{"id":180358,"date":"2017-05-12T17:58:00","date_gmt":"2017-05-12T22:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/12\/even-stupider-than-the-trump-administration\/"},"modified":"2017-05-12T17:58:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-12T22:58:00","slug":"even-stupider-than-the-trump-administration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2017\/05\/12\/even-stupider-than-the-trump-administration\/","title":{"rendered":"Even Stupider than the Trump Administration"},"content":{"rendered":"
The latest genius idea from establishment Democrats, including (of Course) Lawrence Summers, is that Donald Trump should appoint Merrick Garland as head of the FBI<\/a>:<\/div>\n

We live in a golden age of political stupidity, but I’m not being hyperbolic when I say this: The idea of pulling Judge Merrick Garland off the D.C. Circuit federal appeals court and into the FBI is one of the silliest ideas I’ve seen anyone in Washington fall for. It’s like Wile E. Coyote putting down a nest made of dynamite and writing \u201cNOT A TRAP\u201d on a whiteboard next to it. It’s also an incredibly telling chapter in the book that’s been written since the Republican National Convention \u2014 the story of how Republicans who are uncomfortable with the Trump presidency gritting their teeth as they use it to lock in control of the courts.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, as we reported at The Washington Post, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) gave real oomph to an idea<\/a> that had been bouncing around conservative media. Democrats had vetted and praised Garland when President Barack Obama nominated him for the Supreme Court \u2014 how, then, could they object to the idea of putting him in charge of the FBI?<\/p>\n

The reasons to object were quickly explained<\/a> by reporters and by liberal court analysts like Dahlia Lithwick. \u201cGarland probably won\u2019t want to give up his lifetime tenure as the chief judge of the second-most important court in the land,\u201d Lithwick wrote, \u201cand surely the most significant bulwark against Trump administration overreach, in exchange for a 12-minute gig on The Apprentice<\/i> before he uses the wrong color highlighter and gets fired by a crazy person.\u201d Among most court-watchers, the scheme was pretty obvious: Lee would give Republicans a chance to tweak a Garland-less court, changing a 7-to-4 liberal majority to a 6-to-5 majority. And in his tweet, Lee was explicit: If Garland went to the J. Edgar Hoover Building, Democrats wouldn’t need a President Trump\/Russia special prosecutor. <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course, Larry Summers loves<\/b> this idea:<\/p>\n

\n
Merrick Garland as FBI director would avert what could be a long national nightmare. Trump should propose. Dems should insist.<\/div>\n

\u2014 Lawrence H. Summers (@LHSummers) May 12, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Seriously, is there any bit of stupidity that Larry Summers won’t endorse?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The latest genius idea from establishment Democrats, including (of Course) Lawrence Summers, is that Donald Trump should appoint Merrick Garland as head of the FBI: We live in a golden age of political stupidity, but I’m not being hyperbolic when I say this: The idea of pulling Judge Merrick Garland off the D.C. Circuit federal …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[407,374,406],"class_list":["post-180358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-justice","tag-politics","tag-stupid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180358"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180358\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}