Today in Supreme Court History: September 24, 1755

9/24/1755: Chief Justice John Marshall's birthday.

Chief Justice John Marshall

 

Comments

[Commenter_XY]

More heavy rain and wind in Philly today, courtesy of Ophelia (I don't personally get the naming of tropical storms thing, I thought naming hurricanes was enough, but whatever). Truly miserable weather for the anti-semites gathered at U-Penn today at the Palestinian Writes hatefest Festival. Miserable weather all weekend plagued them; I am pleased.

At least they're all on camera.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

They've been issuing names to storms once they reach tropical storm intensity for more than 60 years.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Am I the only person who wishes that it would make a whole lot more sense if ALL the storms in the Atlantic were given one gender names and ALL of the storms in the Pacific were given the other, instead of alternating both as they currently do.

[o estrangeiro]

"Am I the only person who wishes..."

Provavelmente.

[Alpheus W Drinkwater]

Ed, that's actually a great idea!

[Dan Schiavetta]

see

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYkjXMpKBBQ

[Frank Drackman]

I liked it when they were just Chick names. Remember this really creepy "Twillight Zone" Comic Book story from the early 70's about how Hurricanes were caused by angry women (OK, sounds stupid, that's the plot)
OK, so this guy's a Sailor out in the Doldrums, (a Geographical Location, not Parkinsonian Joe's administration) Needs some wind to get him going, cries out to the Tropical Depression, who responds and sails him to safety.
Unfortunately, she doesn't appreciate his not continuing to worship her, and he dies in the Hurricane named after her.
Last scene was the Mariner, dead on a Beach with a beautiful dead Island girl next to him, and the name of the Storm written in the sand next to them...

Creepy?? I think Rod Serling was actually involved in the Comic Book, would have been a great TV Episode

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

Well the Lord rains on the Semitic and Anti-Semitic too,
I think it was a Jewish guy who first said that.

Frank

[Dan Schiavetta]

Twentieth Century Airlines v. Ryan, 74 S.Ct. 8 (decided September 24, 1953): Reed refuses to stay administrative proceedings against “irregular” air carriers who had been ordered to stop mergers and refinancings because they were done without Civil Aeronautics Board approval; no irreparable injury shown and administrative proceedings afforded them adequate due process

Philip Morris USA, Inc. v. Scott, 561 U.S. 1301 (decided September 24, 2010): Scalia stays enforcement of class action judgment against tobacco companies for giving false information about addictive properties of nicotine (judgment also required companies to fund smoking cessation programs); defendants have possible due process defense in that Louisiana court held that each plaintiff did not have to prove individualized fraud for damages (as opposed to access to antismoking programs); cert was ultimately denied, 564 U.S. 1037 (2011)

[Dan Schiavetta]

today’s movie review: The Omen, 1976

I was never so frightened in a theater as when they open up the grave at night and find a wolf skeleton instead of a human. My girlfriend and I were both 18 and not free yet of our Catholic upbringing. Part of us really still believed that Revelation stuff about the Antichrist and the end of the world. It’s the book of the Bible that has caused more harm, mostly paranoid lunacy, than any other. (I’d put Joshua in second place, followed by Ezekiel and 2 Timothy.)

This is a very well done horror movie, and part of its success was its creepy resonance with a Bible-educated audience. This may not be fiction!

Gregory Peck, in his usual role as a troubled authority figure, and Lee Remick, well able to project escalating fright with her steely blue eyes, are parents of a child who contains the spirit of the Devil. This idea was done very well in Rosemary’s Baby, in that the audience is ahead of the protagonists in knowing the nature of their offspring, but here it’s not a baby, it’s a young boy the parents are raising. He doesn’t seem evil, but animals run away from him (a subtly disturbing scene). Patrick Troughton, as a priest who knows the truth and tries to warn the parents, and David Warner, as an investigator who is piecing things together, meet grisly ends which are well done theatrically.

At the end, on instructions from the Leo McKern character, Peck drags the screaming, uncomprehending child to a church altar and is about to stab him when he himself is killed by the police. This of course is an upsetting scene. At the time I thought, killing the child was horrible, but necessary. In the years since I’ve changed my mind — such a thing is never necessary — and it’s probably because I’ve freed myself from the Bible and am an acknowledged (and more importantly, self-acknowledged) atheist.

It’s unsettling to think that people raised in the “Semitic religions” (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) believe that on God’s orders one can kill a young, apparently innocent child. Terrorists do it of course, but the instructions are there and they apply to even “good” people. They might deny it, but they believe that God has done it in the past. There are the genocide scenes in Joshua. The last chapter of Leviticus contains instructions on human sacrifice (it’s hard to read it any other way). There’s Psalm 137, where we are instructed to smash babies’ skulls against rocks (if they’re the babies of our enemies). There’s the ordeal of the bitter water, Numbers 5:11-22, which sounds like a way to abort a child conceived in adultery.

And then there’s God commanding Abraham to kill his son. Abraham is about to do it when God stops the show by producing a ram to be killed instead. (“Ha! Just kidding!” The cruelty of the Old Testament God is not just physical but also mental.) The story has been twisted around as a lesson in obedience, but it sounds to me more like Himmler’s entrance exam for the SS. “You’re willing to kill your own son on my say-so? You’re the kind of man we’re looking for!”

After a couple of years of mind games, I dumped that girlfriend, trying to do it as gently as I could, and thankful that I never got her pregnant. I haven’t spoken to her in years (and have no desire to now). But I do wonder if she feels as liberated as I do, knowing that there is no finger from heaven that might point at me someday and command me to do a horrible thing.

[Magister]

I have never found Bible based horror movies effective; most likely because I was not exposed to any of the horrifying parts before I became an adult. But maybe because there's no dramatic tension in the inevitable end times. People doing terrible things to others (sometimes motivated by their toxic religious beliefs) on a small scale is more frightening.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The book was better — it was a LONG time before I stood in the center of an elevator after that.

As to Revelations, tell me that doesn't describe a Nuke War in the Middle East. The Med is shallow, it WOULD boil, and burning oil wells would make the sky "as dark as sackcloth."

[Drewski]

It doesn't describe a nuke war in the Middle East. Also anyone who studied the Revelation in even a cursory way wouldn't call it "Revelations." Do you even Bible, bro?

[Dr. Ed 2]

Revelation 6:12-15
12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;

13 And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.

14 And the heaven departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.

15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;

[Dan Schiavetta]

I once heard a radio preacher say that the Bible predicted Hiroshima because it said "he will lead you to a-bomb-a-nation".

[SRG2]

It is the Raving of St. John

[Dan Schiavetta]

Not John the Apostle, of course. The dating is too late and there is not even any similarity with the Johannine letters, which also are not by John the Apostle. (For that matter, neither is the Gospel of John.)

Crudely written in bad Greek, it is a barely contained screed against probably Nero and other people the author hates. Contrast this with the accommodation to Roman rule you see in the letters of Paul and in 2 Peter.

The writer of The Omen said in an interview that he believed Revelation was real -- "it wasn't some guy high on mushrooms". But it reads like someone high on mushrooms.

[Jerry B.]

“It’s unsettling to think that people raised in the “Semitic religions” (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) believe that on God’s orders one can kill a young, apparently innocent child.”

But it’s apparently okay if it’s Bush, or Obama, or Trump, or Biden.

[Mr. Bumble]

...or Planned Parenthood. What a fucking oxymoron that name is.

[not guilty]

Don't forget Deuteronomy 21:18-21 (RSV), which commands:

If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they chastise him, will not give heed to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, "This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard." Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

[Mr. Bumble]

Don't forget the Holy Koran:

The Companions unanimously agreed on the execution of homosexuals , but they differed as to how they were to be executed. Some of them were of the view that they should be burned with fire, which was the view of ‘Ali (may Allah be pleased with him) and also of Abu Bakr (may Allah be pleased with him), as we shall see below. And some of them thought that they should be thrown down from a high place then have stones thrown at them. This was the view of Ibn 'Abbas (may Allah be pleased with him).

[Purple Martin]

Bumble, glad to see you've switched to condemning fundamentalist religiously-inspired anti-LBGTQ violence...I don't recall seeing that from you before.

Because it isn't of course, the specific flavor of invisible friends with superpowers that matters, but the fundamentalist conviction that my superfriend can beat up your superfriend and then will destroy you.

And in the U.S., it is Christian rather than Muslim fundamentalists who pose a far greater threat to society. Indeed, the primary difference I'm able to detect between the Taliban and the type of Christianity I see so often represented here is not of intention, but opportunity.

[Dan Schiavetta]

NG:

In doing a parenting class years ago, I kept saying “capital punishment” instead of “corporal punishment”.

[not guilty]

Yahweh, as described in the Old Testament, is literature's most prolific homicidal villain, carrying out multiple incidents of mass murder. Think of the Great Flood, wholesale arson of entire cities, the Tenth Plague, drowning of the Pharoah's army, to list a few.

He is a baby killer, too. The incidents listed above did not spare the infants, and God put a targeted hit on Bathsheba's firstborn. Not a sudden death, either -- the child lingered for seven days after being stricken. (2 Samuel 12:15-18.)

[SRG2]

Location trivia: the cathedral in an early scene - an unpleasant piece of post-war architecture - is Guildford Cathedral. (Guildford is my parental home.)

[Dan Schiavetta]

It reminds me of Albi Cathedral, which also has no transept. Odd to take Albi as a model, "a screaming pile of red brick thrown down on the populace by brute Papal power to warn against another Albigensian heresy".

[Frank Drackman]

That movies still scary as (redacted)!!

[SRG2]

Odd - I find that films whose horror derives from Christian theology (e.g., the Exorcist), have a minimal impact on this Jew, just as porn featuring women dressed as nuns doesn't do anything on top of what one might expect from hot women wearing not much clothing. It's not our thing.

[Frank Drackman]

The Power of Christ Compels You!!!!!!!!!!
that didn't scare you?
Maybe because I saw it in Winter 1974 when it was dark as (redacted) outside.
Used to run the "Exorcist Steps" on my morning runs back during residency. Back before AlGore invented the Internets you'd have to actually talk to locals, "Hey Man, can you tell me where the "Exorcist Steps" are??"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcist_steps

Frank

[Magister]

I agree on horror movies from end times stuff. The trappings of exorcism movies work on me a bit, though, but I'm not sure if it's overlap with non-religious horror stories in general or my early fairly bland experience of Christianity.

porn featuring women dressed as nuns doesn’t do anything on top of what one might expect from hot women wearing not much clothing.

"dressed as nuns" and "wearing not much clothing" are inconsistent. Have you never seen a nun in real life or a non-porn movie?

[Purple Martin]

As I understand it, there's usually a substantial difference in clothing coverage at the beginning and the end of a scene.

[David Nieporent]

Please explain.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The details on the girl in the tub of champagne:

The venue was the Earl Carroll Theatre on Seventh Avenue and Fiftieth Street. The occasion was a party in honor of Carroll’s financier, William R. Edrington, a millionaire Texas oil magnate. The crowd, which arrived in limousines and top hats, included Shirley Booth, a rising Broadway star; Condé Montrose Nast, owner of Vanity Fair and Vogue; Irvin S. Cobb, one of the highest paid journalists in the United States; and Vera Cathcart, a headline-making British countess. In all, several hundred people filled the ornate theater—eating, drinking, dancing, taking swigs from their hip flasks, and ogling girls from the Vanities cast, who pranced around in skimpy bathing suits and negligees. The main floor had been converted into a dining room, with an orchestra, a buffet table, a hot dog stand, and a bar on the stage. To the right of the bar lay a bathtub, from which guests filled their glasses to the brim. Taking a sip as she mingled with a Mirror reporter, the countess remarked, “Good champagne!”

Around 4:00 a.m., Payne was preparing to leave when the evening’s host darted up to him.

“Don’t go yet,” Carroll implored. “I’m going to put on a wow of a stunt!”

Payne watched as the bathtub was moved to center stage and refilled with what appeared to be more alcohol. A girl with bobbed black hair and “the face of an angel,” as one admirer put it, emerged from the wings. Her name was Joyce Hawley, a seventeen-year-old model and aspiring Vanities cast member, whose courage had been stimulated by several rounds of drinks backstage. Wearing an orange chemise that clung to her lithe frame, Hawley daintily approached the tub under the glow of a spotlight. A woman near the front of the stage tossed Carroll a green jacket, which he held in front of Hawley as if she were changing behind a dressing-room curtain. Her slippers came off and her lingerie dropped to the floor. As Carroll swept aside the coat with a flourish, several guests caught a glimpse of Hawley’s breasts as she lowered herself into the tub and propped her feet over the edge, wine dripping from her pale toes. Carroll looked out at the crowd, beaming with satisfaction. “Gentlemen,” he yelled, “the line forms to the left!”

A gaggle of men in dinner jackets elbowed their way toward the tub, retrieving glasses from a nearby table and holding them up to a spigot that had been fitted into the drainpipe. Some of them patted Hawley on her head and shoulders. One man tickled the soles of her feet. After a few minutes, tears streamed down Hawley’s cheeks, at which point the bathtub was wheeled offstage. The show was over, and so was the party. Payne and the other remaining revelers exited the theater and staggered into the dawn.

The following morning, Wednesday, February 24, the Mirror published a vivid account of the scene Payne had witnessed. It was picked up by newspapers all over the country. “Orgy of Wine in N.Y. Rivals Ancient Rome,” one headline declared. The exposé prompted an investigation by federal Prohibition agents, who set out to probe what the New York Times described as an “all-night bacchanalian orgy,” resulting in Carroll’s indictment. Payne took the stand during Carroll’s trial a few months later. He swore he’d obtained Carroll’s blessing to report on the shenanigans, even though Carroll’s parties were understood to be off the record.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/09/the-birth-of-americas-true-crime-obsession

[Magister]

Finally, Dr. Ed 2 is willing to look something up on the internet.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Thanks for following up on my comment from yesterday but it was lighthearted and this seems like TMI.

[Nameless But Highly Opinionated]

Overrated.

[SRG2]

Musically appropriate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGzOozXt4ek
And גמר חתימה טובה
to my fellow tribespeople!

[Dan Schiavetta]

I've played that piece and I think it's very moving (and I'm not Jewish).

[SRG2]

,,,and indeed, neither was Bruch.

[Dan Schiavetta]

I didn't know that!

[SRG2]

Yup - he was a Rhineland Protestant. in the words of an old sleeve note.

[Frank Drackman]

not even a little? (Jewish) Maybe you're 1/1024th Hebrew like Senator Poke-a-Hontas

[The Margrave of Azilia]

You mean that Marshall was both a Hamiltonian nationalist *and* a promoter of slavery? How could this be?

[Dan Schiavetta]

Yes

[Mr. Bumble]

"Classic 70’s horror."
Are referring to the capt or the movie?

[Dan Schiavetta]

Slave owners were a majority on the Court. This was true for the entire time before the Civil War.

[Dan Schiavetta]

There's Gabriel Duvall's dissent from a Marshall decision in Queen v. Hepburn, 1813 -- the only written dissent Duvall wrote in his entire time on the Court. Duvall was himself a slave owner but he made his name prosecuting freedom suits like Queen's.

[Magister]

Marshall's historical reputation will never be changed substantially by any new scholarship. In the same way, Antonin Scalia's reputation is likely set for all time; nobody wants to speak ill of the dead, even if they died in the midst of the last of many fishy hunting trips. Clarence Thomas's and Samuel Alito's corruption should be their main legacy, and the way to achieve that is not to wait for a later judgement of history.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Justice Thomas' obituary will lead with his precipitation of ethics reform at the Supreme Court.

Seventy-five years from now, that is the only thing for which he will be remembered.

[not guilty]

"Seventy-five years from now, that is the only thing for which he will be remembered."

I don't know about that. Uncle Thomas may surpass William Douglas's longevity record for service on SCOTUS. He is age 75 and has served for 32 years as of next month. Douglas served for 36 years and 211 days.

[Frank Drackman]

I'll give you this much "Coach" Sandusky, you'll still be remembered a 100 years from now. Sort of like Jack the Ripper, except you're "Jerry the Turd Burglar"

Frank

[not guilty]

I have never understood the antipathy toward Planned Parenthood. That organization has prevented more abortions than Operation Rescue's minions have ever dreamed of.

[Dan Schiavetta]

+1

[Mr. Bumble]

Still recovering from your trip to Bizzaro World I see.

[Magister]

Yes, my lack of faith wavered for a moment.

The Ed-pocalypse? "You will hear of civil wars and rumors of civil wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed, because none of that stuff will happen.... You will hear that liberals should be handed over to be persecuted and put to death. And refugees. Also slutty women. And the commenters who doubt the word of Dr. Ed. Especially the commenters."

Hmm, not scary. The next mass shooting by someone who shares Dr. Ed 2's vile beliefs? That's scary.

[Purple Martin]

What's your factual objection to that? Throughout its long history, Planned Parenthood have provided far more contraception than abortion services, by an order of magnitude. Nothing has been demonstrated to reduce abortions more then lowering cost of and access to contraception.

On the other hand, there's no evidence that Operation Rescue has significantly reduced the total number of abortions at all.

So, again what is your factual objection?

[Frank Drackman]

See, Queenie, in late 18th/early 19th Century, Afro-Amuricans weren't considered to be real Human Beans, sort of like how the current Afro-Amurican Feti aren't so of course if you had means, you'd own a few.
OK, go ahead about how my mom blows Jameis (rhymes with Rapist) Winston

Frank

[Frank Drackman]

Supporters of Murdering Feti were a majority on the Court from 1973-2022. Thanks to "45" they aren't now.

[Mr. Bumble]

There is no factual basis for ng's comment and none for yours.
PP does about 40% of the abortions in the US. From their own report, 354,871 in 2020 (last year I could find numbers for).

From the article linked below:
According to its own 2019 – 2020 Annual Report, 96.9% of pregnant women seeking help from Planned Parenthood get an abortion; only 0.7% get adoption referrals and 2.4% get prenatal care of any kind.2

They don't do a very good job of preventing unwanted pregnancies and but a great job of cleaning up the failures.

https://www.hli.org/resources/planned-parenthood-abortion-statistics/
I realize this is a "pro-ife" group but most of the info is from PP.

[Purple Martin]

Do you detect the logical fallicy in your response? Go ahead, ponder a bit, I’m sure you can figure it out…

OK, “pregnant women” are not typically inquiring about contraception, so your percentages are from a population not relevant to the subject addressed. When you get your copy-n-paste rebuttals from anti-abortion sources, perhaps you might pause to wonder if they might not be picking from every cherry on the tree.

Again, historically, far more not-pregnant-and-desiring-to-remain-so woman than already pregnant women have historically sought Planned Parenthood services.

[not guilty]

Unclear on the concept of contraception, Mr. Bumble? An embryo or fetus which is never conceived is never aborted.

The screed that you link to states that Planned Parenthood performed 354,871 abortions in 2020, but it also distributed 584,003 emergency contraception kits that year. Even disregarding all other contraceptive methods provided by PP, https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control, that is approximately five contraception patients for every three abortion patients.

Also from your link, Planned Parenthood’s 2019 – 2020 Annual Report shows that abortions are 3% of what it offers. Fifty-two percent of its services are STI testing and treatment, 25% is birth control, and its other services account for 20% of its visits.

Did you think no one would click on the link?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

"Uncle Thomas"

It's funny because he's black. /sarc