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Robinson Meyer at The Atlantic writes—Will a Reconfigured Supreme Court Help Obama's Clean-Power Plan Survive? An excerpt:

The death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia on Saturday sets up a battle between the White House and the Senate over who will nominate a new associate justice—a battle over governing norms and constitutional imperatives, played out in the most powerful republic in the world.

The outcome of that fight could also exert unusual influence over the health of the planet and the survival of its natural systems. For although Scalia’s death has already changed the outlook for a number of cases now in front of the Supreme Court, it will also alter the shape of one that will soon arrive: the legal battle over the Clean Power Plan.

The Clean Power Plan is the new set of Environmental Protection Agency regulations that anchors the Obama administration’s climate-change policy. It seeks to guide local utilities away from coal-fired electricity generation, and toward renewable energy and natural gas, a change that the Department of Energy says will forestall hundreds of millions of tons of greenhouse-gas emissions. The plan’s survival—and its entry into law—could decide the fate of the Paris Agreement, the first international treaty to mitigate climate change. For a case that will ultimately turn on administrative law, it’s hard to imagine the stakes being much higher. 

It had already been a busy week for the Clean Power Plan. On Tuesday, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the rules should neither be implemented nor enforced until the high court itself heard their opponents’ case. This was itself unprecedented: Never before had the Supreme Court stayed a set of regulations before a federal court even heard the initial case about them.

This was an ominous sign for the regulations. “One has to conclude that five justices have decided that the rule must go,” said Seth Jaffe, the former president of the American College of Environmental Lawyers.

But Scalia’s death could change all that. Now there are only four justices who have telegraphed their opposition to the rules. Could the Clean Power Plan now survive, after all? ...

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At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—Aide: Rice Lied ... oops ... “Misled” Congress About Iran:

Lo these many blog years ago the future Mrs. DarkSyde and I sat down to our first meet and greet. It seems odd to think that, back then, we were just another pair of awkward strangers hooked up by virtue of this newfangled contraption called an Internet. But as luck would have it, there was a magical extract available, refined from a strange, flowering plant discovered in the New World several hundred years earlier. Being relatively young and still fairly invincible, we threw caution to the wind and ingested a respectable quantity. The mysterious substance worked its neuro-magic, and soon we were fluttering our now blazing eyes at each other, and would go on to fall madly in love.

But that stuff wasn’t free of risk: Recent experience has shown long-term over-use is correlated with damage to almost every organ in the body. It can cause serious weight fluctuations and occasionally, even first-time users can suffer a life threatening condition involving full cardio-pulmonary failure!

So since it’s Valentine’s Day, what better segue into the topic of flowers and the wonderful—and dangerous—things we get from them?

Few would disagree that President Obama has faced an unprecedented amount of vitriol during his time in office. The Photoshopped images of his head on witch doctor bodies, the vicious anonymous attacks on social media, the hateful comments on websites, the death threats, the liberal use of the “n” word — we’ve all seen and read it.

But he’s hardly alone. Every president from George Washington on has suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune—and of political enemies in the media and in Congress. And the nation’s editorial cartoonists have done their part over the nation’s history to mock those chief executives in derisive fashion.

“Cartoons work best when they attack,” wrote Stephen Hess and Sandy Northrop in Drawn & Quartered: The History of American Political Caroons (Elliott & Clark, 1996). “With the rare exception of applauding a peace agreement or a singular individual act of valor, cartoonists are nobody’s cheerleaders. Some cartoonists gauge their success by the hate mail they receive.”

In honor of Presidents’ Day, let’s look at some examples of the cartoon vilification of our commanders in chief.

Bernie Sanders won by a landslide, a resounding victory against Hillary Clinton in the New Hampshire primary. He beat Hillary Clinton 60 percent to 38 percent. Based on the exit polls, this was more than a decisive win against Hillary Clinton: This was a defeat of the establishment. This was a defeat of incrementalism and inauthenticity. After all, if one digs deep into the message of both candidates, they’re both attempting to promote policies that focus on the middle class and, on the surface, appeal to most.

The New Hampshire grassroots and rank-and-file Democrats reviewed the democratic socialist and the Democratic Party establishment candidates. They found Bernie Sanders’ message, which was consistent and spanned several decades, believable and attainable. They listened to Hillary Clinton’s incrementalism (which purported to attain the same goal, albeit with implicit corporate dictates), as unacceptable.

The classic example is Sanders’ health care proposal. Bernie Sanders wants to get corporations out of paying medical bills altogether, given that they deny coverage to many in order to make a profit for a few (he backs single payer/Medicare for all). Hillary Clinton continues to support the arcane construct that is nothing more than a transfer of middle-class wealth to the executives and shareholders of insurance corporations.

The exit polls were striking. They indicate that the masses are finally getting it. Bernie Sanders won every demographic classification sans people over 64, and people making more than $200,000—and even those were close.

Bernie Sanders, more than any politician, has raised the issue of Wall Street/corporate control of American politics. He has promised to fund his campaign via the grassroots. Thus far he is fulfilling that promise. Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton’s financing is decidedly PAC-based.

Many viewed former President Bill Clinton’s attack on Bernie Sanders immediately before the New Hampshire primary, when it was evident that Hillary would take shellacking, as a faux pas. It wasn’t.

As David Brock said to Politico Magazine, it was a signal.

I am the parent of a high school varsity wrestler. His mother and I have shown him nothing but support for his chosen athletic activity. He is at school at 6:00 AM some mornings for weight lifting, and he doesn’t get home until after 6:00 PM at night. On Friday nights he wrestles a dual meet, and every Saturday during wrestling season we watch him wrestle in tournaments that can last 10 hours—and on top of all of that, he is on the honor roll. He is one of 15 teenagers (male and female) on the wrestling team. They are some of the hardest-working kids I have ever seen, often the first at school in the morning, and the last ones to leave at night. But my son and his teammates are not the story here—I’m just setting the stage for what my ex-wife and I see and hear from the mouths of other parents during these tournaments. What happens at my son’s school happens all around the country: Kids working hard at a sport that does not bring in revenue, and that no one comes to see except their parents.

Some of you may recall, if you watch ESPN, that the WIAA (Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association) caused a bit of a stir when it sent out a memo to athletic directors reminding them of the code of conduct for spectators of high school athletic events. It read, in part:

"Any action directed at opposing teams or their spectators with the intent to taunt, disrespect, distract or entice an unsporting behavior in response is not acceptable sportsmanship," the December email from WIAA director of communications Todd Clark said.

The email detailed certain phrases it considers unacceptable, including: "You can't do that," "Fun-da-men-tals," "Air ball," "There's a net there," "Sieve," and "We can't hear you" -- as well as "scoreboard" and "Season's over" jeers during tournament play.

A student athlete was suspended for tweeting a bad word about this policy, which has been in place for more than 30 years (I still remember Mr. McPike walking around hockey games enforcing it). This is not a new policy.

But the problem isn’t the students. I don’t think student fans cheering Airball or Season’s over! are where the problem lies. Now, the parents? That is where the problem with taunting lies.

Let me give you a heads up: First, I’m going to tell you some things that will make you ill. Then I’m going to present a cure. It will make you feel better—until, of course, you realize that knowing the cure brings us as close to implementing it as buying an electric guitar does to making you a rock star. Then you’ll feel ill again. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Corporations don’t like to pay taxes. More importantly, our tax code makes it crazy easy for them to avoid paying taxes. Thanks to Citizens for Tax Justice, we know that 15 companies in the Fortune 500 earned a collective $23 billion in profits in 2014, yet their corporate income tax bill that year was—you can probably guess where this is going—zero. (The federal government actually paid rebates to all but two of them). And not the kind of Zero that entertains. This is the kind of zero that makes people want to occupy a park in Manhattan’s Financial District.

Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders won overwhelming victories in last week’s New Hampshire primaries. 

While their base of support is very different, these “outsider” candidates are both attracting voters who are feeling alienated by a political and economic system which they perceive as unfair and rigged against average Americans. 

Ultimately, “Feel the Bern” and “Trumpmania” are populist uprisings inspired by protecting the American Dream and its foundational promise that with enough hard work, intelligence, and chutzpah anyone can enjoy upward class mobility in the United States. 

A complication: The progressive and forward-thinking dreamers who support Bernie Sanders want to expand those opportunities to all Americans. The nightmare-channeling fearmongers and authoritarians who are Trump’s base want to protect what they have by denying opportunities to others. 

There is a second problem for Republicans and those others who are attracted to Donald Trump’s particular brand of right-wing populism: His proposed policies will likely do little to improve the life chances of the working- and middle-class white voters who are attracted to his carnival barker, con man, professional wrestling “heel” routine. 

In Trump, they see a savior. He is a man whose (inherited) financial success and wealth is a marker of his greatness and political savvy. In reality, Trump’s rabble is suckered by dime store novel fictions masquerading as substantive politics. 

The first presidential election I voted in was in 1996. I voted for a third-party candidate—I don’t remember more than that it was the one with “socialist” in the party name—because after welfare reform, I was not voting for Bill Clinton. The first time I voted for a Democrat in a presidential election was John Kerry in 2004—I had voted against him in the 2002 Massachusetts Senate election, voting for write-in candidate Randall Forsberg in protest over Iraq. 

I’m not a natural Hillary Clinton supporter, is what I’m saying. When she looked like the only meaningful Democratic candidate in the 2016 presidential election, I was fine with that, committed to a Democratic win but also committed to the work of pushing from her left whenever and wherever possible. When Bernie Sanders got into the race, I was pleased to be able to support a candidate on Clinton’s left. I gave him a little money and assumed I’d give him more.

Then he lost me. Not all at once, but, by now, thoroughly. And along the way, Clinton impressed me more than she ever had. 

Economic inequality is at the top of the list of issues I care about. I basically spend my life trying to work it into discussions of every other issue, because I usually think it belongs there. I had a lot of training on that front: When I once described having fled a shoe store after two salespeople began arguing, in front of me, over which of them had approached me first and should get my business, my father said “that’s what decades of stagnating wages will get you.” So a presidential candidate who wanted to talk seriously about inequality? Great!

Except … somehow Sanders has lost me on even that. I simultaneously want a more serious and nuanced class analysis—something deeper than the talking points, more flexibly targeted to specific questions rather than broad strokes—and more willingness to depart from the talking points, to acknowledge that sometimes you really can’t turn a question to your subject of choice. When the time is right to talk about inequality, try to fit the statistics to the moment. When the time is wrong, at least pretend to notice. Clearly Sanders’ talking points are working for lots of people, and I don’t doubt his commitment on these issues, but the repetition has failed to give me anything new or interesting to hang onto. And beyond inequality, the repetition is a problem with how he talks about—or avoids talking about—other major issues, which he so often dismisses. A president has to be willing to take on issues they don’t necessarily care the most about, able to become an expert on anything, able to pivot and start to care. I need more than “trust me,” and I don’t see Sanders failing to give me that, I see him refusing to do so. That’s not confidence-inspiring.

… Then maybe Beyonce would have dedicated the Super Bowl halftime show to him.

That seems to be the sentiment and level of understanding on the issue of race relations and the Constitution we’re receiving from certain circles. Nevada State Assembly Member Shelley Shelton even said that Finicum, who was killed by the FBI while being arrested along with several other members of the domestic terrorist cult who “occupied” federal property in Oregon for more than one month, was just like Jesus, or Moses, or something.

“In any given generation there are men who are willing to stand for what they believe,” Shelton said in a Facebook post. “Most of the time they are demonized and the uninformed are made to believe they are criminals.”

“From Moses who killed an Egyptian for abusing his people, to Jesus who died on a cross as a condemned criminal, many of those who operate outside the box and promote love and justice over the current form of government are treated as outcasts and many times murdered,” she added.

And of course if Finicum had not been white, there would be hell to pay over his death at the hands of law enforcement.

“This has to be the most amazing and blatant attempt at trickery I have ever witnessed,” Shelton wrote. “America, are we are supposed to believe that LaVoy Finicum got out of the truck with his hands raised, with guns pointed at him from all directions, walked out in the open away from the truck, his only cover, and THEN decided to reach for a firearm?”

“If this happened anywhere else, with any other race or class of American the media would be throwing a fit AND SO WOULD I,” the Nevada Republican wrote. “Where are you now? I spent the entire session in Carson City fighting for the rights of every citizen of every race, creed or social class to gain protection from this very type of tragedy. Where are you now? Can we finally drop the labels and the race cards and come together for justice for all Americans? Democrats, ACLU, I worked with you there for justice. Where are you now?”

Yes, clearly it’s Finicum’s lack of pigment that has the media cowed and reluctant to create a frenzy over his shooting. As this essay was being written, the FBI had begun to move in to end the Oregon standoff with a siege of the remaining occupiers of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge (Editor’s note: The last of the occupiers was ousted Thursday). But a fascinating aspect is the dainty patience that has been afforded these people. The same patience certainly has never been afforded to persons of color who similarly protested the government.

What do excessive testing in schools, the situation in Ferguson, Missouri, speed cameras, and the recent lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan, all have in common?

They’re all symptoms of a new America. An America that is no longer a democracy. An America that is under the control of corporate special interest groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And an America that is being micromanaged by a mid-level tier of bought-and-paid for politicians who no longer work in the interests of the public.

The media keeps presenting these crises as one-off events, singularities.

If you take a step back though, there are clearly common threads. The first thread is that corporate special interests keep buying themselves out of responsibility (privatize the profit, socialize the risk). The second is that in order to keep people in check and execute on these plans, increasingly they’re relying on a tier of mid-level micromanagers. The poisoning of Flint is just the latest symptom of a country that seems to be more and more under corporate special interest micromanagement. 

What does this look like?

Back in the early 80s there was a breeding colony of least terns, near the mouth of the Santa Margarita River, that occasionally hosted the endangered Western snowy plover. During the nesting season, Marines were unable to access the Pacific Ocean in their amphibious vehicles from the sandy beaches of Camp Pendleton that were adjacent to the nesting site. Marine Corps bases in California are scrupulous about protecting the environment that they occupy. 

There were buffalo herds that were guaranteed the right-of-way while crossing roads further inland on the base. Their presence near firing ranges was enough for a cease fire to be called until they ambled out of range, as it was feared that they would be too great a temptation for the young Marines who were in training.

In 1991, the Marine Corps base at Twentynine Palms re-introduced Nelson’s bighorn sheep back into the Bullion Mountains, their historic range. The price of a pair of horns was $40,000 on the black market at the time, and the sheep were safer in the middle of an artillery range than they were on the mountain slopes of the nearby Joshua Tree National Monument (now Park). They are still there today, thriving.

The military is capable of doing a competent job of protecting the environment at the same time that it is training its forces for combat. They can multi-task with the best of them. Which is why the uproar on the right over the latest Department of Defense (DoD) directive is rather insulting to our military forces.

I was about five or six years old when my mom told me the story of Frederick Douglass. In my memories, his history was woven into her tales of my enslaved ancestors, which were lovingly and proudly passed down to me. The first time I saw a portrait of him, he reminded me of a fierce and protective lion, probably because of his mane of silvered hair and noble mien. It’s more than 60 years later, and I am still in love with Douglass. It’s a love wrapped in awe, honor, and respect for a man who stands as one of our greatest Americans. 

Since those days of childhood, I’ve learned much more about him—thanks to both his own words and the works of many historians. He, like all men and women, had fears and flaws. His very humanity and his ability to move through and transcend the myriad obstacles placed in his path—of enslavement, illiteracy, and virulent racism—to rise to the heights of national and international prominence speaks volumes. This, in a time when black Americans were most often viewed as sub-human chattel. This was a time when so many of us were held in bondage. This was a time when murderous gangs of whites—in the South and the North—targeted free black people to be tarred, lynched, burned out, and dragged back into enslavement.

My Valentine’s card for you today, on the day he chose as his birthday, is a tribute to this warrior for social justice. This abolitionist, feminist, orator, writer, and statesman.

Like many of those born into slavery, Frederick Douglass had no idea of the date of his birth. He knew neither his age nor the day on which to commemorate each new year that was added to it. Escaping slavery in Maryland for freedom in the North, Douglass thus had to select a day on which to celebrate his birthday. He chose St. Valentine’s Day, after recalling that his mother had so often called him her “Little Valentine.”