If the Republicans in the Senate were really as concerned about a renegade presidency as they claim to be on Twitter and in anonymous mumblings to various reporters, they’d join with Democrats to block [Mnuchin’s] nomination. It only takes three of them, and they all could cite Mnuchin’s dubious testimony to the committee as a very plausible reason for doing so.

There was absolutely no chance of that ever happening, however. Nobody—except Bernie Sanders, who said it all the time—wants to get up and state flat out that the business model of people like Stephen Mnuchin, the people who immiserated millions out of sheer animal greed, was plain vanilla bunco fraud. This was really the last chance to make that point before these gombeen yahoos do it all over again.

Charlie Pierce, writing about the Mnuchin confirmation for Treasury Secretary. Yep. Great Recession II is coming, and if these yahoos are still in charge when it happens they’ll merily let the global economy burn to the ground Hoover style. The Market will sort all that out, don’t ya know? So get ready for your haircut, Wall Street, because it’s coming sooner than later; the great reckoning that should have been bailout and jailterms back in ought-eight will instead be no bailout, total ruin for you, and a decades long recovery for literally everyone else. And, of course, the end of the GOP. So we’ll have that going for us.

Eichenwald: Neil Gorsuch is supremely qualified, and must not be confirmed

Well reasoned article by Kurt Eichenwald, starts thusly:

Gorsuch [though well qualified in terms of the “traditional norms”], unfortunately, must be sacrificed on the altar of obscene partisanship erected by the Republicans in recent years. Temper tantrums designed to undermine the Constitution for naked political purposes cannot be rewarded. Our government cannot survive the short-term games-playing that has replaced fidelity to the intent of the Founding Fathers’ work in forming this once-great nation.

But I have to say, his solution is an odd one, basically force a vote on Garland, which, of course, would simply be a party-line “no” based on the current Senate, then renominate Gorsuch:

So even though Garland would not have won a Senate confirmation vote, a precedent needs to be established: the Senate’s confirmation responsibilities under the Constitution are not a joke, are not something where absurd rationalizations that pass for smarts on Fox News can be used to circumvent history and precedent. Nominees must be given hearings and votes. And yes, if that means letting the Republicans blow up the filibuster, let them do it.

Honestly, I don’t see how that’s “punishment” or is in any way reseting the Constitutional norms. His final paragraph, however, does break the glass on what I would definitely agree is true and lasting retribution for this act (and that also presumes the inevitable end of judicial filibusters he alluded to above):

Then, when a Democratic president is in office, the Democrats control the Senate, and there is no filibuster, show the Republicans a real exercise in raw power: revive Franklin Roosevelt’s plan to pack the Supreme Court and fill it with the most liberal justices around. If the Republicans insist on turning the judiciary into a political plaything, play the roughest game of hardball they have ever seen.

That is nothing if not serious hardball. It is amazing to see it suggested in print by someone like Eichenwald. Trump voters wanted change. They’re getting change alright.

Eichenwald: Neil Gorsuch is supremely qualified, and must not be confirmed

Sorry, Neil Gorsuch. The Supreme Court Seat Was Already Filled

Geoffrey Stone makes as good a case as I’ve seen:

Anyone who cares about the proper and legitimate functioning of our American democracy must oppose Judge Gorsuch’s nomination, not because he is necessarily unqualified, but because of the undermining of our American democracy by Senate Republicans. Anyone who cares about the rule of law should must oppose this nomination. If we fail to take this stand, the Senate Republicans will have succeeded in placing a justice onto our highest Court who has no business being there. They will have undermined the credibility of the Supreme Court as an institution, an institution that is critical to the functioning of our Constitution.

Judge Gorsuch’s nomination should be withdrawn, and the President should nominate in his place a genuinely moderate justice who is acceptable to Democrats and Republicans alike. Only then can we move on with a sense of institutional integrity. Short of that, every decision of the Court decided by a margin of five-to-four with Neil Gorsuch in the majority will justifiably be castigated as fundamentally illegitimate.

Simply saying you’re holding the seat for at least four years isn’t going to fly. Preemptively declaring a blanket filibuster on all candidates isn’t going to fly; that sort of thing is perfectly okay if you’re a Republican, but otherwise you can forget about it. But the Democrats must find a way to extract a political price over the Garland theft, but have to do so in a “serious” way that also placates the recently ascendant Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Maybe you can manage to hold until mid-terms? But you have to have an end game and start talking about it today; good thing the Democrats are known for their excellent coordinated messaging machine…

Sorry, Neil Gorsuch. The Supreme Court Seat Was Already Filled

The reported resort to astrology in the White House has occasioned much merriment.  It is not funny.  Astrological gibberish, which means astrology generally, has no place in a newspaper, let alone government.  Unlike comics, which are part of a newspaper’s harmless pleasure and make no truth claims, astrology is a fraud.  The idea that it gets a hearing in government is dismaying.

George Will, noted Serious Person, writing in 1988. What I wouldn’t give for an astrologer and a Serious Person that noticed.

I went on three network Sunday shows. I spoke for 35 minutes on three network Sunday shows. You know what got picked? The fact that I said alternative facts, not the fact that I ripped a new one to some of those hosts for never covering the facts that matter to America’s women, 16.1 million women in poverty as we sit there, the 12.4 million who have no health insurance. Everybody should feel outraged. The billions of dollars we have spent as a nation on public education, only to have millions of kids trapped in schools that fail them and never really promote and protect their intelligence and prepare them for the world that they all deserve. They shouldn’t be restricted by the zip code where they live. They should be lifted up.

This has all been a colossus failure, and nobody wants to talk about that. They want to talk about it’s always zing. It’s always playing gotcha. There’s no question that when you look at the contributions made by the media, money contributions, they went to Hillary Clinton. We have all the headlines, people should be embarrassed. Not one network person has been let go. Not one silly political analyst and pundit who talked smack all day long about Donald Trump has been let go. They are on panels every Sunday. They’re on cable news every day. Who’s the first editorial—the first blogger that will be left out that embarrassed his or her outlet? We know all their names.

I’m too polite to call them by name. But they know who they are, and they’re all wondering, will I be the first to go? The election was three months ago. None of them have been let go. If this were a real business, if the mainstream media were a thriving private sector business that actually turn a profit, which is not true of many of our newspapers, Chris, 20 percent of the people would be gone. They embarrassed, they failed to protect their shareholders and their board members and their colleagues.

And yet we deal with him every single day. We turn the other cheek. If you are part of team Trump, you walk around with these gaping, seeping wounds every single day, and that’s fine. I believe in a full and fair press. I’m here every Sunday morning. I haven’t slept in a month. I believe in a full and fair press. But with the free press comes responsibility. And responsibility is to get the story right. Biased coverage is easy to detect. Incomplete coverage impossible to detect. That’s my major grievance, is the media are not—they’re not giving us complete coverage. President Trump has signed all these executive orders this week. He’s met with these heads of states. He’s done so many things to stimulate the economy, to boost wages, to create jobs. Where’s the coverage?

Special Snowflake to the President, Kellyanne Conway, bringing it, uh, bigly to FOXnews’ Chris Wallace (who rather wisely just let her ramble on, it would seem). She’s right about one thing, people should be embarassed and people should be outraged. Just different people in different slots than you would have it.

The President can sign whatever executive orders he likes. But the law is the law. We are not bringing back torture in the United States of America.

“On June 16, 2015, the United States Senate voted 78-21 to adopt an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016 that reaffirmed the prohibition on torture by limiting interrogation techniques to those in the Army Field Manual. The Army Field Manual does not include waterboarding or other forms of enhanced interrogation. The law requires the field manual to be updated to ensure it ‘complies with the legal obligations of the United States and reflects current, evidence-based, best practices for interrogation that are designed to elicit reliable and voluntary statements and do not involve the use or threat of force.’ Furthermore, the law requires any revisions to the field manual be made available to the public 30 days prior to the date the revisions take effect.

Senator John McCain (R), Arizona and chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, doubles down on his "I'll see Trump in court" language. This is definitely where the rubber meets the road. Will McCain actually hold the line, or will he fall into line when they either a) resume torturing without regard to the law or b) just revise the Field Manual to include whatever forms of torture they prefer? I'm guessing there will be a thirty day public comment period for which the announcement of said comment period and the contents of the text to be commented on is classified or otherwise disallowed from release to the public. Later, when the practice of torture inevitably leaks in a politically damaging way, various members of Congress and media sources will reveal that, oh, yeah, we knew about and sat on that for months. Didn't seem important what with all those Hillary emails and the Twitter. And so the republic burns.

[Donald Trump is] a grown man, and secondly he’s someone who has been involved with beauty contests for many years and has met the most beautiful women in the world. I find it hard to believe that he rushed to some hotel to meet girls of loose morals, although ours are undoubtedly the best in the world.

Preisdent in absentia of these United States Vladimir Putin, also noted leader of Russia. Undoubtedly the best in the world. Also very little evidence for “is a grown man.”