Stephan: The Republican Party will do anything to take over control of the American judiciary, and if that happens you can kiss democracy goodbye. WE are in the midst of a complicated multi-faceted attempt to turn America into a racist christofascist authoritarian nation. You may find that hard to believe but to any historian who has studied how democracies die it is textbook obvious.
On Monday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he would refuse to let President Joe Biden fill a Supreme Court seat in 2024 if Republicans win the Senate next year. McConnell also suggested that he would not let Biden fill a Supreme Court vacancy in 2023, even if the president nominated “a normal mainstream liberal.” These comments are not remotely surprising. The Republican Party has outsourced much of its agenda to the federal judiciary, a strategy that requires its lawmakers to ruthlessly extinguish Democrats’ influence over the courts. To that end, a GOP-controlled Senate will never again confirm a Democratic president’s Supreme Court nominee. Not in an election year or any other year. Not in your lifetime or mine. Never.
McConnell played slightly coy when discussing the possibility of a Supreme Court confirmation in 2023, telling Hewitt: “Well, we’d have to wait and see what happens.” But anyone who seriously believes a Republican-controlled Senate would confirm a Biden nominee that year—or even hold hearings on one—is deluding themselves. McConnell’s approach to judicial confirmations reflects two core […]
Stephan: Yet another trend showing the deterioration of American society, the slow death of local journalism. Local journalists are the ones who discover and report on local corruption. The sort of things CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS never get around to reporting. If we are going to save our country we have to each become activists. Do you read and support your local press? Which organizations are you volunteering at? What are you supporting financially? If you are ever going to serve your country in support of democracy now is the time.
Stephan: Part of the existential problem America faces is that about a third of American citizens think an end to democracy in favor of a White supremacist christofacist system is a good idea, while a larger percentage, perhaps a majority of the country, doesn't really understand or believe what is happening. Or, if they do, are too lazy to do anything about it.
Maricopa County ballots cast in the 2020 general election are examined and recounted by contractors working for Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, Thursday, May 6, 2021 at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix. The audit, ordered by the Arizona Senate, has the U.S. Department of Justice saying it is concerned about ballot security and potential voter intimidation arising from the unprecedented private recount of the 2020 presidential election results. (AP Photo/Matt York)
Donald Trump will not be “reinstated” as president by August, as some of his supporters and allegedly the former president himself seem to believe. But Republicans are rushing to change the rules to make it easier for their party to overturn the will of the voters in future elections.
While GOP-controlled legislatures rush to make it harder for Democratic constituencies to vote, they are also intensifying their control over how elections are run and how votes are counted, after Trump tried to overturn the 2020 election results. Twenty-four new laws have been passed in 14 states this year that will allow state legislatures to “politicize, criminalize, and interfere in election administration,” […]
Stephan: It is fascinating in a negative way to watch Republican members of Congress become more and more explicit is their opposition to democracy. Take Rand Paul, for instance. Then ask yourself what does his being elected to office as a senator say about the people of Kentucky? The problem facing America is Americans
Rand Paul Credit: Vanity Fair
About a month before Election Day 2020, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) raised a few eyebrows by declaring via social media that the United States is “not a democracy.” The Utah Republican added soon after, “Democracy isn’t the objective; liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that.”
Eight months later, the New York Times published a report on the severity of Republican efforts to thwart our electoral system, and it quoted Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) making related comments.
Some other Republicans embrace the notion that they are trying to use their prerogatives as a minority party to safeguard their own power. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said the endeavor was the essence of America’s system of representative democracy, distinguishing it from direct democracy, where the majority rules and is free to trample the rights of the minority unimpeded.
“The idea of democracy and majority rule really is what goes against our history and what the country stands for,” the GOP senator said. “The Jim Crow […]
Stephan: Tonight I watched 60 Minutes and was appalled by their package on teaching school children how to offer emergency first aid to classmates wounded by gunfire. I was particularly stunned by an interview with a fireman who explained how he has given his 12-year-old son a kit for his back pack he can use to stop bleeding from bullet wounds.
This is America today. This is what our national obsessive gun psychosis has led to. Teaching children how to save their friends for gunshot wounds from some random sicko. And here is today's news.
Police help a victim of a mass shooting Credit: Jessica Moss/Reuters
At least four major U.S. cities were reeling from an onslaught of mass shootings over the weekend that left at least 39 people wounded, five dead and police officials alarmed that the surge in gun violence is a prelude to a bloody summer as the nation emerges from the pandemic.
Police in Austin, Cleveland, Chicago and Savannah were all investigating on Sunday mass shootings that erupted over a six-hour streak that began around 9 p.m. on Friday and spilled over into Saturday morning.
“It’s very disturbing what we’re seeing across the country and the level of gun violence that we’re seeing across the country. It’s disturbing and it’s senseless,” Savannah Police Chief Roy Minter, Jr. said at a weekend news conference after one person was killed and eight others, including an 18-month-old baby and two teenagers, were wounded.
On Sunday morning, Savannah police were working to identify the suspect or suspects who rolled up in a dark-colored sedan and unleashed a barrage of gunfire around 9 p.m. Friday on a group […]
