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With five Supreme Court justices ready to jettison stare decisis, it is open season on long settled constitutional rights. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is now jawing about relitigating Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982), which held that Texas´s denial of a free public education to undocumented immigrants contravened equal protection (applying intermediate scrutiny). https://www.statesman.com/story/news/2022/05/04/gov-greg-abbott-supreme-court-case-requiring-education-undocumented-children/9652463002/
No decision protecting individual rights is safe.
If stare decisis actually worked the way you and the other progs want it to today we’d still have slavery.
Amending the Constitution is NOT stare decisis.
Wow I never thought of the left as cheerleaders for Dred Scott et al.
Find me a leftist who endorses Dred Scott.
They aren’t. They just want some laws/rights invented by the courts if they can get an activist (aka liberal) majority of five. Then declare it forever.
These are things that wouldn’t pass half the state legislatures and have zero chance as an amendment.
Think hypocrisy not consistency
True, but we’d still have segregated schools, and we wouldn’t have gay marriage. We’d still have forcible sterilization. Why weren’t those decisions the end of stare decisis?
Those decisions are prominent parts of the America to which conservatives wish (vainly, I believe) to return.
You can’t win, clingers. Your ideas stink and are unpopular, except among the lesser elements of American society.
I certainly hope that the left keeps trying to convince swing voters of this.
“Your ideas stink and are unpopular, except among the lesser elements of American society.”
Turns out that mutilating children and teaching crazy racial theories in schools against the will of parents isn’t as popular as the left thought it would be.
Neither is killing babies. I suspect that Florida’s new 15 week threshold is probably close to where the middle of America wants it to be. Which surprise, was done through the political process, not by the courts!
Lord I thought this blog was more evolved. But I guess you can’t fix crazy. TwelveInchPianist if you are advocating that people here are for mutilating children and for teaching things that didn’t happen in the past…there’s a Newsmax group that would shower you with attention
How did circumcision enter this discussion?
Male Circumcision?
Female Circumcision?
Libs: Hold my beer!
I gather you are willing to overlook mutilation when it is rooted in stale, fictional belief among clingers.
Still wondering why conservatives can’t compete at the modern marketplace of ideas?
Bad analogies
Ending segregated schools was rescinding Plessy v Ferguson precedent. So that precedent wasn’t forever. Separate but equal was ruled unconstitutional based on 14A equal treatment under the law.
Gay marriage was a new issue for the court and they ruled it was protected by 14A , equal treatment under the law since the state does regulate marriage which I disagree with but yet is a fact.
So both your examples are based on protecting a constitutional right 14A. There is no inalienable right to abortion stated in the constitution. Therefore by 10A it should revert to the people (do what you wish) or the states.
It was invented much like separate but equal and the 2/3 of a man Dred Scott precedents that were later over ruled. As this one should be.
“Therefore by 10A it should revert to the people (do what you wish) or the states”
Only if you ignore the Ninth Amendment. Which cultural conservatives love to do.
And you just described what’s needed to enshrine abortion as a right. Good job
And what about Plessy v. Ferguson or even Korematsu
Agreed, sort of. Stare decisis for pinnacle courts is always going to be an inexact science. The UK House of Lords spent a few decades with a rule that said it would never overrule its own precedents, but had to abolish that rule in the 1960s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Practice_Statement
However, Parliament generally found it easier to pass legislation to negate a cumbersome precedent than Congress.
Indeed. So the case for a form of stare decisis that is not too rigid is even stronger for US constitutional jurisprudence.
Abortion, of course, is on my mind. I am not convinced by conservative assurances that all repealing Roe will do is “send this issue back to the states.” These are people who believe that abortion is literally murder. Even if Republicans are unable to get any new legislation through Congress, cops and prosecutors already have a tool through RICO to federally criminalize abortion. If abortion is murder, and RICO gives federal law enforcement the authority to penalize making money off of murder, then should we be expecting abortion providers to become targets for federal racketeering charges until a court is able to verify whether abortion ought to be considered, legally, as murder?
Not sure why this posted as a reply. I blame the garbage mobile interface.
Absent some federal indication abortion is murder, RICO is pretty off the table.
Well all it does is return it back to the states. You do realize that in 1972 abortion was legal in 20 states don’t you?
That this ruling would not change any existing state laws.
It was legal in more than 20 states if you actually had medical necessity. It’s still legal in all states if not having an abortion is a serious threat to the mother’s life.
That last bit is not exactly true. Absent Roe, a number of states have abortion laws that don’t consider the health of the mother, or like Oklahoma, require that the mother be in immediate danger of dying. So if there is an ectopic pregnancy, the doctor could not perform surgery until the mother was in the process of dying even though the likelihood of death would be known from day one. Also, in those states where there are third party enforcement laws, a doctor would have to weigh the likelihood of being sued for saving the life of the mother knowing that winning the suit would still mean a significant cost in cash and missed income.
No. You are incorrect. Your focus on ectopic pregnancy is a misleading issue.
“In an ectopic pregnancy, a fertilized egg implants somewhere outside of the uterus, most commonly in the fallopian tube. In the absence of emergency treatment, ectopic pregnancy will cause severe and life-threatening health consequences for the mother, because there isn’t room for the child to develop.
No pro-life person I’m aware of — and, more to the point, no pro-life law that I’m aware of — would prohibit treatment for ectopic pregnancies. Indeed, pro-lifers don’t consider such treatment to be abortion at all. A direct abortion intentionally kills an unborn human being; treatment for an ectopic pregnancy, by contrast, intends to alleviate the health emergency for the mother by removing the improperly implanted zygote. The intended end of such treatment isn’t to kill the child but rather to save the mother’s life — this moral distinction is essential. This view is reflected by the fact that, before Roe, every pro-life state law had, at least, an exception for cases when a mother’s life was at risk.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/why-abortion-supporters-are-so-focused-on-ectopic-pregnancy/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=featured-content-trending&utm_term=second
It’s cute how you call it an “improperly implanted zygote” when the term suits your needs, but the same bundle of cells “properly” implanted is “an unborn human.”
News flash: if it’s a zygote, then where it’s implanted does not change that definition unless you’re being deliberately dishonest because of your own bias.
You didn’t actually respond to his point.
Well, yeah. An “improperly implanted zygote” will never develop past the stage of being a zygote. Zygote is as far as it will ever get.
But a properly implanted zygote will, with time, develop into a human being, and thus really is “an unborn human.”
A properly implanted zygote will, slightly less than 50% of the time, develop into a human being. The rest of the time it will not.
But don’t let the fact that abortion is a nuanced issue get in the way of your unjustified certainty.
There are other conditions other than ectopic pregancy that are likely to kill the mother.
Does it really matter what existed before Roe, unless your point is to lay blame on the new, more restrictive laws at the feet of the people that sued and won recognition of the right to an abortion 50 years ago? Many of these new laws force women to carry their rapist’s children to term.
Which form of anti-abortion law do you think Republicans will enact at the federal level to override Blue state access?
So Brett, I go to your house, change the locks and refuse to let you in. It’s my house now. Basically I’ve impregnated your house with myself. You’re not a victim of crime, you’re a casualty of love. My love for your house. So what are you gonna do now? The law says you can’t abort me even though I violated the sanctity of your house. You’ll just have to deal with it.
So basically Brett, what I’m telling you is, you’ve always thought of your house as your own, but somehow, against all your reason, I got the government to pass a law saying that anyone’s house is beyond ownership. Anyone can take it. Including me. Going to Colorado or California won’t help you either
I suppose I’d resort to a police assisted live birth. Since you’re already viable and all.
So Brett, I go to your house, change the locks and refuse to let you in. It’s my house now. Basically I’ve impregnated your house with myself. You’re not a victim of crime, you’re a casualty of love. My love for your house. So what are you gonna do now? The law says you can’t abort me even though I violated the sanctity of your house. You’ll just have to deal with it.
That’s certainly one way to advertise your stupidity.
They just want a standard they can hold others to when it’s to their advantage. It won’t apply for [reasons] whenever they can get an advantage by ignoring it.
Just like every other norm of behavior or discourse.
not guilty, can we wait for the Dobbs decision to be issued before declaring the death of our rights (and the Republic)?
No decision protecting individual rights is safe. = Are you guilty of playing it up just a little bit? 🙂
We are on the cusp of an individual fundamental right being curtailed after having been initially recognized. That is a travesty in the making.
Five members of SCOTUS are on Eric Rudolph´s side of the culture war.
Economic rights are not fundamental, and are ordinarily subject to rational basis analysis. But I suspect you knew that.
Economic rights “are not fundamental” only because they got curtailed after having been fundamental. But I suspect you knew that.
…Are you stanning for Lochner?
Are you stanning for Roe?
Yes, but not in the comment you’re replying to.
Want to answer the question about these economic rights whose curtailment you lament?
First of all, I had to look up “stanning”. So, now I’m a fanboy of Lochner just because I believe in economic liberties?
What would be the problem if I were? There isn’t anything wrong with Lochner except that it’s not good law anymore. So you think those bakers shouldn’t have worked such long hours… Isn’t that for THEM to decide?
You didn’t answer Sarcastro’s question Brett. As usual your equivocative language, although very practiced, does not help you
Abortion as a right is not one bit more fundamental than economic rights.
But bodily autonomy is. And, in my opinion, so is the right to make most medical decisions without state oversight.
If you want to be able to infringe these rights, first prove that a fetus is a person. Then change the existing law (which confers personhood and the rights thereof after live birth).
I’m not sure what the standard would be for a challenge to sucj a law (strict scrutiny seems reasonable). Can one of the lawyers here chime in?
“But bodily autonomy is. And, in my opinion, so is the right to make most medical decisions without state oversight.”
And that and five bucks will get you a cup of coffee, so long as the state doesn’t decide it’s bad for your health and ban it.
Bodily autonomy and that right to make medical decisions appears to exist only for abortion.
“Bodily autonomy and that right to make medical decisions appears to exist only for abortion.” Within reasonable constraints, you are allowed to make your own medical decisions. And, you are largely allowed to exercise bodily autonomy in other respects.
What it appears you are doing is trying to smuggle in a stupid argument (shocking, I know, shocking). Because, for example, you can’t hire Ted Cruz (or some other incompetent Canadian) to perform brain surgery on you and you can’t legally ingest heroin, you don’t really have bodily autonomy and, therefore, the bodily autonomy argument for abortion rights must fail. I know — stupid argument. But, if it were not for stupid arguments you’d have few arguments at all and then where would we be?
Perhaps a better example would be the many state laws prohibiting assisted suicide or laws that allow assisted suicide only in cases where death from a disease or condition is expected within a fairly short time.
Although I (and likely most people here given the venue) believe that such laws are an inappropriate infringement on personal freedom, I have a hard time finding that such laws violate the US Constitution. I wish that were not true but it is. Just as I think first trimester abortions should be allowed but can’t find that the right to access to such abortions is found anywhere (even in the shadows) of the US Constitution.
What I’ve been perplexed by for decades is that the courts haven’t built on the highly questionable decision in Roe to declare suicide, and therefore assisted suicide, to be a constitutional right. I can’t imagine many more medical decisions that are more “private” than a decision to end one’s life and to engage a provider to assist in that to make the process safer (i.e., not painful and also not at risk of leaving the person alive but in worse shape, perhaps in more pain or worse shape).
Brett, I have directed your attention before to Rochin v. California regarding bodily integrity, with no reply from you. Rochin predated Roe by two decades, and did not involve reproduction or the avoidance thereof.
Brett is a troll. A very intelligent troll…but still a troll. His arguments cannot extend beyond provocatation. Substance? He’s gone. I mean who else lives on a blog comment page from 4am to who-knows-how-long?
Perhaps I should obtain an app that would notify me whenever you direct my attention to something. But I haven’t yet.
“Facts of the case
Rochin swallowed drug capsules to dispose of evidence. The police pummeled him and jumped on his stomach in a vain effort to make him throw up. They took him to a hospital where a doctor was instructed by the police officers to administer an emetic by forceably passing a tube into Rochin’s stomach. He vomited the capules and was convicted on the basis of the evidence produced from his vomit.”
They literally beat the guy. They unlawfully broke into his room without a warrant, then unlawfully assaulted and battered him. Then they engaged in what the Court described as “false imprisonment”. It wasn’t about his right to do something to his body, it was about the police not having a right to obtain evidence unlawfully; Unlawful process can, trivially, never be due process, and the process here was considered by the Court to be analogous to obtaining a confession by torture.
Rochin was a substantive due process case, decided prior to the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable seizures was held to apply to the states. Do you claim that it was wrongfully decided?
Let me know when the Draft gets ruled unconstitutional due to bodily autonomy. I’m pretty sure war is bad for your health. A right to bodily autonomy is a myth.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to raise armies, which includes the draft. As such, you are right, but are wrong, as the Constitution AKA a supermajority of The People and The Several States specifically grants that power abridging that right to government.
Would that more abridgements be traceable to obvious instructions in the Constitution, with everything else, you know, being reserved to The States, or The People.
The Constitution gives Congress the power to raise armies, which includes the draft. As such, you are right, but are wrong, as the Constitution AKA a supermajority of The People and The Several States specifically grants that power abridging that right to government.
To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
Seems to me the power to raise armies is the power to spend money on an army. Nothing about drafting people into the army. However, the ability to draft is embedded in English common law. That’s what it’s traced to.
Would that more abridgements be traceable to obvious instructions in the Constitution, with everything else, you know, being reserved to The States, or The People.
Agreed.
In fact, the draft was quite controversial when they first imposed it for the Civil war, it resulted in major rioting, as it was widely viewed as beyond the legitimate powers of the government.
” prove that a fetus is a person”
That is a ridiculous demand.
The designation of a person is a legal distinction NOT a scientific one.
Even Judge Jackson could not say what a woman is. Live with it.
If your foundational argument is that life begins at conception it is absolutely something that should be proven.
You don’t just get to say “the whole justification for infringing on a woman’s medical decisions and bodily autonomy is based on this premise, but I don’t have to prove it or even convince anyone that it’s true. You just have to accept it because I said it”.
So yes, you have to prove it. Prove it legally, if you prefer it to scientific proof. But you don’t get to build a house of cards on an unsupported and unexamined foundation.
As soon as the egg is fertilized, you have a genetically distinct organism of species homo sapiens.
There is no scientifically valid argument for life beginning at any point after conception.
But that’s not actually relevant to the legal question personhood is a social/legal concept, not a biological concept.
When life begins is not relevant to when it becomes a person with enforceable rights in the eyes of the law.
“There is no scientifically valid argument for life beginning at any point after conception.”
You are correct, biologically. And almost 50% of the time, that fertilized egg will become a human being.
“But that’s not actually relevant to the legal question personhood is a social/legal concept, not a biological concept.”
This is also correct. The problem for anti-abortionists is that the first statement and the second statement are not the same, nor is there a logical connection between the two.
Pro-life advocates take a more logical approach, identifying developmental milestones like “heartbeat” (with no heart) or 15 weeks (I forget what the reason for that is, but I read it and noted it was a developmental standard), or 20 weeks (the earliest a fetus has been born and survived).
“When life begins is not relevant to when it becomes a person with enforceable rights in the eyes of the law.”
Correct. And the assertion that fertilization is a more reasonable standard than the 6-, 15-, 20-, or 26-week point (or live birth) is not compelling. Asserting that the ONLY reasonable standard is fertilization is absurd, yet anti-abortionists make that claim constantly.
If we’re lucky the pro-life folks will split away from the anti-abortionists and work with the pro-choice folks to elect reasonable officials who will create laws that recognize the complexity of the issue and consider the rights of women while doing it.
Who said anything about “foundational arguments.”
The designation of a person is a legal distinction NOT a scientific one.
Period. If you do not find it in written law, it is not there. Got it?
Bodily integrity and privacy were recognized as fundamental prior to Roe. A statute banning abortion prior to viability is just as destructive of individual liberty as would be a statute mandating abortions. Think the People’s Republic of China with its former one child policy.
Buck v. Bell has never been overruled. Perhaps that will now be cited as precedent for governmental intrusion upon who reproduces or not.
Well we’ve been undermining other fundamental rights like speech and self protection for decades and none of you people have minded before so why care now?
Killing babies is important to a “liberal.” Freedom of speech and the ability to defend yourself & your family — not so much. This pretty much tells you all you need to know about them.
The fact that your argument is nothing by hyperbolic bullshit says everything anyone needs to know about you, also.
You think most Americans are baby-killers.
I think a dwindling but energetic American minority consists of bigoted, uneducated, obsolete right-wingers, many of whom are gullible and deluded religious kooks.
I am content to see which view modern America vindicates in the culture war.
You should probably pray on it a spell.
The travesty occurred in ’73, we’re on the cusp of it being undone, an anti-travesty.
But that won’t stop abortions. Not in states that protect abortion and not in states that ban it.
Do you really think that poor women who can’t afford to go to a pro-liberty state will throw up their hands and have the baby?
So if your goal is to get rid of abortion, you’d better be prepared to get pretty medieval. Because you have a lot more banning and criminalizing to do if you want to succeed in forcing everyone to live by your beliefs. Overturning Roe is the beginning, not the end, for cultural conservatives.
My advice is to start mobilizing for criminal justice reform immediately. That way there will be plenty of jail cells available for the women and doctors you’ll have to imprison to achieve your goal.
Because you are never going to convince mist people that abortion should be illegal. If you haven’t managed it in 50 years, overturning Roe isn’t going to change anything.
Laws against murder don’t stop murder. Laws against rape don’t stop rape. Laws against robbery don’t stop robbery.
We generally have to be satisfied with a reduction, you know.
And why would banning abortion reduce them? The woman’s decision won’t change, it will just be done elsewhere or on the black market. It is more similar to drug prohibition than murder, rape, or robbery.
Of course it is hopeful that some doctors will just prescribe the drugs used for the vast majority of abortions. If the authoritarians ban that practice, there is probably some off-label use for them like acne or a hangnail that the doctor can prescribe for. Then if those drugs get banned there are probably other medications tha will do the same thing, if not as effectively. Which could lead to laws that criminalize off-label prescriptions and would require laws to imprison doctors and women who are accused of attempted abortion. Which would obviously leave out-of-state doctors as the only recourse for women who want an abortion, which would result in extradition requests from states where abortion is legal (which would be a winnable battle for the doctors), which would require banning telemedicine…
Like I said, the war on abortion looks a whole lot like the war on drugs. More laws and more authoritarian activity won’t change it. Incarceration of women and doctors won’t change it. Restricting meducations or telemedicine or any other use of government force won’t change it.
And with a large population of people opposed to abortion bans, someone will always find a way to get the people what they want.
Like drugs, the only way to stop abortion is to convince people they don’t want it. And the totalitarians in the cultural conservative movement have shown themselves to be incapable of convincing young people that they have better ideas. Dobbs won’t last more than a generation before getting the Roe treatment, but it will be dead from a practical perspective long before that.
Because, as we have discovered with drug use, the only way to reduce it is to legalize and regulate.
Texas has already banned the Plan B pill and other states have written similar things into their anti-abortion laws. I expect we’ll see attempts to criminalize women who leave the state to have abortions where it’s legal.
This is just another form of prohibition. I think you nailed it there.
Now do parental rights and the parents right to choose the education of their children.
The right of parents to direct the upbringing of children is indeed fundamental. They are free to choose whatever schooling for which they want to pay the freight, or to home school. Has anyone disputed that?
Yes, they have. Even recently. https://nypost.com/2020/04/23/harvard-professor-wants-to-ban-authoritarian-homeschooling/
Noticeably absent in the article you link to is any discussion of constitutional law. In light of Meyer v. Nebraska, Pierce v. Society of Sisters and Wisconsin v. Yoder, I would think a ban on home schooling would not pass constitutional muster.
What you’re saying there is pretty much the reason why the US is the only country in the world not to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Parents don’t own their children, for them to do with as they please.
“Parents don’t own their children, for them to do with as they please.”
No, but parents are in the best position to determine the best interests of their children.
Says who? Parents? The presumption that parents will want to do what’s in the best interest of their children is often a good one, but by no means a 100% guarantee. The family courts are full of counterexamples.
If not the parents, then who?
Parents are better than bureaucrats, who have no interest in the welfare of the child.
And determining the best interests of the child is often a value judgement that the state is incapable of making.
Parents are better than bureaucrats, who have no interest in the welfare of the child.
Because people become social welfare workers because it’s such a fun, low-stress job?
determining the best interests of the child is often a value judgement that the state is incapable of making.
How do you figure? The state makes value judgements all the time. You should know, because you spent half your week arguing on the internet that the state should tell women that they can’t have abortions. If that’s not a value judgement, what is?
“Because people become social welfare workers because it’s such a fun, low-stress job?”
Not sure why their motivation matters. The point is that they have no inherent interest in the child’s welfare.
“You should know, because you spent half your week arguing on the internet that the state should tell women that they can’t have abortions.”
You’re lying. But although the state can aggregate the values of the voters to some degree, there are many judgements it can’t make. It can’t decide, for example, whether or not the child should be raised Jewish or Catholic, how much work ethic to try to inculcate in the child, etc. People who have children expect to pass their own values, not the state’s values.
“”People who have children expect to pass their own values, not the state’s values”
Yuck. I don’t want my kids to have ‘the state’s values’ but I don’t parent to produce lil’ clones of myself either.
I think generally parents are better situated to know what’s best for their children, but there’s plenty of exceptions (as noted, you see this in family court all the time). FWIW a good parent will often realize that deference to an expert (medical doctor, educational professional, etc.,) is the best thing they can often do for their child.
“Because people become social welfare workers because…”
1. like to boss people around
2. Have no real skills
3. Are Lazy or stupid or both.
4. All of the above
Yuck. I don’t want my kids to have ‘the state’s values’ but I don’t parent to produce lil’ clones of myself either.
That’s not what I said.
“FWIW a good parent will often realize that deference to an expert (medical doctor, educational professional, etc.,) is the best thing they can often do for their child.”
Sure, parents are in the best position to determine when to defer to an expert, when not to, and which experts to defer to.
The random contempt for social workers is pretty awful, you performative assholes.
“The random contempt for social workers is pretty awful, you performative assholes.”
Unlike the random contempt for cops displayed by other performative assholes?
@Ed Grinberg: Really? The Fountainhead?
Yes, actually.
“random contempt ”
Its not “random”. Its well founded.
Government social workers prey on the poor. You ought to dislike them also.
“Yes, actually.”
It’s all about the narrative with you.
“The random contempt for social workers is pretty awful, you performative assholes.”
No one gives a shit about your tone policing, especially when it’s in service of the State.
No, TiP – I was saying I think the ACAB people are performative assholes.
More importantly I think, parents have skin in the game: They are legally responsible (to a degree) for the care and actions of their children – if the children are mistreated the parents are punished.
When the bureaucrats (CPS) get involved, the only penalty is if the state agent overtly commits murder against the child. Neglect, physical and psychological abuse, starvation, all are abetted by the government with little to no intervention.
Professionals want to do a good job, they don’t need a direct incentive other then normal human self-image.
‘Skin in the game’ is not a great alignment of incentives in practice – Parents with skin in the game so horrible things sometimes.
As are abuses of the social welfare systemn in the UK and other countries.
Nothing is perfect.
” No, but parents are in the best position to determine the best interests of their children. ”
That’s quite the unqualified declaration, even from a downscale right-winger.
Except for your parents, Arthur. That better?
However, a fetus is not a child.
Says you.
But no one made you or me the authority
https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/03/24/school-districts-are-hiding-information-about-gender-transitioning-children-from-their-parents-this-is-unconstitutional/
Democrats having been attacking parental rights with fervor recently.
You have a right to know someone else’s personal medical information? Why?
“right to know someone else’s personal medical information”
Children are not adults, they don’t have the skills to make medical decisions.
I hope you aren’t a parent.
You not only have a right to know your child’s personal medical information, but an obligation. Not making informed decisions on your child’s behalf is neglect.
Since the parents have the responsibility for that person’s health. Parents do got to jail for failing to provide proper medical care for their children.
That’s a scary statement when we’re talking about little children.
“You have a right to know someone else’s personal sexual activities? Why?”
Is the step down this horrible slippery slope we’ve been pushed down.
Some people also think private schools should be banned, although some seem sensible enough to not admit it in public: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/political-confessional-i-think-private-schools-should-be-banned/
Others are dumb enough to not only put their name behind the idea, but to argue that Pierce v. Society of Sisters was “a strong showing for corporate rights”: https://www.currentaffairs.org/2020/05/the-problem-of-private-schools — apparently confusing anti-Catholic bigotry with other forms of leftist bigotry.
Your thing today seems to be the old ‘find any leftist anywhere who says something, generalize with ‘some people.’ I guess that’s the kind of mindset of someone who cites Justthenews…
You have the right to choose your child’s education. If you don’t like the public education system, there are enty of other options.
But what you really mean is that you want to control what everyone else’s children are taught. You cultural conservatives just love to banning things you don’t like, don’t you? At least with abortion, as opposed to CRT, it’s something that is actually happening.
And I notice your support for parental rights comes to a screeching halt when it comes to transsexual kids.
You must have a lot of great recipes that use hypocrisy because you eat it up like crazy.
Wouldn’t you rather be on his side of the culture war instead of the side of the good Rev. Kluck?
Every political or social position group has some Rev. Kirklands in the mix. It doesn’t validate opposing positions, nor does it invalidate the supporting position.
Reasonable people don’t judge the validity of the pro-life position based on Eric Rudolph. The fact that white nationalists are Republicans doesn’t invalidate the entire party, nor does it make all Republicans racists.
That said, when it comes to the culture wars, cultural conservatives are usually on the wrong side of things, usually because their solutions usually involve limiting the rights of others to choose their own morals and lifestyle.
That said, when it comes to the culture wars, cultural conservatives are usually on the wrong side of things, usually because their solutions usually involve limiting the rights of others to choose their own morals and lifestyle.
Masterpiece Cake Shop anyone? Limiting Free Speech of anyone that disagrees with Democrats?
You don’t understand! I have a right to make you bake me a cake! And you don’t have a right to criticize me for insisting on this right!
If you want to engage in commerce, you have to obey the rules. You don’t get to discriminate based on certain factors/characteristics. But, you get to complain about it all you like. Who, exactly, has been punished by the governmnt for complaining about it?
Ah, yes, the usual argument: “Since we’ve successfully destroyed economic liberty, now we can take away your other liberties by threatening to bankrupt you if you don’t do as we say. And it’s fine, because you don’t have any economic liberty the threat would violate!”
“Masterpiece Cake Shop anyone? Limiting Free Speech”
As I understamd it from reading the comments of the various kawyers here, Madterpiece Cakeshop would be a common carrier issue, not a free speech or free exercise issue.
To be honest, the common carrier debate is a fascinating one to me because the arguments for and against are both strong. For me, as a non-lawyer, Jim Crow was a horrible case study in why businesses should be common carriers.
But learning about common carriers as a legal issue has been fun, if challenging. It’s surprisingly dense material and a lot of people have written very convincingly on both sides, even when I avoid the legal writings.
The anti-abortion movement was (prior to January 3021) the only political movement I can think of with an active domestic terrorist wing. Eric Rudolph bombed an abortion clinic and hated gays. His compatriots need to own him and his ilk.
That is why I refuse to refer to the anti-abortion movement as being “pro-life”. If abortion rights advocates were to adopt a comparable moral framework, it would be a legitimate tactic to assassinate one or more justices prior to the decision in Dobbs being announced. Killing a jurist is the moral equivalent of killing a doctor.
That should be January 2021. We need an edit feature.
I think you forgot about this guy…
https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/14/homepage2/james-hodgkinson-profile/index.html
Your linked article doesn´t show any nexus between James Hodgkinson and abortion rights advocates. Is that all you´ve got?
Hey, great! The only thing we actually owe illegal, not “undocumented’, immigrants is some procedural rights about how we eject them. (And that just to protect citizens accused of being illegal immigrants!) And Plyler was a particularly bad case of substantive due process, which needs to die.
It’s an illustration of the problem with the whole concept of substantive due process: The 14th amendment unambiguously reserves Privileges and Immunities for citizens, while every warm body gets due process. By incorporating our substantive rights by inventing SDP to circumvent Slaughterhouse instead of overturning it, the warm bodies got the rights of citizens!
Brett, have you read Plyler? It was purely an Equal Protection case.
Gah, substantive equal protection, too.
Still pulling law out of your hindquarters? And I note your avoidance of my question about whether you have read Plyler.
Hadn’t in a long while. Just did, what a mess. It really did create substantive equal protection after noting that it wasn’t a thing.
C’mon. Just say you don’t understand something.
I mean, you did. But you can just say it, instead of pretending you don’t.
(Hint- you just can’t toss in “substantive” when you want to because you think you understand what it means, and it means something bad. It’s particularly impressive that you seem to completely misunderstand the way the Court specifically upheld its earlier holding in Rodriguez prior to turning to EPC.)
Brett, what part of, “. . . nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” do you not understand?
Every bit of it, apedad, but I refuse to pretend that equal protection is equal treatment. An education isn’t protection, apedad, it’s a great example of a “privilege” such as the P&I clause protects, but it’s not “protection”.
Allowing unequal allocation of privileges has some pretty rough outcomes. Separate but equal is back on the menu, for one. Is voting now a right, or are we going to re-look at one person one vote?
And what about Section 5 based federal legislation?!
This is a lot more radical than I think you realize. Of course, I do expect you to double down on all of that.
Screw that, citizens have more rights in a country than legal aliens, who have more rights than people there illegally, and that’s as it should be. Recognizing that doesn’t require depriving citizens of their rights.
The only thing we owe illegal aliens is decent treatment as we deport them.
Well this is some naked outcome oriented anti-textualism.
But also, EPC says *any person* and the Founders knew how to use the word citizen when they wanted to.
You, who trade in your rigid outcome-blind formalism all the time, should be ashamed at throwing that away when you want to get at immgirants.
Yeah, it does, and the government can’t announce open season on illegals, go ahead and rape and murder them, because we’re not going to offer them equal protection under the law.
Public services, aside from police enforcing the law when somebody commits a crime against you, are not “equal protection”, they’re the P in P&I.
“equal protection” does not mandate 100% equal treatment
Remember when you supported illegal aliens from Cuba?? I will never forget!
Some time ago I announced the availability – free – of an outstanding magic fantasy book in the tradition of The Wizard of Oz and the Narnia books. However, due to my embarrassing failure to understand the system, the upload was not actually accessible to the public. Now it is! The book is The Children’s Country by Kay Burdekin, from 1929. If you like that kind of thing, feel free to check it out. And if you like the book, tell your friends.
Oh, I’m not profiting in any way by posting it. It’s purely a labor of love. The book is only available as a fragile antique, if you can find it, and usually costs more than $100.00. I think the reason it sank without a trace is that it was published just before the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929.
https://kayburdekinthechildrenscountry.wordpress.com/2022/04/04/6/
I am an avid and voracious reader. I’ll check it out. Thank you!
Thank you for changing the subject. Bravo!
Are you sure the book is not under copyright?
Generally anything published before January 1, 1927 are in the public domain for works after that it becomes complicated.
Mr. Toad wrote about this in a previous thread. There is no evidence of copyright renewal so copyright probably lapsed.
A risk-averse lawyer will advise a company not to assume any responsibility by printing such a book. An online service provider will rely on Section 230 to look the other way until a takedown notice arrives.
Section 230 does not apply to copyright infringement in any way. It’s the completely unrelated DMCA that applies.
Yesterday:
SJWs: I LOVE business freedom (only when it comes to private monopolies deciding to persecute conservatives .) #BuildURown! #buildurowntwitter #buildurowngoogle #buildUrOwnInternet #buildurOwnfinancialsystem
SJWs: stare decisis? Whats that? A new tiktok trend?
Today:
SJW: I hate business freedom. The government should regulate everything. Especially censorship (to increase it)
SJWs: I love stare decisis. The doctrine that once the supreme court makes a decision. Its bound by it forever no matter what.
Somehow I don’t think you actually know a lot about the latest SJW thinking.
I don’t know where you live, but it’s pretty clearly hermetically ideologically sealed.
Somehow I don’t think you actually know a lot about the latest SJW thinking.
So you’re saying that all/most of them are lying in their countless public expressions of what they’re thinking? Well, given who and what you are, I can see how you would make that assumption.
There are no such countless public expressions.
AA is writing SJW fan-fic.
AmosArch — For years I have been a steady advocate of pure free market solutions to internet platform problems. I do not recall you backing any of it. Nor many left wingers backing it either, for that matter.
The fact is, both sides seem not to want a free market publishing regime. Each fears freedom would leave room for dominance by the other. Each wants monopolistic publishing, controlled by government edicts. Each wants exactly what they deplore today, but with ongoing government supervision, and the control reversed.
More than 5 years ago I began predicting Section 230 would deliver today’s outcome. Since then, every post I made to say that has been denied and attacked from all sides. And here we are.
I understood why that happened, and continues to happen. Internet fans are utopians. They imagine it is possible to have an online publishing world free of any editing, affording anonymous, cost-free, world-wide, publishing power to everyone with a keyboard. I understood years ago that for reasons inherent in the way publishing works—both as a business activity, and as an indispensable aspect of the nation’s public life, that it would not be possible to achieve that vision without government controls, amounting to an end to press freedom.
With luck, you will not get your utopia, AmosArch, because nothing but a right-wing dictatorship could have power to deliver it. Or a left-wing dictatorship. Take your pick.
“The fact is, both sides seem not to want a free market publishing regime. Each fears freedom would leave room for dominance by the other. Each wants monopolistic publishing, controlled by government edicts. Each wants exactly what they deplore today, but with ongoing government supervision, and the control reversed.”
Based on what? The only example we really have is the left censoring and controlling content on social media and in the so-called mainstream press in furtherance of their agenda. I don’t know of a case where the right is doing this. My understanding is not that the right wants to control things, they want the left to stop controlling and manipulating it.
The Right has been ‘working’ media (of all kinds) for a very, very long time. You’re just a partisan living in a ideological bubble and so, of course no examples of the Right’s efforts to cancel people for their speech comes to mind. But that says more about you than anything else.
ThePublius — Do I understand you then as an opponent of government action to mandate access for everyone to social media platforms? If not, then you yourself are an example of the sort you say the right never presents. And you would put yourself among company numbering in the millions.
“Mandate access”
It appears that you understand very little, as usual.
Yea they’re pretty hypocritical. It’s a little “both sides” but majority one side.
Bodily integrity is an absolute right !!!! Except when leftists want you vaccinated.
It’s almost as if they’re just play-acting 99% of the time and don’t actually believe in anything beside power for themselves.
If the administration of vaccines were forcible, I would agree that substantive due process guaranties would prohibit that.
Jacobson v. Massachusetts, wherein the options were to be vaccinated against smallpox or pay a $5 fine, is still good law, though.
Absolute rights aren’t subject to coercive mandates. If bodily integrity is an absolute right then it can’t be burdened.
But we all know it’s just a talking point to be forgotten next time.
“forcible,”
A $5 fine is coercion, that is legal “force”, just as much force as an anti-abortion law uses.
“Except when leftists want you vaccinated.”
You don’t have to get the Covid vaccine if you don’t want to. Millions of people have made that choice.
If you want to waste about 15 minute or so heres a fun diversion that takes any caption you make and turns it into an image.
https://huggingface.co/spaces/dalle-mini/dalle-mini
FYI theres a much more powerful and impressive version out there but the company is sitting on it for $$ unfortunately.
Abortion restrictions are on my mind, Professor Volokh. Namely, what kinds of restrictions are most likely if Dobbs returns the question of abortion regulation to the states, and the people?
A total ban on all abortions
A ban after 6 weeks?
A ban after 15 weeks?
No sex selection abortions?
No provision for abortion in cases of rape or incest?
Must obtain parental consent (if a minor)?
Must notify a parent (if a minor)?
Allow abortion for trisomy 16, trisomy 18?
Allow abortion for trisomy 21?
Other?
Allow ‘RAD’ abortions [Retroactive Abortion Do-Over – abort children up to age 13 and start over again…very RAD]?
My other question.
By returning the question of abortion regulation to the states, does SCOTUS diminish the importance of SCOTUS, longer term? The argument has been made that people get uptight about nominations because the stakes are so high. Does de-federalizing an issue render the Court less important in the on-going culture wars? And is that a good thing, on balance?
Louisiana HB 813 just out of committee, defining a fertilized egg as a human.
Abortion as homicide.
No exception for rape, incest, or ectopic pregnancies.
Some forms if birth control illegal.
What is the penalty provision? Is an abortion provider subject to the same penalties as premeditated killers in general? Is a pregnant woman who hires the provider subject to prosecution?
Have you read it?
It doesn’t actually mention rape, incest, ectopic pregnancies, or any other such issue, it just extends homicide laws to cover unborn children. And says, “Nothing in this Section shall alter any existing presumption, defense, 9 justification, immunity, or clemency.”
So, as I read it, you’d still be able to claim self defense in any case where the pregnancy was life threatening.
No, I haven´t read it. That is why I am asking questions about it.
It renders killing the unborn legally indistinguishable from killing the born, in a nutshell.
Self defense is not reading in some exception for the life of the mother, Brett. This is not a law with a rational basis.
Sure it is: Its rational basis is that babies have rights before they’re born, and so murder laws ought to be applicable to them.
Remember, “rational” basis doesn’t mean you, or even the average person, has to think a law actually rational. Or that the actual basis for passing it be rational. It just means the judge can think of some basis for the law that you wouldn’t have to be chewing on the furniture mad to hold, even if it wasn’t the legislature’s actual basis.
It really ought to be called “not batshit crazy” basis, to be honest.
1) ‘babies form the moment of fertilization’ is not how our country operates. Otherwise we’d be working to prevent miscarriages a lot more than we do, and the Pill and Plan B would be a lot more controversial than they are.
2) Even if that’s correct, the lack of exceptions and the penalties for lawyers challenging the law are both a bridge too far.
3) How the fuck can you be defending no exceptions for ectopic pregnancies? Sometimes you need to step back and realize your knee-jerk requirement to defend whatever libs attack makes you side with some pretty horrid shit.
Like, I depart from my compatriots on trans in pro sports, in gun bans, in hecklers vetoing speakers, Citizen United being correct (but not Buckley!) and lots of other stuff.
“How the fuck can you be defending no exceptions for ectopic pregnancies? ”
I’m not. I’m refusing to pretend it doesn’t allow exceptions for ectopic pregnancies.
Can a mother use a “Stand your Ground” law to claim the fetus was a threat to her life?
Add the law of self defense to the things about which you are woefully ignorant. Self defense law has absolutely no application to the abortion question, presuming that fetuses are not in the process of exercising their 2d amendment rights.
“What a nice fallopian tube. Shame if something were to happen to it…”
Ectopic pregnancies are doomed. They cannot result in a live birth and typically kill the mother as well. Medically, it’s triage. Legally, it’s strictly necessary.
Sarcastro, when you have to lie to present your case, you obviously have no confidence in the correctness of your position.
Indeed. But that’s typical of Sarcastro.
This is that personhood at the moment of conception requires, Ben.
It’s a dumb bill, I’m not lying about it.
Wait so if a child causes the death of the mother they get charged with homicide? That’s messed up. /s
We might well wind up with a patchwork of abortion restrictions, Sarcastr0. That is a feature, not a bug, of our Republic.
In the People’s Republic of NJ, nothing will change. You can abort right up to birth. LA (and others) might well change their abortion restrictions very dramatically. I foresee a decade of ‘settling out’ if Dobbs really does toss Roe/Casey. It will take 2-3 election cycles to sort out what the people really want (in each state).
I fully expect a few more states to enact elective abortion up to a few days after live birth. One or two of them might even admit to that last part of it.
Then I expect some highly publicized case of legal infanticide to cause some blowback, maybe get a federal born alive law with teeth. Which would be constitutional, a genuine application of the equal protection clause.
Hopefully the Court will release a decision on Dobbs sooner, rather than later. It is crazy to me that a sitting SCOTUS Justice has to cancel public appearances.
Who forced a justice to cancel public appearances?
My hunch: Nobody.
My educated hunch: the Supreme Court Police Department and USMS.
When were those offices authorized to compel justices to cancel public appearances.
If justices are engaging in cowardice and lack of accountability, nobody should blame others for the relevant decisions and conduct.
This report indicates Chief Justice Roberts appeared at a circuit conference while Justice Alito wimped out in a similar context.
#Gutless
#Pusillanimous
#Coward
#Lily-Livered
Honestly, I’m not sure that would change things. I fully expect some liberal to try to assassinate a SCOTUS judge before the actual Dobbs opinions gets released. I don’t see things getting better afterwards.
Uh, its those who blather about how “pro-life” they are who foster assassinations.
Family Research Council shooter
https://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/frc-shooter-sentenced-to-25-years-097069
Republican Baseball Assassin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_baseball_shooting
Thanks for playing, care to try again?
Your linked articles shown no nexus between the shooters and abortion rights advocates.
” I fully expect some liberal to try to assassinate a SCOTUS judge before the actual Dobbs opinions gets released. ”
Of course you do. You are a worthless, obsolete, delusional right-winger. Probably superstitious. Likely poorly educated. Roundly bigoted and backward. You resent your betters and pine for a return to illusory “good old days.” You can’t stand all of this damned progress.
You will be replaced.
Will they erect a gallows on the front lawn and chant “Hang [insert name]!!” as they roam the halls trying to find their victim?
You know, like those darn liberals are known for doing.
“I fully expect a few more states to enact elective abortion up to a few days after live birth. ”
A few more? Exactly how many states have enacted laws allowing infanticide already?
Reminds me of the following dumb fuckery:
AlbertoGiubiliniandFrancescaMinerva,“After-BirthAbortion:WhyShouldtheBabyLive?”Journal of Medical Ethics, published online (February 23, 2012).
When published, many thought the article was sick satire. But no, and the editor of the Journal defended it even though it consisted mostly of stupid unsupported assertions. Sort of like a Bellmore posting, in that regard.
It keeps changing, last I looked it was two or three.
New York’s abortion laws were amended in the last few years to remove every last protection against early infanticide. They don’t come out and say that you can murder your child as long as you do it shortly after they’re born, but that’s the practical import.
First, if you shoot a pregnant woman and she miscarries, it’s no longer murder, just assault, the baby’s life doesn’t count anymore.
Second, they repealed their “born alive” protections, so there’s now no procedure in place to stop a baby born alive from being immediately killed. They had procedures in place to prevent that, and got rid of them.
Third, you can get an abortion post-viablity to protect your life or health, with no requirement that it be a serious threat to your health. And danger at all will do, doesn’t even have to be more dangerous than the abortion.
But, yes, I expect one or two states will step over the line; We’ve already had a couple draft laws that would allow death by neglect after birth, and they backed down when it was publicized.
So, you’ve been caught lying again.
I can’t open the text of the New York bill you link to from my cellphone. Did it repeal or modify generally applicable homicide statutes, which would apply to a newborn?
I have now read the bill that Brett references. Brett conspicuously neglects the language therein, “´Person,´ when referring to the victim of a homicide, means a human being who has been born and is alive.¨
Brett´s assertions:
are simply not true. Why am I unsurprised?
LOL
As a middle-aged man, I thank you for the chuckle, David. 🙂
They used to have procedures in place to make sure that, if a baby was born alive, they STAYED alive.
They got rid of them.
There is literally nothing in NY anymore to prevent a baby who happens to survive an abortion from being murdered afterwards.
Not true. Section 7 of the bill you referenced states “´Person,´ when referring to the victim of a homicide, means a human being who has been born and is alive.¨ https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2019/S240 The statutes generally applicable to homicides prevent a baby who happens to survive an abortion from being murdered afterwards.
I quoted this language in a prior comment, but you then doubled down. That shows that you are flat out lying.
Not true. Section 7 of the bill you referenced states “´Person,´ when referring to the victim of a homicide, means a human being who has been born and is alive.¨ https://legislation.nysenate.gov/pdf/bills/2019/S240 The statutes generally applicable to homicides prevent a baby who happens to survive an abortion from being murdered afterwards.
I quoted this language in a prior comment, but you then doubled down. That shows that you are deliberately lying.
No one is going to “abort” a baby after live birth. I understand that the anti-abortionists believe that there are states that make it legal (probably a biased and extreme reading of the statute), but as far a I know there has never been a case of an infant after live birth being killed and the killer being shielded by an abortion law.
I challenge you to find such a case. If you can’t, please stop the irrational moral panic and gonzo accusations.
Virtually everyone agrees that the equal protection clause protects all people. Almost no one believes that a fertilized egg is a person.
Starting from an unsupported and factually deficient premise is a terrible way to make law.
Geeze, you’ve got women giving birth and drowning their newborn in a toilet, and you doubt it happens?
CHILDREN OF A LESSER LAW: THE FAILURE OF THE BORN-ALIVE INFANTS PROTECTION ACT AND A PLAN FOR ITS REDEMPTION
Indeed, why WOULD a state repeal a law that requires babies that survive abortion attempts to be given medical treatment, if the intent was not that they die despite having been born alive?
“Geeze, you’ve got women giving birth and drowning their newborn in a toilet, and you doubt it happens?”
Nobody that I know of doubts that infantacide happens. The implication of your statement, “I fully expect a few more states to enact elective abortion up to a few days after live birth. ” is that there are states which already have enacted such laws. When challenged, you failed to provide any examples of such.
“Geeze, you’ve got women giving birth and drowning their newborn in a toilet, and you doubt it happens?”
No, I call that murder. And you failed to actually provide an example of a mother killing a live baby and being protected by an abortion law. No one is doing that.
You start from the assumption that anyone who wants an abortion (or supports those who do) are universally immoral and capable of (even enthusiastic about) commiting any atrocity.
That’s just not true.
This is not a feature.
On aspect of our federalized with rights paradigm is guard rails against manifest injustices like this.
Ectopic pregnancies?! Birth control?!
That’s not a cool part of the patchwork I’m just going to condone.
Here’s your two options:
1) A patchwork system that allows working out that is best locally.
2) A single uniform system that imposes what it will, for good and bad.
Number 1 increases the likelihood of temporary bad policies causing local bad problems while having good policies elsewhere at the same time to show what’s superior.
Number 2 increases the likelihood of permanently bad policies imposed everywhere with nothing to show an alternative and the bad policies remain permanently.
If enough people agree a policy is good, the method for imposing this on all is called a constitutional amendment. The US has done this 27 times. I suggest you look into it.
That’s an excluded middle.
There is also a patchwork with guardrails.
This is in fact how our system generally works. States can pass all sorts of stuff on guns…but at some point the constitution says they’ve gone too far.
This is in fact how our system generally works. States can pass all sorts of stuff on guns…but at some point the constitution says they’ve gone too far.
All due to…a constitutional amendment. Let me know the text of you propose.
Oh, you don’t think there’s anything in the Constitution that deals with forcing a women to give birth at risk to her own life when there is no viable child.
If you’re going to ignore the 14A, lets just call it an unjustified taking.
FFS.
Oh, you don’t think there’s anything in the Constitution that deals with forcing a women to give birth at risk to her own life when there is no viable child.
Strawman argument. Even the Catholic Church doesn’t oppose abortion in such a case. Thomas Aquinas covered this under the principle of the double effect.
If you’re going to ignore the 14A, lets just call it an unjustified taking.
You’re trying to use the equal protection clause to justify killing someone?
Not a strawman. This bill does that by it’s text.
Aborting ectopic pregnancies kill no one; try and stay on topic.
“1) A patchwork system that allows working out that is best locally.”
You obviously don’t mean locally since if Texas makes abortion illegal, cultural conservatives don’t want to let Harris County make it legal in Houston. You want the decidion to be made at the level that assures your preferred outcome.
“Ectopic pregnancies?! ”
What’s the argument the Roe protects terminating an ectopic pregnancy anyway? Roe is about reproductive freedom, and an ectopic pregnancy can’t result in a child.
There might be other protection for necessary medical procedures, but I don’t see it under Roe.
What’s the argument the Roe protects terminating an ectopic pregnancy anyway? Roe is about reproductive freedom, and an ectopic pregnancy can’t result in a child.
That’s not what Roe is about.
Also ably lawyer challenging the law is automatically disbarred ????
Where are you seeing that? I couldn’t find it in the text.
https://reason.com/volokh/2022/05/05/thursday-open-thread-81/?comments=true#comment-9478793
Sarcastro, that says any Louisiana “judge of this state who purports to enjoin, stay, overrule” is subject to removal from Louisiana office. Nothing about lawyers.
The first part of what you quote basically states the 10th amendment.
Is there anything you think the states can tell the federal government to go jump in the lake over?
Lots of stuff are purview of the states and not the feds. But nullification is always bad.
“Louisiana HB 813 just out of committee, defining a fertilized egg as a human. ”
Save the zygotes!!!
The tumor, zygote, clump of cells reply means you’re not serious and can’t argue. It’s understandable because abortion is not defendable.
Tumors don’t turn into humans. We are all clumps of cells our entire life. Zygote is a fertilized ovum and a cell. See clump of cells.
Look at an ultrasound. Then maybe try and formulate a different argument
Why argue with dimwitted, crackpots? You can’t pet a rabid dog.
Abortion is easily defendable. That’s why most Americans think it isn’t murder and should be legal.
The position that is not defendable is the one that allows the state to force citizens to accept moral beliefs and intrusion into their medical decisions and bodily autonomy that they have rejected.
The position that is not defendable is the one that allows the state to force citizens to accept moral beliefs and intrusion into their medical decisions and bodily autonomy that they have rejected.
Are you for or against vaccine mandates? Are you for or against the draft?
Are you also a virus-flouting hayseed, BillyG?
Let me guess: Mississippi or Alabama. Evangelical. High school graduate. Rural. Your family arranged your job. Pretty sure that believing people should ‘stick with their own kind’ doesn’t make anyone a bigot.
I am against compulsory vaccination (giving a vaccine to someone against their will). I also believe that people need to accept the consequences of their decsions, so if you choose not to get a vaccine that is required for participation in something (school, work, field trip, whatever), you can’t participate.
I am torn about the draft. Philosophically I am against it, but I believe that it is easier to wage foreign wars if most people will never be personally impacted. In the end I come down against it, but I worry that it makes foreign adventurism easier for politicians.
No it isn’t. My grandson was premature at 7 months. He was definitely alive and a human in the womb.
Taking a life is murder. So we Stella who predictable resorts to name calling which doesn’t win an argument.
And your point is that its popular. Most American are very much against it in the second and third trimester. Are you?
“So we Stella who predictable resorts to name calling which doesn’t win an argument.”
I see no point in trying to have a reasonable argument with those who are not intellectually suitable. One of the few points on which I agreed with Rand.
You’re not presenting counter arguments other than the baby is not human. Which is of course false.
The baby is most definitely human and at some point 15-20 weeks is viable outside the womb. So the zygote stuff is pure garbage.
So come with something else or just stay silent.
This is just weird.
I’ve not suggested that a baby is not human. I’ve not suggested that a 15-20 week fetus is not human.
All I’ve suggested is that we now have a law brewing in LA which grants legal status to zygotes and suggests that it will be enforced with homicide laws and that is extraordinary. It’s possible that such a law could be used to try to outlaw, or criminalize, some very popular birth control methods, although it’s not clear to me if any birth control methods (including IUDs and PlanB) actually work by preventing the implantation of zygotes. To the best of my knowledge, no such law has ever been enforced in the US. Don’t you crackpots find that extraordinary?
And, a zygote is not a baby.
WHAT a fetus is does not matter.
WHEN doesn’t matter.
WHY doesn’t matter.
WHO doesn’t matter.
Only one thing matters: WHERE the fetus is.
“No it isn’t. My grandson was premature at 7 months. He was definitely alive and a human in the womb.”
That is what “viable” means. And seven months is post-viability, so I don’t understand your point. I would agree that, at seven months, a fetus is a person. But that’s because I see viability as the beginning of life.
However I’m not so arrogant as to believe that my personal beliefs should be forced on others.
And my point isn’t that it’s popular. Calling it “popularity” trivializes the beliefs that people are expressing when responding to issues.
And no, most people aren’t against it being legal in the second and third trimesters. Most people are against it being legal in the third trimester. Most people are for it being legal in the first and second trimesters. And that has been the case since they started asking in the 1970s.
My personal belief is that abortion should be restricted after the brain has developed enough to regulate the fetus’ body. Which happens at about 24 weeks.
“Save the zygotes!!!”
What is a “fertilized [human] egg” but a “human”? Skunk, snake, bird, fish?
Solving a philosophical conundrum via semantics is not a real trick.
“conundrum ”
There isn’t one. A fertilized human egg is human. Its just science.
The zygote argument gets debunked in one round. He’s got nothing left except maybe a few names to call.
Yeah, no controversy here – your choice of line is correct, just invoke The Science!!
You’re doing everything you accuse liberals to do, as usual.
The beginning of personhood is not solved by dictionaries, nor by science.
“personhood”
Don’t change the subject, we are not talking about personhood. Just humanity.
Is a fertilized human egg human? Its telling you won’t answer.
No, we’re talking about legal rights – that’s personhood.
We are talking about “Louisiana HB 813 just out of committee, defining a fertilized egg as a human.”
Is a fertilized egg human?
More semantic games.
Human is generally used to refer to biological stuff. Person is more in the legal/rights area.
Regardless of the specific word used in this bill, the function of that definition is to trigger murder laws. That’s personhood.
You may think those are one and the same, but that’s a case you need to make.
It is conceived and then progresses to a baby who is then leaves the womb and then grows into an adult.
A person is clearly created at conception. There is no stork that arrives on the due date.
Your logic, apart from not making the connection you think it does, applies as much to a given lucky sperm or egg.
Especially given how many zygotes *don’t* make it to a baby, you’re argument is not a very good one.
“It is conceived and then progresses to a baby who is then leaves the womb and then grows into an adult.”
That is one potential outcome. It is by no means the only one. It is estimated that less than 50% of fertilized eggs develop into a human. So your scenario isn’t even the most likely outcome.
“Is a fertilized human egg human?”
No. It potentially a human.
“A fertilized human egg is human. Its just science.”
Not according to scientists. It has the potential to become a human, but that is by no means assured.
So ensoulment is a feature of cells, not cellular aggregates, much less developing brains. Interesting!
I think many states already consider the murder of a pregnant woman a double homicide. Seems consistent
“Seems consistent”
Of course. Because birth control methods which prevent implantation are the moral equivalent of murdering a pregnant woman. Now, that’s a brilliant argument, Bell End.
Hearing bells? Or is your bell rung. The reason its a double homicide is the unborn child is considered a human. Nothing to do with birth control.
You’ve got nothing so name calling and stupid slogans are all you got. Try again.
“Seems consistent”
What’s consistent? Laws which treat killing a pregnant woman as a double homicide and this proposed LA law which treats common birth control methods as homicide?
As for easy insults: if you don’t like insults, you shouldn’t be here.
No one was making an argument about birth control.
Not yet regarding birth control. But Sen. Marsha Blackburn at Judge Jackson’s confirmation hearing denounced Griswold v. Connecticut as being constitutionally unsound.
A hard rain’s gonna fall.
Just wait.
Technically, you make a fantastic argument for birth control.
“I think many states already consider the murder of a pregnant woman a double homicide. Seems consistent”
There are fetal homicide laws in some states but it is its own statute, not part of the homicide statute. There are a constrained set of circumstances that allow a fetal homicide charge.
For example, most of them require an assault or murder of the mother. For example, if someone gave the mother an abortificant (knowingly or otherwise) that caused the fetus to cease to thrive, it would not meet the standard for fetal homicide.
Basically they are sentencing enhancements that were designed to protect pregnant women. Don’t get me started on that type of law. I hate laws that make some victims more “victim-y” than others.
“defining a fertilized egg as a human. ‘
Based ONLY on biology, do you care to tell us what species it is?
DNA is a very different thing than a human being. A seed isn’t a tree. An egg isn’t a bird. Regardless of what the DNA of the seed or the egg is.
Nelson,
Nope a seed is not a tree. But once it germinates, its species is very clear.
Don’t be so dense just because of your politics.
An embryo is human. It is NOT therefore a legal person.
But your claim that it is not a human being is self-delusion.
Are there any IVF services in Louisiana? A standard technique fertilizes a batch of eggs in vitro, implants some embryos, and discards the rest.
Welcome to the messiest (but not only) follow-on issue arising from fetal personhood. And a political nightmare for the GOP if they want to hold on to the support of anyone with fertility issues and the means to pursue IVF.
They could keep the IVF crowd with a “heartbeat” bill instead.
My guess is IVF users are likely to be more liberal. Many of them are going to be women wanting children later in life. My memory tells me conservatives have children earlier than liberals. (I did not look it up to verify.)
In partial answer to my question, there are a few “fertility clinics” in Louisiana. I did not check how many do IVF (“test tube babies”) and how many only use techniques that do not require destroying embryos.
Louisiana HB 813 just out of committee, defining a fertilized egg as a human.
Well, given that it is a human…in every biological sense of the word…what is your complaint? Does it declare a fertilized egg to be a “person”? Or are you hoping your audience doesn’t know the difference?
1) ‘babies form the moment of fertilization’ is not how our country operates. Otherwise we’d be working to prevent miscarriages a lot more than we do, and the Pill and Plan B would be a lot more controversial than they are.
2) Even if that’s correct, the lack of exceptions, the penalties for judges, and the nullification call are a bridge too far.
3) How the fuck can you be defending no exceptions for ectopic pregnancies?
Wuz, stop attacking the posters and stick to the comments. There’s no need for you to be the asshole you seem committed to being.
On that first question, the first seven seem like quite likely to happen somewhere in 50 states. On the trisomy, seems highly unlikely that either “side” would want to appear to be devaluing people with Down’s syndrome by carving it out as special case, of course it would be implicitly allowed in on-demand states.
On that second question, it would not be “de-federalized”. The next big question would be whether Congress has the authority to resolve it at a national level (in either direction), and that question will probably also go to the SC. And just like other federalism questions, one can guess that most of the arguments will be insincere fair-weather federalism.
Father-son duo set for trial despite not firing gun
SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – A trial date has been set for the elder of a father-and-son duo charged with second-degree murder in connection with a 2020 home invasion and homicide.
Rick Johnson, 50, is to be tried in Greene County Circuit Court beginning on Oct. 31, 2022, on charges of murder, unlawful use of a weapon, and attempted burglary.
His son, Rick A. Johnson, has a trial set for Dec. 19, 2022, on identical charges. The pair are accused although they did not fire the shot that killed a man who was with them.
The Johnsons are charged with the death of Joshua Woods which occurred on June 17, 2020, at a Springfield apartment complex. Police say they and Woods were searching for people they thought had stolen from the elder Johnson.
When Woods and the younger Johnson tried to break into an apartment, a resident fired through the door, killing Woods.
https://www.ozarksfirst.com/crime/father-son-duo-set-for-trial-despite-not-firing-gun/
I’m always a little leery about these cases where an accomplice can be charged with murder, called felony murder rules.
Not sure if the suspects were armed (if they weren’t then there was no intent to shoot anyone), and the resident – legally – did the shooting.
Felony murder is criminalized for reasons other than the intention to shoot anyone, just like reckless driving is criminalized for reasons other than an intention to run over anyone or anything.
According to https://www.ky3.com/2020/09/01/father-son-charged-with-murder-although-they-didnt-shoot-victim/, both the son and the decedent brought guns to the attempted break-in — and pointed a gun through the door before anyone fired any gun.
What’s there to be leery about in this case?
Ah, that makes it even more straightforward.
Also, Reason’s habit of omitting critical incriminating details extents to comments, too? Nah, I’ll assume apedad didn’t know.
Yeah, I was just going off the story that I linked to but if they were armed (as noted), then that definitely changes things.
“if they were armed (as noted), then that definitely changes things.”
Why?
Seems to be pretty much garden variety felony murder which doesn’t depend, as far as I know, on anybody being armed. If someone embarks upon a course of felonious* conduct likely to result in a death and a death occurs, you very well may have a murder, intent being imputed. Doesn’t matter who dies, even if one of the perpetrators.
*certain felonies, not all
Well, but he disagrees with garden variety felony murder law. So he thinks the fact that they brought guns is relevant, though it isn’t, of course, legally relevant.
They committed a felony, and had to know that SOMEBODY might get killed in the process. Maybe them!
“Well, but he disagrees with garden variety felony murder law.”
I understand that, Goofy. I’m just pointing out that, in general, for a person to be guilty of felony murder does not require anybody be armed when the felony occurs.
I’m not necessarily a fan of felony murder law as it exists as it can result in some unexpected, and in some cases seemingly unfair, results. But neither am I going to fret about some douchbags getting charged with murder as a result of a home invasion gone bad when Jesus wouldn’t find them to have murderous hearts. I’m not Jesus.
The difference seems to be the “likely to result in death” stipulation.
If you come armed, that greatly reduces the concern that people have about that phrase. You can argue a thief has no intention of harming people. That’s not a valid argument for people who bring firearms.
but if they were armed (as noted), then that definitely changes things.
No, it doesn’t…at least not if one has an above-room temperature I.Q. The rule has nothing to do with whether or not the offenders had the ability to do what they didn’t do. It’s placing upon them the responsibility for the consequences of their action, which was committing the crime of attempting to break into someone’s home, whether they were armed or not.
Pretty standard, though: When you commit a crime, all the reasonably anticipatable consequences of that crime are on you, because you shouldn’t have committed the crime, and they wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t.
The way to avoid being subject to this sort of liability is pretty simple, too: Don’t commit the crime!
“Pretty standard, though: When you commit a crime, all the reasonably anticipatable consequences of that crime are on you, because you shouldn’t have committed the crime, and they wouldn’t have happened if you hadn’t. The way to avoid being subject to this sort of liability is pretty simple, too: Don’t commit the crime! ”
Sounds like everyone convicted with respect to the insurrection should be held to account for the death of Ashli Babbitt. That the proper authorities might need to shoot a violent insurrectionist at a Capitol under siege is obviously foreseeable.
Carry on, clingers.
The Felony Murder Rule is the second most outrageous thing in US criminal law, second only to the death penalty.
What, no hate for real offense sentencing?
🙂
My number 3 was going to be either the ability of prosecutors to get rid of jurors who might actually vote to acquit or the ability of prosecutors to prevent the defendant from having a bench trial if they want one.
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts abolished felony murder a few years ago. California limited it by statute.
There are two general forms of felony murder out there. The California version makes felons liable for any death during the commission of a crime. The Massachusetts version upgrades manslaughter to murder.
I still don’t buy Felony Murder properly comports with the actus/mens requirement. Never did, since Criminal Law class.
Exactly. It involves convicting someone of a crime they didn’t do and didn’t want.
No, it treats the decision to do a crime that could result in a death as providing that mens requirement. It still has to be a crime a reasonable person would understand carries a risk of somebody dying.
In the immediate case, they were not only aware of that risk, they’d planned for it: They’d come armed!
Mens rea for murder requires specific intent in all other cases – otherwise it’s homicide.
Except here.
And of course there is no actus. Doing a risky thing is not alone sufficient actus.
Drunk driving? Reckless driving? Reckless endangerment? There are all sorts of crimes that literally consist entirely of “doing a risky thing”.
And of course, felony murder requires you to do something that is itself already a crime.
I can’t say I understand your position here at all.
Driving while drunk is not a risk, you’ve 100% driven while drunk. And you get convicted of such.
Committing a felony with a gun you never use gets you convicted for a murder you did not commit.
I’m not following you at all. Your claim was that “doing something risky” can’t serve as the conduct that constitutes a crime. It can, and it routinely does.
Doing something that risks outcome A does not generally get you convicted for outcome A unless outcome A comes to pass.
Well, yeah, and these two wouldn’t have been charged with felony murder if nobody had died. But they might well have been charged with carrying a gun in the commission of a felony.
But the causal link does not exist! Someone else did the murder!
With some pretty minor changes, it sounds like you’re describing like vehicular homicide. I’d be fine if it was a homicide charge.
Is “depraved indifference” specific intent? I had never thought so, and in NY at least, DI gets you 2nd Degree Murder. Committing a felony that is serious enough to trigger the possibility of felony murder is close enough to DI that I am not going to lose a lot of sleep over the injustice of it.
I can see the argument in situations where any felony, even “minor” non-violent ones, can trigger a felony murder charge, but I am not sure how many states (if any) have such laws.
Yes, gross recklessness does count as sufficient mens for intent crimes in some jurisdictions, though it is not the common rule.
Still not getting you to FM, though.
Closest I ever saw was statutory rape.
Your comments are usually fairly informed; this one is not. Implied malice murder is a theory of liability for murder that is widespread and well established. Your misunderstanding is quite common, and exactly the reason that in every purely implied malice case I took to trial, I started voir dire with “raise your hand if you think that in order to be guilty of murder, a person has to actually intend to kill the person he or she wound up killing.”
FM is implied malice.
Depraved heart is pretty rare, I was taught.
To be fair, I practiced crim only in clinic, and it was all car thefts. This is academic.
The theory is that intent to commit the antecedent felony furnishes the culpable mental state for felony murder.
Yes, we all (well, most of us) understand that. We just think it’s bullshit.
Yes, and if they shot someone with those weapons by all means try them for murder.
The felony murder rule makes sense in some limited circumstances: it avoids burden of proof problems in cases in which there are multiple felons, who commit obviously violent crimes. Otherwise, all three defendants who rob a liquor store point the finger at each other, and say the other guy pulled the trigger (no one is convicted of murder, because you can’t meet the burden of proof as to any individual defendant).
The felony murder rule makes the least sense in cases similar to this post, in which the shooting is done by a third party, and the “victim” is one of the original perps. I recall that the law school example was the case of two robbers with fake guns, where the cops shoot and kill one of the robbers and then charge the other with felony murder.
The answer is probably to restrict the doctrine to very limited cases, and rely principally on sentence enhancement rules in which other violent felonies are punished much more harshly when a death results.
No, it makes perfect sense in cases like this, because nobody would have been shot were it not for the crime. And since you have no right to commit crimes in the first place, ALL the consequences are on you if you commit one anyway.
At least you are consistent.
But please explain why you find it outrageous that the accomplice is charged with 2nd degree murder
Brett is not at all consistent. Everything he says about guns, crime, and punishment is conditioned on a bizarre twist of cognition which assigns a status of, “law-abiding,” to gun wielders he wants exonerated. On that basis Brett supposes they, and only they, can do no wrong. If a, “law abiding,” gun wielder kills an unarmed non-assailant, because the gun wielder mistakenly thought he was under threat, his surprisingly durable, “law-abiding,” status negates any charge of criminality.
Against that guy, you will never hear Brett say what he says above, “In the immediate case, they were not only aware of that risk, they’d planned for it: They’d come armed!”
“tried to break into an apartment”
Home invasions are very, very dangerous. If you are part of one, you are a very dangerous person.
Isn’t gun ownership great?
Yes, it can be. The guy in the apartment would not have been able to defend himself otherwise against those 3 men.
Would you have preferred him being beaten to death instead?
“Liberals'” hearts bleed . . . for violent criminals.
It’s not like these people wouldn’t be going to jail. But I like the crime to fit the action.
“But I like the crime to fit the action.”
Guy (Jeff Wood) waits in the car while his armed accomplice goes into a gas station to steal a safe and ends up shooting and killing the station clerk with a .22. Wood was a willing accomplice to an armed robbery which ended up in a dead clerk. What should the criminal charge be?
How about those guys who were found guilty of murder in the Arbery case?
Personally, I don’t have much trouble with either case except that Wood was sentenced to death (and is still on death row). But that’s a capital punishment issue, not a felony murder issue.
I mean, voluntary manslaughter would satisfy, no?
Isn’t gun ownership great?
It certainly is when it affords an innocent party to defend their lives/limbs from violent criminals. What about that do you object to?
The part where law abiding citizens lie trembling in their beds because they’re afraid a gun-carrying criminal might break into their home.
Those law abiding citizens outnumber the people you suggest they’re afraid of about a thousand to one. And the criminals victimize dozens a year.
Say there’s a 50-50 chance of the criminal or the law abiding citizen dying in an encounter. The criminal lasts a couple months, most citizens never even face the risk.
Crime, the sort with victims, is only a viable career because the odds are enormously in favor of the criminal. Equalize things even a little, and it becomes impossibly risky for the criminal, while the risk to individual law abiding citizens doesn’t go up any, because the rate of crime drops.
What an idiot fantasy. And especially so for a gun enthusiast who preens himself publicly for his gun sophistication. You know what happens when two armed would-be assailants confront one another? The one with the initiative to get the drop on the other wins. Same thing, but more so, with one armed assailant and one would-be armed defender.
Don’t be a dim bulb, Brett. This nation is already saturated with guns, albeit a bit unevenly geographically. Where are more gun crimes committed? In places most saturated with guns. Would-be armed assailants attack more often in Louisiana than they do in Massachusetts. If Massachusetts were free to pass the gun controls its citizens would vote for, and able to police its borders to make that regime effective, the presently low rate of gun crime would drop to near-zero.
Violent crime is on our minds at home. We distrust everyone, we fight anxiety, bitterness, we want to engage people like we once did, we want to gather with folks in our home, share coffee and cocktails, we want to create a community of supportive friends. But the divisiveness in the country dating back to Hillary’s poisonous comment of the 1990s “vast right wing conspiracy against my husband” started it all. We learned after he left the White House that Bill Clinton was back then a moral cripple, a master of deceit and a grifter’s grifter. He fooled us all considering we voted for him. Bush and Bush were weak men but not divisive. Obama caused a breakdown between us and law enforcement, blacks vs everyone else including Hispanics like me, Trump was unhinged, and Biden’s handlers happily lob attacks at everyone they see as a critic
We are scared, upset, disgusted with our politicians (both sides of the aisle), and as an immigrant I no longer recognize America
Today I will go to work with my 9 mm on my person with my concealed weapon permit, a recent development
That is what is on our mind at home.
Basically, you’re telling me that the US has degraded into a permanent low-level civil war between everybody and everybody else. Sounds like a positive paradise to live in. Fortunately, I understand, you can vote with your feet…
The left has been waging a low-grade civil war here for decades. They were bombing the US Capitol more than 50 years ago, and haven’t stopped since. Second-generation civil warriors are now thwarting law enforcement across the country.
Meanwhile, the right has been arming to the teeth with weapons that would make your average Somali warlord salivate.
Meanwhile, the right has been arming to the teeth with weapons that would make your average Somali warlord salivate.
We were convinced of your fundamental ignorance long ago. There’s no reason to beat it into the ground.
The left is not so much waging a low-grade civil war as continuing to fight against the right’s continuation of the actual Civil War,
“the divisiveness in the country dating back to Hillary’s poisonous comment of the 1990s “vast right wing conspiracy against my husband” started it all”
Yeah, it wasn’t the people peddling video tapes accusing Hillary of murdering Vince Foster and such, it was her for commenting on the efforts. Good grief.
She pulled off an amazing con job on Democrats, actually convincing them that the reason she’d been in continual low level legal trouble since being a local figure in Arkansas is that the Republican party had identified her early on as a Presidential prospect, and set out to smear her starting when she was a nobody. The “vast right-wing conspiracy”.
When the reality is that she’s just corrupt, and really good at avoiding being convicted.
Vince Foster almost certainly did commit suicide, of course, but that suicide note stank on ice. Typed, then torn up, with the missing piece being the one that would have been signed? And suicide is a profoundly selfish act, who complains in a suicide not that their employer is being mistreated?
I suspect Hillary just saw her chance, and provided the note. But, of course, can’t prove it.
Does the fact that thirty years of Republican investigations after which nothing has stuck make it occur to you that maybe there really never has been anything there? Either GOP investigators are totally incompetent (which granted can’t be ruled out) or she’s a criminal genius the likes of which have never before been seen.
I’m not saying she’s a paragon of virtue. She isn’t. I’ve known her for thirty years and I trust her about as far as I could throw her Secret Service detail. But still, thirty years of investigations and nothing to show for it?
If the investigations had come up empty, I might have been persuaded there was nothing there. But they mostly didn’t come up empty, people around the Clintons ended up convicted.
And do you really believe that they couldn’t find the Rose law firm billing records, and then they just sort of mysteriously showed up a couple days after the statute of limitations expired? Are you honestly going to say that they weren’t refusing to comply with the subpoena? Or that they had no reason to slow walk it until the legal consequences went away?
Have you actually read the Rose law firm billing records? If so, please tell us what was in them that actually put dirt on Hillary.
I agree that the timing smacks of obstructionism, but obstruction of what? That there’s nothing in the billing records that puts dirt on Hillary doesn’t mean the GOP wouldn’t have put them under the microscope to find other frivolous things to investigate.
I think THEY clearly thought they had a good reason for obstructing the investigation, or why did they bother, when the obstruction itself placed them at some legal jeopardy?
I repeat, people around the Clintons were continually ending up in jail, I guess you’re just convinced that they were innocent people who spent a lot of time around crooks.
Again, I’m not arguing the Clintons were pure, but any records they turned over would simply have resulted in more frivolous investigations. Any good lawyer can take any answer to a question and turn it into ten more questions. And I don’t think it’s unreasonable to defend yourself by giving them the least amount of ammunition possible.
And I’m not sure it’s a fair statement that the “people around the Clintons were continually ending up in jail.” The McDougals went to jail; there were one or two others. But it wasn’t like Watergate in which the convicted felon count was in the dozens.
OK, I went back and looked. Fifteen people were convicted of Whitewater related crimes, so my memory isn’t what it used to be.
You and me, too. You and me, too.
My point is simply that the Clintons didn’t get a rep for corruption because of a smear campaign. They got it by repeatedly being involved in things that had other people going to jail, and things that had no rational explanation except corruption. Like Hillary making a small fortune day trading in a commodity she knew nothing about, entirely in transactions structured to leave no records, with a broker who is known to have manipulated trades to launder money to people.
I couldn’t care less about ancient Clinton alleged scandals, but I believe the theory on those records is this:
– The Clintons weren’t going to risk providing doctored records to a court, but they were up to saying they couldn’t find them.
– Afterward, when it’s no longer a legal risk, “find” some cleaned up records and make them public.
C’mon. In the UK palance they were impeding the course of justice. Agreed not so v=badly to be convicted in a court of law. But why defend them? Unless there are partisan political reasons.
Call a sleaze a sleaze and move on.
Because Republicans keep resurrecting them whenever they need a whataboutism to invoke whenever Trump’s peccadilloes are being discussed. Some people think that any discussion of Trump’s bad behavior can be answered with “But what about the Clintons”. Never mind that Whitewater was 30 years ago and Trump is still a current threat.
I have called the Clintons sleazy since they came out of Arkansas. I am tired of getting back Clinton answers when with equal accuracy I call right-wingers sleazy.
Sure Brett, all the investigations against Hillary, with no convictions (or even indictments) just demonstrates her corruption, but all the investigations against Trump just show how unusually clean he is! What kind of a mind thinks like this?
“I suspect Hillary just saw her chance, and provided the note. But, of course, can’t prove it.”
Oh, that kind of guy.
But hey, it’s on Hillary for noting the monumental effort to smear her and Bill.
“I suspect Hillary just saw her chance, and provided the note. But, of course, can’t prove it.”
I suspect you are an expert at autofellatio. But of course, I can’t prove it.
I do love how Brett is all about Trump being innocent until proven guilty, but Hillary he’s convicted in the court of having read a lot of really suggestive opinion pieces.
“Yeah, it wasn’t the people peddling video tapes accusing Hillary of murdering Vince Foster and such, it was her for commenting on the efforts. Good grief.”
Don’t forget a certain well-known moral reprobate who got rich by investigating Foster’s death after it had already been investigated to death.
Did Brett Kavanaugh get rich off that?
“Did Brett Kavanaugh get rich off that?”
Depends on your definition of rich, but, yes, he made a nice bit of change.
Let’s say it made him a success.
You sound like a disaffected, antisocial, paranoid right-wing loser.
Thank goodness the liberal-libertarian mainstream’s victory in the culture war relegates people like you to the muttering, bitter irrelevance they deserve in modern America.
A New York appellate justice has denied Donald Trump´s initial application for a stay on the $10,000 per day penalty for failure to produce documents pursuant to the Attorney General´s subpoena and referred the matter to a full bench for determination. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/21851189-trumpcontemptappellatestaydenial
Pursuing that appeal may become quite costly for Trump. I wonder why he doesn´t just produce the documents in question or submit a proper affidavit explaining his alleged inability to do so.
Quite costly? Not as a price for running out the clock. And Trump can raise whatever he has to pay from political contributions.
Until Justice officials are willing to put Trump in handcuffs, and courts are willing to deny bail, Trump will defy justice with impunity. He can sue to delay everything until he dies.
Trump has shown the nation lacks any legal process to stand up against a rich and determined scofflaw tyrant. That ought to be corrected.
Do you actually believe this? Out of all the countless investigations and claims that Trump has defied the law not a single one has even come close to be an indictment. In fact, the indictments that have come out of these investigations are probably some of the lamest “process” crimes the federal government has ever prosecuted.
Maybe here is what is actually going on. Trump is a businessman that sold a bunch of people his product (a Presidential campaign) and they bought it (the cost to them was zero dollars so why not). What he delivered was his usual completion of contract – a substandard product that fit all the specs but ultimately failed to be of any quality. Then, he went on to the next thing. This was his MO is business so why not politics as well? And if he was just a businessman selling a political one liner, why break the law? Lawbreaking is really bad for business. Businessmen don’t (knowingly) do it because they realize the liability involved in doing so. Politicians though don’t have that same realization so break the law with impunity (look at the Clinton Crime Syndicate for example). But Trump isn’t a politician. He is a businessman. He runs a different grift that doesn’t involve breaking the law.
They believe if they just investigate their political opponents enough, they will find a crime to imprison them for.
Pretty typical for a Leftist, frankly.
From the people that brought you dozens of investigations into Hillary. Every accusation is a confession!
The only time a law enforcement investigation Hillary Clinton became public Democrat federal workers ran to the podium to declare “no reasonable prosecutor would find this criminal” and shutdown the investigation.
Uh, James Comey is no Democrat. His shenanigans with Andrew Weiner’s laptop likely got Donald Trump elected.
He was a lifelong GOP operative, like Mueller. If anything the left should be the ones screaming about possible coverup.
I don’t like this paranoia. Dumb does not mean evil.
I think neither is particularly partisan, but both are also not very savvy when it comes to the right-wing propaganda machine, which used them both to good effect.
*Anthony
Right. Thank you.
You must have forgotten all those Congressional investigations into Hillary/Benghai, or the Whitewater investigation (special counsel run wild!), etc.
“He runs a different grift that doesn’t involve breaking the law.”
ROTFLHOL
The entire purpose & point of having power for Donald Trump is getting away with stuff that is illegal or immoral or crude. Or some combination thereof. Oh, and bullying people. There is a long trail of people that Trump stiffed & cheated. The man lies about almost anything to prove he can. Trump is a lifelong conman.
But you & I obviously live in different alternate universes.
Gotta remind you that “immoral or crude” ain’t “illegal”, which means you can legally be immoral and crude.
And “illegal” is the part you guys keep failing to demonstrate, remember?
Words with meanings are racist. The dictionary will just change the definition to fit whatever the leftwing activist said last night.
At $10K a day, that’s $3.65M a year, chump change for a billionaire. If they want the sanctions to move him, they’ll have to move the decimal point over one or two places.
But, what Jimmy said: As often as Trump has been investigated, with nothing coming out of it, you’d think by now you’d have figured out that he’s actually unusually clean for a politician.
It’s not even like the Clintons, where people take the fall for them, then conveniently die in solitary so that there aren’t any deathbed confessions, or evidence of criminality is handed over a day after the statute of limitations expires. In Trump’s case they spend millions investigating and just keep coming up empty.
“It’s not even like the Clintons, where people take the fall for them, then conveniently die in solitary so that there aren’t any deathbed confessions, or evidence of criminality is handed over a day after the statute of limitations expires. ”
It’s all conspiracy, all the time with these folks. But yeah, Hillary started the divisiveness when she said there were these conspiracy people out to get them…
Ten thousand dollars per day is significantly greater than the cost of merely complying with the subpoenas. The trial judge laid out the specifics of what a proper affidavit explaining the absence of records would include. What is Trump’s motivation to appeal rather than comply? Apart from sheer delay, that is.
I don’t know what his motivation is. I’m just pointing out that the sanction is the wrong scale to motivate a guy with his money.
Don’t you mean “billionaire”?
Take it up with Forbes.
You mean, we didn’t know that after Jeffrey Epstein was “punished” by imprisonment in his South Florida mansion?
If you spent the last year filling your social media thread with articles backing vaccine mandates and “show your papers” regulations dismissing the concerns of people who wanted to make their own medical decisions and now are tweeting about “women should be able to decide what to do with their bodies” you either have some inner soul searching to do or should start to realize you are just a useful idiot for the latest leftist scam.
Cognitive dissonance is a thing.
People, especially activists, can hold two contradictory positions at the same time without any pain upstairs. Republicans are equally guilty.
You have it right.
Yeah, there’s certainly no discernible difference in the two (vaccination for a communicable disease and abortion)! Useful idiots there be but closer than you think…
Babies are a sexually transmitted disease that can usually be prevented by proper medication.
Yes, wearing a mask and getting a vaccination are about like forced pregnancy and birth.
Just like this leak is about like January 06.
These new analogies the right are making seem to be a new level of areality, evident to everyone but themselves.
More classic hair splitting by Sarcastro. Could you even attempt to be more disingenuous when it comes to being a liberal hack?
The right to bodily integrity only includes the right to end what is human life that is in vitro. Once any human is walking and talking they can be forced to inject any substance into their body. No rights for you.
Who has advocated forcible administration of any vaccine? Please be specific.
What, you think grabbing somebody and sticking a needle in them while they’re strapped down is the only thing that counts as force? Threatening to render somebody unemployed doesn’t count?
So all conditions of employment should be illegal? Or just the ones you disagree with.
forced pregnancy
What the actual fuck are you on about? No law is forcing women to get pregnant, you mendacious twat. If you want to make a point about rape exceptions (which I support) or something, do it.
Wearing a mask is like wearing a condom or using birth control. It’s your choice, and if you decide not to protect yourself, then you might have to suffer the consequences.
Did they not teach you during your service that no methods of birth control are 100 percent effective?
I just love how quickly the Left just kicked the trannies to the curb now that there is a real women’s issue they can agitate on.
It’s all fake. Every bit of it.
Who is kicking anyone to the curb, and in what manner? Please be specific.
How many of the voices that you see and hear on this abortion debate are parsing and dissecting their gendered language like we’ve seen for the past two years?
No media or political leader is out there demanding justice for “Birthing people’s right to abortion”. Complete erasure of transes.
Clearly this guy has his pulse on leftist America!
Can men get pregnant, Queen?
People that identified as women but now do so as men? Sure.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/apr/20/the-dad-who-gave-birth-pregnant-trans-freddy-mcconnell
“identified”
I don’t think you are a real queen. Should we treat you as one?
‘If you call a dog’s tail a leg, how many legs does it have? ‘ and then answered his own query: ‘Four, because calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one,’”
So why are all these angry Democrats calling it a women’s issue?
Well, it depends on what the meaning of “is” — I mean “woman” — is. In this context, who is or is not a biologist? In a different context, are they biologists, or does the definition of “woman” depend strongly on context?
Gosh, it’s almost like the strawman that conservatives constructed of “wokeism” was never based in reality!
Where’s the strawman?
It’s actually more an example of one can only fight so many battles at a time. That abortion has now moved to the top of the list in terms of urgencies doesn’t means trans issues are no longer there.
I’m specifically referring to the language chosen to fight this battle.
For the past umpteen years we were all harassed and harangued about the trans-harming use of “cis-normative” language. Trans-women are women, we were told. Men can get pregnant, we were told.
Now all of a sudden that concern has vanished, *poof*, gone. The language police have suddenly gone blind, deaf, and dumb.
Suppose that language were still being used. Abortion proponents are now fighting a two-front war, for abortion rights, and also for language. Tactically, abortion is more important right this minute than language, but it doesn’t mean that will always be the case. Fighting the language war would do nothing more than sap resources from the abortion fight.
If you’re a battlefield medic, and you’ve got a soldier who’s going to die in five minutes if you don’t tend to his wounds, and another soldier with a superficial arm wound, that you care for the first one first does not mean you don’t care about the second one. It means you understand the concept of prioritizing.
You can’t bother that guy with such nuance.
So Democrat political expediency calls for the erasure of trans people and it’s okay because of nuance and triage and prioritization and real actual women’s right to choose is way more important than the mental health and destigmatization of transes.
Can Republican political expediency erase transes too, or is the call of “TrAnS RighTz R HuMaN RigHTZ” too strong?
OK, so you don’t understand the basic arguments being made.
I understand that you incorrectly believe there is some substantive difference between the term “political expediency” and “tactically”.
Only to the extent that any tactic is an expedient. But that you think this somehow erases trans people demonstrates you don’t understand the basic argument.
Gotta always be in a fight against regular Americans, though. Peace is never on the table.
Please stop pretending that social conservatives are regular Americans. A majority of Americans live on the coasts and completely disagree with you on the culture wars.
“Please stop pretending that social conservatives are regular Americans.”
What are they, K_2. The level of your polemics seems to sink lower every day.
But for substance just what are they? and Why you’re at it, what are illegal immigrants?
Call this a hit and run if you’re scared to answer directly. I don’t give a damn.
In this specific context I am defining “regular Americans” as a majority of Americans. (It means other things in other contexts.) In point of fact, a majority of Americans think abortion should be legal. Maybe not up until the baby’s head hits the birth canal, but they certainly don’t support the flat bans from the moment of conception the red states are currently implementing.
But I’m also defining it as a majority of *all* Americans taken as a whole. Most Americans live in blue areas where support for abortion rights is stronger than it is in flyover country. Most Americans are also good with gay marriage and, depending on the specific issue, with at least some trans rights as well.
And it’s dishonest rhetoric to pretend, as Ben did in the comment that I was responding to, that “regular Americans” are social conservatives. Nope, not by a long shot. This is a perfect example of the political minority running things because of anti-democratic institutions.
Your reply is rank dishonesty and Humpty-Dumptyism just as your previous response was pure whataboutism.
You have no interest in honest discourse.
Bye
Yet another drive by. I will assume that if you had any actual arguments to make, you would have made them.
So… no argument on the part about how you/they always, always, always have to find something to fight about.
Human nature is such that nobody needs to go looking for something to fight about. We’ve been fighting since we and the chimpanzees diverged from our common ancestor and likely will continue to do so until the sun expands and swallows up the earth.
Even Putin tries to offer better justifications than that.
I flatly disagree with your premise that my side went looking for this fight. Since abortion is the immediate issue being disputed, I’d say that one started when busybodies decided to poke their noses in the reproductive rights of women.
You specifically said above:
“one can only fight so many battles at a time”
And you were talking about “trans issues” up there. So yeah, that’s a fight that leftists decided they wanted to fight — against regular people who don’t think they should cater to that sort of thing.
Sometimes fighting is defensive; I’m sure the Ukrainians can explain that to you.
Just to check, trans people are not “regular people”?
Regular people are not fighting a war with reality they can never change.
Democrats picked an excellent time to jump to the far left. Inflation, crime, masks, education, border crisis, Afghanistan*.
Now abortion will be jettisoned with them in Nov. In Dec, Republicans will say “look people voted with us on abortion.” Of course its not true, people are angry about the 17 other things the democrats screwed up. But Dems did this to themselves, so I have not pity.
*Probably going to add Ukraine to this list. Putin is not out of Ukraine, yet. The narrative will be we did not do enough during the run up and did not do enough during the war.
But people WILL vote with them on abortion in a lot of states. You think those legislatures are enacting abortion laws because they’re unpopular?
The states where abortion is popular, it will be legal, repealing Roe doesn’t change that. The states where abortion is unpopular, it becomes illegal, and that’s popular, because, again, they’re states where abortion is unpopular.
You should distinguish between people who have an opinion on abortion and people who care strongly about it. The first kind will answer a poll question and forget about the issue at election time. Those polls tell you abortion and “Roe v. Wade” (whatever that means) are popular. The second kind is throwing pig fetuses and waving coat hangers. Maybe writing headlines about mass murder and the imminent banning of abortion nationwide. They vote based on abortion and have outsized influence on abortion policy because their votes can be won or lost with one policy shift.
I talked to a guy of the second kind once. He was a libertarian on basically every issue except abortion. Abortion was enough to keep him a Republican.
????
100%
The point is, not enough. The liberal white moms voting on abortion are the same SJW clamoring for no bail and gun control.
Election will be driven by pocketbook issues like inflation. Aggressive rioting and protesting will probably result in the same backlash we saw from the BLM riots, it will hurt more than help the progs.
A very large strategic problem on the left, they don’t know how to persuade people they only know how to bully people.
I happen to support abortion rights, but its going down in flames. Like I said, the left did it to themselves.
” A very large strategic problem on the left, they don’t know how to persuade people they only know how to bully people. ”
That would explain why Republican candidates get more votes than Democratic candidates about once every 30 years or so in national elections.
Just not enough uneducated bigots left in America to keep the right-wingers afloat electorally much longer.
The walls are closing in on the conspiracy behind collusion hoax: https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/john-durham-scores-two-major-court-wins-ahead-clinton
Judge Cooper came to the obvious conclusion that the Clinton campaign’s claims of privilege were far-fetched, and also compelled one of the Fusion GPS drones to testify about the scam.
No one will be held to account. At least among the Federal Class. No federal participants will ever be held to account.
They never are.
” At least among the Federal Class”{
A nonsense term for a nonsense person.
Lol, Justthenews.com….These people. I mean, say what you will but at least Charlie didn’t run around behind Lucy begging her to hold the ball for him to kick…
This keeps blipping on my radar, and every time I wonder if anything new has actually come out – and, nope, it’s just some more churn of exactly the same issue. Durham makes a court filing to rile up the MAGA rats, they get all excited on demand, rinse and repeat.
At the core of this is just a question of a distinction between providing “legal advice” and providing “opposition research,” and in what role some person was claiming to be acting when he approached the FBI with a “tip.” Nothing that has “come out” since the guy was initially indicted has meaningfully changed that basic question; everything since has been just new court filings predicated on the old. And none of it has anything to do with Trump’s conspiracy to collude with Russia to influence the election in 2016 (to say nothing of his efforts to manipulate foreign policy to help himself in 2020, or to overthrow the government to avoid having to leave office).
Damn, the cognitive dissonance is strong here. The Russia Collusion Hoax was debunked years ago. The entire “FBI Tip” was a lie fabricated by the Clinton Campaign.
As I understand it, the claim that GPS Fusion was providing legal advice isn’t just pretext, it’s pretext they officially denied in a separate legal filing.
But, of course, the current fight is just to get at the evidence, assuming no spoliation. The real fun begins when Durham gets it.
https://twitter.com/GavinNewsom/status/1521934666877464577?cxt=HHwWgsCr6YLh_54qAAAA
“If men could get pregnant, this wouldn’t even be a conversation.”
lmao bye bye trannies
Obviously the whole feminist “if men” line is meant to be a zinger, but do they really think that?
Men tend to be inclined to be duty bound. Even if it produces a negative personal consequence for them, they will “man up” (and society at least mimics this expectation) and do what needs to be done. Broke the law and get caught? Confess and do your time. Knock up the girlfriend? Do the right thing and marry her and take care of the kid. Just for two more commonplace examples.
If men could get pregnant would they really flee to abortion doctors to undo their poor decision. Or would they “man up” and have the kid because it was the right moral, duty bound thing to do?
They’ve been telling us for the past few years that men can get pregnant. They’re even putting menstrual products in men’s restrooms.
That would be a stronger argument if conservatives weren’t simultaneously waging a war on trans people.
I don’t get your point. Are you arguing that because conservatives are “waging war on trans people” that it’s okay that Democrats today erase them in the abortion debate?
Where “waging war” consists of telling them, “You’re a dude, dude. No, you don’t get to join the women’s swim team. ‘Cause you’re a dude.”
Yes.
That’s your idea of “waging war”, refusing to humor a delusion?
LOL, I know. That is really quite some war being waged.
To trans people, furiously and performatively committing to denying they exist is pretty serious business.
What? They obviously exist. It’s just that they’re not what they say they are.
I mean, anorexics exist, even if you refuse to pretend that they’re obese. Same thing here.
Blithely telling someone that who they think they are is actually them being crazy is something they would take seriously.
Saying that about a whole group, despite what they say (and some neuroscience), is indeed something like a war on that population.
You may think it’s a righteous war, but make no mistake you’re trying to wipe them out as a people because you think they have no right to exist, but are instead defective humans.
I love how all of a sudden we’re back to the caveman days of “women brains” and “men’s brains”.
Next up “black brains” and “white brains”.
“Saying that about a whole group, despite what they say (and some neuroscience), is indeed something like a war on that population.”
Words are violence, disagreement is a war. Gotta love the left.
If it were only words, I’d agree. But there’s plenty of laws about trans folks now.
“You may think it’s a righteous war, but make no mistake you’re trying to wipe them out as a people because you think they have no right to exist,”
God, are you ever stupid sometimes. I think the leftism rots your brain.
I’m not trying to wipe out people who are deluded about their sex, I don’t think they have no right to exist. I just don’t think they have a right to have other people humor their delusions.
You do you, but leave me out of it.
For a moment Brett, just a moment, consider the point of view of someone who is trans.
What does your ‘I only mean lets not accommodate’ policy look like to them?
That looks like some heavy oppression. The kind of oppression used on ‘undesirables’ that yeah, acts a lot like war on a population. Think of the Jews.
And you’re one of the moderates who doesn’t want to send them to camps.
“That looks like some heavy oppression. The kind of oppression used on ‘undesirables’ that yeah, acts a lot like war on a population.”
Telling a person who is male but self-identifies as being more comfortable with female gender roles in society that he doesn’t deserve a medal because he can lift more weight than women is then kind of “heavy operation used on undesirables?
Come off it. You don’t really believe that.
“If it were only words, I’d agree. But there’s plenty of laws about trans folks now.”
But you were talking about words.
Do these people have the same obligation to consider everyone else’s perspectives as you’d ask/demand be done for them?
“That looks like some heavy oppression. The kind of oppression used on ‘undesirables’ that yeah, acts a lot like war on a population. Think of the Jews.
And you’re one of the moderates who doesn’t want to send them to camps.”
Oh, yeah, it’s SO oppressive, telling a guy that he can’t join the women’s swim team and display his junk in the locker room just because he up and decided he’s a girl. One step short of Zyklon B, really.
Are you even reading what you’re typing?
By your theory, every atheist out there is waging war on the religious, just by saying there’s no God. (Cue Gretta voice) How dare they!
Look, Sarcastro: You’ve got a right to claim you’re a girl, despite the external genitalia and beard. Hell, call yourself Napoleon and tuck your hand in your shirt, if you want!
What you don’t have, is a right that other people play along with the joke. Because, they have rights, too! Your delusions don’t in any way, shape, or form obligate them. Not even in the slightest.
And, no, it isn’t just basic good manners to agree with the anorexic that they’re fat, or salute let the guy who claims he’s a girl keep that women’s swimming trophy. There’s no moral or social obligation to accommodate madness, or allow yourself to be manipulated by crazy, obviously false claims.
it’s SO oppressive, telling a guy that he can’t join the women’s swim team and display his junk in the locker room just because he up and decided he’s a girl. One step short of Zyklon B, really.
Yes, the policies someone that talks like this want aren’t hostile at all! No malice here!
It’s not like trans people need conforming health care or anything life-threatening like that!
Yeah, I listen to myself – do you listen to yourself? Because you’re full on in ‘are we the baddies?’ mode now.
I wouldn’t call it ‘waging war,’ but in many contexts telling someone you’re just refusing to humor their delusion when said delusion involves their identity is called being a very large asshole to that person. I mean, I doubt you go out of your way to tell women around you exactly how they look in ‘this outfit,’ or that dyed blondes are not blondes, or that ones with plastic surgery don’t really have the nose they now they have (they have their birth nose, of course!), etc.
You may want to rethink that analogy…
If a dyed blonde was demanding I call her a true blonde, I surely wouldn’t oblige.
You know, reality and stuff like that.
Is a woman who doesn’t want to share a prison cell with a man a very large asshole?
How about a woman who doesn’t want to cede victory to a man in women’s sports?
What war? Be explicit.
I had trans employees thirty years ago and never gave it a second thought when I was made aware of it.
Men tend to be inclined to be duty bound. Even if it produces a negative personal consequence for them, they will “man up” (and society at least mimics this expectation) and do what needs to be done. Broke the law and get caught? Confess and do your time. Knock up the girlfriend? Do the right thing and marry her and take care of the kid. Just for two more commonplace examples.
Can I have some of whatever it is you’re smoking?
Yeah, that’s the societal expectation, but is often violated, especially the confess and do your time bit, because, spoiler: Crimes are mostly committed by habitual criminals.
But the societal expectation is enforced legally, remember: You father a child, even if you used birth control and she fished the condom out of the trash can to inseminate herself? You’re on the hook for child support.
They will hook you on child support even if you weren’t the father, but took on a fatherly role.
But that’s not what JTD said.
“Men tend to be inclined to be duty bound.”
Lol, comedy gold. Male privilege + masturbation.
I think it varies by generation.
If men could get pregnant would they really flee to abortion doctors to undo their poor decision. Or would they “man up” and have the kid because it was the right moral, duty bound thing to do?
Strong incel vibes.
Man makes valid point so why not revert to name calling. Going to include he probably has a small penis, is bald, and a loser?
You need to look up what vibes mean.
And no, a counterfactual and ignoring deadbeat dads is not a good argument.
Don’t exaggerate. I strongly doubt the percentage of incels among regular commenters at the Volokh Conspiracy is much higher than 33%.
Disaffected, antisocial, bigoted clingers? Probably not above 70%,
Maybe 75%.
Carry on, clingers. So far as your betters permit, anyway.
Knock up the girlfriend? Do the right thing and marry her and take care of the kid. Just for two more commonplace examples.
Fucking hilarious.
Many years ago I had an investment in a DNA testing company. A lot of our business was court-ordered paternity testing.
Guess what? When the mother named the father, and the suspect denied it, the mother was right about 99% of the time.
“Do the right thing and marry her?” No. Lots of men don’t do that at all. Lots of them run in the opposite direction.
Did you ever think that those cases are the exception and not the rule for very good reason? That is because a man who marries his girlfriend and provides for a family creates no actual controversy. When “normal” things happen they are just a blip on the radar.
But, hey, here is one time I did something where one thing happened. So that justifies my entire world view. And then everyone clapped, right?
Cancel Newsom!
If I hypothesised that a group within the Federalist Society years ago began identifying anti-abortion judges who would be prepared to lie about their opposition under oath so that they could be placed on SCOTUS, and then would overturn Roe once those judges were in a majority on SCOTUS, what evidence would you bring to reject that hypothesis?
All these people complaining about the recent SCOTUS confirmation hearings should really get another hobby. I didn’t go back and check, but I would bet dollars to doughnuts that no one currently sitting on the Supreme Court said anything specific about how they would vote on a specific issue. And that’s exactly how it should be. Judicial nominees shouldn’t say how they will vote on specific issues, and politicians shouldn’t ask them. Just because some lying politicians then and now redefined the nominees’ statements as a promise not to overturn Roe v. Wade doesn’t mean that that’s what it was, or that it would be good to hold them to that promise even if such a promise was made.
There are plenty of reasons to argue against Alito’s draft opinion that doesn’t involve misrepresenting judicial ethics or confirmation hearings. Personally I’d start somehwere about here: https://twitter.com/PietEeckhout/status/1521909831770255361
Well said, Martinned
The fact that nobody lied, for one. The fact that you’ve otherwise posited a nonfalsifiable conspiracy theory, for two.
When a potential justice states categorically that Roe is settled law, and then votes to overturn it, then in any moral universe, they’re lying. Enough with this mealy-mouthed defending. BTW that gullible idiot Susan Collins claims that she was lied to.
I suppose if you wanted to make a case for the defence – dishonest, but nonetheless a defence – you could argue that at the time they said that Re was settled, they believed it but now they’ve changed their mind, but no-one with any real-world understanding would believe that.
As far as “conspiracy theory” goes – I am not saying that this happened, I am asking only that if I were to hypothesise it, what could you say to disprove it? If you cannot, then it doesn’t prove the hypothesis but it does mean that you have no evidentiary basis for rejecting it. And I note that – unlike true conspiracy theories – what we observe is consistent with it.
Just admit that they lied but as it was in a righteous Christian cause, you’re fine with it.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but SCOTUS overturn settled law all the time. 15 years ago it was settled law that there was no constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Sotomayor said that Heller was settled law in her confirmation hearings, then voted to overturn it a year later.
Was she lying?
I don’t know the case
I assume he’s referring to her dissent in McDonald v Chicago.
MCDONALD ET AL. v. CITY OF CHICAGO, ILLINOIS,
ET AL.
The dissent is quite open about rejecting Heller as wrongly decided.
Saying a case is wrongly decided isn’t the same as voting to overturn it. That’s the whole point of stare decisis.
” they’re lying.” nonsense. That is was considered “settled law” may be the case. But just as with Plessy, settled law can change.
It would be more entertaining if the Federalist Society were secretly centuries-old vampires in your story. Or trans-dimensional space aliens.
Also an option: not making up stories.
The Federalist Society is a group of time travelers from the year 2525 trying to ensure man is still alive and woman can survive.
They’re a bunch of disaffected, bigoted, stale-thinking losers. Mostly men. Many socially awkward.
That you cannot produce the verbatim instance of perjury.
Stare decisis is a conservative principle, not a liberal one. Buuuut…not really.
Conservatism: There is value in established tradition as hard-wrought wisdom. It should only be changed after much deliberation.
Liberalism: The idea a large break with the past is needed to save society.
20 years ago people mused about how abortion was now becoming a conservative principle due to its longevity.
Well, a return to Maoist ideas makes Xi a conservative…
There is a difference between what conservative or liberal thought is, and what people who find either appealing also feel. For example, a conservative who actually believed in small government, which we are assured is a conservative position, would be much more willing to entertain the possibility of institutional racism than we observe that real-world conservatives to be.
Going back to bad ideas from a half-century ago is either reactionary or Marxist, not conservative. Not that you understand any of these ideas, as witnessed by your conflation of small-government values with believing that the US is permeated by institutional racism.
It’s totally compatible to think that there might be institutional racism (under many understandings this is just an argument about the persistence of social mores and stereotypes, very compatible with conservative thought, pretty standard Burkean thinking actually) but that big government interventions won’t help (and could make things worse).
So you think that overturning Roe is reactionary, not conservative? Gottit.
You can hardly accuse someone else of lack of understanding when you yourself can’t distinguish between entertaining a a possibility and (an implicitly strong) belief.
And in case you can’t connect the dots – one reason for traditional conservatism’s preference for small government is scepticism of government powerr . I will stipulate that someone who is willing to be sceptical about government and its institutions except in the matter of race is prima facie a racist.
No, I think your specific example — Xi going back to Maoist ideas — is reactionary. That’s well beyond a possibility being entertained.
You are begging the question on racism. Which “conservative who actually believed in small government” do you think is a good example of also not “entertain[ing] the possibility of institutional racism”?
“20 years ago people mused about how abortion was now becoming a conservative principle due to its longevity.”
Who were these “people”?
Dictionaries are not policy documents.
It’s strange when people post stuff like this. You’re telling everyone you don’t understand half the country and don’t intend to try.
Conservative and liberal are labels, that’s all. They may have started out descriptive, like left and right in the political senses are said to have been descriptive.
On the decline of religion in America.
I was talking to a high school student a few days ago. I mentioned that my phone kept reminding me that the day was Eid something or other, marking the end of Ramadan. I asked if she knew what Ramadan was. She had heard of it, without being able to explain it well.
So I asked if she had heard about Lent. Never heard of it. Who doesn’t know about Lent? Everybody knows about Lent. More so around Boston, where Catholics are everywhere. And Lent overlaps with Ramadan this year so it’s not a case of quickly forgetting the less recent event.
She also didn’t know Passover.
When I was in school we all knew what Passover and Lent were even if we did not celebrate them. The concept of giving something up for Lent was current. Ramadan was obscure because news was less global and we were less involved in the Middle East. I probably learned about Ramadan during one of the wars in the Middle East. I remember hearing that it would be wrong for Americans to attack Muslims during Ramadan. Unclear if it’s more or less wrong than attacking Jews during Yom Kippur.
Whence came this decline? Is more the fault of those who attack religion or of religious institutions letting adherents down or not relating to their current needs?
Well, only if you take a purely utilitarian view of religious institutions and sneer at the idea that people once literally believed the theology.
I’d say the most of decline is that people are now more exposed to conflicting evidence. Partly through better access to information but also generations of living in places where tolerance for multiple religions is enforced.
And once you decide Lent/Ramadan/Passover are merely traditions, they have to compete for your attention with a huge amount of other people’s cultural stuff. Not surprising that kids are ignorant, and rationally so.
I am going to make a wild extrapolation from insufficient data and blame the decline of the family and extended family. If you have a dozen family members passing through your house regularly some of them are going to be religious. The student I mentioned has no family in the area other than household members.
Or maybe the Catholic church sex abuse scandal turned people off religion.
Or urban multiculturalism took its toll.
Ten or 15 years ago a high school in Newton assigned a Bible story as literature. I know this because an attention-seeking student got a newspaper article out of his refusal to read the assignment. I approve of that sort of assignment. You can’t ask students to take Delilah any more seriously than Hester Prynne. You can tell them they have to read both stories as part of our cultural heritage.
Religion is fading in the modern marketplace of ideas because reason is a better idea than superstition.
Without childhood indoctrination arranged by substandard parents, and the enduring issue of gullibility, organized religion would be swirling the bowl already (rather than doing so in about 30 years) in America.
I was raisded deeply catholic. My husband was raised deeply mormon. According to the bible, we should be put to death*. Why on earth would I remain a practicing member of a faith that demanded my death because of inherent sexuality? (Or that would deny my sexuality entirely.)
Given that the large majority of youth in the country know people who are LGBT as friends and relatives, it’s not a surprise that they hold a dim view of an institution that routinely attacks their LGBT loved ones. (Wanna bet the new slew of morality laws being passed in this country will only accelerate that?)
* Depending on the version of the “one true Bible” that you find, this can vary.
I agree that we have become a less religious society. That for many government has become the religion.
But government,at least ours, was never meant to replace religion.
If you read the 10 commandments there are commandments that are law like thou shall not murder or steal. Others like thou shall not commit adultery or honor your parents are just really good ideas for a good society
And we’ve lost a lot of that
Those concepts weren’t created by religion, though. They have existed throughout history. The two (historical/societal.and religious) cross over, but they are more societal values that religions adopted and codified than original ideas whose genesis was religion.
There isn’t anything inherently moral in religion. There is also not anything inherently immoral. There are plenty of Bible stories about Christians advocating terrible things, much like there are stories (especially about Jesus) that advocate moral ideals and behavior.
I disagree with the “government has become a religion to “many”. Most people I know who are casually religious (C and E Catholics, cafeteria Protestants, agnostics) don’t feel the need to have anything replace religion. It just isn’t an important part of their life, rather than a hole that needs to be filled by something else. Atheists largely don’t feel the need, either.
I don’t see this huge moral decline that others lament. It seems to be more of a conflation of religion and morality than any statistical evidence, so that the decline of religion is the same as a decline of morality.
I believe that people have the ability to think about morality and create a strong moral code independent of religion. Most of the principles are the same, but the foundation is moral reasoning, not religious teaching.
Neither is superior to the other and, excepting things like the Catholic Church and pedophile priests, religion is not a bad thing. For many people it is a strength and a comfort, providing a supportive community that enhances tbeir lives.
I think that there is a floor to religious belief. It will never go away. But I do think that there is still room for more decline before it hits its floor in the developed world.
And as developing nations continue to modernize and advance educationally, they will experience the same decline. Ultimately I think that those for whom religion is a major part of their lives will constitute somewhere between a quarter and a third of America when it hits the bottom. More people will be casually religious but agnosticism, ‘spirituality’, belief in a God without conscioisness, or some other non-doctrinaire belief system will conti ue to grow.
That’s not bad and it isn’t a harbringer of the destruction of America. It’s just a thing. Not a good thing, not a bad thing, just a thing.
You don’t see a moral decline? Read the comments on the abortion issue. Free speech. Equal application of justice.
I’ve been around awhile and morality has declined. The founding fathers stated that our form of government and the constitution and government only works with moral men.
For example we didn’t need bathroom laws 10 years ago. Thats because if a dude went in the HS girls locker room coach, teacher or dad world would bounce them out. The police weren’t needed.
We didn’t need laws saying that K-3 kids shouldn’t be taught sexual identity or sex education . You didn’t do it.
But here we are.
“You don’t see a moral decline?”
When Christianity was a stronger force in America, so was racism.
Christianity was the driving force behind gay-bashing. Still is.
Most Christian churches were misogynistic. Maybe most still are.
Xenophobia seems strongest among the religious.
Any claim that religion promotes morality is as silly as believing that fairy tales — made-up stories for children, often with supernatural features — are true.
Your examples illustrate the limits of your definition of morality, not actual moral behavior.
“Read the comments on the abortion issue.”
I have. What cultural conservative accept as moral and what is actually moral are two different things. When the only way your vision of morality can be justified is to posit that two thirds of Americans are immoral, it’s time for you to reevaluate your belief system.
“For example we didn’t need bathroom laws 10 years ago. Thats because if a dude went in the HS girls locker room coach, teacher or dad world would bounce them out.”
So you think that violent vigilantism based on intolerance and false assumptions about someone else’s motives is moral? The KKK would have loved to have you back in the Civil Rights era. They agreed with your idea of “morality”. You would have been right at home making “strange fruit”.
“We didn’t need laws saying that K-3 kids shouldn’t be taught sexual identity or sex education . You didn’t do it.”
There is nothing wrong with talking about the existence and validity of homosexuality. No one is talking about sex. No one is teaching sex education to K-3 students. But you continue to lie about it (do you consider lying immoral?).
Banning the discussion of things that exust in the world is, to you, a moral action. Pretending that homosexuality and different gender identities don’t exist is, to you, moral.
Look at your beliefs. You are a fierce opponent of anything that isn’t a traditional, heteronormative worldview. You believe that you are right and everyone who sees things differently is a bad person. Morally wrong. Evil.
Your own words show that you are not a moral person. You are a self-righteous, judgemental, violent, restrictionist authoritarian who thinks that if someone doesn’t accept your limited view of morality they should be bounced until they do. You’re a bully and a coward who can’t accept that the world has moved past the cruel traditionalist beliefs you use to justify your self-importance.
You can’t reason with superstition.
You can’t reason with bigotry.
You can’t reason with belligerent ignorance.
It is pointless to try, perhaps even counterproductive.
It is immoral to appease the intolerant, belligerently ignorant, and deluded.
The prudent course is to defeat them in the culture war and make their stale, ugly thinking increasingly irrelevant in modern America. Fortunately, they will be replaced.
Not that this is unique to religion, but I think pedophile priests aren’t that high on the damage religion does in society compared to other issues. For example, religions nearly always identify outsiders as some sort of threat to believers which inevitably leads to mass violence. Dominant religions, as Protestantism used to be in the US, leverage the power of the state to punish non-believers. Ask yourself when was the last time a top 3 candidate for the US presidency was openly non-religious? Or, with few exceptions, non-Christian? How many children were abused by priests versus how many LGBT citizens had their lives destroyed by Christian morality written into the law and wielded by the faithful wearing badges? Tally up the women who died from botched, illegal abortions. Sum up the dead on both sides during the Irish “troubles.” Anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic violence is still common. This is the face of religious belief–a tool for people to excuse their violence against others under the guise of righteousness. Who would this appeal to?
Look who are making friends: https://twitter.com/AnitaKomuves/status/1522178567869763585
So?
Noscitur a sociis.
Leave me out of this!
It’s never good when so many fascists congregate openly and recruit.
Want to predict where the Alito Dobbs opinion, combined with Gorsuch and Roberts’ support for the Bostock opinion, will lead.
Justice Sandra Day O’Conner had joined the Bowers v. Hardwick majority but concurred in Lawrence v. Texas. Her concurrence was based on the Equal Protection Clause. In her view, sodomy laws in general are constitutional, but laws that prohibit only same-sex sodomy are not.
The logic of the Alito Dobbs opinion, combined with the Gorsuch and Roberts’ vote in Bostock, leads me to predict that a majority of the Court will adapt the O’Connor concurrence as the basis for future analysis of laws involving homosexuality, and extend it to gay marriage.
Under this formulation, states must permit gay marriage, but can prohibit sex outside of marriage including sodomy laws so long as they don’t prohibit only same-sex sodomy.
I suspect Roberts and Gorsuch will adapt this entirely, and possibly Kavanaugh and/or Barrett. Kagan, Sottomeyor and Jackson will go along with the equal protection approach to gay marriage but dissent from permitting sodomy laws. Alito, Thomas, and possibly Kavanaugh and/or Barrett will go along with rehabilitating sodomy laws but will object to constitutionalizing gay marriage (and they would also uphold same/sex sodomy laws).
There must be a reason why the draft that we’ve seen hasn’t been issued as a published judgment yet. Cases don’t stay on the shelf for 2.5 months if 5+ justices agree on a given text.
Well, sure: It was circulated in mid February, if it had gotten 5 votes, even with minor editing, it would have issued in March or April.
So, either major editing in an effort to get to 6 votes, or it failed to reach 5. I’m guessing the former.
What if 5 justices agree in principle and not in detail? And the dissenters have not finished their dissent yet, and the majority has not finished its reaction to the dissents, and Roberts has not decided whether he can narrow the decision by joining the majority, and Thomas is still working on a concurrence.
Then we may well end up with a final Alito opinion that’s very different than what we’ve seen. At the Supreme Court the answer is often much less important than how they get there. Abortion is important enough, but in this case the “how they get there” might determine what happens to all sorts of other constitutional rights as well (see upthread for an overview).
It’s become traditional for the Supreme Court to issue decisions on major, closely watched issues at the end of the term, just before they leave for the summer recess.
This opinion certainly counts.
Yes, but they don’t do that just to keep us in suspense.
All of this conjecture assumes that such laws will actually be passed by some state and then challenged and them make it to the Supreme Court. I am dubious about most of the cases you conjecture.
I don’t think that would be a difficulty. There are remnent cases resulting from Obergefell (e.g. a civil rights suit against the Kentucky county clerk who refused to perform gay marriages) where parties would be emboldened by the Alito Dobbs opinion to argue for reversal of Obergefell entirely. And a number of states pointedly left their sodomy laws on the books, including some states like North Carolina with general (not same-sex only) sodomy laws. I’d expect some enterprising DA in a particularly conservative county of a conservative state would attempt to enforce them sooner or later. Or even more likely, a private party could refuse to rent to somebody (or something like that) based on the sodomy law.
OK, so let’s say Roe is overturned and many states put strict regulations on abortions. In response, thousands of women who would have got abortions take advantage of Barrett’s safe haven laws dropping newborns off at the designated drop sites. How many of those pro-life folks here are ready to donate money and/or pay higher taxes to raise these kids?
Thats how it works. If its not in the constitution it goes to the states. There are a million things like this.
Manufacturing alcohol for example which for a brief time was outlawed by constitutional amendment. Which was later repealed by constitutional amendment.
BUT it didn’t mean that certain locales could not outlaw alcohol which is the case today.
“Manufacturing alcohol for example which for a brief time was outlawed by constitutional amendment. Which was later repealed by constitutional amendment.”
Alcohol is special. It’s right there in the Constitution, which you would know if you actually read it.
That’s his point. Abortion is not in the Constitution. Like prostitution or recreational marijuana. All three are optional to the States to regulate as they and their voters see fit.
“All three are optional to the States to regulate as they and their voters see fit.”
That’s not true. Roe is still the law.
I meant once Roe is overturned, obviously.
I don’t know anyone who denies the government’s responsibility to care for children whose parents are unable or unwilling to do so. Do you?
You were citing Ayn Rand as evidence just above.
What, you’re against the long-standing tradition of making the father pay?
If the number of abandoned babies who are not adopted is 1 per 1,000 population, thousands in a state with millions of people, the tax increase would not be noticed.
Royally tempted to drop the following footnote in a brief I’m filing later today:
“Defendant’s Response to Request for Production mistakenly identifies “Gallmon” as “Gallom”. This is the fourth response to request for production in four separate cases in which different defense counsel made the identical typographical error that Plaintiff’s counsel has received in the past two months. Apparently this boilerplate objection has simply been widely copied and pasted throughout the defense bar, typographical error intact.”
Probably won’t include it, but oh so tempting.
I sometimes wonder what would happen to law firms and attorneys if they lost the ability to cut and paste from prior documents.
They’d learn to bill out their assistants’ time for re-keying all those documents in. Either that or they’d book it themselves for some cool chillable hours. $495/hour to have a first-year BigLaw lawyer re-type a document? Count me in!
No, that’s not the way it would work. A $100 an hour paralegal would type it in, and the paralegal’s time would then actually be billed by a $495/hour associate. There are probably very few big firms whose billing practices would survive being put under a microscope.
In fairness, if you are the insurance defense bar, you know that half your time is going to get cut by the insurance company, which will simply tell you that they’ve cut half your bill and if you want any more business from them you’ll suck it up. So it becomes an arms race: Law firms inflate their billing to make up for the time that their insurance clients cut.
Briefs would be a lot shorter. As would judicial opinions. From my own non-scientific observation, judicial opinions have become longer as time has gone by. Compare how long it took West to go from Federal.2d to Federal.3d, and how long it has taken to go from Federal.3d to Federal.4th.
It’s also worth remembering that there are roughly 3x’s the number of people today than there were in the 1950s. So you could expect 3x’s the number of cases and 3x’s the number of decisions.
But I agree with you that opinions have become longer. That can also be attributed to there being more cases, greater accessibility to finding and citing those cases, and thus more need to discuss nuance and distinguish other decisions.
Or word processing software.
You’re in big trouble if Bryan Garner reads that paragraph.
You are not compelled to form any opinion at all about this matter before you, not to disturb your peace of mind at all. Things in themselves have no power to extort a verdict from you.
I find that helpful to remember, even if I often fail to practice it.
This is final exam week where I work….
Every morning, I check on the latest Russian war losses .
As of this morning, Russia has lost 91% of the armored vehicles and 91% of their tanks allocated for the invasion. This represents 19.3% and 33.1% of their total of each piece, respectively. And this comes just as Ukraine starts getting advanced NATO weapons.
At this rate, how can Russia possibly keep this war up? And, more concerning, might they have to resort to nuclear weapons because they literally have too few other assets left?
As has been since the start of this thing I believe you are reading propaganda. Yes Russia was wrong of course but falsifying information has been common, e.g. Ghost of Kiev, and justified since it makes Ukraine look better.
Thats why it seems Russia should be done but they’re not. Because they are not reporting reality
Except that you see roughly the same figures being reported by other intelligence sources who have had visual confirmation of the destroyed vehicles. And, when the Kremlin released actual numbers (that was soon pulled down from the pro-Kremlin reporting sites), they were consistent with what was being reported.
So you’re going to need more than just saying you distrust the numbers.
I distrust the numbers because the actual battlefield outcomes don’t match them.
Right or wrong, it appears that Russia expected a cake walk and did not get it. The Russian military sure seems a lot weaker now than it did a year ago. This is not counting nuclear weapons, of course.
I agree everything is propaganda. However, as Bremer says everything is consistent that Russia is losing a lot of equipment for little to no land gain. The Moscva, as an example, is a mere symptom of the over all losses.
I prefer Oryx for equipment losses (UK & RU).
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
Yea it certainly is not going as expected but that doesn’t mean they are necessarily going to take the big L. Which would be driven out and surrender.
I just don’t see it happening.
The propaganda folks have assured us its just around the corner for awhile now.
I agree (including the reference to propagandists).
I’m surprised Putin went past Donbas & the other Russian speaking region. I’m betting that’s what Russia ends up with after this. The alternative I see is a coup in Russia which ends with Putin in a body bag.
Your thoughts? Think Putin will take all of Ukraine, part of it, or what?
I think he’ll take the breakaways plus Crimea. He’ll consolidate along those lines which IMO will make it impossible to move him. He’ll outlast the other side.
That’s unless of course the Russian people revolt but it will take more than Vietnam war protests to move him I think
Makes sense. I wish I understood why he didn’t go that route in the first place.
I’m not sure Russian dissent reaches the US’s Vietnam war protests. So far, it seems Putin’s still relatively popular.
Of course it’s going to seem like that, right up until the moment a mob tears him to pieces. He’s a dictator in a country where expressing dissent can get you disappeared.
That site is not accurate, which you should have determined from their lack of sources.
Your statement below that these numbers are ‘roughly the same’ as those by other sites which actually use confirmed evidence is also false.
“And, more concerning, might they have to resort to nuclear weapons because they literally have too few other assets left?”
Everyone should be worried about that, especially Squints Biden.
That’s the main reason I went out and bought a supply of high dose iodine tablets months ago.
Why stop there? Why not build a fallout shelter in your back yard?
This is a useful thread on the war that seems to have knowledgeable people posting.
Fire up Google translate, as a fair amount of it is in German.
Why would you need Google Translate to read German? It may well be literally the easiest language for an English speaker to learn.
Actually, I myself don’t need it, though I do need to check an occasional word. But, your snark aside, it’s not that easy to learn, and even if it were that doesn’t mean others have learned it.
In fact, from the standpoint of just reading a foreign language I’d say the Romance languages are generally easier.
The latest count of confirmed equipment losses from Oryx (https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html) is “3428, of which: destroyed: 1869, damaged: 63, abandoned: 266, captured: 1230”. Confirmed tank losses are about 5% of Russia’s total. That total includes a large number in long term storage. If half of the stored tanks are usable Russia can replace equipment losses for months to come.
If half of the stored tanks are usable Russia can replace equipment losses for months to come.
That’s a big if.
Per Alito:
The Constitution
makes no reference to abortion, and no such right
is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision, including
the one on which the defenders of Roe and Casey
now chiefly rely—the Due Process Clauseof the Fourteenth
Amendment. That provision has been held to guarantee
some rights that are not mentioned in the Constitution, but
any such right must be “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history
and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered
liberty.”
Wait a minute, Sam.
The word “abortion” is not in the Constitution, true, but neither are the phrases “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history
and tradition” and “implicit in the concept of ordered
liberty.”
So where the fuck do you get this restriction on the meaning of the 14th from? Certainly not the text.
Case law interpreting the 14th Amendment, going back to the 19th Century. Which itself is shaky, as it was a workaround on the Slaughterhouse cases.
Yeah, in an ideal world the next big opinion would be the one where they finally overrule the Slaugherhouse cases and give Thomas his P&I victory.
14A has been abused or maybe a better word ignored throughout most of its history. It was pigeon holed for the slavery issue up until recently. It was created for that but its not written that way. Its written generally and I think is an excellent amendment,
Yes, it is case law. Isn’t Roe a case?
My point is that Alito wants to rely on a quite vague principle that is not in the Constitution, to determine what rights the 14th protects and doesn’t protect, yet makes a big deal about how the word “abortion” isn’t in there.
It is a big deal. Marriage laws are on the books. Therefore if those laws are applied to some folks hetero different than others homo then that is a violation of 14A which says the laws have to be applied equally.
There are explicitly stated rights, constitution and its amendments with 10A explicitly stating all not stated are left to the people or the states.
It didn’t say left to SCOTUS to make stuff up,
“Therefore if those laws are applied to some folks hetero different than others homo then that is a violation of 14A which says the laws have to be applied equally.”
Yes, and if male homosexuals had been prohibited from marrying women, and lesbians had been prohibited from marrying men, you’d have something like a point. “Marriage” actually incorporated different sex as part of its meaning. That homosexuals didn’t want to “marry” didn’t mean they were forbidden to.
A couple of siblings are forbidden to legally marry each other; Does that mean they’re forbidden to marry, period? No, not even if there’s nobody else they’d be interested in marrying.
Now do Loving v. VA.
Already explained to you that the 14th amendment took care of that over 150 years ago. The only reason Loving was needed in the first place was because the Supreme court committed deliberate judicial malfeasance, stopping the lower courts from striking these laws down, back in 1883, in Pace v Alabama. Before that awful ruling, these laws were being repealed/overturned all over the place.
The Civil rights revolution was aborted by the Supreme court, and only revived a century later in a seriously distorted form because the Court refused to just outright overturn it’s earlier crimes.
Nothing in the text of the 14A about interracial mixing I can see.
Seems to me that by the same ‘male homosexuals had been prohibited from marrying women’ you can talk about blacks being only prohibited from marrying outside their race, just like whites!
By that logic, Loving is the abuse by the Court.
You don’t get to cherry pick your logic for the things you do want and than go to penumbras on the things you don’t.
Rescinding Roe does not restrict anyone. It pushes the issue to the states where each one can decide how to handle it. It actually unrestricts.
I’ve heard how crazy popular abortion is but is it? The MS law thats before the court was passed by their legislature and signed by their governor.
If its so crazy popular then it will be illegal in vert few states.
A lot of TN is dry, no alcohol. It’s not that way nationwide because overall alcohol is pretty popular.
Not being able to get alcohol is not an issue. If abortion is SO popular it will be the same.
None of this is relevant to the post you replied to.
Today, in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a law professor wrote an article attacking the Dobbs memo and presumably defending Roe v. Wade. In the article, she writes this:
Embryos and fetuses are not deserving of any independent legal protection, any more than they are able to survive independently. Infants come into the world dependent on the care and love of others, usually the person who gave birth to them.
What?!?! Tell me you didn’t read Roe without telling me you didn’t read Roe. Also, by this rationale, you ought to be able to murder babies.
Look, I understand there are policy and ethical reasons for preserving abortion, certainly early in the pregnancy (though people will disagree on these things). But do some of these pro-legal abortion people ever think through what they are saying?
Singer does. Most of them shy away from the implications of their own reasoning, without even realizing it.
So do people who scream that abortion is murder but stop short of wanting to actually lock anyone up for it.
Stop short of trying to actually lock anyone up for it.
Eyes on the prize: Saving lives! If jailing a mother who hires a hitman to kill her baby prevents you from getting the law prohibiting hiring a hitman to kill your baby, that’s a clear loss.
(note: The following is not satire.)
1. A bill is introduced in (passed by?) the Virginia legislature that would (arguably?) allow post-birth “abortion” — a viable (i.e., alive) “fetus” (i.e., baby) is delivered and then “euthanized” (i.e., killed). (You can guess the party affiliation of the legislator(s) who introduced (voted for?) this bill.
(no media uproar)
2. The (Democratic) Governor of Virginia unequivocally states his support for the above-described procedure.
(no media uproar)
3. A medical school classmate of the Governor, upset by his comments, alerts the media to an old photo of the Governor, where he and his college roommate pose in blackface and in a KKK outfit.
(media uproar!)
This tells you all you need to know about the “mainstream” media.
source 1:
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2019/02/04/report-ralph-northams-abortion-comments-prompted-classmate-to-reveal-racist-photo/
source 2:
https://www.steynonline.com/9175/infanticide-and-minstrelsy
Does she mean outside the womb ? Because no infant is independent even after full term birth and many parents can argue same for teenagers.
But even outside the womb is that the criteria. Because thats at least a restriction to first trimester and even that is being challenged by medical advancements
Math is a little off. 15 weeks is the MS bill. There are a lot of heartbeat bills teed up but I don’t think heartbeat = viability. But the bar used to be around 24 weeks but has been coming down.
Would the autjor of this opinion agree with the obvious corollary, that men have an natural-justice and ought to have a constitutional right to beat women who are economically dependent on them, because dependence means you’re not really a person and shouldn’t, as a matter of natural equity and justice, be entitled to rights of your own?
Once again, the misrepresentation of “independent” rears its ugly head in the abortion debate.
No one uses “independent” to mean that the kid has reached adulthood, are financially supporting themselves, and have moved out of the house. It means “separate” or, if you prefer, “not dependent on the mother’s body for survival”.
A reasonable reading of the sentence “Embryos and fetuses are not deserving of any independent legal protection, any more than they are able to survive independently” would recognize that embryos and fetuses are the two standard biological terms pre-birth and that post-birth they aren’t referred to as either.
So no, that rationale clearly does not mean that “you ought to be able to murder babies.”
Most pro-choice and pro-life advocates have thought through abortion much more deeply than the anti-abortion crowd, who largely count on strongly asserted, unsupported statements like “life begins at conception” or “DNA shows a fertilized egg is a person” or the abortion-until-birth crowd, who largely count on strongly worded, unsupported statements like “abortion should be legal up until birth”. Those two extremes are the problem because the are tiny minoritirs that have outsized funding and influence (especially on the right).
Pro-life advocates (meaning those who don’t support banning all abortions, but do support a whole lot of restrictions) are at least willing to put in the mental effort to think through the topic and end up with positions that are more heterodox than the always/never binary. Like everyone except the 15% on the right and 9% on the left that assert absolutist positions, they acknowledge it is a nuanced and probably insoluable issue as to when life begins (as evidenced by the various positions on when life/personhood begins).
Pro-choice advocates (meaning those who support abortion with limited restrictions) have reached a different conclusion than the pro-life crowd, but have put the same amount of thought into it. They lean towards less regulation, but also reject the “no limits” position of the abortion-until-birth folks.
I can say for myself, as a pro-legal-abortion person, that I have and continue to put a great deal of thought into this issue. I understand the follow-on results of my beliefs and am honest about them (unlike the anti-abortion folks who claim fetal personhood wouldn’t impact fertility treatments). I am comfortable with both the morality of my beliefs as well as the real-world impact of the restrictions I support.
Seems like the vast majority of anti abortion extremists are men, who believe that all women’s vaginas/bodies are property of the State and subject to the votes of state legislatures.
Now do Vaccine Mandates and the Draft.
Of course, you must have detailed statistics and studies to back up that generalization, right?
Ddi you miss the words “seems” in his post? One small word covers a huge lack of rigor.
The people who vote for anti-abortion legislators are only slightly more likely to be male.
The people outside clinics yelling and being obnoxious seem to be about 50% female.
If you are talking about bombers and shooters, yeah, but bombers and shooters tend to be men regardless of the particular cause.
Ha ha you’re back. Parody satire or just bat sh$t crazy?
So far. not a word about the implications of the disinformation governance board.
No one cares about how it was created, how it is funded, why it does not need congressional legislation, or the clear impact on individual speech?
I can’t help but remember how the “second amendment extremists” were mocked when they said the after the second amendment was trashed, the statists would go after the first amendment.
Libertarian web site? Does anyone know of any?
Because thats not what its for. It’s not about truth. Think of the Twitter and Facebook truth review boards only now they have the power of government behind them.
1984 is no longer fiction
What the hell is this?
E.(1) Any federal statute, regulation, treaty, executive order, or court ruling that purports to supersede, stay, or overrule this Section shall be in violation of the United States Constitution and the Constitution of Louisiana and is therefore void.
(2) This state and its political subdivisions, and agents thereof, may disregard any part or whole of any federal court decision which purports to enjoin or void any provision of this Section.
F. Pursuant to the powers granted to the Legislature by Article X, Part III, of the Constitution of Louisiana, any judge of this state who purports to enjoin, stay, overrule, or void any provision of this Section shall be subject to impeachment or removal.
I mean … hey, after SCOTUS didn’t do anything about Texas’s “fun with civil procedure,” why not just make it explicit?
Why bother with subterfuge- just come out and say, “Screw you, law. Screw you judges.”
Item (F) looks redundant, unless Louisiana has judicial review of impeachment.
Shall, not May.
Would you believe me if I told you FJB voted to overturn Roe v. Wade?
http://news.yahoo.com/flashback-biden-backed-amendment-overturn-223723012.html
Well, to be fair, that’s exactly why they came up with the term “woke”. Once a sinner and now seeing the light.
He’s Catholic, and it was the 1980s. Sure, I believe that.
I also don’t think the Biden of the 1980s is the Biden of the 2020s, just as I’d hope you had some different opinions back then.
Back then I thought only of sleep and nipples…
“Back then I thought only of sleep and nipples…”
Like Biden now.
He was in his second term as a US senator. He wasn’t a child.
Sure, once change one’s mind on anything. But when you react like a decision (or draft decision) is like the second coming of slavery, the fact that you once advocated that very thing undercuts your outrage, or makes it look politically convenient.
Whatever, dude. Lots of awful shit was socially okay 40 years ago. I don’t freak out about it.
He doesn’t have two brain cells to rub together now. Go to the old folks home and do the same test.
So, women upset with the alleged Roe decision are threatening a ‘Sex Strike’…..No wildcats, them!
It seems that their strike provides an adequate solution to the problem.
Ha ha good one. You win the thread!
That depends. The law criminalizing the rape of one’s wife is younger than Roe. Republicans are pretty good at busting unions. If you’re going to force her to bear children against her will, why not sex too?
Meanwhile, in Israel:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/may/05/israeli-court-evict-1000-palestinians-west-bank-area?CMP=share_btn_tw
Funny, I remember in 1967 Egypt closed the Straights of Tiran to Israel, and in the following war Israel won the west bank by force of arms.
(and, oh by the way, they won it from Jordan)
“two-decade legal battle”
Seems like they carefully considered it. Why do you hate the Rule of Law?
Noam Chomsky, in an interview this week, says “fortunately” there is “one Western statesman of stature” who is pushing for a diplomatic solution to the war in Ukraine rather than looking for ways to fuel and prolong it.
“His name is Donald J. Trump,” Chomsky says.
https://twitter.com/ggreenwald/status/1520751923355398144
Reminds me of another recent Chomsky comment:
In an interview late last month with Democracy NOW!, University of Arizona professor and supporter of socialism Noam Chomsky minimized Russian interference in the 2016 election, arguing that Israeli meddling is far worse.
He mocked the media for obsessing about Russian interference, which he described as “almost a joke” in the rest of the world.
“First of all, if you’re interested in foreign interference in our elections, whatever the Russians may have done barely weighs in the balance as compared with what another state does, openly, brazenly, and with enormous support,” Chomsky said. “Israeli intervention in U.S. elections vastly overwhelms anything the Russians may have done.”
https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2018/08/03/noam-chomsky-israel-brazenly-interferes-in-u-s-elections-makes-russian-meddling-a-joke-n59931
He was being sardonic and joking. Context matters, greenwald is a hack and deceptively editing.
When the Court released Shurtleff v. City of Boston on Monday I sorta predicted that someone would try to push the envelope. It’s already happened the Satanic Temple has already requested a flag raising at Boston City Hall and they apparently don’t even have flag design yet.
The solution to Boston’s problem is to tear down that ugly ass building, build one that is not offensive to the eye and put no flagpoles around it.
Alternatively, stop offering the 3rd flag pole for private use.
I agree with tearing down the ugly ass building. It’s worse than Fredericksburg Executive Plaza.
Auction off the right to push the button to detonate the demolition charges.
Pretty sure Satanic Temple has already had numerous displays ordered put up by the courts. They’d probably have been able to get a flag put up even before Shurtleff.
How about a flexible screen displaying a top-shelf stage version of Sympathy for the Devil?
Could any other church compete with that?
(One of the several prominent Stones tunes to which Keith Richards or Mick Taylor contributed the original bass guitar performance. Here is another from Keith. For Mick Taylor, check Tumbling Dice — the At The Max version, ideally.)
I though of that. I originally wrote the comment as a draft email so I could post it today. The title of the email was Sympathy of the Devil.
The mayor will help them raise it.
Why shouldn’t he?
Are you one of these ‘my fairy tale can beat up your fairy tale’ hayseeds?
Or are you one of the ‘my fairy tale can beat up everyone else’s fairy tale’ kooks?
I think he meant that since the Mayor is asian and a women, she would.
Hilarious, no?
So under Alito’s putative Dobbs decision… Miranda warnings would be toast, right? Is there any coherent way to defend Rhenquist’s decision in Dickerson v. U.S. or the original Miranda v. Arizona prophylactic rule under Alito jurisprudence?
This is the underlying problem with the “making up constitutional law as we go” approach. Miranda really has no foundation in any real constitutional law. It was made up designed to address what was perceived society ill of the day. Problem is it isn’t the 1960’s and the answers to our current “problems” are not the same. That is why the proper venue for this type of solution creation is the legislature and not the courts (or at least not a one-size-fits-all nationally mandated criminal procedure dictated by the US Supreme Court).
No one said abortion wasn’t the only thing made up by prior activist courts
I’m not really sure I see the connection, but the court has a Miranda case on the docket this term, Vega v. Tekoh, so we should have a better sense of what they think in the next few weeks. (Or maybe sooner if someone leaks that one too.)
They are not reversing Miranda.
Reversing Roe, ending affirmative action and broadening gun rights ought to be enough for one term.
More Americans — especially properly educated, reasoning Americans residing in modern, successful communities — support enlarging the Supreme Court than endorse reversing Roe v. Wade.
That point seems destined to have consequences. Bring on the accountability!
Who said 13 is an unlucky number?
(Well, a man in black did.)
Within a year of Democrats assembling the power (House, Senate, White House) to arrange it.
Haven’t they controlled all three for over a year now?
They didn’t have the Senate votes. Manchin is a coal-drunk yokel and Sinema is an unreliable misfit.
Your entire schtick would be greatly improved by stopping your insistence on referring to people who disagree with liberals as inferior. As if rejection of human equality was the basis on which liberalism stands. Your insistence on this strategy, despite its obviously alienating and counter-productive nature, has me half-convinced that you are in fact a conservative troll attempting to discredit liberals.
I get that this approach was or has been somewhat entertaining in the past. But, as with all things, it is eventually time to get new material.
His “entire shtick” is based on an inferiority complex, so he cannot take your suggestion.
I believe racists are inferior to non-racists.
I believe gay-bashers are inferior when compared with others.
I believe misogynists are not as good as non-misogynists.
I believe immigrant-haters are not as good as those who do not hate immigrants.
I believe bigots, in general, are among our society’s lesser elements.
If you disagree, please explain your position. If a non-racist is no better than racist from your perspective, what argument should persuade someone that you are correct?
I don’t believe people are rendered inferior on the basis of their opinion. Everyone has a perspective, and I do not believe people should be demeaned on the basis of their perspective.
At least he has the presence of mind to not rave about putting people into death camps. I get the impression he thinks about it, though.
I’m not the biggest RAK fan these days, but you don’t need to make stuff up about his secret thoughts.
You don’t want to demean bigots.
Why not?
From time to time I read the comment threads here without being logged on, to see if I should unmute anyone I’ve previously found to not be worthy of serious attention. The Rev. for some reason known only to him or herself, simply cannot let an opportunity to belittle pass. Yes, he is just as tedious and irritating as ever.
The mute feature is so valuable precisely because it puts the power of censorship into the reader’s hands. Which is really the ONLY place where it belongs.
Might the Commerce Clause preclude a state from prohibiting the mailing of Mifepristone and Misoprostol?
This is an interesting question. Are there any drugs that are legal in one state and which cannot be mailed to a different state. At this time I can only think of medical marijuana. And that to my knowledge have never been tested.
An interesting test case might be the California requirement for humanly raise meat. If the courts allows meat raise out of state, slaughtered and then shipped into California, can you then stop a medication?
Isn’t the meat issue being litigated now?
Drugs are a special case because of heavy regulation at the federal level with preemption of state law. Medical marijuana is also special in its own way. As marijuana, it is illegal to possess or sell. As medical marijuana, it is illegal to sell because it does not have FDA approval. Enforcement by the Justice Department is suspended due to the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment. The FDA could still pursue civil enforcement actions if it did not require Justice Department assistance.
I dont think the “humanely-raised” meat requirement is on-point, as it is not a health and safety regulation. CA already precludes the importation of all kinds of fruits and vegetables out of concern for bringing in pests, blights etc., and AFAIK there is no legal issue with them doing so. Bans on drugs coming into a state would be more analogous to the latter.
Is originalism self-contradictory?
If originalism wasn’t the method of interpretation used by practicing lawyers at the time of the Founding, then isn’t adopting originalism just a modern results-oriented policy choice?
If the Constitution somehow implies a preferred method of interpretation, wouldn’t we look to the practice of lawyers at the time of the Founding and before to determine what that method is?
Perhaps a truly originalist approach to interpretation would reject originalism as defined by modern people.
This is something I would like to research more if anyone knows of any good books or the like. How was law practiced then? How did judges decide cases then?
Did as much methodological disagreement exist then as exists now? And if so, does that imply that methodological questions have no objectively right answers?
“If originalism wasn’t the method of interpretation used by practicing lawyers at the time of the Founding, then isn’t adopting originalism just a modern results-oriented policy choice?”
Except you are conflating general methodology with interpretation of a written Constitution, or a written statute. Most legal issues at the founding were matters of common law, not Constitutional or statutory law. Common law works differently.
Calder v. Bull (1798), which interpreted the Ex Post Facto clauses of the Constitution, was very soon after the Founding. You can read it here: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/3/386/#tab-opinion-1935355
It very much reads like an orignialist decision.
Maybe the answer to your question is in Marbury v Madison. John Marshall used this case to establish the authority of the court. Had he stepped back and not taken and ruled in this case we might have assume a more reserved court and not one that will step into issues.
This is Prof. Baud’s positive turn! It didn’t convince me to be an originalist, but it is a consistent body of work much more worthy of respect than the ‘lets tear down Warren Court precedents with badly researched excuses’ project politicians who invoke originalism seem to mean.
https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/william-baude-originalism-and-positive-turn
The Constitution, being written in English, implies that it is to be interpreted according to the rules of English.
One of those rules those familiar with reading old documents will be familiar with, is that you read a word to mean what it meant at the time it was written, despite any subsequent linguistic shifts.
For instance, a great many old works of literature will refer to somebody as gay. Only a moron or somebody deliberately engaging in bad faith would read them to mean the person was a homosexual.
Thus originalism, in the form of historical, not present day, textualism, is built into the Constitution by the very fact that it’s a written document.
The Constitution is not just any old book. As Chief Justice Marshall famously wrote McCulloch v. Maryland, “we must never forget that it is a constitution we are expounding.”
History indicates your ‘Constitutional language is frozen to when it was written’ was never intended. I keep telling you this, and you keep acting like you never heard it.
Yes, you keep asserting this, and I keep pointing out that your wanting things to be that way carries no weight.
The only reason you want to change the meanings of words after the document was written, is that you don’t like what it says, and don’t have enough public support to legitimately amend it to actually say what you want.
So you get judges to lie about what it means. And then have the nerve to demand that everybody pretend that’s a legitimate thing to do!
Your understanding of how to interpret a constitution is not only far from the only understanding today, it was not the commonly held understanding of attorneys in the Founding era.
I’ve linked you to academic papers, to Baude’s website, and I did a pretty careful writeup of his podcast.
You can impugn the motives of everyone who disagrees with you, including most of the judiciary, and indeed Baude himself, but all that does is allow you to ignore actual historical scholarship and evidence.
In the end, the outcome-oriented one is very much you.
“Is originalism self-contradictory?
If originalism wasn’t the method of interpretation used by practicing lawyers at the time of the Founding, then isn’t adopting originalism just a modern results-oriented policy choice?”
Yes, and yes.
So the Left has now published the home addresses of six SCOTUS justices and are engaging in trolly-thought experiments on Twitter about murdering justices.
Tote’s cool with Twitters TOS.
And Democrats in general.
M’uh norms and sacred Democracies!
The left is pushing eliminating all student debt. The right sees that as a betrayal of personal responsibilities.
The right is often characterized, or mischaracterized, as pro-birth instead of pro-life.
I know several families with children with developmental disabilities. These families often benefit from some health care and social services, but additional costs connected to daily life such as a more restrictive diet, assistive technology, missed work hours for the parents, and travel to and from doctor appointments and therapies are substantial.
I wonder what the costs would be to forgive student loans for parents with children with developmental disabilities would be. Could Democrats applaud it as a first step to what they want? Could Republicans frame it as helping families who chose not to abort and face obstacles they are not responsible for? Is there a downside?
Well, voluntarily assumed debt being canceled would be a downside, insomuch as it would create an expectation of it being done, and prompt people to be even more likely going forward to assume economically irrational debt loads.
An interesting proposal. As a gesture of good faith it works, but as a ploy to buy votes, not so much. I guess one has to decide whether the loan forgiveness is being done in good faith, or not. Frankly, I want to believe it is, but I am getting more cynical as I age.
I think you are 100% correct- Republicans may be able to shield themselves from any political harm by saying this support helps families that were not irresponsible in any way, but it would not generate any votes for them.
And then determinimig which developmental disabilities qualify families becomes a whole new episode of frustration.
What’s often missed in this discussion is that the forgiveness of trillions of dollars in student debt is already the law, and is already baked into the terms and conditions of those loans. Since repayment programs like IBR, PAYE and other versions started, there are 20-25 year time periods during which debtors pay a certain percentage of their income, after which the debt is discharged. At up to 7-8.5% interest for federal student loans, large graduate school balances often grow over time, with the payments not reaching beyond the current interest, large origination fees and interest accrued during deferment periods.
The best thing would be for the federal government to claw back forgiven amounts from the universities.
This all seems rather academic …. in that six Supreme Court justices have been publicly and credibly threatened, and the executive branch has expressed a marked lack of concern about the situation.
What’s the threat?
They have been doxxed by http://www.ruthsent.us:
“Our 6-3 extremist Supreme Court routinely issues rulings that hurt women, racial minorities, LGBTQ+ and immigrant rights. We must rise up to force accountability using a diversity of tactics.”
In the current climate, that reads like a threat …
That is bad, but it’s also some rando with a website.
I don’t need Biden to pretend he cares in a press conference. I want the FBI to investigate quietly and then smite them if they have committed crimes.