That’s how she is sucked (and suckered) in

We as a country are in a bad place when Joan McCarter of Daily Kos can title a post “TODAY in SCOTUS corruption news.” This is corruption not previously reported. I’ll briefly describe the points. Chief Justice Roberts’ wife Jane stepped away from her law career and became a player in a company doing legal recruiting for the big law firms – the firms that do business before her husband’s court. From 2007-2014 she earned a salary, which hubby reported, and also earned $10.3 million in commissions, for which he didn’t report the specifics. He also didn’t recuse himself when those law firms came before his court. Then there’s the Scalia Law School at George Mason University – yup, name for late Justice Antonin Scalia – funded by Leonard Leo, whose work got the conservatives onto the court. Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh were given “teaching” positions at the school for not much work in places like Italy and a “salary” just under the cap for outside work. And their teaching colleagues keep passing them briefs saying did you see this? Back on actual legal cases, the Supremes agreed to hear a case involving who decides the interpretation of an ambiguous law. Precedent, set back in 1984, says the court should defer to the government’s interpretation. This new case has the potential of the Supremes saying we get to decide (well, we who have been thoroughly corrupted by big business). McCarter also reported the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Supreme Court ethics. Roberts declined an invitation to appear, saying his absence was important to preserve judicial independence. Committee Chair Dick Durban said that justices have testified 92 times since 1960 and doing so is part of government’s checks and balances. The hearing was witnesses testifying about the importance of ethics and that Congress does have the right to impose them and Republicans claiming the Court is just fine and that Thomas’ scandals are because Democrats don’t like conservative black people. McCarter concluded:

No Republicans were swayed by arguments that there’s a big ethics problem with Supreme Court conservatives, and that they should possibly consider getting out ahead of it to save the institution and their own reputations. Thus far, just Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has indicated that maybe there’s an issue with the court’s ethics that Congress should address. That’s not going to fly with the rest of the Republicans. They like the fact that they have a set of Supreme Court justices so willing to make their dark money donors happy.

An Associated Press story posted on Kos reports that Republicans are using state capitol protests, like the one involving Zooey Zephyr in Montana to redefine the word “insurrection.” Zephyr had held up her microphone to better capture supporters in the gallery chanting “Let her speak!” Her Republican colleagues censured her for “encouraging an insurrection.” That’s the third time claim in five weeks, and at least four times this year plus several times over the last two years, that disruptive but nonviolent protests were branded as insurrections. The article lists those incidents. From the story: “Legal experts say the term insurrection has a specific meaning — a violent uprising that targets government authority.” The Republican efforts to redefine the term has a strategic purpose: Repeated incorrect use makes it lose its meaning and power. It demonizes Democrats as violent. And it declares what nasty guy supporters are accused of doing during the Capitol Attack two years ago are exaggerated. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported the ACLU of Montana filed a lawsuit on behalf of Zephyr calling the Legislature’s banning of her from attending legislative sessions is unconstitutional. Ben tweeted a thread explaining how linguistics intersects with conservative media.

There are words called determiners. Basically, they introduce a topic. If I say “my kitten is on the table again” you know that 1) I have a kitten, 2) there is a table, 3) the relative positions of a and b and 4) this is not the first time this happened. ... So what these hosts are doing to sell Aunt Janice on their fictional world? In part, deceptive use of determiners. “The riots of 2020” indicates a) riots that b) happened in 2020. In the real world we say “Black Lives Matter protests”, because that’s actually what happened. So now riots have been created from thin air with determiners. Riots aren’t new like aliens are. 2020 was a year that happened in this universe. We’re also accessing shared common knowledge of summer 2020, which was legitimately unsettled.

So look at Sean Hannity’s latest gem, as tweeted by Ben:

“We expect by the end of this year, because Joe Biden’s open border policies, that seven and a half billion illegal immigrants will have entered the country by then. Now, forget about all the people that we caught that were on the terror watch list, how many do you think we’re not caught?”

We’ll just skip over the part that there are only eight billion people in the whole world, so no, seven and a half billion didn’t cross the border. Probably not even seven and a half million.

Biden doesn’t need introduced, we have common knowledge. His alleged open border policies do, they’re new. So does 7.5b illegal immigrants. 7.5b is a big number! Illegal stuff is bad and scary! It’s even scarier if you’ve been primed to believe that other races are plotting to overwhelm the country with its “virtuous white citizenry.” Keep in mind that the “the” in “the great replacement” is, in itself, a determiner. That’s how this stuff gets real, y’all. So we have a mix of real things (Joe Biden, the terror watch list - things that are open to interpretation - open border policies - and things that just aren’t real - 7.5b illegal immigrants.

Add into that Aunt Janice willing to believe racist statements. And that’s how she is “sucked (and suckered) in.” Hunter of Kos posted highlights of Biden’s turn at the microphone at the White House Correspondents Dinner last Saturday. When he wants to, he can be a decent comedian. I watched the whole segment here. It starts with Biden calling for release of dozens of wrongfully detained people, which was 8 of 21 minutes. Examples of his jokes: “I believe in the First Amendment, not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it.” “I have a lot of DeSantis jokes ready. But Mickey Mouse got there first.” Even Dark Brandon showed up. Biden was followed by comedian Roy Wood Jr. I found his 25 minute segment online and it was pretty good! He started by saying it looked like Biden had left some classified documents on the podium. But don’t worry, said Wood, he’ll take care of them. Much of his routine was on the theme everybody’s got scandals. Even Kamala Harris, though her scandal is no matter what she does a man will get the credit. Wood turned to Biden, congratulating him for being the first black female vice president. Then Wood ended with serious remarks, praising the journalists in the room for their sometimes dangerous work that is so necessary for a democracy.