We've written plenty about Montgomery v. Louisiana, the January Supreme Court decision that found all juveniles mandatorily convicted and sentenced to life without parole had to be resentenced. From our previous article on the case:
Montgomery made retroactive Miller v. Alabama, which ruled in 2012 that mandatory life without parole sentences for juveniles violate the Eighth Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Neither ruling was all-encompassing—Montgomery only addressed statutorily mandated sentences, as did its predecessor. But Montgomery not only gave hope to thousands of people serving juvenile LWOP, it also underscored just how rare such sentences should be in the future. "[A] lifetime in prison is a disproportionate sentence for all but the rarest of children, those whose crimes reflect ‘irreparable corruption,'" said the court.
That is a very technical way of stating the broader point: basically, that the Supreme Court said that juvenile LWOP cases should be very, very rare. That not only goes for cases going forward, it goes for those people serving time already that get to be resentenced.
One of the states where the Montgomery ruling would have the most impact is Michigan. In July we wrote about Detroit Prosecutor Kym Worthy, who explicitly failed to follow the Supreme Court's guidelines. From that story:
Criminal justice reform advocates had hoped that Worthy would agree to re-sentence all the defendants to terms of years. Depending on the case, such a sentence could mean immediate release for some inmates, or the possibility of parole now or in the future for others. Ultimately, people just wanted Worthy to give each defendant the chance to eventually see a parole board. They wanted her to give every defendant hope.
Instead, Worthy has decided to once again seek life without parole sentences for many of those inmates.
Remember when Mitch McConnell took over the Senate majority in January 2015, claiming that under his leadership he'd prove that Republicans can govern? Well, as it turns out, not so much—and historically, not so much at all.
Congressional productivity during the GOP’s first two years controlling both the House and Senate falls behind historical averages, according to a new analysis. […]
[…] Quorum found that the Senate passed the lowest percentage of House bills in the past quarter-century despite unified party control of Congress.
Across the Capitol, the House’s record of passing legislation this session—773 total bills—was above the historical average of 626 measures.
But that’s still less than the all-time record of 943 bills passed by the House during the first two years of Obama’s presidency, when Democrats controlled Congress.
If you're like many progressives and are searching for glimmers of silver in that massive black cloud looming over us, here's another tiny bit. They're really, really not good at working together to do things. That's demonstrated clearly in the fact that they hate being in their jobs, and leave as frequently as possible.
Capitol Hill particularly resembled a ghost town during the last quarter of 2016. Both chambers were out session for seven weeks in July and August to accommodate the party nominating conventions and then left town again for the entire month of October for the final weeks of the campaign.
They are planning a tougher work schedule in the new year, but don't hold your breath on that. These are not people who are first and foremost committed to doing the people's business.
The face of the new 'integrity': Eh, whatever Trump does is fine.
The face of the new 'integrity': Eh, whatever Trump does is fine.
Republican efforts to normalize Trump's plans to not divest himself from his myriad businesses (and, thus, myriad opportunities for self-enrichment off his presidency) continue to get stupider.
And apologies for not using a properly pundity word instead of "stupider." Maybe something like intriguing or controversial or unusual, but when you have to go back to the time of slaveholding and a barely-functional national government in order to justify why Donald Trump can profit off White House visitors staying at his own personal Washington hotel two centuries later, then calling such an argument unusual or controversial or anything other than the semi-coherent dribblings of a professional moron would fail to get the point across.
Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) said on Wednesday that he does not think Trump needs to disentangle himself. “To be fair to him, he’s not a guy who made his money out of doing business with the government, particularly,” he observed.
Cole added that he thinks Trump’s team is “trying to be careful,” because “opponents will try to put the worst aspersions” on anything he does. “I don’t expect the family to get out of a family business, for goodness sake. I mean, you read much history, George Washington was still pretty active in managing Mount Vernon when he was president of the United States.”
By this time next year, Tom Cole will be explaining that it's all right for Donald Trump to keep three dozen child slaves chained up the the White House basement because by God, it's what George Washington would have done.
If we travel forward in history to, oh, say any reasonably recent time, the more modern rules have changed considerably since the time of Mount Freaking Vernon. (President Jimmy Carter was famously required to sell his Georgia peanut farm, lest the presidency be held in the pocket of Big Peanut.) It has been a well-established requirement of the modern presidency, at least until a month ago, because until a month ago it was taken largely for granted that our sitting president was at the very least not allowed to be crooked.
Rep. Tom Cole, for example, is part of a Republican House that melted themselves into bubbling puddles over even the perception of "pay to play" concerns in the Clinton Foundation—but now are pooh-poohing concerns over foreign dignitaries currently funneling cash into Trump's own businesses. Cole was personally quite chagrined over the "irresponsible" mixing of private and work emails on Clinton's mail services, but Donald Trump continuing to turn an actual profit on everything from his transition meetings to his own Secret Service protection is, Cole opines, not much to get worked up about.
Sen. Susan Collins, perennial "moderate" of the Senate Republican caucus who rarely does anything to hamper Mitch McConnell's leadership, is making more noises about Obamacare repeal, saying first there needs to be a replacement ready to go.
Republicans, including House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are pushing plans that would immediately repeal the ACA and delay a replacement for three years. Media reports suggest the repeal could be on Trump's desk shortly after he takes office Jan. 20.
"I'm a little concerned about the speed in which this is occurring," said Collins, who opposed the ACA as it was being debated in 2009.
Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Price of Georgia, Trump's health and human services nominee, is advocating for repeal of the ACA and for stripping the subsidies that help those earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level afford individual insurance.
But Collins said removing the subsidies would cause individual insurance markets to collapse, especially if there's no approved plan.
It's going to take more than talk this time for Collins. She's going to have to actually resist, and pull any other uncomfortable Republicans—like Sen. Lamar Alexander, who has also said they should have a replacement plan ready—with her. Collins’ talk over the years has been pretty damned cheap, along with so many Republicans like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Jeff Flake. Here's their chance to finally do something.
Those fine, principled Freedom Caucus stalwarts, keeping a keen eye on the deficit and working to make sure it shrinks no matter how many people starve to death, have apparently decided that the deficit isn't such a big deal—but they're not backing down on the letting people starve to death part.
Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus may be shifting their uncompromising, tough budget stance under President-elect Donald Trump, according to a report in the National Review.
According to the piece, there is discussion underway to accept that just 50 percent of Trump's infrastructure bill would have to be offset with spending cuts elsewhere– a precedent that they never would have accepted under President Barack Obama.
After Trump was first elected, members of the House Freedom Caucus were vocal about their opposition to some of Trump's costly legislative priorities like a $1 trillion infrastructure bill.
"If Trump doesn’t find a way to pay for it, the majority of us, if not all of us, are going to vote against it," Raul Labrador (R-ID) told reporters, according to the National Review piece.
But that was then. Now? The National Review says that "there has been informal talk of accepting a bill that’s only 50 percent paid for, with the rest of the borrowing being offset down the road by 'economic growth.'" That's code for "massive tax cuts for the wealthy." That'll be particularly fun when Congress gets the bill for Trump's expanded nuclear arsenal. Nukes don't come cheap. Clearly, more people are going to have to starve.
If any other transition team were querying government departments for the kind of information the Trumplodytes have been seeking, few people would be uptight about it. But there are plenty of reasons to shudder when these are the guys doing the asking. Josh Rogin reports:
The Trump transition team instructed the State Department to turn over all information Wednesday about “gender-related staffing, programming, and funding,” setting off alarm bells among those who fear that the new administration is going to purge programs that promote women’s equality along with the people who work on them. [...]
I obtained a copy of the State Department request, which said each office should include information on all existing programs and activities that “promote gender equality, such as ending gender-based violence, promoting women’s participation in economic and political spheres, entrepreneurship, etc.”
Earlier this week, we learned that the team had asked State Department employees to account for how much money the agency has spent on international environmental organizations.
Unlike the transitioners’ sortie into the Department of Energy regarding climate change that stirred fears a week ago, these times they aren’t asking for individual names of the civil servants doing the work. That change might, under normal circumstances, be taken as a sign that they have wised up.
But this is the unpresidented-elect’s crew. In a post-Jan. 20 world, they might avoid harassing and otherwise giving a hard time to government employees engaged in those programs and activities. Or they might not. But even if they don’t behave that way, the attitudes expressed by Trump and his chosen few about women, transgender persons, marriage equality, and the like are a good indication that these programs, at State and elsewhere in the federal government, are headed for the shredder.
Anybody possessed of happy nostalgia for the America of the 1950s should buckle up—because it appears they’re going to find out what those years were actually like.
Gator promises to drain swamp ... later. Eventually.
Gator promises to drain swamp ... later. Eventually.
Fresh off the heels of Deep Republican Thinker Newt Gingrich noting that Donald Trump "now disclaims" his earlier promise to "drain the swamp" in Washington, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski reiterated the message: Draining swamps is just not something Donald Trump is that into these days.
“If you had to put them in a chronological order, drain the swamp is probably somewhere down at the bottom,” Lewandowski said of the refrain on “Fox & Friends,” adding that “what it’s really about is putting people back to work.”
“As opposed to getting tax reform done, making sure middle-class people have more jobs, making sure we’re renegotiating our bad trade deals, ensuring that we’re fixing ObamaCare,” the long-time aide and surrogate continued.
Shorter Lewandowski: I mean sure, maybe after all that other stuff gets done we'll get back to campaign-era bullshit promise No. 28, but right now there's a list and it ain't on page one. Or two. Or 10.
Mind you, this may have something to do with Lewandowski just yesterday opening his very own lobbying firm right in the middle of the swamp. But whatever Donald Trump's various faults are, Donald Trump is keenly aware of one thing: The only way bullshit continues to work is if you don't openly pipe up declaring it to be bullshit. So Trump furiously took to Twitter to make it known that his various buds and surrogates were speaking out of turn. Disregard the most recent bullshit; the bullshit before that bullshit is still in effect!
x
Someone incorrectly stated that the phrase "DRAIN THE SWAMP" was no longer being used by me. Actually, we will always be trying to DTS.
Which immediately resulted in Newt Gingrich skittering directly to Twitter to declare that he now thought whatever bullshit Trump thought and is sorry for ever implying any contrary bullshit. (If you've never seen a man shamelessly try to crawl into a rich man's pocket, you're in for a treat.)
Senate Republicans and outside groups are making a hard play for red-state Democrats in trying to force through popular vote loser Donald Trump's cabinet picks.
It’s an effort at early damage control, with Republicans aiming to protect their own from a Democratic onslaught that could cause lasting damage both to Trump administration officials and to the president-elect’s ability to push his ambitious legislative agenda through Congress.
To that end, after Christmas, five red state Democratic senators up for reelection in 2018 will find themselves in the cross hairs of an ad campaign pushing them to support Pruitt, Trump’s nominee to head the Environmental Protection Agency.
Behind the effort is the conservative group America Rising Squared, an arm of the Republican opposition research group America Rising that is also launching a website, ConfirmPruitt.com, on Wednesday.
The Democrats—West Virginia’s Joe Manchin, Missouri’s Claire McCaskill, Montana’s Jon Tester, Indiana’s Joe Donnelly, and North Dakota’s Heidi Heitkamp—will face ads casting their votes on Pruitt’s nomination as a choice between farmers and regulators, working families and extremist environmentalists.
There are similar efforts in the works for nominees Betsy DeVos at Education and Andy Puzder at Labor. These senators, but particularly Manchin and Heitkamp who have been being courted by the Trump transition team, need to remember these names: Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu, and Mark Pryor. They also need to remember their own elections—particularly McCaskill and Tester. Going Republican-lite isn't going to save you in a mid-term election. Republicans aren't going to vote for you anyway, and you'll turn off would-be supporters in what is already certain to be a low-turnout election.
There's too much at stake—and the Republican party has gone so off-the-charts extreme with Trump—that there's no upside for any Democrat tempted to sell their soul to them. Really. Just look around you.
Donald Trump is so displeased with his team’s inability to lock in A-list talent for his inauguration events next month that he’s ordered a “Hail Mary” shakeup of his recruiters to try to book performers, a person familiar with the situation told TheWrap.
Mark Burnett, who produces “Celebrity Apprentice” with Trump and has been overseeing entertainment for inauguration festivities, has brought in talent recruiter Suzanne Bender, a former “Dancing With the Stars” and “American Idol” booker, to end an effective freeze-out by Hollywood, the insider said.
• Stuff that keeps other people up at night:The White House Correspondents' Association Dinner doesn’t happen until April 29, 2017. The fact that it will be Donald Trump at podium has some association board members a tad worried:
"This is unchartered territory," says a former board member who's discussed the matter with board members. "We've never had a businessman-reality TV star as president, somebody who understands the importance of this particular event."
We've also never had a president-elect who so openly disdains much of the media — and won in part by ridiculing the "swamp" of politicians, lobbyists and press that largely comprise the 3,000 attendees at Washington's celebrity-filled, self-reverential social event of the year.
Not sure if that's footage of aliens or earthlings? This Youtube video by Storyful News offers a rare peak at the marine world below Antarctic sea level. With all kinds of colors and shapes, starfish, wigglies, and pompom-looking things, it's really a world unto itself.
NOT SO LONG ago, the internet represented a force for subversion, and WIRED’s list of the most dangerous people on the internet mostly consisted of rebellious individuals using the online world’s disruptive potential to take on the world’s power structures. But as the internet has entered every facet of our lives, and governments and political figures have learned to exploit it, the most dangerous people on the internet today often are the most powerful people.
• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, we’re still dissecting the election, of course. Greg Dworkin remind us to learn all we can about Trump voters, but nobody gets a pass. To no one’s surprise, Trump is “casting” his cabinet like a “reality TV” show. But The Apprentice was never about reality.
A conservative GOP lawmaker says he “made a poor choice of words” when citing a decision to delay treatment of his son’s broken arm to point out the benefits of a health care system in which consumers bear a greater share of out-of-pocket costs. [...]
Huizenga said in an interview with The Associated Press Wednesday that using the experience of his son’s broken arm was a bad example to cite and that the cost of an emergency room visit didn’t play a role in his decision as a parent. Huizenga’s family is covered by Blue Cross Blue Shield, he said.
Oh, that makes it so much better—he didn’t really have a good reason at all for not getting his kid’s broken arm treated immediately. Cost had nothing to do with it. That’ll make his kid feel just great. If this asshole was a black, single, and homeless mom instead of a Republican congressman, he’d be arrested for child neglect.
The larger point, he says, still holds. “We as consumers and users of this need to get better acquainted with what are the true costs.” In other words, people are using too damned much health care and shouldn’t get any help from anybody to pay for it.
Liberal bloggers aren't the only ones sending a strong warning to Democrats about not helping Republicans one iota when it comes to dismantling Obamacare, or their bullshit efforts to "replace" it. Here's Theda Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard and the director of the Scholars Strategy Network:
For the Democratic Party, the coming Republican assault on public health insurance represents a huge political opportunity. But to seize it, the party will have to beef up state committees and place a priority on activating volunteer supporters everywhere—getting people to write messages to local newspapers and social media sites, and reach out to hospitals, health care providers and nonprofits to beat the drums about losses the Republicans are inflicting. Even if Democrats cannot soon win outright majorities beyond their urban base, they must be actively involved in communities damaged by Mr. Trump’s false campaign promises.
Democrats cannot just defend Medicare; they must loudly point out that repealing Obamacare means eliminating the taxes that subsidize health care for low- and middle-income people. That huge and immediate tax cut for the rich would lead to the demise of subsidized health insurance for millions of less privileged Americans in rural, suburban and urban communities. Proclaiming this truth could help Democrats gain a new hearing from many Trump voters. But it remains to be seen whether the party can rise to the challenge of showing up everywhere.
What she's saying: Fight, Democrats! She's right.
Sure, don't lift a finger to help Republicans. That's the easy part.
