Supreme Court

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Congress Opposes Non-Violent Support For Palestinian Rights

This has not been a good week for Democrats, especially those who wish to cast their party as the progressive alternative to the Trump-McConnell regime. As the feckless party leadership continued to avoid taking any action against Donald Trump for his numerous crimes—which go well beyond the Russia questions—they managed to find time to pass a bill opposing the right of U.S. citizens to use economic leverage to press for change in Israel-Palestine.

H. Res. 246, a nameless bill which declares the House of Representatives’ opposition to the movement for boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) against Israel, passed with 398 in favor and only 17 (16 Democrats and one Republican) representatives voting against it. The bill was considerably weaker than the sort of legislation the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) had hoped to pass to criminalize BDS at the federal level. Those efforts ran afoul of free speech concerns among a wide variety of Congress members.

In the end, H. Res. 246 addressed those concerns sufficiently to attract the support of comparatively moderate Jewish groups such as J Street, Ameinu, Partners for Progressive Israel, the National Council of Jewish Women, and Reconstructing Judaism. But fundamental issues remained, and if we were having a rational discussion about BDS and U.S. policy toward Israel-Palestine in general, those issues would have been more of an obstacle. Read more at LobeLog

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Yes, We Can Do Something About Brett Kavanaugh

So Brett Kavanaugh is almost certainly going to be the next associate justice on the Supreme Court. Are we helpless in the face of this?

No, we are not. 

I have little faith that Susan Collins (R-ME), much less Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) or any other Republican senator will vote against Kavanaugh. Even if two of them do bolt, there’s no guarantee that Democrats like Joe Manchin (D-WV), Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), or Joe Donnelly (D-IN) won’t vote to confirm him, as they all did for Neil Gorsuch. Those of us not in those states really can’t do much about their votes in any case.

But there is something we can do.

We can, all of us, in ways great and small, make sure that the story of Brett Kavanaugh focuses not on him, but on the circumstances of his appointment.  The reality is that, as loathsome as I find Kavanaugh’s opinions, they are mostly within the spectrum of US political discourse. Yes, he’s been correctly cast as a partisan judge, but so was Antonin Scalia, and, really, what other kind of judge is Donald Trump likely to appoint? Being opposed to Roe v Wade, Obamacare, and just about every environmental regulation he can find does not disqualify him from the Court.  Continue reading →