Another justice with a sugar daddy

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that Senate Republicans have started endorsing the nasty guy. The post lists several of them and adds important comments.

In Trumpworld, there's no higher form of betrayal than those in his own party who don't prove sufficiently loyal. He made that perfectly clear at the Indianola event when he maligned Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who endorsed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. "I just thought it was really disloyal," Trump told the crowd. "I mean, I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand it. And that happens in politics.” Guess what: No one wants the Reynolds treatment and everyone knew it was coming, which is exactly why Senate Republicans have started to fall like dominoes for Trump over the past week. ... The real tension here, besides the overall direction of the Republican Party, is that Senate Republicans have lost ground in the last two election cycles precisely because they have been saddled with Trump.

By using the word “betrayal” he is, of course, saying they are to be loyal to him, not to the party or the country. More proof he intends to be a dictator. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Sarah Longwell of The Bulwark. She wrote that former officials in the nasty guy administration should explain what it was like to work for him. They know the stakes.

But wait, haven’t they done that already? Mark Milley posed for a front-page spread in the Atlantic. John Kelly gave a statement to CNN. Others have back-channeled their grave misgivings, off the record, to Puck and Politico. Hard truth: That’s not enough. I talk to Republican primary voters every week in focus groups, and you know what they don’t read? The Atlantic, Puck, and Politico. Fundamentally, the reason they seem unbothered by Trump’s autocratic tendencies is that a lot of them don’t know about them.

Dworkin quoted Jonathan Martin of Politico. He said the nasty guy camp is feuding over his VP choice, hoping it isn’t Nikki Haley, still in the race for the nomination. Some see the second spot as the consolation prize. But she’s seen as too much of the party establishment and too against the nasty guy, ready to undermine him at every step. A big scandal over the last week is DeathSantis banned a dictionary because its definition of sex was too racy for his tastes. Down in the roundup comments is a cartoon by Dave Whamond. Four people see DeathSantis leave with a dictionary and say:

DeSantis’ book bans have come for ... dictionaries?! I can’t find the words to express my anger! That’s the literal definition of authoritarian ... I think. He’s got away with words!

An Associated Press article posted on Kos reports on a case that was argued before the Supreme Court a couple days ago. On the surface it is about herring fishermen. A recent regulatory rule says they have to have a monitor on their boats to verify they aren’t overfishing and they have to pay the monitor up to $700 a day. That’s the surface. Underneath is a 1984 decision by the Supremes called “Chevron,” yeah, named after the petroleum company. It states that when there is some ambiguity in a law the federal agencies are allowed to fill in the details. When there’s a dispute a judge is to defer to the agency. Supporters of limited government have wanted to get rid of it for forty years. They want judges to wield this power, not experts. Supporters of Chevron say it is indeed the subject experts, not judges, who should hold this power. Supporters of limited government are, of course, gun groups, e-cigarette groups, farm, timber, and home-building groups, all the billionaires in the country, like the Koch network which recruited the fishermen, and anyone who doesn’t want the government telling them what they can’t do. Supporters of Chevron are those of us who call the rules put out by agencies “protections” rather than “regulations” because they protect us from corporations ripping us off and spoiling our planet. They include environmental groups and the American Cancer Society, the last one because abolishing Chevron would be chaotic for the health insurance industry. It would be chaotic for the whole nation because every federal rule would be called into question. Overturning Chevron means every dispute would result in a court case – overwhelming the court system. Which means until the case is heard, perhaps years later, the litigants would feel they could violate the rule. So far justices Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh have said they are in favor of overturning Chevron. One of them saying they want to give it a tombstone. I hear Barrett is skeptical of overturning the precedent and Roberts has been quiet. We don’t have to wonder about Kagan, Sotomayor, or Jackson. A decision will come by the end of June. The day before the hearing on the herring case Charles Jay of the Kos community wrote that Gorsuch is being pressured to recuse himself from the case. The Guardian reports Gorsuch has his own sugar daddy, billionaire oil baron Philip Anschutz, who “would score big from a favorable ruling by his friend on the high court.” A March 2017 article in the New York Times reported Gorsuch’s ties with Anschutz, just days before his Senate confirmation hearings began. Anschutz was also a donor to the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation, both of which worked to get Gorsuch on the high court. Jay offered another reason why Neil Gorsuch should recuse himself. His mother, Anne Gorsuch, was appointed by Reagan to head the Environmental Protection Agency for the purpose of undermining its regulations. Nearly all of her subordinates were industry insiders. She was eventually forced to resign over mismanagement of the “$1.6 billion Superfund toxic waste clean-up program by effectively freezing its implementation” and was cited for contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over records. The son wants to complete what his mother started. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, quoted late night commentary:

"Donald Trump won the Iowa caucus with 51 percent of the vote. It's worth noting that this caucus was decided by 14 percent of the state's registered Republicans. So Trump won 51 percent of 14 percent of about a quarter of the population of one state out of fifty. So the results are less the will of the people and more the will of Carl." —Stephen Colbert "In a new interview with Fox News, presidential candidate Nikki Haley said that the U.S. has 'never been a racist country.' So if her campaign doesn’t pan out, she can always get a job teaching history in Florida." —Seth Meyers "We have released into the wild hundreds of queens. And listen, If a drag queen wants to read you a story at a library, listen to her because knowledge is power, and if someone tries to restrict your access to power, they are trying to scare you. So listen to a drag queen!" —RuPaul, accepting the 5th Reality Competition Series Emmy for RuPaul's Drag Race. He also won the Best Reality Host award for the 8th consecutive time—the most wins by a person of color.