Trump's Republican Followers in the Senate

How Can I Make $ Off A Vet?

Before there were any real codes of medical conduct or preventative FDA regulations, harsh curative experiments upon various groups of marginalized people and sick victims were kept quietly under wraps.  

The sordid history of such investigations reveals a willingness to discard moral guardrails for personal advancement or arbitrary prospect.

Without oversight or regulation, interest can quickly override rationality.  Here’s an example or two: “Perhaps one benefit of being an inmate at California’s San Quentin prison is the easy access to acclaimed Bay Area doctors. But if that’s the case, then a downside is that these doctors also have easy access to inmates. From 1913 to 1951, Dr. Leo Stanley, chief surgeon at San Quentin, used prisoners as test subjects in a variety of bizarre medical experiments. Stanley’s experiments included sterilization and potential treatments for the Spanish Flu. In one particularly disturbing experiment, Stanley performed testicle transplants on living prisoners using testicles from executed prisoners and, in some cases, from goats and boars.”

“In 1939, University of Iowa researchers Wendell Johnson and Mary Tudor conducted a stuttering experiment on 22 orphan children in Davenport, Iowa. The children were separated into two groups, the first of which received positive speech therapy where children were praised for speech fluency. In the second group, children received negative speech therapy and were belittled for every speech imperfection. Normal-speaking children in the second group developed speech problems which they then retained for the rest of their lives. Terrified by the news of human experiments conducted by the Nazis, Johnson and Tudor never published the results of their‘Monster Study.’”

You can find an unsettling number of others at several sites including Best Psychological Degrees. 

You can also find another disturbing illustration of unapproved medical procedures occurring presently in Veteran Affairs, where a Senator from Nevada has secured an opportunity for himself and a company with whom his senior aide has had business connections for many years.

The Senator: Dean Heller.  His opponent: Democratic challenger Jacky Rosen.

Senator Heller is often described as a low-flying member of the Congress who follows closely and sits often near the current President, but remains carefully hidden and unknown.  According to Vox, he aligns with Trump in voting 92% of the time, and he has slashed Nevada’s health care funding by $257 million.  

But, Senator Heller is quick to see an opportunity even if ignorant of FDA regulations regarding the treatment(s) of patients working their way through PTSD issues in various VA hospitals. Senator Heller has been moving doctors at the Veteran Affairs Medical center in Reno, Nevada, to practice a mental health treatment still in experimental stages by a company with ties to his office.  Using the Trump Administration’s invitation for more alternative treatments, the promotion by Heller’s office of CereCare is troubling to the VFW and other organizations as it represents procedures that have not been scientifically demonstrated to be safe or even effective.

According to ProPublica, “The procedure that CereCare was pitching to the VA uses electrical scans of the brain and heart to detect a patient’s “intrinsic brainwave frequency” and find “the area of the brain in need of restoration,” according to materials brought to the meeting. CereCare then uses that data to apply electromagnetic pulses from a machine called a transcranial magnetic stimulator.

“This procedure is off-label, meaning it uses equipment approved by the Food and Drug Administration, but in a way that is not approved by the agency. Off-label procedures are not uncommon or illegal, but the FDA has not signed off on their safety or effectiveness.”

Regulations?  Who needs regulations?  

In fact, we all do.

The Food and Drug Administration is the oldest comprehensive consumer protection agency in the U. S. federal government. Since 1848 the federal government has used chemical analysis to monitor the safety of agricultural products -- a responsibility inherited by the Department of Agriculture in 1862 and by later by the FDA. 

Although it was not known by its present name until 1930, FDA’s modern regulatory functions began with the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act, a law a quarter-century in the making that prohibited interstate commerce in adulterated and misbranded food and drugs--had been the driving force behind this law and headed its enforcement in the early years, providing basic elements of protection that consumers had never known before that time. 

Since then, the FDA has changed along with social, economic, political and legal changes in the United States. Examining the history of these changes illuminates the evolving role that FDA has played in promoting public health and offers lessons to consider as we evaluate current regulatory challenges. 

But in this administration, the match between office and ability has little overlap and certainly not within the procedural treatment of the VA.  Who studied and agreed to the questionable and unapproved treatments for patients in the VA?  The President’s appointee Wisconsin Beer Baron Jake Leinenkugel who has no experience in dealing with treatments for the mentally injured or veterans suffering from war trauma.  In fact, Leinenkugel has also proposed the use of hyperbaric chambers for the assistance to disturbed veterans, but not because of any real scientific proof – just various companies’ lobbying.  

Meanwhile, Jacky Rosen is closing in on Heller’s lead in Nevada.  

Given Trump’s open invitation for alternative procedures, the White House is now under a flood of hopeful medical vendors with new ideas and possible procedures.  And, it is likely that other weak-willed Senators are facing lobbyists and others who have cash and new, improved concepts for alleviating our most sacred captive audience (our veterans) lucrative issues. 

Maybe testicle transplants?

For his own part, Heller has bombastically responded that he will never apologize for supporting policies that could lead to additional treatment options for Nevada veterans because “no one who has served this country should be waiting for care once they return from combat.”   

Draping your connections to a lobby or company in the American flag and the blood of our veterans is despicable. 

If you have friends or family in Nevada, get on the phone now.  Urge them to vote Rosen and why. 

One week to go.

Okay, You Hate Trump, But What Are You For...?

“Okay, You Hate Trump, But What Are You For…?

A couple of days ago, Scott Stantis, editorial cartoonist for the right-leaning board of the Chicago Tribune offered up another of his hastily sketched tropes of weaknesses in the political left’s drive to unseat the Republican hold on the Congress.  I say hastily because I am always drawn to Stantis’ difficulty in drawing hands.  

Take a look, and you’ll find they most often appear without rudimentary fingers, just nubs grasping items in a fist-like squeeze.  I don’t know why it bothers me so much.  Maybe because hands and fingers take time and thought.  And political cartoons should, too.  

Like the hands on his “subjects,” his messages are also underdeveloped and often similarly conservative/right.  Take his pen and ink portrait of October 24, 2018, which strongly suggests that those opposed to Trump (the Democratic Party) have little more than an irrational hatred for the reality-TV star rather any substantive suggestions to better our country.

I guess at this point on October 24, the buck-toothed and white-eyed donkeys in his inking might respond possibly – "health care, no pre-existing conditions, environmental protection of any sort, some regulation on fossil fuel drilling and polluting, a plan to draw in the violence instigated by access to weapons of war, a long-term action plan for climate change, a schema for assimilating those fleeing poverty and violence, fair voting rights for all, a prevention to the rocketing deficit after the tax giveaway, a guarantee that social security and Medicare will remain"…well, I could go on and so could the donkeys.

 But maybe the real answer is this: a respite.  A RESPITE.

We have had enough. We have endured enough.  When the man who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America stated that “the carnage stops now and it stops here.”  Trump did not tell the truth.

HE is the carnage.

Charlottesville was only the start.  After the last week, we have seen what a leader sowing division, disrespect, tribalism, and racism can wring.  And we as a people have been wrung out.

David Remnick, in the New Yorker pens an invaluable comment regarding this man’s inability to take any road but the wrong one, to fail at bringing anyone together in favor of dividing and generating hatred, to identify every crisis as one in which he has been personally targeted unfairly.  

Suggesting that “The Midterm Elections Are a Referendum on Donald Trump,” Remnick writes:

“What is there left to know about Donald Trump? Robert Mueller, various state officials, and a legion of reporters around the country are dedicated to penetrating any stubborn mysteries that still linger, yet who can argue that there is insufficient evidence to make a rational judgment about the character of the man, the nature of his Presidency, and the climate he has done so much to create and befoul?

“Law enforcement will continue to investigate the incident in the days ahead. But what’s already clear is that it occurred at a moment of tragic division and conspiracy-mongering generated, foremost and daily, by the President of the United States. The right has no monopoly on insult and incivility—the online universe can be a sewer of spite—but there is no real equivalence: no modern President has adopted and weaponized such malevolent rhetoric as a lingua franca.

“Trump is a masterful demagogue of the entertainment age. His instruments are resentment, sarcasm, unbounded insult, casual mendacity, and the swaggering assertion of dominance. From his desk in the Oval Office, on Twitter, and at political rallies across the country, he spews poison into the atmosphere. Trump is an agent of climate change, an unceasing generator of toxic gas that raises the national temperature.

“At a rally in Wisconsin, on Wednesday, the President reacted to the news of the multiple bombs with a barely perfunctory call for a ‘civil tone.”’Of course, he didn’t mean it, not remotely. He made it plain that civility is for suckers, a joke. ‘By the way, do you see how nice I’m behaving tonight?’ he said, with a smirk. ‘Have you ever seen this? We’re all behaving very well.’ The next morning, in a characteristically brazen tweet, Trump amped up the toxicity. A bomb had been sent to a media outlet. The fault was the media’s. ‘A very big part of the Anger we see today in our society is caused by the purposely false and inaccurate reporting of the Mainstream Media that I refer to as Fake News,’ he wrote. ‘Mainstream Media must clean up its act, fast!’ At 3 a.m. on Friday, he tweeted his fury at CNN.

“When the leaders of the Republican Party first acquainted themselves with Trump’s rhetoric and character a few years ago, many of them were appalled. Ted Cruz, after hearing Trump insult his wife’s appearance and insinuate that his father bore some responsibility for the assassination of John F. Kennedy, called his rival a ‘pathological liar,’ a ‘snivelling coward.’ But, after Cruz became one more casualty of the 2016 Republican primaries, and reckoned that he could not hold his Senate seat while attacking Trump, he, like almost every other light of the ‘party of Lincoln,’ capitulated. The G.O.P. is now Ted Cruz writ large, a political party that has debased itself in the image of its standard-bearer.

Please read the entire article in the Nov. 5^thedition of the New Yorker or on line.  

RESIST AND VOTE ON NOVEMBER 6^TH.  

Polar Bear Gone By 2100?

I Love Polar Bears.  Do You?

Do you recall the polar bear Aussie at the Brookfield Zoo?  Sue and I loved him.  He was euthanized in 2017 after a life of nearly 32 years at the zoo.

That’s a remarkable life-span for a Polar Bear, but he was a remarkable animal.  My wife and I used to go there to watch him glide effortlessly in the pool of water like a sleek-leviathan Olympian swimmer gliding back to the blocks. Aussie always lifted his back leg in the water in some kind of signature and frivolous show for the audiences.  

Brought to Brookfield from Australia in the 1980’s, Aussie’s life of 32 years would be the equivalent of well over 100 in human years according to then vice president of clinical medicine for the Chicago Zoological Society. 

I hope children today will be able to see such natural wonder.

I hope that such a wonder can remain naturally.

Given the loss of habitat in polar regions, Polar Bears International now predicts the likelihood that two-thirds of Polar Bears will be gone by 2050, and, if unchecked climate change continues, the loss of the wild species by 2100.

But then came Trump, enter stage Far Right.

The current administration is now opening oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.  “The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is the largest and wildest of our nation’s wildlife refuges. The Coastal Plain is the biological heart of the Refuge, providing essential habitat for a variety of wildlife, including imperiled polar bears, the Porcupine caribou herd and hundreds of species of migratory birds. It is an area sacred to the Gwich’in nation, who depend on the Refuge for their way of life.” 

In order to satisfy oil companies and locate possible oil reserves in this once protected eco-system, the various companies seeking oil for greater oil corporations will begin a winter assault on the land using seismic explorationsto determine the likelihood of oil reserves.  In other words, companies employed by oil corporations will be making large scale sensor impacts in the banks and grounds to detect possible reserves.  The companies, led by SAExploration, will “along with our partners, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC) and Kaktovik Iñupiat Corporation (KIC), (be) pleased to submit their plan of operations for the Marsh Creek 3D Program. Together ASRC, KIC, and SAE, through its joint venture with the Kuukpik Corporation (Kuukpik-SAE), are in the process of forming a joint venture, Iñupiat Geophysical Partnership, LLC. SAE is requesting permits on behalf of its partners to conduct a seismic survey within the 1002 Area of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) beginning during the winter season of 2018- 2019 initially.  My underline

According to many researchers, America is about to become the top producer if crude oil, without needing to drill in the Arctic National Refuge. But American becoming great again is about pillaging, not conserving. 

Unfortunately for the diminishing populations of Polar Bears, this unnecessary search for new oil reserves in a once protected area will negatively affect the many breeding female polar bears which burrow into the snow and land to birth their young in the winter/spring.  It’s not just the habitat; now, it’s their breeding grounds which will be under pressure by exploitation.

Research provided by Steven C. Amstrup indicates that the influence of disturbance, including seismic events over and around Polar Bear dens will result in catastrophic loss of life to younger cubs and new-born cubs during the winter to spring months.  “Reluctance to abandon a den can be viewed as ‘tolerance’ of disturbances near dens, and bears may just hold tight and be fine while industrial activities occur nearby. But when the disturbance is both intensive and expansive, like 3D seismic testing, that apparent tolerance could have negative consequences. Available observations illustrate that some bears will not leave until

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the den is actually invaded. Whether from an innate feeling of security in a den or habituation to noises and vibrations of vehicles moving around them; the ‘comfort level’ many polar bears show with activities outside their dens could result in waiting too long to leave a den when the disturbance is truly dangerous for them. It seems the heavy vehicle and activities associated with surveying the seismic lines only 65 meters from the den described above were the impetus for this bear to emerge, her behavior and other observations suggest however her den could have been runover had the seismic survey path been displaced 65 meters. In that circumstance, even if the female bear was able to leave a den ahead of oncoming vehicles, her departure threshold might have been exceeded so suddenly as to prompt hurried evacuation resulting in cubs being left behind and either crushed or abandoned. “

SAExploration promises to have a biologist hired by SAExplorations on hand to make sure all goes well.  They’ll also listen to concerns by local Native Community people.  Sound promising to you?

Me neither.  

Of course, Republicans and the Koch Bros. have tried over 50 times to get into the ANWR to drill.  Now they’re there.

You might want to call about this if you are concerned.

Department of Energy: Rick Perry – 202 586 5000 

White House: 202 456 1111

The Alaskan Officials involved: 

Ted Smith
Operations Supervisor 907-522-4499 907-301-5434 cell

Suzan Simonds
Permits and Regulatory Manager 907-522-4499
907-331-8140 cell

Rick Trupp
General Manager of Alaska 907-522-4499 

Oversight Panel Suzan Simonds 907-522-4499 907-331-8140 

OR AT LEAST VOTE ON NOVEMBER 6^TH.  

Another Comes Forward Re; Kavanaugh

Yet Another Comes Forward Re: Kavanaugh

Is it likely that Kavanaugh’s transgressions represent an entire bank of behavior, not a momentary stumble in one’s life’s experiences.  Given that, we can expect continued information and spectators to his questionable actions to come forward in the next week – and if confirmed – after his ascension to the highest court in the land.  

How one assumes the position of jurist on the Supreme Court of the United States given what has occurred, the partisan firestorm, the accumulating charges and memories of those who recall the man who “loved beer,” becomes difficult for most of us to comprehend. When does one call it an unworthy charge into the Valley of (professional & reputational) Death? When does one look at the family and say, “Enough.”  When does one realize that the current administration will now let him hang and swing rather than admit he was serviceable to their desperate need to find cover from an oncoming investigation.  

 From Diane Ravitch’s Blog: “Another Yale Classmate Says Kavanaugh Lied About His Drinking.”  

“Another Yale classmate has come forward to say that Brett Kavanaugh had a drinking problem at college, but he might not be interviewed by the FBI as the White House and the Senate are limiting the investigation to only the four people who were allegedly at the party where Dr. Blasey Ford says she was assaulted by Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge. Two other classmates have come forward to say that Kavanaugh was "belligerent and aggressive" when he drank too much, which apparently was not a rare occurrence. They are not on the list to be interviewed. Nor are his roommates, who said that he frequently puked in their bathroom because of his drunkenness. (Kavanaugh said at the hearing that he has a sensitive stomach.)”

The New York Times also reports:

“WASHINGTON — A Yale classmate of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh’s accused him on Sunday of a “blatant mischaracterization” of his drinking while in college, saying that he often saw Judge Kavanaugh “staggering from alcohol consumption.”

The classmate, Chad Ludington, who said he frequently socialized with Judge Kavanaugh as a student, said in a statement that the judge had been untruthful in testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee when he had denied any possibility that he had ever blacked out from drinking.

Mr. Ludington said that Judge Kavanaugh had played down “the degree and frequency” of his drinking, and that the judge had often become “belligerent and aggressive” while intoxicated. Other former classmates have made similar claims.

“It is truth that is at stake, and I believe that the ability to speak the truth, even when it does not reflect well upon oneself, is a paramount quality we seek in our nation’s most powerful judges,” Mr. Ludington said, adding that he planned to “take my information to the F.B.I.”

Mr. Ludington, a professor at North Carolina State University who appears to have made small political contributions to Democratic candidates, said to The New York Times on Sunday that he had been told by the F.B.I.’s Washington, D.C., field office that he should go to the bureau’s Raleigh, N.C., office on Monday morning. He said he intended to do that, so he could “tell the full details of my story.”

It is illegal to lie to Congress. But it was unclear whether the F.B.I. would add Mr. Ludington’s accusations to the newly reopened background investigation into allegations of sexual misconduct against Judge Kavanaugh, which has been limited in scope and time by the White House and Senate Republicans.

The White House had no immediate comment about Mr. Ludington’s accusations.

Even before Mr. Ludington’s statement, Democrats in Washington reacted with anger on Sunday as the narrow scope of the new F.B.I. background inquiry became clear, warning that it threatened to become a sham...

Democrats have cast the initial list of those to be interviewed as falling short of a full examination of the allegations. The four witnesses are Mark Judge and P.J. Smyth, high school friends of Judge Kavanaugh’s; Leland Keyser, a high school friend of one of Judge Kavanaugh’s accusers, Christine Blasey Ford; and Deborah Ramirez, another of the judge’s accusers.

A lawyer for Dr. Blasey, who riveted the nation on Thursday as she recounted before the Judiciary Committee what she said was a rape attempt by a drunken Judge Kavanaugh when they were in high school, said on Sunday that she had not been contacted by the F.B.I.

“We have not heard from the F.B.I. despite repeated efforts to speak with them,” Debra S. Katz, the lawyer, said in a brief telephone interview Sunday morning.”

REGISTER TO VOTE? WHY?

40 Days and Nights or Ham, Ham, Who’s the Ham?

We have a scant 40 plus days before the Midterm Elections, and the Christian Right via Billy Graham’s son Franklin Graham has “chimed in about the sexual assault allegation against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.”  It is irrelevant.   

Irrelevant?

Like Mitch McConnell, the lead proponent for plowing the nomination through, Graham dismisses the possible inclusion of added investigation by the FBI or other investigating bodies in this or any more allegations: “There’s a lot of things that I’ve done when I was a teenager that I certainly am ashamed of and not proud of,” he said. “People are up in arms over this like ‘oh, this is such a disaster.’ You’re talking about two teenagers 40 years ago. That has nothing to do with what we’re talking about today about this man being a judge on the Supreme court.” 

“And they call it sexual assault?” he added. “No, I don’t believe it.” 

Neither will the Republicans in the Senate ask for serious answers at the performance they will hold on Thursday. 

Unlike his father, Franklin Graham has found his avenue in following what is expediently “now” in our tribal culture, and he has learned to identify with the far right’s call for patriotism, nationalism, sovereignty, aversion to political correctness.  Unlike his father who embraced in the later part of his life the concept of Jesus’ sacrifice for all people and all races, Franklin has fallen into line with the current Trumpian trope that any faith in Islam is acceptance of  “a religion of hatred…a religion of war.” 

In the new populist view, “Make America Great Again” is simple code for make us all like the characters who populated the “Leave It to Beaver” programming of the 1950’s.  No other ethnicities; therefore, no problems, no crime, no rapists, no people shouting in support of the Twin Towers falling.  Pure escapism from truth with an alluring offer for scapegoating.  

It’s as old as the Bible – and the many ambiguous interpretations the Bible offers.  In Genesis, poor Noah drinks himself into a stupor and falls/blacks out into bed undressed and exposed.  

Who hasn’t?  Maybe even Brett Kavanaugh?

His sons Japheth and Shem try to cover this weakness as quickly as they can (like a dutiful Mitch McConnell for a favored Supreme Court nominee).  His other son, Ham, laughs at his father’s naked inebriation.  An intoxicated Noah awakes, and he curses Ham and all his children as the progeny of Canaan.  And…for centuries the religious right has used this moment in the Bible to justify everything from the origin of people of color and their cursed position in history as well as a justification for their enslavement by a purer race of people. 

With the Midterm elections just 40 -some days away, I like to recall God’s plan to wipe sin clean from the face of earth.  And storms?  

You can bet we will get them on the way to November 6th.    Storm Rosenstein.  Hurricane Iran.  Tropical Depression Mueller.  Storm North Korea.  Mega Hurricane Distraction.

Behind all of that, however, lay the overriding fundamentalist belief that Billy Graham discarded so long before his death that we were all God’s children. In other words, Billy said NO to the use of this passage to justify racial, ethnic, or religious prejudice. Good for him.  

Welcome to our tribal world of 2018.  The new religious and biblical belief that there are those cursed: those who even as children must to be held in cages away from their parents (numbers untold), those who do not deserve assistance with pre-existing conditions, those who seek asylum but are from shit-hole countries, land and air that is available for unlimited exploitation and destruction, that our friends are now our enemies, that our real enemy is now our friend.  

TODAY WAS NATIONAL VOTER REGISTRATION DAY.  A MEMO FROM THE SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER HAS ARRIVED

If you have anyone in your family, neighborhood, or area not registered, please ask them to get started now. TIME IS RUNNING OUT!!!  See Below:

Are you registered to vote? It's vital to our democracy.

Today is National Voter Registration Day, so make sure you —  and others in your community — are registered to vote. It's as easy as one click!

REGISTER TO VOTE

Not sure? Check your voting status now and, if not, get registered today.

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“Is there nothing more important to Yale Law School than its proximity to power and prestige?”

From Glen Brown’s Excellent Blog of Today.  

While Dean Heather Gerkin of Yale Law School was quick to endorse with glowing accolades Trump’s pick of Brett Kavanaugh, the following backlash of students, alumni and those who worry about the rights of women in our country stands directly in opposition.  

Yale Alumni Characterize Kavanaugh as “Morally Bankrupt.”

July 10, 2018

We write today as Yale Law students, alumni, and educators ashamed of our alma mater. Within an hour of Donald Trump’s announcement that he would nominate Brett Kavanaugh, YLS ‘90, to the Supreme Court, the law school published a press release boasting of its alumnus’s accomplishment. The school’s post included quotes from Yale Law School professors about Judge Kavanaugh’s intellect, influence and mentorship of their students.

Yet the press release’s focus on the nominee’s professionalism, pedigree, and service to Yale Law School obscures the true stakes of his nomination and raises a disturbing question:

“Is there nothing more important to Yale Law School than its proximity to power and prestige?”

Judge Kavanaugh’s nomination presents an emergency — for democratic life, for our safety and freedom, for the future of our country. His nomination is not an interesting intellectual exercise to be debated amongst classmates and scholars in seminar. Support for Judge Kavanaugh is not apolitical. It is a political choice about the meaning of the constitution and our vision of democracy, a choice with real consequences for real people. Without a doubt, Judge Kavanaugh is a threat to the most vulnerable. He is a threat to many of us, despite the privilege bestowed by our education, simply because of who we are.

Since his campaign launched, Trump has repeatedly promised to appoint justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. Overturning that decision would endanger the lives of countless people who need or may need abortions — including many who sign this letter. Trump’s nomination of Judge Kavanaugh is a reliable way to fulfill his oath. Just a few months ago, Judge Kavanaugh ruled to deny a detained immigrant minor her constitutional right to abortion. Decades-old Supreme Court precedent makes clear that the government may not place an undue burden on a pregnant person’s access to abortion. But Judge Kavanaugh clearly did not feel constrained by precedent: what could be a greater obstacle than a cage? The minor had never wavered in her decision to seek an abortion and had received a judicial bypass from a state judge who found that she was competent to make the decision. Yet Kavanaugh condescendingly and disingenuously held that she must wait weeks until she was in a “better place” to make a choice about her own bodily autonomy — at which point she might not be able to have a legal abortion. Further, Kavanaugh argued that to require immigration authorities to stop blocking her from accessing this right would force the government into complicity.

The judge employed similar spurious reasoning in a 2015 dissent arguing that the ACA’s contraceptive mandate violated the rights of religious organizations, even though those organizations were granted an accommodation that allowed them to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage. Kavanaugh’s opinions give us grave concern that he will consistently prioritize the beliefs of third-parties over the rights of the oppressed — not only when it comes to abortion and contraception, but also regarding other forms of medical care (including care for transgender patients), family privacy, and sexual liberty. Litigants harness this same logic when arguing that institutions have a religious right to discriminate against LGBT people — an issue the Court is certain to take up in the years to come.

Judge Kavanaugh would also act as a rubber stamp for President Trump’s fraud and abuse. Despite working with independent counsel Ken Starr to prosecute Bill Clinton, Judge Kavanaugh has since called upon Congress to exempt sitting presidents from civil suits, criminal investigations, and criminal prosecutions. He has also noted that “a serious constitutional question exists regarding whether a president can be criminally indicted and tried while in office.” This reversal does not reflect high-minded consideration but rather naked partisanship. At a time when the President and his associates are under investigation for various serious crimes, including colluding with the Russian government and obstructing justice, Judge Kavanaugh’s extreme deference to the Executive poses a direct threat to our democracy.

As part of his assault on the administrative state — based not in law, as he claims, but on policy preference — Judge Kavanaugh has undermined attempts to protect the environment and regulate predatory lenders and for-profit colleges. He has called now-defunct Net Neutrality regulations violations of the First Amendment. If elevated, the judge would pose an existential threat to the government’s ability to regulate for the common good and further twist the First Amendment beyond recognition, using it as a sword to advance his personal political preferences. His appointment would usher in a new era of Lochner, with “black-robed rulers overriding citizens’ choices.”

Judge Kavanaugh has consistently protected the interests of powerful institutions and disregarded the rights of vulnerable individuals. On the D.C. Circuit he denied a student with disabilities access to the remedial education he was promised after he emerged from juvenile detention. In a 2008 dissent, Judge Kavanaugh argued undocumented workers are not protected by labor laws. In 2016, Judge Kavanaugh ruled that employers can require employees to waive their right to picket. In a concurrence, he argued that the National Security Agency’s sweeping call surveillance program was consistent with the Fourth Amendment. As an attorney, he advocated for prayer at open public school events in brazen contravention of our country’s separation of church and state.

The list goes on. We see in these rulings an intellectually and morally bankrupt ideologue intent on rolling back our rights and the rights of our clients. Judge Kavanaugh’s resume is certainly marked by prestige, groomed for exactly this nomination. But degrees and clerkships should not be the only, or even the primary, credential for a Supreme Court appointment. A commitment to law and justice is.

Now is the time for moral courage — which for Yale Law School comes at so little cost. Perhaps you, as an institution and as individuals, will benefit less from Judge Kavanaugh’s ascendent power if you withhold your support. Perhaps Judge Kavanaugh will be less likely to hire your favorite students. But people will die if he is confirmed. We hope you agree your sacrifice would be worth it. Please use your authority and platform to expose the stakes of this moment and the threat that Judge Kavanaugh poses.

Signed,  (nearly 1000 Yale Law School graduates and undergraduates and other associates).  You can see the entire and increasing list of signatures at Glen Brown's blog.

“Is there nothing more important to Yale Law School than its proximity to power and prestige?”

Methane - Colorless, Odorless, Tasteless, and Lethal

Colorless, Odorless, Tasteless & Lethal

My uncle used to play a simpleton’s trick on us when we were very young and qualified as purebred simpletons.  It was called “Pull my finger.”  It was also at that time in our pre-pubescent youth that all things poop, gross, and fart were golden moments of laughter.  

Uncle Ralph enjoyed a burger with jalapenos or a well-packed burrito; thus, a pulled finger might just bring an explosive drum roll from his nether regions.  Farts, by and large, are not only common but more usually a balance of sulphur and hydrogen in humans rather than methane.  Because of that, they usually smell and are also combustible. I won’t go any further.

Methane, a gaseous by-product often associated with ruminant cattle, is a lesser product of human consumption.  Nevertheless, methane is actually a hideously dangerous gas affecting our climate’s increasing warming, and recent determinations by the E.P.A. (once known as the Environmental Protection Agency) pose a serious threat to our universal experiences as warmest months on record, monstrous heat-fueled hurricanes, and summer fueled fires on our west coast.  

A QUICK PRIMER ON METHANE ALA TRUMP.

Simply put, the air around us is gaseous – mostly oxygen, nitrogen and argon.  BUT certain gases are more likely to produce “global warming” and have earned the dubious character description of Greenhouse Gases.  Most of us know that carbon dioxide has earned a special notoriety in the media for its increasing accumulation and increase environmental changes. The more C02 in the world, the more magnification and holding of heat in our atmosphere.   

Methane is far different than carbon dioxide.  Far different and far deadlier.

Before he left office, Obama signed a number of Presidential Orders, one of which was the Gas Reduction Rule of 2016.  As with all if not most Presidential Orders by Obama, the Trump Administration is rolling back the previous leader’s regulation by now allowing for the increased release of methane gas into our atmosphere and environment.  

            

You see, methane wasn’t a dangerous addition coming from Uncle Ralph’s extended finger or the likely addition of millions of belching and farting bovines in open pastures (which they do), it is the very nature of the gas methane and its influence on global warming that makes it most sinister and integral in the warming of our atmosphere.

Methane – or natural gas – is developed naturally over thousands of years underground and can remain in pockets for continuing thousands of years.  Do you have gas heat?   

Those who argue against methane’s likely influence in global warming cite methane’s quick breakdown in the atmosphere as compared to 02 or H20; that is within 15 – 20 years.  

Are you staying with me? I hope so.  In other words, while trying to capture fossil fuels for their markets, big businesses run by people like the Koch brothers "accidentally" release tons of methane and Obama's regulation forces them to financially assume the responsibility to prevent or limit this loss of methane into the atmosphere.   

It is true that methane breaks down faster than most other gases, but that defense by most oil industries is specious (a falsehood).  

Methane is far more dangerous than 02 or H20 or even C02.  

Some molecules are able to absorb more heat from the sun than others, and methane is a sponge of warmth acquisition.  Floating around out there in the environment, methane may last for a shorter period of time that major culprits like C02, but it has the capacity to create 34 times the potency of C02 over a century.   

The GWP (Global Warming Potential) of a gas is measured by life span and ability to accrue  and hold warmth.   in fact, methane’s shorter life-span in our atmosphere shows an actual GWP over 20 years of 86 times the negative influence of C02.  Methane may have a shorter lifespan, but it has nearly 100 times the destructive power to our climate.  

Now, the Trump Administration has allowed for the release of leaked gas (methane) into our environment as a natural occurrence by gas and fuel industries.  The original Obama Order attempted to reign in methane waste and release by 170,000 tons every year – equal to the greenhouse emissions of nearly 900,000 vehicles annually.  Trump's rollback of this earlier attempt to curb environmental destruction will also run parallel to rollbacks on vehicle fuel economy standards as well as his earlier curbs on the release of refrigerant gases (you’ll recall the hole in the ozone a few decades ago).  

Honestly, any nation looking for energy sources will likely increase methane release, but not always intentionally or arbitrarily.  The search and development of fossil fuels (especially coal) release methane. Beyond biogenic sources (cattle, etc.) the other two culprits are usually fossil fuel development, wildfires and intentional burning (think Amazon forest).  

Trump’s EPA proposal will reduce the need for monitoring methane release, create more exemptions to current standards, provide for alternative methods like flaring, and allow for increased release of methane during natural gas capture.  Flaring and venting is the process by which captured energy is wasted in an uncontrolled release into the environment by oil producers as an efficiency method during production.  Trump’s administration believes that this move to allow increased methane release into our environment will save the oil and fuel industry around $75 million per year. The current EPA under Trump has replied to environmental concerns that not enough information or data is available to quantify the possible health costs or later issues with such a release of methane into our environment. 

Breaking News: Summer will be extended.

Future news: Winter will be postponed.

You can call the Whitehouse at 202-456-1111.