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Fan-favorite guest James Carville returns to ask, What is Merrick Garland doing by the way? I dont think this man knows whether to wind his ass or scratch his watch while arguing that its time to lock up Steve Bannon on the way to locking up Donald TrumpYou cant have the most famous person in the United States blatantly committing crimes.

And Carville talks with Molly Jong-Fast about the critically important... high stakes Virginia raceThis shit is hard but if you dont do it Im not exaggerating to say that they come back in power in 2024, you can kiss this democracys ass goodbye, its goneand explains what Democrats are getting wrong about their most frustrating senator:

Subscribe to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, or Overcast. To listen to our weekly members-only bonus episodes, join Beast Inside here. Already a member? You can listen here and sign up for new episode email alerts here.

Manchin is an Italian, Roman Catholic Democrat from Virginia. A Democrat has not carried a county in West Virginia since 2008. Your choice is not Manchin or Bernie Sanders. Your choice is Manchin or Marsha Blackburn. So what do you want?

Plus, Alec Ross, former senior adviser for innovation to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, talks about his new book, The Raging 2020s, and why We need to fundamentally rewrite the social contract, and author and activist Ryan Hampton, talks about the Sacklers great deal in the Purdue settlement, and how this whole thing was a set up from day one in which victims were sidelined every step of the way.

Listen to The New Abnormal on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon and Stitcher.

Read more from the original source:
Either Merrick Garland Gets to Work or We Can Kiss Democracy Goodbye - The Daily Beast

By fleeing to the political extremes, a co-equal House of Congress is abdicating its lawmaking power.

About the author: Daniel Lipinski is a former U.S. representative from Illinois.

In the fight over if and when a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill would take place and whether it would be tied to a vote on President Joe Bidens broader economic agenda, one fact was overlooked: House Democrats passed their own infrastructure bill in July. The reason you havent heard much about that measure is that the House acquiesced to the Senates demand that it vote on the Senates bill without amendment. In doing this, the House accepted a bill that not only omitted many progressive priorities but also had no input from its members.

If the irrelevance of the House in this negotiation were an unusual case, it may not be cause for concern. But this is the way most major laws have been made for the past decade: They are products of the Senate with little or no House involvement. This is because the Housewhether controlled by Democrats or Republicansnow acts as if it were a unicameral legislature in a parliamentary system, rather than acknowledging that it is only one of two legislative chambers in a presidential system. It routinely passes partisan legislation that cannot pass in the Senate, because it is too far out of the American ideological center. The result is a House of Representatives that now serves only to either block orin the case of must pass legislationrubber-stamp Senate bills on major issues. Members of the House have largely given up their power, and thus their constituents power, to create legislation that addresses our nations biggest problems.

From the November 2018 issue: How Newt Gingrich destroyed American politics

This state of affairs is not what the Founders intended. Two of the main reasons the Framers of the Constitution created two chambers of Congress were to provide Americans with multiple access points to the lawmaking process, and to force representatives and senators to deliberate and compromise. They believed that this would not only produce the best laws but also promote the legitimacy of these laws, because the manifold voices in our nation would have the potential to be heard through their representatives as well as their senators.

As I wrote in a chapter of Under the Iron Dome, a recently published anthology, members of the House now mainly represent their party and its platform rather than their constituents diverse views. Through changes in the rules, members have relinquished much of their individual power and disempowered committees in order to give their party leaders the ability to shape legislation for the purpose of pursuing the partys goals. In formulating legislation, party leaders cater to interest groups, activists, and donors aligned with the party to build electoral support. These supporters tend to be further toward the ideological extremes. Little to no effort is expended to pick up votes from the other party in the legislative process. This may be a reasonable way to legislate in a single-chamber parliamentary system, but the House is only one half of one branch in the American lawmaking process.

The problem with the House legislating in this manner is compounded by the prevalence of divided government, where control of the White House, the House, and the Senate is split between the parties. Divided government has occurred more than 30 out of the past 41 years, or 40 out of 41 when considering the need for 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. During these periods, only bipartisan bills can become law, and partisan House legislating only contributes to gridlock. Sometimes, however, a consensus emerges that legislation must be passed to address a particular issue. When this has occurred in the past decade, the necessary bipartisan compromise bill has been written in the Senate and passed without changes by the House. This happened in October 2013 and January 2018, when Republicans controlled the House and a compromise was needed to end a government shutdown. But it also happens when the House is in Democratic hands. In 2019, when there was a humanitarian crisis at the southern border, a bipartisan bill produced in the Republican Senate became law, because the bill passed by House Democrats could not pass in the Senate.

Read: Political polarization killed the filibuster

When one of the two chambers of Congress is not contributing to lawmaking on the most important issues facing our country, our democracy is not healthy. It is especially troublesome when the weak link is the House, because that chamber was intended to play a preeminent role in ensuring the peoples democratic control of the republic. The House has always been considered the bulwark of American democracy.

Could we solve this problem by eliminating the Senate filibuster? Perhaps. But divided government is now prevalent. And even when Republicans had unified control in 2017 and 2018, and used the budget-reconciliation process to skirt the filibuster in their attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and enact big tax cuts, the Senate still largely determined the outcome on both bills. The Build Back Better reconciliation bill will again test whether the House can generate leverage vis--vis the Senate even without the filibuster.

Jane Chong: This is not the Senate the Framers imagined

Another option to make the House more effective at legislating, and to open up the possibility of more voices being heard in the lawmaking process, would be to change the chambers rules to re-empower individual members and committees, thus providing more opportunities for bipartisan legislating to occur in the House. The bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, of which I was a member, attempted to do this in 2018, when it endorsed a package of rule changes. Leveraging our votes in the January 2019 speaker-of-the-House election enabled us to win a few changes. A new speaker will be elected in the next Congress (assuming that Nancy Pelosi keeps her pledge to step down or Republicans become the majority), presenting another opportunity to secure rule reforms. But if nothing changes, the peoples House will continue to produce more theatrics than solutions, failing the people and our democracy.

The rest is here:
The House of Representatives Is Failing America - The Atlantic

Great crises in American political life often produce a new hero, someone whose courage and charisma capture the imagination of the decent half of the country.

In the 1950s, when Joe McCarthy terrorized America with wild claims of communists lurking in every army barracks and state department corridor, it was an attorney, Joseph Welch, who demanded of the Wisconsin senator: At long last, sir, have you no sense of decency?

Twenty years later, when the country was transfixed by the Watergate hearings, it was a folksy senator from North Carolina, a first world war veteran named Sam Ervin, who won hearts with sayings like: There is nothing in the constitution that authorizes or makes it the official duty of a president to have anything to do with criminal activities.

Forty years on, after Donald Trump entered the White House mining what Adam Schiff calls a dangerous vein of autocratic thought in the Republican party, the then little-known California Democrat did more than anyone else to unravel and excoriate the high crimes of a charlatan destined to be the only president twice impeached.

During the pandemic, Schiff used his confinement to write a memoir which offers a beguiling mix of the personal and political. The book, Midnight in Washington, is full of new details about investigations of the presidents treason and how the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, and the rest of the Democratic caucus decided impeachment was necessary.

But the human side of the story is the most compelling part: the history of Schiffs Jewish-immigrant ancestors, the sustenance he received from a brilliant wife and a devoted son and daughter, a career path that made him the perfect person to meet his moment in history.

I enjoyed writing the first part of the book the most, Schiff told the Guardian. In so many ways I feel like the life I had before Trump prepared me for the national trial that was to come.

The prosecution of an FBI agent for spying for the Russians. Living in eastern Europe and watching the rise of an autocrat in Czechoslovakia literally tear the country apart. And my own familys history in eastern Europe. All of these things seemed to prepare me without knowing it for the rise of a xenophobic autocrat in our own country.

In choppy political waters, a brilliant spouse is a great advantage especially one who sometimes knows you better than you know yourself. When the Democratic establishment recruited him to run for Congress, after he was elected to the California senate, Schiff thought he was undecided. His wife, Eve, knew otherwise.

Youre going to do it, she said, after he came back from meetings in Washington.

I dont know, he replied.

Yes, you do, said Eve. Youre going to do it.

She was right.

Schiffs love of bipartisanship, which ended with the Trump presidency, was inherited from his father, a yellow dog Democrat (a person who would vote for a yellow dog before he would vote Republican) and his Republican mother.

His father offered him advice that has served him all his life: As long as you are good at what you do, there will always be a demand for you.

This was a very liberating idea, Schiff writes, that all I needed to do was focus on being good at my chosen profession and the rest would take care of itself.

His work as a federal prosecutor who got the conviction of the first FBI agent accused of spying for Russia was crucial to his understanding of how thoroughly Trump was manipulated by the Russians. He understood that Michael Cohens efforts during the campaign to close a deal to build a Trump Tower in Moscow would make Trump vulnerable to blackmail if his lawyers calls had been recorded. And he was astonished when he realized that that kind of kompromat wouldnt even be necessary.

When Trump did become president, there would be no need for the Kremlin to blackmail him into betraying Americas interests, Schiff writes. To a remarkable degree, he would prove more than willing to do that on his own.

Theres lots more in the book, from Schiffs unsuccessful effort to convince New York Times editors to remind readers the emails they were publishing to undermine Hillary Clinton had been stolen by the Russians for that very purpose, to Schiffs revelation that if he had known how poorly Robert Mueller would perform as a witness after he completed his stint as special counsel, he would not have demanded his testimony.

I havent said this before this book, he told the Guardian. That was one of the difficult sections of the book to write because I have such reverence for Mueller. I wanted to be respectful but accurate.

Schiff is still at the center of political events. He sits on the House select committee investigating the deadly Capitol attack and dealing with Trumps obstruction.

On the page, he also recalls a hearing in 2017 when he asked representatives of Facebook, Twitter and YouTube if their algorithms were having the effect of balkanizing the public and deepening the divisions in our society.

Facebooks general counsel pretended: The data on this is actually quite mixed.

Maybe that was so, Schiff writes, but it didnt seem very mixed to me.

Asked if he thought this weeks testimony from the Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen would create enough pressure to pass new laws regulating social media platforms, Schiff said: The answer is yes.

I think we need regulation to protect peoples private data. I think we need to narrow the scope of the safe harbor these companies enjoy if they dont moderate their contents and continue to amplify anger and hate. I think we need to insist on a vehicle for more transparency so we understand the data better.

But then he cautioned: If you bet against Congress, you win 90% of the time.

On the page, Schiff records an airport exchange with a Republican stranger, who said: You can tell me theres nothing to this collusion stuff, is there?

It is a conversation which should put that question permanently to rest.

Schiff said: What if I was to tell you that we had evidence in black and white that the Russians approached the Clinton campaign and offered dirt on Donald Trump, then met secretly with Chelsea Clinton, John Podesta and Robby Mook in the Brooklyn headquarters of the campaign then Hillary lied about it to cover it up. Would you call that collusion?

Now what If I also told you that after the election, former national security adviser Susan Rice secretly talked with the Russian ambassador in an effort to undermine US sanctions on Russia after they interfered to help Hillary win. Would you call that collusion?

The Republican was convinced: You know, I probably would.

For Schiff, it was a eureka moment.

Now, he thought, if I can only speak to a couple hundred million people.

Schiffs book should convince a few million more that everything he said about Trump was true and that the country was exceptionally lucky to have him ready and willing to defend the tattered concept of truth.

This article was amended on 11 October 2021. An earlier version misnamed Joseph Welch as Joseph Walsh.

Here is the original post:
A xenophobic autocrat: Adam Schiff on Trumps threat to democracy - The Guardian

The rise of autocrats around the world is the focus of the Distinguished Professor Lecture.

Illinois State Universitys Distinguished ProfessorAli Riaz will present The Rise of AutocratsDemocratic Backsliding and the Middle Class at 5 p.m. November 9, in the Old Main Room of the Bone Student Center at Illinois State University.

Dr.Riaz notes that less than half of the global population now lives under some sort of democracy. We are witnessing the erosion, decay, and in some instances, outright collapse of democracy like never before, said Riaz, who exploresthe new middle class as a supporter of rising authoritarianism across the globe.

The event is free and open to the public.

We are witnessing the erosion, decay, and in some instances, outright collapse of democracy like never before.

Riaz is an internationally recognized expert on democratization, political Islam, violent extremism, South Asian politics, and Bangladeshi politics with a specific interest in the interaction of politics and religion. He is a nonresident senior fellow of the Atlantic Council, and thepresident of The American Institute of Bangladesh Studies (AIBS).

Testifying twice before the U.S. Congress, Riaz has served as an expert and consultant to national and international organizations and governments, including theNationalEndowmentforDemocracyin Washington, D.C.; theInternational Expert Network on Islamism of the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs;the Bertelsmann Foundation of Germany;Woodrow Wilson InternationalCenter;and the Conflict Prevention and Peace Forum of the Social Science Research Council of the U.S.A.

Among his many scholarly works, Riazhas penned and/or editedReligion and Politics in South Asia(2021),Voting in a Hybrid Regime: Explaining the 2018 Bangladeshi Elections(2019),Political Violence in South Asia,Lived Islam and Islamism in Bangladesh(2017), andBangladesh: A Political History Since Independence(2016).His other notable works include:God Willing: The Politics of Islamism in Bangladesh(2004),Faithful Education: Madrassahs in South Asia(2008),Islamist Militancy in Bangladesh: A Complex Web(2008), andIslam and Identity Politics Among British-Bangladeshis: A Leap of Faith(2013).

Riazscommentary is oftensoughtby national media, with hisexpertiseappearing in Deutsche Welle(DW), CNN,The Economist,The Daily Star(Bangladesh),TRT (Turkey), andThe New York Timesamong others.

Those with questionson the lecture can emailjadarga@ilstu.edu.

See the article here:
Eroding democracy and the rise of autocrats: Distinguished Professor Lecture, November 9 - Illinois State University News

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In 2013, Alfred Stepan and Mirjam Kunkler, two world-renowned American experts on civil-military relations and democracy, talked about twin tolerances in their book Democracy and Islam in Indonesia. They built an argument around creating a socio-political ecosystem for forces of democracy and State to accommodate Islamic radical elements willing to take recourse to democratic values or processes while still retaining their Islamism. Drawing on a detailed case study of Indonesia, the duo concluded that twin tolerances was a possibility and to this end they proposed building a community of public intellectuals that could develop capacity within a religious society for democratic norms.

Pakistans State would like to apply this very formula to Afghanistan.

Also read: Look closer, Kashmir and Afghanistan attacks on minorities are copycat strategies

The aim is to turn Afghanistan into a State where the Taliban agree to apply some norms that are acceptable to Western democracy without adapting entirely to the Western model. This argument has remained close to the Pakistani militarys heart for a long time. General Pervez Musharraf hadspoken about Western democratic norms being suited to Pakistan or even other societies. Theoretically, there is a case for twin tolerances to be made if Taliban marginally give up violence and collaborate with the West and the rest of the world to fight more radical forces like al-Qaeda and the Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), they could turn into any other Right-wing religious group in the region. South Asia, as a region, is increasingly awash with Right-wing radical forces whose violence is limited to home or within the region rather than outside.

Its also Islamabads calculation that the world may turn around to the idea of accommodating the Taliban for their own reasons.

The UK is intalkswith the Taliban via Pakistan at a time when the US is inclined to hold talks more independently. Recently, Washington held the first direct talks with the Taliban post-withdrawal.Surely, London and Washington share notes but the fact that the British military and government both continue to engage with the Taliban give hope to Pakistan that its own plan regarding the future of a Taliban-led Afghanistan may be working. European capitals, though, remain confused about forming a clearer policy. Although the European Commission remains firmonnot engaging with the Taliban unless they meet conditionsaninclusive government, female education,due share towomen and minorities in decision-makinga solid united front based on a clear approach is still lacking. For instance, Germany, which is a significant Statein the region, is concerned about being flooded by Afghan migrants,an issue that is more imagined than real.Islamabad sees this lack of consensusin the West as an opportunity to keep pushing the case for countries to accept the Taliban, which they believe representthePashtun culture.

Islamabads security establishment is definitely not concerned about the rise of conservatism or extremism in Afghanistan, a result of the Taliban being in power. In fact, the popular view within the larger security establishment is that while womens education may be an issue, it is at best secondary when compared to the goal of making this new State run, for which Rawalpindi and Islamabad continue to make a case before the international community.

Also read: I am offshore Pakistani General. My establishment beat India in Pandora Papers

Socio-political extremismin Afghanistanis not a matter of concern,primarily because Pakistan itself is taking a similar direction.

The overall changes in the educational system theSingle National Curriculum (SNC)or steps such asmaking it mandatory for Masters degree candidates in Punjab to demonstrate knowledge of Quran to qualify indicate a gradual shift towards turning Pakistans nationalism even closer to religion, which then gets reflected in the States attitudes towards women and minority groups. While the Taliban, al-Qaeda and ISKP denote one end of the religious-extremist spectrum and are a cause of concern, what Pakistan is facing is Barelvi extremism, an ideology that has emerged with force and much more dangerously, especially in the past five years. It has inculcated greater intolerance towards minority groups such as Ahmadiyyas and Shias, and the rapidly disappearing liberals. Though it could be argued that religious-nationalism is the trend that is now pervasive throughout South Asia, there is no parallel to the way it webs Afghanistan and Pakistan together. Interestingly, the Afghanistan-Pakistan region today is a more fundamental reality that extends beyond geo-politics to include socio-politics and political economy.

In Pakistan, both the civil and military leadership subscribe to religious nationalism. Its in the second half of hiscurrent term thatPrime MinisterImran Khan has begun to invest more strategically in religious nationalism. ThePMs recentassurance to the ulemaof not making any lawsthat can beconsidered against Islamic values, as defined by the clergy, is not simply about his personal conservatism but a political choice of strengthening the religious Right that he may depend on one day for his fight against both his political opponents and the army as an institution. He may want to use religious forces to his advantage. Khan understands that the religious extremist, thoughmanufacturedby the military, do scare the generals. My argument may sound counter-intuitive as Imran Khan has demonstrated no desire to fight the military except perhaps for now. Rumours are rife regarding the Prime Ministersreluctanceto notify the new ISI chiefsappointment. But the fact is that every political actor produced by the military ends up with some level of confrontation whenever he or she tries to secure more power or their own future,in government.

Also read: I compared Afghanistan school textbooks with Pakistans. This is what I found

As for the militarys desire to fight the militants, it may do a tactical confrontation but not a strategic one. Its about using military action to influence behaviour and not destroy the forces of religious Right. Contrary to the expectations the Pakistani liberals carry, that the military has the power to eliminate the extremist-militants, Rawalpindis capacity has reduced not the war-fighting capability but the intent. The GHQ is equally invested in the religious Right for its geo-political ambitions. Despite its difficult experience of terrorist attacks by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is fundamentally part of the Afghan Taliban, the military decision-makers remain invested in the Taliban. Khans suggestion of dialogue with the TTPis nota newconcept. Even Nawaz Sharif had suggestedtalkswithRight-wing religious groupsrather than military action. However, the 2015-16 proposal was more of a tactic aimed at co-opting some militants that were ready to talk. Sharifs peace overture to the TTP was also different as he, unlike Imran Khan, took all other parties on board by organising the All-Parties Conference to develop aconsensus.

The Pakistan armywould rather convince militants to give up arms so that the State does not have to fight battles with them. Allowing the extremist-militants to impose their version of sharia in the tribal belt ofPakistanmayjustbe considered a small price to pay. In any case, the popular narrative among Pakistans security community is that Pashtunwali orthePashtun culture is akin to Taliban sharia.Furthermore, some forms of sharia have already touched the households and personal lives of all those involved in military-strategic decision-making in Pakistan from the army chief and many of the corps commanders to the National security Advisor. These are men with greater tolerance for religious conservatismand theironly desire at the moment may be for Pakistan to remain a hybrid theocracy.A set upwithfewspaces for demonstration of socio-cultural liberalism,something whichwouldmake it easier to engage with the world rather than a deeply theocratic form of the Taliban. In 74 years, Pakistan and Afghanistan have begun to look more similar than before.

Ayesha Siddiqa is senior research fellow at Kings College, London and author of Military Inc. Inside Pakistans Military Economy. She tweets @iamthedrifter. Views are personal.

(Edited by Anurag Chaubey)

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Pakistan wants an Afghanistan acceptable to the West Islam plus democracy - ThePrint