A few Hail Marys required

+The list of MPs who have won a place in the ballot for Private Members Bills has been published, and it's dominated by Labour members. Not a single Tory is on it. I wonder if this was a result of them being whipped to stay out of it, the after effects of their shell shock (sic) defeat or simply a lack of ambition. Perhaps it was a mixture of the latter two—it’s unlikely the whips had anything to do with it. The downside of winning a place on the list is that it means some of your Fridays will have to be spent in Parliament when you would much prefer to be sitting in your surgery dealing with asylum cases and roofing repairs, etc., etc. Another downside is that unless you’re near the top of the list, there’s very little chance you’ll get anywhere, although it might provide an opportunity to push a hobbyhorse and possibly ingratiate yourself with a noble cause. And then there’s the danger that in the new Parliament there will be a couple of obnoxious (nearly always Tory) MPs who can think of nothing better to do than talk your bill out. The only upside is that you may generate a couple of stories in your local newspaper (if you still have one). Of course you may get something onto the statute book, and if you do it will almost certainly be something the government should have done anyway.
 
+I came across a book--Profiles in Corruption: Abuse of Power by America’s Progressive Elite by Peter Schweizer (Harper, 2020) -  so since it was only four quid I thought I’d give it a go. Schweizer is a right wing writer with a bent for shaming America’s ’progressive elite’ but he has been published in the New York Times so to that extent is taken seriously. This book is replete with 90 pages of references. What particularly attracted me to it was the very first chapter: Kamala Harris. It doesn’t take us beyond her time as California’s attorney general, but what there is is pretty sleazy, with Harris it seems making decisions which favour those who make campaign contributions. For example, she received money from people associated with the Catholic church. Schweizer writes Harris
 
‘ . . had an abysmal record in prosecuting priest cases.. She somehow served as San Francisco district attorney from 2004 to 2011, and then as California attorney general from 2011 to 2017, and never brought a single documented case forward against an abusive priest. It is an astonishing display of inaction, given the number of cases brought in other parts of the country. To put this lack of action in perspective, at least fifty other cities charged priests in sexual abuse cases during her tenure as San Francisco district attorney. San Francisco is conspicuous by its absence.’ (p.30 Emphasis in original)
 
Schweizer documents the background to this alleged inaction. I assume the Trump team will be trawling through this and other instances of favouritism on Harris’s part. It’s inevitable that this sort of material will take the shine off Harris’s coronation. But how far could Trumpers take it? The Donald is barely in a position to throw the first stone, although it seems his base will forgive him any misdemeanour—which he himself has acknowledged. His crimes are already, by and large, factored in. 

Now I'm looking forward to reading the chapter on Bernie Sanders. No surely not - not THE Bernie Sanders!