Politicus USA has the article Chief Justice Roberts Admits Conservatives Believe Politicians Should Serve The Rich.

Although it appeared that all of the Court’s conservatives believe campaign finance laws and regulations have outlived their relevance in American politics, Roberts agreed with liberals that “States may regulate judicial elections differently than they regulate political elections, because the role of judges differs from the role of politicians. Politicians are expected to be responsive to the preferences of their supporters. Indeed, such responsiveness is key to the very concept of self-governance through elected officials. The same is not true of judges. In deciding cases, a judge is not to provide any special consideration to his campaign donors. Our precedents applying the First Amendment to political elections have little bearing on the issues here.”

No, I am afraid that Roberts does not understand the role of politicians and what we expect of them. He also misunderstands the “very concept of self-governance through elected officials.” The article does not specify exactly what Roberts fails to understand. So let me explain exactly what is wrong with what Roberts says. Politicians are expected to be responsive to the voters. That is why the election officials are supposed to count ballots, not campaign contributions to decide who wins an election.

Supporters and donors are important because they help you get votes, but it is the votes and voters who cast them that are supposed to have the final say. If you get the votes, but consistently fail to look out for the interests of the people who voted to make you win the election, then this is a failure of self-governance. This type of politician is not giving proper consideration to the selves that are supposed to be governing through the representation of the people that they elect.

With all the supposed advice and consent of the Senate, how do we select Supreme Court Justices that have so little understanding of what our Constitution says?

The Ed Show has the article Bernie Sanders out-raises Republicans in first day of campaign. I suppose the horse-racey type of coverage of the campaign can be heartening to the fans of Bernie Sanders. I’d much rather watch the issue oriented interview that went along with the article. The issues are what will get him elected. Coverage of his money raising should only be interesting to a small number of inside players.

If you watch the video in my previous post Bernie Sanders’ Press Conference Announcing His Candidacy, you will hear these words from Bernie Sanders.

And I say this to the media. I hate and detest these 30 second ugly negative ads. I believe that in a democracy, what elections are about are serious debates about serious issues, not political gossip, not making campaigns into soap operas, This is not the Red Sox versus the Yankees. This is the debate over major issues facing the American people. … But I would hope, and I ask the media’s help on this, allow us to discuss the important issues facing the American people and let’s not get hung up on political gossip, or the other soap opera aspects of modern campaigns.

Democracy Now broadcast the video and has an article WATCH: Baltimore Prosecutor Charges Six Police Officers, Calls Freddie Gray’s Death a “Homicide”.

Watch full press conference by Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby when she announced charges against six police officers, including one with murder, in the death of Freddie Gray, the 25-year-old African-American man who was arrested and suffered a fatal neck injury while riding in a moving police van.

I was pleased to see how professionally this conference was handled. I appreciated very much The absence of any attempt to justify the behavior of the officers involved. At the same time, it was well worth hearing the respect that Marilyn Mosby showed for the presumably good police personnel that work for the various agencies in Baltimore.

Now I have some hope that justice will be done.

C-Span broadcast the press conference that Bernie Sanders held.

To appreciate this candidacy, you have to hear Bernie Sanders in his own words.

If Bernie Sanders’ message is going to reach the audience that needs to hear it, then we in the grassroots are going to have to take responsibility for making it happen.

It is becoming clear that the media wants to pretend this never happened. The Google News page hardly even mentions this event at the time I am writing this blog post. Their top article was something about football. The only mention of the Sanders’ candidacy was a reference to an entirely bogus opinion piece in The New York Times, Today in Politics: Sanders Offers Clinton Both a Potential Foil and a Pitfall.

This kind of press coverage by Google and The New York Times is the kind of coverage that Bernie Sanders specifically asked the media to rise above. In the video of the conference you can hear him tell a news person that his question is the wrong kind of question, and then he told him what the right question would be.

Not only is Bernie Sanders the Koch brothers worst nightmare (see the Politicus USA story, On Day One Of His Presidential Campaign, Bernie Sanders Is The Kochs Worst Nightmare), but the press is going to find that he is their nightmare too. When the public finally sees a clear demonstration of how little the media want to give them the information they need, they will rise up in rebellion against that media. The internet is not the newspapers’ biggest threat. Their biggest threat is the lack of quality of the product they want us to buy.

Bernie Sanders announced on his Facebook page that he is running for President of the United States.

I am running for President of the United States because America needs a political revolution. We need a government which represents all of us, and not just a handful of billionaires. In this campaign we won’t have the support of the big-money interests, Wall Street or the military-industrial complex. That’s why I need you to join me in an unprecedented grass-roots effort. Sign up at my new website – BernieSanders.com

I take this campaign very seriously. It is not a campaign to move some other candidate in a desired direction, It is a for real campaign to become President and finally put the course of this nation back on the right track.

When we campaigned for Barack Obama in his first campaign, we knew that the nation was in serious trouble. It wasn’t really obvious how serious the trouble was until after Barack Obama actually won the election. By the time he was sworn in, it wasn’t even obvious that the world economy would avoid its destruction.

Now that we know the history of the period and the aftermath, we can appreciate that the change Obama promised was not enough. We can no longer afford to have a President who fails to see just how crucial it is to rein in the power of the oligarchs. A President who refuses to prosecute criminal behavior on Wall Street, and one who thinks we are wrong to oppose an even more devastating trade pact than we have ever had before is not the kind of President we can afford to elect for the foreseeable future.

If anybody who is politically to the right of Bernie Sanders were to get elected President, the prospects for this country would be very dim indeed. If you think that more bipartisanship and splitting the differences between the two opposing sides is what we need, then you just don’t appreciate how far our country has deteriorated. If you were born after 1980, then I can understand why you have no personal knowledge of what this country once stood for. As I believe Bernie Sanders has said, we won’t have too many more chances to save this country.

The Daily Kos has the article Jon Stewart on Baltimore and the police brutality lottery.

Here is the video that is the subject of the article.

This is the commentary we have needed to hear that I have not found at any other source yet. Why is it that only a comedian who, among all the people in the media, seems able to see the forest for the trees? I am sure the people who live the situation in Baltimore have little trouble seeing that forest.

The Daily Kos has the article Washington Post, citing anonymous Baltimore PD document, says Freddie Gray severed his own spine. The article discusses The Washignton Post article Prisoner in van said Freddie Gray was ‘trying to injure himself,’ document says.

The Daily Kos article also provides the video clip below.

None of the written matter in either The Daily Kos article nor The Washington Post article shows you the depth of the disinformation that is being spread about this case the way the video clip exposes it. The Daily Kos article just fails to give you the most damaging information. The Washington Post article, by contrast, seems to be deliberately trying to hide things by mis-characterizing what they say.

Aljazeera America has the article GOP opposition to Lynch was a missed opportunity by William K. Black.

Black lays out all the sordid details in one fairly compact article. He then concludes with the following:

Remarkably, the supposedly liberal New York Times and GOP leaders have something in common: Both refused to mention HSBC as a key reason for rejecting Lynch’s nomination. What the GOP’s embarrassingly self-destructive strategy for opposing Lynch proves is that even when the Republicans have the perfect opportunity to embarrass the Obama administration and highlight one of its largest scandals — the failure to prosecute a single bank officer who led the most destructive epidemics of financial fraud in history that caused our Great Recession — the Republicans refused, lest they upset their leading source of political contributions. The approval of the Lynch nomination demonstrates that bipartisanship does exist on Capitol Hill: when it favors the big banks and their lobbyists.

It is amazing how well The New York Times can make a huge scandal disappear before our very eyes. Must be some kind of magic.

Black does fail to give credit to Obama’s brilliant strategy. The one thing that the Republicans could have legitimately held against Loretta Lynch is the one topic the Republicans would most like to bury.

New Economic Perspectives has the article Indicting the Trans – Pacific Partnership: Even One of These Counts Is Sufficient to Vote to Kill It!.

This article has 23 stanzas that can be sung to the tune of Dayenu, a favorite Passover song.

The conclusion of the article says:

Right now, those who want to pass Fast Track Authority and the TPP, in the face of the 23 reasons, recorded in the 23 stanzas, for killing these things, any one of which is reason enough to vote to kill them, apparently number the President of the United States, most of the corporate media, a majority of the Senate, though perhaps not a majority of its Democratic members, a large number of Representatives in the House, mostly Republican, but including some Democrats, who may or may not reach a majority of the House with the help of a full court press corporate and billionaire-funded media campaign that we will see intensify in the coming days and weeks. So, these are the forces arrayed against democracy and for tyranny. These are the forces in back of the attempt of the elite to engineer a bloodless coup, that they hope will replace national popular sovereignty with globalizing corporate rule.

Will we counter them in the coming days and weeks and block Fast Track Authority and the TPP? The fate of democracy depends on how we respond to this question and on whether our loud public outcry can counter them successfully, and persuade some in the House and the Senate that it is dangerous for them to oppose the popular will. Let us not fail this test!

The Republicans should impeach Obama if he signs the deal, and I wish there were someone to impeach the Congress if they vote for the TPP.

Maybe we shouldn’t scoff at my previous post Michele Bachmann says the Rapture is coming: ‘Rejoice’.

The Daily Kos has the article Michele Bachmann says the Rapture is coming: ‘Rejoice’. This article discusses the Talking Points Memo article Michele Bachmann: Thanks Obama For Bringing On The Apocalypse.

Here is a quote from The Talking Points Memo article.

Former Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) expressed a mixture of condemnation and appreciation toward President Barack Obama for, in her words, bringing the world to end times.

“We need to cry out to a Holy God,” Bachmann said on Jan Markell’s “Understanding the Times” radio show over the weekend. “This is coming faster than anyone can see.”

You really have to hear the audio clip the article provides.

Listen to the clip, courtesy of Right Wing Watch:

The fact that there are people like this running around our government is really frightening. You can be sure that Michelle Bachmann is not the only one in our government that believes this.

What is more frightening is captured by this quote from The Daily Kos article:

It is flagrantly obvious that the people most convinced that Iran is an irrational theocratic state whose leaders see themselves as religious prophets destined to destroy their enemies and elevate their own religion into global dominance over all others are leaders who consider themselves to be—precisely that.

Even this quote needs further interpretation of how frightening this is. What most of the rest of us think about Iran and its government is more like some people in our own government, and the normal people don’t even recognize it. Not only do they not recognize it in our own people, but they don’t recognize that their understanding of Iran was planted in their minds by crazy people.