If you think Congress does not work, thank John McCain

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John McCain was elected to the Senate in 1986, taking Barry Goldwater’s seat after two terms in the House. In 1987, as a rather naive =freshman Senator, he was involved in the “Keating Five” affair This involved assistance to a constituent of McCain’s but was, in fact, a Democrat influence peddling matter. McCain was included chiefly to make it “bipartisan.”

The five senators—Alan Cranston (Democrat of California), Dennis DeConcini (Democrat of Arizona), John Glenn (Democrat of Ohio), John McCain (Republican of Arizona), and Donald W. Riegle, Jr. (Democrat of Michigan)—were accused of improperly intervening in 1987 on behalf of Charles H. Keating, Jr., Chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of a regulatory investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB). The FHLBB subsequently backed off taking action against Lincoln.

Lincoln Savings and Loan collapsed in 1989, at a cost of $3.4 billion to the federal government (and thus taxpayers).

This experience affected McCain severely, making him obsessed with his reputation and leaving him open to more manipulation by Democrats. What followed was The McCain Feingold Act also known as the “Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.” It made a huge change in the way Congress conducted business.

McCain-Feingold tilted influence in our political system toward the ideological extremes. For centuries, political parties played a moderating role: Because they comprise a broad coalition of interests, parties had to mediate among competing constituencies, looking for ­middle-ground positions that would draw maximum support. Traditionally, they used their preponderance of resources to impose discipline on extremists who threatened party comity.

That description is pretty much nonsense. What it really did was to place legislation in the hands of Congressional staffs and lobbyists. Congress members spend their days and months raising money while staffs and lobbyists write the laws. That is why Nancy Pelosi told us that “we have to pass the bill to find out what is in it.” She was referring to Obamacare but it applies to all legislation the past 18 years since McCain Feingold.

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Consent of the Governed

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“…to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
“The consent of the governed” and what a concept, hey? And outlined in our very own Declaration of Independence. That the government has authority only as far as those it governs permits, allows or tolerates; a notion which seems to have escaped the more stubbornly authoritarian among us, such as the governors of certain states: among them Gavin “Gruesome” Newsom, of California, the Unspeakable Kate Brown of Oregon, Gretchen Witmer, the Grand Karenator of Michigan, J.B. “Jabba the Hutt” Pritzker of Illinois, Ralph Northam, the Baby-Killer of Virginia and the weaselly and nipple-pierced autocrat of New York, Andrew “Missed It By That Much!” Cuomo. All the above-listed, and a good few others of lesser notoriety and office went on an authoritarian kick: “Close all the things!” seemed to be their rallying cry, after first ignoring the first warning signs of the Wuhan Coronavirus, aka the Chinese Commie Crud, and then losing their damned minds when the National Establishment Media lost theirs.

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Video Review: The Dawns Here Are Quiet

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This is both a 2015 Russian WWII TV series and a 1972 Russian movie, both based on the same novel.  The original movie is apparently considered a classic in Russia; so much so that making a new version was viewed as almost blasphemous by some.

Sergeant Vaskov is in charge of an antiaircraft battery in a (so far) quiet area.  His troops have been a drunken and quarrelsome lot, and when they are swapped out and sent to the front, he asks for replacements who will not drink and carouse with the local women so excessively.  He is surprised and initially dismayed when the replacements show up and they are all women…girls, really, just out of AA gunner’s training.

The movie starts out with a rather light tone, but quickly darkens.   Two German paratroopers—apparently saboteurs targeting a vital transportation junction—are spotted in the woods, and Vaskov takes five of his women and goes out after them.   It turns out that there are actually a lot more of the enemy than two…sixteen, in fact…and stopping them will be practically a mission impossible for Vaskov and his five newly-minted AA gunners.

I first watched the recent TV series, which has excellent cinematography and some really striking scenery. The backstories of the women and of their male commander are shown via a series of flashbacks. Lisa Britschkina, a shy girl, was sent to Siberia with her family on grounds of being Kulaks, yet she seemingly feels no conflicts about fighting for the Soviet state.  Another of the five ‘volunteers’,  Sonia Gurvich, was an excellent student and loves to read poetry aloud. Her husband was killed on the first day of the war–she has a son, who is living with Sonia’s mother. Vaskov when we meet him is a rather troubled person:  his wife has left him for another man, he was wounded on his first day of battle and has guilt feelings about now being assigned to this relatively-safe backwater in the midst of a war for national survival.

I don’t want to include any spoilers in this review: suffice it to say that this isn’t a strong-and-independent-female-superhero movie. The women accomplish remarkable things, but they and Vaskov are a true team.  Some of the scenes and events seem improbable, but the story draws you in and the characters will not be easily forgotten.

I was curious as to how the 1972 movie would compare with the more recent series…watched it, and was pleasantly surprised–I was expecting a lot more heavy-handed Soviet propaganda than was in it.  The use of color in this film is interesting: most of it is in black & white, but the flashbacks…most of which refer to the time before the war..are in color. The story is pretty close to that in the 2015 series; the portrayal of the characters, particularly the women, is pretty different–for one thing, those in the 1972 movie seem even younger, and act (at least initially) rather girlier.  One backstory is notably different in this version–that of  Lisa Britschkina–the part about her family having been sent to Siberia isn’t there.  (I’m not sure if it was in the original novel, but based on when it was published (1969) I’m guessing not.)  In both versions, some of the women smart off toward Vaskov in a way which they seem unlikely to have been gotten away with in the 1940s or for that matter today, even with a leader as fundamentally kindly as he is portrayed as being.

One objection some Russians have to the recent video is that it is “too Hollywood-ized”…this is a fair criticism of the action scenes near the end, but not, I think, of the whole thing.  Both versions are worth seeing.

I’m preaching largely to the converted here, but–we should always keep in mind, when watching Russian WWII films or reading books on the same subject, that the great heroism demonstrated by so many Russians, and the fact that they were allied with America, do not negate the extreme evil of the Soviet regime.

 

 

God Knows Where I Am

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I have been asleep at the switch on the story of Linda Bishop, who was a patient at my hospital in the 2000’s, refusing treatment and eventually being discharged, after which she moved into an abandoned farmhouse and eventually starved to death. It was written up well in the New Yorker in 2011 and I recalled reading that. Since that time it was made into an award-winning documentary in 2016, “God Knows Where I Am,” which I had not known about. I’m not sure how I missed that. Asleep at the switch, apparently. I knew nothing about the case at the time, but her entire treatment team were all people known to me. I worked that unit at other times. I think they are all gone from the hospital by now. The discussions they had are ones I have had repeatedly through the years as well. A person is psychotic, but displays no measurable dangerousness. In the protected environment of the hospital they are able to eat, stay clean, and clothe themselves. They go to a cooking group, make food, and answer a nutritionist’s questions intelligently. Whatever we suspect, we are hard pressed to offer much evidence they won’t be able to care for themselves. We might apply for a guardianship, but the standard for proving that a person is unable to make decisions on their own behalf is high. It is not enough to demonstrate they make bad decisions. Half the state of NH makes bad decisions but we don’t lock them up and get them a guardian. The bar is high because we want it to be high.

Her story is poignant, and provoking, but all the commentary in all such stories seems to say the same ridiculous things over and over. She fell through the cracks of the mental health system. No she didn’t. The story/film calls into question a system where a person who doesn’t believe they are sick can make decisions for themselves. No it doesn’t, not really, neither the legal nor the mental health system. The hospital refused to notify the family because of HIPAA laws. What’s this word “refused” in there? Do we say that the sheriff “refused” to tear down a building because of zoning laws? As in my post three years ago about the word “systemic,” we use that word system as an evasion. Systemic racism means we can’t actually define what we’re talking about, but we want bad things to stop happening so we start kicking the machine in random places. Someone will pay, dammit!

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Seth Barrett Tillman: Questions Looking for Answers: Judge Sullivan and General Flynn

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Motion practice query. Where a judge appoints an amicus to represent a party or continue a litigation or prosecution because of an absence of adversity, then do not the parties first get notice and an opportunity to be heard to contest the appointment? Or does the court act on its own, make the appointment, and then allow the parties to make objections after-the-fact?
 
If the court had prior contacts with the amicus—eg, a beauty contest or competition for the starring amicus role—do the parties get to see the records of those contacts between the court and the amicus?
 
Who, if anyone, has oversight over Amicus (Inquisitor) Gleeson? Is it DOJ? Can DOJ assert authority over Gleeson or “his” case, like in a qui tam matter? Does Gleeson take an oath of office to support the Constitution? Is Gleeson subject to the ethical guidance which applies to federal prosecutors or the other policies of the DOJ?
 
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Read the whole thing.

From the comments:

The jurisdiction of federal courts is of course limited to “cases and controversies.” If the US wants to dismiss, and the defendant wants to dismiss, where is the case or controversy? If the court has no subject matter jurisdiction, the case ends right there.