United Liberty

Apparently we needed more evidence that everyone in politics now holds the exact opposite positions on every process issue that they did for the entire eight years of the Obama presidency.

In 2013 the Democrats were fed up with Republicans’ obstruction of Obama’s judicial nominees, so they changed the rules of the Senate to only require a simple majority to stop debate and proceed to a vote, down from the usual 60.

Thanks to all of you who encouraged me to consider filibuster reform. It had to be done.

— Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) November 21, 2013

Republicans condemned the move as against the character of the chamber, and anti-republican. They were right, in a sense.

Since Democrats now hold a 48-vote minority in the Senate after President Trump was elected, more than enough to block his Supreme Court nominee, both parties switched sides. Republicans eliminated the 60-vote threshold and confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Court with 54 votes.

With 51 ayes, the US Senate voted to confirm Judge Neil Gorsuch as a Justice on the US Supreme Court. https://t.co/RwJ3lqMv5L pic.twitter.com/7z8d0nIwLy

— Alex Howard (@digiphile) April 7, 2017

I’m relunctant to defend this dumpster fire of a bill, but I do prefer arguments against it to be honest, and the main one right now isn’t.

Immediately after the Congressional Budget Office report on the American Health Care Act came out, headlines coalesced around the finding that 24 million people would lose coverage compared to current projections. Ignoring the fact that the initial CBO estimates about Obamacare itself were hilariously wrong about increased insurance coverage compared to Medicaid expansion, the headlines about the GOP proposal are just wrong.

Yes, the CBO estimates that 24 million fewer people will have insurance or Medicaid coverage in 2026 if Trumpcare replaces Obamacare. However, the bulk of them will not “lose coverage”; they will choose not to purchase it.

Trumpcare replaces the individual mandate that taxes people for not having some form of health coverage with the ability for insurers to charge people more if they haven’t had coverage recently.

If you stop forcing people to buy something…get this…fewer people will buy it. This isn’t the dystopian crisis that left-leaning media and pundits suggest; it’s their own panacea - choice. It’s freedom. 24 million people will not be denied coverage, they will decide not to buy it. That is a decision free citizens should be allowed to make.

When Obamacare passed in 2010, it marked a turning point in American politics from which we will almost certainly never recover. For fans, this was a good thing. For foes, necessarily bad. But a few permanent truths emerged that our current discourse must acknowledge.

@MelissaTweets 4. Every election afterward would be about reforming health care.

— Matthew DesOrmeaux ⚜ (@authoridad) March 7, 2017

We’re stuck with it now, and the main purpose of our politics will be to reform it every 4 years. That’s the point of any government-driven health care - having your own team control it.

And in that vein House Republicans have introduced their own version of health care reform reform - the American Health Care Act. President Trump has endorsed it, and HHS Secretary Price, who would implement it if passed, has called it a good first step in the process.

But the first step in the process was supposed to be repealing Obamacare itself in full. That’s what almost every Republican has campaigned on since the Tea Party wave in 2010. The AHCA doesn’t repeal the ACA in full, and in fact doubles down on much of it, just in a Republican way instead of a Democratic way.

This morning AP broke the story that the Trump administration was considering using up to 100,000 National Guard troops to assist in border enforcement and the arrest of undocumented immigrants.

BREAKING: Trump administration considers mobilizing as many as 100,000 National Guard troops to round up unauthorized immigrants.

— The Associated Press (@AP) February 17, 2017

The reaction was what we’ve come to expect in the fast and furious three weeks of the Trump presidency. Fevered outrage, flabbergasted denials, and even a little applause, on the far right.

The White House quickly denied the report, saying the memo didn’t come from them, and they never considered it. “#FakeNews” was declared, but that’s not where stories like this die.

Now that it’s in the national consciousness as a Trump proposal, whether it actually is or not, people are going to be asked about it. And that’s just what the Huffington Post did this morning, asking governors of all 11 affected (but not actually affected) states to comment.

Two GOP govs have told @BenDWalsh they have serious concerns abt using Nat Guard as deportation force https://t.co/GsSkF7Y2Lr pic.twitter.com/xQL7hMAF2L

— Amanda Terkel (@aterkel) February 17, 2017

Over the last few years terrorism and crime have been all over the news. You would be forgiven for assuming they are on the rise, but they’re not. After a large drop at the beginning of the decade, terrorist attacks around the world are about where they’ve been for the last 10 years. Despite a small uptick in murders, violent crime is still at record lows since the early 90s.

After the rash of police shootings since 2014 (both from and against), a meme emerged that rang true.

Racism isn’t “getting worse” in America. It’s always been here. Now it’s just more visible to the entire population thanks to social media

— Jon Bone (@smeoke) September 23, 2016

Reported hate crimes may be up slightly in some places, but overall crime is still extremely rare and lower than it has been in decades. We just see it more often, on the news, on Facebook, on YouTube. It’s not worse, it’s just more visible.

The same is true for President Trump’s actions compared to President Obama’s, on a few issues. Yes, Trump has already proven himself an incompetent, dangerous charlatan. But on a few things he’s just a more explicit version of Obama.

Every two years the House elections don’t go the way partisans think they should. Every two years partisans on the losing side place the blame on gerrymandering, the purposeful drawing of district lines to achieve a specific outcome. Every two years there is a new study showing that gerrymandering is not the problem. So here we go again.

Jowie Chen and David Cottrell, of University of Michigan and Dartmouth respectively, published a study (PDF) just before the election last year showing that gerrymandering has almost no effect on the overall makeup of the US House of Representatives. Previous studies have shown a significant or minor one, but Chen and Cottrell easily point out the flaws in most of those, especially in how they create a control group. This new study eliminates those inherent biases by using computer models to create a number of different nonpartisan district maps.

As a baseline, they used the 2008 election results at the precinct level.

We map the votes of these precincts to Florida’s 484,481 Census blocks according to population and then aggregate the votes into a set of 15,640 similarly-populated square polygons so as to produce a geographically-precise spatial grid of the state. These 15,640 “squares” of the grid are then used as the building blocks for the districting simulations.

The computer then chooses precincts at random to begin each district and adds more contiguous precincts until a district-size population is reached.

State senator Konni Burton didn’t wake up yesterday planning to be the target of a presidential threat, but she may have gotten one anyway. Given the president’s temperment I suppose it’s only a matter of time before he gets around to us all individually.

The Fort Worth Republican, who replaced Wendy Davis after her star-crossed gubernatorial campaign, recently introduced a bill in the Texas Senate to require a criminal conviction for civil asset forfeiture by state or local departments.

Civil asset forfeiture is the practice of law enforcement agents confiscating personal property during an investigation of a crime, sometimes just a traffic stop. In most jurisdictions the department in question is free to keep and/or sell that property for their own use or budget-padding needs. Proponents argue it eliminates property used in the commission of a crime, like a crack house or smuggling vehicles, but if no conviction is secured, then no criminal justification exists for the forfeiture.

It sounds like a heinous practice, so surely it must be rare, only used in extreme circumstances or against the most evil criminals, right? In fact, for just 2015, the total value of property seized by the feds ($5 billion) was more than victims nationwide lost from actual burglary ($3.5 billion). And that doesn’t even count state and local forfeiture, which would push the total much higher.

Please, literally any other name…

What would you call a law that prohibited the use of the seven most common hunting rifles and handguns for safety reasons but exempted knives? An honest person would call it a gun ban.

What would you call an order under Obamacare that banned seven different types of meat for health reasons but exempted tofu and fish? An honest person would call it a meat ban.

What would you call an order by China that prohibits visitors from the United States and six other majority Christian nations but specifically exempts non-Christians from those nations? An honest person would call it a Christian ban.

But if the President of the United States orders a 4-month halt on visas from seven majority Muslim nations but specifically exempts non-Muslims from those nations, everyone to the right of Lindsay Graham is apoplectic if you say it’s banning Muslims.

And that’s what it does. Period.

A Muslim ban does not have to ban all Muslims or even say the word “Muslim” to do so. The “assault weapons ban” signed by Bill Clinton exempted all guns owned before it was enacted and many new guns based on other criteria. We still call it an assault weapons ban.

It took 44 years, but a sitting Vice President has finally spoken at the annual March for Life rally in Washington, DC. The event kicked off today to a crowd of many thousands on the National Mall, and Vice President Mike Pence was on hand to deliver a rousing speech in person. He is now the highest ranked government official to ever speak at the event since its inception in 1974, the year after the Roe v Wade ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

President Trump himself is expected to give a remote address from the White House tomorrow, as previous presidents, Reagan and George W Bush, did before him.

Pence’s speech, which briefly descended to boilerplate campaign rhetoric, was otherwise pitch-perfect on the central issue of the day. He highlighted the many ways “life is winning”, with abortions steadily declining nationwide, and pro-life legislation advancing in many states over the last decade.

Though the progress of the pro-life movement is vital (literally), the reasons it has succeeded are just as important, and Pence highlighted them exhaustively.