The embodiment of the greater inequities women experience
In the same spirit of love and liberation that inspired the Women’s March, we join together in making March 8th A Day Without a Woman, recognizing the enormous value that women of all backgrounds add to our socio-economic system – while receiving lower wages and experiencing greater inequities, vulnerability to discrimination, sexual harassment, and job insecurity. We recognize that trans and gender nonconforming people face heightened levels of discrimination, social oppression and political targeting. We believe in gender justice
Think this is not necessary?
Here’s Virginia House of Delegates 42nd District Representative, and Chairman of its Courts of Justice Committee, Dave Albo exercising his “personal privilege” to faux demand a faux apology from his “gentleman” colleague for discussing his bill requiring women exercising their reproductive rights be forced to suffer a transvaginal probe.
Delegate Albo and the elected “gentlemen” representatives whooping and hollering for this performance embody the greater inequities that require A Day Without A Woman.
You know this action is necessary.
Who We Are
Chris Andrade is writing a beautiful series of essays about America. From his latest, about people he spoke with in Youngstown, Ohio:
I ask him if he was surprised Trump performed so well in the region. “The American public grew impatient with what happened here in the US over the last 16 years, eight under Bush, eight under Obama … I work with Trump voters, and have friends who voted for him. I understand many of them and their anger. I don’t like how it is being expressed, but I see their anger as being about economic issues.”
Goose-stepping through the separation of powers
I have been accused of being esoteric. So I’ll be direct – whatever the ultimate outcome of the lawsuits challenging the administration’s Muslim ban, its attack on the courts is textbook fear propaganda.
DICKERSON: OK, We’ll wait for news on that.
When I talked to Republicans on The Hill, they wonder, what in the White House — what have you all learned from this experience with the executive order?
MILLER: Well, I think that it’s been an important reminder to all Americans that we have a judiciary that has taken far too much power and become in many case a supreme branch of government. One unelected judge in Seattle cannot remake laws for the entire country. I mean this is just crazy, John, the idea that you have a judge in Seattle say that a foreign national living in Libya has an effective right to enter the United States is — is — is beyond anything we’ve ever seen before.
The end result of this, though, is that our opponents, the media and the whole world will soon see as we begin to take further actions, that the powers of the president to protect our country are very substantial and will not be questioned.
Textbook.
This is what the constitution looks like
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals administered an antidote to cynicism yesterday.
The Government contends that the district court lacked authority to enjoin enforcement of the Executive Order because the President has “unreviewable authority to suspend the admission of any class of aliens.” The Government does not merely argue that courts owe substantial deference to the immigration and national security policy determinations of the political branches—an uncontroversial principle that is well-grounded in our jurisprudence. See, e.g., Cardenas v. United States, 826 F.3d 1164, 1169 (9th Cir. 2016) (recognizing that “the power to expel or exclude aliens [is] a fundamental sovereign attribute exercised by the Government’s political departments largely immune from judicial control” (quoting Fiallo v. Bell, 430 U.S. 787, 792 (1977))); see also Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, 561 U.S. 1, 33-34 (2010) (explaining that courts should defer to the political branches with respect to national security and foreign relations). Instead, the Government has taken the position that the President’s decisions about immigration policy, particularly when motivated by national security concerns, are unreviewable, even if those actions potentially contravene constitutional rights and protections. The Government indeed asserts that it violates separation of powers for the judiciary to entertain a constitutional challenge to executive actions such as this one.
There is no precedent to support this claimed unreviewability, which runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy. See Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723, 765 (2008) (rejecting the idea that, even by congressional statute, Congress and the Executive could eliminate federal court habeas jurisdiction over enemy combatants, because the “political branches” lack “the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will”). Within our system, it is the role of the judiciary to interpret the law, a duty that will sometimes require the “[r]esolution of litigation challenging the constitutional authority of one of the three branches.” Zivotofsky ex rel. Zivotofsky v. Clinton, 566 U.S. 189, 196 (2012) (quoting INS v. Chadha, 462 U.S. 919, 943 (1983)). We are called upon to perform that duty in this case.
Read it. Washington v. Trump, No. 17-35105, 2/9/17 (9th Cir.)
The sooner we stop pretending, the better
In a money and celebrity worshiping culture, there’s a natural tendency to resist the conclusion that rich and famous people are often quite stupid, but in fact it’s not unusual for this to be the case… As for fame, the correlation between intelligence and celebrity is weak at best, and quite possibly inverse.
Facts
We legalized dumping coal debris in streams, while China, the leader in photovoltaic solar energy, doubled its capacity.
This is what hypocrisy looks like
Candidate Donald Trump promised to take the common sense step of negotiating reasonable drug prices the government pays pharmaceutical companies, like a reasonable country would.
President Trump promised to deregulate pharmaceutical companies and called negotiating drug prices “price fixing”, like an oligarchy would.