October 01, 2024

The Greater "Threat To Democracy", Part III -- Democrats Rule Even If Republicans Win

October 01, 2024/ Francis Menton

Back in July, I had a two posts (here and here) comparing the then candidates for President, Biden and Trump, on the issue of who is the greater “threat to democracy.”
The posts reviewed actions of each candidate that may be viewed as such threats. For Trump, those things included J6, plus seeking legal advice and then bringing litigation as to what he claimed was fraudulent conduct in the 2020 election; for Biden, the things included having the prosecutors bring phony criminal charges against political adversaries, engaging in a systematic effort with social media platforms to suppress the opposition’s speech, extra-constitutional expansion of the regulatory state, hundreds of billions of federal dollars to fund the political Left, the student-loan-forgiveness vote buying program, and opening the southern border.
Whew — quite a list! Obviously, the contest wasn’t close.
But now comes to my attention another whole category of threat to democracy emanating from the Biden-Harris Administration. This is one I have been somewhat aware of, but I have not been fully aware of the vast extent and systematic nature of the effort. Likely, this category is the worst of all the threats discussed in the extent to which it represents fundamental attack on the constitutional structure.

July 05, 2024

Who Is The Greater "Threat To Democracy"?

July 05, 2024/ Francis Menton

If the imploding Biden campaign, such as it is, has a main theme right now, that theme would appear to be that Donald Trump is a “threat to our democracy.” Or maybe it’s that Trump is “the greatest threat to our democracy.”
Joe seems to repeat that line every time he comes out of the basement to speak. Here’s a short Instagram video issued by the Biden campaign about a week ago with the text “Democracy is on the ballot,” and “Donald Trump is the greatest threat to our democracy.”
But then, Trump served a full four year term as President. He has a record of four years in the office from which we can compile evidence of actions that he took while holding the powers of the presidency that might be viewed as threats to democracy. Biden also has a record as President, now approaching the same length, so we can do the same thing for him.
So which of the two is the greater threat to democracy?

June 28, 2024

June 28, 2024/ Francis Menton

The rush of end-of-term decisions from the Supreme Court, not to mention last night’s presidential debate, gives me many more potential topics to write about than I could ever get to.
How to choose? On the subject of the presidential debate, I doubt that I have anything to say that a hundred others have not said in the past 24 hours. So then, which of the latest crop of Supreme Court decisions is the most important?
On that last question, my vote goes to Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. This is the case that has rather emphatically overruled the 1984 case of Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.

August 14, 2023

August 14, 2023/ Francis Menton

My last post highlighted two lengthy comments submitted to EPA by groups of states critical of the agency’s recently-proposed “Power Plant Rule.” (EPA’s official title: “New Source Performance Standards for GHG Emissions from New and Reconstructed EGUs; Emission Guidelines for GHG Emissions from Existing EGUs; and Repeal of the Affordable Clean Energy Rule.” ).
The Rule seeks to eliminate, or nearly so, all greenhouse gas emissions from electric power plants, by some time in the 2030s. The comments that I highlighted delve into substantial technical detail, giving serious reasons why EPA’s proposed transformation of the country’s electricity generation system is unlikely to work and poses severe risks to the people’s electricity supply.
What about on the other side? Are there any comments on the proposed Rule that are supportive of the Rule, and that even contend that its restrictions on use of fossil fuels to generate electricity should be made more stringent, and/or advanced in time? The answer is that there are many such comments.
But how do these supportive comments deal with the problems identified in the critical comments?

July 06, 2023

July 06, 2023/ Francis Menton

Just over a year ago, on July 5, 2022, I had a post titled “How To Think Like A Liberal Supreme Court Justice.” The post was occasioned by the then-brand-new issuance (June 30, 2022) of the biggest decision of the Court’s last term, West Virginia v. EPA. Justice Kagan had authored a dissent on behalf of herself and the other two liberal justices (Breyer and Sotomayor).
My post also discussed two other significant decisions of the 2021-22 term where the three liberals had again dissented as a bloc: Alabama Association of Realtors v. HHS and NFIB v. Department of Labor.
And now we have several more big decisions just issued with the same 6-3 voting split (Justice Jackson having replaced Breyer). The most significant is SFFA v. Harvard.
So suppose you want to learn how to think like a liberal Supreme Court justice. If so, I submit that there is no better place to look than the dissents in cases where the three liberal justices dissent as a bloc.

January 25, 2023

January 25, 2023/ Francis Menton

I have so far avoided weighing in on the Biden and Trump classified documents scandals, but I guess the time has finally come.
I’ve had a “Secret” clearance in my life, and almost all of the “classified” documents I have seen have been of very underwhelming significance. So when the Trump classified document thing blew up with the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago back in August, I was not impressed.
It reeked of something highly likely to be completely devoid of real world significance, but useful to Biden and the left because Trump would be put in a position of not being able to defend himself publicly without disclosing the contents of the documents.
Meanwhile Trump as President had had complete authority to declassify the documents if he wanted, and his position was that he had done so. But even if Trump had a good or even excellent position that he had declassified the documents, he would not take the risk of disclosing their contents to defend himself.
So it seemed like a total freebie for Biden to go on 60 Minutes in September and say “How could anyone be that irresponsible?”
I want to look at two aspects in particular: (1) Do the facts support that Biden was “fully cooperating” with respect to this likely criminal matter involving him? and (2) Does Trump have a reasonable position that documents in his possession with classified “markings” had been declassified?