different matter, of little consequence in the scheme of things.)

In fact, I’ll predict here that contrary to the expectations of many people who foresee a big Supreme Court showdown over presidential power, that’s what the court will do. Certainly Chief Justice Roberts wants nothing to do with these cases. He knows that he is highly likely to be presiding over a Senate impeachment trial early in the new year, at the same time the court would be scheduling the cases for argument. Would he have to recuse himself? He might well choose to, raising the possibility of a 4-to-4 tie, which would affirm the lower court decisions and accomplish nothing beyond leaving the court out on a limb it never needed to climb.

Saturday, November 23, 2019

Scotus brief: Trump v. Vance.pdf

Editorial: The failed leadership of US bishops is clear | National Catholic Reporter

Editorial: The failed leadership of US bishops is clear | National Catholic Reporter
***Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput affirmed that abortion has held the top spot as an issue for the bishops for years. Archbishop Alexander Sample of Portland, Oregon, placed the bishops squarely in the stream of partisan politics when he argued: "We are at a unique moment with the upcoming election cycle to make a real challenge to Roe v. Wade, given the possible changes to the Supreme Court. We should not dilute our efforts to protect the unborn."
That is a thinly disguised endorsement of not only the Republican Party but also the Trump administration. In more than 40 years of pursuing the narrow objective of a legal remedy to abortion, the bishops have placed themselves at the service of those who want to load the courts with conservative judges, but they've accomplished little, continuous polling tells us, to persuade anyone of their point of view, including Catholics.

Friday, November 22, 2019

The Inquiry’s Ominous Verdict | Talking Points Memo

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This is a deeply disturbing essay.
All of this means that the United States is in a grave crisis, like an automobile running at high speed and out of control. It will remain that way for at least a year and as long as five more years. And the opposition’s ability to put a brake on his power is thin.
The Inquiry’s Ominous Verdict | Talking Points Memo
by Josh Marshall
Any effort by a President to use the vast presidential power to advance her personal interests is immediately illegitimate and an abuse of power. It is a direct attack on the constitutional order. This is why foreign subsidies, bribes, emoluments are so damaging to the country: not so much because it’s not fair that a President should get rich off the office but because foreign policy is itself corrupted. It can’t operate in the national interest because some foreign entity is paying the President to do something different than the national interest. Otherwise they wouldn’t be paying.
But all of this pales in comparison to what happens when a President uses his power to sabotage an election. That pushes the whole system into crisis. Because the legitimacy of the President’s power rests on the people’s ability to revoke it in a subsequent election. An American President has vast powers. She has vast power to act in secret. Unleash those powers against the integrity of a US election and the legitimacy of the entire system is short-circuited. It amounts to the President using powers granted to advance the national interest to make his or her power permanent or beyond the people’s ability to take back, a situation which is grave and intolerable.
3. Those who tolerate if not support the President argue that these points above can be tolerated because the President is surrounded by appointees and advisors who serve as guardrails around his behavior. Indeed, something quite like this seems to have happened precisely with respect to policy toward Russia and Ukraine. The administration has adopted a reasonably hawkish policy of support for Ukraine despite the fact that the President himself has a deep affinity for President Putin and an intense animus toward Ukraine.
But what this story has told us more than anything else is that these “guardrails” do not work or even exist. The testimony of Fiona Hill is a case in point. She is committed, smart and professional. Like many others she knew this was wrong and said it was wrong. And yet it happened precisely on her watch. As it did on George Kent’s and Bill Taylor’s and John Bolton’s and numerous others. This point is absolutely critical. Even with all these people, this plot would never have become known and it almost certainly would have succeeded if not for the whistleblower, who appears to be a relatively junior official at the CIA. My point is not to criticize these people, only to show their presence has been insufficient. Now an entire political party is uniting behind the position that these actions are legitimate and laudable. On every front the national law enforcement apparatus has been coopted toward protecting the President and scrutinizing his critics.
4. This confluence of facts makes it all but certain that this present scandal is only one of many and that most we have yet to learn about. ....

Thursday, November 21, 2019

Medicare expansion options xpostfactoid

https://xpostfactoid.blogspot.com/2019/01/medicare-for-all-who-want-or-need-it.html

18 USC 201 Bribery of public officials - by Trump - the proof is at hand

18 USC 201 Bribery of public officials and witnesses
(b) Whoever—
(2) being a public official...directly or indirectly, corruptly demands, seeks, receives, accepts, or agrees to receive or accept anything of value personally or for any other person or entity, in return for: 
(A) being influenced in the performance of any official act;
(B) being influenced to commit or aid in committing, or to collude in, or allow, any fraud, or make opportunity for the commission of any fraud, on the United States; or
(C) being induced to do or omit to do any act in violation of the official duty of such official or person

There is no doubt now that Donald Trump demanded something of value from Ukrainian President Zelensky in exchange for an official act - a White House meeting, and the release of embargoed military aid.  EU Ambassador Gordon Sondland declared in Congressional testimony there was a "quid pro quo" - something of value to Trump in his re-election effort.

John Malcolm of the Heritage Foundation's Meese Center - a former Bush administration official - rationalizes that it is all within the discretionary power of the President over foreign affairs.

But that view cannot survive the testimony of Fiona Hill, Deputy National Security Adviser:

This is a critical, critical portion of testimony. pic.twitter.com/aO7gJBG8Ia

Sunday, November 17, 2019

Eight months later, Elizabeth Warren FINALLY admits it'll take at least TWO bills to achieve M4All | ACA Signups

As Andrew Sprung (my other ACA guru) says...more like ten bills. 
Eight months later, Elizabeth Warren FINALLY admits it'll take at least TWO bills to achieve M4All | ACA Signups
by Charles Gaba

 

For several years now, I've been pleading with the powers that be in Congress to pass two major healthcare reform bills:
  • FIRST, a robust ACA 2.0 upgrade bill which would:
    • REPAIR the law from the Trump/GOP sabotage inflicted on it to date (weakening of 1332 guiderails, cut-off of CSR funding, slashing of the marketing/navigator budget, zeroing out of the mandate penalty; reinstatement of restrictions on short-term plans/etc.);
    • PROTECT it from any further damage (the Trump Administration's attempt to make the subsidy formula stingier; their attempts to require separate invoices for abortion; etc.);
    • FIX THE GLITCHES which were inherent in the bill as passed into law in 2010 (such as the Family Glitch, the Skinny Plan glitch, etc.); and
    • STRENGTHEN the law by expanding it (including removing the 400% FPL subsidy cliff; beefing up the subsidy formula; requiring wider network minimums; etc.)
This first bill would also hopefully include some sort of Public Option as well, although even without one the above improvements would still be a quantum leap ahead of the current istuation.
After these improvements were baked in, there'd then be followed by a SECOND BILL A FEW YEARS LATERwhich would be the next Big Thing. This, of course, is where the Democratic healthcare debate has gotten very ugly over the past year or so: Should we go with mandatory, "pure" Medicare for All or would a robust Public Option be the stopping point...with the assumption being that if the PO was good enough, everyone would eventually choose it over a private policy anyway, thus making it a moot point?
I feel so strongly about this "two stage rocket booster" approach that I even included it in my "Where the Democratic Candidates Stand" summary table from a few months back. As you can see at the bottom, while the candidates keep pushing for one particular bill/plan or another, I've been urging them to pass ACA 2.0 first and then worry about the next phase later on, whether it's "pure" M4All or my preferred long-term plan, Medicare for America (which amounts to "Medicare for All with a PRIVATE Option").
KEEP READING (it's long and wonky with graphs and charts)

Friday, November 15, 2019

Trump files "emergency" stay motion to keep tax returns from Congress - and prosecutors

On the day our former Ukraine Ambassador testified that the Department of State is being hollowed out Donald Trump has filed an "emergency motion for a stay" of the subpoena issued by the House Oversight Committee for his pre-presidential tax returns.  He follows recently appointed Circuit Judge Neomi Rao's road map. 
Trump files "emergency" stay motion to keep tax returns from Congress - and prosecutors

An Imposter: Pelosi on Trump's attack on Ambassador Yovanovitch



Sunday, November 10, 2019

Never forget! A mob lynching of 4 black sharecroppers in 1946 is focus of court battle over grand jury secrecy

A mob lynching of 4 black sharecroppers in 1946 is focus of court battle over grand jury secrecy
By The Associated Press
ATLANTA — A historian's quest for the truth about a gruesome mob lynching of two black couples is prompting a U.S. appeals court to consider whether federal judges can order grand jury records unsealed in decades-old cases with historical significance.
The young black sharecroppers were being driven along a rural road in the summer of 1946 when they were stopped by a white mob beside the Apalachee River, just over 50 miles east of Atlanta. The mob dragged them out, led them to the riverbank and shot them multiple times. For months the FBI investigated and more than 100 people reportedly testified before a grand jury, but no one was ever indicted in the deaths of Roger and Dorothy Malcom and George and Mae Murray Dorsey at Moore's Ford Bridge in Walton County.
Historian Anthony Pitch wrote a book about the killings — "The Last Lynching: How a Gruesome Mass Murder Rocked a Small Georgia Town" — and continued his research after its 2016 publication. He learned transcripts from the grand jury proceedings, thought to have been destroyed, were stored by the National Archives.
Heeding Pitch's request, a federal judge in 2017 ordered the records unsealed. But the U.S. Department of Justice appealed, arguing grand jury proceedings are secret and should remain sealed.
A three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in February ruled 2-1 to uphold the lower court's order. But the full court voted to rehear the case, and is set to hear oral arguments Tuesday.
Pitch, 80, died just two weeks after the announcement the case would be reheard. His wife, Marion Pitch, has taken her husband's place in the case. Pitch's family also approached Laura Wexler, who wrote another book about the lynching, for help completing his work, and she joined the case.
In 1946, Roger Malcom, 24, was jailed after stabbing and gravely injuring a white man during an argument. A white farmer, Loy Harrison, paid $600 to bail Malcom out on July 25 of that year. Harrison later said he was ambushed by a mob as he drove the four home. Harrison, who is identified in an FBI report as a former Ku Klux Klansman and well-known bootlegger, wasn't hurt. He told authorities he didn't recognize anyone in the mob.
The investigation has been reopened and closed several times since a grand jury failed to indict anyone in December 1946. Students, researchers and activists have all tried to crack the case.
Rules governing grand jury secrecy include exceptions when records may be released. A 1984 ruling in the 11th Circuit, which set binding precedent, says judges may order their disclosure in "exceptional circumstances." The historical significance in this case qualifies, Judge Charles Wilson wrote in the panel's majority opinion. He added that enough time has passed that witnesses, suspects or their immediate family members likely aren't alive to be intimidated, persecuted or arrested.
Concurring, Judge Adalberto Jordan agreed that lower court's ruling should be upheld because of the binding precedent. But Jordan said he would have decided the 1984 case differently. Allowing judges to use inherent authority to go beyond the defined exceptions to grand jury secrecy seems too open-ended, he wrote.