126 Comments
User's avatar
Swbv's avatar

Confirming Bove to a seat on ANY Court would be one of the most awful and spineless decisions our GOP senators could foist on the American people. They know he is both abjectly political and a man of scant moral fiber. They know it.

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Ellie Alive In 25's avatar

All that is true, which is why it will more than likely, happen.

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Dave Conant - MO's avatar

Not necessarily. Phone calls, letters, and emails to Senators and Congresspeople work, even though not as publicly or as quickly as we'd like. The more people who call, the more chance there is that three or four Republican Senators will find a bone spur in their spine that is enough for them to stand on and vote no. Doing nothing will ensure that the mess doesn't get cleaned up.

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Ellie Alive In 25's avatar

I don't recall suggesting "doing nothing." I have Democratic Senators that mostly vote the way they should. My Republican congresscon will vote however he is told to by the PTB, but that doesn't stop me from contacting him. Of course everyone should be doing that.

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Dave Conant - MO's avatar

It wasn't directed at you; I've learned not to make assumptions about people I don't know. It was more directed at anyone who reads your comment and thinks "Yeah, we're just stuck with it". You're ahead of me by 2 Senators, all of mine are Republican and my junior Senator is so committed to the cult he really believes the BBB was a good idea and will make us all better off.

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Ellie Alive In 25's avatar

That's what my congresscon (Nick Langworthy) says he believes. I don't think he does believe that at all, but is simply devoted to Power, Party, and Pelf.

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Dave Conant - MO's avatar

Eric Schmitt is a true believer.

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Nick's avatar

Wait, wait, wait. You mean the current Senate would confirm a complete incompetent, lawless person. Not the Senate who confirmed a totally ignorant incompetent person to be Secretary of Health and Human Services. Not the Senate who confirmed a drunk and totally incompetent person to be Secretary of Defense. Not the Senate who confirmed a Russian asset and totally incompetent person to be DNI. Certainly not the Senate who confirmed a totally incompetent hack to be Secretary of Homeland Security. Not this Senate.

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Tim Matchette's avatar

Well said Nick. The gutless GOP senators showed no respect or commitment to Constitution, can never be made to finally change their direction. These slugs are on the arm, so to speak. They are the American Taliban.

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DS's avatar

It would be a terrible thing in and of itself, and a precursor to installing more of his ilk in our federal judiciary. It must be prevented.

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Swbv's avatar

And a 5 alarm fire if the Supreme Court is in the offing

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DS's avatar

Agreed. A little while back my wife and I watched Judgement at Nuremberg for the first time--an example of what our SCOTUS could become. It's already headed there.

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Thea's avatar

Makes me sick

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Hiro's avatar

"Until voters can throw out MAGA lawmakers, install a constitutionally compliant president, and undertake meaningful Supreme Court reform, creative, alternative mechanisms may be the only way to halt or at least slow down Trump’s ongoing schemes to uproot the rule of law." This statement was once a norm, now a dream wish. What a sad change because of one president.

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Roger Loeb's avatar

Unfortunately, we can't just throw out the imbecile who's President (and the crew of crooks behind the curtain) or the highly biased Supreme Court justices or the obedient senators. Because the Constitution allocates two Senators to each State, the Republicans will almost always control the Senate, and there's nothing we can do about this without a Constitutional Amendment, which is effectively impossible. The Founders of this country never foresaw the situation in which there were such lopsided state populations that having equal representation was actually unequal representation.

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Steve Morris's avatar

John Roberts did and has been working his entire professional life as a judge to ensure what the Founders did not and could not foresee: a Felon in Chief on whom Roberts and his rotten MAGA colleagues could confer immunity from criminal acts and endorse and encourage his fascist anti-constitution "executive orders."

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Merrill's avatar

Last week I wrote a long post about my embarrassment trying to explain to my summer neighbors in Nova Scotia, Canada what DJT and MAGA, are doing to America with their hate filled agenda.

We Liberals and our GOP/MAGA opposition have descended into a world of suspicion and hate which seems unending. We have become a country divided. How do we become a country united again?

Three fundamental virtues of a Democratic society have vanished from political life in America; Civility, Responsibility and Tolerance.

Civility meaning we speak with respect rather than insults. Responsibility meaning we support policies that are for the common good of all citizens, not the few. And especially Tolerance which requires us to respectfully debate our differences not demonize them.

If we restore these principles in America, we will stop being angry 24/7, heal our wounds and feel united again.

Today, we are in such a deep hole of political misery, it will take continuous mass protests and all other forms of non-violent actions to unseat MAGA/Trump and the failed GOP.

Let's keep proudly moving forward together and not in fear. We are leading a movement for the rebirth of freedom in America.

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Daniel Solomon's avatar

Today faith leaders will demonstrate in protests in 11 states, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia. Protestors plan to demonstrate outside congressional district offices carrying caskets with statistics of the number of people expected to be harmed by the cuts. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/07/14/faith-leaders-budget-bill-cuts-harm-poor/84640502007/?utm_source=usat-DailyBriefing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-briefing-with-greeting&utm_term=newsletter-greeting&utm_content=8872UT-E-NLETTER02-Weekday

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Merrill's avatar

Hopefully these kinds of protests can change some minds about the direction MAGA is taking America. Fascism is always a dead end for the majority.

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Teresa JV's avatar

I wonder why we haven’t heard from Franklin Graham who has touted this twat wagon of a president as ‘sent from God’? So many evangelical MAGAts think whatever he says is from God’s mouth. So, how is ok with the big ugly bill, Alligator Auschwitz and the treatment of immigrants?

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Tim Matchette's avatar

Teresa, they are selling crap to benefit themselves. Con men of the Cloth if you will. It's just another con to get the morons who buy into this type of religion to pony up.

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Daniel Solomon's avatar

Should get him on the record.

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Nick's avatar

Like Jimmy Swaggart ("I have sinned"), Jim Baker and so many others before him, Franklin Graham is a con man, bilking his followers out of $Millions. Americans just didn't get it after Elmer Gantry and A Face in The Crowd came out in the 1950's.

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Daniel Solomon's avatar

True but these guys aren't married to Trump, are not running for political office. If their paritioners are broke, can't tithe.

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Tim Matchette's avatar

Great films Nick and right to the point of how gullible some people are.

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Stephen Brady's avatar

How restore Civility, Responsibility, and Tolerance when a significant part of the American Polity willfully sits in front of the TV and ingests reichwing propaganda all day, every day? That propaganda tells them repeatedly throughout the day that 'Those People' are wrong, evil, and un-American... And right now, their leaders are willing to simply ignore the Constitution. Dear leader will simply pardon them for any crimes they commit. They think they are on a mission from 'god'.

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It's Come To This's avatar

I think this is a beautiful sentiment, yet I believe it misdiagnoses the problem and therefore misses the mark.

We're not here because of mutual hate, but because a vast fright-wing machine churning out imbecility and inanity every day has created a false world with millions of willing victims. The confusion and anger about the Epstein nonsense you hear right now is a symptom of this machine starting to crack. Through the persona of Trump with his Obama birther bullshit back in 2011 to this present nonsense, the machine has reached maximum influence (I hope). We will never get our country back until the cracks turns into chasms and it starts breaking down totally. Right now, some are being confronted with the idiotic world they themselves helped manufacture (with the assistance of Rupert Murdoch and those giving this false reality legs and money).

This is a moment not for harmony but destruction of the entire Silly Putty complex that has eaten people's brains and turned the Republican Party into nothing but a quivering bowl of jello. The misery is THEIR creation, not ours. We mustn't let go for a second, not with the goal of 'harmony' (I'm not sure what that even means) but with the goal of breaking the Beast. Otherwise our republic is toast. For what it's worth....

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Tim Matchette's avatar

Absolutely. The lunatics are about to cross the Rubicon. And we know what happened to Rome when that occurred. They are starting to eat themselves.

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Doris King's avatar

Good luck with that. I believe that falls under the terms “wishful thinking “. I fear we are way beyond that time.

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Pam Boyce's avatar

I wish there was a double like button.

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patricia's avatar

hopefully MAGA and the trump bilionis will unseat themselves with their destruction of the safety nets millions of americans use.

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Tim Matchette's avatar

And we will succeed, Merrill. The excellent book on what happened to the GOP, was written by WAPO columnist, Dana Milbank. "The Destructionists". Read it and learn how things got to where they are now. We can change directions.

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Jason's avatar
11hEdited

It’s good that Jennifer Rubin protests the outrageous arrest and treatment of Mahmoud Khalil, but Rubin, and The Contrarian in general, have said next to nothing about what he was protesting.

There is a major gap in the coverage given by The Contrarian - the ongoing support by the US of the genocidal onslaught in Gaza by Israel, as well as the major increase in Israel's apartheid driven assaults and land grabs in the West Bank.

The Contrarian (rightly) gives a lot of coverage to developments in Russia's war in the Ukraine and specifically the role of the US in that conflict. It should do the same in Israel and the Occupied Territories, where US military, financial and political support has always been a crucial and deciding factor.

The heinously-named joint US/Israeli operation, the 'Gaza Humanitarian Foundation', continues to lure in starving Palestinians only to shoot them down in cold blood. There have been several hundred murders linked to the GHF since June, and there are more and more credible reports that American GHF contractors are doing some of the killing.

This crime alone is an unbelievable horror. The Contrarian needs to speak out against this and report on it.

Just last week, the US sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the U.N. special rapporteur for the West Bank and Gaza, for the crime of criticizing Israel's ongoing genocidal actions. This is the latest time the US has made a mockery of international law concerning Israel. The US has already sanctioned ICC judges, vetoed resolution after resolution in the UN, and welcomed the indicted war criminal Netanyahu to Congress, where he posed for friendly photos with both Democrats and Republicans.

But, there has been not a word in The Contrarian.

Also last week, a 20-year old Palestinian-American, Saif Musallet, was beaten to death by Israeli 'settlers' in the West Bank. To date there has been no punishment or arrests for this shocking, disgusting crime which recalls lynchings in the Jim Crow South.

Again, not a word in The Contrarian.

It is past time The Contrarian give some attention to these important issues. The silence by this outlet in the face of these daily atrocities is very loud.

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donna woodward's avatar

I second, third, fourth etc. this comment. Will the Contrarian not only rethink your reporting, but maybe give us some rationale for this glaring omission in your coverage?

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Susan Iwanisziw's avatar

Being sympathetic to Palestinians has never been an easy play. On an overseas vacation that included in Israeli general years ago, I was roundly ostracized by the pro-Israel “self-defense” faction. No easy way to be for Israel’s existence AND for Palestinian rights then or now.

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Jason's avatar

You can at least be assured that, by caring about Palestinian lives, you are in solidarity with the overwhelming majority of the people of the world, including every international governing body and legal entity and every international human rights organization there is.

Whether it is an 'easy play' or not is no excuse for the complete blacklisting of news about the US support for Israel and its effects by this supposedly 'liberal' outlet.

As Rubin says here, 'It’s time to hold lawbreakers accountable' - in this case, it's a government led by an indicted war criminal who violates international law daily. By extension, the US government is also violating international law by enabling, supporting, defending and in some cases participating in these horrible, ongoing atrocities.

The silence of The Contrarian is deafening.

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John's avatar
11hEdited

The only problem with holding these criminal accountable is that our system of justice operates…………… so………………..damned………………... slowly. First, we have to wait until they’re out of office, 4 or more years from now, investigations will take another 2-4 years, indictments get handed down after which the games begin, adding another 3-5 years before these cases even get to trial. By the time that happens, half of them will be dead and the other half will have left the country. Crimes of this nature in the United States do pay, and handsomely, too. The rule of law sometimes is its own worst enemy.

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Wendy's avatar

I couldn't agree more. Every time I hear talk of investigations and such, I just laugh. I had hoped to live long enough to see justice done, but with history as my guide, I will be dead before that happens.

I want to see a court put into place where government cases are its only focus: subpoenas, branch squabbles, immigration, special counsel questions as examples. Waiting a decade for the outcomes serves no justice at all. The image that your puppy pees on the carpet when he's six months old and you punish him when he's 10 comes to mind.

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Joline Godfrey's avatar

What do you do when the lawbreakers are Supreme Court justices??

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Joline Godfrey's avatar

Seriously. Not a hypothetical question. I'm hoping SOMEONE has ideas. The ACLU is doing Herculean work in the courts and I hope they do not stop. But what can we do to reenergize sane Republicans and retain/elect committed, smart Democrats? In the short term a 3rd party is not the answer. Strengthening the Legislative branch seems to be the only strategic path currently viable. There is a serious effort to replace Susan Collins in Maine...what are others doing to replace deadwood in Congress?

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Marc Panaye's avatar

Trump is nothing but the useful idiot who is parked in the display window by the creeps of Project 2025, The Heritage Foundation, Leo's sick Federalist Society club and the way to less taxed billionaires.

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Coelle Baskel's avatar

Yes, getting rid of Trump isn't the answer to the control by the Heritage Foundation and it's Project 2025....these people like Miller and others need to be held accountable for this inhumane treatment of immigrants by depleting our farm workers as well as others who are here just doing a job!

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patricia's avatar

trump and the whole lot belong on the cat wall at Petco........

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Alan Greenstein's avatar

Good luck to everyone trying to hold the lawless and cruel Trump administration to account. The Supreme Court is now a part of the executive branch and Republicans have decided that Congress is now part of the executive branch, so all we have left are the lower courts.

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David L Korn's avatar

After reading all the MAGA punditry about illegal aliens in the US, I felt the need to jump in😉. Here goes...

Superman was an illegal alien! Did he legally apply for asylum because his planet exploded, or US citizenship? Where are his documents of American Citizenship? Why isn't ICE rounding up Superman...or Bondi insisting his papers never existed...and then shutting down all of Superman's movies (past and present + destroying all his comic books and old TV shows and even radio shows)?

Yup...just because Superman came here from outer space doesn't mean he crossed the US boarder illegally.

And Ma & Pa Kent, they illegally hid and raised this alien, and even gave him a fake American name, Clark Kent, to keep him from being shipped back to where he came from, or maybe Saturn instead.

Tell ICE...tell Trump...tell ICE Queen that Superman has to go!!!

Thank-you for your attention in this serious matter of national security and truth, justice, and the American way.

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Troy Anderson's avatar

Every adult knows or should know bad behavior unchecked begets bad behavior. It will go on and on until the voters stop it. We can do it. At least some of the courts are trying, but we, the people, can do it. Please let's do it.

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patricia's avatar

ABSOLUTELY ! Voting is the ONLY way to get rid of these traitors. Forget courts.

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Kristina Amadeus's avatar

Now back in the UK after 45 years living in both Canada and the USA, I am, to use a very British expression, gobsmacked at the rapid rise of fascism in the US. At no time did I feel that this might happen. Time to send the Statue of Liberty back to France, methinks!!

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Nay's avatar
7hEdited

I think Macron should demand the return of the Statue of Liberty. It’s what Trump would do. It’s really not that absurd. After all Trump wants Canada and Greenland. There is no liberty in this country anymore. Do I think we should give it back? No. But the demand could make a point.

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patricia's avatar

who are the 8 people who like this for God's sake ???

of course we are shocked by the rapid rise of nazi shit here, but my God people the statue of liberty...get a grip

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patricia's avatar

No way ! Leave her right where she is...she's protected by NY and NJ...and all of us as well !

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Kristina Amadeus's avatar

Have you seen Trump & cohorts honouring previous protections for national parks, bears, wolves, civil rights, etc. ad nauseam? Fingers crossed you'll be able to protect any 'rights' at all in the US. Blessings!

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patricia's avatar

yeah it looks bad doesn't it ?

I think the world's observation of the US is coloured by, see you guys aren't all that after all are you ?

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Lucy's avatar

Thank you, Jennifer,!

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Marsha's avatar

Is any organization computing how much the lawsuits are costing taxpayers? And how crowded are the court dockets as a result of the cases and appeals and refillings and going to the Supremes. Litigation is a classic Trump ploy to bankrupt plaintiffs and drag things out for years and years. And this time we’re the ones paying for his little game.

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Judith Farris Bowman's avatar

CREW (Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington) and LDAD (Lawyers Defending American Democracy) are doing the kind of litigation you are talking about already.

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donna woodward's avatar

"Until voters can throw out MAGA lawmakers, install a constitutionally compliant president, and undertake meaningful Supreme Court reform..."

Yes. While in the first instance this means getting out the vote for the mid-terms, beyond that what we need are term limits for members of Congress and federal judges, and an overhaul of the rules that permit gerrymandering of electoral districts. No member of Congress, however brilliant a legislator or negotiator he/she is, is indispensable. Changes to these two basic facets of our political system could accomplish so much 'downstream,' as it were. E.g. election finance reform, immigration reform, tax reform, gun control.

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Justin Sayne's avatar

“Until voters can throw out MAGA lawmakers, install a constitutionally compliant president, and undertake meaningful Supreme Court reform, creative, alternative mechanisms may be the only way to halt or at least slow down Trump’s ongoing schemes to uproot the rule of law.”

Very true. But……that sure is a “big ask”! Seems our Country has gone “off the rails”. How do you put “Humpty Dumpty back together again”? It just doesn’t make sense: how and why would our population want to destroy themselves? Seems like a majority of our countrymen just don’t believe in “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” for all. The big unanswerable question….to me…..is: Why not?

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Jay Jay Eh's avatar

Trump’s MAGAs have a need to blame ‘others’ for their lot in life, and it’s convenient, effortless & even satisfying for them to engage is the various -isms while doing so … racism currently the main -ism on offer with the aggressive deportations.

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patricia's avatar

racism is very toxic and it destroys your brain

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CE's avatar

Actually, the officials implementing these draconian measures will be easier to hold accountable once Trump is out of office (whether by serving out his time, being impeached and removed by a reformed Congress after the midterms, or by Father Time extracting his due)because they do not enjoy the immunity that the Supreme Court handed to Donald J Trump. Each of them should think long and hard about rejecting the Constitution in the service of an elderly failing fella with a personality disorder.

And Emil Bove will be confirmed. The invertebrates in the Senate won’t die on that particular hill.

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