Astronomy Adventure - Beehive Cluster

Messier 44, the Beehive cluster, is located in the constellation Cancer, visible to the naked eye, and a beautiful binocular object.

Technical Details:

Scope: Starblast 4.5; tracking on

Magnification: ~30x

Camera: iPhone6 using NightCap Pro; ISO 8000; 

Photo: 1x~25secs.

Natural Weekends - Spring Flowers

The Two Most Annoying And False Media Memes About Democrats

There are two media memes that you annoyingly hear and see on a regular basis and both of them are totally false on multiple levels but, unsurprisingly, damaging to Democrats.

The first of these memes is that "Democrats need a message that's more than just running against Trump for the midterms". You hear this from both the left and, predictably, right media environments. I swear I must hear this from Chuck Todd at least three times a week on MTP daily or elsewhere.

This theme is so bogus on two distinct levels. First, have any of the people saying this paid any detailed attention to the special and regular elections over the last year? In Alabama, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and elsewhere, not one Democratic candidate has run with opposing Trump as their major campaign promise. In fact, besides focusing on the needs of the people they hope to represent, the predominant theme among virtually all these Democratic candidates is increasing access to health care and instituting some reasonable gun control laws. Most of them have said they will be happy to work with Trump if his policies will help their state/district and oppose him when they don't.

But the "need a message" analysis is also wrong on another level. The reality is that Trump will be the determinative issue in the fall campaign. For whatever reason, even though polls show that most voters prefer unified government, the reality is that divided government seems to be our predominate state. From the end of World War II until 2016, Americans had elected a divided government 62% of the time. That means that providing a check on Trump is at least part of what is driving suburban Republican voters, especially women, to abandon Republicans in these most recent elections. Whether Democrats openly say opposing Trump is important or not, it will be overriding context of these midterms.

Even more bizarrely, the last people to run on a message primarily opposing the presumed President were the Republicans in 2016. John McCain ran an ad in his Senate race saying "If Hillary Clinton is elected president, Arizona will need a senator who will act as a check, not a rubber stamp, for the White House." In upstate New York, Republican Claudia Tenney won an open seat by claiming she would "stand up to Hillary Clinton." Lindsey Graham was equally explicit, saying, "If there’s ever a time for a check-and-balance argument, it’s now." That turned out to be a reasonably successful strategy for the GOP.

Now, I will admit that the Democrats will certainly need a message for the 2020 presidential campaign. But again, have any of these pundits being paying attention? The majority of the presumptive Democratic contenders are all behind some version of Medicare for all. Sanders is floating a guaranteed jobs program. Booker and Sanders support legalizing marijuana. Gillibrand is proposing a national postal bank. You can be sure that increased education funding will also be a theme for every Democrat. Democrats have plenty of original, progressive ideas and will have no problem crafting a message for 2020 far beyond just opposing Trump.

Just for kicks, let's contrast that with what is going on in the GOP. Their fraudulent wonk, Paul Ryan, is retiring. Most of their candidates are specifically running on an almost blind support for Trump. GOP Senate hopeful Todd Rokita illustrated the Republican's depth of policy ideas by saying the way to solve the opioid crisis was more tax cuts because people will then have a better life and not want to do drugs. The plan to run on the popularity of the tax cuts had to be abandoned because it is so unpopular. Perhaps the reality is that it is the Republicans who really need a message.

The second annoying and bogus meme is that the Democrats should stop talking about impeachment because it will only solidify Republican support for Trump. And again, this comes from both the left and the right. And, again, have any of these pundits been focused on what Democrats are really saying? Last year, there were a handful of Democrats in the House who were pushing impeachment. And, yes, Tom Steyer is out there banging that drum, but even he has moved beyond it. So far this year, you hardly hear that word coming out of mouths of any Democratic candidates at all, even when discussing the potential firing of Mueller. In fact, the people talking the most about impeachment are Republicans. Orrin Hatch brought up the "I" word just a few days ago in regards to Trump firing Mueller. A handful of prominent, conservative House Republicans want to impeach Rod Rosenstein. In Pennsylvania, Republicans are trying to impeach the State Supreme Court members who rules the state's districts were unconstitutionally gerrymandered.

The GOP has an interest in talking up the threat of impeachment in order to motivate their base. Having pundits pushing the meme of that mythical threat only helps their cause. Yes, a large part of the Democratic base would like to see Trump impeached. And that's probably true of a majority of their candidates. But that's not going to happen with a Republican House and Senate so any talk of impeachment is entirely premature. There is no indication that impeachment will become a litmus test for the Democrats in the primaries and, even if it does, it is easily deflected by the fact that, with the map the way it is, Democrats will never get the 66 votes they need in the Senate to convict. Democrats realize impeachment is a dead end that will only fire up the GOP base which is why they are specifically avoiding talking about it.

Most Democratic supporters realize that the way forward is to at least win the House in this cycle. With that platform, they can then use the investigative and subpoena power they have to pursue the ever-present Trump administration scandals. That tactic has worked exceedingly well for Republicans over the years and is actually far more effective than a failed impeachment in terms of weakening Trump and the Republicans in 2020.

These two annoying and false media memes represent the inherent, traditional views of a large segment of the mainstream media. The "messaging" meme is reflective of the long-standing "Democrats in disarray" story line that can be always trotted out when a party with as many diverse interests as the Democratic party shows any internal discord. It is also reflective of a theme that took hold back in the Reagan era that somehow the Republicans were "the party of ideas". Forty years later, the same two ideas, unfunded tax cuts and screwing the poor, keep on get trotted out but the moniker still manages to stick.

The "no impeachment" meme again represents the idea that the Democrats always, and I mean always, must be the adults in the room. Let's face it, based on the evidence already out there, there is no doubt that Trump has engaged in impeachable offenses. Certainly, the obstruction of justice case against him is a slam dunk. And virtually everyone assumes that any peak inside Trump's businesses will uncover some criminality. And that's not even considering the case for collusion and the dozens of contacts the Trump campaign had with the Russians, a number unprecedented in modern electoral history, never reported to the FBI, and continually lied about.

Yes, impeachment is a political process, not a criminal one. But the ever-present desire for "centrist solutions" by the pundit class means that the minority 46% of the populace that voted for Trump must have their will respected despite everything we see and know. I also have no doubt that, if the shoe were on the other foot, we would be hearing the same pundits who are critical of the Democrats today saying that Republicans have a pretty good case for impeachment based on what we already know.

Natural Weekends - House Finch

Trump And Kim Get All The Focus, But Moon Jae-in Is Driving The Process

There is no doubt that the meeting between the North and South Korean leaders yesterday represents something historic and a real opportunity for permanently reshaping relations on the Korean peninsula. But it is fascinating to see the American media obsessively focus on the interaction between the alpha males Trump and Kim Jong-un with an occasional mention of China, while the man largely responsible for most of the progress, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, is almost consistently ignored.

Moon won election on a platform of restoring the "Sunshine Policy" to improve relations with the North as well as with China. Moon also promised to re-open the Kaesong Industrial Complex which is a located in the North but allows South Korean companies to use North Korean labor. South Korea shut that complex down in early 2016 after North Korean missile tests.

It was Moon's efforts that brought the North Koreans to the Olympics and it was largely Moon's efforts that allowed the Trump-Kim summit became a possibility. Yes, tightening the sanctions and, probably to a far lesser degree, Trump's militaristic bluster helped push this process a long. Counterintuitively, however, Trump's aggressive rhetoric worried the South Koreans, making it both easier and more imperative for Moon to begin negotiations with the North. For his part, Kim, having reached a certain nuclear capability, clearly felt comfortable enough to begin negotiations and that he had a willing partner in Moon.

We have been here before. The late 1990s saw the creation of the South's "Sunshine Policy" under Kim Dae-jung. The difference between now and then is that the incoming Bush administration was adamantly opposed to the policy as part of its hard-line stance against the North that included sabotaging the nuclear agreement made under the Clinton administration. Today, Moon has been able to flatter Trump, giving him large doses of credit for moving the negotiations along, negotiations largely driven by Moon.

So far, this strategy of praising Trump has kept the US from interfering in the North-South negotiations. Reportedly, the Chinese are also providing their tacit support to these negotiations. Both Kim and the Chinese have an interest in weakening the ties between the US and South Korea, while Moon has his own interest of strengthening ties with both. This leaves the US more and more on the outside.

The rubber will meet the road when Kim and Trump meet. If, as it appears possible or even likely, Kim officially ends the Korean War and offers to truly denuclearize the North as well as dismantle its missile program in return for the withdrawal of US forces from the South, how will the US respond? Will Trump declare victory if the offer is somewhat less than that, perhaps with the North keeping some missile capability? Or if Kim and Moon agree the North will somewhat reduce its nuclear arsenal and agree to never engage in a first strike? And how will the hardliners in and out of this administration react to such outcomes?

Any one of those outcomes arguably leaves the US in a weaker position in the region and redounds to China's benefit. Any significant reduction in US forces in South Korea, much less total withdrawal, will send an alarming signal to Japan and leave them feeling isolated and unsure of America's commitment to their defense. That, too, will eventually benefit China as the political reality that Japan must too improve their relations with the Chinese sets in.

Now, there is a real case to be made that these outcomes might be for the best. America today may be unwilling or unable to sustain its world-wide imperialistic posture and withdrawing from certain regions may be appropriate. That certainly was part of Trump's campaign promises and popularity. But no one really believes that all these issues have been thoroughly thought out or vetted by this administration. For Trump, it will just be another winning negotiation. The question will remain who exactly it is a win for.

Stanley Cup Round Two Analysis And Predictions

The second round of the NHL playoffs begin tonight. All of these matchups should produce some great hockey and I expect at least two of them to go the distance. Here is a brief preview and prediction for all the series.

Nashville Predators v. Winnipeg Jets - The Preds took way too many penalties against the Avalanche but won't get away with it against the more prolific Jets. On the other hand, Pekka Rinne can usually cover for the Preds defensive lapses. The Jets are a little banged up but they have nothing to lose having finally won the first series in franchise history. Meanwhile, the pressure is on Nashville, who has been built to win this year. Incredibly, the Jets may be just as deep as the Preds, especially at center ice. In the end, I think experience carries Nashville. Prediction: Preds in 7.

Las Vegas Golden Knights v. San Jose Sharks - Both these teams live for speed and both have plenty of depth. The Knights scored just enough to sweep LA but the Sharks are prone to giving up lots of shots so the pressure will be on Martin Jones. The Knights penalty kill has been great while the Sharks power play has been anemic. As in the prior series, Marc Andre Fleury and the staunch Vegas defense will carry them to victory again. Prediction: Vegas in 6.

Tampa Bay Lightning v. Boston Bruins - This series may well be determined by whether Andrei Vasilevskiy can play like a Vezina trophy winner, a prized for which he is a finalist. He has been great all season and the Lightning will need him to cover for their real defensive liabilities. The matchup of the series will probably be Bergeron shadowing Kucherov. In addition, the Bruins seemed a little worn down late in that Toronto series and the Lightning should be fresh. Prediction: Bruins in 7.

Pittsburgh Penguins v. Washington Capitals - This series also may come down to goaltending as both Murray and Holtby have shown they can go from great to suspect pretty quickly. The Pens probably have the better offense but the Caps power play has been on fire. It's hard to bet against Crosby and Malkin and Washington has seen its share of heartbreak. Prediction: Pens in 7.

Enjoy the games and we'll see you in a couple of weeks for a recap!

Courts Abet The Erosion Of Our Rights By Deferring To The Executive On Immigration

In my last post, I discussed the fact that courts have been unwilling and unable to protect our right to vote. In a similar vein, the courts have also allowed the significant erosion of our First Amendment rights of association, our Fourth Amendment rights of unreasonable search and seizures, and the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendment rights of due process. Under Trump, the most blatant abusers of those rights have been ICE and CBP whose victims are primarily undocumented immigrants unaware and unable to exercise those rights.

Last week, ICE agents entered a farm in upstate New York and arrested a worker at that farm who apparently had proper work documentation and had been paying taxes. The ICE agents apparently did not identify themselves to the owner of the farm and refused to provide any warrant or other paperwork that authorized them to be on the farmer's property. They then ignored the owner's request to get off his property without a proper warrant and took away the farm worker in handcuffs. The farm owner continued to protest that the ICE agents did not have a proper warrant to detain his worker and attempted to capture what was going on with his phone. The ICE agents promptly ripped the phone from his hands, smashed it on the ground, handcuffed the farmer, and threatened to arrest him for interfering with a federal investigation. Eventually, they released the farmer and drove with the farm worker under custody.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has documented ICE agents entering homes in Georgia without a warrant or probable cause by impersonating police officers searching for a suspect. In Portland, Oregon, plain-clothed ICE agents entered a home without a warrant or probable cause in order to arrest a person who was a contractor working on remodeling the home. When confronted by another worker that they had no right without a warrant to be in the house, the officers refused to leave or to wait for the homeowner to arrive.  As it turned out, the arrest was apparently a "mistake" and the contractor was released form ICE custody within hours.

This illegal behavior by ICE has been going on before Trump arrived. Back in 2012, ICE arrested an Americans citizen, holding him for seven days in a detention center before releasing him hours away from his home with $10 to his name. But the pace of these abuses has certainly increased under the Trump's anti-immigrant crackdown, regardless of their lack of criminal past or DACA protected status.

The CBP is no better than ICE. Border Patrol agents have recently been captured boarding buses and demanding identification from anyone on board they deem suspicious, which generally involves racial profiling. In another case, CBP prevented passengers from exiting a commercial airline flight unless they provided their "documents". CBP has also dramatically increased its searches of phones belonging to those people entering and even exiting the country, whether American citizens or not. Most of those searches have far less to do with any specific suspicion but are primarily targeted at people with Muslim or Hispanic sounding names or looks.

Just like Kris Kobach, the CBP has openly defied court orders, specifically in the immediate aftermath of the rescission of the Muslim ban in the first few days of the Trump administration. It is all part and parcel of the increasing belief among the officers and leadership of CBP and especially ICE that they represent a law unto themselves when it comes to controlling the border and dealing with illegal immigration.

All of the problems with ICE and CBP relate to the fact that immigrants are obviously not entitled to the same rights of citizens.  But those problems have been exacerbated by the willingness of the courts to limit the rights of persons in this country and to loosen the restriction of what is considered "unreasonable" in the era of the war on terrorism and now Trump's war on gangs.

There is no doubt that the warrantless searches that ICE conducted are unconstitutional. The larger problem with ICE is that the de facto assumption once you are detained is that you are an undocumented immigrant. As such, there is no constitutional requirement for a probable cause hearing or access to a lawyer. As was the case for the US citizen who was illegally detained by ICE, this means that detainees are often held for weeks or months before they can even challenge their detention.

The issues with CBP go even deeper. The need for a warrant does not exist at the border, for obvious reasons. The bigger issue is that the Department of Justice decided in 1953 that the actual border zone where CBP could operate extends 100 miles inland from any external boundary. However, all basic constitutional protections apply within that outer 75 mile limit as opposed to what occurs at the physical border and within 25 miles of it. For instance, the CBP cannot stop anyone within that 75 mile zone without some reasonable suspicion. In addition, CBP is not allowed to search vehicles or phones within that zone without a warrant or some probable cause. A Supreme Court ruling does allow the CBP to set up random checkpoints within that 100 mile zone that allows solely for brief questioning into residence status.

There are three big issues with that 100 mile zone. First, that zone includes two-thirds of the entire US population, meaning that most of the individuals in this country are theoretically subject to be stopped by the CBP. Second, CBP seems unable to recognize that the 100 mile zone is not the same as the physical border itself and that most constitutional protections still apply. When CBP boards buses in Maine, New Hampshire, and upstate New York and only asks Hispanic and Muslim looking people for their identification, it is racial profiling and a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment. There is no reasonable suspicion that random Hispanics or Muslims would be in the country illegally 100 miles from the Canadian border. CBP also illegally conducts searches of vehicles at these checkpoints as well.

Lastly, CBP does not even recognize that its authority stops at the 100 mile limit, but claims it can be extended by order of the commissioner. In fact, in several jurisdictions, federal courts have ruled that CBP actions beyond the 100 mile zone are legal though that determination has not been confirmed by the Supreme Court.

On top of this, there are the scores of complaints against ICE and CBP officers for verbal and physical abuse that the agencies are regularly forced to settle. The abuses while in detention are even worse, including the rape of women and children. Just this week, a trial wrapped up involving a CBP officer who shot a boy on the Mexican side of the border eight times in the back and in the head, killing him. The boy was apparently throwing rocks at the border wall in an attempt to distract CBP officers as part of a smuggling operation. As is the usual case when law enforcement kills almost anyone under any circumstances, the officer was acquitted on murder charges and the jury even deadlocked on manslaughter charges.

The bigger issue with the erosion of our basic constitutional rights when it comes to border control and undocumented immigration is that the courts defer to the executive branch when it comes to these issues. Part of that is due to the broad constitutional authority given to the executive branch as well as mandates passed by Congress. But it also relies on the assumption that the courts do not have the expertise and depth of knowledge to deal with the issue. As Ilya Somin notes, this "special deference" has helped empower the government to enact cruel and racist policies, such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and the exclusion of many Jewish refugees fleeing Nazism in the 1930s". Reports indicate that the Supreme Court will go down this same path with the multiply-revised Mulsim ban. It also doesn't help when judges themselves engage in unconstitutional racial profiling as happened in Pennsylvania the other day.

Now, with Trump essentially expanding the use and power of both ICE and CBP, legal American citizens and residents are more and more likely to get caught up in the abuses by those agencies. In addition, the constitutionals rights of both citizens and immigrants are constantly and consistently being eroded. Combined, the two agencies employ nearly 80,000 people, making it the largest internal police organization in our country, bigger than all the others combined, with a jurisdiction that encompasses two-thirds of our population. There is no effective internal monitoring or oversight inside the agencies. And the courts will only address the most specific, egregious violations by agency employees and are unwilling to deal with the constant constitutional violations due to the assumption of deference.

Considering the authoritarian tendencies of our current President and his administration, the fact that the conservative Supreme Court is more interested at expanding corporate rights at the expense of individual rights, and the existence of a federal police force that acts with impunity and in violation of our core constitutional principles and is seemingly answerable only to the President, you would think that the black helicopter and "the government is gonna take my guns" crowd would be concerned. But I think we all know why they aren't - they are not the ones being profiled. Yet. But is should be a concern for all of us. More often than not, democracy dies slowly, constantly whittled away and rights that we all assumed we had are difficult to recover once they are lost.

Stanley Cup Round One Recap

The Boston Bruins beat the Toronto Maple Leafs 7-4 last night to finally wrap up the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Let's take a look at my predictions and recap each of those series.

Tampa Bay Lightning v. New Jersey Devils - Prediction: Lightning in 6; Actual result: Lightning in 5.  Tampa Bay never really looked threatened in this series although they still showed they were vulnerable to some serious defensive lapses. The goaltending was solid and Nikita Kucherov dominated with five goals and ten points in just the five games.
Boston Bruins v. Toronto Maple Leafs - Predicition: Toronto in 7; Actual result: Bruins in 7. This was a wild, wacky series. The Bruins dominated the first two games as the Maple Leafs' defense and goaltending was largely invisible. Things changed when the series moved up north, however, as the Freddy Andersen became the Leaf's best player and their defense solidified. Even with Andersen's spectacular play and Toronto's domination, the Bruins stole a win in game 4. But they couldn't put the Leafs away in game 5 or game 6, setting up the dramatic game 7. This is the Leafs, however, and they blew three one-goal leads in the game, went into a defensive shell before the end of the second period, and gave up four unanswered goals in the third, including a truly soft one by Andersen on the go-ahead goal to lose 7-4. The Bruins looked surprisingly impotent at certain points in this series but the Toronto defense, especially the forward coverage in the defensive zone, was too much for the Leafs to overcome. Patrice Bergeron muzzled Auston Matthews and dominated in the face-off circle.
Washington Capitals v. Columbus Blue Jackets - Prediction: Columbus in 7; Actual result: Capitals in 6. This series was actually closer than the result might indicate. Four of the six games went to overtime, with each side winning two. The critical point in this series was when the Caps decided to go with Braden Holtby. He came in in relief of Grubauer in the 3rd period of game 2 and won games 3 through 6. Holtby's play arguably stole game 5 for the Caps as he reprised his form from last year's regular season. The Blue Jackets could never get a nose in front in this series, as the Caps scored first in five of the six games.
Pittsburgh Penguins v. Philadelphia Flyers - Prediction: Pittsburgh in 5; Actual result: Pittsburgh in 6. The Penguins never really seemed threatened in this series despite splitting their first two games at home. The Pens had more firepower than the Flyers to begins with and injuries to Couturier and Provorov made that gap even wider. Crosby was spectacular, racking up six goals and seven assists in the six games.
Nashville Predators v. Colorado Avalanche - Prediction:  Nashville in 5; Actual result: Nashville in 6. Like the Pens, you never really thought the Predators were in danger of losing this series although the Avs put up a stiffer challenge than expected, despite being reduced to their third string goalie, Andrew Hammond, in the third period of game 4 and beyond. But Hammond was not the problem for the Avs. That was the third line of the Preds, which had 19 points and was plus 18 for the series. The Predators took way too many penalties and continued to display some egregious defensive lapses which they will have to clean up if they want to win the Cup. 
Winnipeg Jets v. Minnesota Wild - Prediction: Winnipeg in 5; Actual result: Winnipeg in 5. The Wild were undermanned to begin with and losing Zach Parise during the series hurt their offense even more. The Jets were better at both ends of the ice and Devan Dubnyk was the only reason the Wild were able to stay in a few of the games.
Vegas Golden Knights v. L.A. Kings - Prediction: Knights in 7; Actual result: Knights in 4. This was another series where the result does not indicate how even this series was. All four of these games were superb, with each game decided by a single goal and two of them 1-0 shutouts. It really was too bad my prediction didn't pan out because seven games between these two teams would have been great to see. We knew the goaltending and defense of both teams was going to be good. The difference was the stifling defense of the Knights, who only allowed three goals in four games. The Knights also looked like the quicker team throughout and generated more offensive chances.
Anaheim Ducks v. San Jose Sharks - Prediction: Sharks in 7; Actual result: Sharks in 4. I really thought this series would be closer than it was. It was always going to be tough for the Ducks but they just could not generate enough offense, only scoring four goals in the series. The Sharks were the deeper team, especially with the addition of Evander Kane and Eric Fehr. That showed up as each game and the series moved along.

I didn't do so badly in the prediction department, getting six of the eight series correct. I am disappointed the Leafs let me down, but then they always will. I'll be back later with second round analysis and predictions.

GOP Discards Democracy When It Won't Produce The Result They Want

Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the Texas gerrymandering case that has essentially been going on since 2011. The fact that the Supreme Court is even hearing this case is simply part of the delaying tactics that the Republicans have been using to keep these gerrymandered districts in place in that state since 2012.

The case was originally brought in 2011and subsequently a district court initially decided that the new post-2010 census map was an illegal racial gerrymander that discriminated against Latino and African American voters. In their initial decision, the court put together a temporary map for the 2012 election that Texas then appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court. The Court threw out the temporary map and directed the district court redraw the map for the 2012 election with a narrower interpretation. But the 2012 election proved that the temporary map that the district court put together on its second try produced just as good a result for Republicans as they felt they would have gotten with the original 2011 map, whereupon Governor Rick Perry called a special session of the legislature in 2013 to enshrine that 2012 temporary map into law.

That, however, did not mean that the legal case ended and in 2017 the district court again ruled that both the 2011 and now the 2013 map were illegal racial gerrymanders. The district court planned to have hearings on remedial plans this September, late enough to ensure that there would be no change in the maps for the 2018 election. In the interim, Texas decided to request a stay in the case from the Supreme Court, basically arguing that the current map could not possibly be illegal because it was actually drawn by the district court. That argument may seem specious because the district court itself said at the time it drew the temporary map that it was based purely in their preliminary, not final, findings. But that probably doesn't matter to the conservative bloc on the Supreme Court. In addition, as the liberal members of the Court pointed out, it would be unprecedented for the Court to intervene in the district court's case at this point since no remedial actions have been ordered. To do so would invite appellants to come to the Supreme Court at every point in a gerrymandering or redistricting case, potentially prompting tens of thousands of appeals to the Supreme Court.

The more important point, however, is that voters in Texas in multiple state and Congressional districts have been disenfranchised in every election this decade because of a gerrymander ruled illegal in 2011. This will not be rectified for the 2018 election and, based on how Republicans and the courts have dragged this case out, no reason to think it will be any different in 2020. So, basically for an entire decade, millions of Texas voters will have been disenfranchised by illegal redistricting. Of course, this problem also effects millions of other voters in North Carolina and Wisconsin who have also had to vote in illegally gerrymandered districts for the majority of elections in this decade. In Virginia last fall, the state-wide margin for Democratic votes over Republicans was 11% yet gerrymandering allowed to  GOP to barely keep control of the House of Delegates.

The success of their extreme partisan gerrymanders has led to Republicans believing that the whole electoral process can be manipulated at will in order to maintain power. This goes beyond partisan gerrymandering, restricting access to the ballot with stringent voter ID laws, and reductions in polling places and early voting windows. In Wisconsin, when it became apparent that Democrats would win special elections this year, Governor Scott Walker unilaterally decided not to hold them. In Missouri,the GOP-dominated legislature is attempting to move a ballot initiative that would overturn the state's right-to-work law from the November ballot to the primary ballot in August when turnout is usually much lower. If successful, this move will also probably be challenged in court.

Even when the courts act, Republicans defy, or attempt to defy, them with impunity. Just this week, Kris Kobach was held in contempt of court in Kansas for defying a court order and refusing to add thousands of legal Kansas voters to the rolls who were initially unable to register because of Kobach's illegal voter ID system. His actions conceivably disenfranchised tens of thousands of Kansas voters. In Wisconsin, a judge ruled that Walker's cancellation of special elections was illegal and ordered the elections be held. Walker then attempted to call a special session of the legislature in order to change the laws regarding special elections but ran out of time before the judge's order kicked in. Unlike Kobach, Walker decided not to violate the court order and risk contempt of court. In Pennsylvania, the State Supreme Court ruled the state's electoral an illegal partisan gerrymander and the GOP reaction was to begin the legislative process to impeach the members of the Court.

The struggle for universal suffrage, particularly for African Americans and women, has been a struggle since the founding of this country. This is primarily because there is no constitutional right to vote, primarily because of the original sin of slavery and the basic fact that the founders truly did not believe that all citizens should actually vote. Gerrymandering and restricting access to the ballot box are also as old as our democracy. But with the adoption of various constitutional amendments over the years, the successful fight for women's suffrage, and the destruction of Jim Crow and the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), the promise that all citizens, with a handful of exceptions, have a right to vote seemed to have finally been achieved.

But, as the Republican party increasingly became reliant on and then dominated by the votes in Southern states, the very tactics of the Jim Crow era became a more and more important tool for the party in general. When the Supreme Court largely gutted the enforcement procedures of the VRA in 2013, Republicans had been testing the limits of what they could get away with in terms of restricting the voting rights of largely Democratic voters for the prior decade.

In essence, we have now returned to a more limited version of the Jim Crow era, less racially targeted and more politically targeted. With one party basically opposed to the idea of universal suffrage and a court system that is seemingly complicit in the interminable delays in judgement and unable or, more likely, unwilling to offer any redress to those who are disenfranchised, we have reverted to the place we thought we had left behind over 50 years ago. Add to this the increasing frequency that the party that receives the majority of the vote still retains a minority of the power and it is easy to see why people's faith in democracy is so rapidly declining. At the same time, for those who benefit the most from Republican policies, there is an equal desire to discard democratic principles and embrace an authoritarian regime bent on protecting their privileged status. Taken together, they pose the greatest threat to our democracy in decades.

Astronomy Adventure - NGC 2264, The Christmas Tree Cluster

NGC 2264 actually contains four separate items, the most famous being the Christmas Tree open cluster and the Cone Nebula. Located in the constellation Monoceros, the cluster and the surrounding emission nebula lie about 2,600 light years away from us, meaning that the light captured in the photos was produced by these stars at about 500 BC, near the height of the Persian empire and the very founding of the Roman republic.

In my picture, the "Christmas tree" is lying upside down at a 45 degree angle with the brightest star on the upper left at its base and the single bright star in the very middle of the photograph as its peak. With a larger aperture telescope, less light-polluted skies, and a better camera, it is possible to see the Cone Nebula just beyond the tip of the tree and the additional nebulosity surrounding the cluster. These are beautifully captured in the photo from the European Space Organization farther below showing the tree literally upside down.

Technical Details:

Scope: Starblast 4.5; tracking on

Magnification: ~30x

Camera: iPhone6 using NightCap Pro; ISO 8000; 

Photo: 4x~35secs.

Processing: Stacking best 3 of 5 photos on Deep Sky Stacker; adjusted curves and cropped with GIMP

Photo below by ESO - http://www.eso.org/public/outreach/press-rel/pr-2008/phot-48-08.html, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6283704

Natural Weekends - And More Swans

The Art Of The Deal - Extortion

Mike Pompeo's confirmation as Secretary of State has been no sure thing ever since Trump announced his nomination. Rand Paul, at least for his opening negotiating position before his probable cave, is saying he is a no vote based on Pompeo's previously hawkish and interventionist views. That no vote could result in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee not even voting to send Pompeo's nomination out of committee, a move that will certainly be a black mark for Pompeo but not necessarily block the full Senate from taking up his nomination.

With that as a backdrop, it was interesting to see the Washington Post report and the President confirm that Pompeo had made a secret trip to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong-un over the Easter weekend. The trip came just days after Pompeo's nomination. Now, it is not totally out of the ordinary to send the CIA director on a secret diplomatic mission, but it does seem a little odd to send a nominated but not yet confirmed Secretary of State.

But leaking the fact that Pompeo was already involved in the North Korean negotiations was clearly designed to put pressure on Paul and red state Democrats to vote for Pompeo. Voting against Pompeo would not only deny the President his theoretically qualified choice for a senior cabinet position but it actually puts Senators in the position of voting to potentially disrupt the ongoing negotiations with the North Koreans. That pressure seemed to work when Heidi Heitkamp announced that she would vote to confirm Pompeo, virtually guaranteeing his confirmation if the nomination does make it to a full Senate vote. Admittedly, this is kind of an easy vote for Heitkamp and other red-state Democrats to take in order to illustrate their independence going into the fall election. But it is also clear that the secret North Korean negotiations created additional pressure.

It appears that the renegotiation of the NAFTA agreement may be reaching a conclusion in the next month or so. All parties agree that real progress has been made with over 80% of the outstanding items having been agreed to and the difficult auto issue the last remaining obstacle. To be sure, there are still potential issues both on the auto issue and on labor reform in Mexico that could still scuttle the deal. But, even if the new agreement does get finalized, it also appears that the final deal may not be the winning moment that Trump has long promised.

Politico reports that the Trump administration currently favors withdrawing from the existing NAFTA agreement before this new, renegotiated deal is signed. The rationale behind this move is that there is a fear that pro-trade Republicans will refuse to vote for the renegotiated deal and simply leave the existing NAFTA deal in place. By withdrawing from NAFTA, Trump is presenting the Senate and a large bloc of his own party with a choice between his new deal and no deal at all. To a lesser degree, that same pressure could possibly effect Democrats reliant on union support.

What both these stories indicate is that Trump primarily relies on one tactic when he is negotiating and that is some form of extortion. Now, a President strong-arming Congress for votes has a long tradition. But, as LBJ demonstrated, presidents usually get more mileage by engaging in some sort of horse trading, providing certain benefits for the legislator's district in return for a specific vote. This is a tactic that Trump seems incapable of engaging in.

In fact, both these stories illustrate the problem with Trump's tactic of governing by extortion. It was reported that a number of Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee were annoyed by the fact that Pompeo had kept his trip to North Korea secret in their private conversations with the nominee. That fact alone will probably not change a single vote but it created unnecessary ill will for the nominee.

The reaction from Congress on the plan to withdraw from NAFTA sparked even greater outrage. When the plan was laid out to Paul Ryan, he challenged the US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, saying, "Bob, how many FTAs [free trade agreements] have you passed." Lighthizer is reported to have come across to important Congressional leaders such as Ways and Means chairman Kevin Brady as arrogant and dismissive of Congress' and Republican concerns, saying that he only had "an audience of one", namely the President. Said one Congressional source, "if you think a new NAFTA is better than no NAFTA you don’t think about a whip operation until the end. It’s all about the dynamic. The threat of withdrawal hovers over everything."

We have seen this same aggressive extortionist strategy backfire repeatedly for Trump. His threat to destroy Obamacare in order to bring Democrats back to the table to negotiate a new health plan ended up wasting the first and most important year of his presidency. Trump's plan to kill DACA in order to get Democrats to fund his border wall similarly ended in failure when Democrats refused to give him something (his border wall funding) for essentially nothing (restoration of DACA). Trump has only been saved from disaster because the courts have ruled his suspension of DACA unlawful but his actions have motivated the Democratic base.

A similar disaster seems to be looming for NAFTA. There will be winner and losers from the renegotiated deal and some, if not many, of those losers will be Republican districts. Forcing Republicans from those districts to vote for the new NAFTA could be problematic with a potential blue wave coming in the fall. Worse, passing the new NAFTA that hurts certain GOP districts by relying on Democratic votes will outrage the Trump base even more.

Now, I have no doubt that Rand Paul will eventually cave on Pompeo just like he did on Obamacare repeal. And I have no doubt that virtually all of the Republicans in the Senate will cave on NAFTA. Where Trump's penchant for extortion can and has created real damage is in the foreign policy arena.

Trump's unnecessary attacks on Mexico and even Canada have only made renegotiating NAFTA more internally politically difficult for the leaders of those countries. Trump's tariffs have already started a low-grade trade war with China as well as angering the Europeans before Trump caved and offered them exemptions. French President Macron's response to the original announcement of the steel and aluminum tariffs was "We will discuss nothing, as a matter of principle, with a gun pointed at our head".

This is how Trump negotiates with our friends. So we shouldn't hold out much hope for Trump's face-to-face meeting with Kim Jong-un. It seems clear that part of Kim's strategy is to drive a wedge between South Korea and the US. Formally ending the Korean War and discussing denuclearization, by which the North means agreeing to renounce first use, a test ban on the entire Korean peninsula, and not transferring their nuclear technology, not a dismantling its own program, are designed to appeal to the South. But Trump's extortionist and unilateral threats to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal have already reduced the chances that the North Koreans will actually agree to any deal to dismantle their program. And if Trump's talks fail, especially if it is seen to be because of Trump's one-sided demands, the rift between the US and South Korea will grow even wider and it will end up further empowering and emboldening Kim.

Donald Trump has endured six bankruptcies in his checkered career. Part of the reason for that extraordinary  record of failure is that, for Trump, the art of the deal is basically extortion. And most business built on extortion usually can't last very long. In the end, that may be true of the Trump presidency.

Natural Weekends - Swans

There are always a little less than a dozen swans who live on the creek but, for some reason, they rarely wander over to our side of the creek and especially our little inlet. But when a real Nor'easter blew in this week with rains like you'd never seen, the swans finally came over our way, probably for shelter from the biting northeast wind.

The Fraud Of Electoral Fraud

Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State and head of Trump's ill-fated electoral fraud commission, has led the charge against voting rights with bogus claims about rampant voter fraud. But a case in his home state has finally put Kobach's voter fraud data to the test and it was found wanting. The case was brought by a group of 35,000 Kansas residents who were legally allowed to vote but denied that right because of the voting restrictions put in place by Kobach before the 2016 election.

Back in May of 2016, a US District judge ruled that Kobach's voting restrictions violated the National Right to Vote Act (NVRA). The judge issued an injunction that not only kept Kobach from proceeding with his restrictions but also ordered that 18,000 Kansans who had not been able to register because they did not have a birth certificate or passport be added to the rolls. The trial to resolve the legality of those voting restrictions has now begun, with Kobach determined to show that massive voter fraud in the state required the implementation of his restrictions.

Kobach and his legal team were clearly unprepared and unfamiliar with actual court proceedings as they continually tried to introduce evidence long after the deadline for sharing evidence with the plaintiffs had passed, forcing the judge at the trial to have to continually lecture them about how court proceedings actually work.

Worse, the "data" that Kobach presented to "prove" voter fraud was truly laughable. Kobach's star witness, Hans von Spakovsky, was demolished on the stand by the ACLU lawyer representing the plaintiffs. von Spakovsky could not point to one election where non-voters were decisive. He cited an NBC News report that 100 registered voters filled out jury-duty questionnaires saying they were non-citizens but failed to note the follow up to that story that found that around one third of those were actually citizens.

In fact, the bulk of van Spakovsky's "proof" relied on a spreadsheet from Kobach's office itself that showed 30 non-citizens trying to register to vote in just one county over an 18 year period. From that, van Spakovsky extrapolated his numbers of massive voter fraud. But van Spakovsky was forced to admit under questioning that he had no basis for knowing whether those numbers were actually true or whether they reflected confusion or some sort of administrative error. In addition, von Spakovsky was flummoxed by the point that the judge actually made, which was that dilution effect of having non-citizens vote was identical to blocking legitimate voters from voting.

Another of Kobach's witnesses had compiled a list of 18,000 non-citizens in Kansas who had registered or attempted to register to vote. Under questioning, however, he was forced to admit that he compiled the list simply by picking out foreign sounding names. This was the level of evidence introduced by Kobach.

So, the case for Kobach looks pretty grim at this point. But there had been plenty of action in this case even before this phase had begun. Kobach originally refused to comply with the judge's order to restore those 18,000 Kansans to the voter rolls and instead decided he would make them fill out provisional ballots which he would count. The ACLU filed a motion to object to this procedure and the judge ordered Kobach to explain why he had ignored her order. One day before she was about to cite him for contempt, Kobach complied. The ACLU asked Kobach to provide the documents on voter fraud that he was seen carrying into a meeting with Trump. Kobach lied to the judge and claimed that those documents were irrelevant to the Kansas case when in fact the opposite was true.

In addition, Kobach apparently violated another part of the original court order in this case. The ACLU "exhaustively documented Kobach’s refusal to send certificates to voters who tried to register but lacked proof of citizenship. These certificates state critical information, such as voters’ precincts, polling location, and districts for different offices. The ACLU also demonstrated that Kobach had refused to correct extremely deceptive information in the official Kansas election manual that suggested these voters could not lawfully cast a ballot."

Yesterday, the judge ruled Kobach in contempt of court for refusing to send those certificates to voters as well as the refusal to correct the election manual as previously instructed by the judge. The judge's ruling was scathing and encompassed much of Kobach's behavior since the injunction was ordered, saying, "the Court is troubled by Defendant’s failure to take responsibility for violating this Court’s orders, and for failing to ensure compliance over an issue that he explicitly represented to the Court had been accomplished...Defendant deflected blame for his failure to comply onto county officials, and onto his own staff, some of whom are not licensed attorneys." She refused to apply coercive sanctions since Kobach had finally but belatedly complied with the injunction but ordered Kobach to pay the ACLU's attorneys' fees.

Now maybe I'm just a wee bit old fashioned, but it bothers me that just one woman who mistakenly voted illegally in Texas could get five years in jail but a man who not only violated a court order but also lied to the court about those violations in order to prevent perhaps thousands from voting who were legally allowed to do so merely has pay the attorney's fees of those whose rights were abridged.

Worse, Kobach's actions are reflective of the current and, in this case, literal, contempt for the courts from the Republican party as a whole when it comes to gerrymandering and voting rights. In Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Texas, Republicans continually appeal federal judges' decisions on illegally gerrymandered districts, with the delay disenfranchising voters  over multiple election cycles. In addition, these GOP-dominated legislatures basically redraw similarly illegal districts when forced to do so by the courts, again extending the disenfranchisement of voters. In Pennsylvania, the State Supreme Court is being threatened with impeachment over its decision declaring that the state's districts are illegally partisan gerrymandered. Apparently, when it comes to voting rights, the current GOP believes the courts are more of a nuisance than an equal branch of government. And Kobach has demonstrated that in the most extreme way.

What's A Former Senior Deutsche Bank Exec Doing Hanging Out With Michael Cohen?

Last Friday, as Michael Cohen's attorney was trying to suppress the evidence taken in the raids on his home and office, Cohen himself was hanging outside on Park Avenue, smoking cigars with a bunch of his friends. On Sunday, the Guardian identified one of those hanging around with Cohen, admittedly farther in the background, as a man named Jerry Rotonda.

Like many of Cohen's friends, Rotonda has a history of thuggery, threatening a meter maid with violence and racial slurs over a $20 parking ticket that resulted in a civil injunction against Rotonda. And like Cohen and many of his friends, that history of thuggery did not stop Rotonda from advancing into fairly lucrative careers. In fact, Rotonda ended up as Chief Financial Officer of Deutsche Bank's (DB) wealth management division, meaning he probably dealt with extremely high net worth individuals. Since the Guardian report, it appears that Rotonda's LinkedIn profile has been taken down and my limited research has not found much about his history or length of service with DB. Nor have I discovered whether he was just a regional or global head.

The answers to those question might be interesting to know. It is worth noting that DB engaged in a $10 billion money laundering scheme for wealthy Russians between 2011 and 2015. The process used mirror trades with the complicity of individuals in DB's Moscow and London offices in order to move billions of rubles out of Russia to a variety of offshore entities and convert that money into Dollars and Euros. Was Rotonda responsible for wealth management in Russia and/or the UK? Did any of the money that ended up in these offshore entities then go to finance Trump Organization deals?

Since the early 2000s, Donald Trump has not been able to get financing from any legitimate bank except one, Deutsche Bank. Since the late 1990s, DB has provided Trump with over $3.5 billion in loans and loan guarantees. According to Trump's most recent financial disclosure form, Trump still owes over $130 million to the bank. In addition, the bank has recently flagged suspicious activity in accounts controlled by Jared Kushner. Did Rotonda's climb up the corporate ladder at DB coincide with loans to Trump and others involved in other money-laundering schemes? Was Rotonda involved in any way with Michael Cohen's real estate investments?

Interestingly, Rotonda quit his job at DB late last year and went into business with an Indian billionaire and a man named Rotem Rosen, who was also there hanging out with Cohen. Rosen and another Russian expatriate, Alex Sapir, accompanied Trump on his trip to Moscow and the Miss Universe pageant in 2013, where they helped push Trump's dream of a Trump Tower Moscow. Sapir's father was an original investor in the failed Trump SoHo project. Rosen, in addition to getting married down at Mar-a-Lago to Sapir's sister, is the right hand man of Lev Leviev, a partner in Prevezon Holdings that was recently charged with money-laundering tax scheme in violation of the Magnitsky Act. Prevezon settled that suit for $6 million. Natalia Veselnitskaya, the lawyer who met with Don Jr., Kushner, and Manafort with the promise of supplying dirt on Hillary, also worked for Prevezon Holdings. In addition, at some point Prevezon had also hired Fusion GPS, the firm behind the Steele dossier, to do some work for the firm. Oh what a tangled web!! Was Rotonda overseeing accounts held at DB by Rotem, Sapir, or any of their associates? Was he or DB involved in the Prevezon money laundering?

So many questions and, right now, so few answers. I'm sure Robert Mueller has been working on some of these questions for months. And I'm also sure that investigative reporters have and will be doing the same. But the emergence of Rotonda in the Cohen inner circle opens up a lot of questions about Deutsche Bank and its long history of deals with Trump and money-launderers.

Finally, Cohen took a lot of criticism from the punditocracy and angered the judge who chastised Cohen's lawyer by saying "Your inability to answer these questions suggest to me that your client, Mr. Cohen, should be in court with you next time." But Cohen's flagrant flaunting of the hearing and openly meeting with a bunch of cronies where he knew the press would be recording them suggests that Cohen was sending a clear message to someone, most likely Donald Trump. One clear interpretation is that Cohen was telling Trump that I've got all the elements of the case against you - the money launderers, the bankers, the Russian connection - and they are all hanging with me. Whether that means that Cohen is signaling that they are all sticking together to protect Trump or that he and his friends will band together to protect themselves but not the President remains to be seen.

The GOP's Three-Pronged Assault On Regulatory Oversight

Mitch McConnell has been virtually silent about any legislative agenda leading into the November elections. He said that the Senate will focus on continuing to pack the federal court system with Federalist Society hacks. But it appears that McConnell will also be running a stealth campaign to roll back the last 20 years of regulatory oversight in virtually all areas of the federal government.

The Congressional Review Act (CRA) was one item in Newt Gingrich's Contract with America and was passed into law in 1996. The Act empowered Congress to use an expedited process and a simple majority vote to review and overrule federal agency rules. Congress has 60 legislative days after a new rule is enacted by a federal agency in order to review it under the CRA. In addition, if Congress does overrule an existing rule, a new rule that is substantially the same as the old rule cannot be implemented without it being specifically authorized by Congress in a bill or joint resolution.

Before the Trump administration, the CRA had only been used once, in 2001, to roll back a Department of Labor rule on ergonomics. But in 2017, the CRA was used 15 times to roll back regulations in a variety of areas. The most important regulatory rollbacks were the so-called Stream Protection Rule, a rule requiring oil and gas companies to disclose payments to foreign governments for drilling rights, a rule requiring employers to keep accurate records of workplace injuries for five years, and a rule requiring broadband providers to get permission from customers before collecting and using their online information.

All those rollbacks were passed by Congress before June of 2017, before the 60 day legislative day review period expired on those rules. Now the ever-resourceful Republicans believe they have found a loophole that could effect hundreds of so-called regulatory guidance documents put out by federal agencies potentially since passage of the CRA in 1996. Guidance documents are different from rules in that the don't go through the time-consuming process of the Administrative Procedure Act to become a formal rule. While guidance does not carry the force of the law like a rule, industries generally try to follow the guidance put out by their regulators. A classic example are the workplace safety posters that are in every business these days. Those posters are the result of a guidance from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), not a formal rule requiring them.

What the Republicans are now doing is appealing to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) in order to get a ruling on whether certain guidance documents can be treated as a rule for the purposes of the CRA. If the GAO determines that the guidance does count as a rule under the CRA, it officially becomes a rule on the date of that GAO determination, not at the point at which the guidance was issued. At that point the 60 day legislative clock starts ticking for Congress to review the rule and rescind it.

The first such test of this new approach involves a guidance issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau back in 2013 that was instituted in order to reduce discrimination in auto lending. At the request of Club for Growth favorite Senator Pat Toomey (R-PA), the GAO determined that this guidance was actually a rule under the CRA and the Senate is currently taking up a bill right now that would rescind that guidance/rule. If the bill passes, it would mark the first time the CRA has been used to roll back a regulation beyond the 60 day window.

As you can imagine, this exposes an enormous number of federal protections to rescission by a simple majority of Congress. Virtually any regulatory guidance since the CRA's passage in 1996 is now theoretically exposed. As one federal policy analyst noted, "You have this unimaginably large universe of stuff that is now eligible for repeal under the CRA. Agencies don't submit all this stuff because it would be an administrative nightmare." In addition, it is not like the next incoming administration could simply put those rules back in place because they would be similar to the rescinded rule and the CRA requires passage of a specific bill by Congress for them to be re-enacted.

Even worse, this now forces federal agencies to go through the time-consuming rule-making procedure for virtually everything they do going forward or risk the possibility that some future Congress will simply rescind it even when it survives the 60 day review period. That will slow the enactment of new agency rules to a crawl. Take a look at Dodd-Frank, passed in 2010, where its financial opponents have managed to drag out the rule-making process to this day.

In an entirely different arena, another stealth attach on regulatory oversight is also being prepared. Yesterday, in a huge win for liberals and immigrants, the Supreme Court struck down a law allowing the deportation of permanent resident aliens who had been accused of certain violent crimes, deciding that the law was unconstitutionally vague. The three liberal women on the Court were joined by Breyer and the deciding fifth vote was surprisingly cast by Gorsuch. But lest you think that Gorsuch is a closet liberal or perhaps a new Souter, his rationale for supporting this decision was actually laying the groundwork for a broad assault on the constitutionality of regulatory interpretation of Congressional laws by federal agencies.

Way back in 1984, in the case Chevron v. National Resource Defense Council, the Supreme Court made a historic ruling that empowered federal agencies. The Court ruled that it would defer to the interpretation of the federal agency when it enacts a regulation if the Congressional law that "allows" such regulation is ambiguous, an exception being made for a truly outlandish interpretation of the Congressional act. This so-called "administrative deference" has allowed for all sorts of regulations that are not specifically addressed in such laws as the Clean Air Act, for instance, which was at the core of the Chevron case. Considering how poorly and hastily Congress writes laws these days (see the latest tax cuts) and how quickly technology changes, relying on administrative deference is the only way for government to enforce the meaning or broad older legislation like the Clean Air Act these days.

Gorsuch's opinion in this latest Court decision on immigration takes clear aim at the Chevron decision,  one of his pet peeves. Gorsuch writes, "Under the Constitution, the adoption of new laws restricting liberty is supposed to be a hard business, the product of an open and public debate among a large and diverse number of elected representatives. Allowing the legislature to hand off the job of lawmaking risks substituting this design for one where lawmaking is made easy...". In other words, Gorsuch wants to eliminate any deference or delegation to the federal agencies in creating the rules and regulations to enforce Congressional law and put that back in the hands of Congress. His concurrence in this immigration case is purely because he believes that any ambiguity in Congressional law must be resolved by the courts of Congress itself and not left up to the interpretation of the executive branch.

Before Donald Trump even took office, on January 11, 2017, the House of Representative passed the Regulatory Accountability Act of 2017 which specifically targeted the Chevron case and administrative deference and delegation. Thankfully, it could not muster the 60 votes needed in the Senate to pass it. But what the Republicans and their corporate overlords could not get in Congress, they may get at the Supreme Court where Gorsuch is laying the groundwork for the conservative bloc to overturn Chevron.

There is a three-pronged attack on regulatory oversight. The most visible one is at the federal agencies themselves. There, Mick Mulvaney, Scott Pruitt, and Ryan Zinke are targeting consumer and environmental protections at an unprecedented rate. But they are hampered by the same cumbersome process the Administrative Procedure Act requires. It takes just as long for any agency to repeal a rule as it does to implement it. For the most part, the terrible trio have simply managed to delay or re-review of Obama-era regulations that were scheduled to go into effect, rather than rescind any prior regulations. And because of the haste in some of their proposals and the resulting lack of scientific or technical analysis behind them, they will surely be challenged in court, some already successfully so.

This is not to say that the Trump administration's zeal for deregulation has not had an impact. Agency budgets have been cut, science advisory boards have been gutted, and businesses are certainly having an easier time when it comes to things like permitting. More importantly, the signal has been sent that oversight will essentially cease and violations will not be vigorously prosecuted.

So, while the focus of regulatory rollback has mainly been on the actions of Trump's cabinet, those agency heads have actually been far less effective than many imagine, at least for the moment. Yes, the delays or rescission of planned regulation is certainly a blow. But they have so far been able to actually rescind hardly any existing rules. The real imminent danger lies in the Congress, which has managed to rescind some previously scheduled rules and now is planning to use the CRA for the remainder of this term to gut as many existing guidance/rules as they possibly can, presumably in return for handsome campaign donations. The longer term and almost mortal danger, however, clearly lies with the Supreme Court, which could effectively destroy the rule-making authority of federal agencies entirely and put it back in the hands of our dysfunctional Congress or the courts that McConnell has managed to pack.