This is what astounds me: “Heritage derived much of its prominence from the intellectual firepower of its staff, who saw themselves as conservatives, not reactionaries. If their project coincided with those reactionary goals, well, so be it. At least they were motivated by love of originalism, not gutter bigotry. If you squinted hard, you could see they were the true, classical liberals.” Originalism… they read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the writings of the founders, and they believe themselves to be purists. They’ve fooled themselves. They are more like the crown the first American patriots rejected in 1776.
When the Democrats take control of Congress next year, I hope they start working on serious campaign reform to eliminate the dark money in politics. These people are scary. They are allowed to believe what they will, but they should be no where near government.
Sorry, but that 'originalism' has been twisted so many times in so many ways and ignored when inconvenient to their goals. They never employed historians when researching the context for their 'originalism' theories. They focused only on the people who wrote it and never on the people who signed it. The common language has not changed that much, though a few terms need to be clarified by a clear reading of the entire constitution, and historical context.
Let us take the idea of needing to use the Impeachment process, with it's impeachment standards to remove a Judge or Justice. If you are very careful to only read one sentence at a time and ignore all others in the constitution, along with ignoring ALL Historical context... you can almost make a tortured case for it. I am sure the Justices WANTED that tortured excuse to make it harder to remove them, but the actual constitution makes VERY clear the standard for removal of judges is MUCH lower. Judges and Justices need to be on "Good Behaviour" in order to stay in office. They did not detail the means to remove, so it must be at least roughly equivalent to the process of putting them into office.
A common mistake by the founders was over-estimating the honor of those elected to Congress, Presidency and even those appointed to courts. They could picture a few bad people, but not an entire party. I also suspect they did not realize that the way the elections were structured would cause the creation of parties, especially because the initial method of choosing presidents did not involve an election by the people (through the electoral college - which was a compromise to get the insecure smaller states to join the bigger ones).
Trump has been a stress test on our system and to fix it will take real work. For instance we have proven the impeachment process is broken. 14th Amendment Section 3 is broken.
The entire "unitary executive theory" is so incredibly bogus when you look at the entire constitution (not just cherry picking to fit your goals) and the obvious intent and the structure of it all. One example: "he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices" - HOW can that be translated to mean absolute power to micro manage, or even arbitrarily fire that 'principal officer of an executive department'? You would have to ignore that and other plain text that gave the president limited powers AND the requirement to FOLLOW the laws, including the laws passed by congress and signed by a president (or by 2/3 of each house). Those laws are inherently limiting to the actions of the president, so how can a 'Unitary Executive' over-ride them? For Originalism - the context of the recent driving out of their new nation a King that had power over them. Why in the world would they phrase limitations and requirements on their president and at the same time give him absolute power?
We waged our revolutionary war with England ruled by King George III. Caesar was from the Roman Empire around 2,000 years ago. Pretty sure the people writing and signing our Constitution were more focused on King George III than on Caesar.
Project 2025 is about as radical as you can get. Heritage has been rife with every form of prejudice forever. What the hell did these people think? Clearly they were delusional. The guy whose lifetime goal is to deny minorities the vote can’t be associated with anti-semites? Give me a break.
They knew exactly what they were doing and who they were doing it with. None of the bastards at heritage are any different than clairmont or any of the other open Nazis in the Republican sphere.
They all want the same thing, the only difference is that some of them pay lip service to optics.
Loop this in with the Fox-style right wing media universe, the oligarch/inequality problems and a general patina of rot and corruption in civic institutions and government and tie a vulgar bow around the box of pestilence the liberal community will have to develop a vaccine to eradicate, if it can. I’d like to read that story though.
Well said David. It's always amazed me that politicians in power and high ranking government officials are presumably not part of the national elite they speak so scornfully of.
I always knew this Heritage/Maga marriage would end up badly because it was based on hatred and greed, what I never imagined was that it would end up in a bitter divorce, the damage caused to the country is unimaginable, the healing process will take a while.
Dye uses terms like "intellectual firepower" to describe the Heritage Foundation employees. There's a difference between actual intellectuals and these hacks. Intellectuals identify problems and look for solutions. These third-raters have answers and write up explanations for why they're right.
Their answers are predictable. Take any idea from an actual intellectual. Turn it on its head. That's the answer they're justifying.
For example, the man-god Antonin Scalia fleshed out the absurd theory of textualism. He ruled that the only way to interpret a statute is to enforce the actual words, using only a Merriam-Webster dictionary.
The intellectual's answer to the question of how to interpret a statute is to use centuries-old principles designed to find the intent of the legislature, see, e.g. Sutherland Statutory Construction. Reading the words is one important part of ferreting out legislative intent, but it's far from the only one.
Textualism facilitates reaching the desired result, which is often obviously contrary to the actual intent of the legislature. When that doesn't work, as in Biden v Nebraska, Scalia's acolytes create new doctrines like the major questions "doctrine".
So what do these deserting rats want? A Project 2025 cast of kindly white CNats running a Forever Reich that acknowledges (subhuman) minorities. Sehr gut.
One thing I wonder about, though: Evan Bernick's suggestion that there might not be enough MAGAt money to keep Heritage booming. I sure wouldn't bet on that. There seems to be no end of money coming in from the most heinous far-right billionaires, who want nothing more than destroy democracy once and for all. The people left at Heritage may have to tweak their focus a bit, but I don't see that it would be more than a tweak.
Heritage Foundation was always about power. Policy was focused on power and feeding their rich donors' priorities. The means were corrupt as were the goals.
Sure, they hired bright people. Rich people hire bright people all the time, to make them money, giving those bright people just enough crumbs to keep them on the job.
All the conservative media, the judges... They followed the money and the power and they built the power from inside the government they wanted to control for the corrupt purposes of others.
The 'hate factions' have been part of the GOP since the 60's, though the trolls keep trying to confuse the issue. They hate different groups, different people, but their raging hate is the common fingerprint.
Yes, mental diseases, such as hate can be contagious, including affecting the people hated so that many hate in return. You cure the plague by stopping the source, NOT by telling the reasonable people they have to do all the work of 'healing the nation'. That is just more troll talk, trying to confuse the issue. If a person full of rage attacks a cop, is the cop supposed to just relax, take the punches, wait for the attacker to get a weapon and still just talk calm and reasonable? With good training a cop can keep calm as they aggressively restrain and place in jail the idiot who had replaced thinking with rage. Most people are not that well trained, especially when the rage addicts are the ones apparently in power.
When the rage addicts have power, they simply claim that anyone trying to restrain them, hold them accountable for their crimes, are 'politically motivated' and evil... Get the clue, when we get power again, and it will happen, we need to aggressively hold them ALL accountable for their crimes, including following illegal orders. That will include cleaning up SCOTUS of those who lied under oath, those who violated ethics rules used by lower judges, and several other judges KNOWN to act in bad faith. Then get politics out of the nominating and approving process for judges/Justices, with an amendment if need be.
Select an Attorney General with a drive to clean house without fear of Republicans crying foul. They will cry and scream and accuse and lie all day long every day no matter what we do. So let us do it right. That includes changing the rules so that people with unlimited funds don't get to indefinitely delay their court cases. The public ALSO has a right to a "speedy trial".
The challenge is how to clean up the media and re-install truth into shows that are even remotely related to "News", and how to teach our young how to use critical thinking and some applied wisdom that does not have anything to do with parties, except when one party takes advantage of people with lies and manipulation. LOTS more to do of course, and while this may sound like 'retribution', it is much more than that. Do it for the same reasons we arrest murderers. We do it to get the bad people into a place where the rest of us can be safe and to set an example so that people learn it is WRONG to kill and there will be consequences. We never did it for the civil war, and we were too slow and late for the 'head of the snake' this last time, and then that 'head' pardoned all of them, and everybody just decided the 14th amendment, section 3 was not a part of our constitution after all. Laws need to have TEETH that do not assume everyone will honor their oaths.
This is what astounds me: “Heritage derived much of its prominence from the intellectual firepower of its staff, who saw themselves as conservatives, not reactionaries. If their project coincided with those reactionary goals, well, so be it. At least they were motivated by love of originalism, not gutter bigotry. If you squinted hard, you could see they were the true, classical liberals.” Originalism… they read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the writings of the founders, and they believe themselves to be purists. They’ve fooled themselves. They are more like the crown the first American patriots rejected in 1776.
When the Democrats take control of Congress next year, I hope they start working on serious campaign reform to eliminate the dark money in politics. These people are scary. They are allowed to believe what they will, but they should be no where near government.
Sorry, but that 'originalism' has been twisted so many times in so many ways and ignored when inconvenient to their goals. They never employed historians when researching the context for their 'originalism' theories. They focused only on the people who wrote it and never on the people who signed it. The common language has not changed that much, though a few terms need to be clarified by a clear reading of the entire constitution, and historical context.
Let us take the idea of needing to use the Impeachment process, with it's impeachment standards to remove a Judge or Justice. If you are very careful to only read one sentence at a time and ignore all others in the constitution, along with ignoring ALL Historical context... you can almost make a tortured case for it. I am sure the Justices WANTED that tortured excuse to make it harder to remove them, but the actual constitution makes VERY clear the standard for removal of judges is MUCH lower. Judges and Justices need to be on "Good Behaviour" in order to stay in office. They did not detail the means to remove, so it must be at least roughly equivalent to the process of putting them into office.
A common mistake by the founders was over-estimating the honor of those elected to Congress, Presidency and even those appointed to courts. They could picture a few bad people, but not an entire party. I also suspect they did not realize that the way the elections were structured would cause the creation of parties, especially because the initial method of choosing presidents did not involve an election by the people (through the electoral college - which was a compromise to get the insecure smaller states to join the bigger ones).
Trump has been a stress test on our system and to fix it will take real work. For instance we have proven the impeachment process is broken. 14th Amendment Section 3 is broken.
The entire "unitary executive theory" is so incredibly bogus when you look at the entire constitution (not just cherry picking to fit your goals) and the obvious intent and the structure of it all. One example: "he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices" - HOW can that be translated to mean absolute power to micro manage, or even arbitrarily fire that 'principal officer of an executive department'? You would have to ignore that and other plain text that gave the president limited powers AND the requirement to FOLLOW the laws, including the laws passed by congress and signed by a president (or by 2/3 of each house). Those laws are inherently limiting to the actions of the president, so how can a 'Unitary Executive' over-ride them? For Originalism - the context of the recent driving out of their new nation a King that had power over them. Why in the world would they phrase limitations and requirements on their president and at the same time give him absolute power?
" For Originalism - the context of the recent driving out of their new nation a King that had power over them."
Because Caesar? He wasn't a King, he was an...Emperor!
That's different.
It just is, okay?
We waged our revolutionary war with England ruled by King George III. Caesar was from the Roman Empire around 2,000 years ago. Pretty sure the people writing and signing our Constitution were more focused on King George III than on Caesar.
Yes, that was my point—that you'd have to reach back to the end of the Roman Republic/start of the Roman Empire to find precedent.
Not I don't think some sufficiently desperate Heritage Foundation type wouldn't try it....
Exactly the point… why in the world?????
Project 2025 is about as radical as you can get. Heritage has been rife with every form of prejudice forever. What the hell did these people think? Clearly they were delusional. The guy whose lifetime goal is to deny minorities the vote can’t be associated with anti-semites? Give me a break.
They knew exactly what they were doing and who they were doing it with. None of the bastards at heritage are any different than clairmont or any of the other open Nazis in the Republican sphere.
They all want the same thing, the only difference is that some of them pay lip service to optics.
"The guy whose lifetime goal is to deny minorities the vote can’t be associated with anti-semites? Give me a break."
Well, Jewish people in the Heritage Foundation told themselves they weren't a "minority" —they were White AMERICANS!
White Jewish-AMERICANS!
Freedom of Religion and all that!
It's (remotely) possible that a nonzero number of non-Jewish White Americans in the Heritage Foundation told themselves that, too.
Loop this in with the Fox-style right wing media universe, the oligarch/inequality problems and a general patina of rot and corruption in civic institutions and government and tie a vulgar bow around the box of pestilence the liberal community will have to develop a vaccine to eradicate, if it can. I’d like to read that story though.
Am I the only one who thinks “conservative intellectual” is an oxymoron?
“… online rabble rousers” roast the rabbis?
Yup, bray “antisemitism” while demonizing “the elites” as noted. Noted also, but unsaid, THEY are the elite.
Well said David. It's always amazed me that politicians in power and high ranking government officials are presumably not part of the national elite they speak so scornfully of.
Ham-fisted projection — a rightwing speciality.
What Jews did they think the Tiki torch toters were chanting about?
"What Jews did they think the Tiki torch toters were chanting about?"
Black and Brown People, of course!
Jews are White! Didn't you know that...?
And Happy Holidays to the Public Notice family and community❣️
Happy holidays Lisa!
I always knew this Heritage/Maga marriage would end up badly because it was based on hatred and greed, what I never imagined was that it would end up in a bitter divorce, the damage caused to the country is unimaginable, the healing process will take a while.
Dye uses terms like "intellectual firepower" to describe the Heritage Foundation employees. There's a difference between actual intellectuals and these hacks. Intellectuals identify problems and look for solutions. These third-raters have answers and write up explanations for why they're right.
Their answers are predictable. Take any idea from an actual intellectual. Turn it on its head. That's the answer they're justifying.
For example, the man-god Antonin Scalia fleshed out the absurd theory of textualism. He ruled that the only way to interpret a statute is to enforce the actual words, using only a Merriam-Webster dictionary.
The intellectual's answer to the question of how to interpret a statute is to use centuries-old principles designed to find the intent of the legislature, see, e.g. Sutherland Statutory Construction. Reading the words is one important part of ferreting out legislative intent, but it's far from the only one.
Textualism facilitates reaching the desired result, which is often obviously contrary to the actual intent of the legislature. When that doesn't work, as in Biden v Nebraska, Scalia's acolytes create new doctrines like the major questions "doctrine".
Hacks. Nothing more.
Well said - intellectual hacks, hateful, cynical, power hungry, corrupt intellectual wannabes.
And another round begins. This will be fun to watch.
How to master the masses without maga.
Shove them overboard.
So what do these deserting rats want? A Project 2025 cast of kindly white CNats running a Forever Reich that acknowledges (subhuman) minorities. Sehr gut.
Information I hadn't heard about Heritage. Brilliantly said
Is AmericaFest short for America Festering?
Did they drown it in a bathtub?
Thanks for another of your great explainers, Liz.
One thing I wonder about, though: Evan Bernick's suggestion that there might not be enough MAGAt money to keep Heritage booming. I sure wouldn't bet on that. There seems to be no end of money coming in from the most heinous far-right billionaires, who want nothing more than destroy democracy once and for all. The people left at Heritage may have to tweak their focus a bit, but I don't see that it would be more than a tweak.
Heritage Foundation was always about power. Policy was focused on power and feeding their rich donors' priorities. The means were corrupt as were the goals.
Sure, they hired bright people. Rich people hire bright people all the time, to make them money, giving those bright people just enough crumbs to keep them on the job.
All the conservative media, the judges... They followed the money and the power and they built the power from inside the government they wanted to control for the corrupt purposes of others.
The 'hate factions' have been part of the GOP since the 60's, though the trolls keep trying to confuse the issue. They hate different groups, different people, but their raging hate is the common fingerprint.
Yes, mental diseases, such as hate can be contagious, including affecting the people hated so that many hate in return. You cure the plague by stopping the source, NOT by telling the reasonable people they have to do all the work of 'healing the nation'. That is just more troll talk, trying to confuse the issue. If a person full of rage attacks a cop, is the cop supposed to just relax, take the punches, wait for the attacker to get a weapon and still just talk calm and reasonable? With good training a cop can keep calm as they aggressively restrain and place in jail the idiot who had replaced thinking with rage. Most people are not that well trained, especially when the rage addicts are the ones apparently in power.
When the rage addicts have power, they simply claim that anyone trying to restrain them, hold them accountable for their crimes, are 'politically motivated' and evil... Get the clue, when we get power again, and it will happen, we need to aggressively hold them ALL accountable for their crimes, including following illegal orders. That will include cleaning up SCOTUS of those who lied under oath, those who violated ethics rules used by lower judges, and several other judges KNOWN to act in bad faith. Then get politics out of the nominating and approving process for judges/Justices, with an amendment if need be.
Select an Attorney General with a drive to clean house without fear of Republicans crying foul. They will cry and scream and accuse and lie all day long every day no matter what we do. So let us do it right. That includes changing the rules so that people with unlimited funds don't get to indefinitely delay their court cases. The public ALSO has a right to a "speedy trial".
The challenge is how to clean up the media and re-install truth into shows that are even remotely related to "News", and how to teach our young how to use critical thinking and some applied wisdom that does not have anything to do with parties, except when one party takes advantage of people with lies and manipulation. LOTS more to do of course, and while this may sound like 'retribution', it is much more than that. Do it for the same reasons we arrest murderers. We do it to get the bad people into a place where the rest of us can be safe and to set an example so that people learn it is WRONG to kill and there will be consequences. We never did it for the civil war, and we were too slow and late for the 'head of the snake' this last time, and then that 'head' pardoned all of them, and everybody just decided the 14th amendment, section 3 was not a part of our constitution after all. Laws need to have TEETH that do not assume everyone will honor their oaths.