RSN: Will Federal Judges Cover Kavanaugh's Butt - or Whup It?
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=20877"><span class="small">William Boardman, Reader Supported News</span></a>
Monday, 15 October 2018 10:58
Boardman writes: "The stakes are as high as they are simple: will our court system choose to defend the position one of its own members or will it choose to defend the integrity of the US judicial system. There is no possibility it can do both with any credibility."
The angry crowds massed outside the Supreme Court and the Capitol after the vote. (photo: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images)
Will Federal Judges Cover Kavanaugh's Butt - or Whup It?
By William Boardman, Reader Supported News
15 October 18
This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.
he integrity of the US judicial system is actively, albeit quietly, in play. A sitting federal judge, or more likely a panel of sitting federal judges, will be required in the near future to render an assessment of the honesty, integrity, and fitness of a Supreme Court justice to retain his lifetime appointment. The process and the result of the federal judges’ decision will, together, render a judgment as to the integrity of not just one Supreme Court justice but the federal courts as a national institution.
The stakes are as high as they are simple: Will our court system choose to defend the position one of its own members or will it choose to defend the integrity of the US judicial system? There is no possibility it can do both with any credibility.
This is a morality play that began at a time uncertain, reaching back decades. The curtain opened as the president named Brett Kavanaugh to fill a seat on the Supreme Court despite – or because of – his long history of playing Republican hardball against the Clintons over Whitewater, against the Clintons over Monica Lewinsky, for George Bush over the Florida vote count in the 2000 election, for fake intelligence in the lead-up to the Iraq War, and for the White House in its efforts to spy on or torture anyone they chose. On occasion even as a federal judge, Kavanaugh has proved the perfect partisan.
Kavanaugh’s history was a concern when he was first nominated for the federal bench in 2004, but he managed then to get confirmed with only limited doubt about his ability to tell the truth under oath. This year, when his Senate confirmation hearings began on September 4, the concerns about his integrity were still there, but Kavanaugh was protected from his own record because the White House kept most of it secret. Kavanaugh’s refusal to give full and complete answers to questions about his career as a political operative prompted the first formal ethics complaints (even before the Dr. Christime Blasey Ford story broke). One of those complaints, filed by attorney J. Whitfield Larrabee on behalf of two clients – all “under penalty of perjury” – summed up the case against Kavanaugh this way:
Kavanaugh received stolen information taken from Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee while he worked in the White House and he perjured himself while testifying about the matter in Congress in 2004, 2006 and 2018. Kavanaugh violated Canons 1 and 2 of Code of Judicial Conduct by committing crimes of dishonesty while he was a federal judge, by obtaining confirmation of his appointment as a federal judge by false and perjurious testimony, by concealing and covering up his criminal actions and by obstructing justice. He is unfit to serve as a judge by reason of his corrupt, unscrupulous, dishonest and criminal conduct.
This indictment is followed by five pages of factual allegations citing chapter and verse of some of Kavanaugh’s perjurious representations. The complaint concluded with a call for an investigation leading to a recommendation to Congress:
… that Kavanaugh be impeached in accordance with Rules 20 and 23 of the Rules for Judicial-conduct and Judicial-Disability Proceedings.
This is only one of a reported 15 or more formal ethics complaints made about Kavanaugh before the Dr. Blasey Ford farce or his confirmation to the Supreme Court. All the complaints made their way to the chief judge of the Court of Appeals, DC Circuit, on which Kavanaugh then sat. That chief judge is Merrick Garland, whose own appointment to the Supreme Court in 2016 was stonewalled by Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans (illegitimately making the seat available to usurper Neil Gorsuch). Garland, faced with the complaints against Kavanaugh, did the non-partisan thing and recused himself, leaving the first assessment of the complaints to someone else.
After the start of Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, members of the general public began filing complaints in the D.C. Circuit about statements made during those hearings. The complaints do not pertain to any conduct in which Judge Kavanaugh engaged as a judge. The complaints seek investigations only of the public statements he has made as a nominee to the Supreme Court of the United States.
This characterization is misleading if not just false. The complaints may only refer to false public statements (most of the complaints have not been made public), but those false public statements were in fact made by a sitting judge (just not while he was in court, apparently). Judge Henderson is implicitly arguing for a judicial standard that allows judges to lie whenever they want when they’re off the bench. This is not the standard of judicial temperament most of us thought we signed up for.
According to a letter from Chief Justice Roberts on October 10, he first heard officially about the Kavanaugh complaints starting on September 20. By October 6 he had received 15 complaints that were deemed worthy of review (it’s uncertain how many, if any, were dismissed as frivolous). In conveying the complaints to the chief justice, Judge Henderson, concerned “that local disposition may weaken public confidence in the process,” requested that the complaints be transferred to another circuit (as provided by Rule 26). In his October 10 letter, the chief justice did exactly that:
I have selected the Judicial Council of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit to accept the transfer and to exercise the powers of a judicial council with respect to the identified complaints and any pending or new complaints relating to the same subject matter.
The chief judge of the 10th circuit, based in Denver, is Timothy M. Tymkovich (a Bush appointee). He was also on the White House short list with Kavanaugh. And now he is, at least for the moment, in charge of 15 or more Kavanaugh complaints. As of October 15, he had not yet announced how the complaints would be handled. Nor has he publicly addressed his own political bias or his clear conflict of interest in the matter. Early reporting on the Kavanaugh complaints has been somewhat sketchy and sometimes dismissive.
On October 4, the House Progressive Caucus sent a letter to the president in a last-ditch effort to have the Kavanagh nomination withdrawn. The letter, signed by 39 members of Congress, outlined Kavanaugh’s partisan political past and his efforts to minimize or hide it. The letter demanded a full investigation of Kavanaugh’s record and promised impeachment proceedings if the Senate’s accusations of lying under oath were borne out. The letter concluded: “The credibility and reputation of the country’s highest judicial body is at stake.”
Even if the Kavanaugh complaints continue to get scant media coverage, the issue seems unlikely to go away. The Supreme Court is on trial and the chief justice knows it. He also knows that Rules for Judicial Conduct say unambiguously: “As long as the subject of the complaint performs judicial duties, a complaint alleging judicial misconduct must be addressed.” [emphasis added] The chief justice also knows that Kavanaugh’s partisan outburst (quoted at the top) seems to clearly violate the judicial conduct rule against “making inappropriately partisan statements.” The Supreme Court, led by a man with a reputation for defending institutional integrity, is faced with finding a way to justify its own probity – or join the rest of the wreckage of the Trump era.
William M. Boardman has over 40 years experience
in theatre, radio, TV, print journalism, and non-fiction, including 20
years in the Vermont judiciary. He has received honors from Writers
Guild of America, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Vermont Life
magazine, and an Emmy Award nomination from the Academy of Television
Arts and Sciences.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for
this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a
link back to Reader Supported News.
Future of Climate Activism: Dutch Court Orders Government to Reduce CO2 Emissions Dramatically
Monday, 15 October 2018 08:50
Cole writes: "An appeals court in the Netherlands has upheld a 2015 lower court ruling in a class action case that the Dutch government needs to do more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 25% below 1990 levels by 2020. So far the Netherlands has only reduced 13% from 1990 levels."
Fossil fuel emissions. (photo: J David Ake/AP)
Future of Climate Activism: Dutch Court Orders Government to Reduce CO2 Emissions Dramatically
By Juan Cole, Informed Comment
15 October 18
n appeals court in the Netherlands has upheld a 2015 lower court ruling in a class action case that the Dutch government needs to do more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 25% below 1990 levels by 2020. So far the Netherlands has only reduced 13% from 1990 levels.
The court appealed to the principle that the government must attend to the welfare of citizens, enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Netherlands is particularly at risk from one of the main effects of climate change, rising sea levels. Heat trapping gases like carbon dioxide raise the average temperature of the surface of the earth, including the oceans. Warmer oceans expand, since warm water has greater volume than cold water. The extra heat also melts surface ice, as on Greenland or at the poles, which flows into the oceans and raises their level.
Some of Amsterdam is actually twelve feet below sea level, while other parts are six feet above sea level. Since climate change-driven storm surges are now often eight to twelve feet, Amsterdam could be flooded despite its system of dams and locks. Since some of the country is under sea level, in this scenario the climate crisis creates huge salt lakes inside the Netherlands.
A climate crisis lawsuit> is now wending its way through the layers of the US judicial system.
And there is yet another such suit in India.
The falsehoods spewed by the tobacco industry that smoking was good for you rather than causing lung cancer were refuted in the public mind by the 1980s, and at that point the industry began losing lawsuits. The same thing is now starting to happen with regard to heat-trapping gases and the climate emergency. Since law in capitalist societies is extremely sensitive to torts against property, climate damage from CO2 emissions could be especially vulnerable to court challenge.
Likewise, since in countries with common law like the US, Britain and India, precedents can be taken from anywhere, the Dutch decision can be cited by courts in other countries as a precedent.
Trump Is Clamping Down on White House Protest. Be Very Afraid of What Comes Next
Monday, 15 October 2018 08:48
Bunch writes: "People should be very afraid — not just of these proposed rules, but about why Team Trump wants this in the first place."
Protests outside the White House. (photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
Trump Is Clamping Down on White House Protest. Be Very Afraid of What Comes Next
By Will Bunch, Philadelphia Inquirer
15 October 18
t hasn't gotten the attention it deserves — almost nothing does anymore — but since July 16, a colorful and boisterous protest has taken place every single night in front of Donald Trump's White House. The crowds — sometimes in the hundreds, sometimes less — try to mix it up and have a little fun. They flash neon signs reading "treason" or don dinosaur suits and welcome a parade of "resistance" celebrities like Hollywood's Alyssa Milano or lawyer Michael Avenatti.
"We don't plan on stopping until Donald Trump is gone," vow the organizers, including longtime activists like Adam Parkhomenko, a former national field director for the National Democratic Committee — who is of Ukrainian ancestry and was inspired by the mass protests in Kiev that ultimately ended an unpopular government over there. In other words, it's a free speech hangout for some of the president's most vocal dissenters.
The apogee of the event arguably came on Aug. 6, when Rosie O'Donnell and some other Broadway performers Amtraked their way down to the White House gates for a rousing night of anti-Trump show tunes. O'Donnell, longtime bête noire of the 45th president, led the troupe in "America the Beautiful" and told the assembled mass to "stand up against treason, and stop fascism before it takes over the United States."
The very next day, Aug. 7, the Trump administration's National Park Service promulgated rules that threaten protests like the nightly White House demonstrations — as well as any other would-be spontaneous large D.C. protests. The rules would restrict gatherings that now take place on a 25-foot-wide sidewalk in front of the White House to just a 5-foot sliver, severely limiting crowds. The NPS also threatens to hit political protesters on the National Mall with large security and cleanup fees that historically have been waived for such gatherings, and it wants to make it easier to reject a spontaneous protest of the type that might occur, say, if Trump fires special counsel Robert Mueller.
"President Trump might not like having protesters on his doorstep, but the First Amendment guarantees their right to be there," Arthur Spitzer, legal codirector of the D.C. chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, wrote in a post opposing the rules. But foes of the measure rallied late and are running out of time: The government's comment period ends on Monday.
The ACLU notes that we've been here before. In 1967, as protests were mounting over the Vietnam War, the ACLU and other free-speech advocates had to go to court against the administration of Democrat Lyndon Johnson, which had tried to implement protest limits similar to what's being proposed in 2018.
That time, the good guys won. The courts ruled that the LBJ-era plan was an undue restriction on our First Amendment guarantees of free speech, and that outcome has allowed for mass protests near the White House ever since, as well as the rules that made it easier for spontaneous demonstrations and required speedy government action on larger rallies that require permits. "Timeliness is essential to effective dissent," Judge J. Skelly Wright wrote in 1967. "Delay may stifle protest as effectively as outright censorship."
The ACLU would likely mount a similar challenge if the new Trump-era restrictions are imposed — but past success is no guarantee of future results. This time, any court challenge will come before a judiciary that Trump and his enabler Mitch McConnell are racing to reshape in their ultra-conservative likeness. And if the issue climbs the judicial ladder all the way to the Supreme Court, the morally tainted Trump-installed Brett Kavanaugh could be the deciding vote.
The big question about the National Park Service rules is: Why now? In the short term, maybe the persistence of the Parkhomenko-led protests (and the appearance of O'Donnell, whom the president has in the past called "a total loser") set off light bulbs over the heads of Trump and his minions. The park service claims it's simply because so many people are protesting Team Trump in Washington that its budget is straining to keep pace.
From last night's White House protest, dubbed "Kremlin Annex" & #OccupyLafayettePark by organizer Adam Parkhomenko, a Ukrainian American 15-year Hillary Clinton campaigner & volunteer police officer in DC. Speaker says protesters must learn from Ukraine & Tunisia to oust Trump. pic.twitter.com/DylWVKgQef
But something else has changed since August, and that is the Trump strategy for holding onto Congress, which is critical for staving off Mueller's probe and preventing Trump's impeachment in 2019. In a not-so-shocking development, the original idea — that middle-class voters would somehow get excited about a massive tax cut that was skewed toward large corporations and billionaires — wasn't working, with polls showing the Democrats with a double-digit lead in the so-called "generic ballot." So the president and his allies — Republicans candidates, the Fox News Channel, talk radio — instead have amplified divisiveness and, in some cases, unleashed hate.
A judge credibly accused in sworn testimony of sexual assault, whose confirmation hearings revealed a penchant for dishonesty and a poor temperament, was nonetheless rammed onto the Supreme Court — aided by Trump openly mocking Kavanaugh's accuser, cheered on by cult-like supporters. A series of rallies where Trump called journalists "enemies of the American people" took place against the backdrop of the president's close allies, the Saudis, almost certainly killing a critical Washington Post journalist — after which the president's main concern has remained pocketing Saudi petrodollars for his hotel and a billion-dollar arms deal to slaughter more children in Yemen.
In a throwback to the Selma era that many of us naively hoped had been relegated to the dustbin of history, Republicans are now openly and blatantly working to make it harder for nonwhites — blacks in Georgia (where a black woman has a shot at becoming governor), Native Americans in North Dakota — to cast ballots. And now the latest: Team Trump — at the behest of the administration's most fanatical xenophobe, Stephen Miller — is bringing back the much-despised family separation policy at the southern border that will rip migrant babies from their mothers and fathers and dump them into a growing American gulag of detainment camps in the dusty desert.
What do these very not-normal, autocratic moves have in common? They are all making the not-always-silent majority of Americans who strongly disapprove of Trump's presidency madder than they've ever been. In the Kavanaugh caper, women who felt they weren't being heard flooded Capitol Hill, sat in at Senate offices, confronted senators in elevators and pounded on the wooden doors of the high court. The first go-round at migrant family separation sparked sizable protests last summer — so it's likely Round 2 will provoke similar spasms of protests. And when these protests occur, Fox News will highlight them for their audience of angry old men — rebranding legitimate dissent as "mob rule."
"The Democrats are willing to do anything, to hurt anyone, to get the power they so desperately crave," Trump told a Minnesota rally earlier this month. "They want to destroy." That divisive rhetoric is amplified by the essentially state-run media known as Fox News, which has made the supposed threat from left-wing violence into a staple of its prime-time lineup.
In the last 72 hours, the climate of violence has indeed escalated, but with the fisticuffs thrown not by leftists but by pro-Trump goon squads — 21st century brownshirts, essentially — called the Proud Boys, who've been captured on video this weekend inflicting actual "mob rule" mayhem in New York City and in Portland, Ore.
New York City police are still investigating a chaotic scene there on Friday night — but that didn't stop Fox News from blaming violence on the left and anti-fascists. "Antifa strikes again — swords and vandalism at New York GOP office," was the FNC headline, even as video clearly showed the sword was brandished by Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes.
Such falsehoods are not a bug, but a feature. This McCarthyite-style "Red Scare" targeting mostly nonexistent left-wing violence has coincided with a seeming uptick in polling for at least some GOP candidates in November midterms, as once ambivalent 2016 Trump voters remember the one thing that united them: Hatred of liberals and the media.
The White House protest restrictions touch the black heart of Trump's divisive crusade. If these rules go into effect, those who are most angry at the president's actions, who see America plunging into an era of authoritarianism, are likely to ignore these rules and protest anyway. And when they do, the government will now have the power to arrest dissenters — in chaotic scenes that will provide miles of new footage for Fox News. And that chaos will rally Trump's base behind even harsher restrictions on First Amendment protest, speech and the free press, until dissent is silenced totally.
This downward spiral has a name: fascism.
And yet there's something else that's equally troubling about the timing of this — coming right before the midterm elections. It's not hard to think that no matter what happens on Nov. 6, we are on the brink of much larger protests than we've seen so far.
If Democrats do recapture the House, as polls and pundits have predicted for much of this year, an impeachment-fearing Trump may move quickly to shut down the Mueller probe by replacing either Attorney General Jeff Sessions or Sessions' aide who oversees Mueller, Rod Rosenstein or by brazenly firing Mueller — assuming his rabid base, Fox News and a firewall of GOP senators will keep him in office. If that happens, some 400,000 people have signed up to take part in rapid-response protests that under new rules would be problematic and possibly now illegal in D.C.
If Republicans do better than expected in November, angry, protest-prone Democrats may look to widespread voter suppression or a renewal of 2016-style Russian interference and demand to speak out. Or Team Trump will be emboldened to step up its roundup of migrant children and their placement in cages or cruel tent cities. Either way, Trump's inclination to be a divider and not a uniter will increase both chaos and state repression.
There's so much going on right now — the elections, the Mueller probe, the Saudi crisis, etc., etc. It's easy to see some National Park Service rules on permit fees and sidewalk restrictions as a back-burner, Page A17 story. It's not. It's at the cruel core of a presidency with a stunning willingness to erode your First Amendment rights to air grievances and protest the government — the principle that has survived, however imperfectly, for 230 years. People should be very afraid — not just of these proposed rules, but about why Team Trump wants this in the first place.
Has the Dark Side of American Conservatism Taken Over?
Sunday, 14 October 2018 13:35
Lakoff writes: "Conservative bigotry goes beyond racism. It extends to every aspect of social life."
George Lakoff, 2012. (photo: Wikimedia Commons)
Has the Dark Side of American Conservatism Taken Over?
By George Lakoff, George Lakoff's Facebook Page
14 October 18
ome lifelong Republicans are having sudden realizations about what conservatives really believe. Max Boot, who is leaving the Republican Party and wishes "ill fortune" on its candidates, writes:
"It would be nice to think that Donald Trump is an anomaly who came out of nowhere to take over an otherwise sane and sober movement. But it just isn’t so. Upon closer examination, it’s obvious that the history of modern conservative is permeated with racism, extremism, conspiracy-mongering, isolationism and know-nothingism."
But conservative bigotry goes beyond racism. It extends to every aspect of social life. An understanding of the conservative moral hierarchy - the way strict conservatives see the world - helps you understand everything about today's Republican Party. It explains why Republicans forced the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, why they put immigrant children in baby jails, why they're committed to destroying the Earth and its natural resources, etc.
Here is the hierarchy:
God above Man
Man above Nature
The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak)
The Rich above the Poor
Employers above Employees
Adults above Children
Western culture above other cultures
America above other countries
Men above Women
Whites above Nonwhites
Christians above non-Christians
Straights above Gays
Question: Has the dark side of American conservatism taken over, as Boot suggests? Or has its true core simply been revealed for all to see?
Trump's Base-Pandering May Be Hurting Republicans in Swing Districts
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=43327"><span class="small">Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine</span></a>
Sunday, 14 October 2018 13:32
Kilgore writes: "Everyone knows President Trump has decided getting his party's conservative base riled up and 'energized' is the GOP's best hope to hang onto power in Congress. And that's no surprise."
These Trump fans are eating up the red meat he's been dispensing. Swing voters: not so much. (photo: Mark Makela/Getty Images)
Trump's Base-Pandering May Be Hurting Republicans in Swing Districts
By Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine
14 October 18
veryone knows President Trump has decided getting his party’s conservative base riled up and “energized” is the GOP’s best hope to hang onto power in Congress. And that’s no surprise. Not only is it what he does best, day in and day out, with his tweets, his George Wallace–style rallies, and his constant provocations to the media and Democrats. It also accords with often-heard, simplistic truisms of midterm elections being “all about turnout” or “all about which base shows up.”
Those truisms contain a large kernel of truth. Turnout is so much lower in midterms than in presidential contests that mobilizing voters who will cast a ballot for you if they go to the polls is lower-hanging fruit than reaching and persuading swing voters, who are often the least likely to participate. In this period of maximum partisan and ideological polarization, moreover, the number of swing voters has declined significantly. And it’s much easier to appeal simultaneously to base and swing voters by making one’s opponents seem repellent or extremist than by rational arguments or bipartisan gestures.
But too much partisan heat does have its downside, particularly when the heat-generator is as unpopular outside his base as the president is right now. As Ron Brownstein points out, Trump’s strategy may be backfiring in the 25 Republican-held House seats that did not vote for POTUS to begin with:
[P]ublic and private polling suggest that nine of these seats—all of them centered in the suburbs—are already virtually lost causes for the GOP. That list starts with the incumbents Mike Coffman, near Denver; Erik Paulsen, near Minneapolis; Kevin Yoder, near Kansas City; and Barbara Comstock, in Northern Virginia (though some Republicans insist, against the public-polling evidence, that her campaign still has a pulse). Republicans have also largely written off open seats in Clinton-won districts near San Diego, Tucson, and Philadelphia, and in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.
Democrats are slightly favored in five other Clinton-Republican districts, including the incumbents Jeff Denham in the Central Valley, Steve Knight and Mimi Walters near Los Angeles, and Leonard Lance in New Jersey. The Democratic candidate is also favored in one open seat in the Miami area. (All but Denham’s district are urban-suburban seats.)
The remaining six races, all suburban-centered, look like pure toss-ups, with competitive challenges against the incumbents Peter Roskam outside Chicago; John Culberson and Pete Sessions in Houston and Dallas, respectively; and Dana Rohrabacher in Orange County. Also toss-ups are open seats in Orange County and Seattle.
Only five GOP incumbents in districts Clinton carried — David Valadao of California, Carlos Curbelo of Florida, John Katko of New York, Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, and Will Hurd of Texas — seem to be leading in their races. Republican peril extends to a couple of dozen districts Trump carried narrowly in 2016 (one is the First Congressional District of Iowa, whose GOP incumbent, Rod Blum, has been all but abandoned by the national party).
In the Clinton-carried districts, particularly in the suburbs, Trump is, simply put, a millstone for Republicans.
A new Washington Post/Schar School poll across 21 of the 25 Clinton-won districts found that Trump’s approval rating in them stood at just 38 percent. Trump’s position in these swing districts was especially bleak among college-educated white voters, according to previously unpublished results provided to me by the Post’s polling director, Scott Clement. Not only did a staggering 70 percent of college-educated white women in these districts disapprove of Trump’s performance, but so did 58 percent of college-educated white men, usually a reliable Republican constituency.
Republican candidates in these areas can try to establish an identity distinct from their toxic president, but that’s always tough in midterms, and even more difficult with a president like Trump, who dominates the airwaves and the internet to an extent never seen before. And when that same omnipresent POTUS ratchets up his rhetoric to a deafening roar of demagogic partisanship, driving his MAGA legions into a hate rage against immigrants and minorities and the media, it’s almost impossible for an old-school reasonable Republican to break through the noise. And most don’t even try any more.
It’s possible that Trump’s strategy will help even in swing districts if his devotees show up en masse. But in contrast to 2016, Democrats are super-energized as well. Serving up big platters of red meat could work in places where Republicans already have significant numerical advantages and just need to pay attention to win. In more marginal territory, it’s a recipe for defeat.
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he integrity of the US judicial system is actively, albeit quietly, in play. A sitting federal judge, or more likely a panel of sitting federal judges, will be required in the near future to render an assessment of the honesty, integrity, and fitness of a Supreme Court justice to retain his lifetime appointment. The process and the result of the federal judges’ decision will, together, render a judgment as to the integrity of not just one Supreme Court justice but the federal courts as a national institution. 
n appeals court in the Netherlands has upheld a 2015 lower court ruling in a class action case that the Dutch government needs to do more to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to 25% below 1990 levels by 2020. So far the Netherlands has only reduced 13% from 1990 levels.
t hasn't gotten the attention it deserves — almost nothing does anymore — but since July 16, 
ome lifelong Republicans are having sudden realizations about what conservatives really believe. Max Boot, who is leaving the Republican Party and wishes "ill fortune" on its candidates, 
veryone knows President Trump 
