Category: Notes and Comment Blog

And then this.

I will tweet what I can while I wait to be interviewed by police.

— Phil Davis (@PDavis_LLC) June 28, 2018

A single shooter shot multiple people at my office, some of whom are dead.

— Phil Davis (@PDavis_LLC) June 28, 2018

Gunman shot through the glass door to the office and opened fire on multiple employees. Can't say much more and don't want to declare anyone dead, but it's bad.

— Phil Davis (@PDavis_LLC) June 28, 2018

There is nothing more terrifying than hearing multiple people get shot while you're under your desk and then hear the gunman reload

— Phil Davis (@PDavis_LLC) June 28, 2018

Maybe the choice of target was completely random, and Trump’s constant venomous attacks on the press had nothing to do with it.

And maybe not.

What’s going on today:

House Republicans on Thursday mounted a multi-front effort to rebuke and embarrass the GOP-led Justice Department, hauling Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein before an “emergency” hearing of the Judiciary Committee just as the House voted to accuse him of flouting congressional document requests.

Face-to-face with Rosenstein and FBI Director Chris Wray, Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte invoked the Church Committee — the 1975 investigation into federal surveillance abuses against figures like Martin Luther King, Jr. — and suggested history was repeating itself in the ongoing investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia on its election interference efforts.

So, to be clear, Goodlatte compared Trump to King, and the illegal surveillance of King with the investigation of Russia’s intervention in the Trump campaign. To be clear, that’s not a reasonable comparison. To be clear, I don’t for a second believe that Goodlatte thinks it is reasonable, he just thinks it’s good PR.

“Whatever you got, finish it the hell up,” added House Oversight Committee Chairman Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.). “This country’s being torn apart.”

Endless investigations of emails and Benghazi on the other hand were good for the country.

Wow. This is astonishing. These are Republicans, grilling a Republican Deputy Attorney General in a Republican administration, accusing him of lying under oath. It’s not “partisanship” as normally understood, it’s something even sicker – it’s deranged and pernicious loyalty to one monstrous human being whose only real party is himself.

Watch Rod Rosenstein dunk on Jim Jordan in this AM's hearing. It's beautiful.

JORDAN: "Did you threaten subpoena their calls and emails?"
ROSENSTEIN: "No sir, and there's no way to subpoena phone calls." pic.twitter.com/gOnrS2E0HJ

— Caroline Orr Bueno, Ph.D (@RVAwonk) June 28, 2018

Rosenstein keeps his cool but he’s obviously not impressed.

Jordan: “I asked if you said it.”

Rosenstein: “Said what?”

J: “What I just read you.”

R: “No I did not.”

J: “Well now who are we supposed to believe, staff members who we’ve worked with, who’ve never misled us, or you guys, who we’ve caught hiding information from us, who tell a witness not to answer our questions, who we supposed to believe?”

R: “Thank you for making clear it’s not personal, Mr Jordan.”

Jordan starts to bluster-answer while Rosenstein says, sharply, “You should believe me because I’m  telling the truth and I’m under oath.” Jordan comes back with, “I know these staff members.”

They’re both Republicans.

Maybe the difference is simply that Jordan is elected while Rosenstein is appointed, so that Jordan is playing to what he takes to be the mentality of people who voted for him. Or maybe it’s simply loyalty to Trump versus loyalty to the laws, the Constitution, the justice system, the Department of Justice.

At any rate, it’s astonishing.

Of course.

Bill Shine, a former Fox News executive who was close to Roger E. Ailes, the network’s ousted chairman, is expected to be offered the job of White House communications director, according to four people familiar with the decision.

Mr. Shine, who was forced out as co-president at Fox News last May for his handling of sexual harassment scandals at the network, has met with President Trump in recent weeks about taking the West Wing communications job, which has been vacant since Hope Hicks left the job in March.

Yeah! Fox News and an enabler of sexual harassment; win-win!

Four people familiar with the decision said it was likely to be announced and that the president had offered him the job. But the move has not been finalized, in part because of the president’s mercurial decision-making process and also because of Mr. Shine’s reluctance to walk into a chaotic West Wing.

Oh but think of all the fun, the glamour, the chocolate cake.

Mr. Shine’s stature at the network weakened in the wake of the revelations against Mr. Ailes, which included multiple allegations of sexual harassment and several multimillion dollar settlements with the women who made the accusations against him.

Mr. Shine was accused in several lawsuits of covering up Mr. Ailes’s behavior and dismissing concerns from women who complained about it. Mr. Shine has denied any wrongdoing or knowing about Mr. Ailes’s behavior.

Several former employees at Fox News reacted with alarm — but not surprise — to reports that Mr. Shine may move into the top communications job at the White House.

Several who spoke on the condition that they remain anonymous said they were aghast that Mr. Shine would receive an offer to work in the White House while women who came forward to accuse Mr. Ailes of harassment have seen their television careers founder.

Mr. Shine’s connection to the accusations against Mr. Ailes could be particularly sensitive for the president, who was also accused of sexual misconduct during the 2016 campaign. Mr. Trump has denied those accusations, and officials at the White House said they are aware that they may face blowback for appointing someone so closely tied to Mr. Ailes and the culture of harassment toward women at Fox News.

Of course they’re aware; that’s why he’s doing it. Trump loves to shove it in women’s faces. And all of ours.

Kathleen Stock has thoughts on the new language rules:

I reject the near-pathological zeal with which trans activists, ‘trans allies’, and ‘woke blokes’ generally, seek to monitor and control natal women’s language in this domain: not just with respect to discussing whether trans women are actually women, but also in uses of particular names and pronouns, and gender attributions.

…

One basis for self-identifying as a trans person is the condition of gender dysphoria. It is assumed by many medical practitioners that, on diagnosis of this condition, treating a person ‘as if’ belonging to their self-identified gender is helpful to their well-being; whereas confronting them with their ‘birth-assigned’ gender, or the biological facts of their sex, is not. We might easily interpret this as a kind of benevolent role-playing or method-acting, extending from the medical practitioner out into the wider community: act as if a trans woman is a woman, in most social contexts. But this is completely compatible with denying that trans women really arewomen, in a more committed sense.

Somehow, though, in recent years, a respectful concern for the well-being of trans people has supposedly morphed into a literal claim about category membership: trans women really are women. That is: trans women belong unambiguously in the category of women; the concept of woman literally applies to them. For most trans activists, this is supposed to be true whether the trans woman is a post-operative transsexual, or a trans woman on hormones, or whether she belongs to the significant proportion of trans women who are neither. She ‘is’ a women, whether she transitioned in her teens, or in middle-age; whether thirty years ago, or yesterday. Moreover, for many trans activists, not only are trans women literally women, but if they have children, they can be mothers. If they have female partners, they can be lesbians. They can be victims of misogyny. And so on. One by one, the familiar words women have used to describe themselves tumble like a chain of dominoes.

Such claims are usually unargued-for. They are presented more as self-evident truths; the outcome of revelation, perhaps, or as some article of faith which it would be downright evil to try to deny or complicate. As this description suggests, agreement with such claims is ruthlessly socially enforced by trans activists.

And that’s putting it mildly. The enforcement stretches to threats and even outright violence.

It doesn’t matter if your subject matter is Labour party all-woman shortlists, what to do about children who think they are trans, medical discussions, biology teaching, or presumably, your own relatives; you are never, ever, ever supposed to describe trans women as men or male, ‘deadname’, ‘misgender’, or use the ‘wrong’ pronouns out loud. Even trans women themselves aren’t supposed to do these things: see the bullying treatment that trans women in the UK such as Miranda Yardley, Kristina Harrison, and Debbie Hayton get, when they deny that they themselves are ‘really’ women, and seek a different narrative.

This is in itself quite striking, as for other false claims about category membership, people are normally socially permitted to assert them. Take the claims: “Elton John is straight”. “Marvin Gaye is white”. Those claims are obviously false, but there was, presumably, no inward gasp of horror as you just read them. Now contrast with: “Caitlyn Jenner is a man”; “Lily Madigan is biologically male; he is a man”. Even though I mention these as exemplary sentences, rather than assert them myself, I assume that at least some readers think I just wrote something awful.

Or maybe they don’t, but pretend they do if anyone is watching.

Seriously. I wish I had one.

Well, as the saying goes, it’s all over.

Kennedy is retiring from the Supreme Court.

The Times, twisting the knife, includes McConnell Says Senate Will Move Swiftly on a Replacement in the headline.

We’d all emigrate, but no one would have us, and who can blame them.

Trump will be able to impose authoritarian rule with the Court’s blessing (possibly literal).

Hannah Gadsby.

And this ruling sucks too: no truth in advertising for you.

The U.S. Supreme Court has reversed a lower court decision upholding a California law requiring anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers to more fully disclose what they are.

The case pitted the right to know against the right of free speech. On one side are self-identified “crisis pregnancy centers” that seek to prevent abortions and on the other side is the state of California, which enacted a 2015 law to ensure that these centers do not intentionally or unintentionally mislead the women who walk through their doors.

In a 5-4 ruling, the court said the centers are likely to succeed in their claim that the law violates the First Amendment. That overturns an earlier decision by the Ninth Circuit upholding the law and sends the case back for further consideration.

In other words it’s “free speech” for anti-abortion centers to pretend to be “crisis pregnancy centers” in order to lure women in and talk them out of having abortions.

Supporters of the California law called the state’s effort nothing more than seeking “truth in advertising.” But anti-abortion pregnancy centers saw the law as unconstitutional, compelling speech that turns them into mouthpieces for a government message they disagree with.

…

The case began in 2015 when California passed a law known as the Reproductive FACT Act. (It stands for Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care and Transparency.)

The impetus was twofold — first, allegations that pregnancy centers opposed to abortion were using deceptive practices; and second, concern that lower-income women, in particular, weren’t aware of the free pregnancy-related services California provides, from prenatal and delivery care to birth control and abortion.

The FACT Act requires unlicensed crisis pregnancy centers to post a sign or otherwise disclose to their clients in writing that the center is not a licensed medical facility and has no licensed medical provider who supervises the provision of services. The disclosure requirement extends to advertising, which anti-abortion pregnancy centers objected to as an attempt to “drown out” their message.

They want to be free to trick and deceive.

In recent years, the number of pregnancy centers that counsel against abortion has dramatically increased. There are about 2,700 of them across the country, more than three times the number of clinics that provide abortions.

And just as some states provide taxpayer funds for abortions, 14 states directly fund anti-abortion pregnancy centers. From 2001 to 2006, the centers received an estimated $30 million in federal funding.

There is no data on how many of the 2,700 anti-abortion pregnancy centers are unlicensed. But unlicensed clinics offer pregnancy tests and limited ultrasounds, and, to an unskeptical eye, they can look very much like a licensed medical facility.

The personnel wear surgical scrubs or white coats and ask clients to fill out medical history questionnaires. Indeed, many clinics locate next to or across the street from a full-service women’s reproductive health center and some use similar-sounding names.

In order to trick and deceive.

CFI on the Reactionary 5’s grotesque ruling:

Ruling on the case of Trump v. Hawaii, in a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court declared that the president has the authority to prohibit travelers from select countries to enter the U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, asserted that the travel ban did not unconstitutionally discriminate against Muslims because “the text says nothing about religion.”

“This ban is about religious discrimination, and to claim otherwise is completely absurd,” said Nick Little, CFI’s Vice President and General Counsel. “As far back as 2015, Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to see Muslims banned from the United States, and promised to carry out this ban once in office. He followed through, and the Supreme Court, unconscionably, is letting him get away with it.”

“Chief Justice Roberts is a brilliant man who is playing dumb,” added Little. “He knows very well that this is not about other countries’ vetting processes or the scope of presidential authority. This is about fomenting fear of Muslims.”

Fear and also hatred. Trump is all about the hatred.

Charles Pierce burning up the page on the subject of “civility” and not being rude to those neatly-dressed people approaching us with whips and flaming torches.

By all accounts, the most civil action taken in L’affaire Poule Rouge was the way Stephanie Wilkinson handled her refusal to serve Sarah Huckabee Sanders at the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, Virginia.

She talked to her staff, she took a vote, she took Sanders aside, she asked her to leave with an explanation why, she comped Sanders and her party for their cheese plate.

She did not use an official government Twitter account to discuss the episode, as Sanders did later. She did not use the power of the Oval Office to try and destroy someone’s business, as the president* found time to do later…

It would have remained a shiny object unworthy of pursuit had it not roiled up a good portion of official Washington, which seemed grateful to be discussing anything except hijacked migrant children. Suddenly, just as the issue of the hijacked children was beginning to bite the administration* severely in the ass, here was an event over which the elite political media could do one of its favorite traditional fan dances: the Question of Civility.

Right on cue, Fred Hiatt’s Washington Post editorial page, which has no compunction about publishing the words of torture-enthusiast Marc Thiessen, blurted out the most embarrassing single paragraph written about the events at the Red Hen. To wit:

We nonetheless would argue that Ms. Huckabee, and Ms. Nielsen and Mr. Miller, too, should be allowed to eat dinner in peace. Those who are insisting that we are in a special moment justifying incivility should think for a moment how many Americans might find their own special moment. How hard is it to imagine, for example, people who strongly believe that abortion is murder deciding that judges or other officials who protect abortion rights should not be able to live peaceably with their families?

Er. Pierce becomes rather vehement at that point, and you can see why. It’s not hard to imagine because it happens constantly, including MURDER. Imana guess it was all men who put their heads together on that editorial, because women are pretty likely to be aware of how dangerous it is to need an abortion in this country.

I’m old enough to remember the raucous town halls of 2010, when the AstroTurfed forces of the Tea Party shouted down members of Congress while men with automatic weapons strolled around the perimeter of arenas in which the President of the United States was speaking. I’m old enough to remember when N. Leroy Gingrich, Definer of Civilization’s Rules and Leader (Perhaps) of The Civilizing Forces, was working out his Universal Lexicography of Insult for the benefit of a party that ate it up with an entrenching tool. Newt also emerged on the electric Twitter machine over the weekend, leaping to SarahHuck’s defense, and that was nearly enough to make me give up English as a hobby.

You know who would’ve been baffled by this sudden debate over “civility”? Samuel Adams and John Hancock, that’s who. They were a helluva lot less civil to the crew of the Dartmouth than Stephanie Wilkinson was to the Sanders party, and the citizens of Boston did not comp Thomas Hutchinson to a cheese plate when they ran his sorry ass across the pond.

Yes but they didn’t have a Trump Tower to bow to.

Ah yes, making America great again.

Harley-Davidson, the American motorcycle manufacturer, said on Monday that it would shift some production of its iconic bikes overseas to avoid retaliatory tariffs imposed by the European Union in response to President Trump’s trade moves.

The decision, announced in a public filing, is the latest and most high-profile example of how Mr. Trump’s trade war is beginning to ripple through the United States economy as domestic companies begin struggling with a cascade of tariffs both here and abroad. While Mr. Trump says his trade policy is aimed at reviving domestic manufacturing, Harley-Davidson’s decision shows how the administration’s moves could have the unintended effect of reducing employment and economic growth in the United States.

Unintended, but certainly not unforeseeable; everyone told him that would happen.

Last week, the European Union hit back against Mr. Trump’s steel and aluminum tariffs with penalties on $3.2 billion worth of American products, including bourbon, orange juice, playing cards and Harley-Davidsons. On Monday, the Wisconsin-based company said that European tariffs on its motorcycles had increased to 31 percent from 6 percent and estimated that would add about $2,200, on average, to every motorcycle exported from the United States to the bloc.

Rather than pass that cost along, the company said it would shift production to its overseas facilities to avoid the European Union tariffs.