#Speech and Debate Clause

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

Trump immunity decision shows that conservative ‘originalism’ is a farce | The Hill

By Kimberly Wehle

In Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court’s far-right majority showed Americans once again that “textualism” and “originalism” are a ruse.

Writing for a 6-3 majority, Chief Justice Roberts announced that presidents have a presumption of absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts. He identified a handful of obvious official acts that underpin Special Counsel Jack Smith’s four-count indictment of Donald Trump for his actions relating to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, which must therefore now be excised from the case — while at the same time refusing to draw any lines for unofficial acts, instead punting that question to the lower courts for the justices to resolve in an inevitable appeal another day.

In her outraged dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor faulted the majority for morphing the presidency into a monarchy, precisely what the founding generation fought to reject. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson penned her own dissenting opinion, pointing out that it’s not just the president whose powers are now too close to that of a king. It’s the power of the Supreme Court itself: “the risks (and power) the court has now assumed are intolerable, unwarranted, and plainly antithetical to bedrock constitutional norms,” she wrote.

Jackson is on to something — especially because the conservative justices purport to follow a constrained approach to the Constitution. Rather than reading new stuff into the document like progressive judges do, the right-wing justices consistently claim, they focus on the precise text of the document and the Framers’ original intent when it was ratified in 1788. That way, the theory goes, judges stay in their lanes and don’t take on power that isn’t rightly theirs.

Let us consider what the Constitution actually says about immunity.

Article II gives the president his job description, making him “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states.” He can “make treaties” with the advice and consent of the Senate; appoint federal judges, executive branch officers and other officials; “take care that the laws are faithfully executed”; and pardon federal crimes. The Constitution is clear that he can be held accountable for violating the rule of law — he “shall be removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of, treason, bribery, or high crimes and misdemeanors.”

There’s nothing whatsoever in the Constitution about immunity for presidents, unlike for members of Congress under the Speech and Debate Clause. In other words, the Framers knew how to afford immunity to federal officials when they wanted to. They didn’t give it to presidents.

A true textualist might be expected to leave things there and reject Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution for official acts as president.

Under Article I, which sets forth Congress’s respective powers, the Constitution goes on to state that “the Party convicted” upon impeachment — which includes impeached presidents — “shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.”

The Framers thus took pains to state in plain English that presidents, even after being impeached, can be indicted, tried, convicted and punished for committing crimes. Again, a true textualist might be expected to leave things there, and reject Trump’s claim of immunity from prosecution for official acts as president.

If that weren’t enough, a true conservative might then look to the Framers’ original intent for definitive guidance, which Jackson highlights in her dissent. Most American middle schoolers know that presidents aren’t kings, so this should be an easy one. Jackson quotes John Adams, one of the Founding Fathers and the second president of the United States, who enshrined in the Massachusetts Declaration of Rights (which became a model for adoption of the U.S. Constitution) the foundational notion of “a government of laws and not of men,” whereby “every act of government may be challenged by an appeal to law.”

But as Jackson rightly noted: “From this day forward, Presidents of tomorrow will be free to exercise the Commander-in-Chief powers, the foreign-affairs powers, and all the vast law enforcement powers enshrined in Article II however they please — including in ways that Congress has deemed criminal and that have potentially grave consequences for the rights and liberties of Americans.” The majority provides no textual or original authority for this sweeping new power for presidents.

Chief Justice John Roberts, to his credit, engages with the dissents’ critiques. He argues for a strict reading of the separation of powers, pointing out that Congress has no legislative authority to constrain the president’s core powers under Article II — including through the criminal laws. But Congress can constrain the powers of the other branches. The Constitution separates the power of the branches but also sets up checks and balances — no branch, in theory, is above the law, because there are built-in ways each branch is held accountable by the other two and, ultimately, the voters. The majority shattered that originalist concept today.

Roberts deems “unpersuasive” the argument that the Constitution is silent on presidential immunity, saying “there is no ‘separation of powers clause,’ either.” But that’s a flawed distinction — the separation of powers is the name that’s been attached to the fact that, in the text, the Framers specified three branches of government in lieu of an all-powerful king.

As for the dissenting justices’ point that the Impeachment Clause expressly references criminally indicting impeached presidents, Roberts bootstrapped his own ruling. To Roberts, the fact that the clause doesn’t say anything about whether presidents can be prosecuted for official conduct means that the Impeachment Clause answers little. But isn’t impeachment itself about conduct taken by presidents using their official powers?

Roberts’s argument is utterly circular, and tosses aside the conservatives’ purported adherence to the plain text and meaning of the Constitution. Roberts then accused the dissenting justices of “cherry-picking” statements from the Founders, concluding obtusely: “Given the Framers’ desire for an energetic and vigorous President,” their argument against prosecutorial immunity, Roberts wrote, “defies credulity.”

In this regard, Roberts seems to have plucked a page from Trump’s political playbook: charge the other side with exactly what you are doing.

[collapsedsquid]

Prosecutors have the gold bars Menendez supposedly received as a corrupt payment, a cooperating witness, and text messages that, they say, showed the senator promising to take votes and other official actions in exchange for bribes. But the prosecution is being complicated by the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause—or at least by the trial judge’s expansive reading of it. This provision aims to allow lawmakers to avoid legal liability for things they say or do in Congress. The idea is to protect elected representatives from being sued or prosecuted for performing their constitutional duties. You might assume that this clause—while sensibly protecting lawmakers from things like libel suits or criminal charges over controversial floor speeches—would have a carveout for public corruption cases. It, in fact, does not. Read literally, it appears quite broad. “For any speech or debate in either House, [members of Congress] shall not be questioned in any other place,” it says. The feds had argued they could sidestep this provision by avoiding evidence concerning officials acts Menendez took. Instead, they planned to focus on text messages related to his alleged promises to take corrupt actions. But last week, after the trial was well underway, US District Judge Sidney Stein said he would bar prosecutors from introducing text messages that, they allege, showed the people who bribed Menendez discussing “getting their money’s worth” from the senator.

You see you can argue Trump isn't being politically prosecuted but it's hard when it's impossible to prosecute congressmen even for the most flagrant corruption possible.

[mudwerks]

(via AZ panel votes to ban Satan displays from public property)

Arizona’s legislature is STILL a bunch of anti-constitution religious nuts:

PHOENIX — Calling Satan “an explicit enemy of God,’’ a state senator is pushing to keep displays of him, by any name, off of public property.

Just Satan. Christmas trees and menorahs would still be allowed.

”It is a desecration of our public property in the United States of America and in the state of Arizona for a satanic display, memorial, altar, etc., to be on public property,’’ said Sen. Jake Hoffman, a Queen Creek Republican.

He pushed the measure through the Senate Government Committee Wednesday on a 5-1 party-line vote.

All that drew questions.

”It is because it’s insulting to your religion?’’ asked Sen. Juan Mendez, D-Tempe.

Hoffman said that’s not his motive.

The legal issue goes beyond that.

The Satanic Temple has been recognized by the Internal Revenue Service as a religion and entitled to the same charitable status as any other.

“I am genuinely impressed that in only 25 words this bill seems to violate three separate clauses of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,’’ testified Micah Mangione, an individual who showed up to testify against the bill.

These, he said, are prohibiting the government from establishing a religion, barring government interference with the free exercise of religion, and guaranteeing the right to free speech. He warned the Republicans there are implications for their support of SB 1279.

”If you can go after the Satanic Temple, which is a religion, what about paganism next?’’ Mangione asked. “What about Judaism next? How about Islam? How about LDS?’’

What the legislation does is declare that only Christian values matter, he said.

Hoffman said he doesn’t see it that way.

”It is legally and constitutionally suspect to argue that Satan, someone who is universally known to be an explicit enemy of God, is somehow a religion,’’ he said. “That is an absolutely ludicrous statement to make.’’

Another individual testifying against the bill, Tonia Francis, told Hoffman what he is proposing interferes with her First Amendment rights.

Hoffman disagreed, saying she remains free to practice whatever she wants — just as long as nothing is erected on public property. Any arguments beyond that are off base, he said.

”So you think that it’s both legally and constitutionally OK to argue that Satan … who is universally known to be explicitly the enemy of God, antithetical to God, you think that’s targeting your religion?’’ Hoffman asked.

”Universally known to you?’’ Francis asked.

”To, literally, everyone,’’ Hoffman responded. “That’s not a point that’s debatable. Would you not say that Satan is the enemy of God?

”No,’’ Francis said.

Hoffman called her testimony “disingenuous.’’

Mendez called the legislation “a straight-up attack on the rights of people and religion.’’

Hoffman can’t even imagine that other people don’t believe in his chosen religion’s world view. 

And he’s an elected legislator?!?!

[spanishskulduggery]

Hello:

This is a nuance question. What are the minor differences between tan, tanto, cuán, and lo (adjetivo)poder ser a (sustantivo) when modifying "to an extent" something is?

There's a pattern to these words that can help

Typically the question words have a QU or C sound; and the descriptors here have the T

The question words can sometimes be used as other parts of speech, but the questions or implied unknowns will have accent marks

This will make more sense below

-

First, tal and cual - used to describe nouns, or sometimes become nouns themselves:

tal = such, such as / "one such" [noun] tales = such, such as / "some such" [plural noun]

cuál = which? / which one cuáles = which (ones)? / which ones? [plural]

(el/la) cual = the one (in particular), the one that/which, one such cual = as [in poetry; synonymous with como, very unusual]

If you're seeing tal and cual you're seeing nouns for the most part; tal is "such" or "like that" and cuál is more common with the accent mark or in a relative clause

De tal manera... = In that way... / In such a way... De tal palo, tal astilla. = "Chip off the old block" / "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree" [lit. "from such a (wooden) stick, such a splinter"] Escribe sobre la vida tal y cómo es. = "He/She writes about life exactly how it is." [tal y cómo is literally "such and how" but often means "exactly so/as"] Tal leyenda no me interesa. = A legend like that doesn't interest me. / Such a legend doesn't interest me.

There's also an expression Fulanito/a de Tal which is very idiomatic but it's a made up placeholder name like "Mr/Mrs Whoever from Wherever"... fulano/a is basically "someone you don't know their actual name", and de Tal is "from Such" so it comes out as "What's-their-name from Wherever"

...You see this in contexts where someone knows nothing about the person, or they mean so little to them that they can't be bothered to learn their name

You will also see this expression:

(son) tal para cual = "they were made for each other" / "a match made in heaven"

You say this about people who are very much alike

...

Now as for cual you get into questioning words; an unknown noun but specific

If tal is "such", cuál with the accent mark is qué + tal meaning "what such"... aka "which one"

¿Cuál es? = Which one is it? ¿Cuáles son? = Which one are they?

Seeing cual without the accent mark is most commonly used in what they call relative clauses - it's a clause within a sentence that gives more specific information "related" to what noun you just brought up:

Esa torre es la Torre Eiffel, la cual es el edificio más conocido de Francia. = That tower is the Eiffel Tower, which is the most well-known building in France. El amor, el cual es un tema muy importante para muchísimos autores y poetas, sigue siendo expresado y discutido en el arte de todas formas. = Love, which is a very important theme for MANY authors and poets, continues to be expressed and discussed/debated in art of all kinds.

Relative clause just means you decide to add a comma and talk about a specific noun (which could be a person, place, or thing) almost in an aside

You can also do relative clauses with el que and la que they're just more informal than el/la cual ...it's like saying "the one that" vs "the one which"

....

Also I should say cual can also be used as como in some poetry. It's really uncommon today but every so often in poetry you'll see it.

Like rojos labios cual carmín is the way they translated "lips that shame the red red rose" but it literally means "(VERY) red lips like carmine/vermillion" - it reads like very flowery writing, usually reserved for older things or fairy tales or something that feels antiquated

-

Next we move on to tan/cuán and tanto and cuánto/a and again there's a pattern

tan/cuán work with adjectives and adverbs as "so much" and "how much"

And tanto/a and cuánto/a work with nouns as "so many" and "how much/many?"

...

But actually first let me say you will NEVER have to use cuán for "how much + adjective/adverb"; it is considered very archaic and only appears in lyrics and poetry. The only time I've ever seen it was in the translation for Pocahontas in Colors of the Wind:

¿Cuán alto el árbol crecerá? = "How high does the sycamore grow?" [lit. "how high will the tree grow?"]

But from that you can say it's "how much" in terms of "to what extent" - if you're using adjectives you use them agreeing with the gender/plurality

More to the point though, what you actually use depends on region and thankfully it's pretty evenly between Spain and Latin America, and reasonably understandable what you're saying/hearing regardless so no one's really confused it's just a difference in region:

Latin America will use qué tan (which is a deconstructed cuán), and Spain prefers cómo de which is more like "to what extent"

¿Qué tan alto es el árbol? = How tall is the tree? ¿Qué tan alta es la montaña? = How high is the mountain? ¿Cómo de alto es el árbol? = How tall is the tree? ¿Cómo de alta es la montaña? = How high is the mountain? ¿Qué tan lejos? = How far (away)? [adv] ¿Cómo de lejos? = How far (away)? [adv]

And again adverbs won't need to agree; ¿qué tan rápido/a? is "how fast" for example as an adjective, but ¿qué tan rápido? by itself could be "how quickly?"; same with cómo de - only difference is that's for Spain

And cuánto is used for amounts, "how much/many?"

¿Cuánto cuesta? = How much does it cost? ¿Cuánta comida hay? = How much food is there? ¿Cuántos hombres? = How many men? ¿Cuántas mujeres? = How many women? No sabes cuánto te quiero. = You don't know how much I love you. [cuánto here as a noun is like "the (unknown) amount"]

PS en cuanto + subjunctive is "as soon as + subjunctive"; don't worry about it for right now, but every so often you see a cuanto with no accent mark

...

So on to tan and tanto/a, same general distinction

tan is "so/quite/very" used with adjectives and adverbs, and tanto/a is often done with nouns and countable things

Eres tan listo. = You're so smart. Eres tan lista. = You're so smart. Son tan listos. = They're so smart. Son tan listas. = They're so smart. Hay tanta ropa. = There's so much clothing. / There's so many clothes. Hay tanto peligro. = There's so much danger. Tenemos tantos problemas. = We have so many problems. Tenemos tantas personas. = We have so many people.

It's really the same difference between mucho/a and muy

With comparisons, you use tan or tanto with como. The important thing here is that these are expressions of equality or equivalence, rather than "more/better" or "less/worse" that you'd see with más/mejor and menos/peor.

Es tan listo como ella. = He's as smart as she is. Es tan lista como él. = She's as smart as he is. Son tan listos como ellas. = They're as smart as they [f+f] are. Son tan listas como ellos. = They're as smart as they are. Sus libros no son tan famosos como sus poemas. = Their books aren't as famous as their poems. Sus películas no son tan famosas como sus obras de teatro. = Their movies aren't as famous as their theatrical works.

tanto como is more used as "(someone) as well as (someone else)" or "(something) as much as (something else)"... usually in the context of something pertaining to or affecting something/someone, or just overall "involvement"

Tanto yo como mis colegas... = Myself as well as my colleagues... Tanto tú como tus amigos... = (Both) You as well as your friends...

And you use it to compare equal amounts of things with others:

Tienen tanto dinero como yo. = They have as much money as I do. Tienen tanta influencia como nosotros. = They have as much influence as we do. Tengo tantos amigos como amigas. = I have as many (male) friends as (female) friends. Tengo tantas amigas como amigos. = I have as many (female) friends as (male) friends.

You can also see tanto as an amount like "as much" or "so much" just a plain noun, or an adverb like saying no tanto "not so much" or "not really"

And then there's mientras tanto which is "meanwhile" [lit. "while as/so much"]

-

And I'm not entirely sure what you mean by lo in context with comparisons so I'd probably need more context

I'm used to seeing things like lo más antes posible "as soon as possible" or "the soonest possible", or lo más imporante "the most important thing"

Also lo máximo/mínimo que as like "the most/least that (+ something else)"

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Judd Legum at Popular Information:

On Monday, six members of the Supreme Court granted Donald Trump — and every future president — broad criminal immunity. The court found that, as president, Trump was free to use his "official" powers to commit crimes. Considering the President of the United States is the most powerful position in the world, this is a breathtaking pronouncement.  Writing in dissent, Justice Sotomayor details the implications:

[When [the President of the United States] uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. ]

The Supreme Court invented this new kind of presidential immunity 235 years after the Constitution was ratified. And it lacks any grounding in the Constitution's text. Instead, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority, cites the need for the president to take "bold and unhesitating action" without "undue caution." Justice Sotomayor explains that the Constitution contains provisions granting various forms of criminal immunity to federal officials. But the President of the United States was not included:

[The Framers clearly knew how to provide for immunity from prosecution. They did provide a narrow immunity for legislators in the Speech or Debate Clause. See Art. I, §6, cl. 1 (“Senators and Representatives . . . shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place”). They did not extend the same or similar immunity to Presidents. ]

Indeed, the Constitution specifically contemplates the criminal prosecution of a former President. The Constitution states that even after a President is impeached, convicted, and removed from office, the former President "shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law.” Trump's own lawyers, during his second impeachment trial, argued that Senators should not convict him because if there was evidence supporting wrongdoing, Trump could be criminally prosecuted for the events of January 6 after leaving office.  

Giving Trump everything he wants

The majority attempts to frame its decision as a compromise, because it states that former Presidents do not have immunity for unofficial acts. But that was the position of Trump's own lawyers. So it is hardly a concession.  It also creates a very narrow definition of "unofficial" acts. The President is acting in an official capacity as long as the President's actions are "not manifestly or palpably beyond [his] authority." Further, when making that evaluation as to whether an action is official or unofficial "courts may not inquire into the President’s motives." That's why, if the President accepts $10,000,000 to issue a pardon, the President cannot be prosecuted criminally for issuing the pardon because the President's "motive" for the pardon, an official act, is off limits. 

The majority then states that when the President's actions fall within the office's "conclusive and preclusive" authority — powers that stem directly from the Constitution or legislation — the President has absolute immunity. The majority uses this standard to declare "Trump is absolutely immune from prosecution for the alleged conduct involving his discussions with Justice Department officials," which is part of the federal indictment against Trump related to January 6. Notably, the majority does not state what, if any, of Trump's actions that form the basis of the criminal charges are unofficial acts. The heart of the majority decision is that, for all other official acts, the President has "at least presumptive immunity." The majority finds the President is immune unless "the Government can show that applying a criminal prohibition to that act would pose no 'dangers of intrusion on the authority and functions of the Executive Branch.'" 

[...] But the implications for Trump's criminal prosecution pale in comparison to the longterm impact on the nation. "The Court has now declared for the first time in history that the most powerful official in the United States can… become a law unto himself," Justice Ketanji Jackson wrote in a separate dissent. "Presidents alone are now free to commit crimes when they are on the job, while all other Americans must follow the law in all aspects of their lives, whether personal or professional." 

Judd Legum writes in Popular Information that Monday’s heinously insane Trump v. United States ruling at SCOTUS is a disaster for the rule of law, as it gives Donald Trump and all future presidents broad immunity while in office.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 29, 2023

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

“What a day we are having…. As a former director of emergency management, I know a disaster when I see one,” Representative Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) said yesterday in the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, overseen by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee chaired by James Comer (R-KY). 

Moskowitz wasn’t wrong. After a hearing that lasted more than six hours, highlights of which Aaron Rupar of Public Notice reposted on social media, Neil Cavuto of the Fox News Channel was unimpressed. He said that although Comer had promised to present “a mountain of evidence” against President Biden, “none of the expert witnesses today presented…any proof for impeachment…. The way this was built up, ‘where there’s smoke there would be fire,’... but where’s there’s smoke today, we just got a lot more smoke.”   

The Republicans on the committee repeatedly talked about the volume of evidence they have uncovered, but they were never able to link their piles of evidence to the president. Under questioning, their own witnesses said there was not enough evidence to impeach President Biden.

It seemed as if Republicans have become so accustomed to being able to say anything they want to on right-wing media without being challenged they thought a congressional committee would operate the same way. When the Democrats pushed back, they seemed flummoxed. 

Comer lost control of the hearing as Democrats on the committee, thoroughly prepared, came out swinging. Representative Shontel Brown (D-OH) noted that “[t]he DOJ and FBI under former President Trump spent 5 long years looking into these Republican conspiracy theories, and debunked them. Repeatedly.” Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) said, “The majority sits completely empty handed with no evidence of any presidential wrongdoing, no smoking gun, no gun, no smoke.” 

Representative Summer Lee (D-PA) called out the Republicans by name for holding a sham impeachment hearing instead of funding the government and working for their constituents. She noted that 217,583 people living in the districts of the Republicans on the committee would lose their paychecks because of the Republican shutdown.

Most notably, the Democrats called out the places where witnesses or committee members had deleted words in quotations that changed their meanings. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) emphasized that the four Republican witnesses said they had not presented any first-hand witness accounts of crimes committed by President Biden, while the committee was blocking the testimony of witnesses who could testify to actual facts. She also noted that members of Congress could say anything they wanted because they are covered by the Constitution’s Speech and Debate clause protecting them, 

Democrats also called out the many ways in which the Republicans were trying to discredit President Biden with speculation during an impeachment hearing to distract from the very real legal troubles of former president Trump. Representatives Mike Garcia (D-CA) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA) called out the Republicans for focusing on allegations about Hunter Biden and ignoring the very real issues involving Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who could not get a security clearance until Trump demanded he be given one, worked on Middle East issues in the White House, and then received a $2 billion investment from the Saudis shortly after Trump left office.

Most dramatically, Representative Greg Cesar (D-TX) asked the members of the Oversight Committee to raise their hands if they believe that both Hunter and Trump should be held accountable if they are found guilty on any of their indictments. The Democrats all raised their hands. The Republicans did not. 

One senior republican aide told CNN’s Melanie Zanona: “This is an unmitigated disaster.”

It did not get better after the hearing ended. A fact-check by CNN’s Daniel Dale, Marshall Cohen and Annie Grayer tore apart the committee’s “evidence.” Although Comer said in his opening remarks that the committee has uncovered how “the Bidens and their associates…raked in over $20 million between 2014 and 2019,” all but about $7 million went to Hunter Biden’s business associates, who according to the Washington Post had “legitimate business interests,” and there is no evidence that President Biden himself received any of this money. 

Comer’s accusation that money was wired to Joe Biden’s Delaware address did not note that the money was a loan, and it went to Hunter Biden’s bank account. Hunter Biden’s lawyers say that he used the Bidens’ Delaware home as his address at the time. 

Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) claimed that documents released Wednesday from 2020 showed that the Department of Justice was protecting President Biden. But in 2020 Trump, not Biden, was president, and the official who urged Biden senior’s name be kept off a search warrant did so because there was no legal basis to include him in a search warrant concerning a business involving his adult son. 

And on it went. 

Charlie Sykes of The Bulwark wrote: “The charitable view is that the first hearing was a dumpster fire inside a clown car wrapped in a fiasco. To put it mildly, the GOP did not bring their best.” 

At the end of the day, it seemed as if Democrats had flipped the script that has worked so well for so long on right-wing media. Rather than being on the defensive themselves, they put Republicans on the defensive. And because their hits were based in reality, rather than a false narrative, they left the Republican committee members with few options today other than to take to social media, once again, to boast of all the evidence they have accumulated against President Biden. 

The hearing was designed to give the extremists of the Freedom Caucus one of their demands, likely in the hope that they would agree to pass a stopgap funding bill that would at least make it look like the House Republicans were trying to fund the government. But today, when House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) brought to the floor an extreme bill that would have made 30% cuts to food assistance, housing, education, funding for border agents, and so on, and insisted on closing the border while funding the government for only another 30 days, 21 extremists voted with the Democrats to kill it by a vote of 198 to 232.

This was a harsh blow not only to McCarthy but to all the Republicans in swing districts. House leaders forced them all to vote for a measure chock full of enormously unpopular cuts and then snatched away the prize of funding the government. Such a political disaster speaks very poorly of McCarthy, who should have never put members of his conference in such a position. Losing 21 of his members in this vote is an embarrassment. The loss weakens the party for 2024: the Democratic ads will pretty much write themselves.

And the members refusing to fund the government simply don’t appear to care, either about their colleagues or their constituents.

At any point, McCarthy could bring up before the House the bipartisan measure already passed by the Senate. Democrats would then likely make up the votes he would lose in his own conference. But the extremists would then challenge his speakership, and that is apparently a challenge he is unwilling to brave.

—

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[duhragonball]

Dragon Ball Super 061

“Who are you?”

“I’m you, but stronger.  Furthermore, I’m substantially more verbose, though you may find this difficult to accept.”

“Indeed, for I have amazed even myself on occasion with my propensity to ramble endlessly on a given topic.  Though my diction flows like clear waters across a mountain stream, woe be to any who seek to quench their thirst for meaningful conversation, for I provide only minimal insight in the magnitude of verbiage I employ.” 

“Yes, I quite agree!  I have often noticed how my own thoughts and feelings seem quite trivial when diluted beneath the deluge of my interminable speech.  Though I begin with a point I wish to make, I continue to belabor it, adding word after word, clause after clause, like a builder stacking bricks upon a great tower reaching up into the heavens.  And yet, though the great temple is unmatched in splendor, the thought which it houses is so minuscule as to require only a tiny fraction of the space.”

“It is a remarkable similarity we share.  Perhaps, it is a good omen.  Yes, for if you are another iteration of myself, and we truly are of one mind in fact rather than spirit, then we both share the same dream of perfect justice for the entire universe.  A world finally freed from the shackles of evil, released from the fuzzy handcuffs of corruption, and loosed from the kinky chastity belt of mortals, who stain the cosmos with a taint so profound it disgusts me to speak of it.  And if our dream is to be fully realized, then what other outcome can there possibly be, save for a universe where only we two remain as its population?  In such a divinely pristine creation, a creation restored to its rightful essence, our tendency to prattle endlessly will not be abnormal at all.  For such holy voices as ours will be the only speech heard throughout the cosmos.”

“This is nice.  I feel like we’re really vibing here.  Do you want to go somewhere and get a coffee?”

“Oh, fuck yeah.  All Gowasu ever let me drink in this stupid place is tea.”

Okay, so we’re fifteen episodes into this stupid saga, and we’re finally going to get the origin story of Goku Black.  I probably need to write a separate thing where I compare the Zamasu Saga to GT, and I think what I need to do is like a side-by-side with the Baby Saga and the Shadow Dragons Saga, because those two arcs are the most similar to Zamasu’s whole storyline.  I couldn’t decide which one would be more appropriate, so maybe a three-way thing to decide which is the worst.  The point I’m getting at here is that no matter how bad and dumb the Omega Shenron fight got, at least he didn’t have a stupid secret identity on top of the rest of it. 

Okay, so let me set the stage here. In Episode 59, Beerus destroyed Zamasu for attempting to assassinate the Supreme Kai of Universe 10.  This action would have led to Zamasu securing Gowasu’s Time Ring, the Super Dragon Balls, and Goku Black.  So Beerus believed that by destroying Zamasu before he could do all of that, then Trunks’ future world would be at peace. 

That hope was shattered in Episode 59, because the next episode preview clearly showed that nothing had changed in Trunks’ world.  And yet we still had to wade through Episode 60 to find out the long way.  Lots of debate over how time travel works, and now we’re in Episode 61, and we’re still going over this shit.  And the good guys will have to go back to tell Beerus he’s wrong, so we’re spending a lot of episodes on this one plot point. 

So up until now, the good guys had believed that Zamasu had used the Super Dragon Balls to create Goku Black as a henchman, but that’s not it at all. Goku Black is Zamasu, having wished to swap bodies with the real Goku. 

So who’s this green asshole who’s been helping him this whole time?  Well, he’s Zamasu too.  Specifically, he’s the Zamasu native to this timeline, just like Future Trunks and Future Mai and Future Yajirobe.  When the “main” Zamasu successfully switched bodies with Goku, he used the Time Ring to travel to this alternate timeline, where he found his counterpart and recruited him for his plan. 

Goku Black knew that this other Zamasu would share his frustrations with mortals, so he found him, killed his version of Gowasu, and explained what he wanted to do.  Overcome with fulfillment, the other Zamasu embraced his alternate self. 

All right, but that only explains how Future Zamasu got in on this bit.  How can Goku Black be the same Zamasu that Beerus destroyed in Episode 59?  Simple, it’s because of the Time Ring.  At least, that’s what Goku Black says.  The way he remembers it, no one was there to stop him the day he killed Gowasu.  So he took the Time Ring, became Goku Black, recruited Future Zamasu, and made him indestructible. 

I pulled up the subtitles for this, just to make sure there was no confusion, because this part has always irritated me.  Beerus spent like an episode and a half insisting that his way would work, and that his divine status overruled the empirical evidence Trunks had witnessed over the years.  So was Beerus just talking out his ass, or did he just overlook a detail?  

The dub implies that the Time Ring protected him from the causality effects of getting destroyed in the past, but that doesn’t add up, because Zamasu wasn’t wearing it when Beerus destroyed him.  But Goku Black is wearing the Ring now, and he has been for the past seventeen years.

I think that’s what the idea is supposed to be.  Beerus’s whole argument was that he went to the Zamasu of a particular timeline, the only timeline where he met Goku and developed his obsession with Goku, and destroyed that Zamasu.  In theory, this should have a “Marty McFly Effect”, erasing Goku Black from existence, no matter what he does in the future or which timeline he goes to.  And because Beerus is a Hakaishin, this doesn’t create any new timelines, like when mortals change the past like Trunks has done. 

Episode 61 seems to be suggesting that Beerus’ plan could have worked, except he didn’t know that the Time Ring protects the wielder from changes in his own history.  I guess that property would make sense, because the Supreme Kai who uses the Time Ring would need a way to be able to observe and interact with future events without potentially creating new timelines.  For example, Zamasu killed that Barbari warrior 1000 years from now.  I’m pretty sure that change in future events isn’t “locked in” or anything, and if someone were to destroy Planet Barbari in the next thousand years, that wouldn’t create a second timeline where Barbari survived so that the one poor dope could get murdered by Zamasu on schedule. 

And I guess it makes sense that Beerus failed to take the Time Ring’s powers into account, since only the Supreme Kai of each universe is authorized to own and use them.  Zamasu never even heard of the Time Rings until recently, and he was supposed to be training to eventually assume the office of Supreme Kai.  It figures that Beerus, a Destroyer, wouldn’t know everything about how the Time Rings work and what they do.  

In short: If Beerus had any influence over the rules of time, it was canceled out by the Time Ring.  And since Beerus only knew to destroy Zamasu because he saw Goku Black wearing a Time Ring, he can’t unring that bell.  There must have been a version of Zamasu who successfully obtained the Ring and became Goku Black.  Beerus cannot undo this.  All he accomplished was to branch the timeline so that in one branch, Zamasu no longer exists. 

In the other branch, Goku Black continued with his plan, as seen in this flashback.  He used the Time Ring to jump ahead one year, gathered the Super Dragon Balls in Age 780, and wished to swap bodies with Goku.

This left Goku trapped in Zamasu’s body, and in this timeline, Goku has never met Zamasu, or even heard of the guy.

Then Goku Black teleported to Earth and killed the Goku of that timeline. 

And he killed Chi-Chi and Goten too.  No surprise there.  After that, he went to the Universe 10 of Future Trunks’ alternate timeline, recruited the Zamasu native to that world, jumped ahead one more year with the Time Ring, and used the Super Dragon Balls a second time to give that Zamasu the indestructible body.

Then they went to the Future Trunks timeline and started carrying out their Project Zero Mortals thing.  First they destroyed the Super Dragon Balls, then they started hunting down all the other gods in the twelve universes.  This would ensure that there would be no one to stop them as they destroyed all other life in the universes.  Wait, how the hell did they kill Jiren?   And Broly?

Finally, the duo saved Earth for last, and they invaded one year before the events seen in Episode 47.  Black says they’ve specifically reserved Earth for the grand finale, because they wanted to make the people there suffer the most out of everyone. 

See, they thought about all this and decided that Earth is the root of all of this.  Specifically, Trunks and his time machine, since his tinkering with history led to the creation of alternate timelines, which is what led to Zamasu being introduced to Goku in Episode 53, which resulted in Zamasu becoming Goku Black and kicking off Project Zero Mortals.  So when you think about it that way, Trunks is responsible for all of this.  If he had left well enough alone, Goku would have died of a heart virus and Zamasu would have never met him.

Actually, that doesn’t quite add up, but this post is running longer than I wanted, so I’ll try to explain what I mean later.

So I think I’ve covered all of the backstory stuff.  Now let’s talk about the fighting in this episode.  It sucks.  Goku, Vegeta, and Trunks got their asses beat the last time they came here, and the only thing that’s changed is that they remembered to bring some senzu beans.  Not that it matters, because the baddies quickly overwhelm Vegeta and Trunks, and corner Goku.  They tell him the bit about how Goku Black killed Chi-Chi and Goten in his origin story, and Black stabs his hand-energy sword through Zamasu and into Goku while they talk about this. 

And that gets Goku all fired up, so he raises his power and starts going on a tear.  Okay, so there’s a difference of opinion on this scene. 

On the one hand, you could say: Hey, cool, Goku’s had all he can stands, and he can’t stands no more, and he’s gonna kick some ass because he loves his wife and kids.  I can’t dispute that.  This is a factually accurate statement. 

However, on the other hand, this scene is dumb as hell, because Goku’s powering up while he’s got an energy beam sticking through his liver.  Remember when Vegeta got stabbed this way and it didn’t kill him, but it kind of took him out of the fight for several minutes?  Then he got up, went Blue, and fired a Final Flash anyway?  Then he passed out until he got a senzu bean later?  Yeah, well, that was really fucking stupid, and now we have Goku doing the same bullshit, only faster.  He doesn’t even wait around for Black to pull out the beam.

Also, what exactly did Goku do to turn the tables here?  He was already in his strongest form, so what has he powered up to?  He’s just Super Saiyan Blue Goku With a Hole In His Liver, and somehow that makes him stronger than he was before, when he didn’t have a hole there.

Like, he’s a house of fire in this scene, and it looks cool, I won’t dispute that.  It’s kind of nice watching him dominate Black and Zamasu like this... except...

Black just suddenly decides it’s time to start winning again, and he turns the tables on Goku without even trying hard.  

So why is this hurting Goku when the gaping hole in his torso didn’t?   Also, is one of those beams going in his dick?  Why doesn’t Goku just power out of this like he did before?  He’s still mad about Chi-Chi and Goten, isn’t he?

See, this is why this saga sucks.  They tried to do this “Power Awakened by Rage” thing like they used to do in DBZ.  Toddler Gohan vs. Raditz, Goku turning Super Saiyan for the first time on Namek, Gohan turning Super Saiyan 2 against Cell.  These are all classic moments, and this episode tries to borrow some of that magic. 

Except it’s all wrong.  Toddler Gohan ran out of gas pretty quickly, but he still hurt Raditz enough for the others to finish him.  They didn’t just have Raditz instantly recover from all the damage that headbutt did to him.  And Super Saiyan 2 Gohan didn’t just start getting his ass kicked when it was convenient to the plot.  He never stopped being angry at Cell, and his power never wavered.  Cell got stronger, but not strong enough to prevent him from getting his just desserts. 

Here, I think the idea is that Goku Black provoked Goku on purpose, then allowed Goku to pummel him a while, because somehow that helps Goku Black get stronger, like he claimed back in Episode 49.  So I guess he was just toying with Goku?  Which kind of makes Goku look like a total geek here.

But the rotten cherry on top of this moldy sundae is Goku screaming at them before he attacks.  “’Cause now I’m mad!  I’m really really mad!” 

Seriously?   That’s what they came up with?  “I’m really really mad!”?

I mean, why stop there?  Why not have Goku shout “I’m really really really mad!”?  It’s pathetic.  I forgot what he said in the subtitles, but I’m pretty sure it was equally unimpressive.

Okay, so after they take out Goku, they move on to Vegeta and Trunks, and that’s when they try to make this out to be all Trunks’ fault.  And this makes Trunks mad.  In fact, it might make him--dare I say it-- really really mad. 

In fact, the way everyone’s reacting, it’s like Trunks has never been this mad before.  He may have surpassed a level of anger beyond really really mad.  Can it be?

Trunks has ascended to becoming really really really really mad!  Like, these guys killed his mom and destroyed his whole world.  They also attacked his girlfriend several times.  But when they said a bunch of dumb stuff about time travel, that’s what pushed Trunks over the edge. 

So the episode ends on this new power-up, so I guess this is the one we’re expected to take seriously, but it’s a little difficult to care when we just saw Goku do the exact same thing and get his ass kicked.  I mean, Trunks’ form looks like something new, sort of?  But even if it were legit, they completely undermined this story beat with the whole Goku thing they did. 

Okay, enough of Episode 61.  Let’s try to push forward.

[batsarebetterthanpeople]

Just saw a blog called asaconservative who just points out conservative hypocrisy by being like "as a conservative I want lower taxes and free speech which is why I'm into lowering the military budget and allowing kids to be trans" and it's like ... Babe, you're not doing anything with this. Conservative ideology is actually very consistent. It's in the name. It's about conserving the status quo of who's powerful and who's not.

Like idk what lib needs to hear this but you're not gonna get your political enemy with facts or logic or gotchas. They don't actually care about the deficit or taxes they just think being poor should be as hard as humanly possible and being rich should be rewarded because they're gouls who believe in prosperity gospel and the protestant work ethic. They talk about the deficit so they dont alienate the poor who thinks they'll be rich some day voter base. They don't actually like freedom of speech they just want to say slurs and hold fascist rallies and defend an original interpretation of the constitution because they want the 3/5ths clause to come back.

Every belief is like this. You can't say the n word anymore so you have to say forced bussing but you can't say that anymore either so you get even more abstract and you say tax cuts but in a way where black people get hurt worse than white people on average. They have admitted to that. But baby they're still saying the n word in their minds when they come up with policies.

You've gotta stop trying to debate them and start trying to defeat them.

[nicklloydnow]

“Mr. Garland’s memo did acknowledge that “spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution.” That is true but doesn’t go nearly far enough. Education is mostly speech, and parents have a constitutional right to choose the speech with which their children will be educated. They therefore cannot constitutionally be compelled, or even pressured, to make their children a captive audience for government indoctrination.

Public education in America has always attempted to homogenize and mold the identity of children. Since its largely nativist beginnings around 1840, public education has been valued for corralling most of the poor and middle class into institutions where their religious and ethnic differences could be ironed out in pursuit of common “American” values.

The goal was not merely a shared civic culture. Well into the 20th century, much of the political support for public schooling was driven by a fear of Catholicism and an ambition to Protestantize Catholic children. Many Catholics and other minorities escaped the indoctrination of their children by sending them to private schools.

Nativists found that intolerable. Beginning around 1920, they organized to force Catholic children into public education. The success of such a measure in Oregon (with Democratic votes and Ku Klux Klan leadership) prompted the Supreme Court to hold compulsory public education unconstitutional.

The case, Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), was brought by a religious school, not a parent. The justices therefore framed their ruling around the threat to the school’s economic rights. But Pierce says that parents can educate their children outside state schools in accord with the parents’ moral and religious views.

Although the exact nature of this parental freedom is much disputed, it is grounded in the First Amendment. When religious parents claim the freedom, religious liberty seems an especially strong foundation. But the freedom of parents in educating their children belongs to all parents, not only the faithful. Freedom of speech more completely explains this educational liberty.

(…)

The public school system, by design, pressures parents to substitute government educational speech for their own. Public education is a benefit tied to an unconstitutional condition. Parents get subsidized education on the condition that they accept government educational speech in lieu of home or private schooling.

(…)

To be sure, Pierce doesn’t guarantee private education. It merely acknowledges the right of parents to provide it with their own resources. And one may protest that economic pressure is not force. But the Supreme Court has often ruled otherwise.

(…)

When government makes education compulsory and offers it free of charge, it crowds out parental freedom in educational speech. The poorer the parents, the more profound the pressure—and that is by design. Nativists intended to pressure poor and middle-class parents into substituting government educational speech for their own, and their unconstitutional project largely succeeded.

Most parents can’t afford to turn down public schooling. They therefore can’t adopt speech expressive of their own views in educating their children, whether by paying for a private school or dropping out of work to home-school. So they are constrained to adopt government educational speech in place of their own, in violation of the First Amendment.

A long line of Establishment Clause decisions recognize the risk of coercion in public-school messages. In Grand Rapids School District v. Ball (1985), the high court condemned private religious teaching in rooms leased from public schools. “Such indoctrination, if permitted to occur, would have devastating effects on the right of each individual voluntarily to determine what to believe (and what not to believe) free of any coercive pressures from the State,” Justice William Brennan wrote for the majority.

Coercion seemed central in such cases because of the vulnerability of children to indoctrination. Summarizing the court’s jurisprudence, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, concurring in Wallace v. Jaffree (1985), observed that “when government-sponsored religious exercises are directed at impressionable children who are required to attend school, . . . government endorsement is much more likely to result in coerced religious beliefs.”

(…)

Rights are “exceptions” to power, James Madison observed. That is, rights defeat power. But contemporary judicial doctrine allows power to defeat rights—at least when government asserts what is called a compelling interest. One might think that a state’s compelling interest in public education overpowers any parental speech right. Yet because such analysis allows power to subdue rights, it is important to evaluate whether the claimed government interest is really compelling.

The U.S. was founded in an era when almost all schooling was private and religious, and that already suggests that any government interest in public education is neither necessary nor compelling. Further, the idea that public education is a central government interest was popularized by anti-Catholic nativists. Beginning in the mid-19th century, they elevated the public school as a key American institution in their campaign against Catholicism.

In their vision, public schools were essential for inculcating American principles so that children could become independent-minded citizens and thinking voters. The education reformer and politician Horace Mann said that without public schools, American politics would bend toward “those whom ignorance and imbecility have prepared to become slaves.”

That sounds wholesome in the abstract. In practice, it meant that Catholics were mentally enslaved to their priests, and public education was necessary to get to the next generation, imbuing them with Protestant-style ideas so that when they reached adulthood, they would vote more like Protestants.

(…)

The inevitably homogenizing, even indoctrinating, effect of public schools confirms the danger of finding a compelling government interest in them. A 1904 nativist tract grimly declared that the public school is “a great paper mill, into which are cast rags of all kinds and colors, but which lose their special identity and come out white paper, having a common identity. So we want the children of the state, of whatever nationality, color or religion, to pass through this great moral, intellectual and patriotic mill, or transforming process.”

The idea of a common civic culture among children is appealing when it develops voluntarily, but not when state-approved identities and messages are “stamped upon their minds,” as the 1904 tract put it. Far from being a compelling government interest, the project of pressing children into a majority or government mold is a path toward tyranny.

The shared civic culture of 18th-century America was highly civilized, and it developed entirely in private schools. The schools, like the parents who supported them, were diverse in curriculum and their religious outlook, including every shade of Protestantism, plus Judaism, Catholicism, deism and religious indifference.

In their freedom, the 18th-century schools established a common culture. In contrast, public-school coercion has always stimulated division. It was long used to grind down the papalism of Catholic children into something more like Protestantism. Since then, there has been a shift in the beliefs that public schools seek to eradicate. But the schools remain a means by which some Americans force their beliefs on others. That’s why they are still a source of discord. The temptation to indoctrinate the children of others—to impose a common culture by coercion—is an obstacle to working out a genuine common culture.

There is no excuse for maintaining the nativist fiction that public schools are the glue that hold the nation together. They have become the focal point for all that is tearing the nation apart. However good some public schools may be, the system as a whole, being coercive, is a threat to our ability to find common ground. That is the opposite of a compelling government interest.

The public school system therefore is unconstitutional, at least as applied to parents who are pressured to abandon their own educational speech choices and instead adopt the government’s.

Parents should begin by asking judges to recognize—at least in declaratory judgments—that the current system is profoundly unconstitutional. Once that is clear, states will be obliged to figure out solutions. Some may choose to offer tax exemptions for dissenting parents; others may provide vouchers. Either way, states cannot deprive parents of their right to educational speech by pushing children into government schools.”

[midnightfunk]

The South Carolina Republican senator is arguing that such testimony is foreclosed by the Constitution's Speech or Debate clause, which shields legislators from certain law enforcement action for conduct connected to their legislative duties.

What could you possibly be hiding, Lindsey?

[dontmeantobepoliticalbut]

This story has been clarified to reflect that U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie said in the tweet that he believes he can read top secret information on the floor of Congress. There was no indication that he plans to read any such information.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie said on Twitter that he could reveal national secrets by reading them aloud in Congress.

Massie, a Kentucky Republican who tends to embrace Tea Party and Libertarian ideals, believes a clause in the U.S. Constitution enables him to read top secret information included in documents involved in former President Donald Trump's latest indictment tied to his handling of classified information aloud in committee hearings, which are broadcast live on C-SPAN.

"For what it’s worth, under the Constitution, no member of Congress can be prosecuted for reading aloud on the floor any of the documents Trump allegedly has copies of," Massie tweeted Monday.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Massie has not acted on his reading of the law by revealing top secret information.

Massie, who represents Kentucky's 4th Congressional District, has accused President Joe Biden's administration of weaponizing government with Trump's indictment. Biden has said he's never pressured the Department of Justice in the case and has not and will not speak with Attorney General Merrick Garland about it.

As part of his indictment, Trump faces 31 counts of willful retention of national defense information under the Espionage Act. The documents were described as some of the country's most important secrets, including "top secret," requiring special handling, the originator determines who receives the documents and not for release to foreign nationals, according to the indictment.

[arpov-blog-blog]

..."A federal judge has ruled that former Vice President Mike Pence will have to testify before a grand jury after he was subpoenaed by the special counsel investigating efforts by former President Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

That’s according to two people familiar with the ruling, who spoke on condition of anonymity because it remains under seal.

The people said, however, that the Pence would not have to answer questions about his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, when a violent mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the building as Pence was presiding over a joint session of Congress to certify the vote.

Pence had argued that, because he was serving in his capacity as president of the Senate that day, he was protected from being forced to testify under the Constitution’s “speech or debate” clause, which is intended to protect members of Congress from questioning about official legislative acts.

The extraordinary scenario of a former vice president potentially testifying against his former boss in a criminal investigation comes as Pence has been weighing challenging Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.

Pence’s team is discussing whether it will appeal."

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Red Supporter Heard In House,” Kingston Whig-Standard. February 22, 1933. Page 1.. --- Spectator Tells William Irvine to "Give It to Them" --- OTTAWA, Feb. 22— Orders were issued last night to House of Commons guards to eject from the public galleries all spectators who caused disturbance.s This action followed a minor commotion in the galleries during debate on a resolution to repeal the famous Section 98 of the Criminal Code, dealing with sedition and unlawful assemblies. 

“Give it to them! That's the stuff,” exclaimed a young man in the north gallery, while William Irvine (U.F.A. Wetaskinwin) attacked Station 98 as archaic, drastic, and tempered to breed disrespect for law and order. 

A guard rushed to the young man's chair, ordering him to leave speech-making to the members below. The man grabbed his coat and fled. 

The House devoted an hour to consideration of the resolution of J. S. Woodsworth, leader of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, to repeal Section 98. Hon. Maurice Dupre, Solicitor-General, upheld the section as a bulwark against communism and radicalism, while William Irvine and Samuel Factor (Lib., Toronto West-Centre) characterised it as drastic and the type of legislation that fostered communism. Under one clause, said Mr. Factor, a man could be imprisoned twenty years for wearing a certain type button in his coat lapel, 

Communist agitation was prevalent and was increasing all over Canada, declared Hon. Maurice Dupre. He charged that the move of the Liberal Government in 1926 to repeal Section 98 was prompted by Mr Woodsworth and that this was the price which the then Prime Minister was prepared to pay for the support of the Labor Group in the House of Commons.

[mariacallous]

On Feb. 3, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) blocked Wikipedia nationwide. In its statement before the ban, the PTA said the online encyclopedia had refused to remove “sacrilegious contents” from the website. In 2020, Pakistan had threatened legal action against Google and Wikipedia for “disseminating sacrilegious content,” regarding Islamic beliefs held by minority Muslim sects. And while the ban on Wikipedia was overturned three days later, there’s an evident surge in Pakistan’s anti-blasphemy policymaking targeting Muslim minorities, which in turn is further emboldening Islamist vigilantes.

On Feb. 11, a Muslim man was lynched by a mob in the eastern city of Nankana Sahib over allegations of desecrating the Quran. The victim was killed inside the local police station, with the law enforcement authorities being hapless bystanders. Often, local police are complicit in victimizing individuals and communities once Islamist thugs conjure the accusation of blasphemy. And this thuggery has the backing of the state, which is now expanding its already notorious blasphemy codes.

The Pakistan Penal Code (PPC) was co-opted after Partition in 1947 from the Indian Penal Code (IPC) of 1860, with Sections 295 and 298 dedicated to desecrating worship places and outraging religious sensibilities, respectively. The IPC under British rule added Section 295-A to curtail “deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings.” The original sections, identically present in the IPC, are equally applicable to all religions. In the 1980s, under the Islamist military dictatorship of Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, Pakistan added Islam-specific clauses, defining violent penalties over blasphemy against Islam alone.

Last month, the National Assembly passed amendments to the PPC to expand its blasphemy laws. One of those amendments, the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2023, ups the penalty from three years to life imprisonment for “disrespecting” the companions (including the caliphs), family, or wives of the Prophet Muhammad. The PPC criminalizes any sacrilege against the Quran and the prophet, with penalties including capital punishment.

While Pakistan is yet to execute anyone for sacrilege, its blasphemy laws continue to encourage mob violence; at least 93 people have been killed extrajudicially since 1947—including the most recent victims—and more than 1,500 have been imprisoned since 1987, the year after the death penalty was introduced for heresy against Islam in Section 295 of the PPC. The most high-profile victim of the blasphemy laws was one of their staunchest critics, former Punjab Gov. Salman Taseer, who was gunned down by his security guard Mumtaz Qadri in 2011. Taseer’s killing silenced debate on the blasphemy laws and turned Qadri, executed over terrorism charges in 2016, into a saint, with his tomb turned into a shrine.

Last year, a teacher was attacked and killed by her colleague and students in an all-girls school, a mentally unstable man was stoned to death by a mob, and a man born without arms was drowned, in separate incidents of blasphemy killings.

Last month, a Muslim man threatened to incite mobs against a Christian security officer working at the Karachi airport by accusing her of blasphemy against the prophet after the woman had denied his acquaintance entry into the premises. The brutal killing of Sri Lankan business professional Priyantha Kumara illustrated the menace of Pakistan’s murderous blasphemy laws nearly 15 months ago.

While the blasphemy laws have disproportionately and overwhelmingly harmed non-Muslims in Pakistan, many of those victimized have been Muslims themselves. Sometimes these are individuals targeted for personal vendettas; however, many are Muslims who espouse beliefs deemed divergent from those sanctioned by majoritarian orthodoxy. The man killed for blasphemy in October was killed for expressing devotion at the graves of Sufi saints, a significant tenet of Barelvi Islam that the vast majority of South Asian Muslims have traditionally adhered to.

The ideology of takfir, or excommunicating Muslims, is based on outlawing divergent beliefs and penalizing those deemed guilty per Islamic law, or sharia, with punishments for apostasy that include execution. The takfiri ideology fuels murderous sharia codes and jihadi groups alike. Outfits such as the Islamic State and its Pakistani Taliban affiliates have bombed Sufi shrines over the years, deeming the mystic practices heretical. The Islamic State-orchestrated 2017 bombing at the Lal Shahbaz Qalandar shrine in Sehwan, killing at least 90 people, remains one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Pakistan’s history.

The Islamic State and the Pakistani Taliban have similarly targeted Shiite mosques across the country, dubbing Shiites, comprising the second-largest sect of Islam, collectively guilty of sacrilege. And the Criminal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2023, passed last month, is the systematization of this anti-Shiite narrative, which borders on codification of the entire sect’s excommunication.

The new amendments to the blasphemy codes were introduced by Abdul Akbar Chitrali of Jamaat-e-Islami, an Islamist party that espouses radicalism against, among others, Shiite Muslims across South Asia. In the bill’s Statement of Objects and Reasons, Chitrali argues that the current penalty for sacrilege against Muhammad’s companions, unlike the capital punishment for blasphemy against the prophet, is insufficient deterrence, citing the Quranic verse that upholds fitna (mischief or deviance) as “worse than murder.” Following the amendment, Section 298-A of the PPC, which heretofore upheld lighter penalties for any sacrilege of Muhammad’s companions, will henceforth make it a nonbailable offense punishable by life imprisonment.

The amendment passed by the National Assembly is an extension of a bill passed by the Punjab Assembly in 2020, albeit still awaiting the governor’s signature. These laws, in effect, outlaw Shiite beliefs by enforcing Sunni theology and tradition across the population, in turn playing judge, jury, and executioner over a 1,400-year-old Sunni-Shiite split in Islam.

The Sunni-Shiite divide has been militantly fanned by the Saudi-Iranian proxy wars over the past half a century, with Islamabad doing Riyadh’s bidding from the onset. This proliferated Salafi and Deobandi madrassas and propped up the correlated jihadi militias, including anti-Shiite outfits such as Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ). While these groups have militarily gravitated toward the Islamic State and the Pakistani Taliban, their political wings have allied themselves with major parties, especially in Punjab.

The ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N), which has historically dominated Punjab, has done so with the help of SSP and LeJ affiliates such as Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat. The PML-N’s rival, Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, and its allies have all backed the anti-Shiite legislation designed to uphold Sunni supremacism in Pakistan by making “respect for the caliphs” a rallying cry to woo the sectarian vote bank.

Sunni Islamists strong-arming veneration for their caliphs is an extension of the general Islamist intimidation over any critique of Muhammad, which even Barelvi jihadis have weaponized.

The idea that even those who do not believe in Islamic figures should be coerced into, at the very least, silencing their views so as to not offend the believers is, at best, an antediluvian notion that represses freedoms of belief, conscience, and expression; at worst, it is a tool of bloodthirsty ethnoreligious cleansing. And in Pakistan, this radical Islamist superstructure of jurisprudential takfir, blasphemy vigilantes, and state-sponsored jihad is founded on the fall of the first excommunication domino: the constitutional apostatizing of Ahmadiyya Islam.

Just as Shiites today are being compelled into shunning their beliefs so as to be accepted as Muslims in Pakistan, Ahmadis were forced to do the same vis-à-vis their belief in their sect’s 19th-century founder, Mirza Ghulam Ahmad, via the Second Amendment to the Pakistani Constitution in 1974. The official declaration of Ahmadis as non-Muslims was followed by Sections 298-B and 298-C a decade later, banning the community from “posing as Muslims,” including referring to Islamic literature or expressions, thus making Pakistan the only country in the world where an individual can be imprisoned for reciting the Quran.

This veritable apartheid against Ahmadi Muslims over the past four decades has seen members of the community killed, their mosques vandalized, and graves desecrated. Ahmadis have to be declared non-Muslims for individuals to obtain a passport, exercise the right to vote, or even get a marriage certificate. Among the Wikipedia contents flagged by the PTA are pages on Ahmadiyya Islam.

While Shiites and Ahmadis are subjugated owing to their beliefs, another Muslim minority is targeted owing to their nonbelief: nonbelievers. Fast-growing atheism, agnosticism, and deism among Pakistani Muslims has been met with a state crackdown, especially online. Atheism and apostasy, as an extension of blasphemy, are punishable by death in Pakistan.

Following the enactment of the Prevention of Electronic Crimes Act in 2016, the state initiated a war on nonbelief, sending official texts nationwide asking users to notify any form of blasphemy. In 2017, the state promoted a crackdown on dissident bloggers deemed to be posting anti-Islam content online, with the “Pakistani Atheists and Agnostics” Facebook group among those highlighted by the Federal Investigation Agency. With the country’s blasphemy laws going digital, the new expansive codes are going to further stifle online expression in Pakistan, as exemplified by the Wikipedia ban.

The Criminal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2023 aims to do precisely that: restrict the religious discourse and intimidate Muslim minorities against expressing any contrarian views within Islam, just as non-Muslims have long been silenced into submission over Islam. This, in turn, will encourage vigilantes to expand their hunt for so-called blasphemers, whether in Islamic congregations, university auditoriums, or private WhatsApp chats.

Within a month of the Punjab bill being passed, 42 blasphemy cases were lodged, predominantly against the Shiite community, including against a 3-year-old. The toddler, Syed Fazal Abbas Naqvi, was taken into custody along with his father and uncle, with all of them facing terrorism charges before being released on bail. The Criminal Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2023 has been followed by a spike in Shiite killings in the town of Dera Ismail Khan.

While the financially motivated Arab states that historically spread radical Salafism worldwide are now embracing moderation—even if not free thought in Islam—Pakistan appears to be wholly invested in being the bastion of Sunni fundamentalism and plunging further into takfiri jihadism. With Saudi Arabia expecting Pakistan to toe its line of significant geopolitical moves, such as normalization of ties with Israel, it can ill-afford Islamabad to be bogged down by radical Islamist mobs, which are also expressing condemnations of Saudi Arabia’s ostensible liberalization.

The United States, despite its withdrawal from the region, wouldn’t want a Pakistan that spirals further into radical Islamist disintegration at a time when the Western powers are still mulling the fate of the jihadi takeover in Afghanistan. Pakistan’s devastating economic crisis can further push the United States to condition any economic support to human rights advancements.

The Saudi and U.S. petrodollars that helped sustain Pakistan’s jihadi superstructure in the past are no longer on the table, with barely two weeks’ worth of foreign currency reserves to cover imports currently in the central bank. Global institutions, including the European Parliament, are mulling sanctions over Pakistan’s human rights abuses, especially its grotesque blasphemy laws. Any government expanding these codes in a way that risks increasing global sanctions is clearly not invested in Pakistan’s economic well-being.

Self-sustenance for the country is only possible through a purge of radical Islam at all national tiers, from the constitution to governance to the masochistic security policy. And Pakistan will only truly signal a departure from its jihad-infested past when it sounds the death knell for its blasphemy laws.

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A tour de force from the Caribbean

Barbados builds new disaster preparedness hub

Remember the name Mia Mottley, writes Ine Renson. Her proposal to reform the global financial system is the game changer in the climate debate.

When Mia Mottley took the stage in Sharm el-Sheikh on November 7, she had no intention to sweet talk. The Prime Minister of Barbados launched a blistering attack on the industrialized nations. “We are stuck in the imperialist era,” she fulminated. Poor countries depend for their survival on the mercy of the rich, whose power is enshrined in institutions of a bygone era. The human genius has spawned pyramids, put a man on the moon and developed a corona vaccine in less than two years. But the will to save the lives and future of billions of people is not forthcoming. “What will you do? What will you choose to save?”

Despite the punches she threw, the Caribbean is a rising star in the climate debate. Since she attracted attention in Glasgow last year with an equally inspiring speech, she has received invitations from the UN and the World Trade Organization (WTO), she has been asked to give prestigious lectures and she is allowed to have coffee with government leaders. As prime minister of an island state with barely 290,000 inhabitants[1], she punches above her weight. She owes this to her ability to explain complex issues simply. She peppers her argument with references to the Caribbean legends Bob Marley and Jimmy Cliff. She speaks with the urgency of a leader whose country is drowning in failed climate promises. But it is mainly with her revolutionary ideas that she smashes open doors that would otherwise remain closed.

Barbados prime minister Mia Mottley's defence of Small Island Developing States at COP26 makes her a regional rock star

Mia Mottley came up with a plan this year to radically rewrite the rules of the international financial system. That system is broken, she says. She targets the IMF and the World Bank, that were established after World War II to rebuild devastated countries and stabilise the global economy. Gradually, the focus shifted to emerging economies. That has worked pretty well for decades. But the classic recipes are not strong enough against the cascade of hurricanes, floods and droughts that vulnerable countries are currently experiencing. The rigid rules only push them deeper into the swamp of poverty.

Tighten the belt of austerity

If Pakistan and Mozambique are hit by a climate catastrophe, they will have to look for billions to repair the damage. While rich countries borrow on the capital markets at 1 to 4 percent, interest rates for the South are around 14 percent. They can also turn to the World Bank or the IMF in exchange for strict austerity policies. That forces them to tighten their belts so hard that there is no room left to protect themselves against the next disaster, let alone invest in solar panels, schools or hospitals.

This is how emerging countries become entangled in a spiral of disasters and debt. A hurricane can wipe out 200 percent of the income of a country like Barbados in a matter of hours. Mottley delicately points out that those debts serve to combat climate catastrophes caused by creditors building their wealth on fossil fuels. But she does not get stuck in moral reflections. The reality is simple, she says: no country from the South can survive the climate crisis by sinking even deeper. There is no other way out than to climate-proof the financial system itself.

Mottley puts three interventions on the table for this. The IMF and the World Bank must allocate much more money for adaptation. The money with which countries can make their infrastructure resilient is available: the IMF can release USD 1,000 billion in reserves that it can lend to its members on favourable terms. Debt securities must also contain a clause that allows repayment to be suspended for two years if a climate disaster occurs. This frees up budgets that governments can spend on reconstruction. And to accelerate the transition, she advocates a fund that serves as leverage to tap into private capital. That fund, guaranteed by the IMF, could raise up to $5 trillion a year – a stream of money that could be invested in new technologies or energy infrastructure.

Brilliant proposal

That plan goes well beyond the existing $100 billion climate fund, as well as the climate damage reparations that were won as a trophy in Sharm el-Sheikh. The latter remain transfers from rich to poor countries that will never generate the thousands of billions that are needed every year. Mottley's proposal is more ingenius. It works within the capitalist system, not against it. It uses the IMF and the World Bank as leverage to channel risk-averse capital to poor countries. She links climate policy to development. It looks like she's found the holy grail.

The mastermind behind those ideas is Avinash Persaud[2], a fellow countryman and old college friend. They met at the London School of Economics. While he was making his way to the top of the financial world, she was pursuing her political career in Barbados. When she was economy minister in 2007, she brought Persaud to Bridgetown as a financial adviser. With the approval of the IMF, he negotiated a debt restructuring with the largest creditors in 2018. Barbados became the first country to issue debt with a disaster clause[3].

Persaud taught Mottley to think big. Begging is pointless, he says. Use the laws of the regular system. And speak for a group the world cannot ignore. Just about all the countries between the two tropics – roughly 3.3 billion people – are in the same boat. Mottley does not speak for Barbados, but for 40 percent of the world's population.

It works. The plan, known as the Bridgetown Initiative[4], is gaining traction. IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva, World Bank president David Malpass, French President Emmanuel Macron[5], German Development Minister Svenja Schulze, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen: they all stumble over each other to stress that the “current model no longer works” ' and that “private money must be tapped”. The Bridgetown proposals will be worked out by the meeting of the IMF and World Bank next spring.

That is a monumental achievement. Mottley puts on the table for the first time a realistic plan with which the world can finance itself from the climate crisis. It shatters a dysfunctional system that cannot cope with climate change, that is unfair and founded on centuries of exploitation. That a politician from a small island state manages to do this is significant. It leaves the mighty of the earth with their back against the wall.

Source

Ine Renson: Een krachttoer uit de Caraïben, in: De Standaard, 23-12-2022, https://www.standaard.be/cnt/dmf20221222_98072569

[1] Barbados is an island country in the Lesser Antilles of the West Indies, in the Caribbean region of the Americas, and the most easterly of the Caribbean Islands. It occupies an area of 432 km2 and has a population of about 287,000 (2019 estimate). Its capital and largest city is Bridgetown.

[2] Avinash Persaud,Breaking the Deadlock on Climate: The Bridgetown Initiative, in: Green 3, issue 3

[3] Fitch Rates Its First Natural Disaster Clause Sovereign Bond, in: FitchRatings, 24-10-2022, https://www.fitchratings.com/research/sovereigns/fitch-rates-its-first-natural-disaster-clause-sovereign-bond-24-10-2022

[4] https://gisbarbados.gov.bb/download/the-2022-barbados-agenda/

[5] Macron backs climate cash trillions. French president calls for a ‘huge shock’ of climate finance.in: Politico, 23-12-2022, https://www.politico.eu/article/emmanuel-macron-backs-climate-cash-trillions-cop27/