The Erickson Report, Page 3: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Clowns]

The Erickson Report, Page 3: Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages [the Clowns]

And now for our regular segment, Two Weeks of Stupid: Clowns and Outrages. And as usual we start with the Clowns.

Our second runner-up for the Clown Award this time is the administration of Whitefield Academy, a private Christian school in Louisville, Kentucky.

Kayla Kenney turned 15 in December and her mother organized a party with a few friends and family at a local restaurant, for which she also supplied a cake from a local bakery, having requested one with colors that "pop."

It turned out that the by coincidence cake’s rainbow motif mirrored the design on Kayla's sweatshirt - which was enough for Whitefield Academy to expel her, writing in a dismissal letter that the photo "demonstrates a posture of morality and cultural acceptance contrary to that" of the reactionary school's outdated, outmoded, and bigoted philosophy.

There's been a lot of fuss and feathers in the wake of this about if Kayla is LGBTQ or not or about supposed "previous problems" at the school, but one thing remains unaltered: For the administration of Whitefield Academy, you not only can't be LGBTQ, you can't even look LGBTQ, even unintentionally. And that clearly makes them Clowns.

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Our first-runner-up is MSNBC and in particular weekend anchor Joy Ann Reid.

You know about the kerfuffle between Liz Warren and Bernie Sanders. On that I will just say that I don't think either one handled it particularly well as neither of them ever raised the possibility of it all being a simple misunderstanding. But Reid went totally wonko.

Joy Ann Reid

On January 18 she had on a "body language expert" - which is not a real thing - a self-proclaimed "body language expert" named Janine Driver to claim without challenge that based on "eye level" and the "turtling of his shoulders" that Sanders lied when he denied telling Warren that a woman could not be president.

Driver, who has also endorsed a claim that Obama ordered the CIA to train ISIS, appears to be a personal friend of Joe Biden. Clearly, an unimpeachable and unbiased source.

As for Reid, an early and active pusher of the fictitious "Bernie-bro" line, she has hated Sanders ever since - and because - he challenged Hillary Clinton in 2016. Again, totally trustworthy. And a Clown.

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But our winner is the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In 2015, a group of 21 young folks aged 11 to 22 sued the US government for violating their constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property by enacting policies that contributed to the climate crisis.

the plaintiffs

In a mind-boggling 2-1 decision, a panel of the Ninth Circuit agreed with the suit's contentions that the climate crisis has brought the world close to the "eve of destruction" and that "the government's contribution to climate change is not simply a result of inaction" - that is, it's not just what the federal government hasn't done, it's also what it has.

And then after agreeing with the plaintiff's argument, the majority threw up its hands and said their case "must be made to the political branches or to the electorate at large." In other words, "nuthin' to do with us."

But the whole point of judicial review is to provide a remedy when people "are suffering harms to fundamental rights at the hands of other branches of government." As Carroll Muffett of the Center for International Environmental Law put it, "courts have a long history of doing precisely what the panel says they cannot do here."

This was not a judicial decision, it was a political one on the part of judges too cowardly to take responsibility for the meaning of their own findings of fact. And that very clearly makes them Cowns.