Bench Splinters

Don Old Cheez Doodles is making it unquestionably clear that Judge Aileen (Loose) Cannon, whom he appointed to her current position, is required to make absolutely certain that he will be acquitted if the stolen documents case ever reaches the trial stage. Aileen isn't doing anything to change the impression that she's been bought and paid for by Cheez Doodles, so the remaining issue is whether Good Guy Jack Smith can get an appeal before the 11th Circuit Court before Cannon fucks everything up permanently. 

The giveaway? Loose Cannon is obviously the least capable of the judges who have heard or will eventually hear the numerous cases against Cheez Doodles, but she's the ONLY one in that group he describes as highly respected. He must be convinced that the fix is in effect now.

BTW, Cheez Doodles are those crispy snacks that look like little orange dog turds.

Speeding Stuff Up With End Runs

There's plenty of discussion online today about special counsel Jack Smith's unexpected end run yesterday. He filed a petition with the Extreme Court for a prompt decision on the validity of Thunderpussy's belief that he enjoys total immunity from prosecution for crimes he committed while in office as the so-called precedent (sic). Nobody knows who told him that crap.

Meanwhile, MAGA Monkeys are pissing blood over what Jack Smith has done. That suggests lack of confidence that justices Thunderpussy thinks he owns will support his absolute immunity defense. Did they even stop to ponder what Joe Biden would do once the Extremes confirmed he had complete immunity?

PS 7:15 PM Tuesday: It's really nice to have a president who doesn't fantasize about a night in bed with Putin for a change.

Another Blue Monday

I'm behind schedule today, so I'm only now checking to see what's brewing in the news. One story getting attention is the New York fraud case since this is the day that Donald (Dooky) Dump is testifying in his own defense. It apparently isn't going well. (Dooky) is behaving like a spoiled second-grader, if you can imagine one who weighs about 375 pounds and wears a piss-colored comb-over with orange fake suntan makeup. 

A report I read earlier said that (Dooky) and his lawyers will do everything they can to provoke Judge Engoron into a temper explosion, hoping it would be the basis for a mistrial declaration.

On a somewhat related but slightly different subject, PoliticusUSA has a good write-up about the Dump's obsession with making EVERYTHING about him and the persecution he's being forced to suffer because he wants to be precedent (sic) again. The only people on earth who give a single whimpering fuck about that asshole's victimhood are the dipshits who voted for him in two other elections. Everyone else heard him the first two hundred times and are sick of him and his whining.

There are people in the media who are locked onto the idea that (Dooky) is some kind of genius because he dominates the news every day - but he only dominates the news because so many media outlets are totally worthless. 

Q NOTES # 739: Outrageous Behavior

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg needs to explain to America why he's chosen not to prosecute Donald Dump for committing felonies. Then we need to determine if there's another jurisdiction that can resume the investigation.

On the subject of felonies, Clarence's old lady, Ginni Thomas, is back in the news again. She's involved in the attempted coup, and Clarence should be removed from the Court. 

Update Friday 11:48 AM: Crooks & Liars has more on Clarence and his old lady, their corruption, and the repeated failures of our national news journalists. 

Don Vaselini obviously believes he can make his legal woes vanish by filing another frivolous lawsuit, this time against Hillary Clinton. 

More from Daily Kos: Clarence and Ginni are links in the chain in the attempted 1/6 coup, and this should be the most interesting story in the news for a few weeks. Ginni needs to be locked up, and Clarence should retire for health reasons.

Liars

According to TPM, the so-called precedent (sic) believes telling lies to Congress is bad, although he does it every day. Mr. Poo C. Grabber would consider it "unacceptable" if he finds out Kavanaugh lied to the Senate during his confirmation hearing. I suppose that means he'll need to be sure he doesn't find out about the lies Kavanaugh told.

Would this guy lie? Are you serious?

Least surprising news of the day

It was inevitable. The minute Kavanaugh's name was drawn out of Donnie's hat, I knew something like this Crooks & Liars report would pop up.

Donnie never hires anyone unless they (a) swear an oath of personal loyalty to him, or (b) can do him a big personal favor, or (c) preferably, both (a) and (b).

More winning

Early signs are that Gorsucks will be in the Clarence Thomas tradition as a member of the Supreme Court. Which is to say, a goddamned waste of oxygen.

Added 8:05 PM: Getting Gorsucks confirmed is enough damage caused by Donnie Dickdrip to last a lifetime, but the fucker just keeps piling it on. We need to put a stop to this shit, and it needs to be hard and soon.

Added 3:55 PM on 4 July: Something's gotta give, and vox.com has a chart that explains the task Chinless Mitch is facing to pass trumpcare in the Senate

Muck Fitch

Republican chinless wonder Mitch McConnell is making it clear that his Senate won't even consider meeting for coffee with anyone Obama nominates to fill Fat Tony's seat at the Supreme Court. Talking Points Memo explains how and why this bullshit can be manipulated to create an advantage for Democrats this fall.

6-3 the other way

The Gang of Five, led by mob boss Fat Tony Scalia, is coming apart at the seams lately. Those 5-4 Supreme Court rulings that were like money in the bank for right-wingers aren't as predictable as they used to be.

Take gas, losers.

Actually, Roberts and Kennedy saved the Republican Party from itself. Now the GOP crazies can keep ranting about the ACA and promising to repeal it if they ever control both the executive and legislative branches simultaneously (unlikely as that seems), and they won't have to produce any health care reform measures of their own.

The Law

Sometimes things are so obvious that I never see them until somebody points them out.

State laws against gay marriage are discriminatory based on gender rather than sexual orientation. That makes perfect sense, and could be the basis for a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court (with Fat Tony Scalia, Clarence, and Sammy Alito as dissenting votes, naturally).

Busy, busy, busy

This was a busy week for Texas conservatives. In Austin, Sen. Wendy Davis was able to sustain an old-fashioned filibuster (the kind that requires you to stand up and talk non-stop for hours at a time) until the clock ran out on the special session and an anti-abortion bill dominionists were trying to push through at the wire. That got El Perrito lathered up and made an internet star out of Wendy Davis, which got the rest of the Republicans in an uproar.

Then the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that DOMA, passed during Clinton's administration and prohibiting federal benefits to same-sex marriages, was unconstitutional. People like Charles Krauthammer think it's now only a matter of time until gay marriage goes national. As far as I'm concerned, the government could solve the problem by simply terminating every special benefit, privilege, and advantage that it provides to hetero married couples. If hetero marriage is what the Christian god had in mind, it should have remained strictly a religious ceremony and the government shouldn't have rewarded married people with goodies to begin with. The whole mess is a perfect illustration of why we need separation of church and state. Since dominionist Republicans believe the church should BE the state, the court decision lathered them up again.

RWers got some good news when another USSC ruling invalidated a section of the Voting Rights Act that made it difficult for several former slave states to enact Jim Crow laws disenfranching the descendents of slaves. In Texas, this meant its bogus Voter ID law, designed to prevent fraud that never existed, was in Go status again. Other Dixie shit holes like North Carolina and Mississippi rolled out their own bills.

Republicans in the solid red states have used redistricting to lock in majorities in the House of Representatives. The gerrymandering occurred while the VRA was intact, so apparently it couldn't be prevented by the section the court abolished. Most of the states affected by the ruling are already dominated by the GOP, and now they may stay red a while longer than they might have otherwise.

In single-party government, there's always a tendency to overreach. When either party controls the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, it spells trouble. Now that Republican governments in the red states think nobody's watching what they're up to, it's only a matter of time until one or more of them enact really outrageous voter suppression laws, wind up back in court, and have their asses handed to them by a federal judge. It's not a matter of IF it happens, only how long it takes.

What suspense ?

The nine justices of the U.S. Supreme Court are expected to vote today on the fate of the Affordable Care Act, known to RWers as Obamacare. This is expected to take an hour, but that's at least fifty minutes more than necessary. All they really need is Kennedy's opinion. Unless hell has frozen over, we already know how Roberts, Scalia, Alito and Thomas will vote. After that, it makes no difference what the other four think.