We Need Ian Drury's Reasons To Be Cheerful, Pt. 4!

 To point out our reasons to be cheerful.

Or at least less anxious that Cheeto Man is not going to get us all killed.

Donald Trump considers U.S. role as Strait of Hormuz guardian 

The Nato summit exposed the real source of Trump’s power | Robert Reich |  (The Guardian)

U.S., Iran locked in struggle for control of the Strait of Hormuz (NBC News)

Trump informs Congress of renewed Iran strikes, starting 60-day clock (The Hill) 

DC insider warns of very real GOP plot to stop Dem takeover after November victory (Alternet.org )

Trump Embraces Australian Retirement System Backed by Larry Fink 

Judge blasts Trump lawsuit against IRS as improper 

'Impeachment Is Next,' Says Senate Dem After Judge Voids Trump Slush Fund Settlement (Common Dreams) 

The Supreme Court’s quiet coup (SCOTUSblog)

The court’s attacks on congressional power have not come through its monumental decisions regarding reproductive freedom, firearms, or presidential immunity. Instead – and more quietly – the court is also attempting to strip Congress of its authority to carry out its most important function: make laws for the benefit of the American people, where the voting population can hold the elected officials who make those laws accountable through the ballot box. As described below, the unelected members of the court weakened this core relationship between the American people and their government by dismantling pro-democracy voting rights laws, inventing new judicial doctrines out of whole cloth to reject duly enacted laws, rejecting administrative expertise, permitting the president to fire the heads of otherwise independent agencies, and dismissing legislative history as a tool for interpreting the legislative intent behind congressional action.

Taken together, this arrogation of power upsets the careful system of checks and balances created by the founders, elevating the court above Congress, a “co-equal” branch of government where the founders believed policy decisions should be made. These judicial interventions have made it harder for Congress to protect civil rights, voting access, and the environment. What is worse, they position the judiciary as America’s primary policymaking body, a role the founders never intended for the courts.

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As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 47: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” 

 

Dispatches From Indiana’s War On Poor People (Sheila Kennedy )

Be we still have Reasons To Be Cheerful, Pt. 3

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