Earl O. Hutchinson
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Dems can stall another Scalia on High Court
President Trump has made it crystal clear that his SCOTUS picks will be reincarnations of the hard-line late Antonin Scalia. He was as good as his word with his first pick Neil Gorsuch. His majority vote to nail abortion, union dues, and approve No. 45’s Muslim travel ban was terrorizing proof of that. No. 45 wasted no time telling one and all that he’ll pick from a list of 25 names for a replacement for retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.
How do they get away with it?
The New York Times was reporting well-known rumors and accusations when it broke the story Thursday that big-shot movie mogul and Miramax founder Harvey Weinstein allegedly had a long history of sexually harassing, abusing and victimizing countless women. But Mr. Weinstein might have gotten away with the alleged sexual abuse that reportedly spanned three decades for a good reason — several good reasons, in fact.
Signs of things to come
GOP senators, conservative bloggers and legal shills have launched a charm campaign to paint U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama as a guy who has been misunderstood.
Ben Carson: A never-ending nightmare
When Ben Carson emphatically declared that he has no government experience that would qualify him to run a federal agency, most took this to mean that he would quietly fade from public attention. We should have known better.
Carson comic relief no more
on immigration, women and anything else that came to his mind, had the franchise on spouting ridiculous inanities. Dr. Carson hasn’t exactly reformed his ways and become the model of civility in expression: Witness his blast of the Iran treaty deal as anti-Semitic. He’s also prompted more than a few eyes to roll with his inference that Planned Parenthood is a nefarious conspiracy to reduce the black population.
The black-on-black murder myth
Conservative blogs, websites, newspapers and pundits are at it again, screaming that young black males are killing each other with abandon in city after city. They repeatedly toss out the supposedly raging murder violence in Baltimore, Chicago and New York City as proof that black- on-black carnage has mounted to national epidemic levels. It makes no difference that murder rates have drastically plunged in most big cities during the past two decades, and that Chicago and Baltimore are glaring aberrations to the consistent steady national decline in murders.
Lynch pawn in GOP game
Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell said that a vote will finally come April 23 on Attorney General-nominee Loretta Lynch. It probably will happen this time.
Black vote must count in Ferguson
Ferguson, Mo., will hold municipal elections April 7. The mayor and five of the six city council members are white. Three are up for re-election. Since Michael Brown was gunned down by former Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson on Aug. 9, the one loud refrain has been how could a city where African-Americans make up the overwhelming majority of the population be policed by a nearly all-white police force, and governed by a nearly all-white city administration? The thought was that the Brown slaying angered and engaged so many thousands that it was almost a done deal that the first chance black residents got they’d jam the polls and totally revamp city government in Ferguson.
High court’s war on President Obama
U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts was lambasted as a turncoat, traitor and betrayer by conservatives when he cast the deciding fifth vote in 2012 upholding the constitutional soundness of the Affordable Care Act. This allowed states and the federal government to put in an array of measures to fully implement the act. That didn’t end the matter. Conservatives dug deep and found a provision buried in the law that purports that only states and not the federal government can set up insurance exchanges. The case is King vs. Burwell. If the court upholds the challenge, it would nullify the subsidies in the form of IRS approved tax credits that the millions of people who signed up for coverage in those states receive.
