Things to watch and consider
Liberty Lake Library/Liberty Lake City Council
Late last Monday evening (December 4) the temporary supermajority on the Liberty Lake City Council rammed through their controversial ordinance giving them direct oversight over the policies of the Liberty Lake Library Board. Phil Folyer (a lame duck who will be replaced in January), Chris Cargill, Jed Spencer, Wendy Van Orman, and Mike Kennedy (who just now replaced the appointed Tom Sahlberg) voted in favor. Council Members Annie Kurtz and Dan Dunne voted against.
A earlier, similar ordinance said that the council or mayor “will not initiate any book ban” and the council will “confirm or deny any books banned” by the board. That ordinance was vetoed by Mayor Kris Kaminskas (the first veto by a mayor in the twenty-plus year history of the City of Liberty Lake), a veto which the council at the time did not have the votes to override. When that original ordinance was passed by the council, Council Member Chris Cargill, one of the two CMs who earlier had voted to ban the book “Gender Queer” said, “To me, if you are opposed to banning books, you should be in favor of this ordinance because it says very specifically that the council cannot do it,” as reported by Garrett Cabeza of the Spokesman.
Tellingly, last Monday the ordinance passed by the temporary supermajority did not include that language. Moreover, that night the same 5-2 supermajority rejected an amendment that “would have prevented censorship from the council, mayor or board, and required policy to follow the law.” Cargill called the amendment “unnecessary”.
Of course, it remains to be seen if this council, or a later one, will actually try to use the ordinance to ban books it doesn’t like. It also remains to be seen if the council will go through with proposed budgetary machinations that would significantly cut library funding, a move that one would have to interpret as retribution. Message: the actions of the City of Liberty Lake City Council henceforth should be subjected to careful scrutiny.
A Couple of National Notes:
The man nominated in glowing terms by our own U.S. Rep. McMorris Rodgers (R-CD5, eastern Washington) in a closed-door session of the House Republican Caucus, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, recently spoke to the National Association of Christian Lawmakers — a group that seeks to enact its anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ “biblical worldview” into law. In his speech Mr. Johnson claimed that God had counseled him to step forward for the position of Speaker of the House. From an article on the event covered in Rolling Stone, this was:
…just the latest evidence that the politician [Johnson] who is now second in line for the presidency views himself as on a divine mission. Rolling Stone previously reported on Johnson’s exhortations to save a “depraved” America from God’s wrath and vengeance.
No one should be surprised that Johnson believes that the voice in his head is the voice of God or that the voice guides his timing and his particular agenda to “save” America. Fundamentalists and cult leaders have claimed divine justification for each of their particular belief systems since time immemorial. Nor should it surprise anyone that Rep. McMorris Rodgers, former leader of the House Republican Caucus, nominated such a man on a mission to lead House Republicans.
Tuberville Caves. Was he trying to copy McConnell?
On December 5th, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) finally relinquished his blockade of Senate approval of all military appointments and promotions. (Details here.) Tuberville, who sailed to his Senate seat in 2020 on his name recognition as a famous retired college football coach, claimed he was taking a principled stand against abortion. He opposed military policy to provide support for women in the service to seek health care across state lines from states that have criminalized the medical standard of care.
Tuberville finally relented. Most of the media coverage suggested that he gave up his blockade thanks to pressure from fellow senators worried about the political optics of a Republican holding up military promotions. But what was he really up to?
We don’t want to give this man who apparently thinks that Guatemala shares a border with the United States too much credit for intelligence, but one must ask what his real motivation was for this hold. Tuberville is a staunch supporter of Donald Trump and the narrative that the 2020 election was stolen.
Immediately upon taking office in January of 2021 Tuberville joined the group of U.S. Senators who announced their opposition to the counting of the electoral votes for Joe Biden, winner of the 2020 election. The evening after the attack on the Capitol on January 6 Tuberville, despite his position as a freshman senator, joined five other Republican senators to vote to object to Arizona’s electors and the other six who objected to Pennsylvania’s electors.
Donald Trump has declared his intention to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807. This would empower him “to deploy U.S. military and federalized National Guard troops within the United States in particular circumstances, such as to suppress civil disorder, insurrection, or rebellion.” Having Trump’s hand-picked loyalists in positions of power within the military (as proposed for the civil service by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025) would greatly reduce the likelihood of pushback from military leaders to Trump’s invocation of the Insurrection Act.
Moreover, as you will recall, there is precedent for Republicans holding positions open so they can fill them later. Infamously, Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell stonewalled President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court for nearly eight months on the flimsy and duplicitous excuse of “letting the people decide” based on the the 2016 election. Never forget that McConnell quickly reversed his excuse for holding a seat open for months when he rammed through Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination less than two weeks before the 2020 general election. We are still—and will be for some time—reaping the consequences of McConnell’s work.
McConnell broke with any Republican pretense of decency with his holds on approving judicial nominations. Was Tuberville hoping for his own historic power play—but lost his nerve over objections to torturing the military, objections from people in his own party? Here’s Liz Cheney’s comment tucked away on an NPR interview (start at 8:30, but the whole 11 minute video is worth your time):
“Why is Tommy Tuberville doing that?” she said. “It’s causing great damage to this nation’s military readiness. Is he holding those positions open so that Donald Trump can fill them? What’s he doing? It’s certainly not serving the purposes of the United States of America.”
After McConnell’s hold on judicial appointments and the events of January 6, we have every reason to be suspicious of the motives of any Republican loyal to Donald Trump who tries to hold up government appointments.
Keep to the high ground,
Jerry
P.S. Ms. Cheney’s NPR interview was sampled on Fox and Friends (see embedded Fox video), but, not surprisingly, it was immediately and fervently discounted by commentator Joe Concha suggesting that Liz Cheney would say anything to sell her new book “Oath and Honor”—as if anyone in the Cheney family needed money from book sales. Ms. Cheney’s comment about Tuberville wasn’t mentioned—and Concha veered off into condemning transgender surgery—a Fox staple.