Opinion

When I moved to San Francisco in 2013, the state of California was in a drought. As a transplant from the Midwest, I discovered that this manifested itself often at restaurants. Accustomed to water being excessively offered at a restaurant table, I remember waiters telling me that, because of the drought, they were only serving water upon request and in very small quantities. At that moment, I began to understand why Californians bring their own water bottles everywhere.

This article first appeared in Salon.

During the George W. Bush years, as the nation waged the "global war on terror," there was massive concern among civil libertarians about the government's indifference, if not hostility, to human rights and civil liberties. While the "Bush Doctrine" held that "either you're with us or you're with the terrorists" and professed a commitment to spreading democracy (at the point of a gun) around the globe to defeat them, Vice President Dick Cheney articulated an even darker vision in a "Meet the Press" interview five days after the 9/11 attacks:

We have to work the dark side, if you will. Spend time in the shadows of the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion.

It wasn't long before it became clear what he meant. Eventually, the press and other investigators uncovered evidence that the government had gone very dark indeed. It had unleashed the FBI on innocent American Muslims, while military units and the CIA were kidnapping and torturing supposed terrorism suspects in secret "black sites" all over the world. There were secret no-fly lists and warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens, nearly all of this occurring in total secrecy without oversight by the courts or the Congress.

Ron DeSantis likes to say Florida is where “woke” goes to die. If by “woke” he means tolerance, science, inquiry, free expression, and knowledge, yes, Florida is where “woke” goes to die.

Florida is where public education goes to die; Ron DeSantis is poisoning it.

The trend in world history since the Second World War has been toward secularism and away from religious control politically, socially and culturally. With Iran as a notable exception, most nations throughout the world have shifted to some extent toward Thomas Jefferson’s axiom of “separation of church and state.”

However two highly-developed nations have recently bucked the secular trend. Israel and the United States have elected leaders, namely Trump and Netanyahu, who attempted to reinvigorate religion in their respective societies in terms of law, culture and political policies. What is it about the political systems and culture of these countries that enabled religious constituencies to gain ascendancy with a promise of fundamentalist revival? What is it about these two men, Netanyahu and Trump that enabled their rise along with this revival?

Question: How many legs does a dog have if you count the tail as a leg? Answer: Four — calling the tail a leg doesn't make it one.

Likewise, calling a small group of partisan lawyers a "supreme" court doesn't make it one. There's nothing supreme about the six-pack of far-right-wing political activists who are presently soiling our people's ideals of justice by proclaiming their own antidemocratic biases to be the law of the land. On issues of economic fairness, women's rights, racial justice, corporate supremacy, environmental protection, theocratic rule and other fundamentals, these unelected, black-robed extremists are imposing an illegitimate elitist agenda on America that the people do not want and ultimately will not tolerate.

After last week's protracted and frankly hilarious intra-GOP battle over the speakership, Republicans got straight to work passing their first big messaging bill: Allowing rich tax cheats to evade legal consequences for defrauding the government. The bill would rescind an $8 billion-a-year expansion of the IRS budget that was signed into law by President Biden last year. That money is meant to address numerous issues, such as improving customer service (which everyone ought to want), but Republicans haven't tried to hide what truly offends them her: Money earmarked for pursuing criminal prosecutions of wealthy tax evaders.

In their usual dishonest fashion, Republicans have been demagoguing this issue for months, falsely implying that the Biden administration wants to go after middle-class people who fudged a little in estimating the value of their donations to Goodwill. In reality, as many experts have pointed out, this funding is meant to make it less likely the IRS will go after ordinary people. More resources means prioritizing the wealthy tax cheats who have consistently been able to outspend the IRS on legal fees, and often avoid serious consequences. If this GOP bill were to pass, it would result in more than $100 billion in lost government revenue, much of that staying in the pockets of the yacht-owning class.

You can’t understand the J6 insurrection without understanding the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump’s victory was stolen by massive invisible voter fraud.

These conspiracy theories are so ubiquitous and so implausible that it’s tempting to tune them out. But understanding the deception is critical to understanding why ordinary citizens tried to end democracy in America.

Those who value Montana’s Constitution are concerned—terrified, actually—of what the Legislature’s supermajority (and its new Freedom Caucus) are going to try to do to it this session.

Here’s how it can happen: Article XIV of our Constitution sets forth how it can be revised:

Sunday saw that hard lesson play out in Brazil, with coordinated and simultaneous attacks — explicitly inspired by Trump’s assault on the US Capitol and cheered on by American Republicans — on Brazil’s presidential palace, capitol building, and supreme court building.

As The Guardian reports:

For proof there's no real daylight between the two factions, look no further than the fact that the biggest Republican troll in the House, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, was on Kev's side from the get-go. Greene has become one of the most famous — and powerful — Republicans in Capitol Hill by sheer dint of her gleefully unapologetic fascism. She's one of the biggest apologists for Donald Trump's Big Lie and the violent insurrectionists who attempted to overthrow democracy on January 6, 2021. She's a grade-A conspiracy theorist who rode into Washington spouting QAnon nonsense. Once in office, she went straight for the third rail in American politics, showy antisemitism, downplaying the Holocaust and raving about how Jews were setting wildfires with space lasers. She hits all the major stations of the conspiracy theory cross, from dismissing mass shootings as "false flags" to vaccine denialism to, naturally, 9/11 trutherism. She, of course, has also gotten that sweet, sweet attention by calling for the execution of her political opponents.

But she's all for McCarthy, because he is fine with all this, despite his media image of moderation. Greene, who is a much savvier operator than the liberals constantly dunking on her would like to admit, clearly realizes that being on the always-Kevin side of this fight opened up a golden opportunity: She can now rebrand herself as a mainstream Republican. With her shiny new committee assignments — complete with access to some of the most highly classified information in government — and her role as McCarthy's golden girl, Greene is set to remake herself into a respected figure on Capitol Hill. She'll be just as much a conspiracy theory kook as she ever was, but her new status as an elder statesman in the GOP will put an ennobling gloss on her lies, helping push them through the ever-credulous Beltway press.