Big Time News Blog: 11/01/20

Sunday, November 1, 2020

Record-breaking Tropical Storm Eta forms in the Caribbean. 2020 tied for most named storms

Tropical Storm Eta has formed in the Caribbean, breaking a few records in an already historic hurricane season.

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The son of Lev Parnas offers one more Trump tell-all

As a law student, Aaron Parnas says, he witnessed many of his father's encounters with President Trump and his inner circle.

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Greece says Turkey encroaching on continental shelf with new hydrocarbon search

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Vernon Jones responds to criticism of Black men supporting Trump

Democratic State Rep. and Black Voices for Trump advisory board member Vernon Jones reacts to Black support for Trump on 'Fox & Friends Weekend.'

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Election win by Georgia's governing party triggers protests

Georgia's ruling party won the ex-Soviet nation's highly contested parliamentary election, according to preliminary results announced Sunday that the opposition refused to recognize as valid and used to call for protests, saying they were manipulated. With more than 99% of ballots counted, the Georgian Dream party had received 48.1% of the vote in Saturday's election, according to the website of Georgia’s Central Election Commission. The biggest opposition alliance, led by the United National Movement party, got 27.1%.

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The Biden campaign cancelled events in Texas after a convoy of trucks flying Trump flags surrounded their bus and ran into a person's car, officials say

Videos shared on Twitter showed vehicles surrounding the bus. In one clip, a pickup truck with a Trump flag appears to drive into a smaller car.

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Kyle Rittenhouse admitted he 'ended a man's life' and 'shot two white kids' in Kenosha shootings, but claimed self defense, police said

In a police report obtained by Insider, the 17-year-old told police he "shot two white kids" and "ended a man's life" when he turned himself in.

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The Morning

By Unknown Author from NYT Briefing https://ift.tt/3esUYrT

As I.C.U. beds fill in Missouri, small hospitals are stuck holding Covid patients in emergency rooms.

By BY MELINA DELKIC from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/35WSptV

A Year of Devastation in Arizona’s Wild Lands

By BY LAIKEN JORDAHL from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/3oQK04e

Both Candidates Agree: Trump’s Crowds Are Bigger, and They’re OK With That

By BY MICHAEL D. SHEAR AND THOMAS KAPLAN from NYT U.S. https://ift.tt/2HUuhjQ

Lincoln Project targets 3 deep red states with million-dollar ad buy as election map ‘turning against’ Trump

With just three days left until the election, President Trump’s enemies are seeing new opportunities in staunchly red states.

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Greg Gutfeld: What the 2020 election means for everyone

Greg Gutfeld covers the final push to election day.

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Russia pledges help to Yerevan if fighting reaches Armenia

Russia on Saturday pledged to "necessary" help for Yerevan in the conflict with Azerbaijan if fighting reached Armenian territory, after its ally requested security assistance.

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Typhoon Goni: Philippines hit by year's most powerful storm

Goni weakens from a super typhoon but still brings "catastrophic" winds and torrential rain to Luzon.

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Why the Left Is Mad about the Supreme Court

When Joe Biden finally answered, after several weeks of hemming and hawing, whether he would indulge the recently revived left-wing fantasy of adding justices to the Supreme Court, it was revealing. And not simply in the way that his response -- “to put together a national . . . bipartisan commission” some months after Election Day -- betrayed his decades as a political creature. (Have a problem? Form a “commission.”) For although this response has come to be seen as a kind of demurral, Biden still maintained that the Supreme Court was “out of whack.”This is, in essence, the same belief held by others on the left, amplified during the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. Here as in other things, Biden seems to differ from the left primarily tactically, sharing many of its ends but aware that some of them -- and some of its preferred means, such as Court-packing -- are unpopular. But there remains the shared contention that what President Trump and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell have accomplished in placing three “conservative” appointees on the Supreme Court in one presidential term remains somehow illegitimate.Superficially, this almost certainly proceeds from a sense on the left that they got played. Ignoring arguments of precedent, and the fact that, while McConnell undoubtedly played hardball, he did so well within his constitutional powers, many liberals are simply aggrieved at conservative political victories. And it is their right to be so aggrieved; goodness knows the Right has felt the same way under different circumstances. But that many on the left prefer to respond by seeking to dramatically alter the century-and-a-half-old configuration of the Supreme Court -- something not even FDR could do as president -- suggests something deeper is at play.The fundamental source of this agitation is that the Left was convinced the Court would always be on its side, becoming its personal tool for achieving desired outcomes outside the electoral process.A fuller understanding requires looking back at recent history. And it requires looking at it more honestly than do the recent laments that, for example, Republican presidents over the past several decades have disproportionately appointed more justices to the Supreme Court than they deserve. For conservatives of a few decades’ past -- and still, even, to some extent now -- this is not a sign of success but of a particularly cruel kind of failure, if not even their preferred appointees could be trusted once on the Court. The modern conservative legal movement, animated primarily by a renewed commitment to understanding the Constitution as it was understood by those who drafted it (known as originalism), didn’t just come out of nowhere with the 1982 birth of the Federalist Society or the 1985 originalist stirrings of Reagan attorney general Edwin Meese. These and other stirrings came in response to a recognition on the right that the Left had either welcomed or been actively complicit in the transformation of the Supreme Court into a super-legislature, a way for liberals to achieve judicially what they could not electorally.To conservatives, this fact alone comported ill with the Constitution, never mind that many of the decisions achieved by the Court -- most notoriously Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973 -- proceeded to do further violence to the constitutional order. Their response was not merely to capitulate to this state of affairs, but to work, slowly yet surely, to change it. The Federalist Society helped these efforts greatly, bringing originalist-inclined law students together, connecting them to like-minded professors, helping to seed law schools and courts nationwide with trustworthy exponents of its philosophy, broadly speaking, and more. And this was done despite significant resistance from the left, which treasured the Court and wished to keep it under its control. Liberals aghast at McConnell’s hardball today shouldn’t just look back at the 2018 treatment of Brett Kavanaugh, but also to the infamous Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas hearings, the treatment of lower-court nominee Miguel Estrada, and more.And yet, for all of the Right’s successes on the Court, it must still witness what it views as fairly spectacular failures. The first Court with majority Republican appointees essentially affirmed Roe; in 2012 a Republican-appointed chief justice rewrote the Affordable Care Act to uphold it as constitutional; in 2015 the Court found a right to same-sex marriage in the 14th Amendment; and just this past summer, Neil Gorsuch, an apparent textualist, divined protection from transgender discrimination in legislation penned within living memory that originally contained no such protections. To be sure, the Right has had its triumphs -- often though not always corresponding to defeats for the Left, only inasmuch as the Left was defying or hoping to defy the Constitution -- such that it remains interested in the game. And so it is likely to remain, while still wary of the Court’s ability to uphold the Constitution, even with an ostensible 6–3 majority.Yet this complicated history, full of the kind of back-and-forth one would expect from the political process, helps to explain the depth of the Left’s anger about the Court’s current status. They are mad that conservatives discovered their thinly veiled attempts at transforming the judiciary and decided to try to recapture it with the help of a philosophy that emphasized a renewed commitment to the Constitution. Now that, after decades of patience and persistence, conservatives have established a beachhead on a Court liberals thought would always be theirs, they are infuriated. Some, such as Sheldon Whitehouse, see evidence of a nefarious conspiracy in what has been accomplished openly yet at great difficulty. But the true root of this remains a frustration that, in at least one area, the Right has refused to go along with the Left’s capture of an institution, that it has not consented to the triumphalist narrative the Left imagines culminates with it forever in charge of everything, never dealing with anything more than token opposition.With Joe Biden perhaps days away from securing the presidency, however, it is worth keeping in mind that the Right’s approach is not infallible. As it’s suffered in the past, it may in the future as well. Besides even Republican appointees’ having an uneven record of constitutional fidelity, there is also a risk that conservatives abandon such fidelity outright in favor of simply turning the institution into a rightward version of what it once was for the Left. Of course that is not, and has never been, the point of originalism, even as the Right may face this calumny regularly if the Court appears antagonistic to unconstitutional overtures from an empowered Left during a Biden administration.There is also a reality, one that has genuinely harmed conservatism, that many of its exponents have devoted so much intellectual and political energy to law generally and to the Supreme Court in particular that they have abdicated responsibilities in other areas, particularly legislative. It was worth doing, of course; the nature of the courts and Congress had changed to make it desirable. But if done in isolation it will also have been done in vain. For it will do little good if an originalist-dominated Supreme Court returns power to a legislature that fears exercising these powers and accepting their concomitant responsibilities. Even so, there are still many lessons in the recent political history of the Supreme Court, for both Left and Right. But at the moment, it is the Left that seems unwilling to learn the lesson that the pendulum swings, and instead hopes to hold the pendulum permanently in one place.Perhaps a certain commission will do the trick . . .

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Lincoln Project brings viral anti-Trump billboards to Mar-a-Lago this weekend

The Lincoln Project's Times Square billboards showing Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner will be floating near Mar-a-Lago this weekend.

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Bricks thrown at police, Northwestern University students pepper-sprayed in off-campus clash as protesters again call on university to defund its police

EVANSTON, Ill. — After leaving campus, protesters from Northwestern University who were demonstrating Saturday night clashed with Evanston authorities, and a school spokesman said both students and officers reported dangerous conditions from attacks by the other side. Jon Yates, a spokesman with the university, said he had been in contact with the department and was told officers used pepper ...

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Prince William caught Covid in April but kept diagnosis secret

The Duke of Cambridge was struck down with coronavirus in April but kept the diagnosis secret so as not to “worry” anyone, it has emerged. The Duke, 38, is said to have struggled to breathe during his illness and was treated by doctors before isolating at the family home, Anmer Hall, in Norfolk. He is said to have later told one observer at an engagement: “There were important things going on and I didn’t want to worry anyone." The Duke’s diagnosis came shortly after it was announced that both his father, the Prince of Wales, and Boris Johnson had contracted the virus. He was reportedly concerned that revealing his own plight to the nation would create further panic. Kensington Palace sources played down the severity of his illness. But a source told The Sun: "William was hit pretty hard by the virus - it really knocked him for six. "At one stage he was struggling to breathe, so obviously everyone around him was pretty panicked. "After seeing medics and testing positive - which was obviously quite a shock given how fit and healthy he is - William was determined it should be business as usual though. "He was determined to fulfil his engagements.” There was no public hint that the Duke had fallen ill during the height of the pandemic, not least as he continued to work throughout April, carrying out 14 telephone and video call engagements throughout the month. Memorably, he was filmed standing at the door of Anmer Hall with the Duchess of Cambridge, 38, and their children, Prince George, seven, Princess Charlotte, five, and two-year-old Prince Louis as they lead the nation in a Clap for Carers.

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Early voters flock to El Dorado County vote centers open Saturday

On Saturday, El Dorado County opened up all of its vote centers ahead of Election Day on Tuesday. The foothills community is demonstrating the same election excitement seen across the country. “Early voting’s been incredible. We’ve had more ballots returned by mail than in any previous election,” said Bill O’Neill. O’Neill is the county’s Registrar of Voters. This weekend, he said they are also seeing high in-person turnout. O’Neill encourages people to vote early to avoid longer lines on Tuesday. Get the full story in the video above.

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