Alito, Thomas Impeachment Articles Filed

July 11: Supreme impeachment … GOP vengeance plans … Biden news conference tonight … Clooney to Biden: O Brother Where Art Thou? …

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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduces articles of impeachment against Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. (Screengrab / NBC video.)

First of all, calm down. Honestly, you’re embarrassing yourself. We’re all excited. It’s okay.

Yes, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) introduced articles of impeachment yesterday against right-wing Supreme Court theocrats Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.

But, no, they’re not going to go anywhere in a House of Representatives controlled by right-wing theocrats and their tiny handful of “centrist” GOP enablers.

Okay, TFN, but if nothing’s gonna happen then why is TFN leading with it today, smart guy?!?

Fair question!

1. My muscle memory still remembers working at outlets where it might matter if you bucked the trend of what “everybody’s talking about” and shined a counterprogrammed light on something else important.

2. Isn’t it nice to be greeted by a story that doesn’t involve Pres. Joe Biden being old? (See below. Sigh.)

3. It’s important to flag when people do what they’re supposed to, even/especially in the absence of reason to think it will succeed. Members of Congress take an oath to defend the Constitution. That means they’re obliged to file articles of impeachment against judges whose asses need to be benched instead of on the bench¹.

4. We don’t get to know whether it will work or not. Maybe tomorrow six members of the House Moralizing Against Drag Queens While Secretly Sexually Harassing Staff Caucus will die in a horrific parachuting accident and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) will have to cede his gavel to Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) for six hours. Well, thanks to Ocasio-Cortez, now they’ll have actionable articles of impeachment on hand, fresh out of the oven.

5. You start with failure. Roe only died after right-wing theocrats failed to kill it for half a century. Failed attempts shift the norms around your issue, until it gains widespread consideration and corporate media get bored of mocking it and take it seriously. Then you win.

With the backing of seven other Democrats, Ocasio-Cortez introduced three articles of impeachment against Thomas.

• Failure to disclose gifts from billionaire Harlan Crow.

• Failure to recuse himself from cases involving his wife, theocratic activist Ginni Thomas.

• More failure to recuse himself from more cases involving his wife.

Ocasio-Cortez introduced two articles of impeachment against Alito.

• Failure to disclose gifts from billionaire Peter Singer.

• Failure to recuse himself from cases involving January 6.

Earlier this week, Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Thomas for possible tax fraud and possible definite false statements about his secret billionaire gift-hoarding, in violation of the Ethics in Government Act, which only permits public billionaire gift-hoarding.

Garland is expected to give the request serious consideration and then think about it for a while before initiating a period of preliminary mulling.

Project 2025 Foresight Is 2020

Much of the left is still determined that the involvement of former Pres. Donald Trump’s inner circle in the Project 2025 whitemanifesto is proof that Trump read and agrees with all 900-whatever pages of it. TFN is still determined that (a) that’s not how proof works, (b) it’s bad strategy, and (c) Trump doesn’t read.

Strategically, the problem is that this kind of circumstantial-evidence, maximalist conclusion pins the discourse to the question of What Trump Really Thinks. Which: Enough.

It also leaves unused the political dynamite that Trump’s inner circle wrote this. We don’t need more than that. Credibility isn’t weakened by the stretch of accusing Trump of involvement. We know they wrote it, so the discourse on that will be on the substance.

Likewise, on Monday, the little-noticed, little-sane National Conservatism conference was held, and Semafor’s Dave Weigel laid out some of the high low points. And, again, the issue isn’t whether Trump knows/agrees, it’s that these are his people.

John Eastman, Trump’s now-disbarred election-stealing mastermind, advocated retribution against judges who didn’t rule in Trump’s favor. “We’ve got to start impeaching these judges for acting in such an unbelievably partisan way from the bench,” Eastman said in an unbelievably partisan way.

“People who have used this tool against people like John or President Trump have to be prosecuted by Republican or conservative DAs [district attorneys] in exactly the same way, for exactly the same kinds of things, until they stop,” Berkeley Law professor John Yoo was able to chime in, because no one thought to toss him in prison for authorizing the Bush administration torture of suspected Muslims.

Here’s Trump’s former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Tom Homan: “I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen … They ain’t seen shit yet. Wait until 2025.”

Referring to Project 2025, Trump has said, “I disagree with some of the things they’re saying and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

But as Weigel reports, they didn’t care whether Trump agreed with or liked Project 2025 or Project Ain’t Seen Shit. Because Trump doesn’t have to agree: All he has to do is put Homan on ICE. What Trump wants doesn’t matter; what matters is what we’ll get.

Biden’s Symptoms Are Just a Symptom

The single, defining test of Pres. Joe Biden’s mental faculties comes today with a news conference tonight. It’ll be at least the third single, defining test of his faculties since he almost participated in a debate with former Pres. Donald Trump.

We’ve also had the George Stephanopoulos interview. Not great. Then the NATO speech. Fine.

Tonight, though, really could be a game-changer. Yesterday, Sen. Peter Welch (D-VT) became the first Senate Democrat to call publicly for Biden to step aside. This morning, new polling shows the debate debate has done little to change the race, but most Democrats want someone other than Biden running in it.

And it won’t only be Biden’s answers tonight that matter. It matters, too, what questions get asked. Biden news conferences are rare things. And the only people attending are from the White House press corps.

Which means that labor reporters and education reporters and others never get to ask presidents shit. At best they can appeal to their White House press corps colleagues to ask a question. It rarely happens.

So we’ll probably get a lot of questions that solicit guesses or opinion — instead of facts. But even on the issue du jour — Biden’s mental state — there are tons of factual, worthwhile questions to be asked.

Have medical personnel ever advised you about any deterioration of thought or memory or speech? Which of your staff has ever to your face suggested that your diminished capacities are imperiling your campaign? What involvement did you or your proxies have in Democratic National Committee handling of the primaries? What will you do to facilitate open debate at the Democratic convention about your fitness as president or candidate and about potential alternative candidates? So on.

Instead, we’ll get shit like, “What do you say to members of Congress calling for you to step down?” “How do you think you’ll do in your next debate?” “Why aren’t Americans confident in your ability to lead?” “Do you like my sweater?”

In his answers — and in the spin about the questions — fingers will get pointed at the media. Which, true! But also, not new!

Oh, now the media’s a problem? Not when they savaged the Green New Deal and universal health care? Now elites are a problem? Not when they savaged, uh, the exact same things?

If the media and the elite can drive our politics so profoundly that even some congressional Democrats are calling for their own party leader to stop running for president…what, pray-in-a-secular-sense-tell is the Democratic plan to fix that?

Because we’ve known for years that legislation follows elite wishes. We’ve known for years that Democratic leaders, even presidents, dance to the media’s song of the summer and fall and spring and winter.

So what’s the plan?

If Democratic leaders think the media are fucked up — and, trust me, they do — then it’s long past time for them not just to articulate why, but to imagine the ideal media we deserve and make it happen. Because leaders.

Whether it’s a government fix or a private one, we’re long overdue. (And obvi I have thoughts on what that should look like, which I’ll likely articulate on my own at some point. Just in case any Democratic big brains are listening!)

Speaking of Elites and Biden

Pres. Joe Biden has said definitively that he’s decided to stay in the race. So leading Democrats are pressuring him to decide whether he’ll stay in the race.

Politico reports there’s a logic to that madness. When former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) yesterday called on Biden to decide — even though he already has — it wasn’t because she’s forgetting things. 

Reportedly, she’s saying privately — but not so privately it won’t get out — that Biden should step aside. Her public remarks were meant to clear space for other members to voice their concerns publicly.

It was, in other words, a nudge. Certainly compared to the massive shove by actor/director and Democratic fundraising heavyweight George Clooney. In an op-ed yesterday, Clooney said the Biden he saw at the recent big-dollar fundraiser wasn’t the same Biden he once knew.

And Politico reported that Clooney ran the op-ed past former Pres. Barack Obama first … and Obama didn’t push back.

Although Clooney isn’t a politician, his Hollywood work has given him some relevant experience, with movies such as The Men Who Stare at Goats, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Out of Sight, and, most poignantly, Good Night and Good Luck. 

Good News from Ukraine? Maybe! Kinda!

The assessment emerging out of this week’s NATO summit in Washington is two-fold:

• Ukraine managed to hang in there long enough for U.S. and other western aid to make its tortuously slow way there.

• Russia is now unlikely to make significant new advances in the near future.

The New York Times reports that Russia made major efforts starting in the spring to push forward in eastern Ukraine, and to take new territory outside Kharkiv. They lost thousands of troops and gained little ground.

The downside for Ukraine is that regaining lost territory appears about as unlikely as losing more territory. The philosophical framing for the war, the Times reports, seems to be the only thing actually moving at the moment.

While Ukraine says it’s simply fighting to reclaim seized territory, at the NATO summit, the overarching theme of the war was shifting to included Ukraine’s future — specifically as a potential member of NATO or the European Union.

Both possibilities offer hope for Ukraine, to lash its future to western democracy and prosperity. On the other hand, it also raises the stakes for Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin, who already sees Ukraine as a key link in a tightening NATO chain on his western front. And/or would lurv a new excuse.

TCB

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Go get ‘em, kids. You got this.

1. That was a much better turn of phrase in my head.