It was Beat Up the SCOTUS Nominee Day

After Monday’s warm-up session of opening statements, this morning, Judge KETANJI BROWN JACKSON entered what Senate Judiciary Chair DICK DURBIN described as a “trial by ordeal,” with questioning from all 22 members of the panel. The seven morning inquisitors seven had their chance to beat up Mrs. Jackson

Here are some highlights from this morning’s questioning:

— On Roe v. Wade: “‘Roe’ and ‘[Planned Parenthood v.] Casey’ are the settled law of the Supreme Court concerning the right to terminate a woman’s pregnancy,” Jackson said. “They have established a framework that the court has reaffirmed.”

— On court-packing, Jackson repeatedly declined to wade into the issue: “My North Star is the consideration of the proper role of a judge in our Constitutional scheme. In my view, judges should not be speaking to political issues, and certainly not a nominee for a position on the Supreme Court.”

— On marriage rights for same-sex couples: Sen. JOHN CORNYN (R-Texas) asked if Jackson agreed with him that the Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges (which found that “same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry”) creates “a conflict between what people may believe as a matter of their religious faith, and what the federal government says is the law of the land.” “That is the nature of a right,” Jackson replied. “When there is a right, it means that there are limitations on regulation, even if people are regulating pursuant to their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

— On claims that she has been lenient with sentencing in child sex abuse cases: “As a mother and a judge who has had to deal with these cases, I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth,” Jackson said. “I impose a strict sentence and all of the additional restraints that are available in the law. These people [convicted in these cases] cannot use computers in a normal way for decades. I am imposing all of those constraints because I understand how significant, how damaging, how horrible this crime is.”

— On whether she thinks Supreme Court hearings should be televised: “I would want to discuss with the other justices their views and understand all of the various potential issues related to cameras in the courtroom before I took a position on it.”

The most explosive moments from this morning came from LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-S.C.), who used a substantial portion of his time to lament the treatment of Justice AMY CONEY BARRETT during her confirmation process.

GRAHAM: “What faith are you, by the way?” JACKSON: “Senator, I am Protestant. Non-denominational.” GRAHAM: “How important is your faith to you?” JACKSON: “Senator, personally my faith is very important. … It’s very important to set aside one’s personal views about things in the role of a judge.”

Then Graham turned it up: “On a scale of 1-10, how faithful would you say you are in terms of religion?” Jackson responded: “Senator, I am reluctant to talk about my faith in this way just because I want to be mindful of the need for the public to have confidence in my ability to separate out my personal views.”

Graham continued: “Well how would you feel if a senator up here said, ‘your faith, a dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s of concern.’ … Would you find that offensive? I would if I were you. I found it offensive when they said it about Judge Barrett. … You’re reluctant to talk about it because it’s uncomfortable. Just imagine what would happen if people on late-night television called you an ‘effing nut speaking in tongues’ because you’ve practiced the Catholic faith in a way they couldn’t relate to or found uncomfortable. So, judge, you should be proud of your faith. I am convinced that whatever faith you have and how often you go to church, it will not affect your ability to be fair. … Judge Barrett, I thought, was treated very, very poorly, so I just wanted to get that out.”

Graham’s questioning later turned to her work representing Guantánamo Bay detainees, and an amicus brief she filed during her time at a law firm that challenged Bush-era detention policies. The topic produced a tense back-and-forth between Graham and Jackson in which the senator attempted to get an explanation of whether she agreed with the challenge. The context, via NYT’s Charlie Savage

It’s safe to say Graham left unsatisfied. Here’s what he told CNN’s Manu Raju after exiting the room for a break: “Graham emerged from hearing and said it’s ‘fair to say’ he sees red flags with [the] Jackson nomination. He criticized her explanation of defending Guantanamo detainees as an attorney. ‘It just doesn’t make sense to me,’ he told me.”

Graham also lamented that J. MICHELLE CHILDS, a judge from his home state, had not been selected as the nominee, claiming that progressives torpedoed her chances in favor of boosting Jackson.

— Worth noting: Graham was one of three Republican senators who voted to confirm Jackson to her post on the D.C. Circuit.

Fill Your Gas Tank Elsewhere

Fill your tank elsewhere. Lukoil is a Russian multinational corporation headquartered in Moscow. Their CEO, Vagit Alekperov, is a Russian oligarch worth an estimated $19.6 billion. Lukoil gas stations are all over PA, NJ and NY.

#IStandWithUkraine

Scammer Caught

A 73-year-old New York grandmother outsmarted scammers who pretended to be her grandson and said he needed $8,000 to be bailed out of jail. I personally had this very same scam done on me. I simply hung up the phone. The grandmother played along.

A Long Island grandmother outsmarted a group of scammers who wanted $8,000 from her.
The woman said a man called her and pretended to be her grandson, claiming he needed $8,000 in bail money.
The woman said she had money at her house and told him to come get it. Then, she called the police.

A Long Island grandmother outsmarted scammers who tried to steal thousands from her.

The woman from Seaford, who asked to be identified as Jean, told CBS2 that she received a call from someone claiming to be her grandson. The man said he was arrested for drunk driving and needed to be bailed out of jail.

“I knew he was a real scammer. I just knew he wasn’t going to scam me,” Jean, 73, told CBS2. “He starts calling me ‘grandma,’ and then I’m like, I don’t have a grandson that drives, so I knew it was a scam.”

The scam took several phone calls to play out and involved multiple unidentified males, police said in a press release. One person claiming to be a lawyer for Jean’s grandson told her that he needed $8,000 to get out of jail. A third person called claiming to be a bail bondsman coming to collect the money.

“I told him I had the money in the house, and I figured, he’s not going to fall for that,” Jean said, adding that she called the police. “Well, he fell for that hook, line, and sinker.”

A man impersonating a bail bondsman arrived at Jean’s home to collect the money, and she handed him an envelope filled with paper towels. As he turned to leave, police officers tackled him, according to CBS2.

Officers of the Nassau County Police Department arrested Joshua Estrella Gomez, 28, and charged him with attempted grand larceny in the third degree. He was released on an appearance ticket and is due to appear in court on February 3.

“I feel like gotcha, and I feel like, like you say, so many people fall for this and you only hear about it on the other end after they’ve lost $8,000,” Jean said.

The End of Democracy in America

I know it seems like a ridiculous idea. The world’s greatest democracy founded on July 4, 1776 coming to an end. Every nation in the world striving to have a democracy tries to emulate the United States of America. It is happening before our eyes. Millions of our own citizens no longer believe fair and honest elections are possible.

To ensure that there are unfair elections the GOP, the Republican Party, are passing laws to deny citizens the right to vote. But of course many Republicans believe they are doing the right thing to protect the democracy.

States with Republican legislatures have passed waves of new laws making it harder for constituents to vote in response to the 2020 election, experts say.

Republican lawmakers in state legislatures across the country are capitalizing on Trump’s repeated claims of voter fraud to pass these measures. Nineteen states have passed 33 news laws this year that make it harder to vote, according to an updated analysis released Monday by the liberal Brennan Center for Justice.

The report, which covers legislative activity through September 27, finds that:

Four states bundled together an array of new voting restrictions into single omnibus bills: Texas, Florida, Georgia and Iowa.
Four states — Arkansas, Montana, Texas and Arizona — passed multiple laws to restrict voting.
Many state laws hit on common themes. Seven, for instance, imposed tougher identification requirements to cast ballots. Seven states also shortened the window to apply for a mail-in ballots.

Some states are discouraging voter participation by imposing arbitrary requirements and harsh penalties on voters and poll workers who violate these rules. In Georgia, lawmakers have made it a crime to provide food and water to voters standing in line at the polls — lines that are notoriously long in Georgia, especially for communities of color. In Texas, people have been arrested and given outrageous sentences for what amount at most to innocent mistakes made during the voting process.

Large majorities of Republicans continue to believe the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump, and elected Republicans around the country are acting on this conspiracy theory — attempting to lock Democrats out of power by seizing partisan control of America’s electoral systems. Democrats observe all this and gird for battle, with many wondering if the 2024 elections will be held on the level.

I can see only two possibilities. 1) A military civil war that will result in the loss of lives. Those with the guns winning and resulting into a police state. 2) The splitting of the nation into multiple countries. The liberal west coast as one nation. The Midwest and the South another country and the Northeast a third country.

Historians will note that no government lasts forever.

Goodbye to 2021

The good, the bad and the ugly

First the good

The U.S. $1.9 trillion COVID-19-relief package that helped families—and states and cities—weather the financial hardship caused by the pandemic

A relatively smooth rollout of the major COVID-19 vaccines that offered protection to more than 200 million people and provided at least a brief return to normalcy

A U.S. $1 trillion infrastructure law that won Republican party support and made substantial progress on an issue that had vexed presidents of both parties

The bad

The resurgence, first in summer and then in late fall, of the coronavirus pandemic

Failure to win Senate backing of his $1.75 trillion Build Back Better economic plan all thanks to one man, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin III

Retention of the filibuster in the United States Senate

Vladimir Putin massing Russian troops on its Ukraine border

The pointless meeting of countries called COP26, United Nations Climate Change Conference, that accomplished nothing

The ugly

Invasion of the U.S. Capital

The U.S. chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that ceded the country to the Taliban, cost the lives of U.S. troops, and left many Afghan allies to fend for themselves

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that inflation for the past 12 months has risen by 6.8 percent

The supply chain that ensures we can buy the things we want and need has been disrupted by the pandemic. There are too many cargo ships waiting to be unloaded and there is a shortage of manpower to make things and to drive the trucks that deliver goods around the country. In Houston, the public transportation system is offering new bus drivers bonuses of $4,000. For mechanics, it’s $8,000.

—

2022 does not appear to be any better than 2021 with the threats of war, a pandemic that is more ominous, and a democracy that is being threatened by its own people.

Where’s California invitation to Biden’s democracy summit?

President Biden, did California’s invitation to your Summit for Democracy get lost by the postal service?

Or did you just forget to put us on your list?

Either way, you snubbed California. The Golden State isn’t just way more democratic than many countries you included, like increasingly authoritarian Poland, India, and the Philippines. California also has more people all but a handful of countries at the summit.

More pointedly, where’s your gratitude, dude? California is considerably more democratic than the United States as a whole. And you wouldn’t be governing the country now, much less holding a democracy summit, without the votes of Californians.

But, maddeningly, instead of asking California to send a delegation, you missed an opportunity to address criticism that the American government shouldn’t be holding such a summit when its own democracy is backsliding.

Perhaps you didn’t invite us because you feared that we’d make you look bad. People might point out that the United States, over 245 years, hasn’t managed to hold a single national election. Instead, all elections in this country are at the state or local levels, even for the nation’s highest office, which is why you don’t even have to win the most votes to be elected president. Congress, as a supposedly representative institution, is a joke, with a gerrymandered House and a Senate that gives two seats each to California and Delaware. And virtually all hard questions in the United States are decided by nine unelected and unaccountable lawyers with life tenure.

And while you tolerate voter suppression in many states, California is busy making it easier for people to vote. Californians also allows its citizens to make the laws and amend the constitution themselves through direct democratic tools that do not exist at the national level. At the local level, California communities are adopting other democratic advances — including ranked choice voting systems and participatory budgeting.

Meanwhile, we’ve noticed, Mr. President, that you are dumping all the trickiest democratic issues — from voting rights to migrants’ rights — on your Californian vice president, while allowing your staff to undermine her at every turn.

All that said, we know California isn’t perfect. We only look that way compared to your government.

If you’d invited us, we might have had to answer for our many failings. We have centralized so much fiscal power in state government that our local governments are little more than beggars. We’ve also invested a dangerous amount of authority in our governor, who has extended his own pandemic-era power to rule by decree into March 2022.

And for a place that takes so much pride in its diversity, we are terrible at representation. Indeed, Californians are the least-represented people in America. Because of our failure to expand the state legislature over the past century to keep up with population, our legislative districts are twice as populous as any in America — every state senator represents one million Californians, and every assembly member half-a-million.

Our local governments are similarly small and unrepresentative. If we had been invited to your democracy summit, we would have had to leave Los Angeles at home. It’s embarrassing to explain why the city of Los Angeles has just 15 council members for its 4 million people and L.A. County has just five supervisors for 10.3 million.

Given all these failings, it sure would be helpful if we could join a meeting with some of the world’s most democratic countries. Learning more about summit invitees like Taiwan, which has built a successful democracy in the shadow of an autocratic state, and Switzerland, which does direct democracy better than California, could help us raise our game.

President Biden, we know it’s too late for you to invite a California delegation for this year’s online summit. So, why not invite California to next year’s in-person follow-up right now?

This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star

Auto Shows are Fun to Visit

I visited the Los Angeles Auto show the other day. It’s always fun to see what is new. The big push was on all electric vehicles that are referred to as EVs.

The most significant thing for me was the number of companies offering cars that I never new existed. Lucid Motors, Fisker, Bremach, Cobera, EdisonFuture, Electra Meccanica, Imperium Motor Co., Mullen, Sondors, VinFast. Is there any chance that any of these companies will survive? Fisker has a very large display as you enter the South Hall of the Los Angeles Convention Center. Henrick Fisker claims to have raised $1.6 billion in a public offering last year, he said, and there were 19,000 reservation holders waiting for his cars. His display includes his first offering called Ocean, an EV SUV.

These vehicles are great in a city where there are charging stations but there is a big downside to having an EV if you plan to travel. First there is finding a charging station. Second is the time to charge the cars. “Coming to Yosemite with your Tesla or other electric vehicle? Stop in at Tenaya Lodge for a charge! … Things you can do while you charge your car: Dine in one of our five restaurants.” That is on Highway 41 outside the park.

There are two charging stations in Yosemite Valley. Today the one by the Ahwahnee Hotel is closed. Using I5 going from Los Angeles to Oregon you will need a map to locate charging station locations and a lot of patience.

Despite these two glaring issues Nissan is introducing a new EV SUV that is beautifully designed. In my view the vehicle was the outstanding car.

But there is a problem. A shortage of computer chips has slowed the manufacturing of all vehicles.

So while going to the auto show is fun. Dealers have little or no 2021 and 2022 cars in stock.