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