Fierce Resistance

I am going to dinner tonight in a deep-red town.  I am wearing my Obama Miss Me Yet? T-shirt. It's not much, especially if no one confronts me about it, but it's something.

Digby, channeling Lincoln in a column from the day after the election:

This is why the right-wingers are so angry. It's not enough for them to win. Those who opposed Trump must stop opposing him. We must agree that Muslims should be banned from entering the country, agree we should torture and kill suspected terrorists and their families, agree immigrants should be rounded up and deported, agree there should be guns in schools, agree women should be punished for having abortions and agree to all the rest of it. Until we stop resisting completely and declare that we are "avowedly with them," they will continue to believe that "all their troubles proceed from us."
That is not going to happen. Trump's forces may have won the election but they have not won the hearts and minds of the American people who didn't vote for him. And they won't. This administration will be met with fierce resistance from millions of people, from the moment Trump takes office until the day he leaves. There will be no appeasing him, and no easing of his followers' guilt for what many of them know in their hearts to be ugly and cruel impulses in consenting to this white nationalist program. It's all on them.
Lincoln had this to say to his fellow Unionists about how to proceed in a situation such as this:

Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government nor of dungeons to ourselves. 

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

Judge snatches thousands of Kentuckians from Bevin's Medicaid Cuts

The trump-taint-lickers on the Supreme Court will throw them back, of course, but for the moment we get to point and laugh at Gov. I Got Mine Fuck You's latest defeat.

From CNN:

A federal judge ruled Friday that Kentucky cannot require certain Medicaid recipients to get jobs or lose their benefits.

In a closely watched case, US District Court Judge James Boasberg voided the federal government's approval of Kentucky's request to implement work requirements and kicked the matter back to the Department of Health & Human Services for further review. 

 

"...The [Health] Secretary never adequately considered whether Kentucky HEALTH would in fact help the state furnish medical assistance to its citizens, a central objective of Medicaid," Boasberg wrote, referring to Kentucky's Medicaid overhaul. "This signal omission renders his determination arbitrary and capricious."

 

The decision blocks the state -- at least temporarily -- from moving forward with its plan to launch its Medicaid overhaul on July 1.

Remember, this work rule has nothing to do with making imaginary Medicaid lazy takers go to work.  All non-disabled, adult Medicaid recipients without care duties already work, mostly full-time.  What they don't do is have time to travel to a state office every month and fill out reams of paperwork in what is just another example of the Bevin-trump maladministrations' capricious cruelty. 

Just Do the Right Thing

There's a ridiculous and counter-productive "debate" going on right now about how Democrats should handle the nomination of a face-eating leopard to the Supreme Court.

Should Democrats fight like rabid ferrets in a losing cause in order to inspire Democratic voters for the November elections?

Or should they surrender in order to protect red-state Democratic Senators up for re-election?

Or maybe put up a token resistance that won't anger repug voters and drive them to the polls?

When the likely electoral consequences of such what-if game-playing are not clear and obvious, stop playing games.  Just. Do. The. Right. Thing.

The Right Thing is to loudly condemn any nominee who is not Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or Gov. Steve Beshear.

The Right Thing is to vote against the Orange Loser's nominee and discourage any Democratic Senator from doing otherwise.

The Right Thing is to speak clearly, loudly and often about the catastrophe the Orange Loser's nominee will bring down on this country.

Do the right thing, and let the chips fall where they may.

Wrong Kentuckian for Supreme Court

From the Herald:

A group opposed to President Donald Trump's judicial picks is taking aim at a Kentucky judge who has made the president's short list of potential Supreme Court justices.

Demand Justice has rolled out an ad that seeks to paint Amul Thapar, who was confirmed last year to a seat on the federal appeals bench, as a friend of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a "far right" judge who authored a court decision that would allow wealthy donors to influence elections.

Yeah, he's a typical Trump-taint-licking motherfucker.

There's one Kentucky lawyer with the kind of boots-on-the-ground political experience that a court full of appellate judges who have never had to solve real-life problems desperately needs: Governor Steven L. Beshear.

Because if we're serious about Resisting, if we're going to stand our ground and fight everything this fascist un-government tries, if we're going to rally the voters we need to take back the Congress - and the state legislature! - in November, then we have to spit right in their faces with what WE want.

And we want Steve Beshear on the Supreme Court.

Who from your state do you want on the Supreme Court? 

The Resistance: We Can Only Win the Hard Way

For 64 years, since Brown - or maybe 80 years, since Parrish, progressives have been on the ascendant.  Not without setbacks, but on a steady course of expanding the rights and freedoms of the Constitution to everyone - non-white, female, immigrant, poor, gay - left out of the 18th-century document.

And every one of those victories, those giant steps forward, came through the Supreme Court.  No matter what clusterfucks the repugs and conservatards created in the states, we progressives could always count on even the repug-led Courts to rescue us.

So over-confident were we that we didn't notice until far too late that the neo-confederates and the conservatives and the repugs were reacting to always losing at the Supreme Court by building up an electoral victory machine of unmatched power, even as we let our voters languish and drift away and give up.

Now the worm has truly turned, and we're the ones who have to start building an electoral machine to overcome the literally lethal rulings the Trump Court is going to issue over the next 50 years.

First, the polite version:

Josh Marshall:

Today’s High Court decision upholding the President’s anti-Muslim travel ban should focus us on a key, important fact: the federal judiciary is now heavily stocked not just with Republican appointees but conservative ideologues. This isn’t simply a commentary on this decision. It does include major exceptions – the Court’s jurisprudence on marriage, for instance. But we simply cannot rely on the Court’s as presently constituted to make rulings which are in line with the actual constitution or our national traditions. This is in significant part because of the corrupt appointment of Justice Gorsuch. But there’s no undoing that. We are on the cusp of what will likely be an even more dramatic example of rightwing judicial activism against labor rights. On issue after issue, change and justice or simple preservation will have to rely on building robust political movements. This is a point I plan and hope to see as a guiding premise of our upcoming voting rights and democracy series.

It’s not either/or. I spoke to a friend a few days ago who said flatly, the courts are a lost cause. It’s all about politics and elections. That’s wrong. It’s not a pure either/or. Courts and litigation remain still absolutely critical. We’ve seen that even in the last year. Critically important. But on many issues, in this period of testing, saving the country will come from robust political movements, ones which will have to succeed in the face of daunting challenges to the right to vote in order to eventually redeem those rights.

Now, the rude version:

Rude Pundit:

I've been saying this shit for nearly 15 years now. Democrats keep pretending there are rules. That didn't start with Trump. Democrats were playing badminton while Republicans were playing with flamethrowers during the Clinton administration. There are no rules except the ones Democrats keep making themselves follow. That's all so naive.

SNIP

We've been working on the fight in November for one or both houses of Congress. And that fight stands. But another fight is here now. Democrats have to be willing to fight dirty. Oh, sure, there are a lot of less dirty things that we can and should do. But these motherfuckers have gone too long without having their faces shoved in the mud.

Let's wallow in anger and shock for moment. Yet don't get caught up in the bullshit blame game. We have no time for childish things. I don't give a fuck about who voted for what in 2016 anymore, not in the election, not in the primaries. We either put that aside for this fight or we may as well just roll over and wait for the fucking. (By the way, that doesn't mean ignoring important election results this year or the utter failure of Democratic congressional leadership on this and other issues.)

Tomorrow, I'll get to how to fight dirty. Legal, yes, but fuckin' dirty, man. Getting chanted out of restaurants will look like a tiptoe through a meadow. Fuck chess. It's time for a barb wire cage match.

Supreme Court Just Protecting White Supremacy

What have the conservatives on the Supreme Court unleashed with their stripping Muslims and non-white voters of their civil and human rights?  The same thing that always happens when the government winks at white/christian supremacy: anti-minority violence.

Think Progress:

Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940) should have been an easy case.

Unlike many modern religious liberty cases, where religious conservatives demand the power to limit the rights of others, Gobitis involved two children who were expelled from a public school for refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance. The two youths were Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they believed that “such a gesture of respect for the flag was forbidden by command of Scripture.”

As a matter of law, the Gobitis children should have prevailed. Generally, the First Amendment does not permit the government to force individuals to speak against their will. “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation,” the Supreme Court later held in a similar case, “it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.”

And yet, Gobitis now stands as the paradigmatic example of how the Supreme Court can turn its back on a vulnerable group — and unleash the wolves of authoritarianism in the process.

A society committed to “ultimate values of civilization,” Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote, “may, in self-protection, utilize the educational process for inculcating those almost unconscious feelings which bind men together in a comprehending loyalty, whatever may be their lesser differences and difficulties.”

“National unity,” Frankfurter added, “is the basis of national security.”

The Gobitis decision was not a sweeping denial of the shared humanity of Jehovah’s Witnesses. It did not strip Witnesses of all their rights to seek protection from the law, or declare them to be enemies of American society. Yet it may as well have done so, because the public reaction to the decision was swift and harsh.

Gobitis came down in June of 1940. By the next September, according to the ACLU, more than a thousand Jehovah’s Witnesses were assaulted in 236 different incidents nationwide.

Solicitor General Francis Biddle warned that “self-constituted bands of mob patrioteers are roaming about the country, setting upon these people, beating them, driving them out of their homes.”

A lawyer who belonged to the faith lamented that hundreds of his fellow Witnesses were “beaten, kidnapped, tarred and feathered, throttled in castor oil, tied together an chased through the streets, castrated, maimed, hanged, shot, and otherwise consigned to mayhem.”

In one of these incidents, which is recounted in historian Shawn Francis Peters’ book Judging Jehovah’s Witnesses: Religious Persecution and the Dawn of the Rights Revolution, Witnesses in a small Pennsylvania town were harassed, arrested on frivolous charges, set upon by mobs of fifty men or more, beaten, kicked, and dragged through the streets, then held and questioned by police for hours before they could seek medical treatment for their injuries.

In another incident, which took place just days after the Gobitis decision, vigilantes burned a Jehovah’s Witnesses’ place of worship in Maine, then rioted for days.

SNIP

One again, in other words, a Supreme Court decision making a relatively narrow incursion on minority rights fostered a much larger attack on those rights. State lawmakers’ reaction to Crawford was neither as violent as the aftermath of Gobitis and Brown II nor as transparently lawless. But Crawford may provide the biggest warning of all about what could happen in the immediate aftermath of the Muslim Ban decision.

The story of Gobitis was a story of authoritarian elements within the general populace viewing a Supreme Court decision as a license to lash out at a disfavored minority group. The story of Crawford, by contrast, is the story of anti-democratic elements who wield the official power of the government deciding to push the envelope after the Supreme Court signaled that they were likely to get away with it.

Trump v. Hawaii is a case about an authoritarian, anti-democratic president. And it is a case about a racist, who does not feel bound by the Constitution, and who likes to lash out at vulnerable immigrants.

There’s no telling what he may do if the Supreme Court emboldens him further.

President Boko Haram

From Noah at Down with Tyranny:

Bevin: Guns Don't Kill Students; Cell Phones Kill Students

Bevin can't quit weaponize the stooopit the way the Orange Menace can, but he sure is doing his damndest.

From the Herald:

Gov. Matt Bevin on Tuesday urged representatives of the Federal Commission on School Safety to address the impact of mobile devices in the hands of young people who might also be diagnosed with mental problems and prescribed mind-altering drugs.

“We’ve got devices that are contributing significantly to a lack of sleep, lack of self worth, lack of self-esteem…. on top of that we have increasing numbers of kids on psychotropic drugs and we are not being intentional or thoughtful about the impact of those mind altering drugs…” Bevin said.

Sooooo, flooding communities with guns but taking away cell phones will stop school shootings?

Right. Got it.

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article213790309.html#storylink=cpy

Meet Your New ScapeGoat Class of Deportees: The Muslims!

This is the Constitution stating flat-out: No discrimination of any kind on religious grounds EVER. And the Supreme Court responding: Yeah, fuck religious freedom: discriminate all you want as long as it's against some brown ragheads.

Zandar, writing before today's decision:

Once again, this is all part of a plan to create a system where the government can rapidly detain and deport large numbers of people quickly.  It's only a matter of time of course before this mass deportation infrastructure, without due process, is used not just on those crossing the border now, but used on those already here.

Once you establish that those who are declared non-citizens by the government are not subject to due process, the government has the ability to strip citizenship -- and the legal rights that citizenship guarantees -- from anyone it chooses.  And once you have established that, that non-citizens have no legal rights, well, you can do pretty much anything to them.

I cannot overstate the dangers here.

History tells us exactly what authoritarian governments do in situations like this. 

And the ACLU, with reasons not to despair, but to fight:

It's a dark day in American history. The Supreme Court just allowed the Muslim ban to continue.

In a 5-4 ruling, justices sided with this cornerstone of Trump's discriminatory immigration policy. The latest version of the ban limits entry to the United States from citizens of five Muslim-majority countries in addition to a miniscule number of North Koreans and Venezuelans.

Let's be clear: This is a loss. But this isn't the end of the fight – we're committed to taking down this discriminatory ban on every front – in Congress, in the courts, and on the streets.

Here's what you can do to help RIGHT NOW:

• Take to the streets to shout NO MUSLIM BAN EVER and show your commitment to fighting back: Visit peoplepower.org to join a rally in your community today.
• Congress can end Trump's Muslim ban – but they won't do it unless we force them to: Sign the petition and demand action.
• Stand together: Attend a community forum bringing together Muslim communities and allies.
• Make it known that we're still fighting by posting this #NoMuslimBanEver graphic on Twitter and Facebook.

This isn't the first time the Supreme Court has gotten it wrong. In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled in Korematsu v. United States to allow the government to rip Japanese people out of their homes and imprison them based on false claims of national security. It's one of the most shameful chapters of U.S. history – and now the Muslim ban decision joins it. History will judge today's decision harshly.

But I have hope. It's ultimately the people of this country who'll determine its character and future. In the first 24 hours of the Muslim ban, two of the defining themes of the Trump presidency emerged: Trump's determination to stamp anti-Muslim bigotry into national policy, and the key role of the courts and the public in stopping him. Today, the court failed. Now the public is needed more than ever.

I'm confident that our country will ultimately defeat the Muslim ban – as well as Trump's other hateful policies, like tearing children away from their parents at the border, hunting travelers on Greyhound buses, and turning away asylum seekers fleeing domestic violence. But we can't let up the fight – our rights depend on making our voices heard.

Thanks for keeping up the fight,



Omar Jadwat
Director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project

 

Southern Towns Try Just Killing Off All the Browns

So the places that committed treason in defense of slavery and are still proud of it are now denying basic human rights to non-whites.  Big surprise.

Think Progress:

Sixteen localities in six southern states have been restricting access to basic utility services, including gas, water, and electricity, according to nonprofit advocacy organization Project South, which sent letters to the cities Monday demanding an end to discriminatory practices like requiring U.S.-issued photo identification and social security numbers in order to receive public services.

Project South asserted that Latinx immigrants in various cities in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas, who cannot provide social security numbers and IDs have been overwhelmingly impacted by the restrictions, which have left countless residents without the basic utilities needed to live.

Not because they're not paying their bills.  Just because they are not White, and don't give me that "illegal immigrant" bullshit.  Show me Just. One. public official who is full-blooded Native American. 'Cause everybody who is NOT full-blooded Native American is a fucking immigrant.

The practice of requiring photo ID and social security numbers is not mandated by local or state law. It also violates federal laws, including the Privacy Act of 1974, which forbids the denial of government services on the basis of a person’s refusal to share their social security number, as well as the Fair Housing Act, which prohibits policies that discriminate on the basis of a number of factors, including race.

“Access to water and utilities is a human right, It’s a fundamental human right,” Shahshahani added, pointing to the fact that the United Nations Human Rights Council and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognize access to basic utilities as linked to the right to life and human dignity. “Every human being should have access to water regardless of their immigration background.”

Vice-President ISIS

From Noah at Down With Tyranny:

 

Or really just his interpretation of religious law.  His interpretation of religious law from the bloodiest parts of the Old Testament.

Of Course They're Raping the 4-Year-Old Girls; That's the Point

 It's a terror tactic and a war crime, and it's exactly what repugs want.

 

Down with Tyranny:

UPDATE: Who's Taking Care Of The Kidnapped Kids?

Guys like Deputy Sheriff Jose Nunez, a 10-year veteran of the Bexar County Sheriff's Department. According to the Dallas Morning News Nunez (not Devin Nunes this time) sexually assaulted a 4-year-old girl and threatened the victim's mother into staying quiet about the assaults.

Sheriff Javier Salazar said the girl had been assaulted multiple times over the course of several months. The mother is an undocumented immigrants and Nunez said she'd be deported if she told anyone.

Let's Blow Up Some Lies

And remember, these are lies that are literally killing people while also inuring us to the disappearance of the rule of law, and thus Democracy.

Actually, "lie" is the wrong word.  I use it because there is no word that accurately and adequately describes what they are doing.

Digby:

This Slate piece by Dahlia Lithwick and Margo Schlanger rounds up some of the ways you can contribute volunteer or otherwise help:

First, the policy: It helps to be incredibly clear on what the law is, and what has and has not changed. When Donald Trump and Sarah Huckabee Sanders say that the policy of separating children from their parents upon entry is a law passed by Democrats that Democrats will not fix, they are lying.

There are two different policies in play, and both are new.

First is the new policy that any migrant family entering the U.S. without a border inspection will be prosecuted for this minor misdemeanor. The parents get incarcerated and that leaves children to be warehoused. The parents then typically plead guilty to the misdemeanor and are given a sentence of the few days they served waiting for trial. But then when the parents try to reunite with their children, they are given the runaround—and possibly even deported, alone. The children are left in HHS custody, often without family.

Second is a new and apparently unwritten policy that even when the family presents themselves at a border-entry location, seeking asylum—that is, even when the family is complying in all respects with immigration law—the government is snatching the children away from their parents. Here, the government’s excuse seems to be that they want to keep the parents in jaillike immigration detention for a long time, while their asylum cases are adjudicated. The long-standing civil rights case known as Flores dictates that they aren’t allowed to keep kids in that kind of detention, so the Trump administration says they have to break up the families. They do not have to break up families—it is the government’s new choice to jail people with credible asylum claims who haven’t violated any laws that is leading to the heartbreaking separations you’ve been reading about.

So that is what is happening. Whether or not that is what the Bible demands is the subject of a different column. Good explainers on what is and is not legal detention of immigrants and asylum-seekers can also be found here and here and here.

Next: Which groups to support.

This is not being done against the will of Trump voters.  This is what they were promised and what they demanded.  62 million Deplorables are responsible for this.  And proud of it.

Campaign of Terror

Digby:

But that isn't the only horror being inflicted on immigrants in this country.Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions and the rest of the deplorable GOP are terrorizing the Latino community in order to rid this nation of --- Latinos. They are doing everything in their power to scare them into taking their families and leaving the country by going after mothers and babies, teen-agers brought by their parents and even legal residents who had a brush with the law decades ago.. I suspect they would prefer that Hispanic Americans follow:

SNIP

You can't beat the irony of ICE deporting someone who committed domestic violence 20 years ago in the same week that the ttorney general unilaterally ruled that women cannot seek asylum in the country if they are fleeing domestic violence. 

This is a campaign of terror being waged by the government against a specific community in the United States. There's no other way to describe it.

The Resistance: No More Being Nice

Zandar:

So no, the notion that Republicans will turn on Trump even should Mueller or the Senate present evidence of conspiracy or worse is ludicrous.  They will defend Trump even at the cost of their own livelihoods.  The Republican party is nothing more than the racist, misogynist, bigoted cult of personality that worships Trump, and so are all of his voters.

I'm tired of being nice to them.  It's only made them love Trump more.

It's time to call these assholes out this November and throw them out of power for good.  Get registered, get ready, get friends, get to the polls.  At every turn President Obama's open hand was met by fist after fist.

Now it's time to fight.

Deport All the White Immigrants First. That's All Y'All, Motherfuckers

And start with the ones whose pasty ancestors got here the earliest.

 

Charlie Pierce:

This is now clearly a war on all immigration, legal and otherwise. The history of this country would be immeasurably different—and immeasurably worse—if you eliminated from it all those people who came here fleeing violence and oppression. In fact, if you did that, you wouldn’t have a country here at all. Maybe we don’t any more.

Where Are We Going and Why Are We In This Handbasket?

Digby:

Addie Stan clarifies the historical moment for us by throwing a glass of ice cold water in our faces and telling us to wake the hell up:

SNIP

She concludes:

We’re in the grips of a shift in national identity, one in which democracy and adherence to human rights as stated national values (however flawed in their actual execution) are giving way to an acceptance of authoritarian rule. And we’re allowing our country to align itself against the democracies of the world at the hands of a president who is looking more and more every day like a traitor. A president who is helping to fuel the rise of the authoritarian right in Europe.

Just days after Trump walked away from the G-7 consensus statement with a slam at the prime minister of Canada, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it was planning to “strengthen the northern border.”

And that announcement, you could say, “barely registered.”

 Don't despair.  Fight.

No, Seriously, Don't Fuck With Rev. Barber

He brought down another repug governor who thought he could defy the people without consequence.  Bevin should surrender now before it gets worse.

Just to be clear, no previous Kentucky Governor has ever barred Kentuckians and their out-of-state guests from the Capitol.  That's because no previous Kentucky Governor, even the worst ones, threw temper tantrums of unconstitutional arrogance when anyone dared to disagree with them.

From the Herald:

A national leader of the Poor People's Campaign told a group of anti-poverty protesters Wednesday that Kentucky's policy of limiting the group's access to the state Capitol must be challenged in court.

The Rev. William J. Barber, national co-chairman of the campaign, spoke outside the Capitol during his second trip to Frankfort this month to meet with protesters. He said a Kentucky State Police policy of allowing only two members of the group into the statehouse at a time is "an old tactic from civil rights days" and courts in his home state of North Carolina have ruled its Capitol Rotunda is a public place for protesters.

"We believe the same thing will happen here when it is tested under the law," said Barber. "If you let this stand, what is next?"

Pam McMichael, team coordinator for the Kentucky campaign, said the group is exploring "the appropriate legal steps to vindicate our group's right and those of all Kentuckians."

State police recently implemented the two-at-a-time policy when several members of the Poor People's Campaign blocked traffic near the Capitol and entered restricted property around the Governor's Mansion, according to State Police Commissioner Richard W. Sanders. He said the policy would not apply to demonstrators who follow all laws and regulations.

Those regulations include obtaining a state permit to assemble inside the Capitol.

Barber said the Kentucky Constitution says nothing about needing a permit to gather inside the Capitol. He said that policy was "a smokescreen" that Gov. Matt Bevin's administration "has fed to the media."

Gov. I Got Mine Fuck You Will Strip Health Care from 500,000 Kentuckians

How DARE those disabled poors not show proper gratitude to King Matt for forcing them to work in the salt mines for no pay?  BURN THEM!

TPM:

Attorneys for Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) will tell a federal court this Friday that that the governor plans to take his ball and go home if he can’t get his way on Medicaid work requirements, premiums, and other restrictions. Bevin, who campaigned on ending the Medicaid expansion but backed down from that threat once elected, is now arguing that he will scrap the state’s Medicaid expansion if the controversial new rules are struck down by federal courts.

Kentucky was the first state in the nation to win permission from the Trump administration to impose the new Medicaid rules, which are expected to throw nearly 100,000 Kentuckians off the program. With at least a dozen other states looking to adopt their own Medicaid work requirements, the outcome of the case could determine the future of the program not only in Kentucky but across the country.

Kentucky and the Trump administration are jointly fighting a lawsuit from a dozen-plus Kentucky residents who fear the work requirements and other hurdles will strip them of their Medicaid coverage. The plaintiffs are arguing, among other points, that the new rules do not further Congress’ original intent for Medicaid — to provide affordable health care to low-income people.

Kentucky’s waiver will allow the state, to deny coverage to any non-disabled adult who cannot prove they are working at least 20 hours per week. The state also will be able to charge low-income Medicaid recipients health care premiums, eliminate full coverage of dental care, vision services, and over-the-counter medications for many adults, end retroactive Medicaid coverage, and implement a six-month lockout period for people who fail to re-enroll in time or report a change in income.

SNIP

Cuello told TPM that their attorneys also plan to implore the judge not to endorse Bevin’s hostage-taking tactic, arguing that doing so would be “rewarding bad threats.”

“If you were to allow Kentucky to get away with this argument, you’d be saying that anytime someone can come up with a threat worse than the harm the plaintiff is identifying, they can strip away someone’s standing,” he explained. “That sends the message that any government official could avoid lawsuits by saying, ‘If you grant this challenge, we’ll do this other thing that’s even worse.'”

Isn't there a word for that kind of tactic? 

"Piss on Your Peace" *

The immigration war crimes are worse than we know, and have gone far beyond compromise.

 

The Rude Pundit:

Politicians and pundits and others keep saying things like "This is not who we are." Except it is who we are. In this time. In this administration. It is who we are until we decide we're not this. But it is where we've been heading since 9/11 and the passage of the Patriot Act and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, as well as ICE. We are the people who have government officials tell parents that their kids are just going to bathe as they take the children away. We are the people who drive some of those parents, who have endured several kinds of hell to get here, to despair and suicide. We are the people who treat those huddled masses yearning to be free with contempt and cruelty. We are the people who will tell someone who was enslaved that she must go back to the land of her captors, even if she's lived here for nearly three decades.

We are this. And we will continue to be this unless those of us who don't believe this is who we should be can change it. If we don't, then we truly know who we've always been. It will get worse because it always gets worse until we have the will to make it better.

Paul Campos at LGM:

Assuming there are elections in November 2020, and a Democrat wins, I don’t want to hear anything about reconciliation and “healing.” I’d rather hear about Nuremberg.

*Timothy Dalton as King Phillip to Peter O'Toole as King Henry II in "The Lion in Winter."

Bevin Bars Protesters From Kentucky Capitol

In blatant violation of the Kentucky and U.S. Constitutions, of course.  That's not his fucking house.  It's OURS.  And we can get in any time we fucking want and stay as long as we fucking want.  This is outrageous.

 

Bruce Schreiner at the AP:

Anti-poverty activists were denied group access into Kentucky's Capitol on Monday following an outdoor rally where the nation's first work requirements for Medicaid were denounced.

About 400 people demonstrated in front of the statehouse, and many then marched to the front doors of the Capitol in hopes of entering. They were greeted by uniformed officers, and the group's leader was told only two demonstrators could enter at a time. When those two exited, another two would be allowed inside, rally members were told.

"So you're going to literally block us from our constitutional right?" asked the Rev. William Barber, co-chairman of the Poor People's Campaign, which helped organize the rally.

"Two at a time, sir," an officer replied.

That would be the Kentucky people's house.  The one we pay for. The one that is open to every single fucking one of us, no matter what nasty things we say about Gov. I Got Mine Fuck You.

A peaceful standoff ensued. The group chanted "let us in," prayed and sang a spiritual before moving from the front entrance. There were no arrests, and the activists vowed to return for another protest.

"That's not America," Barber said. "People who want health care, who are dying because they don't have it ... have a right to redress their government. This is a public building."

Once upon a time, quite recently, another Southern Governor got crossways with Rev. Barber, and lost re-election because of it.  Kentucky teachers and state employees are already guaranteeing Bevin's defeat next year, but politicians seeking higher office really should avoid annoying Barber.

If babby jeebus Tells You to Do It, It's Not a Crime

How long before some freakazoid blows up a Planned Parenthood clinic, killing a dozen people, and skates because "religious freedom?"

How long before the freakazoids demand religious instruction in every public school in the country?  How long before they demand laws banning homosexuality and birth control as well as abortion? And requiring women to get their husband's permission to work outside the home?  And denying jobs, housing and education to single women?

There is literally no limit to the demands freakazoids - fundamentalist protestant christian freakaoids lighter than a paper bag only, of course - can make under this ruling.

How about rounding up every non-white non-freakazoid and interning them at Guantanamo, because of the threat they pose to the religious liberty of fundie freakazoids?

I am not fucking kidding.  This is olly-olly-oxen-free for every freakazoid asshole in the country.

The new American Theocracy is going to make the Taliban look like amateurs.

The Supreme Court is setting aside a Colorado court ruling against a baker who wouldn’t make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. But the court is not deciding the big issue in the case, whether a business can refuse to serve gay and lesbian people.

The justices’ limited ruling Monday turns on what the court described as anti-religious bias on the Colorado Civil Rights Commission when it ruled against baker Jack Phillips. The justices voted 7-2 that the Colorado Civil Rights Commission violated Phillips’ rights under the First Amendment.

Justice Anthony Kennedy says in his majority opinion that the issue “must await further elaboration.” Appeals in similar cases are pending, including one at the Supreme Court from a florist who didn’t want to provide flowers for a same-sex wedding.

Not the Anthem, Not the Flag: This is About Labor Rights

And of course racism.  If professional hockey players were kneeling, the Orange Loser would give them all the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Dave Zirin at The Nation:

In what has to rank among the worst ideas in the history of the National Football League—alongside decisions to cover up concussion research and ignore the issue of violence against women—NFL owners have come up with a new proposal to deal with players who protest police violence and racial inequity during the National Anthem. According to Sports Illustratedfootball scribe Albert Breer, “Per sources, one anthem idea being discussed: Leaving it up to home team on whether teams come out for the anthem; if teams do come out for the anthem, potential that teams could be assessed 15-yard penalties for kneeling.”

This idea is so terrible that one wonders if it was leaked by another owner as a way of preemptively humiliating whoever proposed it from ever uttering the notion again. One can only imagine an official saying, “Exercising of constitutional rights. On the kicking team. Fifteen-yard penalty. First down.” That the idea is almost The Onion–worthy is not the only reason why penalizing players for protest is a nonstarter. NFL players have had the space to protest during the anthem not out of the noblesse oblige of ownership but because it is enshrined in the Collective Bargaining Agreement with the union.

SNIP

The idea that some owners would even propose this without speaking to the union is a sign of how drastically out of touch this group of aged billionaires is from the players in their league.

Charlie Pierce has another theory:

Or maybe none of this is about the anthem, but about fans being reminded—for less than two minutes—about how maybe the country isn't all great before they get to watch The Big Game. Maybe it has something to do with the complexion of most of those protesting, and the fact they've made many millions of dollars more than most of those watching will in their lifetimes—and they're still not "grateful." And maybe the owners are worried that embracing the social consciousness of their employees might cost them some money. So, after all, would closing the concession stands. The most important freedom in America is the free flow of dollar bills.

Scary Lies to Keep You Afraid

This is really the kind of stupid shit that eight-year-olds tell their four-year-old siblings to keep them terrified and biddable.  We all grew out of it.  Except the toddler-in-chief and his repug enablers.

Nancy LeTourneau at Political Animal:

So here’s what Trump doesn’t want you to know: rich white people were fine with bringing in immigrants from a country whose civil war was financed by the United States because they wanted “the help” to clean their toilets and tend their gardens. That was cool because the brown folks were cordoned off in areas with struggling schools and high crime rates.

Now Trump needs an issue to rile up his base and get them out to the polls in November. He wants them to equate undocumented immigrants with MS-13 gang members and be very, very afraid. Here are some numbers to keep in mind:

1. There are roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S.
2. According to the FBI, there are 8,000-10,000 MS-13 gang members in the country, but not all of them are undocumented.
3. Even if all MS-13 gang members were undocumented, they would represent less that .09 percent of undocumented immigrants in the country.

The truth is that I’m not actually an MS-13 lover. I support the efforts of law enforcement to hold those who have committed crimes accountable. But I also know a scam when I see one—especially when it has its roots in racism and fascism. Calling MS-13 gang members “animals” is the latest way that Trump is attempting to fear-monger support for his administration and for Republican candidates. It is an incredibly dangerous ploy that is aimed at turning this country into something many of us wouldn’t recognize as a democracy. So if standing up against that threat makes me an MS-13 lover in the minds of fascists, I say, “bring it on!”

School "Security" Overkill: "Diverse" Seniors Barred From Own Graduation

This isn't security; this is authoritarian racist assholes finding a new way to fuck over non-whites.

Karla Ward at the Herald:

Tanya Aguon sobbed in a live video on Facebook in which she said that her son was not permitted to walk across the stage at Bryan Station High School's graduation because he was wearing jeans and tennis shoes beneath his gown. 

Other grads, she said, were not allowed in because they were late to the ceremony, which was scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m. at Rupp Arena.

The video shows several youths in green caps and gowns apparently being turned away by security guards at the door. Uniformed police officers are also shown talking with students outside Rupp.

More than 40 years ago at my high school graduation in our un-air-conditioned gym, most of us wore shorts, tank tops and flip-flops under our gowns.

Half the kids arrived after the speeches but just in time to walk across the stage.

They sky did not fall. 

This Nazi shit at schools has to stop.

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article212394479.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/education/article212394479.html#storylink=cpy