{"id":46682,"date":"2020-10-14T17:47:36","date_gmt":"2020-10-14T21:47:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=46682"},"modified":"2020-10-16T17:38:34","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T21:38:34","slug":"keeping-it-simple-blame-right-wing-judges-on-the-koch-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sidebarforplaintiffs.naomifein.net\/?p=46682","title":{"rendered":"Keeping it simple: blame right-wing judges on the Koch machine"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought I sent this one out several days ago but maybe not. So….<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I listened to Sheldon Whitehouse yesterday because what he did with his time on the Senate Judicial Committee hearing was not<\/em> question Amy Coney Barrett.<\/p>\n

No. He ignored her entirely and indicted the Koch machine for all the right-wing federal court decisions — he’s tracked 80 — they’ve paid for by buying right-wing judicial nominees, including Barrett.<\/p>\n

Senator Whitehouse has been accumulating his evidence and shining his sunlight for at least the past year, which I know because I’ve followed him on Twitter. I’ve been in admiration of him for longer than that.<\/a><\/p>\n

Also yesterday, the Times published an op by Christopher Leonard,<\/a> the author of Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America.<\/em> That is, Mr. Leonard knows what he’s writing about, and what he’s writing about is both a complement to Senator Whitehouse’s dissertation in the Committee today and a big punch in our collective gut.<\/p>\n

If you put Whitehouse’s and Leonard’s thorough investigations together, you will understand how it happened that the Koch machine achieved one of its greatest goals: controlling the federal courts.<\/p>\n

Indeed, I just read with the same damn outrage how the Fifth Circuit Federal Court — in Texas, where else?<\/a> — rejected the lower federal judge’s ruling that Governor Greg Abbott could not limit ballot drop-off boxes to one per county, no matter how many people there were in a county. Three judges on that Fifth Circuit panel, all of them put there by Trump and McConnell.<\/p>\n

And paid for by the Koch machine. Secretly, with money shoveled out of unlabeled closets.<\/p>\n

Do you remember the glossy TV ads supporting Neil Gorsuch’s candidacy for the Supreme\u00a0 Court?\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

Who paid for those weird ads — weird in the sense of when have we ever been barraged by glossy political ads for a….judge? Who paid?<\/a><\/p>\n

And who will be paying for glossy toilet paper TV ads for Amy Coney Barrett?<\/p>\n

Same guys Sheldon Whitehouse was naming in the Senate chamber yesterday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought I sent this one out several days ago but maybe not. So….   I listened to Sheldon Whitehouse yesterday because what he did with his time on the Senate Judicial Committee hearing was not question Amy Coney Barrett. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[337,4789,1095,1175,727,2902],"tags":[2474,3490,1305,1842,6327,1664,1299,6326,6325],"class_list":["post-46682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal-news","category-political-campaigns","category-politics","category-the-facts-of-life","category-lawsuits-of-the-filthy-rich-2","category-trump-stuff","tag-amy-coney-barrett","tag-charles-koch","tag-dark-money","tag-jane-mayer","tag-koch-industries","tag-nancy-maclean","tag-neil-gorsuch","tag-senate-judiciary-committee","tag-sheldon-whitehouse"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t