Trump’s potential SCOTUS appointee thinks America took a wrong turn when women got the vote

Ian Millhiser/Think Progress

Peter Thiel, a libertarian billionaire known for funding a lawsuit seeking todestroy the media company behind the website Gawker, is a leading candidate for the Supreme Court in a Trump administration, according to reporting by the Huffington Post’s Ben Walsh and Ryan Grim.

Thiel, according to a source consulted by Walsh and Grim, told friends that Trump will nominate him to the Court if the GOP nominee is elected president. Another source confirms that members of Trump’s “inner circle” consider Thiel a potential justice. Spokespeople for both Trump and Thiel deny these claims.

Though Thiel’s early career resembles that of a potential future justice — he graduated by Stanford Law School and clerked for a federal appeals court judge — Thiel abandoned the practice of law very early to pursue a career in business. Accordingly, he has very few of the qualifications typically held by a judicial nominee and is unlikely to have the same grasp on legal doctrine as a professional lawyer or judge.

Indeed, in 2012, the conservative Federalist Society asked Thiel to deliver its annual Barbara K. Olson Memorial Lecture. It is one of the most prestigious and high-profile platforms offered by the influential legal group — past speakers include former Vice President Dick Cheney, Chief Justice John Roberts, and the late Justice Antonin Scalia. And yet, speaking before a audience of many of the nation’s leading conservative lawyers and judges, Thiel barely discussed legal matters at all, and what he did say betrayed only a passing knowledge of the underlying doctrines.

The bulk of Thiel’s speech outlined his pessimistic belief that economic and technological growth is slowing. He mentioned the law and the Supreme Court only a few times in the speech, and then only briefly. Those brief mentions, however, did suggest that Thiel would make radical changes if he had the power to reinterpret the Constitution.

Thiel blames the alleged slowdown, at least in part, on “mischief that has happened on the legislative, left-wing legal side” which has permitted the rise of “environmentalism” — a statement which suggests that, as a justice, he would be very sympathetic to arguments raised by lawyers active within the Federalist Society, which seek to hobble the federal government’s ability to protect the environment. In an even more drastic departure from widely accepted legal and economic doctrine, Thiel attacked a series of decisions which enabled America to abandon the gold standard, claiming they destroyed money’s “link to something real.”

Thiel’s belief that the gold standard was a good idea is not shared by, well, pretty much anyone who knows anything at all. As Matthew O’Brien explained in the Atlantic,

Economics is often a contentious subject, but economists agree about the gold standard — it is a barbarous relic that belongs in the dustbin of history. As University of Chicago professor Richard Thaler points out, exactly zero economists endorsed the idea in a recent poll. What makes it such an idea non grata? It prevents the central bank from fighting recessions by outsourcing monetary policy decisions to how much gold we have — which, in turn, depends on our trade balance and on how much of the shiny rock we can dig up. When we peg the dollar to gold we have to raise interest rates when gold is scarce, regardless of the state of the economy. This policy inflexibility was the major cause of the Great Depression, as governments were forced to tighten policy at the worst possible moment.

Indeed, as economist Brad DeLong notes, nations began to emerge from the Great Depression at about the same time that they abandoned the gold standard.

So, while Thiel’s views on the law do not appear to be especially well developed, he also appears eager to upend fundamental assumptions that are widely shared by nearly everyone in the fields of law and economics, even though the consensus view is that overturning those assumptions would be catastrophic.

Oh, and there’s one other thing.

In an essay published by the Cato Institute, an influential libertarian think tank, Thiel questioned the very idea that the right to govern flows from the will of the governed. “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” Thiel claimed. He added that he thinks America made a serious wrong turn when it began extending basic human rights to women and poor people.

The moment when it all went wrong, according to Peter Thiel. (CREDIT: AP PHOTO)

“The 1920s were the last decade in American history during which one could be genuinely optimistic about politics,” Thiel claims about the decade that culminated in the single worst economic calamity in American history. “Since 1920,” he adds, “the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”

In fairness, Thiel later attached additional remarks to his Cato essay, where he walked back his attack on women’s suffrage somewhat. “While I don’t think any class of people should be disenfranchised,” Thiel said, “I have little hope that voting will make things better.”

So what are we to make of Trump’s reported flirtation with a Justice Peter Thiel? After the Huffington Post’s piece went live, several journalists dismissed the risk of a Thiel appointment, suggesting that he would face widespread opposition.

Maybe Sarlin and Hayes are right. But here’s the thing, Thiel is hardly treated as an unconfirmable pariah by the American right. To the contrary, the Federalist Society and the Cato Institute are two of the nation’s preeminent conservative organizations. The Federalist Society, in particular,played a major role in helping select President George W. Bush’s judicial appointments. And Trump has said that he will defer to the Federalist Society when he names judges in the past. (Though, in fairness, he’s also said that he would pick Supreme Court nominees from a much more conventional list of judges in the past as well.) If Cato and the Federalist Society are willing to vouch for Thiel, it is far from clear that Republican senators will rebel.

Moreover, Thiel’s views, while out of place among mainstream thinkers, are increasingly common among right intellectuals. Consider his Cato essay, for example. The main thrust of that piece is not that women shouldn’t be allowed to vote, but that democratic values are the enemy of the libertarian society Thiel would prefer to live in. “The great task for libertarians,” according to Thiel, “is to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called ‘social democracy.’”

Thiel claims that technology will effectively enable privileged libertarians such as himself to go Galt — among his more speculative ideas is “because the vast reaches of outer space represent a limitless frontier, they also represent a limitless possibility for escape from world politics.” But his general idea that democracy is the enemy is not limited to libertarians who believe they must shoot themselves into space in order to build their billionaires’ paradise.

Consider Randy Barnett, a leading libertarian scholar who rose to prominence after his unsuccessful efforts to convince a majority of the Supreme Court to repeal the Affordable Care Act. In a recent book, Barnett distinguishes between what he calls the “Democratic Constitution,” a constitution that preferences the will of the people, and the “Republican Constitution,” which stands athwart democracy yelling stop. Under Barnett’s Republican Constitution, libertarian boogiemen such as Obamacare, the minimum wage, and the right to join a union are all killed with fire.

The primary difference between Thiel and Barnett is that Thiel appears to believe that libertarians must remove themselves from ordinary politics in order to build their dystopia, while Barnett believes that libertarians can build it right here in the United States of America if only the right people control the Supreme Court.

If Thiel is willing to accept Trump’s nomination to sit on the Supreme Court, that will be a pretty good sign that he’s embraced Barnett’s charge to reshape America in his own image.

Texas Lawmaker Calls Wendy Davis A Terrorist For Blocking Anti-Abortion Bill

By Rebecca Leber/Think Progress

Late last night, a Republican lawmaker compared Texas state Sen. Wendy Davis (D) and the crowd of her supporters to terrorists. Davis gained national attention and admirers overnight for launching an epic 13-hour filibuster that successfully blocked a restrictive abortion bill from becoming law. Once Republicans failed to pass SB 5, an omnibus bill to ban abortion after 20 weeks and shut down most of the state’s abortion clinics, Rep. Bill Zedler (R) tweeted:

In addition to voting for the 20 week abortion ban in the Texas House, Zedler’s record includes requiring women to undergo an ultrasound and report their education history before being able to have an abortion.

Meanwhile, Lt. Gov David Dewhurst described the crowd that cheered Davis on as “an unruly mob, using Occupy Wall Street tactics” that “disrupted the Senate from protecting unborn babies.” For the record, this is what the protests in the capitol building looked like:

Fox News Op-Ed Says Women’s Nature Is To Be Dominated By Men

By Zack Beauchamp/Think Progress

Fox News has published another sexist op-ed by Suzanne Venker, the author who became infamous for attacking a fictional “War on Men.” In the follow up piece, Venker argues that women are naturally men’s inferiors.

The author believes the crudest of crude gender stereotypes are built into male and female brains, arguing that women “like to gather and nest and take care of people” while men “are hunters: they like to build things and kill things.” As a consequence, she maintains a man’s place is in the office; “his” woman should simply “surrender” to his rule:

[W]omen shouldn’t let their success in the workplace become the biggest thing in their lives. If the ultimate goal is lasting love – and let’s face it: for most people it is – women are going to have to become comfortable with sacrifice and capitulation. …

Surrendering to your femininity means many things. It means letting your man be the man despite the fact that you’ve proven you’re his equal. It means recognizing the fact that you may very well want to stay home with your babies – and that that’s normal. Surrendering to your femininity means if you do work outside the home, you don’t use your work to play tit for tat in your marriage. It means tapping into that part of yourself that’s genuinely vulnerable and really does need a man – even though the culture says you don’t.

In other words, put down your sword. It’s okay if your guy’s in charge. It’s okay if you don’t drive the car. In fact, it’s rather liberating.

These views are not supported by modern neuroscience, which finds that brain differences between men and women are hard to pinpoint and often a result of social pressures rather than biology. Moreover, the reason that many women are unhappy with their worklives is more about institutionalized sexism than some innate need to be cared for by a strong man.

Venker’s justification for unequal gender roles, “men and women are different,” literally harkens back a hundred years: one of the main arguments advanced against women’s suffrage was that it “wasn’t natural” for women to participate in public life outside of the home. And though Venker says with no sense of irony that she believes women are “equal, but different,” views like hers are strongly associated with excusing domestic violence and gender discrimination.

Fox News has a storied history of using its megaphone to broadcast sexism. Host Brian Kilmeade has said on-air that “Women are everywhere. We’re letting them play golf and tennis now. It’s out of control” and that the network hires female anchors by going “into the Victoria’s Secret catalogue and [saying], ‘Can any of these people talk?’”

For Hoekstra, GOP’s Anti-Woman Policy Platform Reflects His Positions

From The Michigan Democratic Party:

GOP Adopts Out-of-Mainstream Positions on Women’s Choice Today in Tampa, But Hoekstra Wants More

LANSING – In adopting the Republican National Committee’s official policy platform today, Republican Party leaders in Tampa confirmed what most political observers already knew: that the GOP is more concerned with appealing to an out-of-touch and fringe social agenda than getting middle-class families back to work.

The GOP’s platform officially confirmed that party leaders agree with the policy position of Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin: the right to choose should be outlawed even for victims of rape and incest. And the GOP’s U.S. Senate candidate from Michigan, Pete Hoekstra, not only agrees with this position but his own agenda is even more extreme.

Statement from Mark Brewer, Chair of Michigan Democratic Party:

“Pete Hoekstra has spent his entire career fighting to turn back the clock on women’s health care and now he wants to bring that fight to the U.S. Senate. Today, the GOP adopted some of Hoekstra’s anti-women positions, like taking away rape victims’ right to choose. But Hoekstra’s voting record shows he also wants to make birth control illegal and give a woman’s boss the power to make the most personal of health care decisions for her. What the GOP did today is bad for Michigan, but you can be sure if Hoekstra gets his way things would get even worse.”

While in Congress, Hoekstra sought to control the most personal family decisions from his seat in Washington, D.C.:

• Hoekstra co-sponsored seven different pieces of “personhood” legislation that would not only outlaw choice for rape victims, but also make birth control illegal.

• He also supports legislation to allow women’s bosses to deny them any health care service — including mammograms, maternity care and other preventative care — for any reason.

• And Hoekstra even went so far as to vote to ban abortion for women serving in the military who are victims of rape.

Allen West’s Women Problem

Come on now my head isn't
shaped like a square.

By Travis Waldron/Think Progress

As has been widely discussed, Florida Rep. Allen West (R), perturbed by an incident on the House floor yesterday, attackedRep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) via e-mail, calling her the “most vile, unprofessional, and despicable” member of the House of Representatives and saying she has “proven repeatedly” that she is “not a Lady.” Wasserman Schultz dismissed the attacks on MSNBC Wednesday, saying she was “unfazed” and “unsurprised” by West’s comments, given the pressure he is under to defend his votes “to end Medicare as we know it.”

But this isn’t the first time West has stirred up controversy with comments about women. Given his short time in office and his own accusations of sexism by political opponents, West has compiled a rather unimpressive record of associating with misogynists, stereotyping the role of women in society, and engaging in outright misogyny of his own:

West contributed to a Florida magazine that called women “oral relief stations”: Before he was elected to Congress, West was a monthly contributor to “Miami Mike’s Wheels On The Road,” a biker magazine that billed itself as the “South Florida Biker’s Bible.” The magazine has featured multiple overtly misogynistic articles, including one asking readers to imagine having sex with Wasserman Schultz. At other times, the magazine’s writers referred to women as “oral relief stations,” complained about women who said “their knees hurt,” depicted women as servants of men, and suggested that they should wear “slave chokers” as accessories.

West claimed liberal women were “neutering” American men and causing a crisis of leadership in America: In a speech to a Women Impacting Nation (WIN) meeting, West blamed liberal women — “these Planned Parenthood women, the Code Pink women” — for “neutering American men and bringing us to the point of this incredible weakness.” Such women were fighting “to have our men become subservient,” West said, before bizarrely adding that this new-found subservience would continue to make the nation’s debt and deficits grow.

West compared conservative women to Spartans, asking them to “raise strong men”: In the same speech, West compared conservative women to the women of Sparta, who he claimed were the real strength behind the men of the ancient Greek city-state. The role of conservative women, West said, was to “raise strong men,” just as it was in Sparta. As Mediaite’s Frances Martel noted at the time, Spartan women had no political rights and were trained to be strong solely for the betterment of males. West’s comparison to Sparta implies that he believes “strong women are to raise strong men,” Martel wrote. “Strong women are not just to be, the way strong men are.”

This list, of course, does not include the numerous policy positions West has taken that would have adverse effects on women, including his joining the fight to defund Planned Parenthood.

Already, West has begun fundraising off of the instance with Wasserman Schultz. Meanwhile, he remains defiant about his assertion that she is unladylike and continues to defend his comments by claiming that he can’t possibly be anti-woman, since he has “been married 22 years and [has] two daughters.”

GA GOP Rep. Would Force Women To Prove Miscarriage Happened Naturally Or Face Felony Charges

By Zaid Jilani

Georgia state Rep. Bobby Franklin (R) has made a name for himself by introducing far-right extremist bills. He has introduced legislation barring the statefrom requiring vaccinations, eliminating income taxesand replacing them with nothing, and requiring state taxpayers to only pay in gold or silver.

Now, he has introduced what may be his most offensive and extreme bill yet. Last week he unveiledHB 1, which would, as the parenting blog Babble explains, “require proof that a miscarriage occured naturally.” If proof could not be provided, the mother could face “felony charges”:

State Rep. Bobby Franklin of Georgia introduced a bill in his state last week that, if enacted, would require proof that a miscarriage occurred naturally. If a woman can’t prove that her miscarriage–or spontaneous abortion–occurred without intervention, she could face felony charges.

According to WebMed, the overall miscarriage rate in the United States is 15-20 percent. The Mayo Clinic estimates that the “the actual number is probably much higher because many miscarriages occur so early in pregnancy that a woman doesn’t even know she’s pregnant. Most miscarriages occur because the fetus isn’t developing normally.” If Franklin’s radical legislation were to be enacted, it could mean that as many as a fifth of pregnant Georgian women would be forced to have their miscarriages reviewed by the government — the bill suggests creating a county registration list for fetal deaths — which would be a dangerous and unprecedented intrusion into their private lives.

M.C.L comment: The pro-life movement in this country are a sick joke, these people want force pregnancies but no support to help these raise these children. Don't believe me ask a right to lifer what he or she thinks about welfare or government programs like free school breakfast or lunch.

In First Month Of Legislative Session, GOP Lawmakers In Five States Seek To Eliminate, Criminalize Abortion

By Tanya Somanader

Last week, House Republicans launched an indefensible effort to redefine rape to exclude certain rape victims from abortion coverage. Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) then followed up with the Protect Life Act, a bill that would “give doctors the green light to let pregnant women die if they have a life-threatening condition and need an emergency abortion.”

Not to be outpaced by their federal, anti-women counterparts, GOP lawmakers in states across the country are ginning up woefully ignorant abortion measures to mandate their anti-choice views on doctors and women. Whether through forcing a woman to hear heartbeats or see sonograms, making up imaginary data on race and gender, nullifying the Supreme Court, or redefining the state constitution, lawmakers in Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Iowa intend to make this year the year they win their war against reproductive rights by any means necessary:

– OHIO: State GOP Rep. Lynn Wachtmann will unveil the so-called “Heartbeat Bill” today, the “first proposal of its kind” that “would prohibit women from ending pregnancies at the first detectable fetal heartbeat,” which can be heard “within 18 to 24 days of conception” and “in almost all cases by six weeks.” As NARAL Ohio pointed out, this bill targets “a point when many women don’t even know they’re pregnant.” Crafted by the right-wing group Faith2Action, the bill is being advertised via “heart-shaped balloons” and “a music video” with “a few fetuses appearing to keep the beat from inside the womb.”

– TEXAS: This week, the Texas Senate will consider state Sen. Dan Patrick’s (R) anti-abortion measure mandating that “pregnant women be shown an ultrasound of the fetus at least two hours before an abortion.” Physicians would be required to show the fetus’ dimensions, presence of limbs or internal organs if applicable, and –if audible – the fetal heartbeat. Similar provisions failed in 2007 and 2009 but two weeks ago, Gov. Rick Perry (R-OH) “fast-tracked the sonogram bill by declaring it an emergency item” to allow early consideration. The bill’s author, state Sen. Dan Patrick (R) says the emergency designation is legitimate because “we have 80,000 abortions in Texas every year” and the emotional pain caused by this bill will inevitably compel “one out of five women” to bring the baby to term.

– ARIZONA: State GOP Rep. Steve Montenegro introduced two bills tocriminalize abortions if they’re sought because of race or sex. The bill would slam doctors who “knowingly perform abortions for these reasons” with Class 3 felony charges. While neither Montenegro norindependent searches of state records provide support for his claims, Montenegro insists “that there are targeted communities that the abortion industry targets.” He even believes that “an abortion based on race would include situations where the parents are the same race as the fetus.” Arizona Department of Health Services does not collect information on fetus gender and only recently began asking about racial statistics. As of last week, Montenegro has yet to provide the “promised” statistics to support of his bills.

– FLORIDA: Ordained minister State Rep. Charles Van Zant (R-FL) recently introduced the Florida for Life Act, a bill that mimics Florida’s recent “fetal personhood” amendment which defines all human beings as persons “regardless of age, race, health function, condition of physical and/or mental dependency and/or disability.” The Florida for Life Act is “more overtly religious,” stating that “all life comes from the Creator and begins at conception.” The bill also states that the Supreme Court is unqualified to “determine, establish, or define the moral values” of Floridians and that the Constitution expresses no qualifications for states to “protect life in a manner consistent with the moral consensus of the people, and reflecting the peoples’ belief in a Creator.” The bill would not only prohibit induced abortions but would “punish abortion doctors as felons, should they violate the measures” of the bill.

– IOWA: Two Iowa Republican representatives are opposing a bill seeking to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks because “it doesn’t go far enough.” Because she feels the bill “would codify deaths of babies from zero to 19 weeks,” State Rep. Kim Pearson is “not willing” to support this legislation and will instead introduce her own bill “that would define life as beginning at conception” and effectively “end all abortions in Iowa.” GOP state Sen. Randy Feenstra is trying to push the marker with a bill to restrict abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy. If all else fails, a resolution to amend the Iowa Constitution to “define a person as starting from a single-cell human embryo” is now pending in the Iowa House.

These measures are certainly not the first efforts by pro-life lawmakers to change state law. Last year, a Kansas GOP lawmaker proposed levying a sales tax on abortions. Perhaps inspiring Texas, Oklahoma overrode a veto last year to enforce an ultrasound mandate with “no exceptions for rape or incest.” And a fetal personhood amendment like the one in Florida appeared on the Colorado ballot in 2008 and 2010 but was “decisively defeated.”

But the state-level efforts right out of the gate in 2011 implies a renewed motivation to blindly pre-determine what is already a difficult and deeply personal choice. A recent NARAL report counts a total of 15 states with anti-choice governments. Arizona has already introduced a “heartbeat” bill similar to Ohio and Texas, Georgia, and Oklahoma are watching its progress “closely.” With concerted attack on reproductive health coming both from the federal and state level, the GOP may just walk women’s rights all the way back before the Supreme Court protected them in 1973.

M.C.L Comment: The funny thing about the pro-life movement yeah they want these women to have these babies yet they want to gut programs that were intended to help them raise their children. Again folks if you have a pro-life friend or relative ask them how they feel about welfare and be prepare to hear the most vile things. They might as well say we want to protect more cops by taking away their bullet proof vest.

Do GOPers Taking Campaign Funds From DeMint Agree With His Extreme Views On Unmarried Women, Gays?

By Josh Dorner Sen. Jim DeMint (R-right wing douchebag), one of the most conservative members of the U.S. Senate, has made a name for himself by supporting tea party insurgents against establishment Republican candidates in this year’s hotly-contested primaries. For instance, he supported Rand Paul over Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) preferred candidate and endorsed Joe Miller over his own Senate colleague Lisa Murkowski in Alaska. Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) called this behavior “a new and shocking development.” Some new and revealing comments DeMint made over the weekend are likely to cause even more division among Republicans, while also providing yet further evidence of the tea party’s hostile takeover of the GOP. Speaking to the “Greater Freedom Rally” on Saturday at a church in Spartanburg, SC, DeMint actually advocated for fewer basic freedoms for gays and unmarried women. According the Spartanburg Herald-Journal, DeMint “said if someone is openly homosexual, they shouldn’t be teaching in the classroom and he holds the same position on an unmarried woman who’s sleeping with her boyfriend — she shouldn’t be in the classroom.” These comments come just days after DeMint and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) successfully blocked approval of a National Women’s History Museum, on the grounds that it unnecessarily duplicated existing local museums honoring quilters and cowgirls, and other sites such as a lilac garden in Washington state. While DeMint’s extreme statements and tea party endorsements have grabbed headlines, less well-known is the fact that two political action committees controlled by DeMint — MINT PAC and the Senate Conservatives Fund — are spending millions of dollars to elect GOP candidates from coast-to-coast. According to OpenSecrets.org and a ThinkProgress review of the most independent expenditure reports filed with the Federal Election Commission, DeMint’s PACs have lavished nearly $2 million on fifteen GOP candidates whose success or failure at the ballot box will determine which party controls the Senate in the 112th Congress. The beneficiaries of his largesse include: – Florida Senate candidate Marco Rubio: $406,250 – Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck, who famously implored GOP primary voters to choose him over his rival Jane Norton because he “[doesn]’t wear high heels”: $359,654 – Nevada Senate candidate Sharron Angle, herself a former teacher: $337,903 – Utah Senate candidate Mike Lee: $251,945 – Alaska Senate candidate Joe Miller: $180,067 – Delaware Senate candidate Christine O’Donnell: $130,326 – Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul: $79,421 – Pennsylvania Senate candidate Pat Toomey: $68,796 – Wisconsin Senate candidate Ron Johnson: $51,858 – Washington Senate candidate Dino Rossi: $37,000 – South Dakota Senate candidate John Thune: $7,500 – North Carolina’s Richard Burr, Georgia’s Johnny Isakson, Ohio’s Rob Portman, and Indiana’s Dan Coats have each received $5,000. The Hill reported last Friday that DeMint plans to spend hundreds of thousands more on another round of television ads targeting his Democratic Senate colleagues Harry Reid (NV), Michael Bennet (CO), and Russ Feingold (WI) in order to further aid challengers Angle, Buck, and Johnson. One wonders whether these and other GOP candidates, including rumored 2012 hopeful Sen. John Thune (R-SD), will continue to accept money and support from their putative leader or whether they will disavow DeMint’s hateful and extreme attack on unmarried women and gays by returning his money and refusing any further support.