So I said... for January 26 - February 13

Another collection of comments on various topics at various sites, with context added as needed to make sense of what was said.

2026-01-26
The White House gangsters, including Greg Bovine (not a typo) and Kristi No-one, have made much of the claim that Alex Pretti was not carrying ID while armed, which meant, they claim, he was breaking the law and that somehow proved he intended to “slaughter” the DHS thugs and deserved to be shot down.

YouTuber Jesse Dollemore bothered to look up the actual law. It turns out the penalty is a max fine of $25 and if you later show the court or the arresting officer your ID plus permit it goes away.

Truly a major crime worthy of instant death.

==

2026-01-27
So the face of The Orange Overlord’s repression regime in Minnesota is going to go from Greg Bovine (not a typo) to Tom Homan, well-named because he’s almost human.

Color me unimpressed.

==

2026-01-27
According to journalist Ron Filipkowski, John Fetterman says he’d like to see DHS funding separated from the mini-bus and voted on separately. But it it’s not (and it won’t be), he’ll vote for the full bill anyway. He ended by saying he’s “committed to being a voice of reason and common sense.”

A worthwhile goal. I hope someday he achieves it.

==

2026-01-29
[Background: Julia Serano did a video essay on “marked” vs. “unmarked” (that is, “othered”) people]

I watched the essay with appreciation. Thank you for doing it. I gave a little fist pump when you referred to part of being “unmarked” is not just what others think about you, it’s what they don’t think about you - having made the same point a couple of years ago in discussing white privilege.

Related to that is the idea that if you are “marked” and in some way misbehave, it’s taken as “that’s what ‘those people’ do” - but if you are “unmarked,” it becomes “that’s what that one individual does.”

Again, thanks for the essay.

==

2026-01-30
[A collection of 47 groups - including faux-Christian ministries, anti-choice twits, and state-based far-right outfits - have started something they’re calling the “Greater Than” campaign to push for overturning Obergefell based on the vacuous claim that children of same-sex parents have been “failed” by marriage equality.]

So I just checked out their website and three things struck me:
One: The first person they picture and quote is Charlie Kirk and they quote Barack Obama as if he is a supporter.

Two:  There is no hint they oppose divorce, which would be required to be consistent with "mother and father are never optional, they are essential." (Then again, when has ethical or logical consistency ever been a requirement for this crowd?)

Three: They equate children's "needs, rights, safety, [and] development" with no same-sex parents without a word about prenatal care, WIC, SNAP,  health care, educational and housing programs, the list would be quite long. (Repeat previous parenthetical.)

Conclusion: Exactly what you'd expect. A concoction of bigots, bozos, and buffoons united in their homophobic paranoia.

==

2026-01-30
[A poll cited by Erin Reed says voters prefer Democrats to GOPpers on trans issues, suggesting there is no need for Dems to shy away from defending trans rights. An objection was raised that trans issues rank low on lists of voter concerns, so extremists dominate on the issue.]
The answer, then, is to be loud. To show it matters to (the generic) you.

Political parties don't just look for voters, they look for motivated voters, not only because they're a source for campaign volunteers but more importantly because they're the ones most likely to turn out if they think the party is on their side and also are the ones most likely to say "the hell with it" and not vote at all if they think you're not.

That "extremely radical vocal minority" you cite fits that description: loud and motivated. So should we.
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2026-01-30
[In response to a different person’s comment on the same poll.]

I expect the coming campaigns to be even more vicious than those to date and the wave of continuously more evil legislation to continue - in spite of the diminishing returns in elections.

Why? Because the most fanatical among the reactionaries know, they can't NOT know - that they are in the long run losing. They'll even say it; their constant desperate whining about the approaching collapse of civilization unless unless unless - it's not just posturing, it's a primal scream and they will fight to hold off the denouement as long as they can.

But at the same time, the rest of the right wing knows that's the only thing they've got. They are so far underwater that they have already essentially surrendered the House and are getting twitchy about the Senate. They can't hope to run and win on issues that people care most about and they know it, so they have to exploit our all-too common discomfort about anything elated to sex to arouse fear and then ride a social panic.

Combine the most fanatical with the merely ordinarily fanatical and you've got a recipe for a very very bad several months.

==

2026-01-31
[A post with a link I failed to record described anti-trans legislation as genocide.]

A bit under three years ago I compared what the right wing wants to do to trans folks with an oubliette (from the French oublier, “to forget”), a type of Medieval prison cell in which people would be stuffed and then, well, forgotten.

That’s what the right wing wants to do to trans people in this country. Not physically, at least not yet, but legally, socially, politically, psychologically, wants them to be disappeared and forgotten as if they simply do not exist, do not have the right to exist, do not even have the right to say "I exist."

I didn't use the word "genocide," but damn, it fits.

=

2026-01-31
CBS network news just this moment, on its Sunday evening broadcast, referred without comment to the new DHS policy that its agents can enter private homes without a judicial warrant.

NO THEY CAN’T! PERIOD TRIPLE-EXCLAMATION POINT ALL CAPS!!!

The masked thugs are claiming an administrative warrant is sufficient. T’S NOT! End of argument.  But I guarantee you there will be more smashed-in doors as a result.

Why why WHY do our major “news” media treat any claims to powers and authorities claimed by The Orange Overlord and his Brownshirted underlings as if they actually had them? Cowardice? Sloppiness? Incompetence? Indifference?

It really doesn’t matter. It’s just another example of how we are uninformed, misinformed, and malinformed by corporate media.

==

2026-01-31
[The following involves an exchange with another commenter. As always in such cases, I have edited their remarks to the points to which I was responding. If you suspect I may be being unfair, I urge you to check out the unedited exchange, which can be found at this link.

It began with a comment that defended the arrest of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort by citing 1 Corinthians 3:17: “If anybody should destroy the temple of God, God will destroy that person, because God’s temple is holy; and you are that temple.”]

I think I'm going to remember that quote. The next time some transphobe wants to deny needed health care to a trans person, I will tell them that they are destroying the temple of God.

As for its use here, I recall the line from "Pilgrims Progress" that says "The devil can quote Scripture for his purpose."
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2026-02-01
[Reply: “Let’s be clear about targets and responsibility. I quoted Scripture to talk about physical intrusion into holy space and natural law fundaments of the Western legal tradition.” He also laid healthcare issues faced by trans folks on insurance companies, not the laws.]

Macbeth may have been referring to life, but he could just have well meant your argument.

So let's skip the attempts to change the subject (to "Who is REALLY to blame for trans people being denied care: profit-mongering insurance companies or the right-wing fundamentalist Christian Bible-thumpers behind the drives to legislate trans folks out of existence?") and get back to the point.

That point being that you quoted the Bible - you know, that book that "has been debated for two thousand years" without even reaching a consensus as to what should be included in it but with a plethora of sects claiming their particular interpretation of their preferred translation is THE TRUTH - as expressing "natural law" and therefore as the foundation of common law and the Constitution.

Which says at minimum that you don't understand the concept of natural law while indicting strongly that you would have our secular laws be "Bible-based," thereby rejecting the very Constitution you claim as backing - all in service of justifying the arrest of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort in contravention of the social contract that allows journalists to bear witness to and report on events.

That contention is given weight by you choice of of closing [Bible] quote [about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah], which bears no connection to anything certainly I and as far as I know anyone else has said but seems to be just a random rant threatening divine retribution for, well, for something from your imagination but not for anything here.

And since you brought up Sodom and Gomorrah, I'll reply with Ezekiel 16:49 (NIV): “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom: She and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy."

I believe I've given you as much time as you deserve. Last licks are yours if you want them.
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Except for this, which I separate to a reply to myself because it's more of a sidebar than part of the actual argument.

Would your contention that Lemon was an "appendage of the protest mob, an added feature ... part and parcel of the intimidation" and therefore deserves punishment be the same if the site had been, say, the HQ of one of those insurance companies you consider "the real enemy of trans people in health-care disputes?"

If yes, your argument about "sacred spaces" goes out the window.

If no, should it be assumed that you would likewise demand punishment for ICE or CBP agents who entered a "sacred space" to arrest a so-called "illegal immigrant?" (Note that the answer "yes, with the permission of those in charge of that space" by definition gives those same authorities the power to absolutely bar entry.)

Finally, who and what gets to define what is a "sacred space?" Does it include all Christian (including Catholic) sects? Does it include synagogues, mosques, Native American sacred lands, various shrines around the world where entry is only by permission? And note that using "a house of God" as a reference point only throws you back onto the already-rejected "'cause the Bible says so."
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2026-02-02
[I got a reply but it didn’t address the first question and the answer to second was "societies define what is sacred."]

I said I wouldn't reply and it's taking considerable will to keep to that, but I can't resist noting your statement "The moment you redefine reporters as 'appendages' of a mob, you’ve justified the baton," etc.
That "redefinition" of Don Lemon was yours. No one else's. By your own words you have "justified the baton, the cuff, and the cell - forever."

And "societies" don't define sacred spaces - the dominant forces in a society do. Consider as illustration the cavalier treatment still accorded to sacred spaces of Native Americans.

One of the roles of government is - or, rather, should be - to protect the rights of those lacking the economic, social, or political power to protect them on their own. Which will of necessity at times involve a use of state power in a way that inconveniences the powerful or privileged.

==

2026-02-01
[Still defending Lemon’s arrest, this same person in a different thread cited Owen Shroyer, who pled guilty to trespass on 1/6 and was sentenced to 6 months: “He never entered the Capitol; he was there as a journalist” so Lemon deserved the same.]

I looked up Shroyer.

First, by trespassing he violated an earlier agreement he made after he disrupted an impeachment hearing.

He made speeches endorsing the claim the election was stolen.

On Jan 5, he put out a video saying "Are we just going to sit here or are we going to actually do something about this?”

On Jan 6, he joined a crowd in shouting "We aren’t going to accept it."

While he could have had some claim to being a journalist (even if it was for Infowars), the fact is, he was not there as a journalist. He was there as an advocate and a participant.

Equating the two cases - Lemon and Shroyer - is flatly false.

==

2026-02-05
["If you can't see a trans person without sexualizing the, that's your sin."]
Geez, how long have I been saying this? So much of the bigotry and social panic about trans folks is driven by our cultural discomfort with, our cultural immaturity about, anything in any way related to sex and for the transphobes, it’s all about sex. They can’t look at, hear about, or even consider a trans person without thinking about “how they ‘do it’” and “what’s in their pants” and desperately needing to reject the guilty fantasies such thoughts arouse.

==

2026-02-06
[In reacting to TOO's saying he'll release the money for a major NJ-NY project if Penn Station and Dulles Airport are renamed for him.]

He is acting like an Egyptian pharaoh, building monuments to make himself appear greater than all who came before and so in a sense immortal. He should check out the poem "Ozymandias."

==

2026-02-08

It's not proper to dismiss Niemöller as an antisemite; his story is much more complex than the single label.

He did indeed embrace that sort of presumptive antisemitism with which we are still afflicted but was even worse then - but he came to regret it and alter his views (while in a concentration camp for being insufficiently pro-Hitler) and the poem was intended not just as a warning but to express his own guilt and shame for his own silence in the face of oppression of others.

==

2026-02-10
From the Meidas Touch "Today in Politics" for Feb. 10 we learn that Binance now holds 87% of the total circulating supply of a stablecoin issued by a crypto outfit affiliated with the Trump family. That's a $4.7 billion investment. The partnership comes after Trump pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in Oct 2025.

The degree of corruption in this administration is truly phenomenal, phenomenal to the point that I just can't keep track of it.

If there is someone who is trying, please point me in their direction!

==

2026-02-10
[Idaho is considering the harshest anti-trans bill yet, making bathroom bans apply everywhere with violations for a 2nd offense a felony punishable by 5 years.]

I'd push back on one point or perhaps more on how a point is expressed. I'd say Idaho doesn't want to run trans folks out of the state. They're quite willing for you to be there - so long as you remain completely invisible.

So long as they can tell themselves you don't exist.

So long as they can smugly declare "there ain't none of that stuff here, not like [insert preferred locale for sneers]."

So long as you commit emotional suicide and live so locked in the closet that you can't see the handle.

There was a time, not that long ago in historical terms, when being gay or lesbian was "the love that dare not say its name." Now we might say the goal here is "the self that dare not admit it breathes."

I know it's small comfort, but know both that you are not alone and that the bigots and haters are so intent on their attacks because they know - they can't not know - that history says they are losing and, like King Canute in the popular version of the story, it will wash over them.

In the meantime, keep fighting and take care of yourself whatever way seems best to you.

==

2026-02-12
[A coalition of religious organizations has filed suit in federal court charging that TOO's "Religious Liberty Commission" violates federal law.]

According to the World Religion Database at Boston University, the world's five largest religious traditions by number of adherents in 2020 were, in order, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, agnosticism, and Buddhism.

Meanwhile, according to a 2023 The Economist/YouGov poll, the top five in the US are Christianity, "nothing in particular," atheist, agnostic, and Mormon.

I'm sure Trump's "Religious Liberty Commission" of 13 Xian nationalists and one Conservative Jew can be trusted to take a truly unbiased approach to the issue of religious freedom in the world.
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2026-12
[Reply: I'm not sure about Hinduism, but Christianity, Islam and Buddhism all have multiple divisions, so lumping them together isn't really valid. Perhaps all the animist religions should be combined as well.]

That's how they were grouped in the source, apparently by general overall theology. The list also grouped "Chinese folk religions" and "ethnic or tribal religions (mostly in Africa)" seemingly in the same manner.

OTOH, decided by sects, according to the same source the top five are Sunni, Roman Catholicism, agnosticism, Protestantism, and Chinese folk religions (note the last is still a grouping).

Either way, it makes the same point: A panel of 13 Xian nationalists and one Conservative Jew cannot be trusted to approach world religious freedom on an unbiased basis.

Just as a footnote and not relevant to the issue at hand, I'll note that if we were to combine all the animist beliefs based on the single commonality of everything having a spiritual essence, to be consistent we'd have to combine all theistic beliefs as well, based on the single commonality of believing in a god or gods, which I'm not sure would yield a useful category.

==

2026-02-12
So in "a deliberate act of erasure," the administration of The Orange Overlord has removed the rainbow Pride flag from the Stonewall Monument, having already removed the Trans Pride and the Progress Pride flags.

Hey, all you "LGB without the T" dunderheads: We told you so! We told you that you would be the next target. DO YOU GET IT YET?

==

2026-02-13
[A post wrote about US weapons used by the IDF in Gaza.]

Damn. I don't get shaken easily but I should have taken your advice about skipping the section about the, let's call it "the mist."

The thing is, I already knew about thermal bombs. I already knew what they do, I knew about the effects and what they're used for. I even already had a decent sense of just how they do it even if I couldn't lay out the chemical reactions involved.

Even so, I didn't catch on until you actually said "Israel used thermal bombs" - and oh god I sat with my head in my hands for what must have been 30 seconds before I could carry on to read the rest.

Unconscionable. Just unconscionable.

It's time.

I've been saying for a few months now that yes, it is time for civil disobedience but I kept getting told "after the election" or "after this Congressional vote" or "after" this or that or the other. But always after.

 

So I was heartened and moved by Robert Reich's declaration at the close of this video, when after referencing MLK Jr.'s campaigns, he said "It is time again for civil disobedience, an upheaval across this land."

 

Because yes, it is.

That doesn't mean we stop what we're already doing. So, yes, by all means lobby Congress. Yes, organize for and support progressive candidates in the primaries and the general. But we should be ready, we should be organizing, for more. To do more than lobbying, to go beyond protest¹ to an aggressive (in the social and political senses, not the physical) campaign of active nonviolent civil disobedience, to find the power of, as a '60s quote put it, "doing 'No,'" of stepping beyond "you should not" to "I will stand in your way," a category in which I include among the rest of the tactics a general strike.

My own organizing skills fall woefully short of the level needed to put together such a campaign, so all I can do is plead, argue, and hope. But I genuinely look to see one arise and to which I will pledge, to paraphrase a rather well-known document, my life, my (such as it is) fortune, and my sacred honor.

Footnote: Another response to the same video wrote of using CD "protect your communities." I replied in agreement: 

It is indeed time for organized civil disobedience. "But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security" - Declaration of Independence.

While I don't think any of us are talking about overthrowing the government, I think we are talking about, if you will, "overthrowing" certain select parts of it.

 

¹I almost used the adjective "mere" here but there is nothing "mere" about either street protest or individual acts of conscience.
 

Silent encroachment

"I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations." - James Madison, June 1778

 

Here is something on-going which has gotten not near enough attention even as people are kinda sorta aware of it in particular circumstances.

 

We are facing a new wave of bills and lawsuits designed to limit and repress First Amendment rights to free speech and public assembly.

 

People are aware, I expect, of moves to restrict (properly read as drive out of existence) campus protest against the genocide in Gaza and/or support of Palestinian rights. But that is not the intended end. Just like sports and bathroom bans are not the actual goal of the transphobes and transmisiacs but are just the "foot on the door," the "camel's nose," to much more far-reaching ends, so are these laws and regulations.

 

The Guardian offered a brief rundown a few weeks ago, declaring

[a]nti-protest bills that seek to expand criminal punishments for constitutionally protected peaceful protests ... have spiked since Trump’s inauguration.

Forty-one new anti-protest bills across 22 states have been introduced since the start of the year ... according to the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law (ICNL) tracker.

This year’s tally includes 32 bills across 16 states since Trump returned to the White House, with five federal bills targeting college students, anti-war protesters and climate activists with harsh prison sentences and hefty fines.

 For example, the Safe and Secure Transportation of American Energy act would make it a federal felony punishable by 20 years in prison to “disrupt” planned or operational gas pipelines – without defining what constitutes "disruption," meaning it even could be applied to a lawsuit challenging a pipeline's permit. Similar bills based on model legislation crafted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) already have been enacted in 22 states.

 

Social movements, the Guardian notes, usually generate attempts at repression. Repressive anti-protest laws proliferated in the wake of the 2016 Standing Rock protests. Protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd resulted in 52 such laws being introduced across 35 states. One federal bill then was the Unmasking Antifa Act, potentially criminalizing wearing a mask during a protest. This March, the virtually-identical Unmasking Hamas Act would make wearing a mask or other disguise while protesting in an “intimidating” or “oppressive” way punishable by 15 years in prison - while not defining either “oppressive” or “disguise.”

 

So understand: Protests about Gaza are not the cause; they are just the latest excuse. In the words of AJenna Leventoff, senior policy counsel at the ACLU,

“These state bills and Trump’s crackdown on protected political speech are intended to scare people away from protesting or, worse, criminalize the exercise of constitutional rights.” 

And there is Jay Saper, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, who said

“Make no mistake, this is not about Jewish safety. This is about advancing an authoritarian agenda to clamp down on dissent.”

That is the goal.

 

And not just the legislatures and the executive, the courts get used as well. The latest attacks on protest also include expanding civil penalties and expanding causes for individual action - a means of allowing repressive suits to be filed by individuals rather than government agencies. Such suits, which can tie up activists in expensive and bankrupting litigation for years, often take the form of a SLAPP* (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation), used by the fossil fuel industry, wealthy individuals, and politicians to silence critics and suppress protest movements. For example,

[i]n Minnesota, a new bill seeks to create civil and criminal liability for funders and supporters of protesters who peacefully demonstrate on pipeline or other utility property. In Ohio, legislators are considering whether participants of noisy or disruptive but non-violent protests – as well as people and organizations who support them – could face expensive lawsuits.`

Three other states – Alaska, Wisconsin, Illinois – are considering new or harsher civil penalties for protesters.

The good news here is that most of these bills fail to pass or never make it out of committee in the first place. The bad news is that any of them at all pass, especially when any one of them applied with hostile intent - which is the point of them - can do significant damage to our right to protest.

On Monday[, April 7,] in Washington DC, a non-violent climate protester was convicted on felony charges of conspiracy against the United States and property damage for putting washable finger paint on the protective case of the Little Dancer statue in the National Gallery. Timothy Martin, who faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine on each count, will be sentenced in August.

Years in prison and a bankrupting fine for "conspiracy" and "damage" that wasn't even to the statue and could be cleared up with a wet cloth. Intimidation into utter silence. That what all this is about.

And don't you ever forget it.

 

*From April 5, 2013: A SLAPP is a lawsuit is intended to censor, intimidate, and silence critics by burdening them with the cost of a legal defense until they abandon their opposition. That is, the suers don't really expect to win the suit. What they want to do is to drain their opponents either financially, emotionally, or better yet both, so the opponents are exhausted and just give up.

They were popular among corporations from the 70s to the 90s, particularly when they were leveled against individuals or "kitchen table" groups that were using regulatory proceedings and hearings to oppose some plan of some corporation. The price for dropping such suits - which were patently frivolous, as they often claimed that by criticizing the company's proposal you were by definition "defaming it" and "causing it to suffer financial loss" - the price for dropping the suits was usually dropping out of the regulatory process and letting the company's proposal proceed unopposed. These suits lost a lot of their luster when their targets who were in a position to fight them began to file what became known as SLAPP-backs, where the roles were switched and the corporation went from plaintiff to defendant.

 

For more on SLAPP-backs, go here. 

The Erickson Report for December 9 to 22, Page Three: Rhetoric of right wing becomes more violent as auto coup attempts fail

The Erickson Report for December 9 to 22, Page Three: Rhetoric of right wing becomes more violent as auto coup attempts fail

That brings up a related issue: The rhetoric of the Tweetie-pie acolytes has been getting more and more violent and dangerous as his auto coup keeps failing in the courts, in the legislatures, and among the public.

(Sidebar: An "auto coup" is a term used for cases that instead of involving corruptly overthrowing a government to come into power, involves corruptly using the powers of government to remain in power.)

Tom Zawistowski, the executive director of the Portage County (Ohio) Tea Party took out a full-page ad in the Washington Times calling for Tweetie-pie to institute martial law to toss out the November election and stage a military-run election for federal candidates, stating that if there isn't martial law, "we will also have no other choice but to take matters into our own hands, and defend our rights on our own."

Among those who have effectively endorsed this call for military rule by re-tweeting it are retired general and former Tweetie-pie National Security Adviser Mike Flynn and pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood.

A number of commenters noted that such folks are entirely okay with overturning the Constitution but insist that wearing a mask to limit the spread of COVID is "fascism."

Meanwhile:

- Tweetie-pie lawyer Joe diGenova has said former Homeland Security official Chris Krebs "should be taken out and shot" for saying the 2020 election was secure.
- Lin Wood tweeted that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger "are (not) sleeping well at night. Nor should they be. Justice is coming."
- Steve Bannon recently said Dr. Anthony Fauci and FBI Director Christopher Wray should be beheaded.
- On November 29, Chris Bedford, senior editor of the right-wing journal The Federalist, called Stacey Abrams "dangerous on many levels" for her advocacy of expanding options for voting.
- Of course there was when Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was the target of a kidnapping and potential murder plot.

DiGenova is now saying that he was merely being rhetorical - of course he did, one he was called out on it. The "can't you take a joke" defense. But words have meaning. Words have impact.

On November 25, Rick Wiles, the senior pastor of the Flowing Streams Church in Florida, said "The Democrats, the news media - if the leftists, if scientists, professors have been working secretly with the Chinese Communist Party, then line 'em up against the wall and shoot them. That's what you do with them."

Do you really think he's be saying that if the idea had not been planted in his head by the drumbeat repetition of "fraud fraud fraud?"

What happens when someone finally does take this too far and someone gets shot and killed? What if the next plot against the next Gretchen Whitmer is not discovered in time? Will any of these people, will one of these people, take any responsibility?

No way in hell. Several years ago, I started a list of what I called "Rules for Right-wingers." It started out rather lightheartedly, but as it expanded over the years it got serious. The most recent version dates from 2017 and this is "Rule #12: Never admit responsibility. Whenever faced with the evil resulting from some other winger following or acting on your arguments, accuse those who point out that fact of 'politicizing a tragedy.' Never, never, never admit any responsibility for the meaning or impact of your own words."

I am dangerously close to saying that the very existence of these people - no, not the people, not the people, but the way of thinking, the thought pattern - its very existence is a moral outrage.

The Erickson Report, Page 6: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrages]

Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrages]

Finally we have the Outrages and there are three of them, all related to court decisions.

I'll do this first because I can do it quickly. Last month, I discussed the morally depraved ruling by the Supreme Court to allow the "public charge" rule to go into effect while appeals against it continue. This is the one that allows denying green cards to potential immigrants if some official thinks they might at some point in the future need any one of a variety of types of public support.

The rule is expected to cut legal immigration by up to two-thirds and obviously it will be the "tired, the poor, the huddled masses" who will be affected.

The Outrage this time is that there was a second suit related to the public charge rule, which as the result of a stay had resulted in the rule not being in effect in Illinois.

On February 21, SCOTUS doubled down on its xenophobic depravity and lifted that stay, meaning the rule is now in place nationwide.

Which is a sickening Outrage.

=

Next is that on February 28, we continued our march toward centralized authoritarian rule as the Court of Appeals for Washington, DC, agreed with the Tweetie-pie gang that the courts can't force former White House Counsel Don McGahn to testify before the House Judiciary Committee because in the absence of proof of damage to some entity beyond the federal government, then quoting the decision, "any dispute remains an intramural disagreement about the ‘operations of government’ that we lack power to resolve."

In other words, for all practical purposes the executive branch can simply and with impunity refuse to provide information or testimony to Congress even if the specific letter or the law says it must - remember the thing about how Treasury "shall" provide requested tax information to Congressional tax committees - because there is no legal mechanism to force them to do so.

It's a dubious position given the court system's traditional role of arbiter of disputes but it does show how easy it is to let more and more power and control to flow to the Executive. That is not only an Outrage, it's frightening.

=

But the big Outrage this time is yet another court action.

The ACLU is asking the Supreme Court to take up the case of DeRay Mckesson, who is being sued by a Baton Rouge cop.

What happened, in brief, is that there were protests in the city after two white police officers shot and killed Alton Sterling, a black man, in July 2016. Police responded, as you would expect, with riot gear, excessive force, and illegitimate arrests.

At some point during one protest outside police headquarters, someone (it's not known who) threw something (it's not clear what) that hit some cop (whose name is unknown). That cop sued DeRay Mckesson, who was one of the organizers of the protest, on the grounds that as an organizer, he was liable for anything done by anyone present if violence was "forseeable."

A district court threw out the suit as clearly violating a core tenet of the First Amendment: In the context of a protest, individuals cannot be held liable for the unlawful, unintended acts of others. 

The Supreme Court

Then the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals - the same one that upheld the Texas and Louisiana abortion laws - took it up. The court concluded that Mckesson was not the person who threw the object, which indeed no one, not even the cop, had suggested he was, that he had no control over the individual who threw the object, and that he had not intended for the object to be thrown. Despite that, the judges concluded that Mckesson could be liable for the officer's injuries and overturned the district court ruling.

Huh? How? Because, the court said, during the protest, Mckesson (according to the cop) directed others onto the street in front of police headquarters, which supposedly violated some Louisiana law. Therefore, it was foreseeable that police would get involved and therefore foreseeable that violence could occur and therefore Mckesson could be liable for any harm that followed.

This is insane and insanely dangerous. Not only for the not unreasonable but still disturbing assumption that any time police are involved you can expect violence, but also that it literally could destroy the right of public protest by laying the risk of personal or organizational bankruptcy over any protest.

Quoting the ACLU:

Under the Fifth Circuit's theory, a police officer - or, equally, a counter-protester - need only allege that a protest organizer directed or enabled other protesters to do any illegal thing, from overstaying a permit in order to pack up, to pumping the volume up a little too loud, to conducting a sit-in that obstructs access on a sidewalk or constitutes a trespass. Countless potential plaintiffs could argue that their injuries - sprained ankles, broken windows, extreme stress - probably would not have occurred had the protest not been at that place at that time, or had police or counter-protesters not responded as they did.

With these costly risks, who would be willing to lead a protest?

In fact, it's even worse than that, because by the 5th Circuit's logic, the likelihood of police presence is itself enough to make violence "foreseeable" and therefore make protesters liable for any violence that occurs.

But police presence at protests is routine, especially in the case of large crowds or a focus on issues of public controversy. So essentially any organizer of any protest is running the risk of financial ruin for what some fool - or agent provocateur - does even in the absence of any illegal act.

Happily the Supreme Court dealt with this back in 1982 in NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co., making it clear that the Constitution limits the government's ability to place responsibility for violence onto peaceful protesters. Interestingly, one of its recent uses was to protect Donald Trump against a suit over violence at one of his campaign rallies and another was to protect protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline.

But it looks like this battle is going to have to be fought all over again. Since 1982, the composition of the Supreme Court has changed for the worse, but at least we can, indeed must, hope the members still believe in the First amendment.

Because if they uphold this insanely outrageous ruling, we are completely screwed.

The Erickson Report for March 11-24

The Erickson Report for March 11-24

Good News: Hope for abortion rights
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/03/june-medical-john-roberts-louisiana-abortion-case-arguments.html
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22270271
https://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/hospitalist
https://legaldictionary.net/whole-womans-health-v-hellerstedt/

Good/Bad News: Help with medication costs
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2020/03/06/this-couple-goes-mexico-buy-low-cost-insulin-strangers-who-need-it/

Everything You Need to Know: about the health care industry
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/2/20/1920420/-Report-20-of-adults-in-the-U-S-donated-to-crowdfunding-campaigns-to-cover-medical-costs
https://www.norc.org/NewsEventsPublications/PressReleases/Pages/millions-of-americans-donate-through-crowdfunding-sites-to-help-others-pay-for-medical-bills.aspx
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/02/which-side-are-you-ask-progressives-health-insurance-stocks-spike-after-centrists

The death penalty is the death of justice
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/06/us/nathaniel-woods-executed-reaction/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/05/us/nathaniel-woods-alabama.html
https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/dont-look-away-this-nation-is-so-cruel-rights-advocates-decry-execution-of-nathaniel-woods-by-alabama/
https://abcnews.go.com/US/nathaniel-woods-execution-cast-scrutiny-alabamas-death-penalty/story?id=69433694
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2019/08/the-erickson-report-page-7-two-weeks-of.html
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/03/06/after-alabama-executes-nathaniel-woods-ayanna-pressley-leads-fresh-calls-us-abolish

Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Clowns]
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/02/paula-white-how-do-you-get-from-the-trailer-park-to-a-white-house-job-give-money-to-trumps-spiritual-adviser/
https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/trump-spiritual-adviser-tells-followers-to-skip-paying-monthly-electric-bills-so-they-can-send-her-church-more-cash/
=
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nina-turner-cnn-hilary-rosen-bernie-sanders-joe-biden-mlk_n_5e63b624c5b605572805b6e0
https://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Outrages]
https://whoviating.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-erickson-report-page-4-two-weeks-of.html
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/484196-supreme-court-allow-public-charge-rule-to-take-effect-across-country
=
https://www.alternet.org/2020/02/federal-court-gives-trump-a-big-gift-but-exposes-the-impeachment-trials-biggest-fraud/
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000170-8dbe-d93c-a979-bfff3cf80000
https://www.thedailybeast.com/heres-the-law-that-requires-steven-mnuchin-to-turn-over-trumps-taxes-or-lose-his-office-and-go-to-prison
=
https://www.aclu.org/mckesson-v-doe-new-petition-writ-certiorari
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/03/07/will-us-supreme-court-protect-right-protest
http://www.ca5.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/17/17-30864-CV1.pdf

36.3 - Not Good News: Americans increasingly ignorant of Constitution and ready to jettison free press

Not Good News: Americans increasingly ignorant of Constitution and ready to jettison free press

A new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll found that nearly half of voters, 46 percent, believe the news media fabricate - just make up out of thin air - news stories about TheRump and his administration, a figure that includes 76% of GOPpers, 44% of independents, and 20% of Democrats. And that doesn't even include the "undecideds," who are in effect saying "maybe they do." Maybe they just get in a room and just make stuff up about poor beleaguered TheRump.

Well, what should be do about such terrible lies? According to a poll from The Economist from a couple of months ago, they should be punished, as a majority of GOPpers and a plurality of independents in the poll agreed that courts should be able to fine news outlets that publish "biased or inaccurate" stories and even Democrats only managed a roughly even split on the question. Worse, significant minorities, including nearly 20% of Democrats, said in such a case the courts should be able to shut down a media outlet.

Maybe we shouldn't be surprised by these frightening results: Last month, the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania reported on the results of a survey of Americans' knowledge of the Constitution.

Among the results:
- 53 percent incorrectly think that undocumented immigrants do not have any rights under the Constitution;
- 37 percent can’t name any of the rights guaranteed under the First Amendment and only 3 percent can name all five (speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition); and
- only 26 percent can name all three branches of the federal government.

Everybody go out and get a copy of Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm - and read it.

Not Good News? Really Depressing News is more like it.

31.2 - Outrage of the Week: threats to the rights of assembly and free press

Outrage of the Week: threats to the rights of assembly and free press

The Good News, unhappily, leads directly to the Outrage of the Week.

Our First Amendment rights, our rights to protest, are under attack. As protests increased and continued, so too did the efforts to shut them down entirely or at least scare people off from taking part.

This spring's state legislative sessions have seen at least 30 bills introduced across 20 states either to limit the right of public protest, to increase punishments for civil disobedience, or both, doing so by measures such as, for example, banning wearing of masks, by declaring some areas "critical infrastructure" forever off-limits to protest, or by changing a charge of blocking a highway from a misdemeanor to a felony. Bills in two states - South Dakota and Tennessee - even proposed to protect drivers who run over protesters blocking streets.

A particular danger lies in use of mass arrests and charges without probable cause.

Back on October 1, 2011, during the Occupy protests, 700 people were peacefully marching across the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. Police had closed the bridge to vehicular traffic and began walking in the roadway. Protesters, reasonably assuming the police were trying to have the march get over the bridge as quickly and efficiently as possible, followed them into the street - only to have the police stop the march, trap the group from behind, and arrest all 700.

Police claim they told the marchers to stay out of the roadway but there is no way anyone other than those at the very front of the crowd could even have heard them; even assuming police did make such an announcement, those further back could not possibly have known about it. No matter - mass arrest, all guilty of "blocking traffic" - even though there was, again, no traffic to block.

A suit arose, Garcia v. Bloomberg. The Supreme Court recently refused to hear the protestors' appeal of their loss at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals. By doing so, the courts have legitimized mass arrests without proper warning and without giving people an opportunity to disperse.

It gets worse:

On January 20, Inauguration Day, police in Washington, DC followed, by their own account, a group of about a couple hundred protesters for about one-half hour. During that time, there were a few people in the group who broke windows. Instead of going in and arresting the people they had probable cause to arrest (because they had observed those people committing a crime), the police waited and then trapped 200 people with police netting, sweeping up demonstrators, journalists covering the event, and even some passers-by, anyone who happened to be there at that moment. Again, a mass arrest without warning, without an opportunity to disperse, and without probable cause to believe most of those arrested had committed any crime.

But those people - all 214 of them - were charged with a crime: felony rioting, which carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. In April, additional charges of property destruction, inciting or urging to riot, and conspiracy to riot, with penalties of up to 75 years in prison, were added.

While some of those arrested have cut plea bargains, many of the cases are still pending, including against at least one of the journalists - who, remember were there doing their job as reporters.

But here is the point: To indict and try someone, it takes, or at least is supposed to take, probable cause directed to that individual, not some unnamed someone. If these arrests are allowed to stand, if this is accepted by the courts, it means that if you are are at a demonstration, no matter how peaceful and legal, and someone in that group commits some illegal act - breaks a window, say - you and everyone else there could be charged with that crime or, even more likely, conspiracy to commit that crime with no need on the part of police or prosecutors to be able to say you did anything wrongful at all. Guilt - criminal guilt - by association in the purest form, a tool to suppress public protest at its most blatant..

The potential chilling effect on the right to protest is hard to overstate. The potential chilling effect on the right of a free press to cover such protests, when journalists may be held to be participants simply by being present, may be less immediately obvious but just as serious.

Because there is more: On July 25, a group of about 95 disabled people disrupted the vote in the Senate on the motion to proceed to debate about a health insurance bill - the debate that came to nothing - by shouting "Kill the Bill, Don't kill us" and "Shame!"

Capitol police dragged them from the gallery into the hall - the Senate chambers being a First-Amendment-free zone - and then blocked the media from covering the arrests, demanding there be no photographs and no videos and in fact ordering reporters present to delete those they had taken. Why? Because, get this now, "It's a crime scene." And if that makes you go "So what." it should.

In the eyes of the Capitol police, they have the power to say "You will not cover this protest. You will make no record of the protesters. You will make no record of their arrest." Which bluntly is one short step away from being able to say "This event did not happen."

Meanwhile, Jeff "I'm not a racist, really, really!" Sessions darkly intones about press subpoenas and how press freedom "is not unlimited."

No one ever said it was, of course, although it is also true that Thomas Jefferson said - and this is a real quote, not one of those fake ones that keep circulating - "were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."

The truth is, we are much more threatened by the power of the government to restrict and conceal than we are by the power of protesters and the press to resist and reveal. And as those threats to our rights increase, so does the outrage.

29.6 - Voter suppression by right wing continues

Voter suppression by right wing continues

I said last week I was going to put off talking about TheRump's "election fraud" commission because there were other things about voter suppression I wanted to address at the same time. So let's get to that right now.

The big recent headlines, of course, involve the so-called Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. Those headlines hit when on June 28 the Commission sent a letter to all 50 states plus Washington, DC, asking for what information they had on registered voters, including and here I am quoting the letter,

full first and last names of all registrants, middle names or initials if available, addresses, dates of birth, political party (if recorded in your state), last four digits of social security number if available, voter history (elections voted in) from 2006 onward, active/inactive status, cancelled status, information regarding any felony convictions, information regarding voter registration in another state, information regarding military status, and overseas citizen.

That is, they wanted to gather all that data on every registered voter in the US into one big federal database which they would control.

Happily, a lot of states did not take kindly to the idea. Among the more colorful responses came from Secretary of State of Mississippi, who told the commission to go jump in the Gulf of Mexico - in pretty much exactly those words.

There were a lot of varying claims about how many states refused to comply, with some saying only a handful did while others claimed only a handful didn't. The difference largely revolved around how you defined "comply": A good number of states said they would supply those parts of the information that are already publicly-available, that is, information that anyone could obtain, although some of them added that they wanted to arrange with the feds to be reimbursed for the costs of submitting this large an amount of data.

Some said they wouldn't comply at all, which it appears they were quite free to do since the commission may have violated the federal Paperwork Reduction Act, which requires that federal requests for information from states must go through the Office of Management and Budget's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs - which this one didn't.

Ultimately, most states will turn over some records but at least 44 states and Washington, DC, won't give the Commission everything it wanted.

In the face of that resistance and a suit by EPIC, the Electronic Privacy Information Center, seeking an injunction against the gathering of the data, the Commission put a hold on the effort, telling states to hold off until there is a ruling on EPIC's suit.

But while the gathering of information is on hold, the purpose of doing it is not. There is very little reason to doubt that one of the purposes of the Commission is to produce enough and I use the word very advisedly "evidence" to justify TheRump's claim that the only reason he lost the popular vote - which really seems to stick in his craw - was that "millions" of undocumented immigrants and others voted illegally.

Giving extra credence to that idea is the fact that Commission co-chair Kris Kobach said on July 19 that "we may never know" if Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 "because even if you can prove that a certain number of votes were cast by ineligible voters, you wouldn't know how they voted."

But for that argument to have any merit, you have to presuppose that you can show that at least 2.9 million illegal votes were cast, because that was Clinton's margin of victory in the popular vote, something Kobach apparently regards as quite likely to be and again I use the word very advisedly "proved" by the Commission.

But assuaging TheRump's easily-bruised ego is not the only reason for the Commission's existence. It's ultimate purpose is to continue and advance the right-wing's assault on the right to vote. Indeed, opposition to the right to vote runs in the veins of many of the Commission's members.

Consider Kris Kobach. He is perhaps the chief architect of the right-wing attack on voting rights. As Secretary of State of Kansas, he has repeatedly tried to make it harder for Kansans to vote. In 2016 he illegally blocked tens of thousands of eligible voters from registering. Beyond that, he pushed the racist conspiracy theory that President Obama was born in Kenya and in 2015, he said that it was possible that the Obama administration might ban all prosecutions of African-Americans.

Then there is Hans von Spakovsky. As an attorney in George Bush's Justice Department and against the advice of career DOJ attorneys, he approved a restrictive voter ID program in Georgia. He now is at the far-right Heritage Foundation, whose president openly admitted the group pushes voter ID requirements in order to elect "more conservative candidates."

Another member is J. Christian Adams. He is a longtime critic of the Voting Rights Act who claimed that under President Obama, the Justice Department's Voting Rights Division didn't spend enough time protecting white voters.

And don't forget Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio Secretary of State and now a senior fellow at the bigoted Family Research Council. In 2004 Blackwell actively hindered minority voter registration and voting in Ohio to support the reelection of George Bush. He endorses TheRump's claim of widespread illegal voting in 2016.

If that doesn't impress you, consider the group's actions. For one thing, Vice President Mike NotWorthAFarthing's office has confirmed the Commission intends to run the state voter rolls it wants to get against federal databases to check for "potential fraudulent registration," a plan that experts say, and the Commission must know because there is no way it could not know, is certain to produce thousands of false positives with potential loss of voting rights for many.

The Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan group focusing on voting rights, has predicted some outgrowths of the work of the Commission, includin

-  proposals to eliminate the Election Assistance Commission, which is responsible for, among other things, guiding compliance with federal election law;
- pushing national and state voter ID laws and the fact that voter fraud, especially the sort that voter ID laws would address, is vanishingly rare be damned in order to embrace the other fact that such laws disproportionately disenfranchise minorities and the poor;
-demanding proof of citizenship as a condition for registering and supposedly, Kobach, who wanted to impose that in Kansas, already has an amendment drafted for that;
- and mandating aggressive purges of voter rolls, to be used to inflate claims of illegal voting to justify the other measures.

That last part - voter purges - is already being pushed. The same day that Kobach sent that letter to states looking for voter information, the Department of Justice also asked 44 states to send them information on their compliance with the 1993 National Voter Registration Act, the NVRA. That law mandates certain state agencies (such as the DMV, leading to the nickname the "Motor Voter" law) provide citizens with the opportunity to register to vote and outlines specific conditions states must meet before removing people from the voting rolls. The focus of the law, that is, is to enable and encourage people to vote by making it easier to register.

However, even though the bulk of the NVRA is about making it easy to register to vote, the letter from the DOJ was only about the parts of the law related to keeping voter lists up-to-date, showing no concern as to whether states were doing enough to aid people in getting registered.

The result was that many saw the letter as a signal that the department was gearing up to force states to kick people off their rolls. And just like the cross-checking that NotWorthAFarthing wants to do, voter purges have been notorious for producing false positives, leaving voters - often minorities - to show up to the polls only to find that their registration has been wiped from the books and the deadline to re-register has already passed.

Chris Carson, president of the League of Women Voters, said that "It's very clear the intent is to purge more and more groups who possibly don't vote the way they want them to vote."

But this goes beyond - well beyond - the federal level. It's at the state level, too.

Because even though US turnout for election is already distressingly low - only 55.7 percent of voting-age Americans cast ballots in 2016 - that is still too high for many GOPper-controlled state legislatures.

At least 99 bills to restrict voting rights have been introduced or carried over from previous sessions in 31 states this year. The most common requirement is voter ID, demanding that voters produce some approved sort of ID at the polling place in order to vote - even though repeated studies have shown such in-person voter fraud to be, again, vanishingly rare.

But of course stopping fraud isn't the point of these laws, any more than the second-most popular requirement - demanding proof of citizenship to register - is. The Brennan Center estimates that millions of Americans lack the necessary documents or ID, an effect felt disproportionately among minorities, poor folks, and the young. The true point, that is, is keeping these disapproved groups of people from voting at all.

Consider what happens when GOPper state officials try to defend these laws as deterrents to fraud. when Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft was trying to build a case for his new voter ID law, he could only cite one potential instance of fraud, that from seven years earlier and it involved registration, which, again, voter ID laws do not cover. In 2013, Kris Kobach himself did a review of 84 million votes cast in 22 states and found just 14 instances of fraud - less than 0.00002 percent of votes - to send to prosecutors.

But they won't stop because they don't care. They don't care about stopping fraud, they don't care about honest elections, they don't care about election integrity - they only care about winning elections any way they can, including twisting both law and logic to deny those who do not embrace their reactionary worldview the most basic of democratic rights: the right to vote.

And now they can count on help from the top.

Since 2011, federal courts have determined that Texas's voter ID law, SB5, targets people of color for discrimination - have determined that not once, not twice, but three times. US District Court Judge Nelva Gonzales Ramos is considering if the legislature's latest attempt at a fix was good enough. The previous versions had been knocked down in part because the sweeping law listed seven acceptable forms of photo ID to be presented at the polling place, forms that clearly preference some voters over others. State-issued gun licenses, for instance, are acceptable but student IDs are not. According to the plaintiffs in the suit, the latest version - quoting -

maintains the same unexplained picking and choosing of 'acceptable' photo IDs for in-person voting - accepting IDs disproportionately held by Anglo voters and rejecting IDs disproportionately held by minority voters.

So in stomps the Justice Dept. of Attorney General Jeff "I am not a racist, I swear" Sessions to declare everything is fine, the law is fine, and all suits challenging SB5 should be dismissed because the court "has no basis" for providing any remedy. And the fact that this version has the same flaws as the earlier ones? They don't care - or, more accurately, they do care because that disparate impact is the purpose. It's not a bug, it's a feature.

They will not stop - so neither can we. This is something I have covered a lot over the years and I fully expect I will have cause to return to it not only now but repeatedly in the future.

15.11 - Update: repressing protest

Update: repressing protest

Next up, last week I referred to my Rules for Right-wingers, with #18 being "If you lose by the rules, change them." I listed a number of recent attempts by right-wingers to change the rules to shut down public opposition to their regimes.

Turns out I missed one.

Arizona has seen some progressive victories lately through the use of citizen initiatives, including an increase in the minimum wage and a paid leave measure in November. So the reactionaries in control of the legislature want to make it harder for such initiatives to get on the ballot.

One measure would ban campaigns from paying petition gatherers by the signature, which would sharply increase the cost of mounting a petition campaign by removing any incentive for the gatherers to maximize the number of signatures they get. GOPpers claim this is to prevent fraud but since signatures are validated before a measure is approved for the ballot, that is obvious nonsense.

Another proposal, which could be an even bigger hurdle, is to require that for a measure to quality for the ballot, in each and every one of the state's 30 legislative districts the petitions must have signatures totalling at least 10% of the vote for governor in that district.

Finally, there is a provision in the state constitution that the legislature can't alter a voter-approved law in a way that would undermine the law's intent. The GOPpers are trying to get rid of that provision.

14.1 - Outrage of the Week: making it harder to protest

Outrage of the Week: making it harder to protest

I said last week that the Outrage of the Week was a teaser because I didn't have time to cover it more fully and that I would make 1st order of business this week. So I'm doing exactly that and our first item is the Outrage of the Week.

I'll start with a quick reminder from last week. I started by referring you to my Rules of Rightwing Debate, number 18 of which reads: "If you can't win by the rules, change them."

I always use voter suppression as a great example of this. The right wing knows it can't win if the mass of the American public votes, so it has been engaged in a years-long effort to make it harder and harder for people to vote at all - particularly the poor, minorities, and the young; that is, the ones least likely to vote reactionary.

But now the rules they are trying to change are quite literally those of the First Amendment.

Faced with outraged citizens and ongoing protests big and small, faced with outraged constituents at town halls, the GOPpers are trying to make it harder and harder to engage in legal protest of any kind.

In the days immediately following the historic protests of January 21, GOPpers in at least six state legislatures were moving to try to block or at least minimize public opposition by criminalizing peaceful protests and sharply increasing penalties for nonviolent civil disobedience. In at least three of those cases they proposed to forgive crimes committed against protesters so long as they were done "accidentally."

The number of states considering such laws quickly grew to eight then to 10 and now stands at at least eighteen: Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington either have considered or are now considering such bills.

There are proposals to ban the use of masks, to increase penalties for trespass on so-called "critical infrastructure," which seems to mean some area where the particular state does not want to allow protests, even one that would make heckling a government official a crime.

But others go far beyond that:

Last week, I told you about the proposed law in Arizona that would expose all participants in and organizers of any demonstration where any property damage occurred to racketeering charges, which involve penalties not only of a year in prison but seizure of personal property and assets. That bill passed the state Senate but died in the House, but it is not the only example of trying to financially crush protest.

Michigan is working on a law to restrict mass picketing. This is more aimed at labor unions, but could be applied to any action that is a series. If a demonstration is deemed an "illegal" mass picket, penalties for taking part would shoot up to $1000 per person per day and $10,000 per organization per day. What's most interesting is that it's hard to find a real definition of what makes a mass picket illegal; it seems to come down to if the target of the picket can convince some judge that there are more people picketing than necessary to make the point.

In another tack on the same line, in Minnesota, a proposed bill would allow localities to charge protesters for the costs of policing the protests.

Also in Minnesota, keeping the traffic flowing is more important than the ability to nonviolently protest: A bill there would triple the fine for taking part in a blockade of a roadway from $1000 to $3000 and lengthen the prison term from 90 days to a year.

An early version of a bill under consideration in Indiana called on police to clear any roadway blocked by protesters within 15 minutes by "any means necessary."

That's not good enough for Iowa and Mississippi, where proposals would make blocking a highway a felony, subject to up to five years in prison.

That's nothing, says North Dakota: We would exempt a driver from liability if they injure or kill a protester taking part in a blockade of a street or highway - provided only that it was done "accidentally," as if they hadn't noticed the traffic backup or this large group of people in the road.

That bill failed to pass out of the House by what in a sane world would be the shockingly close vote of 50-41. But meanwhile, Florida and Tennessee have bills with the same "kill a protester, no problem" idea under consideration.

Now, it's important to note that not all of these efforts succeeded or will succeed: A number of them never got out of committee, some others failed to pass, some others got through one house of a bicameral state legislature only to die in the other. Maybe ultimately none of them will pass.

It is also true that a number of these bills, even were they to be passed into law, would not survive a Constitutional challenge.

That doesn't change the fact that these bills have been introduced, considered, debated, supported at least by some. It doesn't change the fact that there is a concerted push to find ways to respond to protests not by embracing their message, not even by considering if they may have a point, but by shutting them down, silencing them by silencing those that would take part in them by threatening them with such severe consequences that they are intimidated from taking part, by, to use a more legalistic term, "chilling" their speech.

And if you have any doubt of that, just remember that Douglas McAdam, a Stanford sociology professor who studies protest movements, notes that this is hardly the first time for this. For example, when the US labor movement became active in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of laws were created "to limit or outlaw labor organizing or limit labor rights."

For another example, in the 1950s, southern states responded to the emerging civil rights movement with "dozens of new bills outlawing civil rights groups, limiting the rights of assembly," and more, "all in an effort to make civil rights organizing more difficult," McAdam said.

Even the wild, laughable charges about "paid protesters" are nothing new.

So yes, this is nothing new, rather, it's what you should expect when the voice of the people rises to challenge the reactionaries. It is their natural reaction, their knee-jerk response, to look for ways to shut us up and shut us down, to make us go away.

But the fact that this is not new doesn't change, in fact it underlines, the fact that these bills comprise an assault on the right to assemble. And it doesn't change, in fact it underlines, the fact that they are an outrage.

13.11 - Outrage of the Week: GOPpers attack First Amendment right to assemble

Outrage of the Week: GOPpers attack First Amendment right to assemble

This is our other regular feature: the Outrage of the Week.

This is going to have to serve as a teaser for next week, since I am almost out of time. But I will say this now with the understanding that I am going to make it my first order of business for next week.

You may recall that just a couple of weeks ago I gave you my Rules for Rightwing Debate, that is, the rules the wingers follow in avoiding factual engagement on issues.

One of them is "Rule #18: If you can't win by the rules, change them."

A great example of this is voter suppression. As I mentioned earlier, the right wing knows it can't win if the mass of the American public votes, so it tries to make it harder and harder for people to vote at all.

But now the rules they are trying to change are quite literally those of the First Amendment.

Faced with outraged citizens and ongoing protests big and small, the GOPpers are trying to make it harder and harder to engage in legal protest while at the same time increasing the penalties for any act of nonviolent civil disobedience, trying to scare people off from such dramatic but peaceful protests.

Perhaps the worst example is that on February 22, the Arizona state senate actually passed a bill that makes participating in or helping organize a protest that turns into a quote riot unquote subject to criminal racketeering charges, facing a year in prison and seizure of personal assets including such as your car and your home.

Note this, because it's important: In Arizona, a "riot" is described as "two or more people using or threatening force or violence in a way that disturbs the peace." The bill expanded that definition to include any event where there is property damage. Which means that at any demonstration where two people say throw rocks through a window, everyone present could be arrested for "participating in a riot." People trying to organize a protest could be arrested and charged under racketeering laws just for the planning, if the cops decide the planned protest could lead to such "rioting."

This bill, which became known as the "Plan a Protest, Lose Your House" bill, is so extreme that some sanity prevailed and the Arizona House will not take it up, killing it (at least for now), but the state Senate did pass it.

And other kinds of attacks on the right to assemble are being undertaken in at least 18 states.

Run that around in your head for a while. More next week - when it will still be an outrage.