Law, Power, and Justice

WEDNESDAY 6 MARCH 2024

This is a more ill-tempered blog note than I usually post, but I’m tired and I’m afraid. I am tired of corporate news hosts who dance around what we are facing and act as if this is a normal election. As someone said, democracy and the Constitution are not suicide pacts.

MIDDLE EAST

Fear of Women

https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/JIPA/Display/Article/2891300/islamists-fear-of-females-the-roots-of-gynophobic-misogyny-among-the-taliban-an

ISRAEL

• Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, “demanded the government pass legislation to draft ultra-Orthodox men into the army (WSJ,3/6/24).”

US: MSNBC

• Andrew Weissmann (Mueller Report) is asked how it feels to be part of the Justice system that many people feel failed them in holding Trump responsible. 
• Weissmann replies that no matter what the justice system does, Trump is going to claim he has been declared innocent and blameless.  (Possibly, but that’s not the f…ing point).
• Trump, according to Weissmann, is attacking the rule of law.  (Yes, we all know that.  Criminals always do.  The point is that the justice system seems incapable of holding him to account because he is rich and powerful.  It has failed to do so for 70 years, all of Trump’s life.)
• Weissman is arguing that even if the justice system held him accountable, it wouldn’t matter.  (Really?  Seriously?  This is his best shot?)
• Well, well, it seems finally, according to Andrew “we won/t touch the Trump finances in the Mueller investigation” Weissmann “it’s hard” not to see the Supreme Court’s scheduling and the Cannon case as non-partisan.  (ya think? Weissmann is getting extreme, watch out).
• Weissman: “It’s not that we are seeing the potential of the undermining of the rule of law.  We are living it.”  We are slouching towards it and not really seeing that that is the world we are in.  (Some of us have seen it for a long time.  Glad to have you on board.  Tell us what you know, everything you know.  You owe it to us. )
• Every member of the GOP leadership, including McConnell, have endorsed Trump.
• Maddow: The Republicans want to “get rid of the form of government we have and install something else.”  SOMETHING ELSE? 
• Thank you Nicolle Wallace,  for quoting Donald Rumsfeld AGAIN.  AGAIN.  AGAIN.
• “They are trying to change what the United States is.”  (Could you be more specific?)_
• The response of the Republicans is to figure how to help Trump get away with it.  This is the reaction of the Republican leadership to violence and fraud.
• Maddow believes that “We’re actually going to use our democracy.”  (The issue is that if we use it, will it be accurately tabulated on Republican controlled voting machines as in Georgia where the Coffee County Voting Machine breach has still not been fully investigated.)
• Discussing Cheney, Maddow says: we disagree about everything, but I have more in common with her than with people who don’t care about the country.   “If you care about the future of this country…” I can work with you.  (Jesus.  I can’t.  )
• FINALLY: They want to establish “…a strongman form of government in the United States and get rid of democracy.”  (Yes.  They do indeed and people like Liz Cheney helped get is here.  The hasn’t even said she will vote for Biden.)