7th February 2018, 9:41 PM
So, two new reasons to be worried about our democracy!
First, Donald Trump thinks that it's fun to say how people (Democrats) who did not stand up and applaud him at the State of the Union are traitors. I think it's fairly obvious how this is a very directly authoritarian statement -- you applaud Glorious Leader, or you die! The choice is up to you...
Trump is dumb, yes, but with lines like this we are reminded of how dangerous his ignorance is.
And second, a Republican in the Pennsylvania State House thinks that they should impeach their state Supreme Court because the court ruled against the Republicans' very effective gerrymander in that state. Now, Pennsylvania may be a battleground state for statewide elections (president, senator, governor), but the state house and senate, and the US House delegation, are very strongly gerrymandered in the Republican's favor. The current, post-2010 13 to 5 Republican gerrymander even survived Obama's 2012 Presidential win without losing a seat, which was impressive when apparently Democrats got more votes statewide that year for the House.
But there have been several legislative challenges to this gerrymander, and recently one based exclusively on the state constitution (and not the federal one) won -- the state high court decided that the districts are an illegal partisan gerrymander. Now, the high court has a 5-to-3 Democratic majority. So, this Republican's idea is, impeach the five dissenters in order to hold political power, whether the courts or people want to or not. And with the veto-proof, more-than-two-thirds majorities Republicans have in both houses of the statehouse, they could do that if they want...
And as with Trump, the danger here towards our democracy is quite direct and obvious. Even if this doesn't happen, that it would even come up as a possibility says a lot about the state of this nation right now, sadly...
First, Donald Trump thinks that it's fun to say how people (Democrats) who did not stand up and applaud him at the State of the Union are traitors. I think it's fairly obvious how this is a very directly authoritarian statement -- you applaud Glorious Leader, or you die! The choice is up to you...
Trump is dumb, yes, but with lines like this we are reminded of how dangerous his ignorance is.
And second, a Republican in the Pennsylvania State House thinks that they should impeach their state Supreme Court because the court ruled against the Republicans' very effective gerrymander in that state. Now, Pennsylvania may be a battleground state for statewide elections (president, senator, governor), but the state house and senate, and the US House delegation, are very strongly gerrymandered in the Republican's favor. The current, post-2010 13 to 5 Republican gerrymander even survived Obama's 2012 Presidential win without losing a seat, which was impressive when apparently Democrats got more votes statewide that year for the House.
But there have been several legislative challenges to this gerrymander, and recently one based exclusively on the state constitution (and not the federal one) won -- the state high court decided that the districts are an illegal partisan gerrymander. Now, the high court has a 5-to-3 Democratic majority. So, this Republican's idea is, impeach the five dissenters in order to hold political power, whether the courts or people want to or not. And with the veto-proof, more-than-two-thirds majorities Republicans have in both houses of the statehouse, they could do that if they want...
And as with Trump, the danger here towards our democracy is quite direct and obvious. Even if this doesn't happen, that it would even come up as a possibility says a lot about the state of this nation right now, sadly...