Perhaps the biggest problem with the recent withdrawal of Trump's judicial nominees's isn't that they're so unfamiliar with complicated laws; instead it might be that they got this far before the media decided to report on it; or perhaps it's that the laws are so complicated in the first place, and that the elites use this complexity to manipulate the majority and enable them to rob us blind.
Not that I think we should allow these nominees, including Matthew Petersen to go through, but it shouldn't take an advanced education to realize that the elites are rigging the system, and part of the way they do this is to make laws too complicated for most of us to understand, so that we're expected to rely on "experts" to make decisions for us.
Another major problem is that the vast majority of these nominees aren't getting much coverage at all, including some others that are almost as incompetent or that many of these nominees that have been exposed as being so bad have been in government all along without much if any attention. They've drawn attention to Brett Talley's previous support for the Ku Klux Klan, which led to his withdrawal as a nominee as a judge but before this nomination he was already Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Department of Justice and now that his nomination for a judge ahs been withdrawn he's still in that position and hardly anyone is paying attention. Jeffrey Mateer, who claimed that a transgender lawsuit is part of "Satan's Plan" served as the First Assistant Attorney General of Texas before his nomination, and now that the media attention is gone he's still in that positions.
I'm not a fan of Matthew Petersen, but he seems mild compared to some of Donald Trump's other nominees as far as I can tell after looking him up. If he did use reasonable discretion and supported the intent of the law, at least as they present it to the public, to defend us all equally, then he might be more qualified than the vast majority of judges that often use complex legal procedures to help rig the political system for campaign donors.
However, he's been a member of the United States Federal Election Commission for almost ten years and remains there now that his nomination has been withdrawn, yet I haven't heard anything about him speaking out against the political establishment and media only covering candidates that collect enormous amounts of money from corporations ensuring that only candidates they support can get the name recognition they need to get elected essentially rigging the entire election process as part of a routine!
I haven't heard him, or any other politician speak out about how allowing a fraction of one percent of the richest people in the country control over ninety percent of the media, which is exactly what the first amendment was supposed to prevent, and use this control to preselect which candidates are chosen as nominees similar to the way Beijing decides which candidates are allowed to run in Hong Kong; but most people don't even seem to notice and repeating propaganda to keep them distracted is also routine!
What isn't routine is reporting on the vast majority of the judges that have been nominated all over the country to lower courts that are already making major decisions, until a handful of the worst get nominated to the Supreme Court, and even then the worst of it isn't reported, while the report a sampling of it in a lower profile manner than what is on TV like the following article exposing a handful of additional extreme candidates that weren't mentioned on TV:
3 Trump Judicial Nominees Withdraw, Raising Some Questions About Vetting 12/19/2017
.... It took longer for the handwriting to become clear for Brett Talley, a 36-year-old Justice Department official, ghost hunter and believer in the paranormal.
He was approved by the Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote in November, despite a rare and unanimous unqualified rating by the American Bar Association. But as his nomination sat waiting for a vote by the full Senate, news organizations reported that he had failed to disclose key information required for all nominees on his Senate questionnaire. Specifically, he failed to disclose thousands of controversial blog posts under a pseudonym, including one supporting the early Ku Klux Klan, and failed to disclose that he is married to the chief of staff for White House counsel McGahn.
Finally, there was Jeffrey Mateer, an outspoken supporter of religious liberty, nominated with the strong support of his home state senator, Ted Cruz of Texas. Shortly after the nomination was announced, gay rights groups called attention to frequent comments Mateer had made calling same-sex marriage "disgusting" and likening it to polygamy and bestiality. Speaking about a lawsuit brought by a transgender student, Mateer, said "it just shows you how Satan's plan is working and the destruction that is going on."
The three nominees who have withdrawn are not the only ones who could have problems. Damien Schiff, nominated for the Court of Federal Claims, wrote a blog post that called Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy a "judicial prostitute." Another, Thomas Farr, has been accused of lying about his role in suppressing the black vote in North Carolina. Both have been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and are awaiting confirmation.
But others have sailed through quickly with GOP support. To cite just one example, John Bush, a prominent Republican lawyer was confirmed in June for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit despite some 400 often intemperate and very political blog posts under a fake name — posts that linked to so-called alt-right reports containing conspiracy theories and false information, such as the discredited claim that former President Obama was not born in the United States.
Pressed at his confirmation hearing by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Bush said he regretted having equated the Supreme Court's 1857 decision upholding slavery with the court's 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision, and he maintained that he would have no difficulty following the Roe ruling.
The breakneck speed of nominations and confirmations makes it sometimes look as though the Senate "will confirm anyone who has a temperature of 98.6," observes Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution scholar who studies the judicial appointment process. He thinks that the Trump nominees may be "more uniformly conservative" than nominees in previous Republican administrations because Trump has given "freer rein to the [conservative] Federalist Society." Complete article
.... It took longer for the handwriting to become clear for Brett Talley, a 36-year-old Justice Department official, ghost hunter and believer in the paranormal.
He was approved by the Judiciary Committee on a party-line vote in November, despite a rare and unanimous unqualified rating by the American Bar Association. But as his nomination sat waiting for a vote by the full Senate, news organizations reported that he had failed to disclose key information required for all nominees on his Senate questionnaire. Specifically, he failed to disclose thousands of controversial blog posts under a pseudonym, including one supporting the early Ku Klux Klan, and failed to disclose that he is married to the chief of staff for White House counsel McGahn.
Finally, there was Jeffrey Mateer, an outspoken supporter of religious liberty, nominated with the strong support of his home state senator, Ted Cruz of Texas. Shortly after the nomination was announced, gay rights groups called attention to frequent comments Mateer had made calling same-sex marriage "disgusting" and likening it to polygamy and bestiality. Speaking about a lawsuit brought by a transgender student, Mateer, said "it just shows you how Satan's plan is working and the destruction that is going on."
The three nominees who have withdrawn are not the only ones who could have problems. Damien Schiff, nominated for the Court of Federal Claims, wrote a blog post that called Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy a "judicial prostitute." Another, Thomas Farr, has been accused of lying about his role in suppressing the black vote in North Carolina. Both have been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and are awaiting confirmation.
But others have sailed through quickly with GOP support. To cite just one example, John Bush, a prominent Republican lawyer was confirmed in June for a seat on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit despite some 400 often intemperate and very political blog posts under a fake name — posts that linked to so-called alt-right reports containing conspiracy theories and false information, such as the discredited claim that former President Obama was not born in the United States.
Pressed at his confirmation hearing by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., Bush said he regretted having equated the Supreme Court's 1857 decision upholding slavery with the court's 1973 Roe v. Wade abortion decision, and he maintained that he would have no difficulty following the Roe ruling.
The breakneck speed of nominations and confirmations makes it sometimes look as though the Senate "will confirm anyone who has a temperature of 98.6," observes Russell Wheeler, a Brookings Institution scholar who studies the judicial appointment process. He thinks that the Trump nominees may be "more uniformly conservative" than nominees in previous Republican administrations because Trump has given "freer rein to the [conservative] Federalist Society." Complete article
While the majority are relieved about a handful of Trump's fanatical nominees being withdrawn there are more being approved with little or no reporting. And even nominees from the so called progressives are more right wing than they're letting on, including Merrick Garland, who wouldn't have been considered progressive at all if not for the fact that the GOP decided they could stall for a year. Barack Obama carefully selected someone to please these right wingers instead of trying to at least nominate a real progressive and make a good political argument for it to expose the GOP, and they stonewalled him anyway.
Obama and the rest of the establishment Democratic Part have had an incredible knack for caving to the Republican Party, which is part of the reason they couldn't get the progressive support they needed to get elected and what enabled Donald Trump get elected in the first place!
By now most people have forgotten how favorable to corporate interests Neil Gorsuch is as I mentioned in a previous article, Propaganda Campaign For Fascism In Progress, but he's demonstrated over and over again that he supports corporate control of the government and economic system, including his most famous case Hobby Lobby, which allowed employers to make religious and health care decisions for workers. Now that he's on the Supreme Court the media hardly mentions him at all, which is more effective than a campaign to make him look moderate, because if people aren't thinking about him they won't realize how extreme he is.
When they were pushing the public relations campaign one of Obama's young female lawyers did a commercial to support him which was clearly designed to make him look moderate, but he's unlikely to support women's rights at all, perhaps even abortion. In addition to not caring about women's rights, he's also demonstrated that he cares more about corporate profits than protecting the environment like his mother and even if the "Fascism Forever" reference in his yearbook was partly a joke, it accurately reflects his ideology, now and when he was in college, which is why it made it into the yearbook!
It shouldn't be too surprising that one of Obama's lawyers supported him, after Obama caved on every prosecution against Wall Street corruption when he was in office!
I could go into a long list of things that are obviously being rigged for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the rest of us; and in many cases lawyers that use complicated laws created by other lawyers are making arguments to justify epidemic fraud, trying to convince us that they're the "experts," but the final results favor the ruling class almost every time; and if there is an exception it's almost always because there's an enormous demand for it at the grassroots level!
Energy companies spend an enormous amount of money on propaganda about how they're working to create jobs and protect the environment; but if that were true many of the disasters that have happened, including the Gulf Horizon never would have happened. A few months ago Federal Judge ruled that the Public Has No Right To Know About Dakota Pipeline Spill Risks 04/19/2017 but whether it's because the media is getting a cut of the loot in the form of advertising sales or not this was only reported in a low profile manner. Additional reports from Robert Bullard author of "Dumping in Dixie," among other sources, expose that there's an enormous of pollution killing thousands of people, yet it is hardly reported in the traditional media and judges and lawyers have complicated arguments that are designed to convince us this is justified!
But you won't hear about that in the media or debated by political candidates unless the grassroots start getting their candidates from alternative media outlets!
Mainstream media is spending an enormous amount of time telling us they're defending democracy by exposing Trump's scams; however the reason he was elected in the first place is that they gave him obsession coverage in and refused to cover sincere grassroots candidates. The Russia conspiracy they keep obsessing about can't be nearly as bad as the fact that they only cover corrupt candidates!
Somehow none of the candidates that they are willing to cover or news reporters ever speak out against the wars based on lies including weapons of mass destruction when it can actually stop the wars; but after it's too late they're trying to convince us that they're digging for the truth to expose it!
If they wanted to inform the public they would have reported more on disclosures like Scott Ritter, which was demonized when it counted; or kept anti war pundits like Phil Donahue instead of firing him! Then after they fight wars based on lies the only candidates they cover are those that supported them when it counted, rigging future elections for more wars based on lies!
They make psychological research into the indoctrination of children by advertisers a trade secret and make it illegal for insiders to report when oligarchies gradually reduce the quality or quantity of merchandise they're selling to consumers. Trade secrecy laws also prevent them from telling the public about "slotting fees" that stores rent to oligarchies, or that supposedly competing manufacturers are making their products in sweatshops next to each other.
The claim that this is a "free market" is a lie! they now have a small number of oligarchies dividing up the market; and people familiar with alternative media or good non-fiction books know it!
These lawyers, judges and lawmakers creating and enforcing these laws aren't even trying to do a good job pretending to support a reasonably fair system, assuming anyone is actually paying attention. But of course they have researched all kinds of ways to keep us distracted so that a large percentage of the public is obsessed with celebrities or sports so they rely on them to tell them what to think.
It doesn't take a genius to recognize many of these scams especially if more people learn where to look, which isn't traditional media that represents a fraction of one percent of the public!
I'm not saying that some of these complicated legal arguments aren't necessary; butt they could and should make a large portion of them much simpler so that the public can understand it.
Once we get a more educated public with the help of alternative media outlets, at least until we have major media reform, then we should find a better way to nominate judges and report on their record, long before they get nominated to the Supreme Court and it becomes clear that there have been fanatics in the judicial system all along.
I don't know whether it's better to rely on elections for judges or appoint them but either way the public needs to be better informed and if corrupt politicians or political operatives rig the system we need a reasonable way to get the fanatics out if they don't serve our interests!
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