Tuesday, October 13, 2020
Amy Coney Barrett dodges abortion, healthcare and election law questions
Daniel Strauss
@danielstrauss4
On the second day of hearings before the Senate judiciary committee, Democrats pressed supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett on healthcare, election law and abortion rights – and met with little success.
Donald Trump’s third nominee for the highest court dodged questions on how she might rule on a challenge to the Affordable Care Act (ACA); if she would recuse herself from any lawsuit about the presidential election; and whether she would vote to overturn the landmark 1973 ruling Roe v Wade, which made abortion legal.
In an exchange with the Democratic Delaware senator Chris Coons, Barrett said: “I am not here on a mission to destroy the Affordable Care Act. I’m just here to apply the law and adhere to the rule of law.”
Multiple Democratic senators pressed Barrett on whether she would recuse herself from a possible case about the outcome of the 2020 election. The Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal said he was “disappointed” in Barrett’s refusal to commit to a position. He added: “It would be a dagger at the heart of the court and our democracy if this election is decided by the court rather than the American voters.”
Barrett argued that she was not a pundit, citing remarks by Justice Elena Kagan and the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg in saying that outside of reviewing a specific case, it was not her place to offer a position.
“No hints, no previews, no forecasts,” Barrett quoted Ginsburg as saying, after the California senator Dianne Feinstein questioned her about how she might rule in any case challenging the legality of abortion.
Barrett is a devout Catholic whose previous statements and affiliations have been closely examined by Democrats and the media. Trump has said overturning Roe v Wade would be “possible” with Barrett on the court.
When she was asked about a newspaper ad she signed criticizing Roe v Wade, first reported by the Guardian, Barrett said she had “no recollection” of it and stressed she had nothing to hide.
At another point in Tuesday’s hearing, Barrett cited Kagan in saying she would not give “a thumbs up or thumbs down” on any hypothetical ruling.
Most of the questioning from Democrats centered on the ACA, known popularly as Obamacare, and how a ruling by the high court overturning the law would take away healthcare from millions of Americans. A hearing is due a week after election day. Democrats see protecting the ACA as a productive electoral tactic, having focused on it in the 2018 midterms, when they took back the House.
Barrett said she was not hostile to the ACA, or indeed abortion or gay rights, another area worrying progressives as the court seems set to tilt to a 6-3 conservative majority. Barrett said she was simply focused on upholding the law.
“I am not hostile to the ACA,” Barrett said. “I apply the law, I follow the law. You make the policy.”
Asked about gay rights, Barrett said: “I would not discriminate on the basis of sexual preference.”
Her choice of words conspicuously suggested that to her, sexuality is a choice. Amid scrutiny of Barrett’s past, meanwhile, it has been reported that she was a trustee at a school whose handbook included stated opposition to same-sex marriage
Republican senators also questioned Barrett on healthcare, the Iowa senator Chuck Grassley asking if she had been asked during the nomination process if she supported overturning the ACA.
“Absolutely not,” Barrett said. “I was never asked and if I had been that would’ve been a short conversation.”
Barrett said it was “just not true” that she wanted to strike down protections for Americans with pre-existing conditions.
Asked if she thought same-sex marriage should be a crime, she said the ruling in Obergefell v Hodges, in 2015, made it the law of the land.
Asked if she would recuse herself on any lawsuit over the outcome of the 2020 election, however, Barrett declined to commit. Instead she said: “I have made no commitment to anyone – not in the Senate, not in the White House – on how I would decide a case.”
It was the first of two sessions of questioning, after which outside witnesses will be called. Tuesday’s opening exchanges produced a mere continuation of Barrett’s seemingly serene journey into Ginsburg’s seat.
Barrett in addition to serving as an appellate judge is also a professor for the University of Notre Dame. Almost 100 of Barrett’s colleagues in a letter urged her to hold off on the confirmation process until after the presidential election in November.
The letter pointed out the “rushed nature” of events, adding that it “may effectively deprive the American people of a voice in selecting the next supreme court justice”.
“You are not, of course, responsible for the anti-democratic machinations driving your nomination,” the letter added.
Trump and Republicans are eager to move quickly. The president has said he wants to see Barrett confirmed before election day, which is in three weeks’ time, suggesting that this is in part because he hopes she will rule in his favor if a challenge to the election result reaches the highest court.
In a conference call with reporters, Senate Democrats fretted about their chances of stopping Barrett.
“The fact of the matter is this nominee is extreme,” the Connecticut senator Richard Blumenthal said. “Her views are outliers.
“I think we are going to demonstrate today and tomorrow what’s at stake and how extreme and far right this nominee is.”
He conceded that Democrats had no “magic” tool to block Barrett. They would, he said, use every procedural tool they have but “the politics are difficult here. Republicans are practically boasting that they have the votes.”
Blumenthal said Democrats were “ultimately making our case to the American people”, to make them realize the impact Barrett’s nomination was likely to have.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/13/amy-coney-barrett-dodges-abortion-healthcare-election-law-questions-hearing
China Got Better. We Got Sicker. Thanks, Trump.
By Thomas L. Friedman
As I watched the first Trump-Biden debate, a vision popped into my head. I imagined that the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party had also gathered to watch the debate — but its members decided to make it more entertaining by playing a drinking game. Every time Donald Trump said something ridiculous or embarrassing for America, each Politburo member had to down a shot of whiskey. Within a half-hour, all 25 members were stone-cold drunk. How could they not have been? They were watching something they had never seen before — the out-of-control antics of an incoherent American president, a man clearly desperate to stay in office because losing could mean his prosecution, humiliation and liquidation all at the same time. And who can blame the Chinese for gloating? A pandemic that began in Wuhan, and, for now, has been contained in China, is still rampaging through America’s economy and citizenry — even though we saw the whole thing coming. Alas, we aren’t who we think we are. Covid-19 was supposed to be China’s Chernobyl. It’s ended up looking more like the West’s Waterloo. That is the argument that John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge make in their new book, “The Wake-Up Call: Why the Pandemic Has Exposed the Weakness of the West, and How to Fix It.” According to the Johns Hopkins coronavirus tracker, America has suffered 65.74 Covid deaths per 100,000 people, or about 216,000 total. China has lost 0.34 per 100,000, or about 4,750 people. Maybe China’s fibbing. OK — so quadruple its numbers — China still has been vastly better at protecting its people than the United States.Indeed, early this month, days after Trump’s White House became a super-spreader site, and millions of Americans were afraid to send their kids to school, China, with close to zero local transmissions, saw millions of its citizens flocking to bus stations, train stations and airports to travel all across their country for a national holiday. On Oct. 1 Bloomberg reported, “The Chinese yuan is drawing attention as a haven from volatility after its best quarter in 12 years.” China’s September imports and exports both surged. That used to be us! “We argue that the high point for Western government, at least comparatively, was the 1960s when America was racing to put a man on the moon and millions of Chinese were dying of starvation,” Micklethwait, editor in chief of Bloomberg News, told me. Also, “that was the last time when three-quarters of Americans trusted their government.” But, added Wooldridge, The Economist’s political editor, today we’re heading toward “the full reversal of the history that began 500 years ago when China was equally far ahead — a quarter of the world’s economy, and by far the most sophisticated government. We forget these things. China does not. This could be a crucial year in terms of Asia regaining the lead it had 500 years ago — unless the West wakes up.” For America to bounce back would require, for starters, a national plan to deal with Covid-19. China had one: It deployed all the tools of its authoritarian surveillance system — tools designed to track and trace political dissidents to control the population — to track and trace those infected with the coronavirus and control its spread. Some of China’s facial recognition technology is so good, you don’t even have to take off your face mask. Your eyes and upper nose will do. America cannot employ such a strategy. We don’t have an authoritarian government (yet), and I sure don’t want one. But we failed to produce a democratic consensus to do the same job. That’s what is so depressing. America has confronted authoritarian states in our recent history — Japan and Germany in World War II and North Korea and Russia during the Cold War. Authoritarian regimes always have an advantage at the start of wars: They can just order their societies to do things from the top down. But in the long run, America always triumphed because, while we’re usually unprepared for war and start slowly, we always climb the learning curve fast and come together for the long haul — from the bottom up. Until now. This time we never pulled together to rise to the Covid challenge. On March 28, Trump declared, “Our country is at war with an invisible enemy.” He vowed to summon “the full power of the American nation” to defeat it. But it never happened. Outside of the first responders and health workers, acts of public solidarity and wartime willingness to sacrifice have been minimal or evanescent. Why? It’s not because democracies are incapable of governing in a pandemic — South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand have done much better than us. In part, it’s because we have a uniquely individualistic culture, a highly fragmented local-state-federal power-sharing system, a frail public health system, a divided body politic, a Republican Party whose business model has long been to cripple Washington, and so many people getting their news from social networks that amplify conspiracy theories and destroy truth and trust. But what is most different is that we now have a president whose political strategy for re-election is to divide us, to destroy trust — and to destroy truth — and to declare any news hostile to his goals as “fake.” And without truth and trust in a pandemic, you’re lost. In our last great pandemic, in 1918, lots of Americans did not mind wearing masks — look at the pictures — because their leaders asked them to do so and led by example. But this time, the president never trusted Americans with the truth and led by dismissing the virus and mocking mask-wearing. So, many Americans never trusted him back. As a result, we could never rationally discuss the sorts of trade-offs that a democracy like ours, with a culture likes ours, needed to make. Public health expert Dr. David Katz argued in a Times Op-Ed and in an interview with me back in March that we needed a national plan that balanced saving the most lives and the most livelihoods at the same time. If we just focused on saving every life, we would create millions of deaths of despair from lost jobs, savings and businesses. If we just focused on saving every job, we would cruelly condemn to death fellow Americans who deserved no such fate. Katz argued for a strategy of “total harm minimization” that would have protected the elderly and most vulnerable, while gradually feeding back into the work force the young and healthy most likely to experience the coronavirus either asymptomatically or mildly — and let them keep the economy humming and build up some natural herd immunity as we awaited a vaccine. Unfortunately, we could never have a sane, sober discussion about such a strategy. From the right, said Katz, we got “contemptuous disdain” for doing even the simplest things, like wearing a mask and social distancing. The left was much more responsible, he added, but not immune from treating any discussion of economic trade-offs in a pandemic as immoral and “treating any policy allowing for any death as an act of sociopathy.” In sum, what ails us today is something that cannot be cured by a Covid-19 vaccine. We have lost the trust in each other and in our institutions and a basic sense of what is true — all necessary to navigate a health crisis together. We had them in previous wars, but not today’s. I believe that Joe Biden was nominated by Democrats, and has a real chance to win, because enough Americans intuit that we’re sick with disunity and that Biden might be able to begin to reverse it. Biden’s victory will not be sufficient to make America healthy again — politically and physically — but it is necessary. In the meantime, Russia and China, please do not invade us right now. We aren’t who we used to be.
With a different leader, the United States could have contained the coronavirus.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/opinion/trump-china-coronavirus.html
#Pakistan - I, Asim Bajwa, may have quit, but don’t forget I still head Cheese Pizza Economic Corridor
Yesterday was another Mubarak historic 12 October for me. The one in 1999 brought pizza prosperity into my life with General Pervez Musharraf’s coup, and this year was a chance to hide that prosperity in plain sight.
پاکستان ایک ‘ڈیپ سٹیٹ’ ملک ہے، جسے اسٹیبلشمنٹ چلاتی ہے: سابق امریکی وزیر خارجہ کا انکشاف
Hillary Clinton explains Pakistan’s “Deep State.” pic.twitter.com/jtJJUotpfI
— Tarek Fatah (@TarekFatah) October 13, 2020
سابق امریکی وزیر خارجہ اور ڈیموکریٹس پارٹی کی سابقہ صدارتی امیدوار ہیلری
کلنٹن نے ایک انٹرویو کے دوران ڈیپ سٹیٹ کی اصطلاح کی وضاحت کرتے ہوئے انکشاف کیا ہے کہ علم سیاسیات کے مفکرین نے ڈیٹ سٹیٹ کو سمجھانے کیلئے کچھ ریاستوں کے سیاسی ڈھانچے کی اصطلاح کے طور پر استعمال کیا ہے جہاں منتخب حکومت نہیں بلکہ کچھ ادارے حقیقی حکمران ہوتے ہیں جسکی مثال پاکستان جیسے ملک کی دی جاسکتی ہے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ پاکستان میں ملٹری اور اسٹیبلشمنٹ بالواسطہ طور پر ملک چلاتے ہیں۔ یعنی اگر کوئی وہاں منتخب بھی ہو مگر ان کے احکامات نا مانے تو ان کے خلاف سازش کر کے انہیں با آسانی باہر کیا جاسکتا ہے،گرفتار کیا جاسکتا ہے ،ان پر کوئی اور سنگین الزام لگایا جاسکتا ہے ،حتیٰ کہ مارا بھی جاسکتا ہے۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ ڈونلڈ ٹرمپ نے بھی اسے آزمانے کی کوشش کی مگر وہ اسے درست طریقے سے نا کر پائے۔
ہیلری کلنٹن کے اس انٹرویو نے پاکستان میں تہلکہ مچا دیا ہے کہ دنیا کے سب سے زیادہ طاقت ور ملک کی وزیر خارجہ پاکستان کو ایک غیر جمہوری ریاست تصور کرتی ہیں۔ ان حالات میں جب پی ڈی ایم اور اپوزیشن کی تمام جماعتیں حکومت اور اسٹیبلشمنٹ مخالف تحریک چلا رہی ہیں ایسے میں ہیلری کا یہ بیان بہت سے سوالات کو جنم دیتا ہے۔
https://urdu.nayadaur.tv/47490/
سکول میں گنجائش نہیں، باجوڑ کے طلبہ کہاں جائیں؟
محمد بلال یاسر
باجوڑ کے علاقے لغڑئی ماموند میں صرف ایک ہائی سکول ہے، لیکن اس میں گنجائش نہ ہونے کے باعث درجنوں طلبہ کا مستقبل داؤ پر لگ گیا ہے۔
باجوڑ میں ہائی سکول میں داخلے کے خواہشمند طلبہ سکول میں گنجائش نہ ہونے کے باعث داخلے سے محروم ہیں۔ انہیں اس ہائی سکول سے ملحقہ سکولوں سے فراغت کے سرٹیفیکیٹ بھی دیے جا چکے ہیں، مگر پورے علاقے میں ایک ہائی سکول کے باعث اب وہ کہیں اور جا نہیں سکتے اور اس سکول میں انہیں داخلہ مل نہیں رہا۔
رواں ہفتے باجوڑ کے طلبہ مسلسل گورنمنٹ ہائی سکول لغڑئی ماموند آتے رہے مگر سکول میں مزید گنجائش نہ ہونے کے باعث وہ پورا دن گزار کر واپس گھر چلے جاتے ہیں۔ اس دوران محکمہ ایجوکیشن، ضلعی انتظامیہ اور دیگر متعلقہ حکام خواب غفلت میں پڑے رہے۔ بالآخر ان طلبہ نے مجبور ہو کر احتجاجاً مین لغڑئی عنایت کلے شاہراہ کو گورنمنٹ ہائی سکول کے سامنے ہر قسم کی ٹریفک کے لیے بند کر دیا۔
اس موقعے پر ان درجنوں طلبہ کے ساتھ دیگر طلبہ اور سماجی کارکن بھی شریک ہوئے۔ طلبہ کا احتجاج اس لحاظ سے منفرد تھا کہ انہوں نے اپنے پرائمری سکولوں سے فراغت کے سرٹیفکیٹ اٹھائے ہوئے تھے اور سکول میں داخلے کے لیے متعلقہ حکام کی توجہ طلب کر رہے تھے۔
مذکورہ گورنمنٹ ہائی سکول لغڑئی ماموند کے پرنسپل شیر علی نے انڈپینڈنٹ اردو کو بتایا کہ ’اس وقت ہمارے پاس سکول میں طلبہ کی تعداد 1400 سے زائد ہے جبکہ سٹاف کی تعداد 10 ہے، پہلے ہی ہم بڑی مشکل سے ان طلبہ کو سنبھال رہے ہیں، مزید طلبہ کے لیے نہ تو سکول میں داخلے کی گنجائش ہے اور نہ ہی میں اپنے اساتذہ پر مزید بوجھ ڈال سکتا ہوں کیونکہ پہلے ہی وہ بہت بڑے بوجھ کا شکار ہیں۔ کلاسوں میں نہایت رش ہوتا ہے اور بیٹھنے کی جگہ تک نہیں ملتی۔‘
طلبہ نے مجبور ہو کر احتجاجاً مین لغڑئی عنایت کلے شاہراہ کو گورنمنٹ ہائی سکول کے سامنے ہر قسم کی ٹریفک کے لیے بند کر دیا (تصویر: محمد بلال یاسر)
انہوں نے مزید بتایا، ’رش کی وجہ سے تعلیم دینے اور سیکھنے کا عمل دونوں متاثر ہوتے ہیں۔ اتنے رش میں معیاری انداز میں پڑھانا ممکن ہی نہیں۔ یہاں کوئی ساؤنڈ سسٹم بھی نہیں ہے۔ ہم کلاسوں میں لیکچر کے دوران چیختے ہیں جس کی وجہ سے گلا خراب ہو جاتا ہے۔‘
اس حوالے سے اسسٹنٹ ایجوکیشن آفیسر عبدالرحمٰن نے انڈپینڈنٹ اردو کو بتایا کہ ’صرف ماموند نہیں بلکہ پورے باجوڑ میں سکولوں میں مزید گنجائش نہ ہونے، عملے اور عمارت کی کمی کے باعث ہمیں اس مسئلے کا سامنا کرنا پڑ رہا ہے۔ اس مسئلے کے حل کے لیے ہم کوششیں کر رہے ہیں تاکہ مستقل بنیادوں پر یہ مسئلہ حل کیا جا سکے۔
انہوں نے مزید بتایا کہ ’مذکورہ سکولوں کی جماعت پنجم میں طلبہ کی تعداد تین سو سے زیادہ ہے، اب مزید طلبہ کو بغیر عملے میں اضافہ کیے سکول انتظامیہ کیسے سنبھال سکے گی۔ مگر اس کے باوجود ہم نے ان سکولوں کے پرنسپل صاحبان کو احکامات جاری کر دیے ہیں کہ جو بھی ہو ان طلبہ کو داخلے دیے جائیں تاکہ ان کا سال ضائع نہ ہو۔‘
انہوں نے کہا، ’باجوڑ میں تعلیم کے مواقع اور سہولیات بہت کم ہیں۔ ہم سکول کے سٹاف پر اضافی بوجھ ڈال کر زیادہ طلبہ کو داخلہ دلانے کا پابند کرتے ہیں مگر ہمارے پاس اساتذہ اور کلاس رومز کی شدید کمی ہے۔‘ انہوں نے بتایا کہ اس سلسلے میں انہوں نے ڈائریکٹر ہائر ایجوکیشن کمیشن کو کئی بار تحریری طور پر آگاہ کر رکھا ہے، مگر اب تک اس سلسلے میں ایجوکیشن کے شعبے کے لیے درکار مزید چھ ہزار خالی آسامیاں پُر نہ ہو سکیں اور نہ ہی سکولوں میں عمارت کا اضافہ ہوا۔
طلبہ کو درپیش اس مسئلے کے بارے میں ضلعی انتظامیہ کے متعلقہ آفسر اسسٹنٹ کمشنر ناوگئی سب ڈویژن حبیب اللہ وزیر سے کئی بار رابطہ کرنے کی کوشش کی گئی، مگر کامیابی نہ ہو سکی۔
تعلیم بچوں کا بنیادی حق ہے۔ یہ مسئلہ پورے باجوڑ میں ہر سال سر اٹھاتا ہے، معلوم نہیں کب حکمران جاگیں گے تاکہ مسئلے کا حل مستقل بنیادوں پر ممکن ہو سکے۔