Appeals court says Don McGahn doesn’t have to testify in major win for White House

Stephan:  Here is an amazing decision by the Appeals Court that devastates American democracy. It will surely go to the Supreme Court, and we will have to wait to see what happens.

Former White House counsel Don McGahn

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court Friday severely limited Congress’ ability to enforce subpoenas it sends to the executive branch, in a decision dismissing the US House of Representatives’ lawsuit to force former White House counsel Don McGahn to testify.

In a 2-1 decision, the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled it didn’t have the constitutional authority to resolve the standoff between the House Judiciary Committee and the White House.
“We cannot decide this case without declaring the actions of one or the other [branches of government] unconstitutional,” appellate Judge Thomas Griffith wrote in the opinion, determining the federal judiciary should stay out of the fight between Congress and the President. “If federal courts were to swoop in to rescue Congress whenever its constitutional tools failed, it would not just supplement the political process; it would replace that process with one in which unelected judges become the perpetual ‘overseer[s]’ of our […]

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AG Barr and Betsy DeVos rail against secularism and a ‘culture of disbelief’ at religious broadcasters convention

Stephan:  Do you want to know what christofascism sounds like, what positions its proponents advocate? Look no further than William Barr and Betsy DeVos. I find it amazing that such people can hold public office but in criminal Trump's administration such individuals are welcomed. Goodbye democracy.

William Barr the don’s personal consigliere

President Donald Trump views his alliance with the Christian right as essential to his 2020 campaign, and two Trump loyalists — Attorney General William Barr and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos — were clearly pandering to religious conservatives this week during a speech at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, which is being held in Nashville, Tennessee and continues through this Friday, February 28.

Barr’s speech was sponsored by the nonprofit group Save the Persecuted Christians, which is headed by Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. — a far-right conspiracy theorist and Islamophobe who has claimed that the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to infiltrate the U.S. government and impose sharia law. Before Barr spoke at the National Religious Broadcasters Convention, Gaffney stressed that he was not sponsoring a panel that would be held later and feature attorney Asma Uddin (who he smeared as a “sharia supremacist”).

During his speech, Barr (who is a Catholic, not a Protestant evangelical) railed against secularism in the United States — telling the […]

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Piled Bodies, Overflowing Morgues: Inside America’s Autopsy Crisis

Stephan:  Yet another story about the failure of America's illness profit system to provide the kind of healthcare one would find in any other developed nation. This report is on the collapse of the autopsy system, a crisis in and of itself. But the real point to me, is that yet again we spend more than any other nation on earth and what we get isn't even second rate. It is 37th rate and getting worse.

Autopsy team

Say you are found on your bathroom floor, on the grassy knoll of someone else’s front yard, in the berth of your tractor-trailer, in your own bed, at the foot of a bridge, under a car wheel, in the car, caught in the bend of a river, collapsed in the bar, alone in the remains of a scorched kitchen. Your death is sudden and unexpected, a death that no one plans for but that approximately half a million of us will experience this year in America. No death is special, but this kind of death requires special care, procedurally, from a number of people you will never meet. The procedural aspects of your death, which you will never see, begin with a phone call.

One afternoon in the summer of 2018 in Cleveland, a man returned home to find his wife slumped over her computer keyboard. She was in her 50s and had been in poor health, but nothing seemed urgent or life-threatening. It looked as if she died while shopping online. Her […]

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Maternal Mortality Is Worse in Washington, DC Than Syria. Abortion Access Is One Reason Why.

Stephan:  Anti-choice policies produce increased maternal mortality. In fact, America has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. More women die giving birth in the U.S.; it is literally at the risk of your life that you have a baby in the U.S.. Washington, D.C., as this report describes, has a worse maternal mortality rate than Syria, a country being dismantled by war. That's how bad it has. gotten. Oh, and did I mentioned that this whole anti-choice policy and its effects are blatantly racist? According to this report, "In the U.S., both place and race increase women’s risk of of suffering a maternal death. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have concluded that the majority of maternity deaths could be prevented by addressing 'access to appropriate and high-quality care, missed or delayed diagnoses, and lack of knowledge among patients and providers around warning signs.'" However, since two-thirds of Americans have never been outside U.S. borders, they have absolutely no idea what successful healthcare is like, or what it costs, so this is all happening with very little public pushback.

In states that restrict access to reproductive health care options, maternal mortality rates climb precipitously.
Credit: Ruslan Dashinsky/Getty

From 2007 to 2015, Syria‘s maternal mortality rate rose from 26 deaths per 100,000 live births to 31 deaths per 100,000 live births, a result of the country’s war and a crumbling health care system.

In Washington, D.C., where politicians make decisions about both what the United States will do about the war in Syria and American women’s access to reproductive health care, the average maternal mortality rate across the same eight-year period was 33 deaths per 100,000 live births.

And that is for woman of all races: The rate of maternal mortality for African American women living in our nation’s capital is 59.7 deaths per 100,000 live births — worse than Panama (52) or Ecuador (59).

There is no war on American soil and we spend more on health care per capita than any other country in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. However, the […]

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‘This Is a Nightmare’: Trump Accused of Weaponizing DOJ With New Task Force Focused on Stripping US Citizenship

Stephan:  When I was a boy my history master told us a story of how under Hitler Nazis SS troopers would go into German neighborhoods and drag out from their homes Jews who lived there, stripping them of their German citizenship, and either forcing them to wear a yellow star on their clothes or shipping them off to camps. As he spoke I remember trying to imagine what that would like on the street where I lived. Lest we get complacent he warned us it could happen in America, and had, and told us what had happened to the Japanese. It left an indelible impression in my mind, so strong I can still see myself sitting in that classroom as he spoke. Well, under criminal Trump it is happening again. Am I exaggerating? I am not as this report spells out. We are becoming a fascist state, down to details like ICE storm troopers invading American neighborhoods, and dragging undocumented or naturalized people out of their houses. Imagine: you are at dinner with your kids, having just gotten back from a long day's work. You've just said grace, when there is beating on the door, it is flung open and men in dark uniforms with armored vests and guns burst into your house and drag your wife away, as your kids scream and cry. Welcome to Trumplican America.  

ICE troops invading homes
Credit: Getty

Rights advocates expressed outrage and severe concerns after the U.S. Department of Justice announced Wednesday it is creating an official task force devoted to “denaturalization”—the process by which the government strips citizenship from foreign-born Americans, or naturalized citizens.

“Of all the dystopian shit—a department of denaturalization at DOJ might take the biscuit,” tweeted activist Joel Braunold. “Means immigrant Americans (such as myself) will always have a threat to displace us if we step out of line.”

“Trump is weaponizing the DOJ to make naturalized immigrants look like second-class citizens.”
—The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights

The Justice Department claimed in its announcement that the motivation for the new unit stems from a desire to strip citizenship from terrorists or sex offenders whose citizenship was “illegally procured” by lying about past crimes.

“When a terrorist or sex offender becomes a U.S. citizen under false pretenses, it is an affront to our system—and it is especially offensive to those who fall victim to these criminals,” Assistant Attorney General Jody Hunt said in a statement.

Officially termed […]

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