;)
The Commentariat -- September 4, 2021
Until Further Notice, the Comments section is again working properly, and there is no need for you to fake-sign in to comment. But do save your work until you're sure your comment "took." -- Marie
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Ashley Parker of the Washington Post: "President Biden surveyed the damage caused by Hurricane Ida in the New Orleans area on Friday, days after powerful winds and destructive rains from the Category 4 storm devastated the Gulf Coast. At a briefing at the St. John the Baptist Parish Emergency Operations Center in LaPlace, La., Biden spoke to the potential impacts of the 'significant investment' the infrastructure bills he is seeking to push through Congress in rebuilding the storm-ravaged areas like the ones he would tour.... The president pointed to the levee system around New Orleans, which was rebuilt in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, as an example of smart infrastructure investment, saying it was 'a lot of money -- but think about how much money it saved.'... On a later tour of a LaPlace neighborhood, Biden saw homes covered in blue tarps amid debris and uprooted trees. He hugged residents in sweltering heat as they showed him the damage. He then surveyed the damage from above in a helicopter." See also Greg Sargent's post, linked below, on how Joe Manchin is stepping on Biden's message.
Daniel Han of Politico: "President Joe Biden on Friday called the new Texas law banning most abortions 'un-American,' telling reporters that the Department of Justice is investigating mechanisms that might block its enforcement. 'The most pernicious thing about the Texas law, it sort of creates a vigilante system where people get rewards to go out [and enforce it],' Biden said of the law, which prohibits abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected, roughly six weeks into pregnancy and before many women know they are pregnant. 'It just seems, I know this sounds ridiculous, almost un-American.'" The Washington Post's story is here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Amy Wang of the Washington Post: "President Biden on Friday signed an executive order that would require the review, declassification and release of classified government documents related to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. In doing so, Biden said he was fulfilling a promise he had made while campaigning for president, in which he had vowed, if elected, to direct the U.S. attorney general to 'personally examine the merits of all cases' where the government had invoked state secrets privilege and 'to err on the side of disclosure in cases where, as here, the events in question occurred two decades or longer ago.'" (Also linked yesterday.)
Alan Rappeport of the New York Times: "With a humanitarian crisis looming [in Afghanistan], the Biden administration is reviewing how to tailor that web of sanctions so that aid can continue to reach the Afghan people. The challenge is how to let donor money continue to flow without further enriching the Taliban, which the United States considers a terrorist organization. Experts say that such a situation, in which a group deemed to be terrorists takes over an entire country, is without precedent and poses a complex test for the United States' sanctions program.... As the Taliban swept to power last month, the United States swiftly ... blocked its access to $9.5 billion in international reserve funds and pressured the International Monetary Fund to suspend distribution of more than $400 million in currency reserves.... The militant group continues to be classified as a specially designated global terrorist group, and they are also under United Nations sanctions.... But a desire to demonstrate some flexibility is already apparent. In the past week, the Treasury Department has signaled to humanitarian organizations that it is taking steps to permit aid work that benefits the Afghan people to continue."
Jonathan Dienst, et al., of NBC News: "The U.S. plans to send at least two Afghan evacuees back out of the country to Kosovo because of security concerns raised after they arrived at a U.S. airport, said two sources familiar with the U.S. evacuation. The Afghans will undergo a further review in Kosovo.... Any other evacuees who trigger similar concerns will also be sent to Kosovo, said the sources. Of more than 30,000 evacuees from Afghanistan to the U.S., about 10,000 needed additional screening as of Friday, said the sources, and of those about 100 were flagged for possible ties to the Taliban or terror groups. Two of those 100 raised enough concern for additional review."
Michael Shear, et al., of the New York Times: "On the last day of August, when President Biden called the airlift of refugees from Kabul an 'extraordinary success,' senior diplomats and military officers in Doha, Qatar, emailed out a daily situation report ... [that said] conditions in Doha ... were getting worse.... Whatever plans the Biden administration had for an orderly evacuation unraveled when Kabul fell in a matter of days, setting off a frenzied, last-minute global mobilization." If you have a NYT subscription, read on. Unsettling, tho not surprising. In fairness, the majority of immigrants to this country -- from those who came in slave ships to those who came in steerage & counted themselves lucky to escape conditions in the places from which they fled -- arrived in less-than-ideal circumstances.
Catie Edmondson of the New York Times: "The Commerce Department plans to shut down a little-known internal security unit that came under scrutiny by Congress for conducting rogue surveillance and investigations into people of Chinese and Middle Eastern descent, department officials said on Friday. The announcement came after department investigators released the findings of a nearly five-month internal review that concluded that the Investigations and Threat Management Service improperly opened investigations 'even in the absence of a discernible threat' and operated outside the bounds of its legal authority.... Unlike [a parallel] Senate investigation, the Commerce Department stopped short of attributing the problems to racism or xenophobia inside the unit."
Greg Sargent of the Washington Post: "... Sen. Joe Manchin III is going to great lengths to dramatically undermine [President] Biden's ... $3.5 trillion 'human infrastructure' package. In a Wall Street Journal piece, Manchin urges a 'pause' on the bill and calls for 'significantly reducing' its size 'to only what America can afford and needs to spend.' Most obviously, this could upend the 'two track' strategy, under which progressives support the $1 trillion bipartisan 'hard' infrastructure bill on the understanding that centrists such as Manchin will back the reconciliation measure. That could implode Biden's whole agenda. But this is deeply dangerous in another, less obvious way, one that turns on the reconciliation bill's provisions to combat climate change.... It's galling that the word 'climate' appears nowhere in Manchin's piece, even as he piously suggests he has a divinely inspired reading of what America truly 'needs to spend.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Marshall Cohen of CNN: "The so-called 'QAnon Shaman' who stormed the US Capitol in a horned bearskin outfit pleaded guilty Friday to a felony for obstructing the Electoral College proceedings on January 6. The defendant, Jacob Chansley of Arizona, is a well-known figure in the QAnon movement. He went viral after the January 6 attack because of the bizarre outfit he wore while rummaging through the Capitol. He made his way to the Senate dais that was hastily vacated earlier by Vice President Mike Pence -- someone Chansley falsely claimed was a 'child-trafficking traitor.' He pleaded guilty Friday during a virtual hearing in DC District Court. The guilty plea was made as part of a deal with prosecutors, and it was accepted by District Judge Royce Lamberth." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
No. 1 Grifter Uses Donor Money to Pay -- Himself. Shayna Jacobs, et al., of the Washington Post: "... as Trump Tower has dealt with imploding tenants [including a company that made Ivanka Trump shoes], political backlash and a broader, pandemic-related slump in Manhattan office leasing since last year -- it has been able to count on one reliable, high-paying tenant:... Donald Trump's own political operation.... Starting in March, one of his committees, Make America Great Again PAC, paid $37,541.67 per month to rent office space on the 15th floor of Trump Tower -- a space previously rented by his campaign.... This may not be the most efficient use of donors' money: The person familiar with Trump&'s PAC said that its staffers do not regularly use the office space. Also, for several months, Trump's PAC paid the Trump Organization $3,000 per month to rent a retail kiosk in the tower's lobby -- even though the lobby was closed." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~
~~~ Marie: This is quintessentially Trump: scamming people who think their $25 will transport him to the White House in August (oh wait, August is over) but instead will be a drop in the bucket to pay Trump to rent empty space to himself because the space is unrentable to real people & businesses.
Steve Vladeck in a Washington Post op-ed: Justice Elena Kagan's dissent in the Texas abortion case was only two short paragraphs in which she pointed out "the court's alarming record of inconsistency in its recent spate of late-night emergency orders, [and] she spoke directly to its eroding legitimacy. Rather than focus on the majority's willingness to allow Texas to flout the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, Kagan chose to highlight what the ruling said about the court's 'shadow-docket' -- the calendar it uses to issue procedural case-management orders.... As Kagan put it, the majority decision 'is emblematic of too much of this Court's shadow-docket decisionmaking -- which every day becomes more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend.'... Her critique [noted that the majority] ... used an unsigned and barely explained order to short-circuit the constitutional rights of millions of Texas women; and its nonintervention over abortion differed blatantly from its aggressive interventions in the past year in religious liberty cases.... Two things have changed in recent years. First, the court is using these orders with far greater frequency to allow much-debated policies to go into effect.... Second..., the court is treating these orders as creating precedents that lower courts must follow." Justice Kagan's dissent is here, via the Supreme Court. ~~~
~~~ Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "In recent years, and especially during the Trump administration, the court has relied on the shadow docket to make consequential decisions on a wide range of issues. Often, the court issues its decisions from the shadow docket without signed opinions or detailed explanations of the kind you would find in an argued case.... The vote on the Texas abortion law came on Wednesday, in the dead of night.... The court has essentially nullified the constitutional rights of millions of American women without so much as an argument.... This isn't judicial review as much as it is a raw exercise of judicial power.... The extent to which political outcomes in America rest on the opaque machinations of a cloistered, nine-member clique is the clearest possible sign that we've given too much power to this institution. We can have self-government or we can have rule by judge, but we cannot have both."
... the courts let the Sacklers off the hook, the excuse being they didn't want to clog the courts with lawsuits. But suing poor women in Texas, or people who help poor women in Texas, or people who help the people who help the poor women in Texas? File at will! -- Nisky Guy, in yesterday's Comments
Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. -- Scott Fitzgerald
And the courts won't let us forget it. -- Marie
Marie: So here are the fundamental flaws in U.S. "democracy" today. (1) We nearly re-elected a president* who for four years mocked the rule of law and used his position and his appointees to facilitate multiple violations of law and "norms." The president is not elected by popular vote, and arguably the worst presidents* in recent years (Bush & Trump) came into office after they lost the popular vote. (2) A Senate that in no way represents the majority of Americans. a House of Representatives that, because of gerrymandering, does not represent a majority of American voters. (3) A court system that overreaches its implied powers and is made up of justices, two of whom (Gorsuch & Barrett) were confirmed under abnormal conditions and two of whom (Thomas & Kavanaugh) who most likely told material lies, under oath, during their confirmation hearings. (4) State legislatures which are working to disenfranchise millions of Americans. (5) A Constitution which is almost impossible to amend in order to improve Flaws 1-4. (Likely you can think of more, but these are the basics.) ~~~
~~~ ** AND There's This. Elizabeth Dwoskin of the Washington Post: "A new study of user behavior on Facebook around the 2020 election is likely to bolster critics' long-standing arguments that the company's algorithms fuel the spread of misinformation over more trustworthy sources. The forthcoming peer-reviewed study by researchers at New York University and the Université Grenoble Alpes in France has found that from August 2020 to January 2021, news publishers known for putting out misinformation got six times the amount of likes, shares, and interactions on the platform as did trustworthy news sources, such as CNN or the World Health Organization.... The NYU study is one of the few comprehensive attempts to measure and isolate the misinformation effect across a wide group of publishers on Facebook, experts said, and its conclusions support the criticism that Facebook's platform rewards publishers that put out misleading accounts." ~~~
~~~ Marie: Clearly, 20th- and 21st-century parents & teachers have not been smart enough or able enough to convey to their impressionable offspring that tabloids, movie magazines, gossip columns, what your friends heard -- and now social media -- are not fonts of facts. The result is a country populated by generations of numbskulls.
The Pandemic, Ctd.
The New York Times' live updates of Covid-19 developments Friday are here. The Washington Post's live Covid-19 updates for Friday are here. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Adela Suliman of the Washington Post: "A coronavirus variant known as 'mu' or 'B.1.621' was designated by the World Health Organization as a 'variant of interest' earlier this week and will be monitored by the global health body as cases continue to emerge across parts of the world. It is the fifth variant of interest currently being monitored by the WHO." The article outlines what is known, so far, about the mu variant. ~~~
~~~ Tom Tapp of Deadline: "Dr. Anthony Fauci on Thursday said U.S. public health officials are 'keeping a very close eye' on a new variant of Covid-19 that was first detected in Colombia. Known as B.1.621 or the 'Mu variant' according to the World Health Organization nomenclature, it has 'a constellation of mutations that indicate potential properties of immune escape,' according to a WHO report released on Monday. 'Preliminary data presented to the Virus Evolution Working Group show a reduction in neutralization capacity of convalescent ... similar to that seen for the Beta variant, but this needs to be confirmed by further studies.' Today, he Los Angeles County Department of Public Health announced the Mu variant, for the first time, has been identified in the region. The numbers are still small; Only 167 Mu variants have been identified in L.A. County thus far."
Chris Hayes of MSNBC pointed out Friday night that about twice as many people died from Covid-19 yesterday as died from Covid-19 on that date a year ago, before vaccines were available.
Marie: I was listening to Anthony Fauci on the teevee Friday night. He speaks unscripted about complex topics in full, understandable & grammatical sentences and paragraphs. If you're accustomed to listening to teevee hosts & pundits, that should impress you.
Arizona. Andrea Salcedo of the Washington Post: "When an Arizona school employee called a parent on Thursday to share that his son had come in close contact with someone who tested positive for the coronavirus, the dad was told his son must stay at home for at least a week. Instead, later that morning, the man walked into Mesquite Elementary School with his son and two other men carrying zip ties before confronting the principal over the school's quarantine policy, Vail Unified School District Superintendent John Carruth told The Washington Post. In a meeting with the principal, Carruth said, the men threatened to call local authorities and conduct a 'citizen's arrest' if the student was not allowed to rejoin school activities immediately.... The principal ... explained that the school was following guidance issued by the local health department [and] ordered the trio to leave, Carruth said.... A spokesperson with the Tucson Police Department confirmed that officers responded to the incident."
Beyond the Beltway
Colorado Update. According to Bente Birkeland of NPR, Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters is still in hiding after a month on the lam, aided & abetted as she is by My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell. Tina is an elected official & the county supervisors, who like Tina are Republicans, are urging her to return to work. MEANWHILE, "Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold [D] filed a lawsuit to prevent Peters from having any role in the county's upcoming fall election.... [AND] On Thursday [Peters'] deputy, Belinda Knisley, was charged with second-degree burglary and a cybercrime over entering the building while she was suspended, pending an investigation into unprofessional and inappropriate conduct in the workplace." I checked out photos of Tina online, and it turns out she is an attractive, blond-haired woman d'un certain âge. Perhaps Mike has My Pillow aspirations here. In Right-wing Bizarros World, life is but a dream.
Texas. Sean Hollister of the Verge: "... the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life is encouraging citizens to report those people [who help women get abortions] at a dedicated 'whistleblower' website, promising to 'ensure that these lawbreakers are held accountable for their actions.'However..., hosting provider GoDaddy has given the group 24 hours to find a different place to park its website. 'We have informed prolifewhistleblower.com they have 24 hours to move to another provider for violating our terms of service,' a spokesperson told The New York Times and The Verge. GoDaddy ... tells The Verge that it violated 'multiple provisions' of the site's Terms of Service including Section 5.2, which reads: 'You will not collect or harvest (or permit anyone else to collect or harvest) any User Content (as defined below) or any non-public or personally identifiable information about another User or any other person or entity without their express prior written consent.'" ~~~
~~~ Leia Idliby of Mediaite: "Logan Green, the CEO and co-founder of Lyft, announced that the ride-hailing company will cover all legal fees if any of its drivers are sued under Texas' new abortion law." ~~~
~~~ AP: "A state judge has shielded, for now, Texas abortion clinics from lawsuits by an anti-abortion group under a new state abortion law in a narrow ruling handed down Friday. The temporary restraining order Friday by state District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble in Austin in response to the Planned Parenthood request does not interfere with the provision. However, it shields clinics from whistleblower lawsuits by the nonprofit group Texas Right to Life, its legislative director and 100 unidentified individuals. A hearing on a preliminary injunction request was set for Sept. 13."
News Ledes
New York Times: "Patricia Maginnis, one of the nation's earliest and fiercest proponents of a woman's right to safe, legal abortions, who crusaded for that right on her own before the formation of an organized reproductive-rights movement, died on Aug. 30 in Oakland, Calif. She was 93."
New York Times: "Willard Scott, the antic longtime weather forecaster on the "Today' show, whose work, by his own cheerful acknowledgment, made it clear that you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows, died on Saturday at his farm in Delaplane, Va. He was 87.″
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Reader Comments (14)
Call me naive but I don't understand how the Texas anti-abortion law skirts the original intent of Roe vs. Wade, which supposedly guarantees a woman's (a family's) right to choose to bring a fetus to term--or not.
Granted, various courts have allowed states to chip away at that right over the years for (what would seem to me to be good reasons and bad), but it has survived up to now because from what I understand states cannot enforce an absolute prohibition against something the SCOTUS has explicitly allowed.
From what I understand, the Texas law gets around that proscription by handing over enforcement responsibility to private citizens, which apparently allows the Texas government to adhere to the preferred role of Pontius Pilate.
If I have that arrangement right, I just don't get it.
This analogy occurs:
I would like someone I don't like killed, but I don't want to do it myself.
So I hire someone who dislikes the same person and also wants him dead, and I sweeten the offer with a promise of a possible ten thousand dollars sometime down the road.
How am I not also legally responsible for whatever ensues?
As I said, I just don't get it.
Too bad those five Supremes didn't bother to explain it to me. I obviously need the help.
So this new “law” in Texas is effectively an open invitation to the same sort of totalitarian mindset used by the Nazis and later, the Stasi and other similar police state operations. Neighbors spying on neighbors and reporting on activities deemed illegal by the state. And like those other totalitarian states, snitches are rewarded for turning in the “evildoers”. Except in this case, the “evil” is making decisions for yourself, about your own life, without the permission of the Bible bangers.
And what about this new breed of bounty hunters? They rat out a woman for trying to take control of her own life, they sue everyone involved, doctors, nurses, cab drivers, husbands, boyfriends, anyone connected to a legal medical procedure that they disapprove of. So my question is twofold. First, who gets the money? But more importantly, who in the fucking hell are they to spy on private citizens and intrude in their lives? How do these creepy assholes have the right to sue someone who has nothing to do with them and has done them no harm? Where’s their standing?
In effect, the Supreme Court* has not just upended decades of settled law, it has, overnight, warped the entire judicial system by now allowing anyone, even those with no standing, to sue anyone else for suspected actions…actions that aren’t even illegal anywhere else.
This is just the beginning. Remember how confederates were always screaming about liberals taking away their rights and putting them in re-education camps? It was a complete fantasy. But not anymore. Now it’s those same right-wingers who have created a fascist police state where citizens who don’t obey THEIR rules, get hauled into court and punished.
And there’s no recourse. None. Anyone who thinks they can appeal this unconstitutional bullshit needs to remember that appeals courts have been stocked with Nazi traitors to America, and the final court of appeal, the Supreme Court*, is never going to rule in favor of those they hate.
Much worse to come.
The thinking, if you can call it that, about the rash of highly restrictive anti-choice laws being insisted upon by a small minority, which allow no exceptions for rape or incest, goes like this: the circumstances of the pregnancy are not the concern of the American Taliban. You got pregnant? Tough cookies. We don’t care if it was by Uncle Festus or daddy or some serial rapist. No abortion!
Yesterday, I caught a bit of a discussion on a local radio station with one of these anti-choice Savonarolas. He said what most of them believe. If you got pregnant because you were raped, that was God’s plan and you have no right to challenge god’s will. Period.
Besides, he said, some sneaky women (cuz, you know you can’t trust women) might claim to have been raped in order to finagle an abortion, but these floozies aren’t fooling us!
They used to go along with exceptions because they believed that some politicians, most of the public, but most importantly, the Supreme Court, would balk at such cruelty. Not anymore. With the current “justices”, cruelty is the order of the day. They are now emboldened to enact the type of religious laws they believe should control all Americans.
How many states, this morning, are rushing to enact controls similar to Texas’s Sharia Law, despite the fact that 80% of Americans believe abortion is a right and should remain both legal and the sole business of a woman and her medical providers?
This is another reason Republicans are doing everything they can to ensure that democracy will never deprive them of power. They are a minority, getting more minor by the year, so fair elections are right out.
About that “God’s plan” business…funny they never attribute Trump’s electoral ass kicking to god. Guess he made a mistake with that one. Or maybe Trump’s payoff didn’t arrive on time.
Ken,
The Supreme cowards will never explain any of their shadow docket rulings, most of which are unsigned and handed down in the dead of night, decided upon with no argumentation or presentation of evidence, because any explanation would open them up to legal challenges (even if there’s no chance of overturning a decision, they don’t want to look like the sleazy charlatans they are).
When last I looked, “because we say so” doesn’t make the grade when considering solid legal reasoning, but that’s where we are right now. Law, precedent, defensible legal reasoning, none of that matters anymore. It really is down to “because we say so”.
I applaud Marie's 5 fundamental flaws in U.S. democracy–-let's throw in the Fucking Filly-buster for good measure.
Yesterday I was reading something from Ben Ho, a professor of economics at Vassar, in whose book "Why Trust Matters" says one could tell the story of human civilization as a story of how we learned to trust one another.
"We learned first to share the spoils of a group hunt instead of hunting and eating (or not eating) alone." He cites a British study that noticed that natural community size for primates seemed directly related to brain size–––the greater the relative size of the neocortex, the larger the tribe. Without going into details here, the basic idea–-that there are probably capacity constraints on the number of personal connections we can make with our fellow-humans––seems hard to dispute.
We have always had our "in-groups" and our "out-groups" and within these groups hostility toward the opposite group proved inevitable.–-more loyalty to your group and more distrust toward the other. And "religion proved to be an especially powerful social glue, providing common purpose, mutual protection, and a modicum of alms distribution, often enforced by the idea of retributive deities and their earthly emissaries."
Our own Joe Stiglitz, , the tireless critic of inequality, even in the aftermath of the Great Recession, said:
"It is trust, more than money, that makes the world go round."
I bring all this up because I think we are losing the battle here on this trust issue––-and it is definitely going to be a battle to win this war.
Can we say "truth will out" with confidence?
@Ken Winkes: Here's why your analogy doesn't work:
Your promise Someone $10K sometime if he will kill Some Jerk. Murder is a crime.
You hope to collect $10K sometime by suing an Uber driver who drops a woman off at a Planned Parenthood clinic. Suing the Uber driver is not a crime.
That is, in the first instance, you're soliciting a crime, and that in itself is a crime (as of course, is the murder itself). In the second instance, you're bringing a perfectly legal suit against an individual who is doing something illegal under Texas law. You are not guilty of a crime, and you are not soliciting a crime. Rather, you are discouraging a crime, the crime being picking up a 7-weeks-pregnant fare & dropping her off at an abortion clinic.
Your analogy ain't analogous.
Re study on Facebook user behavior:
" ... news publishers known for putting out misinformation got six times the amount of likes, shares, and interactions on the platform as did trustworthy news sources, such as CNN or the World Health Organization..."
I didn't read the study, and only read Marie's clip.
But ... it seems to me that, as Marie notes in comments, this is really a generational thing.
People over a certain age (don't know what, but I'm thinking of those who get most of their information from print even if the print is pixellated) tend not to "like" or "share" what they read as much as younger people do. I think. Maybe I'm just extrapolating from people I know in my boomer age cohort, and those I know who are younger. But it seems true.
So let's say there are ten articles and 100 readers. Five articles are by "publishers known for misinforming"; five are from "reputable imprints". Fifty readers are NYT subscribers; fifty subscribe to nothing but get information from what is pushed to their cellphones.
For simplicity, let's say forty NYT readers read the five "good" articles. These guys are not really in the "like" business, so let's say there are net twenty likes (10% = (40X5)/20).
Again, simplicity, none of the boomers read any of the push articles. None of the younger readers read the "good" articles.
The fifty younger readers see all ten articles, but don't read any of the stodgy five. Forty of them read the "misinformation" five articles. These folk ARE in the "like" business, so lets say half of those forty readers click on "like". So net, 20X5= 100 "likes" , which is 200% of the cohort of those who read the "misinform" articles.
I made up these numbers going along, as "reasonable guesses". If they are in the ballpark, this dynamic goes a long way toward explaining the outputs of the Facebook algorithms. Kidz rool.
If not, I'm no worse off for guessing. You may have lost a few minutes. though.
Marie,
I'm no lawyer, but....
I get that, but I thought Roe which allows abortions in most reasonably defined circumstances, confirmed over and over again by the courts, including SCOTUS, not the new, cramped and deliberately unrealistic Texas 6 week abortion window, was still the law of the land.
That's why I said, "From what I understand, the Texas law gets around that proscription (against state enforcement of anti-abortion laws--one of its two elements) by handing over enforcement responsibility to private citizens, which apparently allows the Texas government to adhere to the preferred role of Pontius Pilate."
Of course, it's still Texas' law, and I would think the state is responsible for the law, if not for its enforcement.
The five cowardly Supremes ducked that issue, too.
Ken - part of the strategy of the pro-lifers is that, even if pro-lefers' anti-abortion laws get shot down, providers (esp. Planned Parenhood) have to risk bankruptcy and spend time dealing with all of the snares and traps. And pregnant women seeking abortion don't have the luxury of time.
They want to drag you into bankruptcy and court.
Coincidentally, that is also a big part of the Trump Company business strategy. Use the courts to bankrupt your opposition, even when you don't hold the winning case..
So random citizens can now compel private medical records from people they think might have gotten an abortion? Or in the case of the uber driver suit from a third party. If they cannot get the medical records then the defendants could just plead the fifth and maybe win the suit.
And according to my understanding anyone who just considered getting an abortion can now be sued also. That means that a new mother could be sued under the law for thinking about visiting a clinic even if she decided against it.
Nomenclature
I will never, ever, ever refer to those who seek to take away the right of women to decide their own fate as pro-lifers.
They are nothing of the kind.
Most are supporters of war, guns for everyone, even criminals and terrorists, ignoring climate change, the death penalty, and putting immigrant babies in cages to die.
If that’s “pro-life”, I’m Emperor Ming of the planet Mongo.
No. They are only pro-their own belief system. They are anti-choice. And, as the inimitable Barney Frank once said, they only care about you when you’re a zygote. As soon as you’re born, if your family isn’t white, connected, and well off, they care less about you than a 2 fer 1 special at Chick-fil-A. You’re on your own.
So to hell with this “pro-life” tag. It’s like saying Perdue is “pro-chicken”.
Now, if they were also for helping poor and lower middle class moms who brought the baby to term, helping them with feeding, clothing, and properly educating them (ie, not the usual bible banging, right-wing, racist lie fests that pass for education) after they were born, I might be more considerate of their cause. But that will never happen.
It’s like saying we want your kid to be a math genius, but after she gets to 1+1=2, she’s on her own up to and beyond analytic geometry and applied mathematics. And if she doesn’t achieve Stephen Hawking level, well, fuck her. And you.
Confederates are insidious masters of EZ bumper sticker memes. But their basic philosophy has more to do with rah-rah hooray for us and fuck you than it ever does with thoughtful consideration of serious problems.
Here we have the possibility that if I think about anybody's more than 6 week pregnancy, I might run the risk of being sued by someone who hasn't talked to me, hasn't been harmed by me and who doesn't really know what I do think. I'm not thinking of how this is absolutely the end of our democracy. I'm thinking of how we women can deliver payback to these men. Hide their levitra? Have one, two, or - heavens !!! - 3 days of refusing men any sex at all? Excuse me, any republican men. It's got to be a really good. After all, who makes women pregnant? Shall we look condescendingly at their "jewels" and say, why yes, it looks just like a penis, only... smaller? If all 175 million of us put our heads together, I'm sure we'll think of something.
@Ken Winkes: I see your point now. Strip away the neighborly lawsuit feature, leaving enforcement to the usual suspects, and you still have a law that violates the Constitution, as defined in Roe & Casey. Yeah, that's true, and that, of course, is why Sotomayor was "stunned" by the confederate justices' decision.
Contributed by my doctor daughter in law:
Fine statement of well-earned outrage, I thought.
(don't know if all those letters in the link are necessary so included them all...)
https://jpsantiagomd.substack.com/p/dispatches-from-the-front-line?fbclid=IwAR36vHVH2sYwNAVGT3DgZWiCcRyXZAQUitXhYuhe-aEHVvsxVeO83CbxIDI