Prez Donald Trump is all about Donald Trump. The Don picks a perfect cabal member to cover his ass from the Supreme Court bench. Judge Brett Kavanaugh has demonstrated huge judicial deference to expansive executive power. In tribute to this pick, I offer you this FREE POLITICAL POSTER: Judge Kavanaugh covers Trump – I’ve got your back, that is, backside – “We should not burden a sitting President with civil suits, criminal investigations, or criminal prosecution.”
A New York Times opinion piece, Will Kavanaugh Provide Cover for Trump?, provides insight to why Judge Kavanaugh may have captured Prez Donald Trump’s interest:
In the coming weeks, the Senate will undertake its constitutional duty to vet Judge Kavanaugh on issues like health care and abortion. But the Senate must also explore a question central to evaluating the judge’s commitment to the rule of law: Does he have the requisite independence from President Trump to serve as a check on his abuses of power?
This issue is particularly important given repeated claims by the president’s attorneys that Mr. Trump is essentially above the law — that he can even refuse a subpoena to testify. Given the looming Mueller investigation, these weighty, knotty constitutional questions may soon come before the court.
When it comes to these questions, Judge Kavanaugh is not a blank slate. He worked for Ken Starr, the independent counsel who aggressively investigated President Bill Clinton. But Judge Kavanaugh later adopted views that are outside the mainstream in their deference to the executive.
In a 2009 law review article, Judge Kavanaugh argued that a sitting president should be able to defer civil suits and criminal prosecutions until after he leaves office and should be excused from having to answer depositions or questions during his term. He went so far as to advocate that Congress “consider a law exempting a president — while in office — from criminal prosecution and investigation, including from questioning by criminal prosecutors or defense counsel.”
It is hard to imagine that these extreme views weren’t part of Judge Kavanaugh’s appeal to President Trump, a man who is a defendant in several civil suits and the subject of at least one criminal investigation. According to media reports, the White House has looked at the judge’s views on indicting a sitting president.
Nor are these mere academic musings. During his service on the appellate court, Judge Kavanaugh has written opinions reflecting an expansive view of presidential power, and on several occasions he has expressed concern about executive branch agencies that are insulated from direct control by the president.
What does this tell us about how he would view the ongoing investigation by Robert Mueller, the special counsel? There are important and — at least under current law — decisive differences between the independence enjoyed by the agencies at issue in those cases and that of the special counsel, who reports directly to a political appointee serving at the pleasure of the president. But the logic employed in Judge Kavanaugh’s opinions could easily be extended to argue that the president should enjoy the power to control the course of all criminal investigations — including those into his own alleged misconduct.
Judge Kavanaugh’s approach to executive power could, moreover, affect other aspects of the federal investigations relating to Mr. Trump. One of the most important is whether a president can pardon himself. In our view, the idea that a president can grant himself a pardon is anathema to our constitutional structure. One need not be a judge to see how antithetical this is to our Constitution: 85 percent of Americans (including 75 percent of Republicans) say that it is unacceptable for a president to pardon himself of a crime. Given Judge Kavanaugh’s position on executive authority, it is unclear where he would stand. Senators must find out.
Judge Kavanaugh’s writings and opinions also suggest he will be receptive to the bizarre argument that the president cannot obstruct justice by firing Department of Justice officials or taking other actions pursuant to his constitutional authority. There are multiple flaws in this argument, chief among them that both the Constitution and hundreds of years of precedent support the validity of congressional restrictions on the exercise of executive power. Will Judge Kavanaugh stand with the rule of law or allow the president to interfere with our system of justice with impunity?
Then there is the legality of Mr. Mueller’s appointment, which Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, has already tested in the two federal courts where he is facing charges. Both the District of Columbia and Virginia federal district courts rejected motions by Mr. Manafort to dismiss his criminal indictments, and the District of Columbia court rejected a collateral civil suit that he filed there challenging Mr. Mueller’s prosecution of the case. The reasoning behind these decisions is straightforward: Congress has given the attorney general broad authority to delegate power to subordinate officials. We cannot help wondering whether Judge Kavanaugh will view this delegation as an intrusion on presidential direct removal authority and reject the commonsense holdings of these lower courts should he have the chance.
The usual practice at Supreme Court confirmation hearings is for the nominee to refuse to answer questions about issues that may come before him or her. But we have never had a nominee who was chosen by a president identified as the subject of a criminal inquiry — one that already has resulted in serious charges against top aides and could implicate the president himself. We need to know the judge’s views on these issues so we can have an honest and open national discussion, and the Senate make a fully informed decision.
If he refuses to share them, Judge Kavanaugh must agree that if he is confirmed he will recuse himself from any decisions concerning the special counsel investigation and the related exercise of presidential powers —or his confirmation must be delayed until after the investigations are resolved. If the Senate confirms him without resolving these questions, we face the prospect of a new associate justice who poses a grave danger to the legitimacy of the court — and our democratic system of checks and balances.
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If Do Not Change Direction End Up Where Headed–PEACE QUOTE BUTTON
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This is a great Chinese proverb. Its simplicity and inescapable logic is a powerful way to break us out of inertial thinking. Western civilization and its fixation on rationality (which ironically brings about irrational consequences), walks right into the inescapable logic of this proverb. One of the many dangers in life is being desensitized to the negative aspects of the status quo. Since we tend to rationalize whatever situation or behavior we are experiencing, and, in this respect, reality has a conservative bent, meaning a tendency or a bias towards maintaining what is already in existence and resisting a different course than wherever we happen to be headed. I’m amazed at the powerful force that cognitive dissonance plays in the human psyche. As a former health educator and having some training in human behavior, I was surprised to learn that the seemingly obvious assertion that behavior follows knowledge is actually largely backwards. While knowledge may very well be a necessary component of a particular behavior, it is typically far from sufficient. More typically, we engage in a behavior and then do what is necessary to align our thinking, attitudes and feelings with that behavior. This makes sense if you reflect on the relative difficulty of changing behavior versus thinking. It is usually easier to rationalize than actually make a behavioral change from whatever present course we are on. So, cognitive dissonance serves as a psychic energy-saving mechanism by aligning a less difficult process in the face of a more difficult behavior or situation. Of course, the way we think feeds back into our behavior. Nonetheless, there is some mystical reality to acting on faith, when and where one may sense that a particular behavior may be better than a current one, but one can’t muster the psychic resources to first change one’s larger set of thoughts, attitudes and feelings, before giving the change in behavior a try. I have heard counselors and therapists marvel at clients who struggled with many issues related to their thinking, attitudes and feelings, and found help on this front to be unhelpful, until taking the advice of “fake it till you make it;” then, found that when they changed their behavior everything else just “magically” fell into place (and, of course, the helper often received little credit for what seemed like stupid advice at the beginning). Back to the concept of inertia, I’m reminded of the saying that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Both of these sayings or proverbs imply that the past present and future are connected – duh! While this may seem oddly oversimplified, it may just remind the reader that we can change the future by changing the present, just as we can assure more of the same by not changing our present course. If you want something different, try something different.
One last reflection on thinking and behavior change. Trying to figure out which comes first, thinking or behavior change, is sort of like asking which came first, the chicken or the egg. For example, what needs to change for someone to actually take the advice of “fake it till you make it?” — a hurdle that may reap a quantum leap of change. Of course, this can very well involve thoughts and attitudes. So, maybe you shouldn’t try any of this behavior change mumbo jumbo (that’s reverse psychology by the way…)
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