States Sue Over Citizenship Test
At least twelve states to sue Trump over Census citizenship question. NYT: "At least 12 states signaled Tuesday that they would sue to block the Trump administration from adding a question about citizenship to the 2020 census, arguing that the change would cause fewer Americans to be counted and violate the Constitution. The New York State attorney general, Eric T. Schneiderman, said he was leading a multistate lawsuit to stop the move, and officials in Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Washington said they would join the effort. The State of California filed a separate lawsuit late Monday night. 'The census is supposed to count everyone,' said Attorney General Maura Healey of Massachusetts. 'This is a blatant and illegal attempt by the Trump administration to undermine that goal, which will result in an undercount of the population and threaten federal funding for our state and cities.'"
SCOTUS Hears MD Gerrymandering Case
Extreme Partisan Gerrymandering: The Supreme Court's Play In 3 Acts. NPR: "The curtain rises Wednesday on Act II of Extreme Partisan Gerrymandering, a play in three acts currently playing at the U.S. Supreme Court... This one is from Maryland, and the justices decided to review it more than two months after the arguments in the Wisconsin case were completed. Just why the court added the second case, and so much later, is unclear. Speculation has centered on two theories — one legal and one political. The political explanation was spurred by a comment from Chief Justice John Roberts during the Wisconsin arguments. "If you're the intelligent man on the street and the court issues a decision" and the Democrats win, he speculated, "the intelligent man on the street is going to say, 'It must be because the Supreme Court preferred the Democrats over the Republicans.' ... And that is going to cause very serious harm to the status and integrity of the decisions of this Court in the eyes of the country."
GOP To Push 'Balanced-Budget' Amendment
Republicans to push balanced-budget amendment. Politico: "House Republicans will take up a balanced-budget amendment when they return from recess, several sources tell us. This follows on the heels of their $1.3-trillion budget bill and their massive tax bill. Why do this now? Here's what we think: It’s almost election season, and it would be helpful if GOP lawmakers could go home and be able to say they voted to support balancing the federal budget, even though they voted boosted discretionary spending by a ton, and have not touched entitlement spending, which, they have said for years, is the driver of U.S. budget deficits."
Bolton's Record Of Carnage In Iraq
For Bolton, the slaughter of 1m Iraqis is a job qualification. Truthout: "President Donald Trump's incoming national security adviser, John Bolton, still thinks the mass destruction of Iraq was a good idea... Then, 12 years later, with 5 percent of the total population of Iraq dead, thousands of US troops dead, and trillions of dollars of taxpayer funds bled away, he told the Washington Examiner that he still thought the Iraq War was worth it. He even commented that 'the worst decision made after that was the 2011 decision to withdraw US and coalition forces.' I witnessed the carnage firsthand in Iraq. I saw the destruction of an entire country. I watched women, children and the elderly slaughtered in Fallujah by the US military. I walked through freezers full of decayed bodies that were the detritus of Bolton's US empire project. The fact that this individual is about to become national security adviser feels like a true nightmare about to revisit us."
Racial Disparity In Austin Bomber Depiction
Sympathy for the devil: White privilege and the Austin bomber. Salon: "There are questions emerging from this case that simply will not be asked. Why didn’t Conditt’s neighbors call the authorities? What do we know about his upbringing? Who were his friends and family? Where was he 'radicalized'? How did he pray? Was religion to blame? What were his political views? Did he hate America? In the case of Conditt we do have some answers. As a teenager he practiced weapons and survival skills with a Christian youth military group called Righteous Invasion of Truth (RIOT). He was home-schooled by Christian fundamentalists. He was apparently a conservative who believed homosexuality was abnormal, supported the death penalty and opposed women’s reproductive freedom. What if we flipped the script by extending the same level of human empathy and concern towards Muslim and other nonwhite terrorists that was shown to Mark Conditt by the Austin police and media outlets like the New York Times? What would we learn?"
