#steve cooley

Makeshift Workshop in Storage Container (Photo: R.P. Murphy) We’ve dealt with some unique challenges during Rosslyn’s icehouse rehab, and today’s post provides an inside glimpse into one of the workaround. The icehouse is a small building offering limited workspace. And while we’ve been able to take advantage of the carriage barn for workflows that aren’t adversely impacted by the cold, priming…

Cerritos Resident Will Stand Trial in Embezzlement Case

Paul Phillips By Brian Hews October 5, 2022~Cerritos resident and former Industry City Manager Paul Philips will stand trial for allegedly assisting in a developer’s scheme to steal up to $20 million in public funds from a proposed solar farm, a judge ruled Tuesday, Oct. 4. The charges involve $20 million that the City of Industry paid to San Gabriel Valley Water and Power LLC for land leasing…

Peter Montgomery at RWW: 

John Eastman, a well-connected right-wing lawyer and anti-LGBTQ activist, published a column on Newsweek Wednesday questioning whether Kamala Harris meets the constitutional requirement to be vice president. As Right Wing Watch reported in a 2016 profile, law professor Eastman has a long record of activism on behalf of right-wing causes.

In his  Newsweek op-ed, Eastman argued that even though Harris was born in Oakland, California, and her parents entered in the U.S. legally, she might not qualify as a natural-born U.S. citizen if her parents were not permanent residents at the time of Harris’ birth.  Eastman’s constitutional interpretation is outside ​mainstream ​legal thinking; questions about Harris’s eligibility have been rejected by nonpartisan fact-checking sites and prominent conservatives. The column generated a wave of backlash on social media from critics calling Eastman’s argument racist.

Newsweek published an editor’s note late last night rejecting claims that Eastman’s column was racist. Editors Josh Hammer and Nancy Cooper stated:

[Some of our readers have reacted strongly to the op-ed we published by Dr. John Eastman, assuming it to be an attempt to ignite a racist conspiracy theory around Kamala Harris’ candidacy. Dr. Eastman was focusing on a long-standing, somewhat arcane legal debate about the precise meaning of the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” in the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment. His essay has no connection whatsoever to co-called “birther-ism,” the racist 2008 conspiracy theory aimed at delegitimizing then-candidate Barack Obama by claiming, baselessly, that he was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya. We share our readers’ revulsion at those vile lies.]

Eastman has been one of the most vocal advocates for eliminating the 14th Amendment’s protection of birthright citizenship. He has argued that it would not take a constitutional amendment, just a court decision or act of Congress to change what he believes to be an erroneous interpretation of the 14th Amendment. These ideas put him on the fringes of the right-wing legal movement.

[...]

Harris and Eastman do have something in common. Both were candidates in the 2010 election for attorney general in California. Harris won, while Eastman was defeated in the Republican primary.