Chattanooga Choo Choo 🌻 🌻 🌻 🐇 🐰 🐇 🐰

Not so Grand Opry: In a move that’s beyond alarming, obviously racist, and in conflict with the principals of Democracy, Tennessee’s Republican dominated state house voted to expel two young Black lawmakers, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson.  The Republican supermajority also tried to expel a third Democrat, Gloria Johnson, but failed by one vote when one of the Republicans who had no problem voting out two Black lawmakers decided that ousting a white woman was a step too far. The three representatives’ crime: they violated decorum rules when they participated in the anti-gun protests that followed the killing of six people, including three nine-year-olds, at Nashville’s Covenant School.  The justifiably emotional protests weren’t violent but that didn’t stop the Republican dominated legislature from equating them with the January 6^th insurrection because false equivalency.  Apparently, in Tennessee protecting gun rights doesn’t just trump protecting the lives of innocent students and teachers it is also far more important than preserving democratic principles.  The two ousted lawmakers can run for reelection but for now their districts have no representation in the Tennessee house.  If you are waiting to hear condemnation of this from national Republican leadership, forget about it, that’s not going to happen in part because politicians like Gym Jordan and Kevin McCarthy are too busy defending Trump and calling for the defunding of the Department of Justice, the FBI and any other part of government with even the most tangential relationship to the investigations into Trump’s criminal activities.  Tennessee is an extreme example of what happens when gerrymandering is combined with hate, gun love, and extreme right-wing positions, even the ones that countless polls tell us the electorate at large oppose.  Keep an eye on Wisconsin, where some Republican state legislators have called for the impeachment of newly elected liberal Judge Janet Prostasiewicz.  Judge Janet isn’t Black, but her racial status might not be enough to protect her as she stands for all the democratic principles that the increasingly emboldened righter than ever Republican party hate these days so those threats should be taken seriously.

Ethics Anyone? Among things that should be taken seriously but so far haven’t are Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’ outrageous ethics violations. Yesterday ProPublica detailed how Thomas has been flouting ethics rules for more than twenty years by accepting expensive luxury trips every year from Dallas billionaire businessman Harlan Crow. Those trips have included flights on Crow’s Bombarbardier Global 5000 jet and cruises on his superyacht to far flung places like Indonesia and closer to home locales including California, East Texas and the Adirondacks. These trips don’t appear on Thomas’ financial disclosures, a problem that goes far beyond the optics of a Supreme Court Justice hobnobbing with conservative influence peddlers, because the failure to report them violates a law passed after Watergate that requires justices, judges, members of Congress, and federal officials to disclose most gifts especially free travel. Also, worth noting, Harlan Crow isn’t just a run of the mill billionaire who shares Thomas’s conservative views, he’s also someone who has benefited from Thomas’ court decisions and who has funded some of Thomas’ wife, Ginni’s projects. Naturally, Republicans in the House and Senate aren’t concerned at all about Thomas’ bigly ethical lapses , but Democrats are, very.  Some are calling for Thomas to be impeached as if that would ever happen with the more realistic ones calling for Chief Justice Roberts, who found the anti-abortion Dobbs leak so shocking that he had it investigated to direct some of that outrage and investigatory zeal towards Thomas. Democrats are also hoping that Thomas’ flagrant disregard for the rules will help them to finally get some definitive ethics rules for Supreme Court Justices passed. Don’t hold your breath. The outrage is justified but the issue is just another one of things that’s polarizing even though it shouldn’t be.  Kind of like a former president, calling judges and district attorneys radical left lunatics, racist, and put their lives in jeopardy.  That shouldn’t be tolerable but apparently those on the right think it’s totally fine.  They can’t or don’t want to divorce themselves from Trump’s nefarious, dangerous insanity over fears that doing so will doom their political careers.  Gym Jordan, who refused to testify when he was subpoenaed, isn’t at all concerned by Trump’s threats but in his role as House Judiciary Chair he has subpoenaed Mark Pomerantz, who previously worked in the Manhattan DA’s office but resigned in frustration when Manhattan Bragg didn’t indict Trump earlier.  It’s not clear that Pomerantz will show, it’s also not clear that his testimony will advance Trump’s cause, but it is a headline grabber and that’s probably the point.        

And:  Former VP Pence’s divorce from Trump is about to go from amicable to hostile.  On Wednesday, Pence said that he would not appeal the federal court ruling ordering him to testify about the conversations he had with Trump in the run up to the January 6^th insurrection to Special Counsel Jack Smith’s grand jury probing Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election.  To date Pence has succesfully avoided testifying so that’s big. Likely far less bigly but still thorougly disturbing, Robert F Kennedy, Jr, the rabidly anti-vax son of RFK and the nephew of JFK, has announced that he plans to challenge President Biden for the Democratic 2024 nomination by running in next year’s Democratic primaries.  According to CBS’ Robert Costa RFK Jr was encouraged to run by erstwhile Trump advisor Steve Bannon who believes that introdcuing a Kennedy into the mix will forment chaos while also stoking anti-vaccine sentiment.  If you had a Kennedy family scion teaming up with Bannon on your BINGO card, you’re on a roll.            

 

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