Another Stomach-Turning Appointment

While we are all transfixed by the Impeachment process, and by Republicans’ bizarre antics during the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committee proceedings, their Senate counterparts have been busy defiling the federal bench and giving a middle finger to the rule of law by confirming judicial nominees who are demonstrably unfit.

Ed Brayton recently reported on the confirmation of one such specimen: a creationist named Lawrence Van Dyke. Van Dyke is yet another Trump nominee rated “unfit” by the American Bar Association–ratings to which the Administration has responded by discontinuing the practice of asking the ABA for its evaluation of potential nominees.

When you don’t get the answers you want, just stop asking the questions…

In addition to being considered unfit by his legal peers, however, Van Dyke is apparently a real piece of work:

After conducting 60 interviews, the ABA found that VanDyke has a reputation as “arrogant, lazy, an ideologue, and lacking in knowledge of the day-to-day practice including procedural rules.” Video of VanDyke lecturing, scolding, and interrupting judges during oral argument while serving as Nevada solicitor general lends credence to that assessment…

VanDyke has a long record as an anti-LGBTQ activist. He wrote in 2004 that marriage equality “will hurt families, and consequentially children and society.” As the solicitor general of Montana, he advocated for the state to join two briefs alleging that legal recognition of same-sex relationships would harm children. The first claimed that prohibiting same-sex marriage promoted “optimal childrearing” because same-sex couples “cannot provide” the optimal “family structure.” And the second asserted that states “may rationally conclude” that “it is better” for parents to have a “biological” connection to their children…

How would you like to be an LGBTQ litigant whose claim was being adjudicated by this gem? As Brayton writes,

Only Trump would have even considered appointing this ignorant dolt to the federal bench. And since the Senate Republicans would confirm a ham sandwich if Trump nominated one, we’re now stuck with this mushhead for a lifetime.

A regular reader of this blog recently sent me an email asking whether Bill Barr could be impeached. As I told her, he could be–and he should be. But so long as Mitch McConnell is in charge of the Senate, he won’t be.

The New York Bar Association recently issued a statement to the effect that, if Barr refuses to recuse himself from the Ukraine investigation, he should resign or, failing that, “be subject to sanctions, including possible removal, by Congress.” It is certainly foreseeable that other bar associations, responding to inappropriate behavior by one of Trump’s questionable judicial appointments, might also call on Congress to issue sanctions– although doing so would raise a very real possibility of judicial retaliation against lawyers with suits pending in that courtroom.

More to the point, calling out judicial misbehavior is useless if the Senate remains in the hands of the same no-integrity Republicans who confirmed these specimens in the first place.

As important as it is to defeat Donald Trump in November, it is every bit as important–actually, it is even more important–to remove Mitch McConnell (aka the most evil man in America) and the Republican majority that has enabled him.

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More Confirmation Of Civic Ignorance

One of the most obvious–and infuriating–characteristics of the Keystone Kop administration that Trump has cobbled together is its utter cluelessness about the government they have been installed to manage.

One of the most consistent complaints I hear from reasonably well-educated Americans is amazement that there is still a base that sees nothing wrong with an Education Secretary who clearly knows nothing about public education, a Secretary of State who consults his bible in order to formulate foreign policy, an EPA Administrator who says we need not worry about climate change for another fifty years…and so on and so on.

Not to mention a President who is clearly unacquainted with any part of the U.S. Constitution and who would be challenged to answer questions on a 6th grade civics test.

Much of the answer is, of course, Trump’s appeal to white nationalists who are willing to support anyone who hates the same people they do. But another, significant part of the explanation is the large numbers of uninformed voters, citizens who have no idea how their government is structured or how it is supposed to operate–who have no clue what the rules might be, and thus are unaware of the (multiple) times when those rules are being broken.

Yes–I am once again going to pontificate about the civic ignorance of far too many American citizens. (And yes, I know it isn’t just civic ignorance–a recent, widely reported poll revealed that 56% of Americans believe that Arabic numerals should not be taught in American schools…it’s hard not to cry.)

When it comes to my persistent distress over civic literacy, however,  I now have the American Bar Association to confirm my rant.

According to a new national poll conducted by the American Bar Association, less than half of the U.S. public knows that John Roberts is chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, while almost one-quarter think it is Ruth Bader Ginsburg and 16 percent believe it is Clarence Thomas.

The nationally representative poll of 1,000 members of the American public found troubling gaps in their knowledge of American history and government, as well as constitutional rights. One in 10 think the Declaration of Independence freed slaves in the Confederate states and almost 1 in 5 believe the first 10 amendments of the U.S. Constitution are called the Declaration of Independence instead of the Bill of Rights.

 ABA President Bob Carlson reacted to the survey:

Making sure that people living in America know their rights and responsibilities is too important to leave to chance,” said Carlson. “Moving forward, the ABA’s Standing Committee on Public Education will launch an educational program based on these survey results, to re-acquaint the public with the law and the Constitution.

“We cannot be content to sit on the sidelines as democracy plays out in front of us. For the sake of our country, we all need to get in the game,” he said.

So, what were the findings that shocked officials of the Bar Association? Let’s start with the “good” news:

The U.S. public expresses strong support for freedom of speech. Eighty-one percent of the public agrees that people should be able to publicly criticize the U.S. president or any other government leader and three-quarters agree that government should not be able to prevent news media from reporting on political protests. Fully 80 percent of the public agrees that individuals and organizations should have the right to request government records or information. And 88 percent correctly say that the government does not have the right to review what journalists write before it is published under the First Amendment.

Unfortunately, this strong endorsement of free speech is accompanied by public confusion over what the First Amendment actually protects.

Nearly 1 in 5 said freedom of the press is not protected by the First Amendment and 20 percent said the right of people to peaceably assemble does not fall under the First Amendment. More than half incorrectly think the First Amendment does not permit the burning the American flag in political protest under the First Amendment. The U.S. Supreme Court has struck down laws that forbid flag-burning, ruling first in 1989 that under the First Amendment a person cannot be penalized for such action.

There’s more, of course.

Seventy-eight percent of respondents, for example, knew that the term “the rule of law” means no one is above the law, but fully 15 percent believed  it means “the law is always right.”

The public also demonstrated a lack of basic knowledge about the rights and responsibilities accorded under the Constitution. Less than half know that only U.S. citizens can hold federal elective office, more than 1 in 5 believe only U.S. citizens are responsible for paying taxes and more than 10 percent believe only U.S. citizens are responsible for obeying the law. A little more than 1 in 6 think that due process of law is only available to U.S. citizens. And 30 percent believe that non-citizens do not have the right of freedom of speech.

To view the whole, sad survey, you can download it here.

As for me, I’m going to pour myself (another) drink.

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Going Courting

I know there’s a fierce competition for the title of “most harmful consequence” of the Trump Administration. There’s so much to choose from: sabotaging the Affordable Care Act, waging war on public education, reviving the racist and ineffective drug war,  ensuring that new environmental regulations aren’t informed by science (and older ones aren’t enforced), drastically diminishing America’s role in world affairs (and making us a laughingstock among sentient people)…well, choosing just one assault on good government seems impossible.

That said, I want to make the case for Trump’s corruption of the federal judiciary.

Assuming Democrats take back (at least) the House in 2018, and further assuming Trump’s presidency won’t last the full four years (an assumption I make, given Muller’s investigation and Trump’s petulance), we can call a halt to most of the administration’s March to Armageddon and begin to repair the considerable damage done by the Confederacy of Dunces who currently hold sway in the Cabinet and White House.

The Courts, however, are another matter. Federal Judges have lifetime appointments, and what is particularly unnerving is the rapidity with which Trump is placing truly horrific nominees in vacancies that a destructive and partisan Congress prevented the Obama Administration from filling.

Readers who follow the news–which is most of those who come to this site–have probably heard about one of Trump’s most recent nominees, who is not only an unqualified whack job, but ethically challenged; he “neglected” to mention that his wife is employed by the Administration as Chief of Staff of the office that selects judicial nominees. As El Jefe reports at the World’s Most Dangerous Beauty Shop, Inc.,

This nominee is a 36 year old young man, 3 years out of law school who has never argued a case in court.  Hell, he’s never even argued a motion in court.  He’s a blogger who writes highly partisan posts, likes to call the last Democratic candidate Hillary Rotten Clinton, and wrote a piece during the last administration about how Barack Obama was destroying the Constitution by introducing legislation for background checks after the Newtown massacre.  He was a speechwriter for Mitt Romney in 2012, and an aide to Luther Strange when he was appointed to be senator after Granny Sessions was named attorney general.

Who is this candidate, and what’s he nominated for?  Why he is Brett Talley, and he’s been nominated to a lifetime position as a federal judge in the Middle District of Alabama.  Oh, and it gets better; after coming to Washington with Luther Strange, he then took a job in the Justice Department in the office that does…wait for it…appointments to federal judgeships.  Can you spell inside track?  And one last little tidbit…he was unanimously rated by the American Bar Association as “not qualified” for this appointment.

Trump’s other nominees are equally horrific: Salon recently reported on some of them in an article titled “Trump’s Judicial nominees are so ludicrous, he may just be trolling us.”The ABA unanimously evaluated nominee Steven Grasz unqualified, explaining that Grasz’ “professional peers” reported that the nominee “puts his right-wing political views ahead of the law — and is “gratuitously rude” to boot.”

It takes a lot to be so noxious that the ABA will confer this kind of rating. For instance, Trump nominee Jeff Mateer, an appalling bully who says trans children are part of “Satan’s plan” and has suggested that same-sex marriage will lead to “people marrying their pets,” still got a “qualified” rating, though some members of the panel expressed reservations.

Two of Trump’s other district judge nominations, Charles Goodwin and Holly Lou Teeter, also received not-qualified ratings. Part of the issue here is that Trump has decided not to submit his picks to ABA review before a formal nomination, something that has only been done before by George W. Bush. It’s a symbol of the tribalism of the right, and conservatives’ increasing hostility to anyone perceived as not belonging to their tribe. Trump promised during the campaign that he would simply let the far-right Federalist Society pick his nominees for him, and that appears to be exactly what he’s doing. Just as conservatives have opted out of mainstream media, turning instead to Fox News and even more truth-hostile outlets like Breitbart, they’re turning away from mainstream professional organizations and other gatekeepers who seek to maintain a level of proficiency and competence that is seen as inherently threatening to the conservative agenda. If anything, Trump’s judges suggest that he’s thumbing his nose at the very idea of fitness and competence, just to show he can.

Of all his assaults on the rule of law, corrupting the federal judiciary by packing the courts with an assortment of (overwhelmingly white and male) partisan hacks is likely to do the most long-term damage.

Unfortunately, a Senate devoid of Republican statesmen is all too willing to confirm these deeply problematic appointments.

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