The Nicole Sandler Show

Tomorrow is the day we set aside to celebrate America's independence from the monarchy. Thanks to the Extreme Court's ruling announced yesterday, it might be our last one.I could think of no better guest for this wake than my old friend - comedian, actor, broadcaster John Fugelsang.It's been too long since we've spoken. But I've always marveled at his inherent ability to make us laugh in the face of things the are simply not funny. He's got a high bar to clear today, but I have no doubt that he will. Reminder, I'll be here tomorrow with a 4th of July music show.  It will not be on YouTube and will not go out as a podcast on my usual feed due to copyright issues. It will stream on my stream though, and I'll post a recording of it at nicolesandler.com.  Happy Independence Day... while we have it.

Lisa Graves has graciously agreed to join us again today to help us wade through this ultimate travesty of justice by the high court that is no longer "supreme". Extreme is more fitting.Lisa Graves has unimpeachable legal bona-fides. Among other positions during her career, she served under two US Attorneys General -- Janet Reno during the Clinton administration and John Ashcroft during the W Bush regime. She was chief counsel for nominations under Chair Patrick Leahy on the Senate Judiciary Committee, so was charged with vetting Supreme Court nominees.  I'm always grateful when Lisa brings her expertise here to help us try to figure out wtf is going on. And sadly, that's the only way I can describe what's going on now in the wake of the Extreme Court's gutting of the Chevron deference and conferring "absolute immunity" -- a concept that hadn't existed before yesterday's decision.  

The six Extreme Court injustices completed their task from the Federalist Society to kill our democracy. And no, that's not hyperbole. The month of July begins with such a travesty to close out the court's session.I spent most of the first half-hour reading from Justice Sonia Sotomayor's and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson's dissents.  PLEASE read the whole thing for yourself. Or just read the two dissenting opinions which run from page 68 to 118.  Then we check in with Jonathan Larsen of The Fucking News to further examine this unprecedented assault on democracy and the crowning of King D'ump.

It's time for our weekly get-together info download with Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel.net. And it's another week ending with out disbelief over what's happening in our corner of the world.... After last night's debate and this morning's group of SCOTUS rulings, I can't help but envy Marcy's living in Ireland. Today, we try to make sense of all that happened this week. Again, buckle in. It's a rough road ahead.

What a day! The Extreme Supremes this morning handed down four more decisions out of the dozen or so still tba... and then signaled that they will not get it all done by the official end of the term tomorrow. There will be at least one more decision day in July. We'll know more about that tomorrow. Lisa Graves, the unofficial legal expert of the Nicole Sandler Show, returns for the first half of the show today to talk SCOTUS, which we somehow didn't get to yesterday. We'll discuss both the two and sneak peek at a third from yesterday, plus three more from this morning (and the one we got a look at yesterday), with some horrific consequences playing out. Then Howie Klein joins in from Down With Tyranny as we count down to tonight's debate showdown. Buckle in...

With the Extreme Court allegedly poised to hand down the final decisions for this term over the next two days, we're joined again by the Nicole Sandler Show's unofficial legal expert Lisa Graves. I had hoped that this morning's announcements would include more than the two they trickled out... and in a sense it did. Apparently accidentally, someone posted a draft of one of the still outstanding decisions-- this one in Idaho vs US. They quickly took it down, but not before Bloomberg News got it, converted it to pdf form and posted it online... Julian Assange is a free man in Australia again, primary upsets abound and Aileen Cannon is still somehow presiding over a clusterfuck of Trump's criminal trial for stealing and hiding classified documents. We'll talk about all of that and more... PLUS we'll tell you about Lisa's new podcast "GRAVE INJUSTICE"!!   **Postscript: Best laid plans and all that. Lisa and I didn't get to SCOTUS or Assange at all, but still covered some important territory. She'll be back tomorrow for the first half hour leading up to Howie Klein. Hopefully tomorrow morning, the Extremes will have given us more of the decisions we're waiting for. One more thing, there was quite a bit of disagreement in the YouTube chat during the show about my comments regarding Jamal Bowman and why he was defeated in yesterday's primary. I've been highly critical of the one-sided coverage of the Israel-Hamas war. But I happened to see this article today about why Bowman lost, and they sum it up perfectly. Read it here: "Jamaal Bowman Didn’t Lose Because of AIPAC: Their astonishing spending mattered less than how the congressman’s Jewish constituents weighed his words and actions."  

Yesterday, the HEALTH CARE un-covered Newsletter arrived in my inbox, sporting the headline "Fifteen Years Ago Today I Became a Whistleblower". It was from Wendell Potter who remains a hero to all of us in the US, whether you know it or not. I was fortunate to first interview Wendell on Air America Radio in August of 2009, just two months after he testified before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, pulling back the curtain from around the industry for which he carried water and covered up unethical practices. A few months later, he would testify before the House and became the most important voice for the masses, just as then president Obama was helping to push through the first health care industry reforms in decades. Fifteen years ago. And though things are better for us mere mortals who will, at some point, need medical care, we're still fighting nefarious forces in the health insurance and so-called health care industries as well as in government. And Wendell continues to fight for us. Wendell Potter has been a frequent guest on this program since that first appearance 15 years ago and I'm proud to consider him a friend. I invited him back to today to talk about the problems we're still faced with and to thank him, again, for standing up for us.

After a rebound infection with COVID over the weekend (I'm not kidding), I'm almost feeling human today. The icing on the cake was a negative test this morning! Yippee!! So I'm back, trying to catch up on all that happened while I was delirious. One thing that did happen was TFG rambling like the demented old fool he is in Philadelphia Saturday night. I even have some audio... And as it is Monday, Jonathan Larsen is here from The Fucking News to fill us in on the fucking news I missed while I was fucking sick...  

Marcy Wheeler is on holiday and I'm still on the mend from a nasty case of Covid, but we managed a fascinating hour of conversation about everything from Hunter Biden's trials to Aileen Cannon's and the Supreme Court's assaults on democracy and lots in between. Read Marcy at emptywheel.net, and hear her at the end of each week here...

I'm back today, hopefully my voice will hold up for the hour.I'm no longer testing positive for Covid, so I've got that going for me. Any my brain isn't as foggy as its been, so there's that too... But much news has transpired in the week and a half I've been gone, and I can't sit idly by.And it is Thursday, so Howie Klein is here from downwithtyranny.com and the Blue America PAC...