Tag: Republican Congress

The militarization of society is trapping us in a paralyzed republic

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The Republicans in the US Congress insist it’s a constitutional Second Amendment issue. The Democrats insist it’s a commonsense safety issue. The press corps, which prefers binaries as a matter of professional convenience, frames the question just like that, as a tension between the right to bear arms and the right to peace. As long as that framing holds steady, there’s no way for the conflict to be resolved (which is, as I mentioned Monday in an unrelated context, exactly how the press corps likes it).

This framing is useless. How is a free republic supposed to react in good faith to bloody massacres like the one last week in Atlanta and the one this week in Boulder, Colorado,1 if the conflict between diametric rights is forever deadlocked? Well, the answer is obvious. It does not. It is paralyzed. It has been for going on two decades now. A problem of democracy cannot be solved democratically even as the problem continues killing wholesale. It’s no wonder many Americans have turned to military solutions to democratic problems, which, of course, make nearly everything worse.

We must concede this free republic of ours is not free. To be sure, some within it believethey are free—white men, for the most part, who make a fetish of stockpiling as many weapons of destruction as they can. But these people are not free. They are not only trapped by their own delusions, paranoia and fear, they are trapped in the same paralyzed republic the rest of us are trapped in. They are subject to the same risk of carnage, injury and death. The difference? They choose to make-believe they are free. Continue reading.

How a super PAC helped House Republicans survive the ‘green wave’

Congressional Leadership Fund spent more than $140 million as GOP beat expectations

Unlike in 2018, this year’s “green wave” of Democratic money didn’t produce a “blue wave” of victories, thanks in part to a super PAC that helped Republicans close the spending gap. 

Congressional Leadership Fund, a group aligned with House GOP leadership, spent more than $140 million, a record for the most money a House-focused super PAC has spent in an election cycle and narrowly outspending its Democratic counterpart, House Majority PAC. In some races, CLF carried the bulk of the GOP’s ad spending.

Ballots are still being counted in several competitive races, but as of Tuesday evening, no House Republican has lost reelection, and the GOP has netted six House seats. Continue reading.

A grandiose collective paranoid fantasy: It’s time to speak honestly about the GOP’s evolution into a conspiracy cult

AlterNet logoOne of the challenges in analyzing modern American politics is accurately describing the Republican Party without seeming unserious and hyperbolic. Major publications are understandably in the habit of presenting both sides of the partisan divide as being inherently worthy of respect and equal consideration, both as a way of shielding themselves from accusations of bias and as a way of maintaining their own sense of journalistic integrity.

Unfortunately, the modern Republican Party’s abdication of seriousness, good faith and reality-based communications or policy-making has stretched even the most open-minded analyst’s capacity for forced balance. Donald Trump’s own inability to string together coherent or consistent thoughts has led to a bizarre normalization of his statements in the traditional media, as journalists unconsciously try to fit his rambling, spontaneous utterances into a conventional framework. This has come at the cost of Americans seeing the full truth of the crisis of leadership in the Oval Office for what it is. For instance, it was ironically salutary for the American public to witness Donald Trump’s bizarre pandemic press conferences where he oddly attacked reporters for asking innocuous questions and recommended researching bleach and sunlight injections, because they got to see Trump raw as he truly is, without the normalization filter. Republicans have long argued that the “mainstream media filter” gives them a bad shake, but the reality is the opposite: sure, it’s not as good as being boosted by Fox News’ overt propaganda, but it does them a greater service than letting the public see them unfiltered at all. Continue reading.

Religious exemptions are gutting civil rights protections, advocacy groups warn

The Trump administration’s expansion of “religious freedom” is coming at the expense of LGBTQ rights, according to a new report.

The Trump administration’s expansion of religious exemptions is undermining civil rights protections and codifying discrimination against marginalized groups — particularly LGBTQ people — according to a reportreleased Monday by three research and advocacy groups.

>Using a combination of new rules, legal interventions and newly created divisions, the departments of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Justice, Labor and State have all taken steps to advance “religious liberty,” often at the expense of LGBTQ rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for American Progress and the Movement Advancement Project argue in their report.

“The many proposals to allow religious discrimination are consistent with the trend of the administration to undercut civil rights broadly,” Louise Melling, deputy legal director of the ACLU, told NBC News. “The administration is taking the position that religious freedoms give you a right to discriminate.” Continue reading.

Furious Republicans prepare to rebuke Trump on Syria

The Hill logoCongressional Republicans appear poised to hand President Trump a stinging rebuke of his Turkey and Syria policy when lawmakers return to Washington this week.

GOP lawmakers, furious over Trump’s decision to withdraw troops to make way for a Turkish offensive against Kurdish allies, are preparing legislation that would force the administration to impose sanctions on Turkey.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced Friday that Trump would sign an executive order giving the Treasury Department “very significant” new sanctions authorities against Turkey, but it’s unclear whether the move will be enough to placate Republicans on Capitol Hill.

View the complete October 13 article by Rebecca Kheel on The Hill website here.

Republicans show signs of discomfort in defense of Trump

The Hill logoRepublicans, even as they generally show support for President Trump, are showing signs of discomfort amid an impeachment fight that has engulfed the country.

The battle over Trump’s actions toward Ukraine marks the biggest test to date for Republicans, who are juggling the president’s demand for loyalty with questions about his push for a foreign government to investigate a political rival.

While the party has largely rallied behind him against the Democrats’ impeachment push, there are some signs of cracks just days into the scandal that is likely to dominate the rest of 2019.

View the complete September 28 article by Jordain Carney on The Hill website here.

GOP blew Obamacare repeal, not us, former CBO director says

Keith Hall said if anyone is to blame for Republicans’ failure to repeal the health care law, it’s Republicans themselves

Outgoing Congressional Budget Office Director Keith Hall held his fire when the agency was under attack in 2017 for estimating that a repeal of the 2010 health care law would throw millions of people off health insurance.

Now that he is leaving the agency, he can speak more freely. In an interview in his office last week, Hall said if anyone is to blame for Republicans’ failure to repeal the health care law, it’s Republicans themselves.

“I made a real decision not to, in real time, defend our work because I really do think of us as referees or umpires,” said Hall, a Republican. He said the agency’s job is to provide its best analysis and let it stand on its own.

View the complete June 3 article by Paul M. Krawzak on The Roll Call website here.

James Comey: Republicans are wrong. Transparency is possible in the Mueller investigation.

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Attorney General William P. Barr will decide how much of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s findings and conclusions to share with Congress and the American people. Barr told the Senate Judiciary Committee he would try to be as transparent as possible while abiding by the Justice Department’s long-standing tradition of protecting the privacy rights of the innocent. That makes sense, but past departmental practices suggest he can release far more details than many people may now realize.

Providing detailed information about a completed investigation of intense public interest has long been a part of Justice Department practice. It doesn’t happen often, because ordinarily nothing outweighs the privacy interests of the subject of an investigation that ends without public charges. But department tradition recognizes that transparency is especially important where polarized politics and baseless attacks challenge law enforcement’s credibility. In critical matters of national importance, a straightforward report of what facts have been learned and how judgment has been exercised may be the only way to advance the public interest.

The Justice Department shared detailed information with the public after the FBI’s investigation of the 2014 killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. His death at the hands of a white police officer touched off unrest around the country. The Justice Department responded to calls for a federal investigation, sending dozens of FBI special agents into Ferguson. After months of careful work, the department declined to bring a federal criminal prosecution. But the Justice Department didn’t just put the boxes in storage. Because there was intense, legitimate public interest — and significant doubt about law enforcement independence — the department publicly released an 86-page report in March 2015 detailing the entire investigation — what was done, what was found and how the evidence compared to governing legal standards, including an evaluation of the conduct and statements of individuals.

View the complete March 4 commentary by James Comey, former Director of the FBI and former Deputy Attorney General on The Washington Post website here.

Instead of tax cuts, GOP candidates motivate with anxiety

The following article by Steve Peoples and Bill Barrow was posted on the Associated Press website August 8, 2018:

WASHINGTON (AP) — There’s a border crisis in Pennsylvania. The radical left is surging in New Jersey. And Nancy Pelosi is a threat to New York.

Republican candidates in the nation’s premier midterm battlegrounds have embraced a central message in their fight to maintain the House majority this fall — and it has little to do with the surging economy or the sweeping tax cuts that the GOP celebrated as a once-in-a-generation achievement just eight months ago.

Instead, as Republicans enter the final month of the primary season, they’re looking ahead to a general-election strategy of embracing anxiety as a tool to motivate voters. That was clear this week as the GOP’s closing message in an Ohio special election questioned Democrat Danny O’Connor’s connection to Pelosi, the House Democratic leader and preferred super villain for Republicans.

View the complete article here.

GOP may skip budget, kneecapping 2018 ambitions

The following article by Rachel Bade and Sarah Ferris was posted on the Politico website January 10, 2018:

Lacking the votes and fearing political blowback, Republicans are unlikely to deploy powerful budget procedures to enact their agenda.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also said he is prepared to wade into GOP primaries to “make every effort to make sure we have a nominee on the November ballot who can appeal to a general election audience.” | Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images

Republican leaders are considering skipping passage of a GOP budget this year — a blow to the party’s weakened fiscal hawks that would squash all 2018 efforts to revamp entitlements or repeal Obamacare.

White House and Hill GOP leaders discussed the possibility of forgoing the painful budget process during last weekend’s Camp David legislative summit, according to four sources familiar with the talks. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has argued that he cannot pass controversial deficit-reduction legislation using powerful budget procedures with his new 51-vote majority — and wasn’t even sure he could find the votes for a fiscal blueprint in the first place. Continue reading “GOP may skip budget, kneecapping 2018 ambitions”