Bonus points to commenters who discover, in Alito's opinion, that he refers to English legal precedents including famed jurist Sir Matthew Hale, who had at least two women executed for witchcraft and wrote a treatise supporting marital rape (at least per twitter): link.

Gay marriage is likely gone too...

Charlie
it appears that the USSC is intent on turning back the clock all the way to the 19th century. - As RECENTLY as that?
Looks more like women-as-property to me.
And so backward into all the dark & fascist rabbit-holes you have mentioned.

OTOH, the mention of all the OTHER "privacy" laws & judgements could be a very fertile ground for disputation.

Is this, as per the tail-end of the last thread, the opening shot in an actual civil war?
Paging US-resident commenters for opinions?

I take the liberty of transplanting what I wrote earlier over here, (Moderators: feel free to remove from the other thread)

So, at the risk of being a bit controversial, The Roe vs. Wade thing is not as clear-cut as most people think.

In the end, it is all about opinion and beliefs, and let there be absolutely no doubt, that I am firmly and definitively of the opinion that abortion is a decision to be made by the pregnant person, however they prefer to be identified, and however they decide to make that decision, subject only to a scientifically defined deadline.

With that out of the way:

Alito's proposed opinion boils down to: "This kind of contentious issue should not be decided by us. If you want equal rights for women, a right to abortion, same-sex marriage or whatever: Pass an amendment, that's how we do it in USA."

And he is not wrong.

For the last 50 years, all sorts of groupings have been trying to use the SCOTUS to enact policy, some got what they wanted, from Roe vs. Wade to Citizens United, others didn't.

Some of the judges have repeatedly and increasingly vocally expressed concern, about the division and distrust of the judicial system these kind of decisions foster, (see for instance Stevens' in Bush vs. Gore.)

The fundamental problem is that the entire power-structure of USA is rigged to benefit rich(er) white(r) men.

That is why USA never ratified the "Equal Rights" amendment, which was introduced first time 99 years ago and why USA still have the death-penalty and why police are protected by "qualified immunity", why people of color er much more likely to live in "Industrial" zones and so on.

And the racism is not just confined to one side of the political spectrum, Tom Lehrer's observation was pretty precise: Up to around the seventh decile of USA is clearly racist, but against different targets.

It is therefore no surprise that minorities have tried to use the Supreme Court as a Hail Mary pass, and it is also no surprise that the justices of the court have become increasingly weary of it, and want to get out of that business.

But whatever hopes Alito holds for strong medicine, overturning Roe vs. Wade with a 5-4 opinion, where a lot of the country considers three of the five votes illegitimate, is not going to make anything better.

We are witnessing the first shot in the second inning of USA's civil war, and it is far from given that the union, or the judges, survives this time.

I can see several exits from this situation.

Is this, as per the tail-end of the last thread, the opening shot in an actual civil war?

No, the opening shot was the attempted coup d'etat on January 6th.

We're now well into the Phony War, with pre-engagement political-judicial positioning, a gridlocked legislature, and a behind-the-scenes squabble for who will inherit Trump's mantle and lead the SJPs to dominion.

(Spoiler: it won't be Madison Cawthorn. The Republican party isn't quite ready for his ilk yet. Give it another couple of years, though, and they'll find someone even worse who is palatable to them.)

My opinion is useless. I don't understand at all. Having lived there for 6 months I have no insight, as it was just so bafflingly weird. And I think that's really all I can add. 21st century people can't relate enough to make meaningful prognostications. Any thoughts about what's going on that include any modelling of their thought process will be wrong because that's not how they think.

The Republicans in the Senate get worried and allow a bipartisan version of (1) (watered-down and larded with concessions,

I think this ruling will move a non trivial number of voters over from middle to D for at least one election cycle.

But the existing Senate R's know that any such laws they pass before the next election cycle will get them tossed out of power for a decade or more. Need to see what R Senators are up for election this cycle in what states to be sure.

From the last thread:

For the last 50 years, all sorts of groupings have been trying to use the SCOTUS to enact policy, some got what they wanted, from Roe vs. Wade to Citizens United, others didn't.

To a first reading by a legally uneducated person (me), this new leaked ruling doesn't overturn Citizens United or any of those other decisions, just this one specific decision.

"I can see several exits from this situation."

Do not overlook that this is 100% clear-cut, totally beyond dispute, win for the "Trump-wing" of the republican party.

Also, do not overlook that at least three of the democratic senators are firmly against abortion, but have gotten away with it, because "The Supreme Court has spoken."

I dont necessarily disagree about 6th january being the first shot, but that was largely a shot in the air.

This shot is the one that kills somebody.

"To a first reading by a legally uneducated person (me), this new leaked ruling doesn't overturn Citizens United or any of those other decisions, just this one specific decision."

It does not: They can only rule on the case before them.

But overturning RvW, and mentioning all the others in the judgement, is a gold-embossed invitation to get them back in front of the court, so they can be overruled.

Absent a sudden death, a new amendment or a radical expansion of the court, this 5 judge majority runs the show for the forseeable future and can have them all overturned before the next presidental election.

This shot is the one that kills somebody.

If this ruling stands I expect there will in due course be an American Savita Halappanavar case.

It'll be a reasonably affluent white woman who is happily pregnant when she starts getting odd pains/bleeding, checks into a hospital in a state that just went absolutist on banning abortion, turns out to have an ectopic pregnancy, and is too ill to travel/be medevac'd to another state.

Unfortunately the state of sex ed in American schools over the past sixty years is so terrifyingly awful that, in combination with bizarre folk beliefs ("a woman can't get pregnant unless she has an orgasm" is one argument used to deny that rape can result in pregnancy, for example) legislators probably won't get the message.

And an added complication is the war on public schools (because private academies are so much more profitable: see also Betsy DeVos).

The context for the first one Charlie mentions here, btw, is itself important. Lawrence vs Texas legalised same-sex intercourse across the US, invaliding 13 states' sodomy laws, after Texas cops entered a property following reports of an armed intruder, and arrested the men they found there because they were having sex.

To quote the Wikipedia lead:

In 1998, John Geddes Lawrence Jr., an older white man, was arrested along with Tyron Garner, a younger black man, at Lawrence's apartment in Harris County, Texas. Garner's former boyfriend had called the police, claiming that there was a man with a weapon in the apartment. Sheriff's deputies said they found the men engaging in sexual intercourse. Lawrence and Garner were charged with a misdemeanor under Texas' anti-sodomy law; both pleaded no contest and received a fine.

The Supreme Court struck down the sodomy law in Texas in a 6–3 decision and, by extension, invalidated sodomy laws in 13 other states, making same-sex sexual activity legal in every U.S. state and territory. The Court, with a five-justice majority, overturned its previous ruling on the same issue in the 1986 case Bowers v. Hardwick, where it upheld a challenged Georgia statute and did not find a constitutional protection of sexual privacy. It explicitly overruled Bowers, holding that it had viewed the liberty interest too narrowly. The Court held that intimate consensual sexual conduct was part of the liberty protected by substantive due process under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Lawrence invalidated similar laws throughout the United States that criminalized sodomy between consenting adults acting in private, whatever the sex of the participants.

It's the key law that allows queer people to exist without fear of blackmail or gaol in red-voting states.

Likewise Loving v. Virginia legalised mixed-race marriages and mixed-race sex in 16 states, including everywhere south of Mason–Dixon but also Delaware(!!); it's only in 2000 that Alabama removed the (invalidated) miscegenation text from the state constitution.

I wouldn't normally repeat a posting knowingly, but in the circumstances I think "I am pro-choice. This follows from believing that I have no right to tell a woman whether she should bear a child or not, under any circumstances." warrants repeating.

I agree. The opinion reads like there was a pre-written main text overturning Roe, which Alito has simply stapled on to an addendum relating to the case at hand. We have to ask which other pre-written opinions are floating around, waiting for the right chance.

"The context for the first one Charlie mentions here, btw, is itself important"

They are all important: They are precisely what stands in the way of states implementing what is for all purposes and intents "Christian Sharia Law".

Note that the last time the Dems had a 60+ majority of the Senate (filibuster proof) and a majority of the House and a democratic President was the 95th congress: 1977-1979. They didn't pass a law on Roe/Wade then - when they could.

"They didn't pass a law on Roe/Wade then - when they could."

They could not.

Ratifying RvW would have to be a constitutional amendment for it to stick, otherwise republicans could just remove it again at first chance they got.

Note that the "Equal Rights Amendment", which sought to remove all discrimination based on sex, was introduced in 1923 and have still not be ratified.

https://www.talkingpoliticspodcast.com/blog/2020/214-the-great-abortion-switcheroo

Half an hour on the weird history of abortion politics in the US. The part which was most surprising to me is the Protestant vs. Catholic (to some extent immigrant) issues which used to be in play.

Imigrants in USA have almost always been very conservative and religious.

If the republicans turned the racism against brown people down a bit they would gain a sizeable fraction of 1st gen hispanic voters, probably enough to give them a solid majority in all three branches of government.

It galvanizes the Democrat base and they manage to edge the Republican majority out of the Senate: suddenly the legislative gridlock evaporates and they pass a Federal law explicitly enumerating rights to this stuff. (I wish.)

Even in the best case scenario where the Democrats gain a majority in the Senate (and keep a majority in the House), would they be able to pass such a law that isn't struck down by the same Supreme Court on the reasoning that the power to pass such a law isn't given to the Federal government in the constitution, and hence reserved to the States.

i.e. Would they need a constitutional amendment to get those protections back nationally?

"would they be able to pass such a law that isn't struck down by the same Supreme Court on the reasoning that the power to pass such a law isn't given to the Federal government in the constitution, and hence reserved to the States."

The biggest stick Congress have is the "Spending Clause" power, where they can say things like "We offer all this money to states which ...".

That's how they got speed limits on free-ways for instance: "No money for maintenance if the state's highest speed-limit is above 55 MPH"

Absent a new amendment, any future majority can undo any law, like in any other country.

1977-1979. They didn't pass a law on Roe/Wade then - when they could.

Then the issue wasn't D vs R as it is now.

First, can we change this to SCOTUS, the more widespread acronym? The USSC is also the US Space Command.

Second...yuck. This is partly political payoff to the conservative rich supporters. Reason is, Republicans usually do better in non-presidential elections because more of them vote. Why give everyone else a reason to destroy them at the polls, unless they have no other choice? About 60% of all Americans support access to abortion in all or almost all cases, and we just got kicked in the crotch. Now we have to vote, like it or not.

Third, Poul: check your racism, please. US immigrants are not just the poor and desperate from Latin America, because many of these people are too busy to vote. The ones you're missing are the highly trained professionals from all over the world who come here for jobs, and they're no more conservative here than elsewhere. They often don't vote, not because they're not liberal, but rather because they're leaving behind ugly politics and don't want to be politically active in their new home unless they have to be (I know a lot of immigrants). Now they have to be.

Anyway, Poul, the real kicker is that the "Black Republicans*" used the strategy you propose from Lincoln until Nixon. They abandoned being the party of "all men are created equal" when LBJ alienated white southern voters, and they decided it was worth grabbing that big, powerful chunk of the US electorate. And here we are. Most people who are not white and male don't like the Republicans any more, for fairly obvious reasons.

*"Black Republicans" was a rallying cry in the 1860 election for the slaving electorate, as in, if the "Black Republicans" won, they'd secede, because white men are created better than others. Equality was not in the Constitution, slavery was, and only traitors would so desecrate the Constitution.

"We have to ask which other pre-written opinions are floating around, waiting for the right chance"

Yes, there are alot I am sure. This has been planned for decades, it has the Federalist Society's fingerprints all over it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society

I formed the opinion in the eighties, when I was a teenager and just becoming conscious of such things, that the US would destroy itself. I have seen nothing to contradict that opinion yet, only confirm it.

"Third, Poul: check your racism, please."

You, on the other hand, should try to read to the end of what I wrote, and then think about it, maybe even do some research of your own, before you fire of your "I know better than everybody" auto-reactions ?

Look in the cross-tabs of any competent opinion poll and you can see for your self: 1st gen hispanic immigrants are overwhelmingly aligned with what the republican party claims to stand for, including opposition to abortion, opposition to same-sex marriage, opposition to sex-education in schools etc.

The only thing which stops them voting republican seems to be the racism hurled against themselves.

I dont know /why/ the 1st gen. hispanic immigrants holds those political standpoints, but it has come through that way in opinion polls for more than two decades.

There have been several "progressive" republicans who have tried to point out to their party how big they are missing out, but of course to no avail.

That same phenomena has been present in other major waves of immigration, but not documented at the same level of precision as with these days.

I think even Alistair Cooke used an episode on this phenomena many years ago.

The foundational privacy rights case is Griswold and the smart money expects it to wind up on the docket soon.

It's worth noting WRT Roe that the smart money did not expect an opinion like the one leaked: the Supremes seldom explicitly state "$PREVIOUS_DECISION was wrongly held ab initio and is hereby made null, it and all the reasoning that depends on it." If they pull that with Griswold, the 2nd half of the 20th century really does get repealed.

The only thing which stops them voting republican seems to be the racism hurled against themselves.

Well, yes: the Republican party didn't start out racist, they did it to themselves.

But now, all the leading senior Republicans -- the senators and congressional reps, plus the senior state reps and governors -- all got there during the party's period as the water-carrier for white supremacists.

If they reverse themselves, then sure, they'll pick up hispanic votes. But they'll haemorrhage more white votes than the garnish from the other side. In particular, the white supremacist base will get whipped into a frenzy and will kick them out during primary season, resulting in a fresh intake of lunatics who make Marjorie Taylor Greene look like Leon Trotsky. So they won't do that until the death spiral is heading towards completion. And the party may disintegrate first.

I think it's rather more likely that the Republicans get one more shot at the White House, and after that the White House won't be worth owning because it'll be a smoking crater (along with the whole concept of the Union of States).

Secondary issues include how many states will pass laws forbidding out-of-state travel for an abortion, and what will happen if someone comes to the UK for one. Based on current precedent, they would be extradicted, despite public outcry. The UK might even be pressured into passing a law forbidding (even private) abortions for women from countries that forbid them. What will happen in Canada, I can't say.

I think that it will take a bit longer than that; there is a lot of inertia in the politics of countries like the USA. But I agree that the USA probably won't reach its tricentenary, though there may be groupings that claim to be the real USA that do.

...the last time the Dems had a 60+ majority of the Senate (filibuster proof) and a majority of the House and a democratic President was the 95th congress: 1977-1979.

2009, when the Democrats used it to pass the PPACA (Obamacare). The 60-vote majority in the Senate disappeared when Ted Kennedy died and Massachusetts elected a Republican in his place.

Poul, I did read it, and it doesn't work anymore.

I happen to agree that many Hispanics would like to vote for more conservative candidates than they do. However, they're a smaller and less powerful bloc than the white supremacists at the moment. If the Republicans abandon the white supremacists now, they're through as a party. They've abandoned all pretense of being anything other than the Party of Trump and teh crazy--no policy basis, just quid pro quo and ubiquitous lying.

The downside you're missing, which is even bigger is that the democrats are getting pushed right by trying to be the big tent that holds everyone who's not a Republican. They're not terribly successful at it, but being the party of socially conservative non-whites, mainstream business, and progressives means that not a lot gets done on climate change, because the coalition is split on it.

That's what is going to bite everyone else in the world. Not US abortion politics.

Secondary issues include how many states will pass laws forbidding out-of-state travel for an abortion, and what will happen if someone comes to the UK for one. Based on current precedent, they would be extradicted, despite public outcry. The UK might even be pressured into passing a law forbidding (even private) abortions for women from countries that forbid them. What will happen in Canada, I can't say.

For women who are wealthy enough to travel, they will go to states or countries that provide abortions and get one. Women don't need doctors to tell them they're pregnant, so if they get an unwanted pregnancy, they tell no one who would object, take a trip, and deal with it.

That was happening prior to Roe, and it will happen again, because overturning Roe simply devolves abortion back to the states.

The women who are harmed by this are too poor to take that trip.

What I'd suggest, if you want to do something about the situation, is to give money to Planned Parenthood, because they're going to be really busy. I should note that abortion is a small portion of what Planned Parenthood does. Mostly they provide gynecological services. And I don't think donations to PP are limited to US citizens.

There are other groups out there who are organizing ways to help women travel safely to get abortions. I'm not sure who the best of these are, but it may be worth funding such efforts too.

"If they reverse themselves, then sure, they'll pick up hispanic votes"

I have not seen anyone advocate that they "reverse", it's more of a "tone down a little bit" thing, and it comes mostly from younger R's who no doubt wonder if anything will be left for them.

And yes, absent a genuine miracle, a full-blown fascist R will win the presidency in 2024, and that will be the formal end of "The American Experiment".

In this context "a genuine miracle" would amount to the so=called "progressives" gaining control of the Democratic party /and/ manage to run a competent and popular campaign and winning, against not only the Republican party, but also all the 1%'ers and all TV-networks.

So yeah, "Trump-Tucker 2024" it is...

"Secondary issues include how many states will pass laws forbidding out-of-state travel for an abortion"

They cant.

"Interstate commerce" is one of Congress' explicitly enumerated powers.

In a sane world that follows actual legal precedents they clearly can't. Unfortunately, it isn't clear we exist in that world any longer. Scotus just showed they don't particular care about precedent other than where it helps them construct their own argument.

In the U.S. the freedom to travel is a constitutionally guaranteed right, and it's a lot more fundamental to liberty than the right to an abortion (of which I'm also in favor, for all the obvious reasons.) I don't think you'll get the Supremes to sign off on restricting freedom to travel. (If they do it's game-over.)

Based on current precedent, they would be extradicted, despite public outcry.

Nope.

AIUI you can only be extradited if the crime you are accused of is a crime in both nations. Abortion isn't illegal in the UK, so it wouldn't be extraditable.

If I had ridiculous amounts of money the first thing I would do is produce a TV show which put the current Supreme Court on trial, because starting with the Senate's treatment of Merrick Garland (and all the business with Thomas not recusing himself from issues which involve his wife) I think the court is no longer legitimate.

If you're in the U.S. you might write to your Congresscritters and tell them to impeach Thomas, at the very least.

"In a sane world that follows actual legal precedents they clearly can't."

As I said: Interstate Commerce is an enumerated power of Congress in the US constitution, it is not something the SCOTUS came up with, so they cannot tear it down either:

Article 1, Section 8:

AIUI you can only be extradited if the crime you are accused of is a crime in both nations.

is what assange is accused of a crime in the uk? i thought the espionage act stuff was kind of america-specific

AIUI you can only be extradited if the crime you are accused of is a crime in both nations. Abortion isn't illegal in the UK, so it wouldn't be extraditable.

This comes up from time to time because US prosecutors love charging people with conspiracy to commit some large crime. The charges get reduced to something smaller and much more concrete if the person has fled to England, where conspiracy is limited to a very narrow set of activities.

Assange is being held for bail evasion, IIRC.

Espionage is a crime in the UK; it doesn't have to be the exact same law in both jurisdictions, it just has to be sufficiently similar/equivalent to apply.

My money'd be on DeSantis.

About 60% of all Americans support access to abortion in all or almost all cases, and we just got kicked in the crotch.

Invest in a cup. Given that your political structure lets the rural/racist minority control the country, being in the majority is apparently meaningless. (See also gun control, universal health care, etc.)

That's easy to change in the UK; even without that, the Home Secretary has a fairly free hand and (as we have seen) faces no penalty for breaking the law. Furthermore, there's nothing to stop the USA state from creating a trumped-up charge of a sort that is a crime in the UK, because of the way that our law effectively prevents enquiry into whether the charge is malicious; I can't remember the others, but the 'two nurses' case was not the only one when the charge would have been thrown out by the magistrates in England.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. You may be OK if Scotland is allowed to become independent.

For women who are wealthy enough to travel, they will go to states or countries that provide abortions and get one.

If it later comes out that they had an abortion, in some states that opens the door to private lawsuits:

"Like a similar anti-abortion law recently passed in Texas, Oklahoma’s bill also gives individuals the right to sue someone who “aids or abets the performance or inducement of an abortion.” This includes the clinic that performs the procedure, as well as the person who drives the woman to the medical building."

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/30/23050662/uber-lyft-extend-legal-fee-coverage-drivers-sued-over-oklahoma-restrictive-abortion-law

So airlines, hotels, etc look like they may be potentially on the firing line. I wonder how much it will cost to insure an airline taking a pregnant woman out of Texas or Oklahoma (or any other state that passes similar laws).

(Probably over-reacting here, but I've heard teachers censoring what they teach to avoid lawsuits from activist parents and/or "concerned parties" in states that allow it.)

Invest in a cup.

What part of Griswold v. Connecticut did you miss?

Overturning Roe v. Wade in this manner is an opening shot, not the end game.

"Interstate commerce" is one of Congress' explicitly enumerated powers.

So how did Texas manage to block the Mexican border?

There are ways of making something bloody difficult without making it actually illegal.

I was referring to the kicked in the crotch part of his comment.

Policies that a majority of Americans support can be blocked by a minority, which can ram through policies that they support. The majority needs to look at ways of dealing with the kicks that they know are going to happen. Stopping the kicking would be ideal, but that's not going to happen soon so preparing for them so that you're not eliminated by a single kick is important.

And I've probably pushed the analogy too far…

It's going to get worse before it gets better, if it gets better. I'm not as invested as Frank, but given one of my grandnieces is growing up in America (and her father my nephew-in-law is right-wing) I have skin in the game. And given that America isn't shy about pressuing Canada on a whole variety of issues, I have my own concerns.

Yes, that's commerce. The constitutional basis of interstate ravel is more complicated: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/amdt14_S1_4_3_2_1/

Complicated is bad under the current Scotus.

[[ changing markup links now to work with updated markup version - mod ]]

My money'd be on DeSantis.

Given the fight he's picking right now, I'd wonder how far he could get in the primaries if he tried to run at all. He'd be splitting the loony vote with the other farther-reich-than-thou nuts, and Florida Man isn't a demographic that plays well nationally. He'd have to be picked by some media giant with very deep pockets and so far I haven't seen that he's sold himself to Rupert Murdoch.

Short of that, he's going to loose any media war. He's picked a fight with Disney! I'm not a great fan of the Disney Corporation, but let's have some sense of reality here - Disney has been doing media since the earliest days of animation, public relations and entertainment almost as long, has a global reach, and has very deep pockets. I don't anticipate a lot of success for a politician who personally goes after Disney and threatens their profits.

Is this, as per the tail-end of the last thread, the opening shot in an actual civil war?

I think future historians will mark the 2020 U.S. Presidential election and the January 6th insurrection as the likely beginnings...

Invest in a cup. Given that your political structure lets the rural/racist minority control the country, being in the majority is apparently meaningless. (See also gun control, universal health care, etc.)

Sorry, misunderstanding. I was being obtuse.

To me, the fight kicks into high gear with the June primaries, and ends in November with the midterm elections.

Getting kicked on Roe early is going to hurt, but it also may energize a lot of people who are less likely to vote or donate otherwise, these being young women who don't have a lot of time or money to waste on issues that don't directly impact them.

I appreciate you've got skin in the game here, and I'm going to do my minuscule part to help see that it doesn't stand. It's going to be another mess, though.

I also wonder if Mitch McConnell's refusal to let Merrick Garland, Obama's pick for the Supreme Court, be approved. For almost a year, Senate Republicans refused to consider Garland's nomination, holding no hearings, no votes, and no action whatsoever on the nomination. :-(

My understanding is that in the United States, both at the federal and state level, convicts are never forced to work. They are offered work for privileges, and are paid at some rate far below minimum wage (sometimes below a dollar per hour).

They can choose not to work, but for boredom or for money/privileges, they will do so.

In theory, the 13th amendment does allow for forced labor when convicted and sentenced to that. Even then, depending on the work performed, it might be challenged on 8th amendment grounds (prohibition of "cruel and unusual" punishment). I have not heard of any modern accounts of forced labor in the US (excepting possibly, prisoners of war after WWII in the European theater... if those even count).

As for abortion, I have strong doubts that this leaked draft means anything, or that it is even authentic (not that Alito wouldn't write such, but that he'd leave it laying around to be nicked). If it is real, I have strong doubts that the court will rule in majority this way... it could just as easily be a dissenting opinion. And should they rule that way, it means little practical difference. Texas can't outlaw abortion in California or anywhere besides Texas. It would amount to posturing only. And in 5 years time, it will have flip-flopped back to where it was previously (or maybe a little further). For anyone who gives a shit about this issue and is celebrating their victory, I suspect they will be equally disappointed when their strategic overstep comes back to bite them.

My guess is that Congress picks up enough of a majority to put forth a 28th amendment, and that they'll write it with no sunset clause... pretty much the nuclear option. Those can hang around forever (and be ratified 200 years later, if need be). There's no getting rid of them, there's no way to get rid of them. And if your faction was trying to guard against ratifying those, all the time, with not a moment's respite... it's inevitable defeat. 20 of the 37 states are automatic givens (ratified within 4 months), and the other 17 can be picked up here and there with just minor demographic/electoral shifts. One at a time. It would almost be poetic. They'd see the defeat looming at them for 3 or 4 years, one state closer and one state closer to the 37 needed. Hell, I can't think of any plausible counter-strategy for it. The Republicans could try to admit new states (increasing the threshold for ratification), but there are only 3 or 4 candidates, hardly enough to move that goalpost much and worse all the candidates lean heavily left anyway.

Biden creates three new Supreme Court seats and fills them in the next few months: requires the filibuster to be ditched, too.

Requires filibuster-proof Congressional legislation. Not gonna happen... :-/

...believing that I have no right to tell a woman whether she should bear a child or not...

And that's the precise nature of the problem. All US-specific versions of Christianity which are the source of the problem state as an article of faith that a fertilised egg is a child, and therefore abortion is child murder. Whether or not you think this is a faith issue or a controlling-women's-bodies issue is largely irrelevant, because it's phrased as a faith issue and therefore has to be addressed as one. Of course Catholicism goes one step further yet, by stating as an article of faith that sex which couldn't potentially result in a fertilised egg is also equivalent to child murder. The problem here is that it isn't possible to have a rational debate with someone who holds those views. They are literally incapable of seeing the other side, because if you think it's premeditated child murder then of course there isn't another side.

In most of the rest of the world, this has been dealt with by humanism creeping up on society and displacing religious "values" which mandate sexist/racist/homophobic treatment if you want to be a member of that religion (or at least that branch of the religion), and some version of majority-rule getting this into law. The screw-up for the USA is that they've allowed the Supreme Court to become a law-making mechanism which isn't accountable under majority-rule, and now they're seeing the consequence.

Note that the last time the Dems had a 60+ majority of the Senate (filibuster proof) and a majority of the House and a democratic President was the 95th congress: 1977-1979. They didn't pass a law on Roe/Wade then - when they could.

For various weird reasons, Democrats actually had a filibuster-proof majority for only 14 weeks during that term. Just long enough to pass Obamacare...

I have strong doubts that this leaked draft means anything, or that it is even authentic

Roberts has already said that it is a valid DRAFT opinion.

It seems he was saying a lot. Opinions change. Drafts change. For and against can change.

There has been a lot of discussion that if the abortion challenge becomes a 5-4 then Roberts might switch so HE can write the opinion. As it is now Thomas gets to pick who writes it. And I suspect that behind the scenes Thomas would take a pass and NOT write it himself due to all the craziness with his wife. The other conservatives would most likely talk him out of it.

What may have happened is this is Alito's canned first draft that and he was lobbying to be the writer.

Now with all of this I have to wonder if Roberts might switch so HE can write it.

BTW, the news isn't that RvW would likely fall. It's the logic of the fall that has the serious folks upset. Which is why Roberts might write the majority opinion and make it narrow compared to what Alito wants to do.

Is the Alito draft real?

Apparently it is, per Washington Post (Roberts directs investigation into leaked draft of abortion opinion. The document is authentic but not final, the chief justice said in a news release Tuesday.

"Yes, that's commerce. The constitutional basis of interstate ravel is more complicated:"

This is precisely why PP ask you to make donation every time, rather than one big donation: That makes it "Commerce".

(My son is born in USA and received prenatal care through PP. My daughter is born in Denmark. Don't get me started.)

"My understanding is that in the United States, both at the federal and state level, convicts are never forced to work."

You are wrong.

If they want such "extras" as toothpaste, telephone calls etc, they are forced to work under, constitutionally approved, slave-like conditions.

BTW, the news isn't that RvW would likely fall. It's the logic of the fall that has the serious folks upset. Which is why Roberts might write the majority opinion and make it narrow compared to what Alito wants to do.

I agree with what you posted. The reason I quoted this is that I'd argue that it's not just the logic, it's the timing. This is highly inflammatory and let out before the primaries.

My uninformed guess is that some clerk leaked this because the Court was heading in this direction, but that this is different enough from their current position that it's "less bad."

I have a guess on who might have done it, but hopefully we'll never know.

He was originally charged with conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, and the original Swedish warrant was for mere questioning! The whole affair stinks, and the fact that Assange is a shit does not justify it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indictment_and_arrest_of_Julian_Assange#Charge_of_conspiracy_to_commit_computer_intrusion

[[ changing markup links now to work with updated markup version - mod ]]

Texas can't outlaw abortion in California or anywhere besides Texas.

With private lawsuits by 'concerned citizens', they can make it out-of-reach for anyone that can't afford to leave Texas and fight a lawsuit. In the modern panopticon, if you have money tracking people is easier than most of us realize (at a gut level). And the anti-abortion side has plenty of money*.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7vzjb/location-data-abortion-clinics-safegraph-planned-parenthood

So if you are in Texas and need an abortion, you might have to not only travel somewhere beyond the reach of Texas courts, but remain there to do so without risking financial ruin.

I really hope I'm being prematurely paranoid here.

*Plenty of money to stop abortions. Not so much to help children have a good life. I think we all recognize the hypocrisy.

""a woman can't get pregnant unless she has an orgasm" is one argument used to deny that rape can result in pregnancy, for example"

Really?

Gordon Bennett.

Our science teacher mentioned that in order to tell us it was bollocks. This was at the kind of age where it was still called "science" instead of "physics/chemistry/biology", I didn't even understand that women could have orgasms, and I quite likely hadn't even had one myself yet.

And I have never once heard of it since then, until I read your post. The idea that it is actually a live belief in parts of the US is really quite staggering.

Then the issue wasn't D vs R as it is now.

Sure it was. Obamacare...

Charlie @ 6
So you are predicting total chaos & close-to-civil-war in 2024, yes?

David L
But the existing Senate R's know that any such laws they pass before the next election cycle will get them tossed out of power for a decade or more - REALLY?
Look, they have got this far with their christofascist agenda & no-one has really tried to stop them, even though we know a majority of the US population is agin it ...

EC
"They" will try for that, but the UK Supreme Court would rule against it - plus the screaming outcry, of course.
SEE ALSO Charlie @ 38 (!)

Rbt Prior
Amazon of all employers, have already stated that they will not only allow, but support women who have to travel out-of-state to get abortions ....

YET AGAIN ...
It's the OTHER Privacy rulings that are at risk, if this goes through, that would firmly implant the US as a christofascist state. See also Aadvark Cheeselog @ 27 - If Griswold goes down, then the US ceases to exist as a functional state (eventually )
I think?
Again: opinions?

A science fictional solution to the whole abortion issue would be something like Bujold's uterine replicators. If such a thing was possible would the anti-abortion activists rally round and look after the fetuses, or would they lobby to make uterine replicators illegal?

"I dont know /why/ the 1st gen. hispanic immigrants holds those political standpoints, but it has come through that way in opinion polls for more than two decades."

Catholicism would be my guess. See also Ireland. Those kind of opinions seem to come in an "American screamers" flavour and a "native Catholic" flavour, which aren't quite the same, although for practical purposes the difference probably is not important.

I have seen speculation that it was leaked by a conservative SC clerk, specifically to nail it to the mast and force the conservative justices to stop arguing and back it to the hilt, lest they look petty and foolish.

So you are predicting total chaos & close-to-civil-war in 2024, yes?

Hello?

15 months ago they had armed lunatics storming their centre of government and hunting the Vice-President with a gallows (not to mention going after liberal legislators)!

I think that ship has sailed.

The draft is from February, and there's no telling how predictive it is of the current writings in the court.

Note that we do not know the actual votes, it may be 5-4, but it could also be 6-3.

When I listened to the oral arguments I certainly did not come away convinced that Roberts would uphold RvW, wheras it was very evident that the five activist judges wanted to kill it.

Roberts have been a very loud voice against "the judiciary creating law" and while he also stresses the need for settled law, the prospect of getting courts out of that nasty business once and for all clearly appealed to him.

Being on "the good side", possibly on a dissent where he merely cries croccodile tears about "settled law", and then have the five other swing the blade would not be out of character for him.

"interstate commerce" is a movement between 2 or more states of the USA, not between the USA and an alien nation.

For women who are wealthy enough to travel, they will go to states or countries that provide abortions and get one.

Yup. And poor women go back to coat hangers... :-(

Isn't control of the borders something that is federal, not state-level?

Or could, say, New York State decide "fuck this we're closing the border" and shut down all cross-border traffic? (Or, impose additional inspections that take weeks or months, thus practically shutting it down even if it's not actually prohibited.)

Sure it was. Obamacare...

I replied to the comment that was about 1977-1979.

OCare was 2009-2010.

Back in ancient of days, 1977-1979, abortion opinions were split across both parties.

You have missed my point. Johnson has been too busy to introduce much more fascism and anti-libertarian laws, but that's passing. What is more, Starmer is sounding more and more like an extreme Blair, and he introduced a great many of those. You HAVE seen the reports that Johnson (probably because Patel) wants to remove the courts powers over ministerial decisions, haven't you? It can't be done today, but the same might not be true in a few years time., because that's the way things are going.

And then there are our abortion laws as such. Do you think that the current lot would scruple to introduce an extradiction-enabling clause into a revision of those?

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/roe-v-wade-abortion-leak-supreme-court-b2070336.html

I have seen speculation that it was leaked by a conservative SC clerk, specifically to nail it to the mast and force the conservative justices to stop arguing and back it to the hilt, lest they look petty and foolish.

My guess was the opposite, a liberal female clerk who has no inclination to go into the judiciary (possibly any more?), and leaked it to energize the liberals for the election, and possibly to scare independents into voting democratic. "She" is nuking her legal career if caught, so either she's confident she won't be caught, or she's counting on the notoriety launching her career as an activist.

If I had to guess, I'd say the leaker works for Breyer and is out of a job in a few months regardless.

REALLY?

Let me be a bit more clear. Any R voting for such a law will be kicked to the curb and stomped on with combat boots. Their political career would be over.

Given that your political structure lets the rural/racist minority control the country, being in the majority is apparently meaningless.

This is a feature - not a bug. Without the compromise of Senate representation, the smaller states would never have approved our Constitution, and the USA (in its present form) would not exist...

Catholicism would be my guess. See also Ireland. Those kind of opinions seem to come in an "American screamers" flavour and a "native Catholic" flavour, which aren't quite the same, although for practical purposes the difference probably is not important.

Yes. Ask Floridian Ds and Rs mucky mucks about what happens when they try and slot the Hispanics into a traditional D or R box. Whoever tries hardest tends to lose that voting block to the other side.

Please note that the EQA is... problematical. There was a sunset clause, which may or may not be valid.

And under the previous governor of Virginia, a Democrat, they ratified it, so it should be the 28th Amendment.

If such a thing was possible would the anti-abortion activists rally round and look after the fetuses, or would they lobby to make uterine replicators illegal?

The latter, 100% definite.

It's not about saving the fetuses, it's about controlling women.

Religious, yes, conservative, not so much. I point to the Jews of eastern Europe who came here, who supported Dems. can't turn down its anti-immigrant rhetoric, because they've gone full white supremecist. To paraphrase Gandalf, when the plot is ready, you can't hide it any more.

All US-specific versions of Christianity which are the source of the problem state as an article of faith that a fertilised egg is a child, and therefore abortion is child murder.

This was not an issue when I was growing up. I suspect that the GOP picked this as a way to energize their base and win elections. It's also a great way to raise money... :-/

Note that leaks from SCOTUS are not rare, only leaks from SCOTUS to the public are.

If I had to hazard a guess, I would interrogate Thomas' wife.

I'd also point out that there isn't an American Hispanic bloc.

Cuban expats, prominent in Florida politics, are passionate about US-Cuba relations. Some want the island scoured clean of communists so that they can claim purported ancestral lands, others worry about relatives on the island and want to remit money. Many of the former group vote Republican because R's hate commies.

Mexican-American community gets complex, because Mexico's actually a very large country, and the US consists in part of former chunks of Mexico, including all the southwestern states from Texas to California. Some Hispanic families were here 400 years ago, especially in New Mexico.

There are Central and South American migrants who are often here because of US Drug War policies, and people from Argentina, Chile, and Brazil who are here for work. And so it goes.

To the extent they're a bloc, it's because American racism tends to force them to be one whether they want to or not.

"because if you think it's premeditated child murder then of course there isn't another side."

I don't know about that. Whether you think a fetus is a child or just a bunch of cells, that point isn't the end of the argument, because it ignores the specific differentiating feature which applies to this case and no other: a fetus is an endoparasite. So you cannot, in this case, regard it as a matter involving a simple victim/perpetrator interaction between two separate entities in the same way as a mother deliberately smothering her baby in its cot would be.

Instead you must - regardless of legalistic wriggling, since it is an inherent property of the situation - consider both the host and the parasite. To prohibit treatment of the parasitism imposes a bunch of consequences which start with slavery, and go up to the legal compulsion of premeditated murder of the host as well.

So "premeditated child murder" is not the be-all and end-all of the argument even if you do believe it's the correct description. There is another side, and it's no less disgusting. Therefore the argument is not terminated, but instead becomes about how one of those can be OK when the other isn't. (With the note that the need for uncomfortable compromise regarding one's own beliefs and acceptance that there exist only suboptimal solutions are personal matters which one must deal with personally, and do not count as excuses in respect of the wider, non-personal situation.)

I think we Euros should work to have a common defence as a backup of NATO, as collapse of the USA into civil war or fascist dictatorship can't be excluded. (Think a story in Alternate generals: a legitimate Dem governments is almost overturned by Trumpists and asks fo NATO intervention under article 5. Bundeswehr has to act as constabulary force...)

Michel2bec originally posted (on the previous discussion):

"It is therefore no surprise that minorities have tried to use the Supreme Court as a Hail Mary pass, and it is also no surprise that the justices of the court have become increasingly weary of it, and want to get out of that business."

As a European, I have always be surprised that something that important edged on a convoluted legal argument, rather than a law.

In France, the fight was extra ugly (1), the law passed thanks to the opposition, but it is a least no more seriously contested.

(1) Simone Weil, a auchwitz survivor, who lost part of her family there, was called a Nazi in the assembly by a number of "not far right" deputies, in 1975, less than thirty years after the war.

Pigeon, you're assuming that logic, facts, and biology are taken into account here. The people making these arguments are not doing so on any rational basis: they're driven by emotion, and the unspoken basis for their vehemence is that women's sexuality is dangerous and must be controlled. (The foetus is an excuse for this absolutism, not an actual thing, let alone a person.) A corollary is that they don't believe women are real people in the same way that rich white christian men are.

Reported ( In the "indy" ) that the leak is confirmed as a genuine preparatory statement/opinion.

Charlie - which is why you were so right to highlight all the other "privacy" rulings, which would all be immediately vulnerable, once this proposed judgement comes up.

All Supreme Court clerks are "out of a job" in a few months. It's usually a one year internship.

My conspiracy side suspected Roberts trying to scare Gorsuch straight. Roberts big concern is the reputation of the Court. If you get a decision that nibbles down on Roe, you continue the "frog in a slowly boiling pot" status quo. A sweeping reversal gets reaction. There is a window for "sane" conservatives to "save" abortion rights and be thanked for only eroding some of our Rights, while still getting the win of narrowing Roe further.

However, I suspect it is either a traditional Republican who still believes in "liberty" or a Democrat who wants to make the Justices feel the heat. In the normal course of things, they would have left this as the last opinion on the Court doorstep while they had already made a break for their summertime pursuits out of town.

Back when I was in college, I came up with the following obnoxious summary of the abortion fight: it's over justifiable homicide. On one side it's not justifiable, on the other, it's not homicide. It's hellishly more nuanced than this, but this bit of sarcasm gets at the point that the sides are talking past each other.

And yes, I agree it's about control and subjugation of women, so sitting the sides down to actually talk with each other won't work. If you believe the 538 data, most Americans are in the messy middle on abortion. For example, I cringe at abortion of a viable fetus for non-medical reasons, but more people are okay with early-term abortion, especially once they know that "heart activity" is not the same as viability.

If I had to guess, the national compromise (which yes, will likely happen) will probably heavily regulate late-term abortions, allow early term and medically necessary abortions, and the argument will be about where the line between generally legal and mostly illegal goes (most likely around "viability", which yes, I agree, is problematic).

Senators, and I emailed both of my Senators to impeach Barrett for not recusing herself, and putting the Bible ahead of the Constitution.

I came up with the following obnoxious summary of the abortion fight: it's over justifiable homicide.

No, it's a religious conflict within Christian sects.

From a Jewish halachic point of view, it's a non-issue: the woman's life and needs always takes precedence until the foetus is on the outside and breathing. Until then it's just a piece of tissue. If it's threatening her life? Get rid of it. If it's causing her distress? She can get rid of it. No reason or any reason will do, until it's a separate person.

The arguments are based on Jewish law, derived from the same bible those Christianists claim to use, but using entirely different jurisprudence. Which might just tell you how specious the "biblical" anti-abortion arguments are.

I repeat, in case you don't see what I'm getting at: the pro/anti abortion argument is entirely internal to Christianity. Other religions, even ones working mostly from the same source material, don't share the hang-up.

Or, as the old Jewish joke puts it:

Q: Beyond what age is abortion forbidden?

A: Graduation from medical school.

My conspiracy side suspected Roberts trying to scare Gorsuch straight.

And Kavanaugh. I think Roberts still worries somewhat about how history will view "his" court, and wants to avoid, "Then after three justices lied to the US Senate in order to get confirmed, the Roberts court went sharply downhill."

There are already organizations formed to mail/ship Plan B pills.

I quite agree that it's from a American Christian perspective, and I'm not going to push something I came up with 30 years ago as the correct frame to judge from.

That said, I wanted to add my take on a possible pathway to national abortion rights in the US.

--The Roe ruling blows up in Republican faces. Since this is about control and power, anything that causes loss of control and loss of power is bad.

--If the people pushing anti-abortion get their agenda slapped (and trust me, I know how this feels), then once they go unheard, the politicians practice their "Art of the Possible" and figure out some set of compromises that make that issue go away for awhile.

--Meanwhile, the people for whom this matters go back and plot how to regain their power.

I was saying that under the Former Guy, but I was hoping it would be led by the Belgians, who would land and hand out chocolate, and waltz into the Capital and the White House with no resistance.

AIUI you can only be extradited if the crime you are accused of is a crime in both nations. Abortion isn't illegal in the UK, so it wouldn't be extraditable.

Abortion is a criminal offense in the UK.

There is an exception if you have the signatures of two doctors and either it is before 24 weeks gestational age, or the doctors believe that the mother's life or health is at risk, or the foetus is unviable or would be born with a severe disability. That exception would clearly apply for an abortion conducted in the UK.

Certainly a woman who had an abortion in the US and then fled to the UK could be extradited if the abortion would have been criminal in the UK - which probably means that it was post-24-weeks, or not conducted by a doctor (the whole two doctors thing would almost certainly be interpreted by an English or Scottish court as meaning conducted according to local law or by a qualified doctor). A black market medical (Plan B) abortion might be extraditable, but not one by an actual doctor.

Hmmmm, I doubt there would be a "public interest" case for extradition in that situation, but I would want a real lawyer to look at that one.

As of 2020, 98% of abortions carried out in England and Wales were carried out due to "Risk of injury to physical/mental health of pregnant woman". Which in most cases means "risk to mental health", i.e. having a child against one's desires is quite possibly extremely traumatising and has long-term consequences.

Seriously, the mental health loophole is big enough to sail a carrier battle group through; that's what it's there for. (In 1967 it was intended to give the SJPs a sense that they were being pandered to and that abortion wouldn't be available "on demand". In practice, that's exactly what it is.)

Absolutely, but there is the requirement to have two doctors' signatures. An abortion done using grey market mifepristone was prosecuted relatively recently (in Northern Ireland, but still) because it wasn't authorised by doctors.

Texas, etc are going to have lots of black market mifepristone once this all becomes law - it will be very easy to ship across the state border from states where it is legal. Most of those abortions will take place at home in the quiet and no-one will know, but some will, inevitably, end up getting found out, and some fraction of those will run. I do not want to find out that an abortion by using black-market drugs in Texas (when there was no other option) is to be treated the same as one using black-market drugs in Great Britain (in a situation where a free NHS option was available) and thus a woman gets extradited on some terrible procedural basis.

I need to leave in about half an hour - I'm going down to the Supreme Court building to join the demonstration.

From Vice: The Supreme Court Leaks All The Time for your reading pleasure.

They're also forced to be locked in a cell.

That's called prison. No one's forced to need telephone calls. You have a strange idea of what "force" means.

Even when they are "forced" to work this isn't under "constitutionally approved, slave-like conditions" but for wages.

In that sense, I suppose you too are a slave, forced to work for wages. Why will no one feed you for free?

John Oyler: YELLOW CARD.

You appear to be spoiling for a fight.

Take it somewhere else, please. If you continue this way you will be banned.

A very depressing day.

I guess where this is going is “states’ rights” to make the list of Supreme Court-backed freedoms OGH stated in the original post illegal in red states. So this is the start of the “No choice” states from the Merchant Princes series.

The GOP picked abortion for a lot of horrible intertwined reasons. For a good account of the grim details read Republican Gomorrah by Max Blumenthal.

And if you're in the mood for a good rant on the subject, Marina Hyde lets rip.

That's really the sort of thing I was getting at: in the context of arguing with such people, the "premeditated child murder" position is not an unanswerable roadblock that makes it impossible to continue, it's a hook to drag the real reasons out into the light of day and hang them up in big flashing letters.

Laurie Penny is also worth a read.

This is from her most recent book:

https://lauriepenny.substack.com/p/do-women-have-a-right-to-life

Muslims consider that the soul enters the foetus on the 120th day after conception. - 17 weeks. This gives a very short window for first trimester screening for abnormalities before abortion is not allowed. Abortions may be carried out after this time if the life of the mother is endangered. Some groups are more strict about the dates.

Thirteen federal Circuit Courts (I worked for the Ninth Circuit). Thirteen Justices for the Supreme Court. Problem solved. Next question?

Have returned from one of the many protest marches here that were organized immediately last night upon the SCOTUS draft leaked by Politico.

Fleets of police helicopters relentlessly circling, so loud, so threatening.

They didn't bother to show up when the criminals were committing organized pillage my neighborhood that week in the summer of 2020.

"Thirteen federal Circuit Courts (I worked for the Ninth Circuit). Thirteen Justices for the Supreme Court."

That is by and large the model a lot of EU countries have picked, in some cases distributing cases by lottery, in some by specialty.

Denmark's supreme court has 18 judges, and they hand down a couple of opinions every week, except during holidays.

@100:

[There are already organizations formed to mail/ship Plan B pills.]

Like South Dakota's governor, there are already -- and were ever since the Texas laws this winter -- governors of the usual states, including Texas, to make this criminalized as well as everything else and anyone else who might possibly be performing public service for women who need reproductive health assistance.

Just like in the days of Comstock anything to do with female reproduction was criminal to send through the mails -- just starting with any information about it at all.

Just like the slaveocracy in the southern states did with anything that was in the mails that dealt with slaves and slavery.

Yes, they did indeed have post office employees in both Comstock's and slavery's days going through everybody's mail -- even opening it -- to be sure nothing got through, and that those who received it would be arrested or at the very least fined.

The days of Anthony Comstock are less than a century ago, since his laws weren't repealed when he died in 1915.

I have known this was coming since the days of Ronald Reagan. They told us they would make it happen, and they haven't stopped since. But I was told over and over that I was wearing tinfoil, that it it couldn't happen. I also knew it wouldn't stop there -- contraception, everything is in their sights to repealed, from gay marriage to, well, you name it, such as universal suffrage, if it is about someone who isn't a fragile white, straight, rich, male, xtian nationalist (this is now the party once known as Republicans), having rights, public support, respect and dignity is on the block. They TELL US this. They are taking down democracy, just like their heroman of history, Putin.

For reference, seven (count them, seven) states have no-bullshit abortion rights laws. https://images.fatherly.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/abortion-legality-map-september-2021.jpg

Very proud mine is one of them. https://www.findlaw.com/state/oregon-law/oregon-abortion-laws.html

For reference, seven (count them, seven) states have no-bullshit abortion rights laws.

At the time of the map, Colorado was unrestricted because it had no state laws one way or the other. This spring the state put an unrestricted right to an abortion into statute.

Current USSC thinking on Roe v. Wade and a whole slew of other social issues ALL abrogate the First Amendment's "establishment clause".

And I don't think they're going to stop with the 19th Century. I'll be surprised if they stop at the 16th Century.

All my years of service to Protect and Defend the Constitution wiped out in one fell swoop!

Fleets of police helicopters relentlessly circling, so loud, so threatening.

They didn't bother to show up when the criminals were committing organized pillage my neighborhood that week in the summer of 2020.

Or for the January 6th riot, either.

Of course they didn't. The police had (still have) a large percentage of Trump followers, so these criminals were their spiritual buddies... :-/

We've seen the same thing here in Portland, Oregon, during the many protests / riots we've had.

I wonder if this madness will motivate my own Canadian government to actually create law that protects women from such intrusion.

It's been settled precedent that the law against abortion in Canada was struck down, and has never been replaced. It was unthinkable that someone might try, but now we see that the people who have been trying all along may well succeed.

70% of Americans oppose overturning Roe v Wade.

It's the greatest gift the GOP could give the Democrats before the midterms.

Spent a bit over an hour at the rally - my foot is giving me grief (probably arthritis). I'm too angry to write it up tonight, but tomorrow, I'm going to email my Congressman (who just happens to be Raskin, who led the 2nd impeachment) to suggest several new federal laws:
1. Viagra is illegal in states with anti-abortion laws.
2. Convicted rapists are to be castrated.
3. States with anti-abortion laws are required to provide 100% of healthcare for the kids to age 18, and prenatal, birth, and postnatal care for the mother, as well as child support to age 18, and, oh, yes, to fund not using property taxes the schools for the kids.

The opinion apparently overturns Roe v. Wade by junking the implied constitutional right to privacy that it created. However, a bunch of other US legal precedents rely on the right to privacy. Notably:

• Lawrence v. Texas (2003) determined that it's unconstitutional to punish people for committing "Sodomy" (any sex act other than missionary-position penis-in-vagina between a married man and woman)

• Griswold v. Connecticut (1965) protects the ability of married couples to buy contraceptives without government interference

• Loving v. Virginia (1968): right to privacy was used to overturn laws banning interracial marriage

• Stanley v. Georgia (1969): right to privacy protects personal possession of pornography

• Obergefell v. Hodges (2015): right to privacy and equal protection clause were used to argue for legality of same sex marriage

• Meyer v. Nebraska (1923): ruling allows families to decide for themselves if they want their children to learn a language other than English (overturning the right to privacy could open the door for racist states to outlaw parents teaching their children their natal language)

• Skinner v. Oklahoma (1942): this ruling found it unconstitutional to forcibly sterilize people (it violated the Equal Protection clause)

Yeah, but all of THOSE decisions are also in the gun-sights of the CHRISTO-FASCIST majority.

It doesn't matter if junking the "right to privacy" undermines them because they're soon to be overturned as well.

Griswold v. Connecticut will probably be the first to fall, with a race between Obergefell v. Hodges & Lawrence v. Texas for second place. But the rest will fall soon enough.

Portland even generated this New York Post headline: Suspect in fatal Portland protest shooting killed by feds during arrest attempt

The suspect, who insisted he acted in self-defense and “had no choice” when he shot and killed a right-wing protester in Portland during an evening of clashing protests, was later assassinated by law enforcement in Lacey, Washington. From what I've read, police made no attempt to arrest him, but just opened fire.

Contrast this to the way right-winger Kyle Rittenhouse was treated by police on the night he killed 2 people in Kenosha, Wisconsin... :-(

70% of Americans oppose overturning Roe v Wade.

It's the greatest gift the GOP could give the Democrats before the midterms.

Only if Democrats turn out to vote, which is always problematic. We'll have to wait and see if the Roe v Wade issue really makes a difference. It could also motivate Republicans to vote...

What percent of England's population when Cromwell became Lord Protector in 1653 were Puritans?

What percent of America's population today consists of Evangelicals?

Not much to add to the comments --- the US is speeding its way down a hell-hole.

One group that might be at even more risk is girls under 18* who need a parent's signature for any medical procedure under their family medical insurance plan.

OOC - the only other recent legislation that I can think of that seems archaic and pits Feds vs. some States is marijuana. Most States have legalized it but (I think) it's still not legal per Federal law. I'm wondering whether abortion will be handled similarly or even if whatever was learned re: Fed vs. State marijuana legislation differences could be applied and used to help in this situation.

So - SCOTUS says the Gov't should have complete control over women's reproductive systems but won't pick up the tab for uterine/ovarian/breast cancer screening and treatments?

*Sorry to pile on the misery - but there are kids who've been raped at home.

Poul-Henning Kamp @ 35:

"Secondary issues include how many states will pass laws forbidding out-of-state travel for an abortion"

They cant.

"Interstate commerce" is one of Congress' explicitly enumerated powers.

They CAN if the SCOTUS opines that such a prohibition won't violate the Constitution. And I think that's highly probable given the current makeup of the court.

AlanD2 @ 53:

Is this, as per the tail-end of the last thread, the opening shot in an actual civil war?

I think future historians will mark the 2020 U.S. Presidential election and the January 6th insurrection as the likely beginnings...

I lean more towards considering the 2000 Miami-Dade Brooks Brothers Riot and the decision in Bush v. Gore as the first round.

International data

Figured some international perspective - even though some of the data's pretty old - might be useful given that 'religion' and 'ethnicity' have been mentioned as factors.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/abortion-rates-by-country

'Top 10 Countries with the Highest Abortion Rates (annually per 1000 women) - United Nations

Russia - 53.7 (2004) Vietnam - 35.2 (2000) Kazakhstan - 35.0 (2004) Estonia - 33.3 (2005) Belarus - 31.7 (2004) Romania - 27.8 (2004) Ukraine - 27.5 (2004) Latvia - 27.3 (2004) Cuba - 24.8 (2004) China - 24.0 (1998)'

Robert Prior @ 70: A science fictional solution to the whole abortion issue would be something like Bujold's uterine replicators. If such a thing was possible would the anti-abortion activists rally round and look after the fetuses, or would they lobby to make uterine replicators illegal?

ILLEGAL

Michael Cain @ 99:

My conspiracy side suspected Roberts trying to scare Gorsuch straight.

And Kavanaugh. I think Roberts still worries somewhat about how history will view "his" court, and wants to avoid, "Then after three justices lied to the US Senate in order to get confirmed, the Roberts court went sharply downhill."

Too late. He lost that battle in 2016.

I agree with Charlie. It's most likely some right-wingnut trying to put the "conservative majority" in a box.

not quite sure about the practicality of that gallows tbh, nor whether i can get this picture of it past markdown

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2021/01/07/USAT/247dbc80-2689-4c87-bc21-b31a1142185e-XXX_TH__DC_protests697.JPG

[[ changing markup links now to work with updated markup version - mod ]]

Duffy @ 126:

70% of Americans oppose overturning Roe v Wade.

It's the greatest gift the GOP could give the Democrats before the midterms.

Do you think it will be enough to overcome GQP Gerrymandering?

The whole affair stinks, and the fact that Assange is a shit does not justify it.

don't they LOVE dwelling on it, though?

"he never did the dishes!"

Adrian Smith @ 138: not quite sure about the practicality of that gallows tbh, nor whether i can get this picture of it past markdown

https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2021/01/07/USAT/247dbc80-2689-4c87-bc21-b31a1142185e-XXX_TH__DC_protests697.JPG

It's symbolic, not practical. If they'd actually managed to get their hands on Pence (or Pelosi and/or others ...) they'd have been lynched right there in the House Chamber.

[[ changing markup links now to work with updated markup version - mod ]]

Spent a bit over an hour at the rally - my foot is giving me grief (probably arthritis). I'm too angry to write it up tonight, but tomorrow, I'm going to email my Congressman (who just happens to be Raskin, who led the 2nd impeachment) to suggest several new federal laws:

(Unironically)Thank you for your service. I was out pulling weeds, which feels similar but is politically less useful(/unironic thanks).

Since I don't want to fire up the Republicans, I'll point out that treating assault rifle rights the same way abortion rights are being treated is something people in California have talked about. Probably not a good idea to bring this onto the national stage just yet.

As for the rest, I know they feel good, but please make sure that the measures are not preferentially targeted at minorities.

I'd add one law for your consideration: make it a right for any woman to ask for her child to be genotyped, and to develop a method for the government to use child DNA as a method for finding fathers (in the FBI and public databases) and suing them for child support starting at 25% of their annual wages. Note that there's a whole little industry of finding people from partial matches on Ancestry and elsewhere. That industry could be grown, and hopefully (sarcasm) it would cut down on welfare costs in poor states (/sarcasm).

I'd also suggest that, as a precondition of running for elected office, every candidate has to submit a DNA sample to go into the FBI database. It's not for finding deadbeat dads, of course. It's (also) for dealing with disasters where they or their bodies might have to be identified: airplane crashes, terrorist bombings, stuff like that. If they're taking federal health care, they can also use the data for medical genomic screening. So it's a net positive, not (just) a way for finding deadbeat dads.

I lean more towards considering the 2000 Miami-Dade Brooks Brothers Riot and the decision in Bush v. Gore as the first round.

You could certainly view these as the opening shots. Or you could go back to Nixon's Southern Strategy, or even the post-Civil-War Reconstruction. Everything seems linked one way or another...

Do you think it will be enough to overcome GQP Gerrymandering?

I don't know, but Democrats have been Gerrymandering too. Check out New York State...

You could certainly view these as the opening shots. Or you could go back to Nixon's Southern Strategy, or even the post-Civil-War Reconstruction. Everything seems linked one way or another...

I'll just put in my pitch for reading US history from the 1850s to 1900. I strongly suspect that various right win operatives are recycling their political science classes to reuse the tactics of that era.

If they'd actually managed to get their hands on Pence (or Pelosi and/or others ...) they'd have been lynched right there in the House Chamber.

by the guys who were staying inside the rope barriers as they walked through? most of them seemed to be looking for souvenirs

Gerrymandering too. Check out New York State...

Or North Carolina for the last 30+ years. Maybe longer but I've only been here since 89.

No, it's a religious conflict within Christian sects.

Currently. Mostly. Sort of.

When RvW was written it was also after School led prayer was outlawed. And after forced busing to end segregation.

Back then the libertarians were the one frothing at the mouth. The smarter ones realized that they would never be a large enough group to push through changes. So one (of many) things they did (the smart behind the scenes folks) was make it a religious issue. Prior to that the religious aspects was mostly an issue of the RCs. Evangelicals were against abortion but it was as much again women of loose morals as the actual abortion.

Sort of. Mostly. Kind of.

The history of this is not simple or straight forward.

About 25 years ago there was a schism in the ProChoice leaders about 100% on demand as it is not a person vs. those who said we can't keep talking about 2 weeks and 39 weeks as the same thing. The later were drummed out of the movement.

"I agree with Charlie. It's most likely some right-wingnut trying to put the "conservative majority" in a box."

It is far more likely some rabid "pro-life" ass-hat celebrating.

Justice Thomas' wife would be my very first suspect: This is right in her wheelhouse and there is no way she would be able to keep a victory this enormous under her hat for months.

Justice Thomas may not even know, she would be rifling through his papers behind his back to find out.

The three lying justices should be charged with perjury before Congress and impeached. Not gonna happen, I know, but it should.

Are You for 86?

JBS
Yes - C16th is about right, or maybe early C17th - the times of the witch-trials, yes?
See my post @# 3 - & also requoting # 69: - It's the OTHER Privacy rulings that are at risk, if this goes through, that would firmly implant the US as a christofascist state. If Griswold goes down, then the US ceases to exist as a functional state (eventually )

Duffy & AlanD2
ONLY if everyone gets outs & votes "D" & ignores all the shrieks of "commonism", though ...

"First shot in an actual war"
No. The 6th January riots were probably the equivalent of John Brown's raid, Haper's Ferry 1859. We have not got to Fort Sumter, yet .... yet.

Alito is very explicit about it the ruling: The benchmark is when the 14th amendment was enacted in 1868.

(See page 25, 44 and Appendix A)

If you are going to impeach justices, impeach everyone that signed Shelby for breaking their oaths of office. Which a functional congress would have done years ago.

Shelby is the decision that gutted the voting rights act. The voting rights act is entirely straightforwardly within the power of congress under the Reconstruction Amendments. It should have been untouchable, but the Republican justices did not like that it prevented Republican legislators from suppressing voters, so pretended those parts of the constitution did not exist.

And all of them should have been impeached, convicted and disbarred from ever practicing law again at all for doing so.

Problem is, the US founders designed their system of government on the presumption that each of the three parts of government would jealously guard their power. And congress has been fleeing any actual exercise of power for decades now. That is why the US has the imperial presidency and the Council of Guardians court.

Equal protection was it's failure mode. I don't like it but I understand it.

P H-K
Could you please explain #153?
Are you saying that Alito & others are trying to overturn your 14th amendment, or was that a timestamp??
And how does this tie in to the "privacy" rulings that might/will be under threat in the near future?

Oh yes, repeat question from "the Boss" ...
Why do USA-Americans hate each other so much?
Why do they spend so much effort trying to piss on each other? "I'm not allowing MY taxes to go on someone else's healthcare" / Let's treat women as property" etc ...

Heteromeles @145:

I'll just put in my pitch for reading US history from the 1850s to 1900. I strongly suspect that various right win operatives are recycling their political science classes to reuse the tactics of that era.

Serious question: Do you have any history books to recommend? Not only for those years, but US history in general. We eureopeans tend to get a condensed and probably sanitized version from school.

No. Read the dissents. That holds no water at all. (because it proves rather too much.)

Shelby was written in spectacular bad faith and the fact that the court did not have an anvil dropped on it for that bullshit is pretty directly why this is happening.

Shelby is also how the republicans plan to weather this storm. Does not matter if most of the nation hates your guts if you keep that part of the nation from voting!

"I'm not allowing MY taxes to go on someone else's healthcare"

You've run off the end of the runway.

There is a long running strain of though in a non trivial number of US folks who just don't want the federal government to do much of anything. Healthcare is just a subset of this. Just like overturning RvW isn't about abortion for these folks, it's about getting the federal government out of most anything.

They want to go back to 1821 and have a vision of how great the country would be. And not it is NOT all about slavery. It is about people wanting to be totally in charge of all of their life's decisions. I know some of these folks and their mental dissonance is huge as to being able to ignore the effects of a life like this. Their biggest problem is that is has been 150 years since, in their mind, they could pack up and move to the next frontier if they didn't like the locals around them. The frontiers are mostly gone. Well except for places like northern Canada which is, yuck, cold, wet, and not a nice place to live.

The social "live life like we want you to" is a group that has, very successfully, attached themselves to this core libertarian group. And if "they" win I suspect there will be a huge fight over LEAVE ME ALONE and WE MUST MAKE SOCIETY WORK THE WAY WE WANT.

Think of the discussions around here over the years over space cadets and their vision of how great life would be on other planets or generation ships. Because everyone would be free to do their best.

Also toss in a big dose of "everything I have I made for myself without any help from government or society."

RvW was based on the 14th amendment.

Alito goes through all the states (Appendix A) in 1868 and finds that they (almost) all criminalized abortion in some way and another at that time, and based on that he concludes that the 14th clearly does not give women a right to abortion.

In other words: Pure "originalism".

suddenly the legislative gridlock evaporates and they pass a Federal law explicitly enumerating rights to this stuff.

"They want to go back to 1821 and have [...]"

I think it is more fundamental than that ?

It seems to be almost a law of nature, that if you win an war of ideology, you need to occupy the looser for around three generations and forcefully reeducate them in the winners way, otherwise you'll just get a return-match sooner or later.

Examples:

US Civil War: Being lenient on the racist slave states, just meant the problem festered on for another century and now they'll have to fight them again. (Quiz question: Why are all the Civil War statues of southern traitors ?)

First world war: Telling Germany to be sorry and forcing them to pay for the damage they caused was more or less the direct cause of WWII.

After WWII, USA occupied Japan and Western Germany for 50 years, force-feeding them a steady state of Sesame Street, The American Way, Cheap plastic consumerism and junk-food and they seem to have been effectively assimilated ?

(This hypothesis begs the question: Who's going to do that to Russia ?)

Not quite. There are multiple rulings over the years where SCOTUS has said, there's no right to this in the document but you can write a law. And at times in the past Congress would write such a law. But not much lately.

Western Germany for 50 years, force-feeding them a steady state of Sesame Street, The American Way, Cheap plastic consumerism and junk-food and they seem to have been effectively assimilated ?

I donno. Seems to me there's a vibrant hard core right wing still functioning in Germany.

And once you get past the public facade Japan presents to the world they have a slew of issues. Just not "let's conquer the entire Pacific".

There are now and have been forever people who want to be in charge of others. (And in their minds are better than them.) At times they get powerful enough to wreak the lives of everyone else.

But that's kind of the point. The current rhetoric from prominent US Christians is that the "rights" of the "child" are absolute and trump any risk to the mother. Never mind that if the mother dies (and don't discount the suicide risk), the foetus dies too. Sure it's all a control thing, but you need to fight through the "you can't change what my religion says" bullshit first.

The problem for the US, it seems to me, is that actual people dying isn't a political issue there. If it was then there'd be a lot more control of guns. If your citizenship don't even make it a vote-changing issue to do something about school shootings, or the total people murdered with guns (19,000 a year), then what on earth would make them change their vote?

"The problem for the US, it seems to me, is that actual people dying isn't a political issue there."

That's the hall-mark of a racial society: As long as it is one of "those people" who die, it is not important.

Warning: Rambling thoughts first, followed by a presentation on the state of abortion access here in Norway.

To state the obvious, abortion is a tough topic to discuss, and dividing into "pro-life" vs "pro-choice" doesn't help at all. Personally I'd prefer a world where abortions weren't necessary, but that's not the world we live in. I can empathize with the doctors who at one day is doing their very best to save a newborn after 23 weeks (1) and the next day are doing a late-term abortion of a fetus that seems very similar, so I really feel the argument for only allowing abortions up to the point they are viable. IMHO the best ways to lower the abortion rate is providing access to knowledge and contraception, combined with good care all the way from pre-natal to post-partum and beyond. For the occasions when an abortion is necessary, I think it's important to make sure the service is provided as early and safely as possible.

Abortion was legalized here in Norway back in 1976, and with it came a national registry to monitor the use of abortions, ostensibly to ensure "it didn't become too common". The law allows abortion for three main categories:

• Up to 12 weeks gestational age (ga) for any reason
• After 12 weeks ga with the consent of a tribunal, with no upper bound in law but the requirement that better reasons are needed for later terminations
• At any time the pregnant woman's health is in immediate danger

We therefore have a rich dataset (2) of how many abortions are performed, and for the late-term abortions we have the reason given to the tribunal:

The prominent orange "B" line is the woman's social situation, which can range from "too young" to "too poor" to "have too many kids" to other reasons. The steep decline is probably explained by better access to contraception as well as earlier detection/abortion to avoid the tribunals. The lower dark-blue "A" line is the mother's mental of physical health. The purple "AB" line is when both of these was the basis for the decisions. The light green "C" line is the viability of the fetus, mainly deformities, but also for reasons such as "the woman will underfo chemo-therapy which will have an adverse impact". The increase here can probably be explained by better detection, increased age of the prospective parents, and increased use of IVF. Lastly the dark green "Anna (Other)" line contains the cases for rape and incest as well as those women who are unable to comprehend that they are pregnant. Luckily, it's a vanishingly small number. Note that all numbers are absolutes and not ratios.

The conclusion is that abortions is like other forms of healthcare: The best and cheapest way is pro-active prevention, but that doesn't give any tangible results.

1) One-year survival rate for extremely premature infants born after 23 weeks is now around 50% here, up to almost 90% at 26 week gestational age.

2) Data is available in a statistics bank in norwegian; last english-language report is from 2020.

Not quite. There are multiple rulings over the years where SCOTUS has said, there's no right to this in the document but you can write a law.

You appear to be assuming good faith.

There are some famous Jewish right-wingers who have adopted a strong "pro-Life" stance as a means of admittance to the inner circle, despite Jewish theology and despite the fact that they aver "faith" is the most importance force in their life. See Ben Shapiro and his sister, for example.

The big picture you all are missing is that the American Civil War never ended

http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2014/09/phases-of-american-civil-war.html

Phase one of the American Civil War took place in the South, during the Revolution, when the British found their strongest support among Loyalist/Tory militias in Georgia and the Carolinas. It was Scots-Irish hill settlers, fighting for Daniel Morgan, who tipped the balance in that struggle, toward what would become the American Experiment.

Phase two featured a period when southern politicians grew ever stronger in control of the U.S. federal government. True, Andrew Jackson clamped down on John C. Calhoun's secessionism, in the 1830s, and kept the nation together. But Mr. Chait is correct that Jackson's overall sentiments were what we might call "confederate." Indeed, southern control over levers of power only grew until, by 1860, five of nine Supreme Court justices were slave-owners.

This extended through the next phase, starting in 1852, when the Fugitive Slave Act turned the division violent. Swarms of small units of southern irregular cavalry commenced rampaging across northern states, seizing anyone they wanted as an "escaped slave." These raider squadrons had the support of U.S. Marshals who were appointed by mostly-southern presidents. When outraged northerners started forming posses to defend their neighbors, those marshals called in federal troops. (See my earlier article: Past Keeping Faith with Future...and Day with Night. In other words, the "confederate" social movement is not always anti-central-government! It is only opposed to federal government when it does not control those levers of power. Witness the tepidness of anti-government proclamations during the tenure of GW Bush. Indeed, it is a wrathful unwillingness to let the electoral winners have their legitimate turn that was behind the hysterical reaction to Lincoln's election... and (one might argue) Obama's.

But finally, Blue America got fed up. And what ensued was phase four — the one we normally think of as “The Civil War.” Unable to stomach their opponents ever even having a brief tenancy in just one branch of the government, CS did not bother trying to send even one delegation to negotiate with president-elect Lincoln, thus eliminating all right to refer to the Justifications for separation found in Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence… that secession can be justified, but only when all other negotiations and redress have been exhausted. Anything short of that is oath breaking and damnable treason.

Phase 5- The 1870s early end of Reconstruction... when the South bargained to let Rutherford Hayes and the Republicans into the White House, in exchange for what they really wanted. The “confederacy” won this phase, big time, when they dickered their way into an end of Civil Rights protections and a surge of Jim Crow laws that ripped from freed slaves the right to vote. The real losers, though? Not just minorities, but in every pragmatic sense the entire South, which thereupon slumped into a backwater of economic retardation and romantic, old-timey hatred of progress.

Phase 6 . The 1880s… this phase is not entirely associated with “confederate society” though it was part and parcel of the Democratic Party of those days. It featured William Jennings Bryan's white-christian populism, Free Silver and a rebuke to the steamroller effects of consolidated northern corporations. And for the first time, the states of the Great Plains began edging toward alliance with the Olde South. Northern oligarchs won phase six… unfortunately, in this case! (The one time the confederacy wing of our ongoing civil war had some real, moral justification on their side.)

Phase 7 - The 1940s through 1970s … the civil rights movement, started with Harry Truman’s bold desegregation of the military, then Dwight Eisenhower’s firm support of school desegregation. The essential and too-long delayed resumption of Reconstruction… which also included Lyndon Johnson’s effort to re-industrialize and re-invigorate the South. This phase was clearly won by Blue America (though the South benefited prodigiously, economically), but at a cost — which was….

Phase 8 - …the Nixonian, southern-strategy “flip" leads ultimately to today's full scale New Confederacy effort to finally destroy the United States of America. Not by force of arms, but by ending the effectiveness of politics as a pragmatic, open-minded process by which undogmatic citizens negotiate a mix of experiments and find out what works -- the methodology behind all of our successes. Replacing all of that with dogma more intense than communism ever was. Pragmatism and science and re-evaluation are now portrayed to half our neighbors as enemies

As some bright people have pointed out, the Supreme Court's Right to Review the Constitutionality of laws is not explicitly found in the document's text. It had to be inferred in Marbury v Madison, fifteen years after the Constitution was written. So strict constructionists should be self-erasing, but obviously they are not going down that logical path. You can ignore inconvenient explicit text as well, for instance the Militia Clause of the 2nd Amendment or the Badges and Ensigns of Slavery.

You can ignore inconvenient explicit text as well, for instance the Militia Clause of the 2nd Amendment

apparently "well-regulated" had a subtly different meaning then

not quite sure about the practicality of that gallows tbh, nor whether i can get this picture of it past markdown

You're not wrong about that, but "incompetent treason" is very much on-brand for the Trumpsters. Hell, it practically IS the brand.

Although I can easily imagine my late father, or possibly Hank Hill, taking one look at that and launching into a contemptuous handyman's rant.

"That ain't how you build a gallows, I tell you what..."

"Who taught you boys how to tie a noose? Git a rope, I'll show you right."

"I dont know /why/ the 1st gen. hispanic immigrants holds those political standpoints, but it has come through that way in opinion polls for more than two decades."

Perhaps you're being disingenuous about the reason, but those Hispanic immigrants are overwhelmingly Catholic -- as is SCOTUS.

115 - As usual, this relies on being able to determine exactly the date of conception!

127 - (1), (2) and (3) all strongly seconded.
Ref suspected arthritis: Are you aware of any of your direct forebears or uncles having any form of gout? I'm asking because I have gout which was mis-diagnosed as early onset osteo-arthritis.

131 para 1 - Pretty much irrelevant since the majority of the population did not hold a franchise at that time. At most the franchise extended to male property owners alone.

142 - Good time to point out that there is no "Federal DNA Database" in the Yousay?

We've seen the same thing here in Portland, Oregon, during the many protests / riots we've had.

See also the Ottawa occupation in February…

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Sorry to pile on the misery - but there are kids who've been raped at home.

Generally, children that have been sexually abused are victims of family members. Last time I did a dive into the subject*, it wasn't until around age 15 that the chances of the abuser being a family member (or family friend) dropped below 50%.

*It felt like a dive, and not one I want to repeat having dealt with abuse victims; I don't need more nightmares right now. So feel free to provide more updated statistics if you have them.

Is there mileage in speculating about timing of the leak with regard to the wider context, I.e. the other big patriarchal / petro-wealth battle which is happening right now, in Ukraine? We have speculated here that Putin is driven by a deadline, which may not (only) be one of personal health. Indeed there was a well argued thread about the invasion being driven by demographics and state capacity. Might this be a similar last chance roll of the dice, or a moment of opportunity, driven by the fact that Putin still has a chance to win the war?

Can’t help thinking there’s a tactical connection between the two, rather than only a common patriarchal worldview and common state actors…

Everything seems linked one way or another...

It's history. Of course everything is linked!

Do you have any history books to recommend? Not only for those years, but US history in general.

Not an American, but I recommend Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_People%27s_History_of_the_United_States

The frontiers are mostly gone. Well except for places like northern Canada which is, yuck, cold, wet, and not a nice place to live.

And also not in their country. Not that some of them realize that…

(I couldn't find the Talking to Americans segment where Rick Mercer trolled Republicans who didn't seem to realize that. Sorry, I looked.)

FYI - Washington Past has an interesting article on cognitive dissonance and the re-election chances of your mayor.

Serious question: Do you have any history books to recommend? Not only for those years, but US history in general. We eureopeans tend to get a condensed and probably sanitized version from school.

As noted here before, I'm fiddling around with an alt-history in which the Union won the Reconstruction as well as the Civil War, so I'm not reading the books below to become an expert. Rather, I'm reading them to get a sense of what was going on, so I can think about ways things like Jim Crow could have been countered. The result diverges profoundly from what actually happened in the US.

Foxessa is the real historian, so I'm hoping she'll chime in with a more thoughtful list. Here's what I'm dipping into:

David Keehn, Knights of the Golden Circle mostly for pre Civil War violent right wing nuttery, and the consequences thereof.

Eric Foner, Reconstruction Updated Edition I think this is the standard history text.

Eric Foner, The Second Founding: How the Civil War and Reconstruction Remade the Constitution. Foner's one of the best-known historians of the era.

Heather Cox Richardson West from Appomattox: The Reconstruction of America after the Civil War. Richardson's Letters from an American are worth signing up for (you can either get free daily emails or pay for the full substack experience). Her posts bring up the connections between what happened then and what's going on now.

There are quite a few monuments to Union civil war people. For example, the General William Tecumseh Sherman Monument.

The frontiers are mostly gone. Well except for places like northern Canada which is, yuck, cold, wet, and not a nice place to live. And also not in their country. Not that some of them realize that…(I couldn't find the Talking to Americans segment where Rick Mercer trolled Republicans who didn't seem to realize that. Sorry, I looked.)

Agreed about Americans, although I disagree that northern Canada is a frontier. It's been settled for thousands of years.

I should note that dispossession, sometimes serial dispossession, is a major character of the New World and Australian frontiers. So that "why do those creeps want our land" feeling is something that not just the First Nations went through, but it's also something people in places like Owen's Valley went through twice, when Mulholland diverted the water they'd stolen from the Paiutes, and piped it to LA. If you like disaster documentaries, the American Experience episode on the St. Francis Dam is a good example of this whole thing in action, including the Owen's Valley war.

Don't know where it stops though, because developers are currently scraping the seabeds and trashing cislunar space to claw out the next billion for themselves and keep the rest of us lurching along for a little bit. I do think the Native comparisons between capitalists and Wendigos are particularly apt, though.

Washington Past has an interesting article on cognitive dissonance and the re-election chances of your mayor.

We just had an election for mayor (my preferred candidate lost — only chap who placed environmental concerns front-and-centre rather than ignoring them).

Do you have a link? I'm not finding an article that looks like the one you're referencing.

Plausible speculation from an ex-clerk of the supreme court about who leaked and why.

I do think the Native comparisons between capitalists and Wendigos are particularly apt, though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX_AhL2SsUs

Sorry. Premier.

CS doesn't like Wapo links so here's the title.

"Doug Ford’s disastrous government should not be given another term"

American Experience episode on the St. Francis Dam is a good example of this whole thing in action, including the Owen's Valley war.

I know where you spent 50 minutes last night. :)

Poul-Henning Kamp @ 149:

"I agree with Charlie. It's most likely some right-wingnut trying to put the "conservative majority" in a box."

It is far more likely some rabid "pro-life" ass-hat celebrating.

Justice Thomas' wife would be my very first suspect: This is right in her wheelhouse and there is no way she would be able to keep a victory this enormous under her hat for months.

Justice Thomas may not even know, she would be rifling through his papers behind his back to find out.

She wouldn't have to go behind his back.

Since I actually know the area a bit and remembered the story from Cadillac Desert, oh hell yes. You too?

To me, the most jaw-dropping part is that William Mulholland was entirely self-educated past grade school. While his Owen's Valley aqueduct is a work of (evil) genius in several regards, the St. Francis Dam design was pure Dunning-Kruger, and a lot of people died as a result of his ignorance. To Mulholland's credit, he did at least take the blame for that colossal failure, although he didn't pay much of a price for it.

Not really. The timing for the leak is driven by the timing of the judgement, which in turn is driven by the Supreme Court session ending in June. Meantime the timing of Putin's war is driven by the seasons (because as many armies have found out to their cost, you don't run a military campaign in Eastern Europe in winter).

My Tivo captures lots of things for me to play while doing boring system admin things.

Frontline, Nova, American Experience, etc... at one end of the mental spectrum. I suspect I have 20 hours of such stacked up where I want to actually pay close attention but don't have the time.

Dam building of the last century is an interest for me. Things like the salmon runs on the Columbia River which I think most people around that area want to fix but can't imagine life without the dams. Or the costs to do some kind of a real fix.

Plus a some of what many people here would consider brain mush at the other end.

I noticed Sliders was starting on one of the local off channels so I started recording it. Curious to see how it aged. Or I'll delete them all soon.

I started recording the Jetsons a few weeks ago but they didn't age well at all.

Oh, yeah. I'm still waiting for Frontline to apologize for the fawning hour they did on Enron two decades ago.

(because as many armies have found out to their cost, you don't run a military campaign in Eastern Europe in winter).

Or a tank offensive after the thaw starts.

Greg Tingey @ 156: P H-K
Could you please explain #153?
Are you saying that Alito & others are trying to overturn your 14th amendment, or was that a timestamp??
And how does this tie in to the "privacy" rulings that might/will be under threat in the near future?

The "idea" of a "right to privacy" derives from the "due process" clause of the 14th Amendment:

No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Alito's draft opinion states (in part):

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 Clause of 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.”

Not "overturning" the 14th Amendment so much as narrowing the scope drastically and denying it codifies any "right to privacy" protection against intrusive state laws banning behavior the christofascists don't approve.

Oh yes, repeat question from "the Boss" ...
Why do USA-Americans hate each other so much?
Why do they spend so much effort trying to piss on each other? "I'm not allowing MY taxes to go on someone else's healthcare" / Let's treat women as property" etc ...

I think it's a legacy of how North America was colonized in the aftermath of the English Civil War; how so many of the colonies were founded by religious groups seeking to make themselves the dominant sect ... "escaping persecution" so they could in turn become the persecutors.

None of the groups wants someone else telling them what to do, but they all want to be the ones telling everyone else what to do.

... and it's perhaps more apparent than real. The majority just wants to be left alone, but a very vocal minority gets all the attention.

And the ones who were armed? The guy (and his mother) with the zip-tie handcuffs? And the MFSOB who put his feet up on Pelosi's desk... and was found to have been carrying a shock rod, good for, IIRC, almost a million volts, which could well kill someone older?

They're not all uniform. Some (like my next door neighbors) are from Central America, and they vote, and are liberal. And then there's the older generation of Cuba-Americans in FL, esp. Miami.

Let's see, the first wave were all supporters of the nasty dictator Battista, and, oh, yes, literally, the Mob, who owned and ran Havana until Castro came in (there are stories of them grabbing money and whatever they could in the casinos and running before the revolutionary troops came in). Then there was the second wave, the Mariel boatlift. What percentage of those were literal criminals that Castro let out of jail (so, in effect, exiling them)? They're still psychotically anti-commie.

The frontier is gone. Hell, the US gov't declared that literally over a century ago. What's left are national lands and a lot of land that's no good for anything, except maybe solar cell farms.

tarkeel @ 157: Heteromeles @145:

I'll just put in my pitch for reading US history from the 1850s to 1900. I strongly suspect that various right win operatives are recycling their political science classes to reuse the tactics of that era.

Serious question: Do you have any history books to recommend? Not only for those years, but US history in general. We eureopeans tend to get a condensed and probably sanitized version from school.

I'd start with Lies My Teacher Told Me

I think Wikipedia is pretty good on American History. Covers it in great detail. All you really need is a good query.

Maybe start here History of the United States (begins with the arrival of Native Americans 15,000 years ago) and branch out to specific topics following the hyperlinks.

The frontier is gone. Hell, the US gov't declared that literally over a century ago. What's left are national lands and a lot of land that's no good for anything, except maybe solar cell farms.

This was in response to Americans thinking that the Canadian Yukon, Northwest Territories, and Nunavut are the next US frontier, because thinking eastern Siberia is our next frontier would cause a nuclear war. Since the American and other colonial frontiers have always been about greedy outsiders dispossessing knowledgeable locals, this notion of new frontiers is both predictable and odious.

Beyond that, it's worth realizing that the end of the frontier is Turner's 1893 thesis, something that's been somewhat uncritically taken as a fact. Dispossession of locals by greedy outsiders continues to this day, although we don't call it "the spirit of the frontier," because the locals are often not Indians. We've racialized the whole frontier ethos as whites alienating land from First Nations, when the reality, which includes both Buffalo Soldiers and the Five Civilized Tribes keeping black slaves, not to mention the whole Commanche Empire, is considerably more complex.

I think you're mixing way too much up. What I referred to was this: "In 1890 the superintendent of the U.S. Census announced that rapid western settlement meant that "there can hardly be said to be a frontier line." - https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&psid=3154

I assure you there was no thought of eastern Siberia or nuclear war in 1890.

Adrian Smith @ 172:

You can ignore inconvenient explicit text as well, for instance the Militia Clause of the 2nd Amendment

apparently "well-regulated" had a subtly different meaning then

I hope that's sarcasm, because it didn't. It meant the same thing it means today - governed under the rule of law; trained & disciplined and answerable to the authority of civil government.

I don't know about eastern Siberia from the US side. From the Russian side, it's worth reading Across the Ussuri Kray.

Also, remember that the US continued to expand after 1890, into Hawai'i, the Philippines, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Samoa, and later parts of Micronesia. Frontier? Or empire? (This was a big debate in the 1890s, because the US was supposed to be the one non-empire among the nations).

In the middle 19th Century, groups like the Knights of the Golden Circle were into filibustering (basically, extending the American frontier into places that were already declared nations). The KGC wanted to form a "Golden Circle" of slaving-owning states, run by Americans, to entirely encircle the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean. They'd then secede from what they regarded as a US that was increasingly disregarding the text of the Constitution, which said that slavery was perfectly legal. They recruited quite a few armed militia-members (in the proper sense) to take over Mexico before the 1860 election caused the KGC to pivot to training southerners to fight the war of the secession. John Wilkes Booth was trained by them.

Two reasons to bring this up. One gets back to the Roe V. Wade ruling that we're supposed to talk about, to point to the deep roots of the mess we're now dealing with. The other is to point out that you can't really understand American history if you say "this is the frontier, this is secession, this is capitalism." KGC members started in some cases on the frontier (especially the Texas members), pivoted to planning to filibuster into Mexico, pivoted to fighting as rebels in the Civil War, then pivoted apparently to becoming frontier outlaws after the war. Rather than trying to parse the frontier as an area that affected the psychology of people who ventured there, it's worth looking at who was doing stuff on the frontier, what they had done elsewhere, and what they did after the frontier was declared closed.

Things like the salmon runs on the Columbia River which I think most people around that area want to fix but can't imagine life without the dams.

Salmon runs are also affected by dams on the Snake River in eastern Oregon / western Idaho. Both sets of dams are used for barge transportation, and proposals for dam removal are very controversial. I'm sure the salmon would approve, though... :-)

"The problem for the US, it seems to me, is that actual people dying isn't a political issue there." That's the hall-mark of a racial society: As long as it is one of "those people" who die, it is not important.

Every highly publicized school shooting happened at some mostly white, middle class school. The dead children were not "those people". And still nothing was done.

'apparently "well-regulated" had a subtly different meaning then'

I hope that's sarcasm, because it didn't. It meant the same thing it means today - governed under the rule of law; trained & disciplined and answerable to the authority of civil government.

Apparently the Supreme Court and conservative gun-rights advocates disagree with you... :-/

The folks (founding fathers) who wrote up those words figured if militias can throw off the yoke of the worlds dominate empire, we shouldn't need standing armies. Thus well regulated militias would be a great thing.

Madison, who in so many ways can be considered the main architect of the US Constitution was president during that interesting period of 1812-1814. And became convinced that militias were NOT going to be a very good way to defend the country. And that he and his buds had been wrong. But he (and us) were/are stuck with that pesky amendment.

IMNSHO, a goal of repealing Roe V Wade is the immiseration of sinners, a low tech implementation of the virtual Hells Iain M. Banks described in Surface Detail. It's as if the believers thought punishment was more important than salvation.

@183 -- I've tried to compile a short list that covers US history chronologically from the early colonial eras to how where we are now.

All of these titles are award winning, very well written and easy to read.

Some of them, such as the first on the list, are unknown outside of academia, others, such Stile's bio of Vanderbilt, were best sellers. I personally have found each of these extremely valuable as are so very many, many others, by friends and strangers alike.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English Empire in the American South, 1670-1717 (2003) by Alan Gallay. How South Carolina settlers killed all the deer for their valuable buckskin, then the inhabitants themselves who'd done much of the deer killing previously, either enslaving them in SC, or trading them in multiples in the Caribbean for the more valuable African individuals. Thereby making safe this hollowed out Louisiana Territory for cotton. This book treats fundamental aspects of our early colonial behavior that seldom gets included in works of our early history.

Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989) by David Hackett Fischer. As one sees immediately from the title, the African folkways, which have done at least as much to shape this country, including the South, New York and New England, which this book is concerned with, are not included, nor are the hispanic folkways and Jewish folkways. It's still a valuable read to understand US history and behaviors.

Slavery's Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification (2009) by David Waldstreicher. Disclosure: this brilliant historian (look up his achievements) is a good friend.

America's Great Debate: Henry Clay, Stephen A. Douglas, and the Compromise That Preserved the Union (2012) by Fergus M. Bordewich. Disclosure, this historian reviewed our book in the Wall Street Journal; my opinion of this particular work of Bordewich, is it is essential, brilliant and very well written.

The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War (2007) by Leonard L. Richards. This goes seamlessly with the title preceding, telling how much California and gold played in the Southern desperation to get there WITH THEIR SLAVES to make CA safe for the Cotton Kingdom, and how determined the miners and others were to prevent it. In this territory we see in bold type, so to speak, the two conflicting forms of capitalism played out, as slavery and industry simply could not co-exist, when 'industry's' labor force was constantly refreshed by not only a higher rate of 'natural increase' but by immigration. Slave labor screwed the white laborer's wages.

Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II (2008) by Douglas A. Blackmon. The essential book on how the South in particular, and the nation in general, went back to systemic, legal versions everywhere of African American slavery, immediately after Appomattox.

The First Tycoon: The Epic Life of Cornelius Vanderbilt (2009) by T.J. Stiles. Boom and bust economic cycles are the feature of the US capitalist, economic system, not a bug. Disclosure: author is an old friend.

All the books by Eric S. Perlstein, historian and journalist who has garnered recognition for his chronicles of the 1960s and 1970s, and the American conservative movement.

By the way, the reason the word abortion can't be found in the Constitution, is because only rich, powerful white MEN, wrote it. And that's how it should be, and what Alito is hinting we need to go back to in that leaked 'opinion'. Nothing allowed or done that the Constitution from over 200 years ago doesn't specifically specify.

Also, 'well-regulated militia' is there because the southerners demanded it, and were so proud they got their way, particularly the South Carolinians, that they boasted of it to each other. It was the continuity of their state constitutions that decreed every WHITE MAN was to keep a gun and form up with each other to hunt down runaways from the slave labor camps and put down slave labor revolts. They say it specifically.

(Quiz question: Why are all the Civil War statues of southern traitors ?)

Poul-Henning, they ain't.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Union_Civil_War_monuments_and_memorials
Civil Wars are for our Cousins Across The Pond.

But you's a furriner, and therefore don't get taught much about what's properly known as
The War Of Rebellion (as per USG documents, and my staunchly Union family).

This month's extravagance is taking a great-great's War of Rebellion POW pension paperwork to Boise at the end of the month for PBS Antiques Roadshow to find what it's worth. Already been offered a kilobuck from a rando on FacePlant.

[[ changing markup links now to work with updated markup version - mod ]]

Re: 'So feel free to provide more updated statistics if you have them.'

This is US only - 2019 data with report published Nov 2021. Several limitations noted and addressed by the authors but even so this report provides the best current overview of abortion rates and ratios, services, reason, by whom (age, race/ethnicity), how far into the pregnancy, etc.

Analysis/reporting uses two metrics: ratio and rate. 'Ratio' is percent of all pregnancies within that group. 'Rate' is simply 'x [number] out of 1,000 women' in that group. Some comparisons versus previous years.

https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/ss/ss7009a1.htm

“The dead children were not "those people". “ Sure they were. Children only matter when they are useful to the argument. Otherwise there would be decent schools, proper healthcare and civilized policing.

But you's a furriner, and therefore don't get taught much about what's properly known as The War Of Rebellion...

Unless you're from the South, in which case it's known as The War Of Northern Aggression.

Also, 'well-regulated militia' is there because the southerners demanded it, and were so proud they got their way, particularly the South Carolinians, that they boasted of it to each other. It was the continuity of their state constitutions that decreed every WHITE MAN was to keep a gun and form up with each other to hunt down runaways from the slave labor camps and put down slave labor revolts. They say it specifically.

I think both you and David L (at 208) may be correct? It went into the Constitution because that's how the colonists had organized their violence (including Indian wars IIRC), then that little 1812 drubbing we received educated us in the shortcomings of that type of organization and we went in for a regular army of sorts until the 1890s, when we went for the full imperial panoply thanks to Mahan doing some inconvenient naval theorizing that gave all the Great Power unfortunate Ideas about the Isthmus of Panama and Hawai'i.

Problem is, we've now got a bit of a floating pointer with respect to the Second Amendment. For awhile (after 1903 to ?) the National Guard was our well-regulated militia. But they're getting engaged overseas like a regular military, and in any case, they don't house their service weapons. So (sarcasm), what can the Second Amendment be originally constructed as referring to in the late 20th Century and thereafter, if the US no longer has a well-regulated militia? (/Sarcasm).

Re: 'Nothing allowed or done that the Constitution from over 200 years ago doesn't specifically specify.'

Swimming pool, automatic gun(s), mobile, TV & radio, social media (and online porn) accounts, ICE vehicle, A/C - home, office, car, meds (esp.for ED!), electric razors, stereos, (plastic) surgery, airplanes to vacation/tropical destinations, dry cleaning SCOTUS robes, washing machines, dishwashers, espresso machines, plastics/synthetics, gas heaters, electricity, etc.

Sure! I'd watch him and his SO personally demonstrate how to be a true 'Murrican and live like 'our great forefathers'. (Probably wouldn't be a very long-running show though.)

'Over the last 200 years, U.S. life expectancy has more than doubled to almost 80 years (78.8 in 2015) ...'

https://sjbpublichealth.org/200-years-public-health-doubled-life-expectancy/

FYI - this article mentions [horrors, gasp] vaccines!

I just ran across an article about the book The Turnaway Study, by Diana Greene Foster. From Simon & Schuster's web site:

"What happens when a woman seeking an abortion is turned away? To answer this question, Diana Greene Foster assembled a team of scientists—psychologists, epidemiologists, demographers, nurses, physicians, economists, sociologists, and public health researchers—to conduct a ten-year study. They followed a thousand women from across America, some of whom received abortions, some of whom were turned away. Now, for the first time, Dr. Foster presents the results of this landmark study in one extraordinary, groundbreaking book.

"Judges, politicians, and pro-life advocates routinely defend their anti-abortion stance by claiming that abortion is physically risky and leads to depression and remorse. Dr. Foster’s data proves the opposite to be true. Foster documents the outcomes for women who received and were denied an abortion, analyzing the impact on their mental and physical health, their careers, their romantic relationships, and their other children, if they have them. Women who received an abortion were better off by almost every measure than women who did not, and five years after they receive an abortion, 99 percent of women do not regret it."

I forgot to mention that this book was published in 2021.

The Vox article about this book also said "The most unexpected and tragic outcome noted in the Turnaway Study was that two of the women died because of childbirth complications. It came as a shock to Foster, who wrote that she “did not expect to find even one maternal death in a study of 1,000 women.” The US maternal mortality rate is 1.7 per 10,000, meaning the odds of two women in 1,000 dying were exceedingly low."

Ain't the electronic program guide, the automatic (enabled not often enough) commercial skip function, the 30-second fast-forward and the seven-second oops-I-went-too-far buttons on the TiVo the greatest things since sliced bread? Don't know if I could stand the babble box without them, and then I'd only be watching "IT WAS GOING WELL UNTIL IT EXPLODED" Scott Manley on YouTube.

"The US maternal mortality rate is 1.7 per 10,000"

The /official/ US ...

As far as I know, nobody my side of the Atlantic trusts any numbers from USA relating to pregnancy to be precise.

Not just because of the insane abortion crap, and because of the large number of undocumented immigrants, but also because contraception seems to fail around 5-10 times as often in USA as in EU countries.

Assange is being held for bail evasion, IIRC.

Not anymore. That sentence was served on 2019-09-22. He is currently held for extradition to the US and denied bail.

In a country that doesn't bother to keep statistics on how many people the police kill... Yeah, numbers out of that country aren't trusted by anyone who has looked at it closely.

The constitutional fight at the federal level may be lost (for now). The focus needs to change from federal to state by state constitutional amendments. Some (but not all) Republican states are not majority 'pro-life', and a pro-choice amendment may be possible, in some cases even without a change to Democrat state majority. So far Republicans have had a better game at the state level, but this might be an issue that Democrats can rally around. Pro-choice legislation at the federal level without changing state positions is a recipe for disaster - at best, resulting in laws that change with every election, at worse leading to something like civil war.

I hope that's sarcasm

indeed, but i've been told such things by the enthusiastic

Yeah, numbers out of that country aren't trusted by anyone who has looked at it closely.

Yeah. Too many U.S. politicians, agencies, organizations, and companies have a vested interest in hiding numbers which make them look bad.

But it's a world-wide problem that crops up all the time. How many of you Brits, for example, trust the British government's numbers regarding the results of Brexit?

bunch of larpers imo. didn't they find the zip-ties in there? feet on pelosi's desk, oh dear, how will democracy survive

if any weapons they were carrying had been used there would be an issue

i realize the insurrection/coup stuff still offers some hope of derailing trump 2.0 and i don't want to take that away from anyone, but it still looks to me like a protest that got out of hand

but i don't have a vote and opinions are like assholes so

I beg your pardon, but your snark is unwarranted.
https://www.npr.org/2021/03/19/977879589/yes-capitol-rioters-were-armed-here-are-the-weapons-prosecutors-say-they-used
https://www.statesman.com/story/news/politics/politifact/2021/07/14/some-jan-6-capitol-rioters-were-armed-guns-documents-show/7963993002/
Do I need to continue?
Oh, right: "The smirking photo of Richard “Bigo” Barnett, the 60-year-old self-proclaimed white nationalist seen with his feet on a desk in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, quickly became an iconic image of defilement of the seat of power. A close-up image showed something else that was shocking.

“As seen in the zoomed in box in the photograph below, the ZAP brand is clearly visible on the stun gun tucked into Barnett’s pants,” Capitol Police agent James Solte wrote in a 7-page statement of facts. “Based on the brand on the weapon, and its appearance, the weapon appeared to be a ZAP Hike N Strike 950,000 Volt Stun Gun Walking Stick.”
https://lawandcrime.com/u-s-capitol-siege/man-who-kicked-up-his-feet-on-desk-in-nancy-pelosis-office-had-a-stun-gun-feds-say/

"Alito's proposed opinion boils down to: "This kind of contentious issue should not be decided by us. If you want equal rights for women, a right to abortion, same-sex marriage or whatever: Pass an amendment, that's how we do it in USA.""

I disagree. He basically said not to expect the courts to protect civil rights (one of their duties). If the government f*cks you over on your rights, why just win control of the government!

Note that SCOTUS is quite happy to intervene on the side of the right, and that they've been making it harder and harder for Democrats to win elections.

(I apologize if this has already been covered)

"Secondary issues include how many states will pass laws forbidding out-of-state travel for an abortion, and what will happen if someone comes to the UK for one."

IIRC, Mississippi is in the process of passing a law forbidding pregnant women from leaving the state to get an abortion.

"Isn't control of the borders something that is federal, not state-level?

Or could, say, New York State decide "fuck this we're closing the border" and shut down all cross-border traffic? (Or, impose additional inspections that take weeks or months, thus practically shutting it down even if it's not actually prohibited.)"

New York could not. Texas could, because [insert bullsh*t here]

Oh yeah, that's true, happens everywhere. Witness the current Ukraine-Russia war. Russia is pretty obviously beset by good news going up the line. "everything is fine!" But when the rubber hits the road, it turns out that the rubber has "Made in the USSR" stamped on the side and your non tracked vehicles are disabled within a few days because the 40 year old tyres fall apart. (repeat for fuzes, rocket propellant, ready meals, boots and so on)

https://mobile.twitter.com/bjoernstritzel/status/1520750841279533059

Do I need to continue?

well, if they didn't use them, and haven't already been prosecuted for having had them, it sounds a bit like water under the bridge

Actually, a number have been prosecuted, with 100% convictions. Including feet on desk.
Or haven't you been watching as the FBI has over 700 of them, and still arresting? And we've had at least one or two, recently, who were charged with insurrection.

But you say "they didn't succeed, so ignore them"? I beg your pardon....

How the heck are they going to enforce a "no pregnant women leave Texas for abortion" ordinance? I mean, obviously it's election year wanking, but they've got no upside. It's logistically impossible to enforce in a way that makes the War on Drugs a smashing success.

On their downside, who'd want to move to Texas and deal with that BS? Right now, they're trying to attract people to move in but if "Come on in, we're totally batshit, and not just under that bridge" is their slogan, it's not going to work. Would you want to relocate your business there if all your female employees quit rather than move?

There's a lot of "civil war" talk.

Obviously things are set up such that if a state joins the union, it's a Hotel California situation.

Last thing I remember, I was Running for the door I had to find the passage back To the place I was before 'Relax, ' said the night man, 'We are programmed to receive. You can check-out any time you like, But you can never leave!'

But, there are mechanisms for amending the constitution. Would it not be better to add an Article 50 style amendment?

With a bit of work you could manage the citizenship rights issue. If you're born in the Union, you remain a citizen, even if the place you're born subsequently leaves.

Seems to beat a rerun of the previous unpleasantness with modern weapons. Not saying it would be easy, but is there a reason that killing millions seems to be a preference for most?

(obviously this ties into my previous post saying that modelling the thought processes doesn't work)

Even this Supreme Court would have trouble with that one.

well, if they didn't use them, and haven't already been prosecuted for having had them, it sounds a bit like water under the bridge

Carrying weapons is illegal in D.C. To me, a 950,000 volt stun gun sure sounds like it's on the edge of being a weapon. So this guy likely could be prosecuted if the D.A. really wanted to get him.

"Not really. The timing for the leak is driven by the timing of the judgement, which in turn is driven by the Supreme Court session ending in June. Meantime the timing of Putin's war is driven by the seasons (because as many armies have found out to their cost, you don't run a military campaign in Eastern Europe in winter)."

UNLESS YOU ARE THE RUSSIAN ARMY Attacking in December would have given them hard ground to run on. The trees would have dropped leaves, which means less cover. The snow makes it easier to track partisans. The cold makes it so that partisans have to spend almost all of their time just surviving.

"i realize the insurrection/coup stuff still offers some hope of derailing trump 2.0 and i don't want to take that away from anyone, but it still looks to me like a protest that got out of hand"

The last time that Congress was driven out of the Capitol bldg was the War of 1812.

i didn't say ignore them, lots have clearly been prosecuted and will pay for their crimes, just that as insurrections go it was a bit of a cartoon version, and taking it super seriously really looks like an attempt to fend off something in 2024

The last time that Congress was driven out of the Capitol bldg was the War of 1812.

yeah, the fact that the police on duty that day decided to let the british in was totally shameful

Attacking in December would have given them hard ground to run on.

wasn't he supposed to have promised xi not to fuck up the olympics?

Here's my PLEASE STEAL THIS IDEA of the day. As a middle-aged cis-male nerd of no great charisma, I can't pull this off. But if you can, or know someone who can, please forward it to them.

There is a type of protest called a Lysistratan Strike. As you may have guessed, it traditionally involves women refusing to have sex with men until the men stop doing whatever it is that offends the women.

If Roe is struck down, I suggest a global Lysistratan strike against Republicans and anybody who is pro-life, until they back down. Block them--involuntary chastity will bring them closer to God anyway, so long as they can hold it. Note that I'm agnostic as to the gender or sex of any striker. Make Pro-lifers service themselves, the wankers.

The possibilities are endless:

--How about Merch? Logos can be printed on underwear ("No Republican tools allowed"), sex toys ("Smarter than a Republican") and so forth.

--Strike relief funds can be raised for sex workers, so that they can refuse Republican clients for the duration without serious loss of income.

--Hand out leaflets in church preaching the virtues of abstinence until there's ample affordable childcare and Ob/Gyn/Ped care in the church's neighborhood.

And that's without getting creative...

...taking it super seriously really looks like an attempt to fend off something in 2024

Yup. After all, practice makes perfect... :-(

How the heck are they going to enforce a "no pregnant women leave Texas for abortion" ordinance?

By allowing private lawsuits, which (being civil not criminal) operate on 'balance of probability' rather than 'beyond a reasonable doubt'.

So Jane, who is pregnant, leaves Texas and returns not pregnant and without a child. Concerned Private Citizen* sues her for violating Texas anti-abortion laws. Jane must now find the money for a lawyer. Given that one can buy phone location data etc on the open market, search data etc I can see this being an easy tactic for horrible people to do. (Westboro Baptists show that such people exist.) Even if she wins she loses (lawyers are expensive**).

Throw in easy facial recognition (this is an SF blog, after all) and the anti-abortion types will be doxxing everyone who visits an abortion clinic (which they are already doing) much more effectively.

So Jane is photographed going into a Planned Parenthood clinic in NYC and doxxed. She is sued in Texas for procuring an abortion. Maybe she didn't get one because she wasn't even pregnant — how does she defend herself? Or maybe she visited the clinic and a friend/coworker of her's later visited a clinic or had a 'suspicious' miscarriage — Jane is obviously an accessory. She went into the clinic — balance of probability and a sympathetic judge/jury gets her convicted anyway.

Even worse if Jane isn't pink, because then the totally-not-racist justice system gets to exercise its usual biases…

So if Jane leaves Texas for an abortion and doesn't return, she is probably OK. Unless she has assets in Texas, which the Concerned Private Citizen could sue for. Or maybe she would still have to defend herself in a Texas court even if she no longer lives there (not certain how American civil law works on jurisdiction — know that you folks can shop for sympathetic judges in a way that can't happen in Canada).

*Who is totally not part of a well-funded astroturfed campaign.

**A lawyer friend said a lawsuit is a bit like a knife fight — the winner is the party that isn't totally bankrupt, just poorer.

“ taking it super seriously really looks like an attempt to fend off something in 2024” Yeah, a more competent repeat.

Problem for them is, you can do SLAPP suits against anybody suing to enforce the law on the same grounds. If a pro-life woman travels out of state, sue her on the notion that she was going to get an illicit abortion. Flood the courts with bogus suits.

Heck, you can even sue any females involved in such litigation or female relatives of litigants, and make them prove that they haven't had an abortion. That's a true SLAPP suit.

The bigger problem is that early pregnancy is trivial to hide, because pregnancy tests are private affairs. If a woman finds out she's pregnant and has means to travel, she can travel for business or pleasure or to see relatives, leave her phone in the hotel while she sees a doctor or gets Plan B (which is available without a prescription, and pay cash). So long as she's destroyed the tests, there's no evidence trail.

I wouldn't put it past them to ban the sale of pregnancy tests.

I wouldn't put it past them to ban the sale of pregnancy tests

I would, although you're right, stupid is as stupid does certainly applies here.

Here's my reasoning. First off, women who are trying to get pregnant use them every time their period is late, especially if they've had a miscarriage. Second off, making them illegal kills the evidence trail, because it makes it even harder to determine if a woman left a state to get an abortion if she has little way of telling if she's pregnant before she travels. And catch a woman with pregnancy tests? She's trying to get pregnant and wants to find out ASAP.

Quite honestly, if they get serious about such suits, this can get cruel for them: every female relative or aide to every Republican legislator who supports this, if they are of reproductive age, can be sued as a matter of course every time they leave the state, on the grounds that they were going to get an abortion out of state. That's what they want to do to all women after all. Make them bear the burden too.

I wouldn't put it past them to ban the sale of pregnancy tests.

Tests? Hell, they're going to do their best to ban any kind of contraception! :-(

When it comes to contraception being outlawed, it has been before -- again, not for the first time -- I remind you all of Anthony Comstock and his laws about everything to do with sex and reproduction -- yet another MAN determined to keep women from having anything out of his control -- and he controlled the post offices too, nationally, about this shyte. He also was insane about 'sodomy'.

Google Anthony Comstock, who goes right along with Jim Crow.

Banning pregnancy tests would be curtailing a perfectly good revenue stream. As the US seems to be going full Gilead how about the following instead: All purchases of pregnancy tests need to be registered. All results of said tests need to be registered.

The above gives you greater control over womens lives and allows those with "nothing to hide" easy travel across state borders as they can prove it can't be for an abortion.

Foxessa
Thanks - I think. Looked him up.
Another totally brain-fucked christian dominionist ....

Unless you're from the South, in which case it's known as The War Of Northern Aggression.

YELLOW CARD: On this blog it is known as The slaveowners' treasonous rebellion. And that's official.

Make Pro-lifers service themselves, the wankers.

the way male pro-lifers tend to talk about women, i suspect quite a few of them are already doing so

i've also come across (don't) atheist/humanist pro-lifers, in a since-deleted fb thunderdome group, still can't quite get my head around that

YELLOW CARD: On this blog it is known as The slaveowners' treasonous rebellion. And that's official.

The slaveowners' [ second ] treasonous rebellion, surely?

Right now, they're trying to attract people to move in but if "Come on in, we're totally batshit, and not just under that bridge" is their slogan, it's not going to work. Would you want to relocate your business there if all your female employees quit rather than move?

Yep. Here in North Carolina the politicians of ALL stripes are giddy about all the companies moving here and are waving money in their face to attract them. But the R's are also beginning to get nervous as they more and more realize that most of the folks moving here are NOT R's. And likely never will be.

Just one of the dozens of societal fractures occurring here. We've discussed some of it before. Housing prices, zoning, etc...

That's not what I'd call it, but I've heard it is quite popular in the South. Another issue which divides Americans... :-(

I understand the preference is now Enslaver's Treasonous Rebellion? To show where the responsibility for circumstances lies.

228 Para 3 - That's a hard "h*11 NO" from me.

237 - There is actually no means in the US Constitution to repeal an amendment. Hence how the 18th Amendment (aka prohibition) required the 21st in order to repeal it in full.

253 - There have been numbers of novels (not all SF or feminist, they include detective fiction and other genres too) where nationA allowing contraceptive medicines and nationB "banning" them is a plot point.

Don't know if I could stand the babble box without them,

Tivo - Yes to everything you said. Especially the alternative to the standard cable TV program grid. Ewwww.

What other remote for something with so many functions can be used one handed in the dark after a few days of use?

My current 4 or 5 year old Tivo is having the network chip fail. Wired no longer works. Wireless generates lots of errors but it does limp along for the 3 Mini's I have to work. Mostly. I run it with the top off and every few weeks power it down for a few hours to "perk it back up".

I'd replace it (4 tuners w/lifetime) but my cable TV deal at $8/mo runs out next February. And I don't know that I want to pay $60-$70/mo for TV just to keep using a Tivo. I also have an over the air Tivo (2 tuners w/lifetime) that I will likely stand up at that time and go full streaming options for the rest. But that means putting THREE directional antennas in the attic which is not high on my list of things I can't wait to do.

well, if they didn't use them, and haven't already been prosecuted for having had them, it sounds a bit like water under the bridge

They didn't need a bridge; they had a boat standing by for when the shooting started. Guns, ammo, even a Boat: how Oath Keepers plotted an armed coup

How the heck are they going to enforce a "no pregnant women leave Texas for abortion" ordinance?

Same ways as They deal with a wayward teenager: Have some wannabe "Meal Team 6" goons kidnap them and put them in a bootcamp for nine months.

Soundtrack for the current moment, with all credit to Declan McManus

I wish that I could push a button And talk in the past and not the present tense And watch this lovin' feeling disappear Like it was common sense I was a fine idea at the time Now I'm a brilliant mistake

They didn't need a bridge; they had a boat standing by for when the shooting started. Guns, ammo, even a Boat: how Oath Keepers plotted an armed coup

sounds like the boat only made it as far as the wishlist tho

"It’s easy to dismiss a lot of what is in the indictment as fantasy, as projection of what the Oath Keepers would like to see"

larpers

but yeah, might as well throw the book at them for the arms violations

i didn't say ignore them, lots have clearly been prosecuted and will pay for their crimes...

There were so many insurrectionists that law enforcement is still working through the cases. This happened just a few days ago: Ex-NYPD officer found guilty of attacking DC cop with flagpole

wouldn't put it past them to ban the sale of pregnancy tests

I would, although you're right, stupid is as stupid does certainly applies here.

Nah. They won't ban them. What they'll do is ban over the counter or mail order sale of pregnancy tests. After all, it's a delicate diagnostic tool that needs to be interpreted by a professional like a pharmacist, doctor, or Republican politician to be certain it's not misread, right?

(There are ways around this -- notably, get your very non-pregnant female friend to take the urine sample in for "her" test -- but they'll probably make that a felony (impersonating someone else for medical purposes). Or prosecute her if she doesn't deliver a baby on demand. It gets messy, fast.)

Where this ends, Romania style, is bans on contraception, mandatory pregnancy tests every three months for females aged 15-50, and State orphanages. (Mandatory tests to be waived for married females who are registered Republican voters, of course.)

Yes. That is irrelevant to the point I was making, which was about the UK and similar countries. The UK courts are effectively not allowed to consider the actual validity of a charge when considering an extradiction request, only whether the charge is appropriate for extradiction. I don't think that Mississippi could launch such a request, so it would need a sympathetic federal government, but the validity of the charge wouldn't be considered until much later.

At present, I think the courts would baulk, but the government are proposing to abolish the Human Rights Act and remove the ability of the courts to challenge political decisions.

Many early pregnancies don't go to term for reasons other than abortion. How do you prove you had a miscarriage instead? Some recent cases in El Salvador of women being jailed for miscarriage.

Given the absolutism "Funnymentalists" are prone to, theres a possibility of breaking up their shack up of convenience with the Mammonites. A small thing, but good.

Jensnail @271:

Many early pregnancies don't go to term for reasons other than abortion. How do you prove you had a miscarriage instead? Some recent cases in El Salvador of women being jailed for miscarriage.

There's no way to differentiate between an abortion that's spontaneous (miscarriage) and one that is provoked by mifepristone+misoprostol (medical abortion). I don't think it's hyperbole to assume that both are likely to be treated as illegal.

Heteromeles/Robert Prior/JBS/Foxessa: Thanks for the references, they've been added to the pile. Some of the works I was aware of, but it can be hard to tell which history books are worth reading.

Unless you're from the South, in which case it's known as The War Of Northern Aggression.

I don't remember ever hearing that particular term in the public schools (I'm told the term 'state school' is the equivalent in England) of a Gulf Coast state in the 60's and 70's. It was either the Civil War (most common) or the War Between the States. One of my history teachers commented that it was a most uncivil war.

Or consider this for a different viewpoint:

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/87133/the-state-of-jones-by-sally-jenkins-and-john-stauffer/

James McPherson, a historian of the mid-19^th century USA has referred to it as "The War of Southern Aggression," because every step of the way from the 1830s-1860, it was the South that escalated matters.

If they'd kept their mouths shut and not rebelled, there would have been no way that Lincoln would have been able to pass the 13^th amendment. A politician as canny as Lincoln was wouldn't even have tried.

Who knows? Maybe Ben Winters's Underground Airlines (in which chattel slavery continues to exist in the early 21^st century USA, largely because the Civil War was avoided).

H'rumph. The last paragraph should read

"Who knows? Maybe Ben Winters's Underground Airlines (in which chattel slavery continues to exist in the early 21st century USA, largely because the Civil War was avoided) would be accurate?"

The Land of the Brave and the Home of the Free, folks!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_the_American_Civil_War

The most common name for the American Civil War in modern American usage is simply "The Civil War". Although rarely used during the war, the term "War Between the States" became widespread afterward in the Southern United States. During and immediately after the war, Northern historians often used the terms "War of the Rebellion" and "Great Rebellion", and the Confederate term was "War for Southern Independence", which regained some currency in the 20th century but has again fallen out of use. The name "Slaveholders' Rebellion" was used by Frederick Douglass and appears in newspaper articles. Also in the 20th century, the term "War of Northern Aggression" developed under the Lost Cause of the Confederacy movement by Southern history revisionists, with attempts to reimagine the American Civil War narrative negatively and to preserve Confederate legacy. "Freedom War" is used to celebrate the war's effect of ending slavery. In several European languages, the war is called "War of Secession".

[[ changing markup links now to work with updated markup version - mod ]]

That's where the whole fundamentalist thing goes wrong, of course. If you want to nail the biggest abortionist, God's choice to stop most fertilised eggs developing into a baby 9 months later is clearly the biggie. (I know several people who've had IVF after repeated miscarriages.) But that kind of logic doesn't go down too well with the more fanatical end of the God Squad.

Yup. Similarly: I was once party to a discussion in which one of the women present mentioned that she and her hubby were trying for a baby again ... after ten consecutive miscarriages.

About 30% of pregnancies spontaneously abort in the first trimester, at which point they're barely larger than a pinhead. This is normal and indeed most of those miscarriages would, if continued to term, result in a badly deformed or completely non-viable baby.

Oh, another factoid: there are roughly 200,000 diagnosed ectopic pregnancies in the USA per year. An ectopic pregnancy is a life-threatening medical emergency: a blastocyte has implanted outside the uterus and if it isn't removed fast it'll aggressively invade whatever tissue it's landed in until it causes a fatal haemorrhage. The only treatment is an abortion: otherwise the pregnant person dies along with the foetus (which never survives).

The forced-birther position is, IMO, monstrously cruel -- it's just plain at odds with human biology, unless the objective is to criminalize being female. (Which is I believe the intent.)

Nah. They won't ban them. What they'll do is ban over the counter or mail order sale of pregnancy tests. After all, it's a delicate diagnostic tool that needs to be interpreted by a professional like a pharmacist, doctor, or Republican politician to be certain it's not misread, right?

Like they've made the shipping illegal merchandise impossible? While they're trying to gut the US Postal Service?

Charlie, at the risk of a yellow card, were this a horror story you were plotting, you'd be screwing up. It's fun to wallow in how monstrous the bad guys are, but what are the protagonists going to do in response? It's only a worthwhile story if you put equal energy into all sides of the conflict.

I agree that some people currently in power want the US to go full Gilead. The fact that I can use "Gilead" as a code word is one of the most dangerous things about writing: it gives models. I'm sure at least a few people read Atwood's book and used Gilead as a game plan, much as Barbarians at the Gate taught a bunch of amoral traders how to make lots of money. Cautionary tales are dangerous that way, especially when the bad guys are memorable, while the protagonists are not.

I'm not going to paint myself as any moral crusader here, because I'm in a relatively safe state with regards to reproductive rights. Gov. Newsom yesterday launched a drive to get the right to an abortion enshrined in the California state constitution, speaking of states' rights.

What I will say, though, is that most everyone's following your lead, and wallowing in how horrible this all is. That's at most half the story. Are we allowed to talk about the other side, or not? It's your blog, and your lead.

Charlie, at the risk of a yellow card, were this a horror story you were plotting, you'd be screwing up.

Disagree.

I'm pretty sure the forced-birthers are that malign and they will get around to trying to pass such measures.

However they're also incompetent -- consider how bad Trump was at getting his agenda implemented.

(My father, dead these past five years, rather uncharitably described Americans as "failed Germans". He was right, insofar as the subtype of Americans who want to impose a reactionary and oppressive bureaucratic tyranny fundamentally don't believe government can be effective at anything so their bureaucratic tyranny is ineffectual, brutal but incoherent. (NB: Dad served during WW2, so he was talking about first-half-of-1940s Germans, not modern Germany.))

Anyway, my point is: they'll try to do all these things. And some of the time they'll get it to work, just well enough to hurt a lot of women. But overall they won't succeed. I hope and trust.

(The worst ray of darkness in this is that modern Adtech and internet monitoring technology is monstrously more efficient than anything the Gestapo could have imagined, and not everyone in Big Tech will refuse to cooperate: in fact, some bros will dive in enthusiastically.)

One of the things that's not being said about Alito quoting the witch-burning, spousal-rape justifying British jurist is this:

The Salem Witch Trials are one of the most unjust events of U.S. colonial history. When you think about injustice in the U.S., particularly as involves the courts or law enforcement, the Salem Witch Trials are in the top ten. If your focus is particularly on religious history, it might be the very most unjust event ever (in U.S.). But regardless of where you place it, the Salem Witch Trials are canonical, for Americans, as an unjust event for which we feel intense guilt/shame when we look back at our history.

So when Alito quotes a Protestant witch-finder, he's doing more than trying to find a convenient source of judicial quotes. He's trying to rewrite the cultural basis of the U.S. It's the equivalent, in it's cultural significance, of trying to enforce, from the bench, the idea that keeping Blacks as slaves is good, or that Jews should be sent to concentration camps. It's not merely insane, it's a deliberate and monstrous attempt to write witch-hunting, pro-rape madness into our judicial history, where it can be used as a basis for further court decisions.

It's as if you go to the beach and as you wade into the water you see a shoggoth rise from the waves in front of you. The terrible, madness-inducing figure of the shoggoth, in this extended metaphor, is the decision to destroy Roe v. Wade.

But then the Shoggoth moves to one side, and you see, behind the Shoggoth, the eldritch insanity of Cthulhu himself. Your eyeballs explode and you begin to gibber as your mind descends, inexorably, into a permanent state of intense insanity, made worse because your eyeballs exploded before you could use your own volition to remove them yourself! In this extended metaphor, the decision to quote the witch-burner is Cthulhu, because it doesn't merely remove a useful and necessary right, it embeds nonsensical, daylight madness into the heart of our judicial system, where it can and will be used in the future.

There's not much difference between the Bible and the Necronomicon. Spend any time reading either of them and as Alito has proved, you're likely to go insane.

If they'd kept their mouths shut and not rebelled, there would have been no way that Lincoln would have been able to pass the 13th amendment. A politician as canny as Lincoln was wouldn't even have tried.

While it's true that Lincoln or even his eventual successor wouldn't have been able to pass the 13th amendment, the writing was on the wall. And the south did know this, they were only evil and not particularly dumb.

A constitutional amendment would only have required that enough states were admitted that there would be a 3/4 majority. Hence all the bullshit for decades about balancing admissions so that the southern states did not have to worry about that. And when that bullshit went as far as it could go, everyone noticed.

They might have bought themselves two or three more decades, had they chosen not to rebel... but would that have gained them any advantage? Likely, they'd have been in a worse position to fight. The northern states continued to industrialize, their population would have grown and much faster than the south's. As it turned out, this process had already continued for 3 or 4 decades too long when the war started.

Even if slavery could somehow be ignored in all of this, the southern states were going to have a bad time, and the north was going to dominate them politically. That the south just also happened to be the bad guys is a happy accident...

unless the objective is to criminalize being female. (Which is I believe the intent.)

Honestly, I think it's more amoral than that. I don't actually think they care about the details of who you are.

When you look behind the scenes, the Holy Rollers have always only ever had two end goals: money and power. (Ray Schiller wouldn't have worked as a character, after all, unless he was recognisable as only a minor twist on real televangelists.) Even if you presuppose they believe in what they're saying and aren't motivated by money, they still clearly want the power, otherwise they'd be quietly doing good works somewhere instead.

So ultimately I think it doesn't really matter to them whether the roadkill is women, gays, blacks, gypsies, Muslims or Jews. What matters is the money and/or power they get from reinforcing their positions by othering someone else, and they're happy to pick any target they can. And for me that's scarier than the idea they're aiming for someone with intent.

Mandatory tests to be waived for married females who are registered Republican voters, of course.

At which point, 100% of married women in Red states will become registered Republican voters. :-)

Until secret ballots disappear, and you have to have an election official watch you fill out your ballot. :-(

If you want to nail the biggest abortionist, God's choice to stop most fertilised eggs developing into a baby 9 months later is clearly the biggie.

Yup. I've seen estimates that half of all pregnancies end in a spontaneous abortion (i.e. miscarriage).

And of course your final paragraph needs to be printed in big letters on the boxes of all computing devices in the manner of health warnings on tobacco packets, taught in schools (with certain of your books on the reading list), [insert other suggestions]... something, or things, to get people to actually be aware of it. The understanding needs to be general, not limited to a particular subset of computer nerds and people who work for MI6. At present nearly everyone doesn't know, doesn't care, doesn't understand, and can't even be educated about it. (Come to that, nearly everyone doesn't even understand things like the way traffic analysis gets you 90% of the way there and whether or not the traffic is encrypted makes very little difference.)

I'm going to ignore your Lovecraftian metaphor, but just note that merely because a judge expressed an opinion at some time in history, we do not automatically enshrine their opinion as valid for eternity. Hint: Roland Freisler handed down a lot of verdicts but we have zero respect or use for them today.

And, as OGH says, control. But it's not just about controlling women - it's about controlling sex, which gives one HELL of a lever over the population. My formal sex education was mostly about the evils of masturbation; that's rare nowadays, but I doubt it's gone away.

John Oyler
I've said this before & will repeat ...
After 1805, slavery was totally dead, it just didn't know it ...
How so? !805 was the date of the first mass-production machinery, invented by Marc Isambard Brunel ( IKB's father ) for the Royal Navy.
Slavery could not possibly compete, unless the game was totally rigged.
Sound familiar?

Graham
To add to your "roadkill" list: - Atheists - they really hate atheists ...

AlanD2 & Graham
I thought the figure was closer to 66% ....

It's fun to wallow in how monstrous the bad guys are, but what are the protagonists going to do in response?

Not much, I'm afraid, if the recent events are anything to go by. For instance, I vividly remember several commenters here who sounded quite convinced in late 2020 that the (at that point not yet) former guy would face prosecution for his numerous crimes. Well, now we're approaching middle of 2022, and … zilch. Instead of crushing the bad guys under their feet, the 'good guys' (put in quotes because we all know that they're actually not; they just look gradually better in comparison) are headed for (1) a defeat in the mid-terms and (b) handing the White House back to the former guy in 2024. Everything they've been doing in response to the disaster of 2016-2020 and to its culmination on 2021/01/06 is looking woefully weak.

At least from my perspective they're decidedly not looking (or behaving) like the protagonists of a Marvel summer blockbuster.

And so the story that unfolds before our eyes looks a bit like a replay of the slaveowners' treasonous rebellion and its aftermath on a smaller scale: the Dems may have won the White House and Congress in 2020, but it awfully looks like the more rabid Reps are winning the reconstruction.

And that doesn't give me a lot of faith in the protagonists' ability to fight back against the culling of human and civil rights.

My formal sex education was mostly about the evils of masturbation; that's rare nowadays, but I doubt it's gone away.

It comes and goes (sorry!).

AIUI the 18th and 19th centuries bequeathed us some very weird hangups about [male] masturbation (female masturbation was barely mentioned in surviving texts: and the history of errors about the clitoris in medical texts makes it fairly clear how deep the misconceptions go). And there are throwbacks to masturbation-phobia today in some quarters: incels, "no-nut November" which shows up on Reddit, and so on.

I classify this weird hang-up as part and parcel of the white supremacist natalist panic -- not enough white babies being born, etc, so we've got to ban masturbation so they'll make more footsoldiers for the quiverfull revolution. In other words, it's disgusting rubbish with a side-salad of racism and patriarchal misogyny.

Anyway, my point is: they'll try to do all these things. And some of the time they'll get it to work, just well enough to hurt a lot of women. But overall they won't succeed. I hope and trust.

Sorry to continue to be annoying, but I think we can all do better than hope and trust.

For example, considering the number of computer experts who flock here, how does one go about making adtech not just useless, but expensively useless? I'm not sure how much public good it does now, why not try to make it as useless as the STASI archives for espionage?

For all the engineers around here, how do you go about smuggling Plan B or even pregnancy tests in ways that evade modern monitoring methods?

For the lawyers, how do you subvert something like the Texas public prosecution system? AFAIK the "Texas Heartbeat Act" (per Wikipedia) " The act authorizes members of the public to sue anyone who performs or facilitates an illegal abortion for a minimum of $10,000 in statutory damages per abortion, plus court costs and attorneys’ fees." My immediate thought is that you sue employers, especially Republican employers and most especially Republican legislators and churches, for sending their female employees out of state, on the grounds of "facilitating an abortion." Since no Texas officials are responsible for enforcing the law, they also can't step in and stop this.

I don't believe in hope or trust for contraception, and I don't believe in it for control of Republicans either. There's a lot of talent here, if anyone wants to start working with it.

It predates that, by a LONG way. My guess is that it probably goes back to Paul, and the official Roman Catholic line is that it does. It certainly goes back to Leo IX.

https://www.catholiceducation.org/en/marriage-and-family/sexuality/masturbation.html

Somewhere on YouTube you can probably still find a discussion in the Oklahoma legislature from this year. They were discussing the new anti-abortion trap bill they were about to pass. A male Republican interrogated a female Republican leader on why her committee left a loophole for ectopic pregnancies in the bill (along with rape and incest.)

About 30% of pregnancies spontaneously abort in the first trimester, at which point they're barely larger than a pinhead.

Depends on how you define the term "pregnancies".

I've read that 50% of fertilized eggs never make it to term or implantation. Not sure which but still, a non trivial number.

These are classic examples of military strategy; while being smarter accounts for a lot, having the big guns accounts for more. Unless you are talking about a rebellion (and, yes, that IS what would be involved) by a majority of the population, we are onto a loser. In practice, in order to win, we would have to kick the sheeple awake enough to break the links between Big Tech and our governments.

I thought the figure was closer to 66% ....

These numbers are wild-ass guesses. Most women never notice a miscarriage that happens in the first few weeks of pregnancy.

i realize the insurrection/coup stuff still offers some hope of derailing trump 2.0 and i don't want to take that away from anyone, but it still looks to me like a protest that got out of hand

Without the vote they were trying to stop there would be no "president elect" to be sworn in. Kill or kidnap Pence and the law gets murky fast as the VP, by law, is the one in charge of the count but there's not auto replacement for that office when it is vacant.

As to a protest, there are truckloads of evidence that a non trivial number of those folks wanted to stop things. Many thought Trump had asked them to do so.

And if that wasn't why they were there (some in commando gear marching purposely in groups through the mobs to the doors) why are they pleading guilty to sedition?

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article261078837.html

It varies wildly with age: by the time the pregnant person is 40, it's more like 80-90% failure. (A "geriatric pregnancy" is one where the mother is over 35.)

Many early pregnancies don't go to term for reasons other than abortion. How do you prove you had a miscarriage instead? Some recent cases in El Salvador of women being jailed for miscarriage.

You probably can't, unless you went to the doctor right away and got it certified. And if you are the wrong type of person (ie. not rich and pink) then you might well be prosecuted. And by "might well" I mean it's already happening…

an Oklahoma jury convicted a Native American woman of manslaughter for miscarrying a pregnancy after 15-17 gestational weeks. She's one of 57 such cases documented in the state since 2006 — and 1,200 in the United States.

https://twitter.com/megancarpentier/status/1449075068773052421

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-59214544

"I've read that 50% of fertilized eggs never make it to term or implantation. Not sure which but still, a non trivial number."

Yes,

https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001488.htm

Around half of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant. Among women who know they are pregnant, about 10% to 25% will have a miscarriage.

Obviously, statistics about such things are hard to gather and should be regarded with caution, but 50% seems to be in the ballpark.

I'm pretty sure the forced-birthers are that malign and they will get around to trying to pass such measures.

However they're also incompetent -- consider how bad Trump was at getting his agenda implemented.

On the other hand, thanks to Trump the GOP managed to lock in a majority of the Supreme Court for a generation — it wasn't Trump's agenda, but it was the agenda of the Evangelicals who gave him his presidency. Sure, they had to support an amoral grifter who was against everything they purport to stand for, but it got them the Supreme Court and the power to reshape American law.

I'm not sure that we actually do have the right sort of experts here for all of those.

Para 2 is more of a business question than a computer one: it's not so much making it expensive as making them think it's expensive. There's not a lot you can do to make them actually have to hand over more money apart from illegal sorts of things like DDOSing ad servers, and I'm not even sure that would have enough of an effect anyway.

Similarly with para 3 - there already are plenty of people who do that on a large scale, although mostly with other chemicals. It's among those people that the main expertise exists on what the threats are and how to counter them (and without "do it in a different universe" being the principal method in their awareness); and should they be given the opportunity I'm sure they would be delighted to put that knowledge to the additional use.

At which point I repeat my favourite Peter Watts quote:

Edmund Burke once said that the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. I think that begs a question.

If you do nothing, what makes you any fucking good?

The cotton gin, invented and patented in 1783, was the actual industrial capitalist trump card.

The cotton gin allowed the enslaved labor force to produce so much cleaned cotton that the Cotton Kingdom was well in place and expanding the wealth in enslaved laborers -- making almost all the millionaires in the US by 1850 southerners.

This in turn, by 1850, had allowed for mechanized textile capitalist industry to expand madly in Europe and Britain -- cheap cotton for their mills, with even cheaper labor to run the machines.

But all that rested on slavery in the Cotton Kingdom, and demanded its constant expansion throughout the US. So, you know, that funny little war called the War of the Rebellion, to settle whether racialized slave capitalism or oppressed white immigrant labor capitalism.

That war also allowed Britain to create its own cotton plantations on their own versions of the same US slave model in Egypt and India, by the way.

The official name of That War in the annals of the Union government from years in which it was fought here on US soil is, "The War of the Rebellion." This is how General / President Grant always referred to it too.

By the way there are still some million of documents from the era of The War of the Rebellion that haven't been declassifed, and thus are unaccessible in either the federal archives or the Library of Congress.

"female masturbation was barely mentioned in surviving texts"

I've encountered it in fiction - as in rigidly respectable mainstream Victorian fiction of the kind which is as subtle as a brick in the way it bashes you over the head with some Point of establishment morality every other paragraph. Oblique references which sound as if even the author doesn't actually know what they really refer to, but which are clear enough knowing that the same theory which gave the word "hysteria" its definition also gave rise to a method of treatment, which was to toddle down to your doctor and get him to wank you off.

Vibrators were also sold as ordinary household items instead of from shops with the windows painted black on the inside. Such concealment as there was was a function of the combination of the picture on the box suggesting you used it on your face, and massive ignorance. Same basic mechanism as a hand drill of the type with a set of bevel gears to speed up the crank motion, but with an eccentric mass in place of the chuck. As public utilities advanced you could get versions powered by a Pelton wheel running off the water tap.

It varies wildly with age: by the time the pregnant person is 40, it's more like 80-90% failure. (A "geriatric pregnancy" is one where the mother is over 35.)

To inject some unplanned humor into this, you're right about over 35 being a geriatric pregnancy. Where I am, that gets coded as a risk factor for pregnancy: advanced maternal age (AMA).

There's another AMA in local (US?) medical records: Against Medical Advice, usually used for people who check themselves out of hospitals before the doctors want them to go.

The humor was that I had to point this out to my wife, the hospital worker, who was using AMA for both without realizing that they were the same acronym and confusing me when she talked about AMA pregnancies.

...

I should point out that, at least a few years ago, it was more common for working women* to plan to put of childbearing into their late 30s, on the assumption that medicine had advanced far enough that they'd still be able to have children into their 40s, when they were financially stable. This belief was supported by a number of celebrity women having AMA children. The part that didn't get covered by the media is that this is a) quite expensive, and b) does risk the mother's health in various, not obvious, and sometimes nasty ways.

While I don't think evolution or modern society are at all fair to women, whether or not they want children, I do think the "easy AMA pregnancy" is a myth that needs to be challenged. I won't stop any woman from trying it, but they do need to understand the various odds and various risks going in.

*To be clear, I'm using woman as a rather thoughtless shorthand for any human with a uterus, whatever gender.

To change the subject (we're after post 300 now), when I went in to the Portland, Oregon, Veterans Administration hospital for my annual medical checkup in February of 2020, my doctor and I had a conversation about Covid-19, which was just getting noticed at the time. I told the doctor I expected a million American deaths from Covid. He said that this was an extreme prediction.

I expected the Trump administration to screw things up, and I was right. Today, 27 months after the country’s first confirmed coronavirus case, I read that the U.S. has surpassed a million Covid deaths. (We actually could have had this event several months ago, as some of our Covid deaths are not reported correctly.) I hate to have been proven right... :-(

Probably only about half of those are excess deaths and, if the USA is like the UK, the life expectancy hasn't changed much, but it's still a hell of a lot. It's going to be really disturbing when there's enough data to make estimates of long COVID, and currently we really don't know how much vaccination and/or immunity from a prior infection reduces that.

There's a folksong, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. It's a great song, and a great tune, but bugged the hell out of me since it was first released. A few years ago, I rewrote it. The original chorus is
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the bells were ringing
The night they drove old Dixie down
And the people were singing
They went, "Na, na, la, na, na, la"

My version has a chorus:
The night we beat the slavers down....

knowing that the same theory which gave the word "hysteria" its definition also gave rise to a method of treatment

The film of the same name is quite funny.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysteria_(2011_film)

It was on sale on Apple TV+ for $5 a few months ago, which is where I picked it up.

[[ changing markup links to work now - mod ]]

I'm waiting for the first case where... my second ex, the twin's mom, tried two or three times to have a kid with her second husband. All miscarriages... and they assumed, and I agree, that it was due to his having been in 'Nam, and dealing with loading Agent Orange ("up to my elbows in the powder"). Or someone with Gulf War syndrome.

The one psycho I argued with when I was at the demonstration Tuesday, said, pretty much in so many words, that women shouldn't have sex outside of marriage, and only for procreation in. "They have no right...."

Y'know, you really ought to read the legitimate mainstream media (Faux Noise and to the right do not qualify), or you'd have seen, over and over, that they're handling these cases the way they go after Mob bosses - they convict and/or turn lower levels to rat on their bosses, and they've gone pretty far up. They do not want a failure when they try him.

Meanwhile, the Senate committee is at everyone directly under the Former Guy.

Could use existing laws, too. I like the idea of someone going after the Texas lege as accessories to rape.

Meanwhile, making and selling "surprise boxes" through Amazon, who deliver promptly, and how were they to know that the contents were popcorn, or whatever... and Plan B pills?

Oh, and Ellen and I just got back an hour and a half ago from getting out second booster. Good timing, with Balticon the end of the month.

I told the doctor I expected a million American deaths from Covid. He said that this was an extreme prediction.

Back in the ancient days of March 2020 I and one client I thought 6 to 18 months. Maybe more. The 40 or so other people I mentioned this to thought I was nuts. A month or two tops in their mind.

Sadly I and my client were correct.

whitroth
Plainly a raving christian psycho.

THIS is where it comes from - you may need brain-bleach, afterwards.
- From: I Timothy 2 -
11 Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection.

12 But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence.

13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

15 Notwithstanding she shall be saved in childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety.

Fully as criminally domineering as the religion of "Submission", when you get right down to it.

Probably only about half of those are excess deaths and, if the USA is like the UK, the life expectancy hasn't changed much, but it's still a hell of a lot.

I saw some CDC stats for last year and before the year was up the US was at over 200K excess deaths for that year. So your guess is about right.

But life expectancy has dropped. A little in some groups. A lot (1 to 20 years) in others.

1 to 2 (TWO) years

AlanD2 @ 207:

     'apparently "well-regulated" had a subtly different meaning then'

I hope that's sarcasm, because it didn't. It meant the same thing it means today - governed under the rule of law; trained & disciplined and answerable to the authority of civil government.

Apparently the Supreme Court and conservative gun-rights advocates disagree with you... :-/

They've chosen to ignore the first clause of the Amendment, but the MEANING of that clause has not changed.

Thanks. I should have expected that - it will correlate strongly with access to healthcare etc.

Hey, Charlie - hope you don't mind, but I quoted this (as being from a well-known Scottish SF author) a couple of places.... "There's not much difference between the Bible and the Necronomicon. Spend any time reading either of them and as Alito has proved, you're likely to go insane."

Wait, let's consider this. Either God got it right the first time, then screwed up, or Adam taught her wrong. So, exactly whose fault is this?

Back in the ancient days of March 2020 I and one client I thought 6 to 18 months. Maybe more. The 40 or so other people I mentioned this to thought I was nuts. A month or two tops in their mind.

My prediction back then was 2-3 years. I didn't expect vaccines so soon. Also didn't expect politicization of pandemic measures and such a high level of vaccine denial.

Paul, right? Hypocritical old git.

Back when I was attending a Baptist church* we had a guest preacher who made a big deal about covering her head in church (silver scarf over a beehive hairdo — no way to miss it). She told everyone (while preaching the sermon) that when anyone asked her why she simply and humbly** explained that it says in the Bible that women should cover their heads in church. When I pointed out that the same chapter also says they should be silent I got such an elbowing that my ribs were sore for a week.

If I was smarter I'd have realized that hanging around people who could believe such blatant contradictions, let alone being romantically entangled with one of them, was foolish. But I was young and thought I was in love…

*I was young and in love, and that's where my girlfriend had her community.

**Never met anyone so proud of being humble as those Baptists.

"They've chosen to ignore the first clause of the Amendment, but the MEANING of that clause has not changed."

That's not unique in that statements of purpose, presumably meant to give guidance on how to interpret the laws they are attached to, often get dissed. The Preamble to the US Constitution is a notable case in point.

https://constitution.findlaw.com/preamble.html

Wait, let's consider this. Either God got it right the first time, then screwed up, or Adam taught her wrong. So, exactly whose fault is this?

Whose fault? Well, back up a couple of verses, and you have the sun in the sky signifying the day, and the moon in the sky signifying the night. At that point in human history, everybody old enough to learn that story had been outside and seen the moon in the daylit sky (happens every month), so the lesson was that what follows is not literally true.

To be fair, if you go to seminary, apparently you get taught all this, but if you then go on to minister, you have to keep silent on your knowledge to keep your job, especially if you're in a denomination where the lay people hire and fire the pastor based on what they think of them. What does an ethical pastor do if they have to preach to people who want the Bible to be literally true, even though they know otherwise?

Anyway, we've got a deity who made humans twice. The first time (Gen 1:27 "male and female he made them"), They told humans to be fruitful and multiply and establish dominion over the entire Earth. Ethics not required. Was this when God created developers?

AND

God also created humans in a separate story in Gen 2:7 (made Adam, put him in Eden, Put the Ye Tree out, warning Adam that it would kill him if he ate it (spoiler: it didn't) then ribbed Adam about Eve, because Adam needed help and pets just weren't doing it for him.

Then you get the gibberish with the Fall from eating a Malus (bad Latin pun on apple/evil being almost the same word. Apples don't grow in the Fertile Crescent...), serpents are told to stop giving advice and just bite people, which they have done ever since in obedience to God's wishes. And there's something about...Peaches of Immortality (?) (Fruit of the Tree of Life, eat it and live forever). Per Genesis 2, the presence of the Tree of Life in Eden is why God booted them from Eden, after they'd become like him and eaten from the Tree of Knowledge. But God never told humans not to eat from the Tree of Life. So his intent all along was for humans to be immortal, but apparently to not be God-like by having no knowledge of good and evil.

Yeah. Weird. Possibly not meant to be taken literally? Also, snakes are more obedient to God's commands than humans are, even though they're....evil in doing so?

I think the big lesson is that all those who say that this is literally true can be made to swallow almost anything if the story's repeated enough in a serious context. And a lot of men over the centuries have learned that particular lesson all too well.

No surprise there.

Could I have some more background on these unavailable civil war documents? I'm assuming the concept of a classified document as we would understand it didn't exist in 1865 so what's the story?

Whitroth, I didn't say that.

Heteromeles @ 216: Problem is, we've now got a bit of a floating pointer with respect to the Second Amendment. For awhile (after 1903 to ?) the National Guard was our well-regulated militia. But they're getting engaged overseas like a regular military, and in any case, they don't house their service weapons. So (sarcasm), what can the Second Amendment be originally constructed as referring to in the late 20th Century and thereafter, if the US no longer has a well-regulated militia? (/Sarcasm).

The National Guard IS the "well-regulated militia". People seem to forget the "militia" is mentioned in the main body of the Constitution giving some idea of HOW the militia is to be regulated.

Article 1, Section 8 - Congress shall have the power ...

• To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
• To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
• To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of TRAINING THE MILITIA ACCORDING TO THE DISCIPLINE PRESCRIBED BY CONGRESS;

When the Constitution was adopted, the states were embarking with some trepidation on an experiment to create a single nation out what was at the time several sovereign states (nations in their own right). The purpose of the Second Amendment is to ensure the new Federal government could not simply abolish the militias leaving the states defenseless.

All of the clauses of the Second Amendment are important and cannot stand alone despite what the wingnuts who have taken over the Federal Judiciary have claimed in the last 30+ years. Where the commas occur don't matter (because they're an artifact of the hand copied nature of the original transcription - they only represent where the reader paused to take a breath).

Note also that in the Constitution itself, separate clauses are denoted by semi-colons. If Congress had intended the Second Amendment clauses to stand alone they would have used semi-colons instead of commas.

Without the vote they were trying to stop there would be no "president elect" to be sworn in. Kill or kidnap Pence and the law gets murky fast as the VP, by law, is the one in charge of the count but there's not auto replacement for that office when it is vacant.

the place was full of police - would they really not have protected pence? i would have thought that would have been a priority

As to a protest, there are truckloads of evidence that a non trivial number of those folks wanted to stop things.

well yeah, if wishes were fishes, they were protesting the result, seem to have lacked the means or leadership to pull it off though

why are they pleading guilty to sedition?

that one is, sounds like a plea bargain

i mean if a few guys pleading guilty to sedition is enough to make it an attempted coup, go for it, i guess

dunno if it's enough to derail trump 2.0 tho

jensnail @ 271: Many early pregnancies don't go to term for reasons other than abortion. How do you prove you had a miscarriage instead? Some recent cases in El Salvador of women being jailed for miscarriage.

You don't have to go to El Salvador. It's already been happening here in the U.S.

When Prosecutors Jail a Mother for a Miscarriage [NY Times] - note this article is from December 2018

Ah, "personal massagers" (aka "egg scramblers") are still very much a thing on some USian sites.

Compare that to the equivalents for men.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/true-stories/the-brutal-antimasturbation-devices-of-the-victorian-era/news-story/21d1a1ba9b8c92938d3f1e40c9611387

The National Guard IS the "well-regulated militia". People seem to forget the "militia" is mentioned in the main body of the Constitution giving some idea of HOW the militia is to be regulated.

Thanks! I was being sarcastic as marked, but I appreciate you taking it seriously.

However, I can't resist...

(Sarcasm) But the Constitution doesn't cover air and space forces. Is this why we have Area 51 and the USAF/USSF working so closely with the NRO, because they see themselves as outside the Constitution? (/sarcasm)

Note, you don't have to respond to that. I'm just obliquely venting my frustration with the power-addicted parasites we've got to treat.

"...note that merely because a judge expressed an opinion at some time in history, we do not automatically enshrine their opinion as valid for eternity."

That was, in fact, my entire point - that the "witch burning" judge's opinion is, in fact, a matter of the purest daylight madness, and Alito's citing of that opinion is extraordinarily ugly.

the american fad for circumcision came out of that as well, good old kellogg

I think the point is that they want to have testimony and imperial buttloads of evidence saying Trump ran the operation on January 6, not that he said "Will somebody rid me of this meddlesome election" and everybody else freely and illegally decided to stage a rebellion on his behalf.

As others have noted, this is really little different from taking down a mafia don.

It goes back much further than that; at least to St. Augustine.

John Hughes @ 258:

YELLOW CARD: On this blog it is known as The slaveowners' treasonous rebellion. And that's official.

The slaveowners' [ second ] treasonous rebellion, surely?

FWIW, the OFFICIAL designation used by the United States Government is "The War of the Rebellion"

The War of the Rebellion: a compilation of the official records of the Union and Confederate armies. [Library of Congress]

And in the American Revolution, many, many of the participating rebels were NOT slave owners. A lot of the fighting took place in the northern colonies and involved their colonial militias.

One reason there are so many statues of confederate generals is the 50th anniversary of the end of the War of the Rebellion came in 1915, when many of the first generation children of the confederates were still alive. The Daughters of the Confederacy was a real thing. It was, I think, the "high point" (or low point depending on your point of view) of "Lost Cause" revisionism.

With President Wilson being largely a confederate sympathizer (Virginian, born in 1856) and with the winds of the Great War already blowing across "America", he encouraged them in hopes of solidifying support for his decision to join the British & French side (although the U.S. wouldn't actively join the war until 1917 ... with Wilson campaigning for reelection in 1916 on the slogan "He kept us out of war!".

@332 -- Ah -- many apologies1 I'm mistaken; my declaration of still-classified dox from the War of the Rebellion was Wrong! I just checked with my friend who told me that some years back -- he's a retired archivist in the United States House of Representatives Library. Since he'd told me this, the CIA has declassified everything from the wars through WWII -- if I understand him correctly. All the available records concerning the War of the Rebellion were published by the Government printing office between 1880 and 1901, in seventy volumes. The War of the Rebellion: a Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies is commonly referred to as “the O.R.” and is a prime resource for those writing about the war. In addition, there was Official Records of the Union and Confederate Navies published between 1894 and 1922, in thirty volumes. Almost all these documents can be found, in Hathi.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/mb?a=listis;c=106642625

Also at sites such as these

http://collections.library.cornell.edu/moa_new/waro.html

https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-14121350R-mvset

As we know, he further said people had different attitudes in those days (meaning the 1860's until librarianship and the classification systems were devised around the end of the 19th ). “Classifying” information was on an ad hoc and case by case basis. Which, of course can mean in librarian speak, anything from lost, stolen, hidden, misfiled, forgotten, need to know basis (lots of theft! which until the collections were made digital continued). Of those dox that were still classified that he saw back in the day were recipes, written in French, for making secret writing ink.

Sorry, glad I didn't use your name. sigh

OGH didn't say that. I did. And when you quote me you may name me according to my office as "Bodhisattva Troutwaxer."

Unfortunately, seminal weirdness is not limited to Christianity:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judaism_and_masturbation

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam_and_masturbation

And I won't even begin to link to Taoist sex practices.

(going off on a wild tangent) If life energy is so elementally combined with haploid genomes, doesn't that mean that haploid bacteria and fungi are the most sacred of beings? Is Saccharomyces divine?

[[ changing markup links to work now - mod ]]

Hey, I sympathise with the sentiment ... but I didn't say it.

Zeroth @ 275:

Unless you're from the South, in which case it's known as The War Of Northern Aggression."

I don't remember ever hearing that particular term in the public schools (I'm told the term 'state school' is the equivalent in England) of a Gulf Coast state in the 60's and 70's. It was either the Civil War (most common) or the War Between the States. One of my history teachers commented that it was a most uncivil war.

That was my experience in school as well. I grew up here in North Carolina. I did hear the term used outside of school. The centennial of The War of the Rebellion came while I was still in elementary school and was over once I was in high school.

This was also the peak period of the Civil Rights movement. I don't think that was a coincidence.

While on the bible, I remember an article I read many decades ago (Asimov?) about the verse “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” (Exodus 22:18). The author said that the meaning of the Hebrew word that had been translated as "witch" was actually unknown, and it was more likely to mean "poisoner". This made a lot of sense to me. I wonder how many innocent people have been killed because of this bad translation, and how many others are in the Bible.

Also a problem are the verses taken out of context, or whose context is unknown. For example, 'And Jesus answered and said to them, “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”' (Mark 12:17). Now the Hebrews and the Romans were pretty much at war, so why would they give anything to Caesar? Since the Hebrews knew everything belonged to God, I think Caesar probably came out on the short end of the stick... :-)

dunno if it's enough to derail trump 2.0 tho

Probably not, but I'm hoping the Georgia election phone call will do him in... :-/

the american fad for circumcision came out of that as well, good old kellogg

Thanks! I've always wanted to know who to blame for my situation... :-)

H
Is Saccharomyces divine? - assuming you mean S. cerevisia - YES!

Yes, Saccharomyces cerevisiae. The yeasts which nobly sacrifice themselves in their untold trillions to insure that the sacred symbioses between humans and grains are sustained, which rise and rise again.

What could be more divine than that?

On the subject of not masturbating, Eleanor Jenga is a great resource for Medieval attitudes, so let me note three of her essays on the subject:

https://going-medieval.com/2020/11/13/on-no-nut-november-then-and-now/

https://going-medieval.com/2021/09/03/on-semen-retention/

https://going-medieval.com/2020/12/16/on-treating-sex-with-the-utmost-reverence/

the quest for the nofap superpowers is not for the faint of heart

If circumcision was supposed to prevent masturbation I think it qualifies as a wholly failed effort.

I grew up in a town that was infested with Baptists. One of my 'best friends' as a child was in an extremely religious family. There were a number of conversations that I later realized were completely bizarre.

I distinctly remember getting interested in the medieval period, castles and knights and all the rest. When I excitedly told my friend about the Lords and Ladies of the castles he very solemnly told me 'There is only one Lord', full stop no further discussion allowed or needed.

My 9 year old self found it funny, my adult self finds it appalling.

Footnote: My last interaction with that 'friend' was not long after high school when he pigeonholed me and did his very best to recruit me to Amway, in a manner very similar to proselytizing.

Or the faint of part!

"Vengeance is mine", saith the LORD, "I will repay. So keep your hands to yourselves, you lot."

There's a folksong, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down....

It's not strictly speaking a folk song; it was written by Robbie Robertson of The Band. He is still alive. Joan Baez did have a hit with it, and many others have covered it.

This is The Band (Robbie is the frontman, Levon Helm singing) from the the Last Waltz movie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jREUrbGGrgM&t=1s

My take was that it was about what it's like to be on the losing side of a war, so it could reasonably be interpreted as an anti-Vietnam war song.

Yeah its not only women's lives they want to ruin it everyone's. Remember this is the same country that often forces male victims of rape to pay child support for children that result from said rape, even when the victim is themselves a child. Oh and some states give the rapist parental right. So you may end up paying your rapist to raise your child.

The US view of sexual relations are beyond backward.

male victims of rape by women (who get pregnant as a result)?

is this really happening a lot?

If circumcision was supposed to prevent masturbation I think it qualifies as a wholly failed effort.

I think it's supposed to make it marginally less convenient, true prevention required other devices

I think RancidCrabTree is talking about male victims of statutory rape, that is, teenagers who were molested by adult women. Other than that I don't know enough to comment. Perhaps Rancid can enlighten us?

Yes that is what is was referring to.

(https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/talking-about-trauma/201902/when-male-rape-victims-are-accountable-child-support)

Several cases are covered in different states where male rape victims have been made to pay child support to the children they fathered when they were raped by older women.

ah right, child support judgements aiui tend to be really focussed on the interests of the child, extenuating circumstances be damned

352 - Different sources, same statement that the original meaning was "Poisoner (of waterholes)".

359 - There is only one Lord (God); there can be as many lords (note all lower case) as a rank of nobility as one likes.

362 - Mibbae aye, mibbae nae. It rather depends on whether Robbie Roberts was able to copyright the tune or just The Band's arrangement I think.