America as failing state: Once again, it starts with the US Constitution

Having read Daniel Lazare's "The Frozen Republic" when it came out many moons ago, with bits of my Goodreads review excerpted below, I've long known that in many ways, the US Constitution is broken. The electoral college and its modern winner-take-all aspects mean its broken for third parties, too. 

And, speaking of, per this NYT book review, it's nice that Erwin Chemerinsky thinks so, too. Given today's United States, no, I don't want an Article V Convention, unlike him. I'm afraid it would send us back to the Stone Age, hijacked by the remnants of the Koch empire, winger tech dudebros and more. Today, the people who want a "Convention of States" are the types of people who want to get rid of the 17th and 19th Amendments, so that state legislatures even more easily bought than Congress can be bought off to elect US Senators, and so that women know their place of being barefoot, pregnant and voiceless.

Secession? Interesting. Rare indeed that a "blue state" person will be open about that. As someone who lives in a "red state," what would I do if that happened, especially if, to pun away, such a secession succeeded? I mean, would the remnant US honor Social Security payments to people in Chemerinsky's "Pacifica"? If not, it would laugh at lawsuits to compel payment, even if that affected "the full faith and credit" in various ways.

That said? Chemerinsky is 20 years behind the Lazare curve:

The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy by Daniel Lazare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A must-read laundry list of how anachronistic the US Constitution really is, and why, with Lazare making a strong argument for junking the whole thing (not counting the amendments that give us our rights) and starting over ... with an eye to a non checks-and-balances gridlock parliamentary government instead of our current nonsense.

This is a book I have re-read more than once.

And, in what is arguably a bit of serendipitous timing, Lazare starts the book with a threat of secession by the state of California, in conjunction with the 2020 election.

Beyond this, readers should look for other books about the realities of the Constitutional Convention. Sheldon Wolin is one good one.

View all my reviews

The piece at top links to a 2023 column by Ryan Dorfler and Samuel Moyn, the latter of whom I've read elsewhere. Let's start with their thesis:

The real need is not to reclaim the Constitution, as many would have it, but instead to reclaim America from constitutionalism.

The idea of constitutionalism is that there needs to be some higher law that is more difficult to change than the rest of the legal order. Having a constitution is about setting more sacrosanct rules than the ones the legislature can pass day to day.

Simple and basic enough.

Here are excerpts from how they think that should play out:

It is a breath of fresh air to witness progressives offering bold new proposals to reform courts and shift power to elected officials. But even such proposals raise the question: Why justify our politics by the Constitution or by calls for some renovated constitutional tradition? It has exacted a terrible price in distortion and distraction to transform our national life into a contest over reinterpreting our founding charter consistently with what majorities believe now.

No matter how openly political it may purport to be, reclaiming the Constitution remains a kind of antipolitics. ...

It’s difficult to find a constitutional basis for abortion or labor unions in a document written by largely affluent men more than two centuries ago. It would be far better if liberal legislators could simply make a case for abortion and labor rights on their own merits without having to bother with the Constitution.

By leaving democracy hostage to constraints that are harder to change than the rest of the legal order, constitutionalism of any sort demands extraordinary consensus for meaningful progress. It conditions democracy in which majority rule always must matter most on surviving vetoes from powerful minorities that invoke the constitutional past to obstruct a new future.

Doable? Probably not. Not by liberals. Maybe by leftists. The idea, for example, that Congress itself would vote to make the U.S. Senate even partially like the Canadian Senate is ... laughable.

Within present limits, the best options are for a leftist president to govern by executive order and getting a Supreme Court that, contra Ted Cruz, knows the most overlooked amendment is the Ninth not the Tenth and makes all sorts of "people power" constitutionality rulings.

Strangeabbott: Support Cook, not Burrows, or else — else WHAT? more grifting?

Now that McDade Phelan has bailed from the Texas House Speaker's race, and the buttoned-up two-thirds wingnut David Cook faces an alleged challenge to succeed him from the blathering Dustin Burrows, our state's beloved Gov. Strangeabbott has weighed in, a slight bit more directly than Dannie Goeb did from the state Senate and Lite Guv's house.

There on Shitter, Strange referenced the number of House Republicans that he primaried over caucuses:

Let me be clear:

I worked this entire year to elect conservative candidates who will pass conservative laws, including school choice.

To achieve that goal we need a Texas House Speaker chosen by a majority of Republicans in accordance with the Republican Caucus Rules.

Seems straightforward.

Contra the Trib's piece building off that, this won't "dash" Burrows' hopes. Burrows did that to his own self within the first 24 hours of his claim that he had the votes. Even if he's not lost eight or more Rethugs, or more than one Democrap, he's still got uphill sledding in a shitstorm of his own making.

That said, also on Shitter, Scott Braddock points out that either Strangeabbott himself or his paid political flunkies are doing grifting while trying to play both sides of the street. More of that rabbit hole is here.

This looks like the normal Jesuitical-type parsing, flunkies' apparent grifting or not, for which the likes of Chris Hooks has long called him out.

Left vs Left on Syria — major US-Israel meddling or not?

A sort of faceoff on this issue between Asa Winstanley of the Electronic Intifada, on his Substack, and Joseph Daher, billed as a Swiss Syrian socialist, at The Tempest (seen by me on Counterpunch).

The Tempest did an interview with Daher that starts with this intro:

Some on the Left have claimed without foundation that their rebellion was orchestrated by the U.S. and Israel. Others have uncritically romanticized these rebel forces as rekindling the original popular revolution that nearly overthrew Assad’s regime in 2011. Neither captures the complex dynamics unfolding in Syria today.

And, this is why I see the "faceoff." Winstanley is the type of person being called out, but is it more by The Tempest or more by Daher personally?

That said, the differences start with something else. Daher, while saying that the main rebel force, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, while not a walk in the park, has evolved since repudiating ties with al-Qaeda in 2016 and focusing on Syrian nationalist issues. He notes it has promised to protect Druze and Ismailis. (That said, NPR yesterday talked about how many of the latter are already fleeing Syria.) He also said that since that 2016 separation, it has repressed people of al-Qaida and ISIS backgrounds.

Winstanley looks at such claims with a more gimlet eye, noting their current name is a "rebranding" since separating from al-Qaida, talking about pre-2016 atrocities in a post-2016 Syria:

Nor did such abuses stop with the rebranding to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Human Rights Watch says it has documented severe abuses by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham in the Idlib enclave it has controlled in recent years.

Sounds a bit different than Daher.

Winstanley adds that HTS leader al-Julani "has never been held to account."

Now, to the header. It's true that neither the US nor Israel has explicitly backed Turkey's actions in northern Syria. But, everybody who knows Turkish President Reççip Tayyip Erdogan knows he plays under-the-table footsie with Bibi Netanyahu. The US knows the basics of this and has chosen not to intervene. Otherwise, Daher appears to take statements by both Israeli and US political leaders at face value.

Winstanley does not. Here's the background he provides:

That's the US reality.

Over the last 13 years, the various armed groups working together to overthrow the Syrian government have been backed by the US, Gulf states, Turkey and Israel itself.

In a rare moment of honesty – one he later had to apologize for – then US Vice President Joe Biden admitted in 2014 that the surge of funding had aided groups the US considers extremists.

Biden said that Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and others “were so determined to take down Assad and essentially have a proxy Sunni-Shia war … [that] they poured hundreds of millions of dollars, tens, thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against Assad.”

This is the Israeli reality from years past, per Winstanley.

The last time al-Qaida and other insurgent groups were present in the Golan Heights, Israel established warm relations with them, treating their fighters in a specially constructed field hospital and even arming them.

Netanyahu on Sunday signaled the revival of that policy. He said that Israel would pursue “the same approach we maintained when we set up a field hospital here that treated thousands of Syrians injured during the civil war. Hundreds of Syrian children were born here in Israel.”

There's more on both at his piece, with links. That includes Bibi trying to take credit for the downfall of Damascus.

Daher has a number of good things to say about the Palestinian issue, and as a socialist, trying to delink it from nation-state issues and to boost Palestinian class issues. That still doesn't mean that me isn't wrong on the nation-state issues in Syria. That's especially as Winstanley noted that some Syrian insurgents appear to have already been in contact with Israelis.

This is even as, at Jacobin, on these other issues, Daher said that it's Israel, not Hezbullah or Iran, that wants a wider war. Agreed. So, what gives with his take on Syria? Turkish control of northern Syria severs its direct connection with Iran, which, in turn, affects Hezbullah.

Texas Progressives talk Speaker drama and more

SocraticGadfly talks about Dade Phelan and Dustin Burrows.

Whoever the new Speaker is, whether Burrows, GOP caucus guy David Cook, or some better never-Patrick GOP alternative to Burrows, the sense of Legiscritters, or at least ones that blathered to the Tribune along with various lobbying types, is that vouchers will be a done deal. (It appears nobody from TASB was at the event.)

Gene Wu replaced Trey Martinez Fisher as leader of Texas House Dems. So far, he's been less than perfect, though not godawful, on the GOP side of the Speaker battle.

Off the Kuff shared a couple of thoughts about where to go from here.

Dannie Goeb wants to ban THC products and it's high on his priorities list.

This one is nothing new to me — I wrote back in 2006 about Rick Perry's "economic miracle" and noted that it was based on two things: oil and Ill Eagles. The state had data about the economic benefits of illegal immigrants then and hasn't updated it — because Strangeabbott et al know they can't refudiate it.

Biden did an el foldo to Paxton on confidentiality for teen birth control meds.

Blocking social media accounts on school district WiFi, as is generally already done? Good thing. Blocking minors from starting accounts in the first place, even if they have parental consent? Unconstitutional as I see it. Shock me that Rethuglicans are pushing it here in Tex-ass. It has parallels to blocking medications for transgender and / or transsexual minors even if they have parental consent.

The Observer gets the real names behind four neo-Nazi accounts on Shitter. 

Couldn't happen to a nicer guy: Nick Fuentes arrested on battery charge.

Reform Austin leans into their discontent.

The Eyewall reviews the 2024 hurricane forecasts. 

Law Dork looks to the trans representation at the SCOTUS hearing on gender affirming care.

Uranium mining is heating back up in south Texas. I never knew it was much of a deal there.

Neil at the Houston Democracy Project posted on the Houston Planning Commission stalling the silly & selfish revision process of Houston’s sidewalk ordinance.

Texas statewide media news sites get more incestuous. The Monthly ran the Trib's piece about Phelan bailing out. And now, the Barbed Wire, the new kid, is running stuff from Steven Monacelli, who normally is at the Observer.

FDA could abolish Red Dye No. 3

Good if this happens!

First, the petition to make this happen does NOT appear to be related to Brainworm Bobby's nomination by Trump to head Health and Human Services.

Second, there are good reasons for this to happen.

Like this:

“With the holiday season in full swing where sweet treats are abundant, it is frightening that this chemical remains hidden in these foods that we and our children are eating,” US Representative Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ), a ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, wrote in a letter to the FDA.

“While food companies must ensure that the food they market is safe, they are also only required to ensure that their products meet FDA’s standards. This means that thousands of products that contain this chemical can remain on the market.”

He argued that there is “no reason” for the additive to be in food “except to entice and mislead customers” to make products appear “more appealing.

And this:

Thomas Galligan, who works at the Center for Science in the Public Interest as a principal scientist for food additives and supplements, echoed a similar sentiment.

“These food dyes only serve one function in food, to make them look pretty so you and I want to buy it, it’s a marketing tool,” he told NBC.

"Make it so."

As the piece notes, it was banned from cosmetics in 1990. It's banned in California in foods right now.

Trump schwaffles on tariffs and more

The AP offers a summary of his Sunday appearance on NBC's Meet the Press.

On tariffs, he won't guarantee that they won't lead to price hikes. Nor will he offer any consumer consolation if they do.

His comments on immigration and families of both legal and Ill Eagle people sounds incredibly stupid even for him:

But Trump also said he does not “want to be breaking up families” of mixed legal status, “so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back.”

Whoever cut him off at the pass on tariffs presumably failed to do so here.

This all has little meaning if he strokes out before his term ends.

Texas House committee to subpoena Roberson again

It's supposed to happen today, unless Kenny Boy Paxton stops blocking access to the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee having Robert Roberson talk to them in person about the state's junk science law, how it apparently has not been followed in his case and more.

The committee worries Paxton is stalling them out until a new year, a new Lege and a new committee.

Given that Kenny Boy went from saying "do a video" to "can't see him," of course we know he's stalling. And, re a new committee, we don't know how presumed new Speaker David Cook (not you, Dustin) will handle this, or what his take is on the junk science law. We do know that current chair Joe Moody is a Democrat.

We also, per the story of the committee's original subpoena and its legal playout, don't know how the three new members of the CCA stand on this issue.