BUCKNACKT'S SORDID TAWDRY BLOG We should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive & well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, chocolate, bier or wein in hand, body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming "WHOO-HOO, WHAT A RIDE!!!!!!"
Showing posts with label Sen mitch mcconnell r KY. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sen mitch mcconnell r KY. Show all posts
20 September 2019
14 August 2019
28 January 2019
04 February 2018
23 January 2018
Shooting At Kentucky High School Leaves 2 Dead, At Least 17 Injured 23JAN18
At least two people were killed Tuesday in Benton, Ky., after a shooter opened fire on students and faculty at a local high school. Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin said at least 17 others were injured in the attack on Marshall County High School, 12 of whom sustained gunshot wounds.
Both of the victims, a girl who died on the scene and a boy who died of his wounds later at a hospital, were 15 years old.
"We are trying to determine that every one of those that has been shot was a student. It is our belief that they are," Bevin said at a news conference Tuesday.
"The shooter was a student, a 15-year-old male," he added. "That student is in custody. That student was apprehended at the scene."
Kentucky State Police Commissioner Rick Sanders said that the shooting began just before 8 a.m. and that first responders arrived on the scene within 10 minutes of the first gunshot. The shooter was soon arrested in a "nonviolent" fashion and will be charged with murder and attempted murder, according to Bevin.
"I did not see the shooter, but I did see the commons after. It was a disaster. Everyone just dropped their stuff and ran," Allissa Hubbard, 16, told member station WKMS.
She had been in the library when a series of loud pops rang out, and students began to run outside. According to WKMS, Hubbard hid beneath a set of stairs with another girl as they listened to the screams of their teachers.
"I'm terrified," she added. "I've been feeling like I'm going to throw up all day long. It was awful."
"It was the most frightening thing," Gloria Hollifield, a parent, told WKMS. "I'm 60-some years old and I've never been so damn scared in my entire life."
"I know I speak for communities across my home state in sending prayers of comfort and healing to students, faculty and everyone affected by this violence," Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the Senate floor midday Tuesday morning as information about the shooting was beginning to surface.
"Our hearts are with the entire community in Marshall County and our gratitude is with the first responders who rushed into harm's way."
04 December 2017
08 April 2017
Senate Confirms Gorsuch To Supreme Court 7APR17
FASCIST, right wing extremist neil gorsuch has been approved by the repiglican controlled senate after Senatsmehrfotzeheit mitch mcconnell r KY invoked the nuclear option so gorsuch could be approved as the next justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. mcconnell tries to blame the senate Democrats but this is a result of mcconnell's publically stated plan to obstruct Pres Obama. Not only did mcconnell and the senate repiglicans block Merrick Garland from the entire confirmation process the article below notes " Indeed, during President Barack Obama's first term, Republicans blocked or delayed executive branch and lower court nominations 79 times. That's more than half of all the 149 filibusters used against presidential nominees in the nation's history. The Democrats noted that even as they abolished the filibuster for executive and lower court nominations in 2013, they left it in place for Supreme Court nominations, believing that lifetime appointments to the nation's highest court are different. " Now, instead of threats to our civil liberties, civil rights, human rights, to the U.S. Constitution coming from right wing political fanatics the threats will be coming from the high court itself, the very court that is supposed to protect us all. This from +NPR .....
Senate Confirms Gorsuch To Supreme Court
Updated at 2:47 p.m. ET
Judge Neil Gorsuch was confirmed Friday as the 113th justice to serve on the nation's highest court. The final vote was 54-45, mostly along party lines.
Gorsuch will be sworn in Monday. Chief Justice John Roberts will administer the constitutional oath in a private ceremony at the Supreme Court. Later in the day, Justice Anthony Kennedy, for whom Gorsuch once clerked, will administer the judicial oath in a ceremony at the White House.
Rumors among conservative activists have been swirling around Washington this year that Kennedy will retire at the end of this term of the high court, but the 80-year-old conservative justice, who sometimes votes with the court's liberals, has remained mum on his plans. Were he to be replaced by a Trump-nominated conservative justice, the balance of the court would almost certainly be tipped in a dramatically more conservative direction, and even Kennedy's own legacy on equality for gays and lesbians could be in jeopardy.
For now, though, the focus is on the court's newest justice, the 49-year-old Gorsuch.
His path to confirmation was relatively short by modern standards — just 65 days. But it was accomplished with a historic vote Thursday to end the U.S. Senate's filibuster rule for Supreme Court nominees.
Gorsuch takes the place of the late Justice Antonin Scalia, a conservative icon who died unexpectedly more than a year ago.
The new justice is also a conservative who adheres to many of the same positions that Scalia did. Indeed, some believe that Gorsuch will be more conservative.
While Scalia was enormously well-liked and admired by fellow justices, his harsh written rhetoric sometimes diminished his influence internally on the court. Gorsuch, in contrast, is known for his clear writing, but not for a harsh or dismissive writing style, and that could make him an influential justice on a court that is often closely divided on some major issues.
Though he obfuscated and evaded on many questions put to him during his confirmation hearing, all indications are that he will vote most often with the court's conservative bloc of justices, providing a fifth vote for a conservative majority in 5-4 cases.
The Supreme Court so far this year has punted on controversial issues, seemingly to avoid an indecisive 4-4 tie. But it has cases pending before it for next term that, if granted for review, could expand gun rights to include carrying concealed firearms in public; uphold state voting restrictions that critics contend are aimed at suppressing minority voter turnout; and allow business owners to refuse to serve gay couples, based on religious objections.
Within days of his swearing-in, Gorsuch is likely to face an issue that is particularly difficult for new justices — casting life or death votes on last-minute appeals in capital cases. The number of these cases right now is unusually large. Arkansas has scheduled eight executions for the 11 days after Easter, and it is all but certain that some of those cases will reach the Supreme Court.
Justices past and present have said that regardless of a new justice's experience on the lower courts, it is something very different to have the last word, and that it typically takes several years to get used to the breadth of the caseload and that responsibility. But for a new justice who joins the court mid-term, that task and the fire hose of decisions faced with little time to prepare, is even greater.
In 10 days, the justices will begin hearing their last round of arguments for this term. Among the cases to be heard is a closely watched case testing whether a Missouri church school was wrongly denied state funding for a program to make playgrounds safer. The state maintains that it cannot provide the funding without violating the constitutional requirement of separation of church and state.
Republicans change the rules
Prodded Thursday by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, the Senate voted 52-48, along party lines, to trigger the so-called "nuclear option," eliminating the Senate filibuster for Supreme Court confirmations.
With a series of choreographed parliamentary maneuvers, Republicans were able, by majority vote, to abolish the longstanding rule that required 60 votes to cut off debate on a Supreme Court nomination. The victory prompted high-fives between Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell and the majority whip, Sen. John Cornyn.
Senators from both parties have warned that the move will have profound consequences for the Supreme Court, predicting that more ideologically extreme judges on the right and left will be nominated to the court if only a majority is needed for confirmation. Likewise, senators have predicted that the Supreme Court will itself be injected more and more as a central issue in Senate elections, further eroding the once prized bipartisanship that made the Senate "the world's most deliberative body."
Escalating tit-for-tat in the Senate
Republicans sought to blame Democrats for the shift in the Senate's rules, noting that it was the Democrats who first abandoned the filibuster rule with a majority vote maneuver in 2013.
But Democrats replied that they were left no choice after Republicans' systematic abuse of the filibuster during the first four years of the Obama presidency, making it extraordinarily difficult to confirm lower court and executive branch nominees.
Indeed, during President Barack Obama's first term, Republicans blocked or delayed executive branch and lower court nominations 79 times. That's more than half of all the 149 filibusters used against presidential nominees in the nation's history.
The Democrats noted that even as they abolished the filibuster for executive and lower court nominations in 2013, they left it in place for Supreme Court nominations, believing that lifetime appointments to the nation's highest court are different.
Some Republicans, like Sen. Ted Cruz, maintained on Thursday that the Democrats had bowed to demands from the "radical left" in demanding that Democratic senators "obstruct everything." And indeed, liberal activists have pressed Democratic senators hard on the Gorsuch nomination, threatening some with primary opponents if they voted to allow a quick vote for Gorsuch.
But Democrats cited a variety of reasons for their votes to bar a cutoff of debate on Gorsuch. Among them: his conservative judicial philosophy as expressed in his 10 years on the bench, his evasive answers during the confirmation hearing and a burning resentment at the Republicans' unprecedented refusal for nearly a year to even hold a hearing on Obama's nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court.
Thursday's vote means that from now on, all nominations, including those to the Supreme Court, can be quickly approved by a majority vote in the Senate.
The remaining question is whether Republicans will seek, by majority vote, to abolish the filibuster as it applies to legislation. On Thursday, Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah poured cold water on that idea.
"Oh no, we'll never do that," he said in response to a question. "If we do that, then the Senate will become like the House. The Senate is a place of deliberation. It's not supposed to be a place where you just move things quickly through, and the filibuster rule is a very great protection for the minority."
Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico said there are plans afoot among a bipartisan group of senators to organize a private meeting in the Old Supreme Court Chamber, located in the Capitol, later this year.
The goal, he said, is to see if senators can figure out a way to promote more bipartisanship in a body where the two parties barely work together at all anymore.
09 February 2017
Why Silencing Senator Warren Is Actually Backfiring On GOP & Senate Republicans did not use Rule 19 when Ted Cruz attacked Mitch McConnell 8FEB17
HEY republicans, it is 2017 not 1817 or even 1917 and women are NOT going to tolerate being told to shut up! YOU MAKE US PROUD +Senator Elizabeth Warren !!!!! From +Huffington Post with Coretta Scott King's letter followed by the +PolitiFact article.....
Why Silencing Senator Warren Is Actually Backfiring On GOP
McConnell interrupted her, saying she had impugned another senator.
Last night, the Senate voted 49-43 to silence Elizabeth Warren as she read a letter written by the wife of Martin Luther King Jr, Coretta Scott King. King sent this letter to the Senate in 1986 when the chamber was in debate on whether or not to confirm Jeff Sessions to a lifetime appointment on the federal bench.
King’s explains:
Blacks still fall far short of having equal participation in the electoral process. Particularly in the South, efforts continue to be made to deny blacks access to the polls, even where blacks constitute the majority of the voters.It has been a long, up-hill struggle to keep alive the vital legislation the protects the most fundamental right to vote. A person who has exhibited so much hostility to the enforcement of those laws, and thus to the exercise of those rights by black people should not be elevated to the federal bench.
King argues that during Jeff Sessions’ time as a prosecutor in Alabama, “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens.” As Sen. Elizabeth Warren read this portion of the letter, McConnell interrupted the senator, saying she had impugned another senator. “She was warned. She was given and explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” Senator Warren followed up by stepping outside the senate doors and reading the letter in it’s entirety using Facebook Live to get her message out. “They can shut me up, but they can’t change the truth,” Warren later told CNN’s Don Lemon.
She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.
- Mitch McConnell
Overnight, #ShePersisted and #LetLizSpeak went viral. People from across the country began sharing pictures and stories of other brave women who have been silenced by men but continued fighting the fight against discrimination. We’ve seen this before. The vote to keep Warren quiet was a textbook case of males silencing a women.
If you don't see how the brave people speaking up are mostly women, and how the #GOP is set on silencing them, then WAKE UP...#LetLizSpeak
If u need to silence words of a civil rights icon b/c it impugns ur senator, perhaps the problem is ur senator?#LetLizSpeak#stopsessions
.@SenateGOP should have watched the #WomensMarch. Lots of women who have been told to "take their seat" aren't sitting anymore. #LetLizSpeak
“Senator Warren is so articulate and precise with her words that it drives the Republicans blood pressure through the roof. They know the following she has. I think this shows that the women of the Democratic party will not be silenced.” Sen. Dick Durbin told MSNBC. Following Elizabeth Warren being kicked off the senate floor, Tom Udall took the stand and began reading the same letter read by Warren and was followed by Sherrod Brown from Ohio. Neither were silenced.
“I will not be silent about a nominee for Attorney General who has made derogatory and racist comments that have no place in our justice system.” Elizabeth Warren
As if women needed anymore reason to continue on with their fight, it seems as though the Republicans have done nothing but dig themselves in a bigger hole by firing up the Progressive base. This comes just two days after the Women’s March on Washington announced “A Day without Women” strike.
THE WASHINGTON POST
Senate Republicans did not use Rule 19 when Ted Cruz attacked Mitch McConnell
"Back when Ted Cruz called Mitch McConnell a liar on the floor of the Senate floor, nobody invoked Rule 19 to censor him."
Senate Democrats attacked their GOP colleagues for using a procedural regulation to shut down Elizabeth Warren’s criticism of a fellow senator, but not when Texas Republican Ted Cruz did the same thing two years ago.
During a Feb. 8 CNN interview, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., excoriated Republicans for invoking Rule 19 the day before to force Warren to stop her floor speech against Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, President Donald Trump’s nominee for attorney general.
Warren, D-Mass., had been reading a 1986 letter by Coretta Scott King that protested Sessions’ failed appointment as a federal judge in Alabama. The letter from King said Sessions "has used the awesome power of his office to chill the free exercise of the vote by black citizens in the district he now seeks to serve as a federal judge."
During Warren’s speech, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky cited Rule 19, which prevents senators from impugning one another. Senators voted along party lines to silence Warren, a move Shaheen said was hypocritical.
"Back when Ted Cruz called Mitch McConnell a liar on the floor of the Senate floor, nobody invoked Rule 19 to censor him, so this has been a very subjective process," Shaheen said.
Cruz did take to the Senate floor in 2015 to accuse McConnell of lying to him. While other Republicans did admonish Cruz for doing so, the rule that silenced Warren was not invoked.
‘A simple lie’
According to the Senate Committee on Rules and Administration, Rule 19 says in part that "no Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator."
Shaheen and other Democrats argued that if the rule applies to Warren, it also should have applied to a July 24, 2015, speech by Cruz.
He took to the Senate floor to castigate McConnell for allegedly making a private deal with some senators to allow a vote to renew the charter for the Export-Import Bank in exchange for votes on a trade deal. Cruz and many other Republicans oppose the bank, which acts as the nation’s official credit agency to help businesses find foreign markets.
After McConnell moved a proposal to reauthorize the bank through a transportation bill, Cruz went on the attack. Cruz said McConnell had told him there was no such deal — "Like Saint Peter, he repeated it three times," Cruz said — but Cruz’s office staff had said McConnell was lying.
"I cannot believe he would tell a flat-out lie. ... What we just saw today was an absolute demonstration that not only what he told every Republican senator, but what he told the press over and over and over again, was a simple lie," Cruz said.
So Cruz didn’t specifically use the word "liar" to describe McConnell, an important caveat. But he did make it very clear that, according to Cruz’s account, McConnell had told him and others a lie.
McConnell denied the charge, saying he had held the position that the transportation bill would be the best opportunity to hold a vote on renewing the bank’s charter (it passed).
We didn’t find any evidence that anyone in the Senate moved to silence Cruz with Rule 19. But Republicans did denounce his attack on the party leader as improper in the days following.
"I think it was outside the realm of Senate behavior," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CNN a couple of days later. "I would never contemplate going to the floor of the Senate and impugning the integrity of another senator. Just not something we do here. I really think it was a very wrong thing to do."
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, then the Senate president pro tempore, suggested in a date floor speech that Cruz may have been grandstanding to draw attention to his presidential bid.
"Squabbling and sanctimony may be tolerated in other venues — or perhaps on the campaign trail — but they have no place among colleagues in the United States Senate," Hatch said. "The Senate floor has even become a place where senators have singled out colleagues by name to attack them in personal terms, to impugn their character, in blatant disregard for Senate rules."
No senator defended Cruz’s speech, and he was defeated by his own party on several procedural maneuvers in the days after he spoke. His Texas colleague, GOP Sen. John Cornyn, even questioned Cruz’s recollection of events, noting he "would have to say he's mistaken" about what McConnell said.
Gregory Koger, a University of Miami political science professor, further noted to us that the Senate majority leader isn’t the only senator who can invoke Rule 19.
"(What Cruz said) was definitely a violation of the norms of the Senate and he was not called to account," Koger said. "I would just say that any senator — including any Democrat or any Republican — could have called him on it."
Our ruling
Shaheen said, "Back when Ted Cruz called Mitch McConnell a liar on the floor of the Senate floor, nobody invoked Rule 19 to censor him."
Cruz didn't call him a "liar," exactly, but he did say in a 2015 floor speech that McConnell had told him a lie about whether the Senate majority leader had made a deal to renew the Export-Import Bank’s charter. Republicans chastised Cruz afterward, saying it was not the proper thing to do. But he was not silenced under Rule 19.
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