Senate Judiciary Committee subpoenas billionaire Crow and Leonard leo

https://accountable.us/senate-judiciary-committee-votes-to-authorize-subpoenas-for-leo-crow/

Despite Republicans' offering up 177 amendments, the Senate Judiciary Committee passed a motion to issue subpoenas to billionaire Harlan Crow and dark-money manipulator Leonard Leo, two linchpins of the successful right-wing effort to influence the federal judiciary. This news release contains a good overview of Crow's and Leo's activities since 2008.

Charlie Cooper

Review of organizational and individual influencers of Clarence & Ginni Thomas

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2023/11/09/clarence-thomas-ginni-harlan-crow-gifts/?utm_campaign=wp_post_most&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_most

Useful survey of past several months' news of scandal.

Charlie Cooper

Why are U.S. courts afraid of the 14th Amendment? Because it’s radical.

Why are U.S. courts afraid of the 14th Amendment? Because it's radical.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/11/24/us-courts-fear-14th-amendment-radical/

Sherrilynn Iffel reviews the history of courts in the United States refusing to accept the full thrust of the 14th Amendment and bowing to white racist sentiment among the majority population. She applies this analysis to cases trying to remove Trump from the presidential ballot for 2024..

Charlie Cooper

 

Ranked choice voting is gaining in cities

https://thefulcrum.us/rank-choice-voting-a-day-of-wins

Ranked choice voting has now won 27 city ballot questions consecutively and is in use in 20 cities.

Charlie Cooper

Election officials quitting and election deniers trying to replace them

https://missoulian.com/opinion/column/mary-sheehy-moe-foxes-and-doggies-and-frogs-oh-my/article_20c7458a-83d4-11ee-b306-6fae355738ea.html

Describes problems with experienced election officials quitting in Montana and inexperienced people having to do the work. Many election deniers ran in the primaries, but only 8% of the general elections were won by deniers. Vignettes describing problems in Great Falls, where an election denier did win, are concerning.

Charlie Cooper

State of NY seeks partisan gerrymander

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/11/11/new-york-democrats-redistricting-congress-00126682

Because of a change in personnel in its highest court the State of New York is roiled in a battle over rare mid-decade redistricting of seats in Congress. Mirroring the partisan gerrymandering completed in North Carolina, New York Democrats are asking the high court to allow a redrawing of the map that could give them up to six more seats.

Charlie Cooper

Stinging critique of SCOTUS ethics announcement

https://www.afj.org/article/the-insufficiences-of-the-supreme-courts-so-called-code-of-conduct/

The Justices have modified the Code of Conduct applied to lower court federal judges but have replaced "shall" with "should" many times and have added modifiers like "knowingly" to give Justices an out when they are caught. 

Regarding recusal, the article says, "Canon 3(B)(3) holds that 'The rule of necessity may override the rule of disqualification.' If this sentence sounds like it means whatever the justices want it to mean, that's because that's exactly what it means. The 'rule of necessity' renders the Court's supposed disqualification and recusal rules meaningless." 

The code provides no enforcement mechanism.

Charlie Cooper

Despite economic growth, U.S. inequality worsens

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/opinion/why-voters-arent-buying-bidens-boasts-about-bidenomics.html

Inflation is down and GDP up, but the fruits of growth go overwhelmingly to the already-well-off. Tens of millions of middle- and working-class people are feeling worse off -- despite the aggregate numbers. People don't vote so much on aggregate numbers as they do on their own situation. Biden and his political advisors need to stop looking at aggregates and enforce their own measures to promote equality.

Charlie Cooper

The impact of McCutcheon on big-money fundraising

https://us12.campaign-archive.com/?u=7fdad23a80f54c4dc24833bd8&id=b4f9578fee

Fred Wertheimer shows how the 2014 McCutcheon decision of the Supreme Court, allowing unlimited aggregate contributions to political committees to influence elections allows politicians to legally sell influence to high-rollers. [This portion of the article starts after several paragraphs on Trump's rhetoric.]

Charlie Cooper

Brennan Center discussion of Supreme Court reform with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AUSgei4YL4

Charlie Cooper

Virginia voters question a state senator's residence

https://www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/ghazala-hashmi-home-address-nov-14-2023

Four voters have filed a petition alleging that the senator is not eligible to represent her district because she does not live there. She has a house outside the district and an apartment in the district. The dispute does have a partisan element because the petitioners are Republicans while the senator/candidate is a Democrat.

Charlie Cooper

Supreme Court adopts voluntary ethics code

https://www.propublica.org/article/supreme-court-adopts-ethics-code-scotus-thomas-alito-crow

After years of pressure from Democratic members of Congress (led by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse), and after startling revelations about how right-wing billionaires have provided lavish gifts and financial benefits to Clarence Thomas and other  justices, and after the press has exposed the right-wing network of dark money organizations led by Leonard leo seeking to influence the court, the Supreme Court has adopted a voluntary code of ethics. It contains slight wording changes compared to the ethics code imposed on all lower judges of the federal judiciary, and it is less stringent than the code applied to employees of the legislative and executive branches. There is no enforcement mechanism.

This article also gives a brief overview of the questionable practices by several justices that have uncovered over the past years.

Sen. Dick Durbin, Chair of the Senate Judiciary, said the Committee would continue efforts to issue subpoenas for Leo and for billionaire Thomas benefactor Harlan Crow. Republicans on the Committee have delayed the process by introducing 90 amendments to the motion authorizing the subpoenas.

Charlie Cooper

Constitutional scholar Rep. Jamie Raskin on priorities for amending the Constitution

https://thefulcrum.us/constitution-day-conversation-with-jamie-raskin

His remarks on Constitution Day, 9/17/23, all focus on expanding democracy.

Charlie Cooper

Senate Judiciary subpoenas and GOP delaying tactics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uArOi5OAnDY

At 36:00 in this video, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a key member of the Senate Judiciary Committee explains that the motion to subpoena billionaire Harlan Crow and right-wing kingpin Leonard Leo regarding gifts to Justice Clarence Thomas (among others), have been delayed because Republican senators have introduced 90 amendments. Whitehouse expects the roadblocks to be overcome and for the subpoenas to be issued.

Charlie Cooper

Move to Amend hits Josh Hawley bill

https://www.movetoamend.org/hawley_masks_corporaterule?utm_campaign=josh_hawleys_bill&utm_medium=email&utm_source=movetoamend 

Move to Amend argues that only a constitutional amendment overturning Citizens United and banning the concept of corporate constitutional rights can restore balance to our politics and government. 

 

Hawleys bill, which only bans certain kinds of political spending by for profit corporations, they argue, will not do the trick.

Charlie Cooper.

Senate Judiciary Committee will subpoena Harlan Crow and Leonard Leo

https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/press/releases/durbin-announces-judiciary-committee-will-no-longer-vote-to-authorize-subpoena-for-robin-arkley-following-cooperation-in-supreme-court-ethics-investigation

The Senate Judiciary Committee will issue subpoenas to principal figures in the Supreme Court ethics scandal.

Charlie Cooper

Public Citizen praises Meta and Microsoft on deep fakes

https://www.citizen.org/news/meta-microsoft-back-disclosure-for-election-deepfakes/

Public Citizen thinks that Meta and Microsoft are sincerely supporting effective regulation of deep fakes, which are a potential serious threat to our elections and to the entire concept of democratic control of government.

Charlie Cooper

Overview of threats to 2024 Presidential election

https://www.marylandmatters.org/2023/11/07/one-year-out-how-a-free-and-fair-2024-presidential-election-could-be-under-threat/

Congress fixed a major problem with the Electoral Count Reform Act, but the desire of Trump partisans to win an election by any means and their belief in conspiracy theories mean that a host of threats at every stage of the process looms. Also, four key states have made it more difficult to vote by mail.

Charlie Cooper

Audit of Maryland State Board of Elections

https://www.marylandmatters.org/2023/11/03/audit-raises-concerns-about-efforts-to-purge-the-dead-from-voter-rolls/

Out of more than 4 million registered voters, State auditors claimed to have found 2,400 dead people. SBE staff disputes the number and says it is just under 1,000. The audit found 134 people who voted more than once in the 2020 election out of 1,371 who tried to vote more than once. (The election occurred during the pandemic.) None of these findings suggest that the outcome of an election could have been changed by fraudulent voting.

Charlie Cooper

McConnell warns GOP senators not to back Hawley bill to limit outside money from corporations

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/31/politics/mitch-mcconnell-josh-hawley-citizens-united/index.html

McConnell bragged about how much outside money he had been able to funnel to colleagues. In an interview, Hawley defended his bill and said that corporate influence should be limited in elections.

"I think that's wrong," Hawley told CNN. "I think it's wrong as an original matter. I think it's warping our politics, and I see no reason for conservatives to defend it. It's wrong as a matter of the original meaning of the Constitution. It is bad for our elections. It's bad for our voters. And I just think on principle, we ought to be concerned."

Charlie Cooper