The U.S. has no rules for when the president is a national security threat - The Washington Post

The U.S. has no rules for when the president is a national security threat - The Washington Post
by Asha Rangappa
"Unfortunately, once a person who is willing to act against the interests of the United States assumes the awesome powers of the presidency, the laws and investigative techniques we use in ordinary national security situations are woefully inadequate. Like the breach of multiple hulls in the Titanic, the mechanisms designed to keep our democracy afloat are giving way one by one."

Benjamin Wittes on the whistleblower and Congress

https://www.lawfareblog.com/witness-and-whistleblower-some-thoughts

Lewandowski: exemplary examination of a hostile witness by Barry Berke

Corey Lewandowski yesterday joined a rogues gallery of famously hostile witnesses before the Congress.  Like Oliver North (Iran Contra) - examined by Arthur Liman -  former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was defiant and contemptuous in his testimony before a Congressional committee.  But he met his match in this examination by Judiciary Committee counsel Barry Berke.  HERE it is.

Supreme Court vacates order blocking Trump anti refugee rule

Torts Today: Supreme Court vacates order blocking Trump anti refugee rule

Fair trial and free press - New York State Bar Assocation

NEW YORK FAIR TRIAL FREE PRESS CONFERENCE 2019

A hypothetical exploring issues involving the media, law enforcement, lawyers and the courts, with participation by an experienced panel and the audience.

Free for all NYSBA Members & Non-Members

---

Program Co-Chairs
Sandra S. Baron, Esq. | Resident Fellow, Yale Law School
Anne L. LaBarbera, Esq. | Thomas LaBarbera Counselors At Law PC
J. Elliott Lewis, Esq. | S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University

Moderators
Hon. Albert M. Rosenblatt | Former Associate Judge, New York State Court of Appeals | McCabe & Mack LLP
Rex Smith | Times Union

NYC Program Faculty
Hon. Jenny Rivera | New York State Court of Appeals
Hon. Richard J. Sullivan | United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit
Stephen Brown | Manhattan Federal Court Reporter | New York Daily News
David Caruso | Associated Press
Jonathan Dienst | WNBC-TV, New York
Carey Dunne, Esq. | General Counsel | Manhattan District Attorney's Office
Captain Robert Gault | New York Police Department
Pat Hurtado | Bloomberg News
Matthew A. Leish, Esq. | Assistant General Counsel | Tribune Publishing Company
Tina Luongo, Esq. | Attorney in Charge of the Criminal Practice | The Legal Aid Society of New York
Anthony Ricco, Esq. | NYC
Rebecca Rosenberg | New York Post
Anna Skotko, Esq. | Deputy Chief, Appellate Unit | United States Attorney's Office of the Southern District of New York
Mary Kate Tischler, Esq. | Vice President and Associate General Counsel | News Review and Litigation | CBS Law Department

AmericanStudies: September 2, 2019: Academic Labor: Adjunctification

AmericanStudies: September 2, 2019: Academic Labor: Adjunctification:
by Ben Railton
 [Usually around this time I’d be sharing Fall Semester Preview posts. I’m on sabbatical, so no teaching for me this Fall; instead I thought I’d connect Labor Day to issues ofacademic labor this week. Leading up to a special weekend tribute post!]

On the disastrous and dehumanizing trend at the heart of 21^st century academia, and what to do about it.

I don’t imagine it’s news to most readers of this blog that over the last couple decades, institutions of higher education in America (and I imagine around the world, but as usual on this blog I’ll focus in this post and series on America) have come to rely more and more fully on underpaid, unbenefited, too often unappreciated, always painfully precarious adjunct and contingent faculty labor. Wherever you look you can find striking statistics in support of that claim, but I would note two examples from the always reliable American Association of University Professors (AAUP): more than half of all faculty appointments are now part-time; and over 70% of all instructional appointments are non-tenure-track (meaning even if they’re not part-time, they don’t allow the instructors the chance of moving toward tenure and stability; such full-time non-tenure-track positions almost always have time limits as well, making them at best a temporary alternative to contingency). That AAUP site lays out the wide range of disastrous and destructive effects of these trends, not just for the faculty members but also for the institutions, for their students, and as a result for all Americans (since the success or failure of our education system affects us all).

I would never want to argue for a hierarchy of those disastrous effects; indeed, it is precisely the combination of all of them that makes adjunctification as destructive (and short-sighted, if it even offers short-term financial benefits which that AAUP site persuasively argues it does not) as it is. But for those of us in the Humanities, one particularly horrific such effect is the dehumanization of our peers and colleagues. I don’t mean simply that adjunct faculty are generally treated as entirely interchangeable and replaceable cogs in a machine, although that is how far too many institutions and administrators (and, yes, tenure-track faculty; that piece was written by my friend and NeMLA colleague, and consistent advocate for adjunct faculty, Angela Fulk) seem to treat them. No, I mean the way that contingency consistently strips away even the most basic layers of human security, such as having a home or having enough food. Such stories of adjunct life might seem extreme, but I would argue the opposite—that they are frequent, if not indeed commonplace, reflections of an extreme system. I also refuse to give any credence to those who would argue that these faculty members should simply do something else for a living—besides being itself an inhuman response to inhuman conditions, that argument represents a destructive distraction from the core issue here: that numerous teachers are living in such conditions in 2019 America.

So what can we do about this unavoidable and awful reality of 21^st century higher education? The next few posts in this series will focus on my experiences with some of the ways through which particular communities, from labor unions to scholarly organizations to state legislatures, can help us collectively address and change the realities of adjunctification. But when it comes to us tenure-track or tenured faculty members, it seems to me that the first step is a simple but crucial one: to admit that luck, purely and entirely, is far and away the most important factor in our having such positions compared to our colleagues who do not.

Law at the End of the Day: The G7 Declaration on the Situation in Hong Kong, and China's Response: Two Analyses on the (Re)Construction of New Era Empire from the Coalition for Peace & Ethics

Law at the End of the Day: The G7 Declaration on the Situation in Hong Kong, and China's Response: Two Analyses on the (Re)Construction of New Era Empire from the Coalition for Peace & Ethics: A blog about globalization, governance, law, corporations, religion and culture in changing times.

The Federalist Society Says It’s Not an Advocacy Organization. We Found Documents Showing Otherwise. - POLITICO Magazine

The Federalist Society Says It’s Not an Advocacy Organization. We Found Documents Showing Otherwise. - POLITICO Magazine: 

This past March, when the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies held its 37th annual national gathering for conservative law students, the lineup of speakers and panelists included an impressive number of Republican Party and conservative movement stars.

All four of the conference’s main panels were chaired by active Republican-appointed federal appeals court judges. Amul Thapar—a protégé of Senator Mitch McConnell who “nearly wouldn’t speak” to his own father upon finding out he had voted for Barack Obama, his father said—directed one panel. Edith Jones, a long-time 5th Circuit judge considered too conservative for the Supreme Court by the George H.W. Bush administration, moderated another. Elizabeth Branch, a recent appointee of President Donald Trump to the 11th Circuit and former senior official in the George W. Bush administration, moderated the third panel, while fellow Trump appointee to the 6th Circuit John B. Nalbandian moderated the fourth. And the “keynote” was a “fireside chat” between former GOP Senator Jon Kyl and Arizona Governor Doug Ducey, a fellow Republican. Despite what appears to be an obvious political valence, the Federalist Society and its high-profile members have long insisted the nonprofit organization does not endorse any political party “or engage in other forms of politicaladvocacy,” as its website says. The society does not deny an ideology—it calls itself a “group of conservatives and libertarians”—but it maintains that it is simply “about ideas,” not legislation, politicians or policy positions.

Federalist Society documents that one of us recently unearthed, however, make this position untenable going forward. The documents, made public here for the first time, show that the society not only has held explicit ideological goals since its infancy in the early 1980s, but sought to apply those ideological goals to legal policy and political issues through the group’s roundtables, symposia and conferences.

The question of whether the Federalist Society is properly characterized as a “society of ideas” or a political organization has significant ramifications. The Code of Conduct for United States Judges, a set of guidelines administered by the federal judiciary’s Judicial Conference, was revised earlier this year to bar sitting federal judges from participating in conferences and seminars sponsored by groups “generally viewed by the public as having adopted a consistent political or ideological point of view equivalent to the type of partisanship often found in political organizations.” (The Code does not “explicitly” apply to Supreme Court justices, though they have looked to it in the past.) One former federal judge argued that under the new ethics opinion, the Federalist Society is now a “no-go zone for federal judges.” The Society’s president, Eugene Meyer, responded, calling the former jurist’s argument an “absurd and ludicrous” interpretation of the rule, adding that the Federalist Society has said “time and again” that it is nonpartisan and does not take official policy positions.

But the newly unearthed documents—a 1984 grant proposal and cover letter, written by Meyer on the Federalist Society’s behalf and now housed in the late Judge Robert Bork’s papers at the Library of Congress—provide evidence that the Federalist Society, in contravention of what the new Codestates, in fact “advocates for specific outcomes on legal or political issues.” This suggests that federal judges, by attending Federalist Society events, are transgressing the Code’s new guidelines. Given the importance of active federal judges to the Federalist Society’s long-term goal of reshaping the law, barring them from the society’s events could hamper its continued ability to exert the political influence it has impressively built over decades.

The Federalist Society was founded in 1982 as a small law student group with the goal of bringing conservative and libertarian speakers, and their ideas, to law school campuses perceived to be dismissive of these intellectual traditions. After the Federalist Society held its first national symposium at Yale Law School that year—featuring recent Reagan-appointed federal appeals court judges Bork and Antonin Scalia—Federalist Society student groups started popping up on law school campuses around the country. The organization now boasts more than 65,000 members, and most federal judgeships, clerkships and executive branch legal jobs in Republican administrations are effectively off-limits to nonmembers.
***

Amanda Hollis-Brusky is an associate professor of politics at Pomona College and author of Ideas With Consequences: The Federalist Society and the Conservative Counterrevolution.

Calvin TerBeek is a Ph.D. candidate in political science at the University of Chicago.

Academy of Child Psychiatrists as amicus denounces indefinite detention of child migrants.

Torts Today: Academy of Child Psychiatrists as amicus denounces indefinite detention of child migrants.: The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry leads a raft of twenty one organizations as amicus to denounce the Trump administration.

What that Comey Email Report Really Says - Lawfare

What that Comey Email Report Really Says - Lawfare:
by Benjamin Wittes
The inspector general of the United States Department of Justice says that a witness to gross misconduct by the president of the United States has a duty to keep his mouth shut.

Editorial: 'The 1619 Project' is landmark truth telling | National Catholic Reporter

Editorial: 'The 1619 Project' is landmark truth telling | National Catholic Reporter: "Ultimately, my goal is to subvert the common perception of 'black history' as somehow separate from American history and to reinstate it as indivisible from the totality of past social, political and...

Deconstructing 'Sanctuary Cities': The Legality of Federal Grant Conditions That Require State and Local Cooperation on Immigration Enforcement by Peter Margulies :: SSRN

Deconstructing 'Sanctuary Cities': The Legality of Federal Grant Conditions That Require State and Local Cooperation on Immigration Enforcement by Peter Margulies :: SSRN: The term “sanctuary city” has generated more heat than light. The Trump administration has branded certain cities as citadels of lawlessness because those cities have resisted federal attempts to condition receipt of law enforcement funds on cooperation with the full range of immigration enforcement efforts. Pushing back against these federal conditions, cities and other subfederal entities have argued that the untrammeled cooperation that the Trump administration seeks would hinder local law enforcement and promote racial profiling. Neither side acknowledges that the dispute is relatively narrow in scope, since federal and subfederal entities cooperate both tacitly and actively on many immigration-related fronts, from the data entered during routine local police stops to transfers of custody for persons convicted of serious crimes. That reality does not fit the straw figures that dominate the sanctuary city landscape in political debates. However, it informs attempts to resolve the underlying legal issues. This Article assesses the legality of Trump administration conditions on both constitutional and statutory grounds. The Article argues for the constitutionality of 8 U.S.C. §

Sidney Rittenberg — Jerome A. Cohen | 孔傑榮（柯恩）

Sidney Rittenberg — Jerome A. Cohen | 孔傑榮（柯恩）: By Jerome A. Cohen Yesterday’s wonderful obit in the New York Times was a balanced presentation of Sid’s long and complex life. I especially liked its references to his experiences on both sides of the scourge of mankind — arbitrary detention. Although, soon after his final release from prison,

NJ Appeals Court refuses to enforce law firm's arbitration provision

A-1726-17T4 - BRIAN DELANEY VS. TRENT S. DICKEY, ET AL. (C-000214-17, ESSEX COUNTY AND STATEWIDE)

The Appellate Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey has reinstated a  malpractice claim and fee dispute against a leading firm.  The firm's retainer agreement adopted the rules of the private mediation service JAMS and provided for private arbitration of both fee disputes and malpractice claims against the firm.

A couple of excerpts from the unpublished decision by the three judge panel will capture the heart of the case:

For his part, plaintiff averred in a verified complaint that no one from Sills [Cummis, et al.] "went over the arbitration provision with [him]." He also averred that no one from Sills explained the nature of the costs associated with the arbitration, including that they could "easily exceed $20,000" and could be awarded against him. Nor did anyone from Sills point out that the arbitration fees and costs "greatly exceeded" filing fees for a Superior Court action, or that under the retainer agreement plaintiff could be held liable for Sills' costs and attorneys' fees, depending on how the arbitrator ruled. Plaintiff asserted that had he been "made aware of the inequities and costs associated with proceeding with arbitration, as well as the fact that he was constitutionally entitled to have a jury decide issues related to malpractice, he would have never signed the initial retainer agreement in the form presented by [Sills]," if he signed it at all.

Our holding is narrow. We do not hold that all retainer agreement clauses that mandate  arbitration of legal malpractice claims are per se invalid. Nor do we hold that the "reasonable explanation" required of an attorney by RPC 1.4(c) cannot be contained in the written retainer agreement. Rather, we hold that when an attorney incorporates by reference in a retainer agreement a document that contains material terms concerning mandatory arbitration of legal malpractice claims, does not provide the incorporated document to the client, gives the client no explanation about material terms contained in the document, and asks the client to sign the retainer agreement without reading the incorporated documents, the agreement runs afoul of the RPCs and is invalid. 

No vicarious liability for husband ~ wife lawyers

https://www.law.com/njlawjournal/2019/08/21/3rd-circuit-finds-no-vicarious-liability-in-case-of-husband-wife-attorneys/

New DHS rule defies Flores settlement principles

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/08/dhs-and-hhs-announce-new-rule-to-implement-the-flores-settlement-agreement.html

Rule issued August 22 and titled Apprehension, Processing, Care, and Custody of Alien Minors and Unaccompanied Alien Children

The 1619 Project - The New York Times

The 1619 Project - The New York Times: American slavery began 400 years ago this month. This is referred to as the country’s original sin, but it is more than that: It is the country’s true origin.

The struggle against slavery and Jim Crow, by Black people for equality has done more to make American as democratic as it is than any other force - including the War of Independence.  And the contribution to our culture of Black people via music, and blood shed - similarly surpasses any other single force,  There is no America without African Americans.

Appallingly Donald Trump began his day by denouncing this important project of the New York Times as "fake news".  Quite the reverse - it is of great importance. - gwc

Ninth Circuit fractures over national injunction on asylum rule

https://lawprofessors.typepad.com/immigration/2019/08/ninth-circuit-panel-fractures-over-national-injunctions-with-trumps-latest-asylum-order.
The Trump administration in July issued a new "interim final rule" blocking asylum applications by alien refugees who passed through a "third country" but did not apply for asylum there.  The U.S. District Court in San Francisco enjoined the enforcement of the rule nationally, citing violations of the Administrative Procedure Act.  A panel of the 9th Circuit held the U.S.had not shown it was likely to succeed on the merits but on August 16, 2019 partially granted the U.S. motion for a stay - limiting the scope to the territory of the Circuit, and remanding to the District Court for factual development on the need for a national scope to the injunction.

East Bay Sanctuary: 9th Circuit Panel Narrows Injunction Against Trump Asylum Order

East Bay Sanctuary v. Barr - August 16, 2019 (geographically limiting preliminary injunction)
9th Circuit federal appeals court panel (2-1) denies stay sought by government but rejects nationwide injunction blocking Trump refusal to consider asylum applications by those who do passed through a third country, such as Mexico bit did not seek asylum there.  Dissenter would grant nationwide injunction.

William Barr is wrong about reform prosecutors. Here is what we stand for. - The Washington Post

William Barr is wrong about reform prosecutors. Here is what we stand for. - The Washington Post: It’s wrong to paint social-justice efforts as invitations to criminals.

In a speech this week to the Fraternal Order of Police, Attorney General William P. Barr lamented “the emergence in some of our large cities of district attorneys who style themselves as ‘social justice’ reformers, who spend their time undercutting the police, letting criminals off the hook and refusing to enforce the law.”

On the evening that one of us (Parisa Dehghani-Tafti) won the Democratic nomination for commonwealth’s attorney in Arlington, Del. Todd Gilbert, the Virginia House GOP leader, similarly tweeted: “These social justice prosecutors will inevitably get their citizens hurt, robbed, burglarized or much worse because of their approach to crime.”

Sounds awful, but don’t worry: There is a vast distance between what Barr and other opponents of progress in criminal justice say reform prosecutors believe and what we actually believe. Allow us to summarize.

FDA Unveils New Graphic Warnings For Cigarette Packs - Law360

FDA Unveils New Graphic Warnings For Cigarette Packs - Law360: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Thursday released a notice of proposed rule requiring graphic, full-color warning images on cigarette packs and tobacco advertisements.  Such  measures are mandated by the 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.

The D.C. Circuit in 2012 blocked graphic FDA warnings saying the FDA had no evidence that such advertising would reduce risks.  The tobacco companies' First Amendment claims were thus sustained.  A good (bad) example of the impact of Federalist Society vetted conservative judges.  As the scientific capacities of regulatory agencies are weakened such judges will find it easier to strike down health and safety regulations.

Hong Kong lawyer calls for lawyers to monitor abuses

https://medium.com/@davydwong/the-law-is-our-business-48921006a5e9

www.jeromecohen.net

Should unauthorized immigrants be able to practice law?

https://www.law360.com/articles/1186579/how-unauthorized-immigrants-are-fighting-to-practice-law

Trump's words are poison ~ Peter Wehner ~ The Atlantic

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/what-trump-has-done/595585/

In Nigeria's overcrowded prisons Catholic group offers free legal services ~ NCR online

https://www.ncronline.org/news/justice/nigerias-overcrowded-prisons-catholic-group-frees-inmates-through-free-legal-services

Lawyer’s Use of Internet Search Engine Keyword Advertising OK'd by New Jersey Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics

The New Jersey Supreme Court’s Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics (ACPE) has issued a binding Opinion 735 Lawyer’s Use of Internet Search Engine Keyword Advertising

The Committee- whose published opinions bind the bar – subject to discretionary appeal -  responded to an inquiry: “asking whether a lawyer may, consistent with the rules governing attorney ethics, purchase a Google Adword℠ or keyword that is a competitor lawyer’s name, in order to display the lawyer’s own law firm website in the search results when a person searches for the competitor lawyer by name. Internet search engine advertising programs permit businesses to purchase certain keywords or phrases; when a person searching on the internet uses those words in the search, the websites of purchasers of the keywords will appear in the search results, ordinarily presented as paid or “sponsored” ads.”  The ACPE found that acceptable but abjured any method that would surreptitiously direct an inquirer from the competitor’s website to the lawyer’s own site.

The issue has been addressed by Texas, Wisconsin, and North Carolina.  Like the first two the Court Committee explained that so long as the result of a network search yields a “sponsored” result The purchase of “keywords” is permissible:

The Committee concurs with the approach of Texas and Wisconsin and finds that purchasing keywords of a competitor lawyer’s name is not conduct that involves dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation. The websites of the keyword purchaser’s law firm and the competitor’s law firm will, presumably, both appear in the resulting search. The keyword purchaser’s website ordinarily will appear as a paid or “sponsored” website, while the competitor lawyer’s website will appear in the organic results (unless the competitor has purchased the same keyword, in which case it will also appear as a paid or “sponsored” website). The user can choose which website to select and the search engine ordinarily will mark the keywordpurchased website as paid or “sponsored.” This is not deceptive, fraudulent, or dishonest conduct within the meaning of Rule of Professional Conduct 8.4(c).

The Committee further finds that purchasing keywords of a competitor lawyer’s name is not conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice. The standard for conduct prejudicial to 1 In 2013, the Florida Bar’s Standing Committee on Advertising proposed an opinion that would have found it to be a deceptive and misleading advertising technique for a lawyer to purchase the name of another lawyer or law firm as a keyword in search engines so that the lawyer’s advertisement or sponsored website link appears when a person uses the other lawyer or law firm’s name as a search term. This proposed opinion, however, was rejected by the Board Review Committee on Professional Ethics and withdrawn by the Florida Bar Board of Governors.  

The ACPE  held "this Rule applies to “particularly egregious conduct,” or conduct that “flagrantly violat[es] . . . accepted professional norms.” In re Helmer, 237 N.J. 70, 83 (2019) (quoting In re Hinds, 90 N.J. 604, 632 (1982)). Purchasing keywords that are the name of a competitor lawyer is not egregious or flagrant conduct. Inquirer also asked whether a lawyer may pay Google to insert a hyperlink on a competitor lawyer’s name that diverts the user to the first lawyer’s website. The Committee finds that surreptitiously redirecting a user from the competitor’s website to the lawyer’s own website is purposeful conduct intended to deceive the searcher for the other lawyer’s website.

Former Vice President Joe Biden Remarks on Mass Shootings | C-SPAN.org

Former Vice President Joe Biden Remarks on Mass Shootings | C-SPAN.org: In the wake of the mass shootings in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton, Ohio, former Vice President Biden delivers a speech in Burlington, Iowa, in which he decries the damage being done by Donald Trump.

Elizabeth Warren: school teacher

https://www.thecut.com/2019/08/elizabeth-warren-teacher-presidential-candidate.html

Adam Serwer The most dangerous idea

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/08/reagan-nixon-trump-white-nationalism/595465/
Adam Serwer    An excellent historical survey of how white bias has harmed us and blinds us.

Does Church Teaching Change? | Commonweal Magazine

Does Church Teaching Change? | Commonweal Magazine: Vatican II marked a turning point, showing that appropriate change did not mean losing one’s identity but, rather, enhancing it or salvaging it from ossification.

his article is an excerpt from When Bishops Meet: An Essay Comparing Trent, Vatican I, and Vatican II, published this month by Harvard University Press. Copyright © 2019 by the president and fellows of Harvard College. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Although the documents of the early councils of the church recognized that bad customs and bad teaching had to be uprooted, which is a form of change, they most characteristically betray a sense of continuity with previous Christian teaching and practice. They called for continuation and implementation of ancient customs and ancient traditions—antiqua lex, antiqua traditio.

The documents of the medieval councils very much follow the same pattern. Although they in fact deal with the twists and turns in culture and institutional structures of their day, they lack a keen sense of discrepancy between past and present, and thus the councils never felt the necessity to address the discrepancy directly. Only with the Italian Renaissance of the fifteenth century and then the Reformation early in the next century did this ahistorical mindset receive its first serious challenges. The Council of Trent was, therefore, the first council that had to take those challenges into account.

 Th

Bernie Sanders is the Pied Piper of Healthcare Hamlin | xpostfactoid

Bernie Sanders is the Pied Piper of Healthcare Hamlin | xpostfactoid: Bernie Sanders is determined to keep Democratic healthcare debate in utopian territory  SUBSCRIBE!
by Andrew Sprung

Political battles can be semantic, but important. Such is the case with Democrats wrestling with the meaning of Medicare for all.

This week Kamala Harris came out with a healthcare reform plan that seems designed to resolve her past flip-flops as to whether private insurance should be phased out entirely. In brief, she proposed a 10-year path to "Medicare for all" that includes Medicare Advantage -- private plans reimburses by the federal government and conforming to strict coverage rules. Employers could also offer "Medicare Advantage" plans.  Lots of question marks, but the intent to preserve the public/private hybrid of Medicare as we know it is clear.

Bernie's camp lit into the plan, claiming in effect that the his bill's title (Medicare for All) is politically trademarked. "“Call it anything you want, but you can’t call this plan Medicare for All," Sanders' campaign manager Faiz Shakir said in a statement. Pramila Jayapal, lead sponsor of the House version, tweeted, "as lead sponsor of #MedicareForAll, I find it misleading when my fellow Democrats use the #M4A name to describe proposals that are NOT #MedicareForAll."

That's a straight trademark play: we own the hashtag, we own the name. The subtext is that the
One True Path to Medicare for All is Sanders and Jayapal's Big Rock Candy Mountain in which a single government entity provides 100% coverage of everything for everyone, funded entirely by over $3 trillion per year in new taxes ($1.5 trillion according to Bernie).
Charles Gaba sensibly pointed out that some Democrats "have interpreted Medicare-for-all to simply mean expanding the current program to more people while keeping the existing limitations on covered services, as well as premiums, deductibles and co-pays." And, more provocatively,

even if you do use the existing program structure as your baseline, Harris’s plan is actually closer to the current definition of Medicare, because it would retain Medicare Advantage. This is no small thing, as more than 22 million people — a third of all Medicare enrollees — have Medicare Advantage plans. In fact, David Bowen, who worked for the late senator Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.), said Harris’s plan “closely resembles” the Medicare-for-all bill that Kennedy and Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) introduced in 2006. 

This is manifestly true. It doesn't mean that Harris's plan is better than Bernie's bill, or that either has the remotest chance of being passed or enacted in the foreseeable future, but it's a simple statement of fact: Harris's endgame more closely resembles enrollment of all Americans in Medicare as it currently exists than does Sanders'.

So what? Well, Sanders is a Pied Piper, luring a large subset of the Democratic base into a cave from whence democracy may never emerge. That is, he is piping a utopian solution -- complete transformation of the $3.5 trillion/year healthcare system within four years, financed by a doubling of U.S. tax revenue -- that threatens to foreclose on any realistic plan to expand access and control costs -- and may sour a good number of progressives on any candidate who proposes something doable, as Bernie fervor did in 2016.

The Sanders camp's attack on the Sanders plan also perpetuates Democrats' rhetorical avoidance of the largest obstacle to affordable healthcare for all: provider payment rates. That's evident in the second half of Fakir's response to the Harris plan. Referring to the preservation of Medicare Advantage:

“Folding to the interests of the health insurance industry is both bad policy and bad politics.”

Possibly true, but...Harris's plan would pay MA plans less than the cost of insuring their members under the public plan. In their denunciations of healthcare profiteering in the U.S., Sanders, Warren, and almost every Democrat alway focus on insurers and pharma and leave out hospitals and doctors' trade groups -- which have joined in coalition with insurers and the pharmaceutical industry to oppose single payer and any public option that pays Medicare rates (or something like them) to providers. Insurers could in fact live with the latter; they are more or less neutral as to provider payment rates, i.e., playing and profiting very happily in the Medicare Advantage and managed Medicaid markets, where their payment rates to providers are effectively constrained by the per-member rates the government pays to them. (Whether they can be better policed than at present when government is their payer is another question.)

Two takeaways from that. First, BernieBrand Medicare for All proponents are as loathe as anyone to verbally assault healthcare providers -- notwithstanding that, as Axios' Caitlin Owens notes, "hospital care is the largest driver of U.S. health prices."  Second, plans that effectively establish one payment schedule for healthcare providers but preserve a role for private insurance, such as the Medicare for America bill, have the potential to split the healthcare industry coalition currently united against major reform.

More broadly, I seriously doubt that a Democratic president elected in 2021 with at best a bare Senate majority is going to have the bandwidth to do more immediately on the healthcare front than  a) end balance-billing, which effectively undermines everyone's insurance; b) patch the ACA, boosting subsidies, enlarging subsidy eligibility, and possibly adding a public option; and c) pass effective legislation to control drug prices. That would in fact constitute a ton of accomplishment. But you'd never know it while listening to Democratic candidates blather about single payer purity.

P.S. A reminder from the Kaiser Family Foundation that while Bernie & co. think they own the brand, they don't:

based on a poll fielded in early 2019, 55% of the public think that they and their families would be able to keep their current health insurance under Medicare-for-all; 54% think they would continue to pay health insurance premiums and 69% think they would continue to pay deductibles and copays for covered health services.

Balkinization: Can Congress Investigate Whether the President Has Conflicts of Interest, is Compromised by Russia, or Has Violated the Law?

Balkinization: Can Congress Investigate Whether the President Has Conflicts of Interest, is Compromised by Russia, or Has Violated the Law?: 

by Marty Lederman - Georgetown Law

July 29, 2019

The answer to the question in my title is obvious, isn't it?:  Of course Congress can do so.  According to Donald Trump and his (personal) attorneys, however, the correct answer is “no.”  And in a series of pending cases involving challenges to congressional efforts to obtain the President’s financial and tax records, they’re urging the courts to hold that Congress’s oversight and regulatory authorities simply don't extend to investigating the wrongdoing, foreign influence over, and possible conflicts of interest of, the President of the United States.

It’s hard to exaggerate just how profound a challenge this is to our longstanding system of checks and balances.  Yet these cases, and Trump's arguments in them, have mostly flown under the radar: They haven't received much attention in the press or among legal observers.  Perhaps that's as it should be:  After all, if the arguments are as extreme as I'm suggesting, maybe there's nothing much to worry about.  The Trump team is deadly serious, however; the Department of Justice might come to its aid; and it’s possible Trump’s lawyers will find a receptive audience among at least some Supreme Court Justices.  Therefore I thought it might be worthwhile to unpack those arguments a bit in this post.

Background on Congress's Oversight Authority and "Informing" Function

Brookings/Lawfare wrap up of Mueller testimony

https://www.lawfareblog.com/muellers-testimony-baton-passes-congress

Adam Schiff examines Robert Mueller

This is how it is done.

Here’s what Mueller said:

➡️ Russia interfered in our election to help Trump.

➡️ Russians made numerous contacts with the campaign.

➡️ Campaign welcomed their help.

➡️ No one reported these contacts or interference to FBI.

➡️ They lied to cover it up. pic.twitter.com/ePAjUkfMlo

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) July 24, 2019

Hawley

https://thinkprogress.org/a-u-s-senator-just-laid-out-a-blueprint-for-turning-the-united-states-into-a-theocracy/

Geort Cobway in go back where you came from

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/george-conway-trump-is-a-racist-president/2019/07/15/b13c0bd4-a740-11e9-9214-246e594de5d5_story.html

Lederman The worst part is not Trump

https://balkin.blogspot.com/2019/07/whats-newsworthy-or-important-about.html

Busing...Nicole Hannah Jones

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/12/opinion/sunday/it-was-never-about-busing.html

The Douglass Plan | Pete For America

The Douglass Plan | Pete For America: A Comprehensive Investment in the Empowerment of Black America
"After the accumulated weight of slavery and Jim Crow, America cannot simply replace centuries of racism with non-racist policy; it must intentionally mitigate the gaps that those centuries of policy created."  Pete Buttigieg


It's not just slavery. In 1949 our parents signed lease-purchase agreements in Levittown, NY that contained a promise to sell only to Caucasians.  Levittown is 98% white today.  Black and Latin people were denied the home equity that fueled our prosperity.  - gwc

p.s. - want to know more?  See Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law for the story of the white suburbs

His Kampf

 hours ago

His Kampf.

July 11, 2019

The White House will be hosting a very big and very important Social Media Summit today. Would I have become President without Social Media? Yes (probably)! At its conclusion, we will all go to the beautiful Rose Garden for a News Conference on the Census and Citizenship.

A big subject today at the White House Social Media Summit will be the tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practiced by certain companies. We will not let them get away with it much longer. The Fake News Media will also be there, but for a limited period..

....years, or maybe 10 or 14 (just kidding), they will quickly go out of business for lack of credibility, or approval, from the public. That’s why they will all be Endorsing me at some point, one way or the other. Could you imagine having Sleepy Joe Biden, or @AlfredENeuman99,..

...or a very nervous and skinny version of Pocahontas (1000/24th), as your President, rather than what you have now, so great looking and smart, a true Stable Genius! Sorry to say that even Social Media would be driven out of business along with, and finally, the Fake News Media!

Donald J. Trump‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump 3h3

15,555 replies7,879 retweets35,011 likes

Robert Mueller Missed the Crime: Trump’s Campaign Coordinated With Russia - Jed Shugerman

Robert Mueller Missed the Crime: Trump’s Campaign Coordinated With Russia: The special counsel will testify before Congress next week. He needs to answer for historic legal and factual errors.
by Jed Shugerman (Fordham Law)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/751nw1y617jt4lb/shugerman.Robert%20Mueller%20Missed%20the%20Crime_%20Trump%E2%80%99s%20Campaign%20Coordinated%20With%20Russia.pdf?dl=0

5th Circuit appears ready to strike down ACA.

https://thinkprogress.org/republican-judges-seem-determined-to-strike-down-obamacare-ad1f584ee8cb/

Nancy Pelosi is VERY smart ~ Kevin Drum

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/07/never-forget-that-nancy-pelosi-is-very-smart/

The busing myth. Sherilyn Ifill ~ LDF Slate

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/07/joe-biden-kamala-harris-busing-debate-2020-primary.html

China includes IP in its SAT

https://chinaipr.com/2019/07/04/public-awareness-the-gaokao-and-respect-for-ip/