The world’s largest money manager has introduced a new policy forcing its 16,000 employees to disclose ‘personal relationships’ with all the company’s clients, in what is being described as the toughest policy yet on office romances.
BlackRock, the New York-based firm which manages $7.4 trillion in assets, introduced the new rules last week.
They are in addition to existing policies which forced the disclosure of relationships with other staff members.
Given that BlackRock, on behalf of the funds it runs, is one of the five largest shareholders in nearly every corporation in the S&P 500, the impact of the new policy is expected to be significant.
[…]
‘It takes the assessment of what is or is not a conflict out of the employees’ hands and puts it into the hands of HR and lawyers — which makes it eminently enforceable,’ the executive said.
The Democrats have already reflexively announced their opposition to Gorsuch, even though their criticisms have failed to rise to any cogent standard. Wisconsin’s own Senator Tammy Baldwin has even refused to meet with Gorsuch, thus abdicating her role in the process and retreating behind nasty press releases and daft commentary.
Far be it from me to advise the Democrats, but their overreach on Gorsuch may neuter them further on future picks. Remember that former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid killed the filibuster rule for all but Supreme Court picks in his effort to ram through President Obama’s lower court appointments, but left it in place for Supreme Court appointments. In doing so, Reid laid the ideological groundwork and precedent for killing the filibuster rule for Supreme Court picks too.
If the Democrats in the U.S. Senate choose to filibuster and obstruct what is clearly a brilliantly qualified choice for the Supreme Court, the Republicans can rescind the filibuster rule for Supreme Court picks too and confirm the appointment without needing to make a single concession to the minority party. The Democrats’ intransigence and unwillingness to even participate in the process, and the precedent already established by Harry Reid, will provide ample political cover for the change in rules.
Then, if and when Trump gets another opportunity to appoint a Supreme Court justice, the rules will already be set to allow an easy confirmation. If the Democrats participate and allow a vote – even if all of them vote against the nominee – they will likely preserve the filibuster for future Supreme Court nominations while undercutting the political justification to rescind it next time.
If the political battles of the past few years in Wisconsin have taught me anything, it is that Democrats will overreach. Their base of radicals demands unbending fealty to ideology – even at the expense of victory.
As it turned out, McConnell did end the filibuster for SCOTUS confirmations over the Gorsuch fight and here we are. Then the Democrats hardened once “play nice” Senators like Graham during their atrocious behavior in the Kavanaugh hearing. Again, I expect the Democrats to overreach again here.
Through all of this I continue to lament that we attach so much importance to a single judge; on a 9-judge panel; in one branch of our federal government. It shows how much power we have ceded to the federal government and, specifically, the Supreme Court. Do you know why judge appointments were mostly a non-event outside of Washington for well over a century of our nation’s history? Because it didn’t impact the lives of most Americans. That’s not the case anymore and our Republic is worse for it.
This is very simple. There is no practical purpose to expand the court for the good of the American People. The only reason to do it is to change the philosophical center of the court one way or the other. It is about raw power.
Democrats have threatened to pack the Supreme Court if Donald Trump‘s nomination gets confirmed following the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The president on Saturday urged the GOP-run Senate to consider ‘without delay’ his upcoming nomination to fill the seat vacated by Justice Ginsburg, who died Friday after a battle with cancer.
[…]
Several Democrats have vowed the party will expand the size of the court if they capture the Senate in November and Republicans have already pushed through a conservative successor to Ginsburg.
Joe Kennedy III, who represents Massachusetts’ 4th Congressional District and is the grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, tweeted Sunday: ‘If he holds a vote in 2020, we pack the court in 2021. It’s that simple.’
Let’s think this through a few steps. Let’s say the Democrats win the presidency and majorities in the Congress, so they expand the court to 11 members, appoint two liberals, and shift the balance. What’s to stop the Republicans from doing the same thing the next time they are in control? Does the Republic then just keep expanding the Supreme Court every time a party gets in power? We still experience the sway of courts as elected officials from one party or the other gain power, only now it happens faster because they don’t have to wait for sitting justices to die or retire.
Is that better? Is our Republic better for it?
Nope. Do the Democrats care? Nope.
Let’s hope this is a passing tantrum and more thoughtful people step to the front of the Democratic Party.
The Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a Montana program that excluded religious schools from a student aid initiative violates religious freedoms protected under the U.S. Constitution.
The 5-4 majority decision, which fell along ideological lines, said that by making state-backed private school scholarships off-limits to parochial schools, the program ran afoul of First Amendment protections for the free exercise of religion, which prohibits the government from treating religious and secular groups differently.
“A state need not subsidize private education,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. “But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”
[…]
In a concurring opinion, Thomas argued that the court’s current treatment of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which functions as a sort of counterweight to the free exercise clause, unduly interferes with states’ ability to support religious activities.
“So long as this hostility remains, fostered by our distorted understanding of the Establishment Clause, free exercise rights will continue to suffer,” Thomas, joined by Gorsuch, wrote.
Thirteen protesters who were arrested during clashes with police in Pennsylvania at the weekend remain behind bars after a judge slapped the majority of them with bonds of $1 million each.
Police say the protesters, who range from 16 to 43 years of age, were arrested for rioting in Lancaster in the early hours of Monday morning after the police shooting of a knife-wielding man sparked protests.
The 13 protesters remained behind bars on Tuesday with bail for seven of them set at $1 million each.
Authorities said the protests following Ricardo Munoz’s fatal shooting degenerated into rioting that damaged Lancaster’s police headquarters and produced an arson fire that blocked a downtown intersection.
A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court has rejected the Green Party’s request to place presidential candidate Howie Hawkins on the state’s slate, giving local clerks the go-ahead to begin sending out absentee ballots to voters.
The 4-3 decision — which had conservative Justice Brian Hagedorn joining the court’s three liberals to form a majority — found it was too late for Hawkins to be added, citing the “very short deadlines” and “the fact that the 2020 fall general election has essentially begun.”
“It is too late to grant petitioners any form of relief that would be feasible and that would not cause confusion and undue damage to both the Wisconsin electors who want to vote and the other candidates in all of the various races on the general election ballot,” wrote the majority.
(Reuters) – A U.S. appeals court on Thursday rejected Texas Democrats’ bid to allow all state residents to vote by mail due to the coronavirus pandemic, ruling that the state’s law extending that right only to those over 65 was not unconstitutional age discrimination.
A split three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court’s preliminary ruling that had required the state to expand mail-in voting to all eligible voters.
The Texas case is just one of dozens of court challenges across the country over whether to expand voting rights in light of the pandemic. President Donald Trump, a Republican, has asserted without evidence that voting by mail will result in fraud, although many states have used the practice for decades with no major problems.
Texas law allows voters over age 65, as well as those with certain disabilities, who are ill, absent from their home counties or confined to jail, to vote by mail. In a separate case, the state’s high court ruled in May that the risk of contracting the novel coronavirus was not in itself a valid reason to allow mail-in ballots.
The 5th Circuit’s majority said the state’s law did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on age discrimination because it merely conferred an extra benefit on older residents, rather than limiting the right to vote for younger Texans.
MADISON – The state Supreme Court told election officials Thursday that absentee ballots should not be mailed for now so the justices can determine whether they should include the Green Party’s presidential ticket.
The 4-3 order left open the possibility of reprinting 2.3 million ballots and delaying the printing of others — moves that election officials said would cause them to miss deadlines set by state law.
The order fell along ideological lines, with the conservatives in the majority and the liberals in dissent.
In response to the order, the state Elections Commission submitted a report late Thursday that suggested as many as 378,000 ballots have already been sent to voters. But the head of the commission said there was no way to know for certain how many ballots have been sent because that duty falls to municipal clerks, not the commission.
Adding candidates to the ballots after some have been sent would be complicated. Voters who have already been sent a ballot would need to get a second one and clerks would have to make sure no one voted twice.
[…]
The Green Party case centers on whether presidential nominee Howie Hawkins and vice presidential nominee Angela Walker should be on the ballot.
The Elections Commission didn’t include the Green Party on the ballot after it deadlocked last month on the issue. Walker, a Milwaukee native, provided two different addresses on her campaign filings, and the three Democrats on the commission said that should keep the Green Party off the ballot. The commission’s three Republicans wanted the Green Party on the ballot.
Unspoken at last month’s commission meeting was how the Green Party could affect the presidential election. Democrats fear the liberal party could take votes away from Democratic nominee Joe Biden and Republicans hope such a situation will help GOP President Donald Trump.
Gov. Tony Evers said public health shouldn’t be a partisan issue, in response to a lawsuit filed last week by a conservative advocacy group that seeks to challenge his latest emergency declaration and mask mandate.
His remarks came as state health officials confirmed 727 new COVID-19 cases on Thursday.
“Science should not be a partisan issue, and a county-by-county piecemeal approach to the pandemic wasn’t working,” said Evers in a DHS briefing. “Our numbers continue to rise, families continue to lose loved ones, and we’ve reached record daily increases of positive cases, day after day.”
The curfew will be in effect from 8 p.m. Monday night until 7 a.m.Tuesday, according to the Kenosha Police Department. The Wisconsin National Guard was headed to Kenosha on Monday, according to the Kenosha News.
The state Department of Justice is investigating after officers from the department responding to a domestic incident shortly after 5 p.m. “were involved in an officer involved shooting,” according to a news release.
The man who was shot, identified by Gov. Tony Evers as Jacob Blake, was airlifted to a Milwaukee hospital in serious condition as of early Monday, police said. Tyrone Muhammad, a member of the group Ex-Cons for Community and social change, said Blake’s father told him Blake was out of surgery and was expected to survive.
On Twitter, Evers said he and his wife are hoping for Blake’s recovery.
“While we do not have all of the details yet, what we know for certain is that he is not the first Black man or person to have been shot or injured or mercilessly killed at the hands of individuals in law enforcement in our state or our country,” Evers wrote on Twitter.
[…]
Evers is calling lawmakers into session to take action on a package of bills aimed at reducing the prevalence of police brutality a day after Blake was shot. The move would ban police chokeholds and no-knock search warrants and make it harder for overly aggressive officers to move from one job to another.
Like most people, I look at the video and have some serious questions. I don’t know why non-lethal force was not used first. I question why they shot him when he was moving away. I wonder what happened before the video started. But I also understand that the police were responding to a domestic call, thought he had a gun, and perhaps thought that the kids were in danger.
We. Don’t. Know. What we do know is that a thorough investigation should be done to find out the facts. And if the police are found to have acted illegally, they should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. But if they are found to have acted appropriately, then we should laud their actions while lamenting the sad results.
But before we even know the facts, the governor is out with a statement intimating that it was an unjustified shooting by racist police. His statement gave tacit permission for rioters to burn down Kenosha. And he has called a special session to pass a bunch of bills that have nothing whatsoever to do with this shooting. But since the bills are about police brutality, the governor is sending the message that he thinks this shooting is the result of racist, brutal police.
Governor Evers’ actions are repugnant and they have endangered the lives, health, and property of all Wisconsinites.
(CNN)A former Army Green Beret has been charged with providing information about US national defenses to Russian agents, the Department of Justice announced on Friday.
Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins was arrested for allegedly releasing details to Russian intelligence operatives about the chemical and Special Forces unit he was a part of before and while serving in the US Army.
Prosecutors with the Eastern District of Virginia say Debbins met with Russian operatives on multiple occasions from 1996 to 2011 and was even assigned a code name, “Ikar Lesnikov,” by Russian intel agents. Debbins is also accused of signing a statement allegedly affirming that he wanted to serve Russia.
The FBI alleges that “Mr. Debbins knowingly provided information to self-proclaimed members of Russia’s Intelligence Service, the GRU,” said James A. Dawson, acting assistant director in charge of the FBI Washington field office.
A Justice Department investigation has found Yale University favored black students and illegally discriminated against white and Asian American applicants, in violation of federal civil rights law, officials said.
The findings were detailed in a letter to the college’s attorneys on Thursday, following a two-year investigation after students had complained about the application process at some Ivy League schools.
It marks the latest action by the Trump administration aimed at rooting out discrimination in college admissions.
A majority of justices could not agree on a rationale for why the three Evers vetoes were unconstitutional, finding generally that they created new law that the Legislature did not intend. The complex, 146-page ruling was limited to the four vetoes that were challenged and did not rein in the ability of future governors to make partial vetoes.
[…]
Two of the vetoes were overturned by the five-justice conservative majority, with two liberal justices dissenting. But a third veto that was overturned 4-3 saw conservative Chief Justice Pat Roggensack side with the two liberals on the losing side. And in upholding one Evers veto, three conservatives joined with two liberals in support.
I must say, AP reporter Scott Bauer has gotten worse and worse. He doesn’t even attempt to write an unbiased story. Check out the overtly loaded language. But as for the story itself, good.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The conservative-controlled Wisconsin Supreme Court on Thursday upheld Republican-authored lame-duck laws that stripped power from the incoming Democratic attorney general just before he took office in 2019.
The justices rejected arguments that the laws were unconstitutional, handing another win to Republicans who have scored multiple high-profile victories before the court in recent years.
The 5-2 ruling marks the second time that the court has upheld the lame-duck laws passed in December 2018, just weeks before Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Josh Kaul, both Democrats, took office. The actions in Wisconsin mirrored Republican moves after losing control of the governors’ offices in Michigan in November 2018 and in North Carolina in 2016. Democrats decried the tactics as brazen attempts to hold onto power after losing elections.
[…]
Thursday’s ruling involved a case filed by a coalition of labor unions led by the State Employees International Union. The coalition argued that the laws give the Legislature power over the attorney general’s office and that this violates the separation of powers doctrine in the state constitution.
The laws prohibit Evers from ordering Kaul to withdraw from lawsuits, let legislators intervene in lawsuits using their own attorneys rather than Kaul’s state Department of Justice lawyers, and force Kaul to get permission from the Legislature’s Republican-controlled budget committee before settling lawsuits.
Republicans designed the laws to prohibit Evers from pulling Wisconsin out of a multistate lawsuit challenging the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, and to ensure that they have a say in court if Kaul chooses not to defend GOP-authored laws.
(CNN)The Supreme Court on Wednesday threw out two job bias lawsuits brought by teachers against their religious employers, reaffirming that religious institutions and schools have a First Amendment right to select their employees.
It’s the latest case to come before the court exploring the relationship between church and state, and in their 7-2 ruling, the justices clarified the class of employees who are barred from suing their religious employers under anti-discrimination law.
[…]
“Today’s important decision does not mean, as some suggest, that religious institutions are above the law or that they have a license to discriminate,” said Richard Garnett of Notre Dame Law School, who filed a brief in support of the schools.
“It means, instead, that a crucial dimension of our Constitution’s religious-freedom guarantee is that civil powers are limited to civil matters and that state lacks authority to second-guess religious decisions and doctrines,” he added.
There is a huge disconnect between the draconian laws that we are expected to obey and fact that the government is letting protesters and rioters ignore all of the laws. Equal application of the law is a fundamental pillar of a free society. And yes, Middleton does not have the legal authority to enact these restrictions.
MIDDLETON, Wis. (WMTV) – The Tavern League of Wisconsin is calling restrictions on bars and restaurants “unlawful,” after public health officials announced a new emergency order Wednesday to slow the spread of coronavirus.
At restaurants, the restriction (Emergency Order #7) brings indoor dining capacity down from 50 percent to 25 percent. Bars can no longer allow indoor dining, only takeout and outdoor seating with physical distancing.
Janel Heinrich, the director of Public Health Madison & Dane County, said that the county has experienced a high number of cases recently. She also said that contact tracers found much of the spread has come from public gatherings, restaurants and bars.
In a 5-4 decision with the conservative justices in the majority and the liberal justices dissenting, the court backed a Montana program that gave tax incentives for people to donate to a scholarship fund that provided money to Christian schools for student tuition expenses.
The ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, represented the court’s latest expansion of religious liberties, a priority of its conservative majority in recent years.
The court sided with three mothers of Christian school students who appealed after Montana’s top court invalidated the tax credit for violating the state constitution’s ban on public aid to churches and religious entities. Thirty-eight states have such constitutional provisions.
The justices faulted the Montana Supreme Court for voiding a taxpayer program merely because it can be used to fund religious entities, saying such action violates the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protection for the free exercise of religion.
“A state need not subsidize private education,” Roberts wrote. “But once a state decides to do so, it cannot disqualify some private schools solely because they are religious.”
MADISON – In a sweeping decision that took more than three years to come out, a panel of federal judges on Monday reinstated limits on early voting and a requirement that voters be Wisconsin residents for at least a month before an election.
The three judges also banned most voters from having absentee ballots emailed or faxed to them and told a lower court to continue to tweak the system the state uses to provide voting credentials to those who have the most difficulty getting photo IDs.
The unanimous decision by the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago was mostly a setback for the liberal groups that challenged Wisconsin’s voting laws, but it did give them some victories. The appeals court upheld a decision that allows college students to use expired university IDs to vote and barred the state from requiring colleges to provide citizenship information about dorm residents who head to the polls.
Although there was a down side.
In one victory for those who brought the lawsuit, the appeals court agreed with Peterson that students could use expired college IDs to vote. And the appeals court also went along with the lower court ruling that said the state could not require universities to provide citizenship information about students living in dorms. (Such a requirement would violate federal privacy laws for students, the appeals court found.)
Monday’s decision also dealt with a separate challenge to the voter ID law that was heard by U.S. Judge Lynn Adelman in Milwaukee. The appeals court had already blocked a ruling by Adelman that would have allowed people to vote without an ID if they signed an affidavit. It gave a final reversal to Adelman’s decision with Monday’s ruling.
The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that workers cannot be fired for being gay or transgender in a major win for members of the LGBT community.
The 6-3 holding, authored by Justice Neil Gorsuch, a conservative appointed by President Donald Trump, is a blockbuster development in the history of gay rights in the United States.
“An individual’s homosexuality or transgender status is not relevant to employment decisions,” Gorsuch wrote. “That’s because it is impossible to discriminate against a person for being homosexual or transgender without discriminating against that individual based on sex.”
While workers in about half the country were protected by local laws that prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity, there was no federal law that explicitly barred LGBT workers from being fired on that basis.
Gorsuch was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, a fellow conservative, and the four members of the court’s liberal wing, Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan. Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh dissented.
