Visiting some family this week and didn’t bring my computer, so mainly off MOL since I hate typing on a phone, but was up in the Santa Cruz mountains and thought of you when I saw this. Feliz navidad!
Thanks PVW! Up here in Edmonton, we have to make do with fake slugs. I am looking forward to heading down to SC in a few weeks for some hiking and a break from snow, snow, snow. I hope you and yours had a lovely holiday.
Hard to imagine any one less Santa like than the Trumpeter Fire. Even in the picture they used, he just looks so mean. I guess they are just tying to put the Red Christmas behind them.
Nohero posted this in the muskrat thread…I think it’s perfect for MT’s “blog” about stupid stuff being overheard in the rose garden…like the good Christians these people are.
Republicans have the most bizarre ways to celebrate Christmas.
For example, Texas Governor Greg Abbott wanted to observe the Birth of Our Savior in a stable (because there was no room for His Family) by dropping a busload of migrants onto the cold and frozen streets on NY City on Christmas morning. Alas, the weather screwed up his plans, so they had to drop the busload of migrants onto the cold and frozen streets of Washington, D.C. on Christmas Eve.
By some miracle, the Supreme Court has demonstrated, once again, that will not turn into a puppet show operated by the “strings” of Congressional demand..
From the National Review….
“Make no mistake, though. Justice Neil Gorsuch hit the nail on the head in the conclusion of his dissent, joined by Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson:
The current border crisis is not a COVID crisis. And courts should not be in the business of perpetuating administrative edicts designed for one emergency only because elected officials have failed to address a different emergency. We are a court of law, not policymakers of last resort.
“To recap how we got here is to pile fiction atop fiction.
“In a commonsense republic where the Constitution was operating as designed, the president would regard homeland security as a top priority. He would use the powers vested in him by the Constitution, in addition to the vast authority Congress has delegated to him by statute, to keep foreign threats at bay, including by excluding illegal aliens, particularly during a pandemic. When a communicable-disease crisis had passed, the president would promptly rescind any emergency exclusion he had imposed to address it, but border security — including the exclusion and detention of illegal aliens attempting to enter — would remain the norm, and as a result there would not be hundreds of thousands of aliens attempting to enter illegally each month.
“Alas, we no longer have constitutional governance and a president who faithfully carries out his duties. In their place, we have the administrative state and Biden. So instead of securing the border, the political branches abdicate to an administrative agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Such agencies operate under a progressive regulatory morass governed by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which has supplanted the Constitution in many vital matters.
“The Trump-era CDC imposed Title 42 when Covid emerged as a crisis in March 2020. But it did so under the APA, which prescribes a notice-and-comment period before administrative rules become final. As a result, the Title 42 imposition did not run this gauntlet and become a final rule for about nine months, even though it was being applied to exclude aliens during that time.
“What is imposed under the APA can only be dismantled under the APA. That was the argument 24 states made to Louisiana federal judge Robert Summerhays, a Trump appointee. On May 20, three days before Title 42’s termination was to take effect, Judge Summerhays issued a 47-page ruling, concluding that the Biden CDC had unlawfully failed to comply with the APA’s notice-and-comment mandates in attempting to rescind the provision. Perhaps so, but interestingly, no one claimed that a Covid emergency still justified keeping Title 42. The states’ argument, and the court’s emphasis, was that, because the Biden administration lacked a workable border-enforcement plan, the influx of alien hordes that rescission would loose on the states — imposing crushing burdens on their education and medical facilities, and taxing their law-enforcement capabilities — would cause disastrous, potentially irreparable harm.
“In the temper of the time, with the midterms looming and Biden dogged by criticism over the appalling deterioration of border security, administration officials did not race to challenge Judge Summerhays’s decision. They were content to appear to be opposing the ruling while allowing Title 42 to remain in force and slow-walking the appeal, which could have taken over a year.
“Naturally, the Left was not content. Even before the states challenged the lifting of Title 42, the ACLU and immigration activist groups found a collection of aliens who brought a class-action lawsuit against Biden’s Department of Homeland Security. They claimed that the Title 42 directive violated immigration law’s asylum provisions and that, because there were conceivable alternatives that were less burdensome than a sweeping exclusion, the directive was arbitrary and capricious under the APA.
“Unlike the state plaintiffs in the Louisiana case, these alien plaintiffs were in line with the true Biden administration and Democratic Party position on Title 42. Furthermore, by filing their suit in Washington, D.C., they struck gold when it was assigned to Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Clinton appointee notoriously hostile to the Trump administration (which, again, had initially imposed Title 42).
“With the Biden administration’s now feeling heat from its base, the aliens’ case became a collusive lawsuit — the “opposing” parties (i.e., the plaintiff aliens and the defendant Biden officials) were in essential agreement that Title 42 should be rescinded. Given the fortuity of a judicial collaborator in the mix, the Biden administration sensed an opportunity to get Title 42 lifted in a manner that would (a) obviate the need to comply with the APA in the states’ case before Judge Summerhays, which was now on appeal before the Fifth Circuit; (b) show the Democratic base that it had deviously rescinded Title 42 despite opposition from red states; and (c) dupe the rest of the country into believing that Title 42 had to be lifted, despite the border chaos, because a ruling by Judge Sullivan embodied “the rule of law,” with which the administration had no choice but to comply.
“True to form, Sullivan played his part. On November 15, he issued a 49-page ruling, holding that Title 42 should never have been imposed in the first place and now had to be lifted so that the “migrants” could exploit their statutory right to seek asylum. (The asylum system runs rampant with frivolous applications and fraudulent claims.) Sullivan subsequently, and with theatrical “great reluctance,” gave the Biden administration a five-week delay to prepare for an “orderly transition” to the anticipated border chaos. The deadline was now December 20.
“As you’d expect, the states went ballistic. Nineteen of them, led by Texas, raced to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking to intervene in the aliens’ case in order to appeal Judge Sullivan’s ruling. On December 16, four days before Title 42 was to be lifted, a three-judge panel (consisting of appointees of Obama, Biden, and Trump) issued a cursory orderdenying the states’ application, rationalizing that they had waited too long to intervene. This was the order that triggered the states’ emergency appeal to the Supreme Court — initially, to Chief Justice Roberts, the circuit justice for matters arising in Washington, D.C., who referred the matter to the full court.
“The Court’s majority was bound to take umbrage at the collusive nature of the aliens’ lawsuit, and the manner in which the Biden administration exploited it to undermine the ongoing litigation in the states’ lawsuit and thus sidestep APA compliance. The Court has seen such deceptive practices from the administration before, to the point that Roberts had previously labeled the tactic “rulemaking by collective acquiescence.” The chief justice borrowed that mouthful from Ninth Circuit appellate judge Lawrence VanDyke, who detected it in a case involving the so-called public-charge rule, a Trump-era directive to enforce long-standing immigration law that excludes aliens likely to seek subsistence on public welfare. (In that case, the Biden administration used a consent decree to drop the rule without complying with the APA and sought to block 13 states who supported the rule from intervening.)
“Again, the irony: No one in the Supreme Court emergency litigation is claiming that there is a factual basis to maintain Title 42 because of some medical necessity. Instead, five of the justices are sufficiently perturbed by the Biden administration’s gamesmanship, and by the specter of a border crisis’s becoming a border catastrophe, that they have decided to grant the states a further review. The question the Court will consider is a narrow one: not whether Title 42 merits being retained as policy, but instead whether the states should have been permitted to intervene to appeal Judge Sullivan’s ruling.
“The dissenters, though, are not fooled: The Court is doing border policy, not law. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan did not elaborate on why they were dissenting and did not join Justice Gorsuch’s dissent as Justice Jackson did.
“The latter pairing is intriguing: Gorsuch, a Trump appointee and one of the Court’s most conservative members, joined by Jackson, a Biden appointee — the Court’s newest and, perhaps, its most left-wing member. Gorsuch took pains to observe that he “do[es] not discount the States’ concerns” about the mayhem lifting Title 42 would entail. Philosophically, one suspects that he and Jackson would be in very different places if the question were what border-security policy the United States should have. They are both correct, however, in agreeing that the Court has no business making that policy, even if the president and Congress are derelict in their duty to do so.”
“To recap how we got here is to pile fiction atop fiction.
“In a commonsense republic where the Constitution was operating as designed, the president would regard homeland security as a top priority. He would use the powers vested in him by the Constitution, in addition to the vast authority Congress has delegated to him by statute, to keep foreign threats at bay, including by excluding illegal aliens, particularly during a pandemic. When a communicable-disease crisis had passed, the president would promptly rescind any emergency exclusion he had imposed to address it, but border security — including the exclusion and detention of illegal aliens attempting to enter — would remain the norm, and as a result there would not be hundreds of thousands of aliens attempting to enter illegally each month.
“Alas, we no longer have constitutional governance and a president who faithfully carries out his duties. In their place, we have the administrative state and Biden. So instead of securing the border, the political branches abdicate to an administrative agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Such agencies operate under a progressive regulatory morass governed by the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), which has supplanted the Constitution in many vital matters.
“The Trump-era CDC imposed Title 42 when Covid emerged as a crisis in March 2020. But it did so under the APA, which prescribes a notice-and-comment period before administrative rules become final. As a result, the Title 42 imposition did not run this gauntlet and become a final rule for about nine months, even though it was being applied to exclude aliens during that time.
“What is imposed under the APA can only be dismantled under the APA. That was the argument 24 states made to Louisiana federal judge Robert Summerhays, a Trump appointee. On May 20, three days before Title 42’s termination was to take effect, Judge Summerhays issued a 47-page ruling, concluding that the Biden CDC had unlawfully failed to comply with the APA’s notice-and-comment mandates in attempting to rescind the provision. Perhaps so, but interestingly, no one claimed that a Covid emergency still justified keeping Title 42. The states’ argument, and the court’s emphasis, was that, because the Biden administration lacked a workable border-enforcement plan, the influx of alien hordes that rescission would loose on the states — imposing crushing burdens on their education and medical facilities, and taxing their law-enforcement capabilities — would cause disastrous, potentially irreparable harm.
“In the temper of the time, with the midterms looming and Biden dogged by criticism over the appalling deterioration of border security, administration officials did not race to challenge Judge Summerhays’s decision. They were content to appear to be opposing the ruling while allowing Title 42 to remain in force and slow-walking the appeal, which could have taken over a year.
“Naturally, the Left was not content. Even before the states challenged the lifting of Title 42, the ACLU and immigration activist groups found a collection of aliens who brought a class-action lawsuit against Biden’s Department of Homeland Security. They claimed that the Title 42 directive violated immigration law’s asylum provisions and that, because there were conceivable alternatives that were less burdensome than a sweeping exclusion, the directive was arbitrary and capricious under the APA.
“Unlike the state plaintiffs in the Louisiana case, these alien plaintiffs were in line with the true Biden administration and Democratic Party position on Title 42. Furthermore, by filing their suit in Washington, D.C., they struck gold when it was assigned to Judge Emmet Sullivan, a Clinton appointee notoriously hostile to the Trump administration (which, again, had initially imposed Title 42).
“With the Biden administration’s now feeling heat from its base, the aliens’ case became a collusive lawsuit — the “opposing” parties (i.e., the plaintiff aliens and the defendant Biden officials) were in essential agreement that Title 42 should be rescinded. Given the fortuity of a judicial collaborator in the mix, the Biden administration sensed an opportunity to get Title 42 lifted in a manner that would (a) obviate the need to comply with the APA in the states’ case before Judge Summerhays, which was now on appeal before the Fifth Circuit; (b) show the Democratic base that it had deviously rescinded Title 42 despite opposition from red states; and (c) dupe the rest of the country into believing that Title 42 had to be lifted, despite the border chaos, because a ruling by Judge Sullivan embodied “the rule of law,” with which the administration had no choice but to comply.
“True to form, Sullivan played his part. On November 15, he issued a 49-page ruling, holding that Title 42 should never have been imposed in the first place and now had to be lifted so that the “migrants” could exploit their statutory right to seek asylum. (The asylum system runs rampant with frivolous applications and fraudulent claims.) Sullivan subsequently, and with theatrical “great reluctance,” gave the Biden administration a five-week delay to prepare for an “orderly transition” to the anticipated border chaos. The deadline was now December 20.
“As you’d expect, the states went ballistic. Nineteen of them, led by Texas, raced to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking to intervene in the aliens’ case in order to appeal Judge Sullivan’s ruling. On December 16, four days before Title 42 was to be lifted, a three-judge panel (consisting of appointees of Obama, Biden, and Trump) issued a cursory orderdenying the states’ application, rationalizing that they had waited too long to intervene. This was the order that triggered the states’ emergency appeal to the Supreme Court — initially, to Chief Justice Roberts, the circuit justice for matters arising in Washington, D.C., who referred the matter to the full court.
“The Court’s majority was bound to take umbrage at the collusive nature of the aliens’ lawsuit, and the manner in which the Biden administration exploited it to undermine the ongoing litigation in the states’ lawsuit and thus sidestep APA compliance. The Court has seen such deceptive practices from the administration before, to the point that Roberts had previously labeled the tactic “rulemaking by collective acquiescence.” The chief justice borrowed that mouthful from Ninth Circuit appellate judge Lawrence VanDyke, who detected it in a case involving the so-called public-charge rule, a Trump-era directive to enforce long-standing immigration law that excludes aliens likely to seek subsistence on public welfare. (In that case, the Biden administration used a consent decree to drop the rule without complying with the APA and sought to block 13 states who supported the rule from intervening.)
“Again, the irony: No one in the Supreme Court emergency litigation is claiming that there is a factual basis to maintain Title 42 because of some medical necessity. Instead, five of the justices are sufficiently perturbed by the Biden administration’s gamesmanship, and by the specter of a border crisis’s becoming a border catastrophe, that they have decided to grant the states a further review. The question the Court will consider is a narrow one: not whether Title 42 merits being retained as policy, but instead whether the states should have been permitted to intervene to appeal Judge Sullivan’s ruling.
“The dissenters, though, are not fooled: The Court is doing border policy, not law. Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan did not elaborate on why they were dissenting and did not join Justice Gorsuch’s dissent as Justice Jackson did.
“The latter pairing is intriguing: Gorsuch, a Trump appointee and one of the Court’s most conservative members, joined by Jackson, a Biden appointee — the Court’s newest and, perhaps, its most left-wing member. Gorsuch took pains to observe that he “do[es] not discount the States’ concerns” about the mayhem lifting Title 42 would entail. Philosophically, one suspects that he and Jackson would be in very different places if the question were what border-security policy the United States should have. They are both correct, however, in agreeing that the Court has no business making that policy, even if the president and Congress are derelict in their duty to do so.”
more evidence to support the argument that Biden is not just throwing the gates open for the millions of migrants to just walk in.
From Mtierney's lengthy post, the only sentence worth reading is:
They are both correct, however, in agreeing that the Court has no business making that policy, even if the president and Congress are derelict in their duty to do so.
And they could have just said:
They are both correct, however, in agreeing that the Court has no business making that policy
By some miracle, the Supreme Court has demonstrated, once again, that will not turn into a puppet show operated by the “strings” of Congressional demand.
You may have missed it while distracted by terms such as “influx of alien hordes,” but that essay is pro-strings. The author laments the absence of congressional policy.
I’m always fascinated, and somewhat astounded, by how much ‘politics’ invades simple day-to-day running of routine of simple matters in the US. Reading that long quote that explains ‘how we got here’, while policies were indeed handed down by politically influenced people and bodies, it’s also very clear that every departmental and individual decision for implementation and daily running is considered politically-based. (Here, most of the workers would say ‘read my job description, my politics have nothing to do with it’)
Added to this, it seems to me, an outsider, so silly that your federal government’s entire budget is held to ransom practically every year. It’s only released at the very last moment when concessions are agreed to, that may not be practical or what the governing party want at all but hey, who cares if ordinary work can’t be done, bills paid, etc Opposition has to hold all that up (like children, or muggers) until they get their way. Then they complain about incomplete/interrupted/neglected projects because $$$ had to be diverted elsewhere. Government is not a game, it’s ordinary people’s lives. Can this be remembered in 2023?
Government is not a game, it’s ordinary people’s lives. Can this be remembered in 2023?
It is, for the elected legislators, and most likely, has been since our nation was founded.
We, the people, however, are willing pawns and players. Still the best governing system in the world — never tainted by monarchy inbreeding, thankfully, nor an unelected dictator.
It is, for the elected legislators, and most likely, has been since our nation was founded.
We, the people, however, are willing pawns and players. Still the best governing system in the world — never tainted by monarchy inbreeding, thankfully, nor an unelected dictator.
Should the USA rest on its laurels? No way.
Does this mean, for you, an elected dictator is OK? Or has the concept of elected dictator escaped you?
If you haven't noticed, dictators can be elected. Mussolini and Hitler come to mind.
What about George Santos, who seems to have brazenly lied about just about everything important just to get elected?? Goodness!
I’m fairly certain that if he were here, by this stage either the runner-up would be appointed OR a new election announced. (I vaguely remember a rash of MPs who weren’t eligible having to stand down about 15-20 years ago…?)
What about George Santos, who seems to have brazenly lied about just about everything important just to get elected?? Goodness!
I’m fairly certain that if he were here, by this stage either the runner-up would be appointed OR a new election announced. (I vaguely remember a rash of MPs who weren’t eligible having to stand down about 15-20 years ago…?)
he will not resign. And his party will not force him to.
In our country we have a rock solid principle that governs in situations like this: IOKIYAR.
I’ve learnt a new term; thanks. But no, it’s not OK even if you believe you’re on a ‘higher mission’ as Scott Morrison told fellow-congregants in his church yet later learnt the truth while facing a recent Royal Commission.
I’ve learnt a new term; thanks. But no, it’s not OK even if you believe you’re on a ‘higher mission’ as Scott Morrison told fellow-congregants in his church yet later learnt the truth while facing a recent Royal Commission.
it's not OK in a moral sense of course. But anything goes among Republicans if it's one of their own. TFG is Exhibit A.
As my celebration of the New Year begins with the arrival of family today, I offer this description of how Mussolini and Hitler were “elected” back in the day.
“During 1930s Mussolini also lead the armed local fascist militia, the MVSN or "Blackshirts", who terrorized incipient resistances in the cities and provinces and established the OVRA, an institutionalized secret police that carried official state support. In this way he succeeded in keeping power in his own hands and preventing the emergence of any rival.
“After Adolf Hitler came into power, threatening Italian interests in Austria and the Danube basin, Mussolini proposed the Four Power Pact with Britain, France and Germany in 1933. When the Austrian 'austro-fascist' Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss with dictatorial power was assassinated on 25 July 1934, by National-Socialist supporters, Mussolini even threatened Germany with war in the event of a German invasion of Austria.”
As my celebration of the New Year begins with the arrival of family today, I offer this description of how Mussolini and Hitler were “elected” back in the day.
“During 1930s Mussolini ...
Mussolini was elected to the Italian Parliament in 1921 and asked to form a government in 1922. He remained in power until 1943.
Mussolini was elected to the Italian Parliament in 1922 and asked to form a government in 1922. He remained in power until 1943.
Facts remain the greatest enemy of conservatives.
Correct. Another reason why they are so easily fooled and used.
But I should have clarified that Hitler was appointed when the Nazi party was elected and kept in power due to subsequent party elections. The beginning of the Triumph of the Will movie shows the fawning almost messianic support given Hitler by the public when he entered Munich. In effect he was "elected".
It looks to be from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1934_Italian_general_election, and is not claiming that Mussolini was first elected in the 1930s, but rather about events around the 1934 election, after Mussolini had been in power a decade.
Facts are a weakness for ideologues and ultra-partisans -- I'd put mt in the latter category rather than the former, as I'm not sure she believes in anything other than the American Republican party. But her quote here is less revealing of her attitude toward facts than in her lack of self-awareness, as it's deeply ironic for someone who downplays Trump's attempted coup and who derides concern over his continued threat to American democracy to claim to be opposed to fascism.
What about George Santos, who seems to have brazenly lied about just about everything important just to get elected?? Goodness!
I’m fairly certain that if he were here, by this stage either the runner-up would be appointed OR a new election announced. (I vaguely remember a rash of MPs who weren’t eligible having to stand down about 15-20 years ago…?)
he will not resign. And his party will not force him to.
In our country we have a rock solid principle that governs in situations like this: IOKIYAR.
It they seat him then the House of Representatives will have shown itself to like a very low class cheap whorehouse. A house that employs the diseased or filthy to serve their clients as long as its profitable.
We will again be a laughing stock to the part of the world that pays attention to American politics.
The latest disclosure is of his campaign paying his housing rent and personal expenses.
It they seat him then the House of Representatives will have shown itself to like a very low class cheap whorehouse.
From Powell v. McCormack (1969), an 8-1 Supreme Court decision:
Therefore, we hold that, since Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was duly elected by the voters of the 18th Congressional District of New York and was not ineligible to serve under any provision of the Constitution, the House was without power to exclude him from its membership.
(Expulsion once seated, the court said, would be a different matter.)
Remember Biden’s decision to abandon Afghanistan? From the National Review….
A female university student walks in front of a university in Kandahar Province on December 21, 2022. (Photo by STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images.)
Hasti, a third-year political studies student in Afghanistan, was preparing for a final exam last week when she heard that the Taliban had shut universities to female students. She spent the evening crying instead of studying, and armed Taliban guards turned away young women at the campus gate in Kabul when they arrived to sit exams.
“It is very hard for me, because right now I have to stop my studying and my goals are not achievable,” Hasti told Reuters. “Women and girls are being buried alive.”
When the Taliban overran Afghanistan last year on the heels of the United States’ withdrawal, leaders of the militant Islamist group promised womenwould retain rights—including access to education—they had gained over the previous decades of rule by Afghanistan’s internationally recognized government. The Biden administration expressed cautious optimism they’d keep their word. “The Taliban has made their own commitments,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in August 2021 when asked about the possibility of the Taliban reverting to their old ways. “They’ve made them publicly. They’ve made them privately. And again, I think they have a very strong self-interest in acting with a modicum of responsibility going forward.”
That appears to have been a miscalculation, as Afghanistan’s de factogovernment has spent the 16 months since the United States’ withdrawal slowly choking off women’s freedom and imposing restrictions—and public corporal punishment—familiar to those who remember the group’s previous rule. Days after closing universities to women, the Taliban told aid groups in the area to pull their female employees in the field or lose authorization to work in the country, prompting several groups to pause operations altogether despite Afghanistan’s worsening economic and hunger crisis.
“The world must reject, as Afghans have, that this is about culture or religion,” Rina Amiri, U.S. special envoy for Afghan women and girls, wrote after the university ban. “In no Muslim-majority country, in no place in the world, are girls denied an education.” She added that the restriction “removes any doubt” that the Taliban is “reverting” to the gender-based repression implemented during its reign in the 1990s.
But the intervening two decades gave Afghan women a taste of freedom, and many don’t want to go back. Female students mounting a street protest in the western city of Herat faced water cannons, and at eastern Nangarhar University some male medical students walked out of their exams in solidarity. A few male professors have resigned in protest. Even some Taliban officials—such as the deputy foreign minister—have voiced support for female education as recently as September.
But the university closings were only the latest in a string of returning restrictions. The Taliban had already banned girls from secondary schools in March, limited what degrees they could begin pursuing in college, and required them to use separate entrances and split classrooms to avoid male students. Women and girls have been banned from public places like parks and gyms, barred from most types of work, and must once again cover their faces in public and travel with a male guardian. The religious affairs ministry on Saturday prohibited “adult girls” from attending certain religious classes in Kabul mosques, though the rule didn’t specify an age cutoff or why it only applies to women in Kabul.
Some restrictions have served as the pretext for implementing others: The Taliban’s higher education minister cited reports of female students breaking dress rules and traveling without male escort as justification for the university ban, and the Ministry of Economy offered a similar rationalefor the ban on female aid workers. “Lately there have been serious complaints regarding not observing the Islamic hijab and other Islamic Emirate’s laws and regulations,” the Ministry of Economy said in a letter to licensed NGOs. It’s not immediately clear whether the ban applies only to Afghan women or all female aid workers in the country.
Without female employees, restrictions on mixed gender interactions will make it difficult to deliver aid to Afghan women, several aid groups argued. “If we are not allowed to employ women, we are not able to deliver to those in need,” the International Rescue Committee (IRC) said in a Sunday statement announcing suspension of its Afghanistan operations. Afghanaid, Save the Children, the Norwegian Refugee Council, CARE International, and several other groups have also curtailed their operations in Afghanistan in response to the Taliban’s move. The World Health Organization estimates some 18.1 million Afghans need treatment for afflictions like measles, and nearly 19 million of the country’s 40 million people face acute food insecurity. Ramiz Alakbarov, the United Nations’ Afghanistan humanitarian coordinator, is holding out hope the Taliban health ministry will walk back some restrictions on certain female aid workers to ensure women can still access healthcare.
With unemployment among Afghan adults already above 80 percent, firing female aid workers will only deepen the country’s economic crisis. The Red Cross noted that a third of the more than 10,000 Afghanistan health care workers whose salaries it pays are women, and the IRC said more than 3,000 of its 8,000 Afghanistan employees are women.
International leaders swiftly condemned the latest restrictions. “Women are central to humanitarian operations around the world,” Blinken wrote Saturday. “This decision could be devastating for the Afghan people.” The United Nations Security Council on Tuesday unanimously decried the female aid worker ban, and Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and other Muslim-majority countries have voiceddisapproval over the higher education restrictions. The U.S. placed visa limits on current and former Taliban members in October in response to their treatment of women, and Blinken promised further unspecified multilateral “costs” if the university ban isn’t reversed.
But the Taliban has hardly proved receptive to previous criticism, and this time looks no different. “Those organizations operative in Afghanistan are obliged to comply with the laws and regulations of our country,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted Sunday, warning U.S. officials against interfering in “internal issues” of Afghanistan. “We do not permit anyone to state irresponsible words or make threats about the decisions or officials of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan under the title of humanitarian aid.”
That argument hasn’t convinced students who are suddenly blocked from school. “The Taliban has come and taken away our human rights, both the right to education and the right to freedom,” second-year law student Najiba told Radio Free Europe. “Imagine how frustrating it would be for a bird with no wings who wants to fly.”
It they seat him then the House of Representatives will have shown itself to like a very low class cheap whorehouse.
From Powell v. McCormack (1969), an 8-1 Supreme Court decision:
Therefore, we hold that, since Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was duly elected by the voters of the 18th Congressional District of New York and was not ineligible to serve under any provision of the Constitution, the House was without power to exclude him from its membership.
(Expulsion once seated, the court said, would be a different matter.)
So? They can still refuse to seat him. Not that they will. Seems a silly technicality. You end up with a two step process of seating and then removing instead of directly not seating.
Besides, if congress refuses to seat him what will the SC do? Arrest or fine congress for contempt?
Courts have been defied before. An example is President Lincoln denying Chief Justice Taney's ruling that Lincoln unconstitutionally suspended habeas corpus. The court ruled only Congress has that power.
"Donald Trump has announced on Twitter that he wants to bring all US troops home from Afghanistan by Christmas – a plan that came as a surprise to administration officials and which puts complicated peace negotiations in jeopardy.
The announcement was, however, greeted enthusiastically by the Taliban on Thursday (10/8/2020). If Trump follows through, the militant group would almost certainly claim it as a victory, after decades of couching their fight as a war against foreign aggression."
Thanks PVW! Up here in Edmonton, we have to make do with fake slugs. I am looking forward to heading down to SC in a few weeks for some hiking and a break from snow, snow, snow. I hope you and yours had a lovely holiday.