I appreciate Bari’s piece on this--I think she is clearly pro-abortion, but takes the high road and tackles the bigger principle at stake. Despite the fact that I sense every shred of her person screaming silently to not overturn Roe, she addresses how this leak impacts the institution. To me she demonstrates a massive amount of integrity.
I think the issue with Roe is that it is bad law, even if it provides something considered good by some people. There is nothing in the Constitution that enshrines abortion as a right, but there is also nothing that denies it. But Roe has had people thinking wrongly about SCOTUS and the Constitution.
If you are pro-abortion then work within the bounds of the state where you live to pass the laws that you and your fellow citizens want. Or conversely if you are anti-abortion do the same in your state. That is the mechanism that exists.
Agreed. I think the biggest issue here—that people are wholeheartedly ignoring—is the damage this does to what is probably the most stable institution in the United States.
For as much crap as the Supreme Court gets, there are nine, very level-headed people on it who are some of the most highly scrutinized judges in our legal system BEFORE they even get appointed to the court. In my experience, those who are criticizing the SCOTUS, usually have a bad understanding of the law in the first place. Whoever leaked this should be ashamed. This does incredible damage to the institution.
Institutions don’t fall from outside pressure. They fall from internal instability.
Sotomayor, Kagan and the new one who can't define the meaning of woman, whose name I refuse to.write, are progressive ideologues. They are not highly scrutinized, o felt headed people. They are radical, rabid ideologues voted into their.position by other radical, rabid ideologues.
The three of them are actually pretty bland. They get pegged at ideologues because of who nominated them and when—it was pretty divisive back then.
Jackson not defining a woman is probably not as political as you think:
1) There is no legal definition of a woman. Asking her to answer a biology question is way outside her lane and was kind of the fault of the senator who asked her. It was a dumb and irrelevant question.
As far as the biological definition, if you’re a regular listener of the podcast, you’ve definitely heard a few of Bari’s guests cover this. If you go with the “has a uterus and ovaries” definition, where does that leave women who’ve had hysterectomies? If you go strictly by external genitalia, what about biological males whose body formed like that of a girl’s? Is it defined as someone who presents as female in all the traditional ways? One of Bari’s early guests, Carole Hooven, argued that humans only produce two types of gametes: eggs and sperm and that’s the basic tiebreaker on male v female.
But then again, none of that is legally defined, and a Supreme Court nominee would not want to step in that political minefield.
While there are extremely rare birth anomalies, all humans throughout all time have been able to define 'woman' (an adult human female)...except the modern Western leftists. It doesn't take a biologist, or a judge, to define 'woman.' It was a pertinent and useful question and Jackson's refusal to answer it spoke volumes. She's a captive to a cult religion (which I don't think she is a member of), but so are most Democrats these days.
"Where does that leave women who’ve had hysterectomies" it leaves them exactly as you said - as women who have later had surgery on certain organs. A human is a biped, but humans who have lost their legs, or were born without them, are still humans.
Sorry but y'all are just as captive to your cult where you can't see the nuance of what the commenter just described. It's amazing how many o you in these comments don't realize how extreme, un-nuanced, and tribal you are.
Do tell. I'm listening. The values "the far right neo nazis" (as breathless leftists like to describe all opposition) like me have are basically Barrack Obama 2005.
Sex differences are obvious except to those who pretend they don’t exist. Those who aren’t one sex or the other are few and far between. Katanji Brown is intellectually dishonest.
Does she know if (s)he is a woman? Or does she only know that she is a Black Woman because Biden said he would nominate a Black Woman. Also, relatedly, is RuPaul a Black Woman? If not, why not?
I hadn’t really thought that far back, actually, but I appreciate your thinking on it. If it were to ever be brought up before a court, going based on the historical definition in context is one way to go about defining it.
My argument above is mostly based on a lot of the arguments I hear from people who view gender and sex as completely relative. If we’re going to mail it down to one thing that’s black and white, I would argue, “does this person’s body—in a natural state—produce egg cells or sperm cells.”
Nevertheless, I think the 19th Amendment does bolster the idea of what was historically defined as a woman should be respected. Thanks for bringing that up!
Yeah.. "on account of sex" was the reference that came to mind. The amendment might have avoided sex entirely and just granted all citizens the ability to vote in a way that didn't specify gender, but the suffrage movement was clearly orientated for women and even the language kind of backhands you with it since one of the sexes could already vote.
But hey that's clearly a constitutional right that is specifically granted to males and to females (and a candidate for SCOTUS should know that).
Do you know what "disinformation" is? Disinformation is when I point out that Kathleen has a broken fingernail, and expand this minor flaw to conclude Kathleen is a broken and bad person. This is wrong of course. Likewise, about one out of a hundred thousand people have some minor genetic defect which affects the development of their gonads ... and then project that onto the entire population. Yes, some 300 or so people alive today in our country have genetic defects which affect their gametes ... but its no category in which to stuff all people.
Dick Morris, the former Clinton adviser, had no choice but to remark,
"Generally, it is a good political rule never to say anything
HEARTWARMING! ♥️ Woman keeps trying to get on the same side of an argument as the people antagonizing her in the comments by using the arguments elite intellectuals use against them, but the people who PAY for the privilege to comment on this Substack can’t argue with nuance! 🫠
"There is no legal definition of a woman. Asking her to answer a biology question is way outside her lane and was kind of the fault of the senator who asked her. It was a dumb and irrelevant question."
It is a high-school level question. Perhaps she didn't attend her classes regularly? The definition is well-known and may even be in junior-high classes: A man has an XY 23rd chromosome and a woman has an XX 23rd chromosome. That is definitive. There is no dispute about it at all. Someone who identifies as some different gender still has the 23rd chromosome to determine if he/she is male or female, especially for genome-based medical care.
It is really perplexing that she did not know this elementary fact, and it suggests she is poorly educated and thus not appropriate to serve on the Supreme Court.
It’s a biology minefield where elite institutions are muddying the waters significantly and drawing attention away from actual biological factors that DO have a binary. (Chromosomes have too many variabilities that intellectuals will fight you on).
Answering the question that way would have been suicide to her career—whether or not she was confirmed. She was smart to deflect it to a field with more authority on the subject.
The XX and XY chromosomes are definitive with very rare exceptions.
Here is one quote: "According to the World Health Organisation, the biological differences between men and women result from the differences in the genes the X and Y chromosomes carry. If the Y chromosome is present, then these genes cause a male sexual differentiation pathway to be followed, causing the offspring to be a man. On the other hand, if the Y chromosome is absent, then the female sexual differentiation pathway is followed and the offspring will be a woman."
Jackson’s answer was either disingenuous or she buckled under pressure. Given the woke ideology of the school who’s board she sits on and who she choose to educate here kids, I suspect the former.
The academic, social Justice priesthood’s argument is not biological it is that gender is “a social construct” and she must know this as she appears to agree with it. The priests believe everything, including empiricism and “science” are socially constructed and are thus subjective and malleable to their wills.
Cruz’s question was not a “dumb question.” It was designed to reveal her ideology which is critically important to evaluate a judge for the highest court. It is relevant precisely because the constitution’s framers found the definition of man and woman self evident.
The subjectivist or nihilistic type of belief system he fears she follows is not new and has been the author of most of the world’s evil since the dawn of the human race, this includes those post enlightenment periods where Christianity was corrupted by fanatics.
The new priests are very, very clever. They are chipping away at objective reality by manipulating language, leveraging psychological techniques, selling shame and building identity based resentments . If we, you, me, all of us don’t fight their ideology then the fine grained intellectual points you effectively made in you comment on defining man v woman will be made moot.
People are getting hung up on her confusion around sex, the real issue here is that she is being cheeky in a confirmation hearing with a sitting Senator, and not being forthcoming on the school of thought that got her there.
Cruz failed to follow up to nail her, though. He could have asked if she was an astronomer and then whether or not she thought the earth was flat. Or if (s)he was a nutritionist and whether or not drinking 2 liters of Coke a day was good for your health... What kind of judge can she be if she has to defer to experts about everything simple.
So hilarious that you don't see all of Trumps choices this way. The newly elected judge was highly qualified in every sense of the word and went through a ridiculous political circus to get nominated. Imagine is she would have cried like Kavanaugh. Amy Comey Barrett was a religious puppet put in to do this very job of un-turning Roe v Wade and this was the plan all along. How is any of that not a rabid idealogue and going into the job with an agenda instead of impartiality? I don't care ifnyou think some of the left is impartial, but at least open your eyes and see that the new right judges are not impartial either. It is not one sided. It is ALL jaded and we need more moderates--full stop.
You're right that they should be ashamed, but shame is alien to the mind-set of po-mo progressivism. Already, I suspect, the leaker or leakers are angling for book deals and MSNBC gigs. Maybe Biden will decorate them with the Presidential Medal of Freedom...
Let's see. First you declare that courts should reflect the will of the majority, then, you say that courts should be impartial rather than reflecting political allegiances. So which is it? Because it can't be both...
I completely disagree with the first part of this sentiment. The SC is not and should not be ruled by the "will of majority". It is ruled by the constitution. It is set up specifically not to be bound by pressure from outside the law. (Lifetime appointments and such). It is meant to be a counter balance to that, where what is considered is "does this abide by the law", specifically the constitution
With that said I completely agree with the second. Judges should be impartial, which is exactly why this leak is so bad. I believe it was possibly released for political expediency (affect the upcoming mid terms) or more likely and way worse, to try to pressure the judges to NOT be impartial. Regardless of where you fall in the debate of the issue before the court, that should seriously worry you.
I used to be prochoice. I thought the rabid prolife people were a bunch of hardcore Christian fundamentalist nut cases.
I said I used to be prochoice until a friend was having trouble getting pregnant. She and her husband tried invitro fertilization and it worked but she miscarried the first child. The miscarriage devastated her. They tried again and it worked. Her husband brought me the sonogram disk of the fetus.
I watched it and I had a road to Damascus moment and epiphany. I watch this living strange looking creature's heartbeat. and thought "This is a human being." and it was.
I read the article in Bari's post by Caitlin Flanagan. It’s called “The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate”. She said, "The argument for abortion, if made honestly, requires many words: It must evoke the recent past, the dire consequences to women of making a very simple medical procedure illegal. The argument against it doesn’t take even a single word. The argument against it is a picture."
She described my change from prochoice to prolife in that one sentence. The fetus I saw was a human being and as such had all the rights and privileges of any other US citizen and one of those rights is to be protected by the law, specifically being protected, against being murdered. And that is what abortion is, murder.
Just because I am now prolife, I would never tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her body. But is not just her body we are talking about, is it? It's also about the human being she is carrying in that body.
There are no simple answers to complex problems. Only idiots, fanatics and politicians give simple answers to complex problems there are fanatics on both sides of this terribly complex problem.
It's appropriate that you write this was a "road to Damascus" moment. It showscases that the question on when a fetus becomes a person is, in fact, a religious argument. Being a religious argument, your comment also makes the case for why Freedom of Choice is the only conceivable outcome in this pluralistic country of ours. I do not subscribe to Christianity nor do substantial numbers of our fellow citizens. I 100% respect the right you have to practice the religion of your choosing within the boundaries of your life. I expect that you will respect the right of each and every other citizen and resident of this country to practice the religion of THEIR choosing within the boundaries of their lives.
Just as your freedom of expression to swing your fist ends at your neighbor's face, so to does your freedom of religious expression end at your neighbor's religiously held believes (or lack thereof). There is NO science which determines when a "fetus," which cannot live independently of a woman, becomes a "child," which can live independently. As such, we ONLY have religion to make that determination. Ergo, abortion is solely a religious question up to the point of viability. The 1st amendment clearly expresses that neither the US government nor the states may rule on a religious question. Ergo, abortion cannot be made illegal by the courts, an act of congress, or even the state legislatures.
Dan0, you are mistaken. It takes not a whit of religion to be antiabortion. In fact, I would argue that being antiabortion is much more a humanist thing than a religion thing.
Like so many others, I started out as a rabid believer in abortion. It was just a clump of cells. Its a parasite.
Then, well, I saw my daughters 3D sonogram at 3 months. Saw her face and her fingers and I saw her move. That was it for me. I had the same experience with my son.
That opened my mind to considering the possibility that maybe things were not as clear cut as I had thought. So, I started listening more to people who had real experiences with abortion and people who had done real research into it. I got to hear the experiences of women who had abortions and were traumatized because they discovered it was not what they had been told to expect. I got to see the images that were surreptitiously taken inside abortion clinics that showed dismembered babies. You might have seen the case in NY recently where they opened up a murder investigation over 3 dead babies that were found in the trash only to discover that they were discarded by an abortion clinic.
But then, I used to be pro- death penalty too. Then I woke up to the number of people who were being sentenced to death who were ultimately found innocent.
Being anti-abortion is NOT a religious question. The fact that so many religious people are antiabortion does not make it a religious issue. I am about as lapsed a catholic as your gonna find and if I have any faith it would probably be Buddhism.
And...let's clarify your last statement. The courts are NOT making abortion illegal. To whatever degree abortion is illegal or legal, it will be determined by state legislatures, elected officials. The court is in no way saying that abortion is illegal. It is simply saying that the states may pass laws to make it illegal. For that to happen, the states elected officials must pass laws. For those officials to have that power, they have to be elected by the states voters. SO, in short, it is the voters of those states that will or will not make it illegal, to whatever degree they do.
I know a number of atheists who are anti-abortion. Even among libertarians (many of whom are atheists), people are pretty evenly split on the issue. (They also tend to make more rational arguments for their position, whichever it is.)
I, too, am less in favor of the death penalty than I used to be, for exactly the same reason. I had believed--naively, perhaps--that anyone who got the death penalty was *unquestionably* guilty of a heinous murder. Then I began to read the stories about people who had been exonerated by DNA evidence, and discovered that many of them had been convicted on the basis of very, very questionable evidence. Now we know that too many DAs have *knowingly* falsely charged people, despite having evidence that excluded them as suspects. Until that rot can be purged, our system cannot be dealing out the death penalty without 100% solid proof.
My point is that since this can't be determined by science, it becomes a religious question by default. I'm not suggesting it's due to a belief among a specific religion. I'm simply saying that we have not yet been able to objectively determine when Human life begins. We know that a collection of cell is life, but we haven't been able to identify it as a human life. It's only a potential life.
There are many in this thread who believe that it begins at conception. I expect that for their own conscience they follow that believe with action and would never use a form of birth control which could result in a fertilized egg being rejected by a person's body. There are likely others who believe human life begins further down the development process. They, as well, should follow their own conscience.
No one is dictating that another person MUST have an abortion. No one should be required to do something which is against their own conscience within the bounds of public accommodation. I would fully support the doctor or nurse who chooses not to partake in abortion proceedings. However, an administrator or a hospital should not be able to forestall their employee from performing what the state determines to be a medical procedure. Similarly, employers should not be able to impose their religious beliefs on their employees. I'm aware that SCOTUS disagreed, but that's an argument for a different day.
My personal belief is that everything should be done to avoid an abortion of an otherwise viable fetus. That includes adoption, economic assistance to the family, and supportive counseling. We cannot simply focus on the ethics of the medical procedure without also focusing on the ethics of how we treat those in our communities who are facing hardships and challenges. I firmly believe you should not judge a person until you understand their life experience (i.e. walk a mile in their shoes). There should be better education about the impacts of abortion on an individual and their families. Conversely, no one should restrict an individual from making the choice that they determine is right for them, especially when context and circumstances are different for each one of us.
Courts cannot and should not interject their own beliefs about the unknown when their continues to be rational and vigorous debate. I welcome the day when science allows us to objectively determine the difference between a fetus within a womb and a fetus created the invitro fertilization. Then we can make laws respecting the situation. ONLY THEN can the government get involved in deciding this issue. Until that day, this is and will remain a matter of belief. Belief is the realm of religion and not of the government.
I generally concur with your analysis and I empathize with your position.
Although I do not believe that a fertilized egg constitutes a human being, I do believe that somewhere between fertilization and birth a sentient human being develops. Where that line is and when in fetal development it occurs is a brutally hard question to answer. That said, I would suggest that both science and general human experience would say that by the time you hit the end of the first trimester you have crossed that line. I say human experience for two reasons, both simply observational. First, based on my wife's experience and those of my sisters and cousins, the 3 month mark is where they first seem to be constantly aware of the baby and it seems to be the point where they are confident in sharing that they are pregnant with others. Second, as someone who has witnessed 3D ultrasounds of a 3 month old fetus and seen others from before that point, it strikes me that at that 3 month mark what we see is a fully human form that is responsive to its mothers body, its mothers mood and to external stimuli. There are those who would argue that for various reasons such as size, intellectual development, physical dependency, that it is not a "baby" but is in fact the more clinical term "fetus". I would argue that we do not want to get into the business of defining a persons humanity based on size, intellectual development or physical dependency.
As a side note, have you ever noticed how when a baby is wanted, it is CLEARLY a baby the mother is carrying. She and her friends and family celebrate every heartbeat, every kick, every milestone on the way to birth. Yet, when a baby is NOT wanted, it is a "fetus", a parasite, something that must be destroyed and removed. Do we really want to define a persons humanity based on whether or not that persons presence is desired?
I believe that this is why most Americans support unquestioned abortion in the first trimester but balk at anything after that point.
I doubt any of us support the wanton killing of a sentient human being in a horrific way, except under the most extreme circumstances. I think the vast majority of us would say that any time the mother's life is put at risk would constitute such an extreme circumstance. By the same token, I think most people would be horrified to hear that a woman aborted at 7 months because she is divorcing her husband and does not want to raise his child. Do we as a society want to say that it is ok to abort at 5 months because the parents discovered that it will have Downs Syndrome and they do not want to deal with it?
Now, granted, all of this comes into direct conflict with the right of each human being to control their own body. And that is no small thing.
If this were an easy question, we would not all still be discussing it and it would have been resolved within our society decades ago. Its NOT an easy question. It is morally, and scientifically complex. That some abortions are inherently necessary cannot reasonably be questioned. But then neither can the fact that many abortions are done for the most heinous of reasons such as parents who select for sex or due to a potential birth defect like Down Syndrome or a missing arm, something that is more common than is regularly recognized. Imagine if parents could select for a child being inclined to be gay or for dwarfism. Both are either possible now or will be in the near future with DNA analysis. Should they be allowed to abort at any point in time? You think that extreme, but I actually know a man that said had he known his son (great kid by the way and on his way to UVA) was going to be gay he would have pressed his wife to abort. Knowing her, I think she would have agreed.
A moment on your last paragraph. You say that "Courts cannot and should not interject their own beliefs....". I agree. I would argue that Roe did exactly that. It enforced that courts belief on the whole country. This new decision, if it actually happens, undoes that. It takes it out of the courts hands and places it in the hands of legislatures. Legislators, unlike court justices, DO have to face election and re-election. Although imperfect, legislatures do generally reflect the social and moral judgments of the citizens of the state. In that, there is a general collective wisdom of the society as a whole and not the opinion of a few elite people who are all lawyers.
Honestly, I think overturning Roe may be the best thing to happen to abortion rights. Here is why. First, Roe was a very very weak, poorly reasoned decision that was the act of a court reaching for the outcome it desired. Even RBG admitted that. For that reason, it always left the issue on shaky ground. Second, it has allowed both republicans and democrats to demagogue the issue. Both sides have been able to be more and more extreme in support of extreme laws in order to fund raise or pump up portions of their base for votes, and to do so knowing they will never have to face the consequences because the court would always stop them. Legislators that want to pass laws outlawing all abortions will now have to deal with ectopic pregnancies. People like senator Warren will have to deal with the idea that saying abortion should be legal until the cord is cut now have to face the reality of that perhaps happening.
This is now an issue that the American people cannot avoid working to reach a working consensus on. The court is no longer there to protect them from themselves. Do I ever think we will have standardized abortion law across the country? No. I do however think that as time goes on we will find that every state has some minimum access to legal abortion that is centered on that 3 month mark and the life of the mother, rape or incest. I suspect that more liberal states will open the floodgates for awhile and then back off as reports of particularly heinous abortion practices force them to back off. Ultimately, we will end up with something that a majority of voters can accept, with variations by state, and that has to be better than what we have had for 5 decades, which is constant warfare that has polarized our politics and corrupted the process of nominating and appointing Supreme Court Justices.
By this thinking, outlawing murder is also a religious question. What it comes down to is intellectual honesty, of which the loudest activists on both sides have none.
If the "pro-choice" people (who are for vaccine mandates) were to honestly say that this is about sexual liberation and the idea that a (wo)man should not have to worry about pregnancy if s/he (gotta look out for those "birthing persons") doesn't desire to have a child, they would receive more credit from the other side.
At the same time, if the "pro-life" people (who love the death penalty) were to honestly say that they do believe that one of their concerns is that people need to take responsibilities for their own actions (e.g. intercourse), and should be "punished" for doing something irresponsible, we would finally get to a point where the argument could be toned down by everyone.
Instead we whinge about rights to privacy, clumps of cells, fetal heartbeats, viability, ectopic pregnancies, "except rape and incest" yada yada yada
I went in the opposite direction: I started out pro-life but am now pro-choice. And it's because I'm adopted.
Maybe that doesn't make sense to some--I'm adopted, so I ought to be favor of adoption over abortion, shouldn't I? Except that I'm not.
I have struggled all my life as a result of my birthmother's DNA. The only thing that saved me was my birthfather's less-messed-up DNA and my wonderful and terminally *sane* adoptive parents. (Okay, meeting my birthmother and realizing that my struggles were a physical disease passed on in her DNA helped a lot.) But I have felt for a long time that it would have been better to have been aborted than to suffer through all that I've suffered through.
Despite the fact that adoption saved me, I can't recommend it. Children are rarely ever given up for adoption because "a nice girl from a nice family accidentally got pregnant." Children who end up being given up for adoption almost always come with DNA that is coded for a host of issues, including addiction and mental illness. Those infants are also burdened with epigenetic damage resulting from a history of abuse in the family, particularly abuse suffered by the birthmother throughout her own life. And they are damaged *directly* by addiction and abuse experienced by the birthmother during her pregnancy.
People who adopt these damaged children often have no idea what they're getting into. They believe the "nice girl/nice family" lie. And they suffer tremendous heartbreak as a result.
So I now have a painfully pragmatic approach to abortion: those infants are better off. They do not need the heavy, heavy burdens with which they would be born.
Oh Celia I am so sorry. I have said in connection with other issues that there are things worse than dying. You in essence are saying there are things worse than living. I respect, and accept your position, but that may be the saddest thing I have ever heard.
Suicidality is one of those "gifts" from my birthmother's DNA. I've never had the guts to go through with it, but still it's very mentally wearing to have your brain randomly sending you the impulse. Whenever I answer one of those "where would you go if you could travel through time?" questions, the answer is always the same: I would prevent my conception, or failing that, I would make sure my birthmother got an abortion.
As sad as that might be for my adoptive parents (who took great joy from my presence in their lives, despite sometimes not knowing how to deal with a kind of pain they couldn't understand) and for my lifelong best friend, I genuinely feel that a life cut short in the womb would have been less horrible for me than my near-56 years-so-far on this planet have been.
I've been thinking about this for a while, Celia. I'm sorry You feel that Way about Your life. I wish someone could change that for You. I, too, never made a serious attempt at suicide for the same reason. When i was 22 I had a combination of some Spiritual experiences and outta-balance neurotransmitters that upset me one night. One. Be taht as it may, I was hospitalized and branded Bipolar II. You probably recall back in the day that was called manic-depressive. Heavy on the depressive side.
Still, i can only imagine what Your life is truly like. Dunno what a "good" day is for You, to hope You have more-a them than the "bad" ones. Me? I've been very lucky.
I dunno this gives You any comfort, and admit I'm only 50% Religio-Spiritual. And part Atheist Religion. But my sense is that if You hadn't been born, there would-a been a ripple effect on all the people You've touched. PRobably hundreds or thousands of people in large and small Ways You may not even know about. As Lynne "said," US for example. Your light is worth it to us, and hope You know that, is about all.
Thank you for the kind words. My life is much better now than it once was--age and perspective helps a lot. And fortunately--although I've mentioned addiction in the context of children who are better off not being born--that was not one of the griefs I inherited. More than a little grateful for that!
Even as a child I had some weird paranoias--I *recognized* them as irrational (thanks to my upbringing), but that didn't make them go away. But everything crashed in on me in my mid-teens: OCD, religious mania (that was a HUGE one in my birthmother's family), panic attacks, and crippling levels of depression. My 20s ushered in the suicidal impulses.
My birthmother found me when I was 19, and proceeded to emotionally abuse me in the name of "love" for the next ten years (At which point I moved across the country and didn't leave her any contact info). The only good thing that came out of that was the realization that it wasn't my soul or my character that was broken; it was my DNA.
Armed with that knowledge, I fought back. The reality was that my brain was perfectly capable of lying to me. When I had panic attacks, it lied to me that I wasn't getting any air, completely against the solid evidence that I was breathing and I hadn't passed out. Instead of accepting my brain's lies, I had to focus on discovering the truth. And after a while, my brain stopped trying to lie to me quite so often, since it wasn't getting the results it wanted. But it will still randomly throw shit at me. It's exhausting.
I suspect from your comments on here that you have a far broader reach than your parents and your best friend. Including me albeit in a far different way. I always look forward to your insight.
I used to have a lot of friends that are pro choice. In college especially it was prevalent. I generally did not voice my view because of the general hatred towards the prolife attitude. Being female everyone pretty much assumed what my stance was. I had one of those friends ask me once why I never said anything during these discussions. I told them what my opinion was and they were utterly shocked. "How could I?!?" People tend to treat it like a forgone conclusion of how you should think and you must be evil to think otherwise, or some religious wacko.
To me its actually fairly easy to see both sides. I do not think anyone here would argue you should be able to kill a baby after its born? Why? Because it is a person and has rights. It would be murder to virtually anyone. We (pro life and choice) do not have some major divide on how we think, its just simply one small issue that causes all the trouble. We disagree on "when" the baby is considered a "human with rights"
I do tend to disagree with the Roe decision especially viewed through the "viability" lens. Think about it this way. As our medical knowledge gets better and better the "viability" date actually changes. So does that mean that 100 years ago a "human fetus" was not "a human" until even later? By the time of Roe it was (24 months?). Now with all our medical advances it is less than that. So depending on the time you were born, it changes the definition of when you became "a human being" and would have rights. That to me says it is a faulty measure of life.
I try to stay away from the emotional or religious side of things when discussing this because in a large sense it really does not matter except maybe to influence the "when" question for you as an individual. Yes I know there are some horrible situations that can happen. It does not change the simple fact that once that baby is "considered a human being" it has rights that must be protected too.
Even the Roe vs Wade decision agreed with this. They tried to balance the woman's "right to privacy" against the rights of the states to protect potential life. If you have not ever read the Roe decision it was the "right to privacy" in the Bill of Rights for the argument that abortions should be legal.
As far as the legal issues, the abortion debate doesn't revolve around someone's personal opinions about the circumstances where abortion might be justifiable (most people view it as a more complex question than "yes" or "no"). It revolves around whether one supports the prerogative of the government- the State- to stringently restrict abortion and criminalize any act of abortion outside of the ordained limitations.
That might sound like weaseling, but in my opinion supporters of abortion criminalization haven't thought through exactly how much power a State gets granted by that punitive "remedy". They might also reflect on the reality that the previous era of criminalization of abortion did not stop large numbers of abortions from being performed illegally. Criminalization simply drove the practice underground. It should also be pointed out that the first law in the US forbidding abortion wasn't passed until 1821, enacted in the State of Connecticut. https://currentpub.com/2022/04/26/the-story-behind-the-first-abortion-law-in-the-united-states/
Oh wow, just read it again. "the Supreme Court has ruled that laws affecting family relations, commerce within a state's own borders, and local law enforcement activities, are among those specifically reserved to the states or the people." Does that mean that Federal legislation is out of scope for new Abortion law?
I would say that a federal ban OR legalization of abortion would be unConstitutional. But the lack of Constitutionality hasn't prevented a mountain of federal legislation in the past 100+ years.
I believe they seek to delay the opinion until a new voice can be added. This leak provides the reason to abort this case - just as they abort everything else. Those who crave power love abortion, not just for babies, but for every process of humanity...
Abortion of Humanity is achieved through abortion of Justice
I appreciation what you said about Bari's taking the high road on this issue. Yes, she did, and thank you for pointing it out so eloquently.
The only quibble I will offer is that nobody including me is "pro-abortion," and I don't believe Bari is, either. We are pro-choice, which is profoundly different from being cheerleaders for the procedure.
Sorry, but I've seen numerous women (such as Lena Denham) being cheerleaders for the procedure. I'm pro-choice for pragmatic reasons, but there are ABSOLUTELY Leftists out there who promote abortion as some kind of necessary rite-of-passage for a "true" feminist.
You're right, Celia--"nobody" is too broad, because there certainly are those who believe abortion is a happy rite of passage. I don't know any personally, which is what I should have said. I believe the percentage of the United States that says "abortion is awesome!" is pretty tiny. And, correct so: abortion is, even when necessary, sad.
"Liberal sluts get knocked up because they can't keep their legs closed and murder their own babies to hide the evidence."
Shut the fuck up. You're no Jew; I've never met a Jew who is as vile as you are constantly on Bari's feed. You're just a piece of sexist, hating trash. You hate gays, you hate women, you hate liberals, you hate Christians, you hate Jews you consider "not real," you hate hate hate hate all day long.
Thank Yahweh most of my fellow Jews are reasonable. If they were all like you, I'd have to convert back to being a Lutheran. As for you, move to Israel and throw yourself on a Hamas grenade. I promise I'll recite Kaddish.
"Any decent human being "hates" evil, as the Torah says."
Yup. That's exactly why I wrote what I did about you and your hate-filled diatribes: because decent human beings hate evil and call it out whenever possible. The truth hurts, eh?
As a proud Jew whether you like it or not, I will call God whatever the fuck I want, thanks.
As for "pet victims," I have no use for pedophiles, they're the scum of humanity. Gay people are not pedophiles and you slander them endlessly for God knows what twisted reason marinates in your brain. In the United States, where you seem to forget you live, you are entitled to believe whatever you want religiously, but you cannot impose those views on anyone else. We are a secular nation of laws, where gays can marry and women can legally seek abortions. You want to be the religious cop on the beat, find another country.
What you wrote here deepens my conviction that you are a sick and twisted hater of anything that does not comport with your claim of being a "real Jew," and as such, this will be my last response to you. Life is too short to argue with anyone who calls women "liberal sluts parading their anorexic bodies on social media, getting used and degraded, and murdering their own babies to hide the evidence."
It’s a fair argument to make. People try and simplify the abortion debate so flatly, but there are a lot of stakeholders and the decision is never made in a vacuum.
Men do have rights. They have the right to take responsibility for their role in creating the pregnancy by discussing with their female partner before having sex about how they would handle an unwanted/unplanned pregnancy and if they have opposing views they can choose to not have sex with them. Men can educate themselves about birth control and learn that when both partners use birth control the odds of pregnancy are greatly reduced. They can take responsibility for their actions by choosing to wear a condom for all of their sexual encounters or getting a vasectomy or by not having sex at all. Men's options/rights are all pre-conception. If that seems unfair it is because the burden of pregnancy is unfair.
So you take the feminist position that men (and men alone) need to keep their pants zipped?
As long as women have the right to get an abortion, men should have the right to legally disown any child that results within the same timeframe of knowledge (within 9 months of finding out that a child resulted).
Pregnancy is no more "unfair" than gravity is. If you step off a cliff, even an abortion won't save you.
Burden of pregnancy isn't unfair? So biological males can get pregnant and give birth? Heterosexual vaginal intercourse always has a risk of pregnancy. We all know this. Men who make the "financial abortion" argument make it sound like fatherhood was forced upon them against their will and without their willing participation. I listed above men's options in preventing an unwanted pregnancy. Basically a lot of men feel entitled to sex on demand without taking any responsibility for the children they father blaming the woman for having a child they don't want and feel the woman should just support the kid themselves. What these men fail to realize is that these fatherless children then become society's and the taxpayer's problem (lower education achievement, higher likelihood of incarceration, higher unemployment, lower earnings), so if a "financial abortion" were made legal resulting in millions of men refusing to financially support their children the negative effects on our society would be catastrophic. That it is why the courts will never allow a financial abortion.
The right to decide the fate of the pregnancy is unfair because the burden of pregnancy is unfair. If men are afraid of their conceived child being aborted then those men should only have sex with women who share their abortion beliefs. Just because you don't like the choices available to you doesn't mean you don't have any choices.
No I'm saying only 1 person can ultimately decide the fate of the pregnancy either the man or the woman, it can't be both. So as it's the woman's body it should be her decision. Are you arguing that it should be the father's decision and men and only men can decide if a woman is allowed to carry her pregnancy to term?
There are many of us on the right that have not sat idly by. We have connected the dots on the coming woke tyranny for many years. We have gone to work to vote in candidates who have connected the dots and developed an entire movement to peacefully, and through the ballot box, combat this tyranny.
But the ever so clever woke who own all the means of propaganda in the country have convinced the rest of the nation that we are violent insurrectionists. Because most people are so late to realize the awful reality we live in, it is likely that we are doomed to live pitifully controlled lives, and the only thing left would be violent revolution, and we would lose. I consider myself a classical liberal but I believe I see through the masterfully crafted (by Hollywood) matrix, to a somewhat more accurate reality. Until more people understand that when in, even a peaceful war, sometimes an ill-mannered General Patton is needed. Forget the delicate manners of old liberals, fighters come with different personalities. Even the extraordinarily well-mannered Douglas Murray has concluded it is past the time for politeness. DeSantis, Larry Elder, Candice Owens, Charlie Kirk, Tom Cotton, Jim Jordan, and Trump may not be your cup of tea but there is NO ONE else willing to fight. And never pay attention to how Hollywood paints these very brave, intuitively street smart people, always remember who owns Hollywood and the media.
I would like this over and over again. The ONLY path to sanity is a plurality of democrats to wake up and fight with us before it is too late. We need them.
William & Comprof, thx for the Qs. I am not exactly on the inside but I have spent most of my life in Beverly Hills, have a wife who was in entertainment for a couple of decades, and I know a great many people in entertainment, some at the management level.
I believe Hollywood, (except for the much smaller "faith-based" film industry) is largely owned by exceptionally woke corporations such as Disney, Netflix, Apple, Universal. China invests also. I believe these are the real "owners" of Hollywood. Jews, of which I am one, are disproportionately involved in the business, however the real ownership of these corps many not have a disproportionate number of Jews. It is true German Jews built and "owned" early Hollywood, but the industry ownership today is much more diverse. I will say there are a crazy number of Jews who are writers (also real influencers) for the industry. 75-80% of Jews are very left, and I believe Hollywood writers, Jews or not, are very left, AND forbidden to stray from their employers' enforced woke standards.
As far as media, there are six major media companies and they own virtually all the outlets we are exposed to. These companies are all very woke and enforce woke standards. I think there could be a disproportionate number of Jews in media as it has been a career of choice for a long time for Jews. How many Jews have a position of ownership control would only be understood by knowing how many of those owners/executives are Jewish. Again these corps are so large and diverse that it would be very inaccurate to say Jews own Hollywood. But it seems quite obvious to me that the woke do "own" Hollywood.
Thanks for this nuanced explanation, Dennies. Clearly you were NOT going for the old antisemetic tropes of "the Jews own everything," and that is much appreciated. Your take seems accurate to me because a small number of corporations DO own virtually all media outlets in this country, from cable to broadcast to Internet to film to, probably, Substack. Whether these corporations are Woke or not I'll leave to your judgement. I tend to think of them as Hey, Whatever Brings In the Money. If hard-rightism did, they'd be hard right. Since Woke seems to sell, they do that.
The rich irony of antisemitism is that Jews formed Hollywood because they were blocked from many other industries. As soon as Hollywood became important, the same people who ghettoized Jews into film started screaming, "How dare the Jews have a monopoly on Hollywood!"
In TV, it's all about eyeballs and subscribers. You said writers are "forbidden to stray from their employers' enforced woke standards" but the vast majority of TV shows, and CERTAINLY network TV shows, are written to appeal to the widest possible audience to bring in the most advertising. If a conservative message was one that drew viewers, you can bet there'd be a lot more conservative shows on TV. Personally, I find most TV shows inane rather than "woke."
There is no "woke totalitarianism" - you are deranged. Installed right-wing justices in Supreme Court overturning Roe, next gay marriage, then Loving decision, then the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
And you'll still be talking about "woke totalitarianism." Lol.
The right hardly "sat idly by." They packed the court by refusing a hearing on a president's pick a full year before an election, then crammed through another judge after that. And before that, they conveniently got "impartial" judges to decide who got to be president. And Al Gore conceded gracefully, unlike the right-wing troll who still hasn't conceded AT ALL.
The ONLY way Republicans still win presidential elections is due to the Electoral College which disenfranchises the highly populated states in favor of the lightly populated states. Justice Roberts is the only SCOTUS justice who seems concerned with the integrity of the court itself. The reality, though, is that, at this point, it's pretty much just another branch of the Republican Party .
Bullshit. Republicans followed all the rules. In the cases you mention, the rules worked in their favor. It doesn't always work out that way. And you had to reach back 22 years to dredge up the Gore example?
Where is it written that they owed Garland a hearing? Gore didn't concede gracefully. He and his lawyers had enough realism to see there was no path for him to become president. Had the SC not settled the matter, it would have gone to the House of Representatives where Bush would have prevailed. In the following years, Gore perpetrated the "I just wanted all the votes to be counted" lie. All the votes in only the four counties where he thought a recount would give him an advantage.
You say Roberts is concerned with the integrity of the court. I say he's preoccupied with the likes of the NYT saying bad things about him... His vote on Obamacare was farcical.
Yes, the electoral college shifts some of the power away from the small handful of most populous states. Without it, those of us in flyover country would be the subjects of the Chuck Schumers and Nancy Pelosis. The electoral college is working as designed.
Anytime Democrats don't get their way, they whine that "Democracy is broken."
Preach brother. We are in many respects wrestling with the same dilemma the founding fathers did - rural versus urban. I do not want to exist in a world of urban values. That is why I left city life behind. Why should I be denied an existence? The Court's leaked opinion, if accurate,is nothing more than a recognition that some things belong to the states. Good for the Court.
You're not "denied an existence" but you ARE trying to force your values (pro-life, anti-gay, guns everywhere, watering down teaching about slavery) on urban areas. (By "you" I don't mean you personally--I have no idea of your views on these things--I'm referring to general right-wing talking points).
I get that religion is a necessary means of controlling uneducated people, i.e. "you have a crappy life now but you'll get your reward when you die if you behave yourself," but many of us do just fine with no religious values whatsoever and don't need to have those values forced on us.
Polls show more than half the public thinks something wasn't right about the election. Saying it another way, they're not confident it was an honest election.
Maybe if everything was all good with the economy, and Putin wasn't threatening to start WWIII, they wouldn't be wondering. But they are.
Followed the rules?? So, followed the rules and precedent when merrick garland was denied. OK. Give me an f'n break. They lie, cheat and steal every chance they get. We just need democrats to start doing the same.
The rules were followed re Garland. That is why it worked. But it was absolutely a power play. Moral? IDK. Fair? Probably not. But after his less than admirable stint as AG, I am very glad he was shut out.
Scott, packing the court is not nominating and confirming justices; that is following the terms of the Constitution. I defy you to tell me a president who has not nominated someone to the Supreme Court who didn’t closely align with their ideals. They all do that. Packing the court is when an administration adds more justices to the existing court. The electoral college is there to prevent densely populated states from deciding every election. I don’t want California and New York deciding every damned election, and if the modern urban centers were constructed largely of conservatives, you might understand the need for the electoral college. But you won’t, because you see yourself as having the moral high ground, and you won’t admit, even to yourself, that have no morals at all, only your righteous anger.
"They packed the court by refusing a hearing on a president's pick a full year before an election". The Republicans were following the Biden rule, which he used to block a nominee in 1992 because the Senate and the Presidency were in different parties. And there is general agreement that Merrick Garland is one of the most corrupt Attorneys General, given his intervention with the NSBA to increase his son-in-law's company's income.
"unlike the right-wing troll who still hasn't conceded AT ALL." Just a slight correction and you are fine: "unlike the left-wing troll who still hasn't conceded AT ALL." You are of course referring to Hillary Clinton, who made daily claims for three+ years that she had won, and still now and then makes that claim.
"in favor of the lightly populated states". Yes, like Texas and Florida.
Scott, I assume you are ok with toddlers encouraged to become a new sex, with the lose of free speech, with wholesale cancelling of anyone who does not toe the woke party line, with abandoning our citizens, allies and billions in equipment in Afghanistan, with no southern border, soon no constitution as Jurists are threatened by the same violent mobs that destroyed our cities in 2020, with anitfa & BLM backed by mayors and the Democrat party eliminating freedom of assembly for the majority of Americans, and with unchecked violent crime in our cities. It is hard to have a polite conversation with you if this is what you support with your anger.
“Pack the court” has a specific meaning and this isn’t it. Playing politics with the nomination? Sure. McConnell should have let the nominee get voted down properly. It also seems you just fundamentally disagree with the nation’s intentional restraints on majoritarian tyranny.
I want to say I completely agree except there may be a few good souls remaining on the political left and right. Now that I got the exceptional few out of the way, I describe the vast majority on the left as preferring mustard on their bullshit, and those on the right preferring ketchup on their bullshit. And I shouldn't get started on the apathetic masses because they just like their bullshit with pretty much any condiment that happens to be near the couch. :(
You attack both the left and the right without providing any specifics. Your lazy attacks are worse than useless. A pox on you and your whole useless approach.
Civility is as much a strength of yours as profanity is a weakness of mine. A pox on me for not providing specific examples that are abundantly obvious to most adults is a bit of an overreaction, isn’t it? If it was the profanity that triggered you, please accept my apology. If not, maybe consider staying on Twitter where your type of confrontational and hysterical behavior is common place. Regardless, if you really haven’t seen an absurd amount of BS on the left and right, you’re either too young to continue the conversation, or you’re suffering from a significant case of cognitive dissonance, in which case we probably can’t have a productive exchange of ideas. I’d say it was nice to meet you, but it’s painfully obvious that you won’t appreciate the sarcasm.
you forgot the proviso: "...except if they hold a "leadership" position in society, like CEO (or Chief Diversity Officer) of TindUberBookStaGoogle, or Black Lives Matter, or hold elected office, or was college roommate of someone in the previous categories."
how has the left's "white privilege" BS had anything to do with the Court? I'm on the left ,but I want to gag almost every time I hear that phrase, but I don't think it's relevant here.
By the way, here's a book that shows how wrong headed the left's mantra of white privilege is: Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth, by Roy Beck. ($9 on Amazon).
The book is highly readable (Beck is a former journalist, now head of NumbersUSA.com) despite being a thorough exposition of the relevant academic economic history (296 footnotes), along with statements from Black leaders, quotes from Black periodicals, accounts of gov't commissions on immigration reform (all of which recommended substantial reductions in immigration), and Beck's own journalism.
The book also gives the lie to the notion tht there are no jobs Americans won't do. But when employers import scads of immigrants, they pay them wages that leaves them living a bunch of people to a room, and don't want to pay even the lowest of American wages.
The book also notes that the left is full of charity for immigrants, but not for our own fellow citizens, and that the kinds of people who come to the US are often those who--if they stayed in their own countries--would be likely to help them pull themselves up.
Legal immigration is great. It is intentional and arrived thru a democratic process. Illegal immigration is a deceit that gives us immigrants based on something other than the merit that we as a nation define & deserve because we are a sovereign nation.
Why do we have to reinvent common sense and timeless wisdom in 2022? Because we now have two generations devoid of knowledge of human history, human nature and the human condition.
Immigrants are more likely to start a business than native born people. They also consume goods and services, creating a larger customer base for businesses. Immigration is good for job creation and the economy overall.
There is no consensus on that among economists. If there is a suppression of wages, it is small. However, there is plenty of evidence that increased immigration lowers unemployment due to the higher entrepreneurship among immigrants and the increase in aggregate demand. Immigration also increases GDP.
They grow the overall economy, but not per capita income. More people reduces quality of life. More traffic, higher housing prices, more sprawl, etc. And too much has kept the working classes poor. Half the people in this country couldn't afford a big car repair or a major medical bill.
Even indication throughout the history of capitalism is that as the economy grows, quality of life grows with it. As for your concerns, take a cross country flight with a window seat and tell me there isn’t enough room for more people.
And don't even get started about the people who don't trust elections or think their candidate lost because an election was stolen. "If you can't persuade, destroy and recreate..." Indeed, indeed.
The court is NOT making abortion illegal. It is simply saying that the states have the right to regulate abortion as its voters see fit to support.
That has two sides. Some states may choose to allow abortion right up until birth and may even define birth as occuring only after the cord is cut.
Other states will pass laws with varying levels of illegality and scope as to time etc.
Others may try to eliminate it altogether and find that they have to make a bunch of exceptions.
The bottom line is that each state, through its elected officials, can determine what laws it sees fit and those elected officials are subject to being voted out.
The consequences of overturning Roe and how that plays out in law is going to years to shake out.
I would also point out, that every citizen has the right to up and move from a state who's laws and values do not align with their views. I did it. Got out of MA as fast as I could. Despite a lot of job offers I will not move back and neither will I move to NY or CA.
And you are not required to approve of that. I do not approve of that.
BUT....I DO believe that this issue is SO divisive, particularly among states, that it needs to be left to the voters in each state to determine.
Abortion, like war, to my mind at least, is an evil that is on occasion necessary, but it is always evil. There is nothing good or to celebrate in an abortion. There is nothing noble in an abortion. There is only death and often a gruesome and disgusting death.
As I said, it may, on occasion, be necessary, but it is always evil.
I'm a lawyer and member of the Supreme Court Bar, and I can hardly describe how devastating this leak is to the integrity and legitimacy of the Court. Irrespective of the specific case at issue, this is a new low for our political and legal culture. What ever happened to honor?
The ship of legitimacy sailed when Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues refused to grant President Obama a Supreme Court pick. Merrick Garland should be on the court. I find it puzzling that so many people are "shocked" by the leak. The SCOTUS is as political as the House and Senate.
Do you remember what the left did to Judge Janice Brown? What they did to Alberto Gonzalez? What they did to Thomas and Bork?
The left has, since at least when Biden was on the Judiciary committee, been politicizing the courts.
The left has always fought with brass knuckles, while the right has mostly fought with pillows. That has changed in the last few years and the left doesn't like it one bit.
Of the four judges mentioned here the only one that bears any semblance to truth is Bork. Alberto Gonzalez? Please. Thomas? Biden conducted a hearing that wouldn’t be possible today given the heated topic. I suppose Anita should have been branded with a red letter instead of being listened to. Bork was the first and most egregious example of liberal (Edward Kennedy) overreach and prejudice. Bork was a titan and deserved a fair hearing.
Gonzalez and Rogers were both blocked by Biden and the Democrats before they could even be nominated. Thomas was treated atrociously by Biden and the Dems.
They were blocked by Democrats for the sleaziest of reasons - because the Democrats did not want the Republicans to be the party that appointed the first Latino (Gonzales) or the first black woman (Rogers Brown) to the Supreme Court. They insisted on preserving the lie that the Democrats are more supportive of minorities.
He should at least had a shot at the DC district court - I make no excuses for Dem actions nor Republican. Both have engaged in anti-democratic behavior and I have a special place in hell for Harry Reid
"he left has always fought with brass knuckles, while the right has mostly fought with pillows"
Pop-media definitions of "left" and "right" aside: one of the few issues where the Democrats have really played hard, arguably underhanded politics over the years is in preserving a pro-choice majority on the Supreme Court.
The Democrats do this because "keeping abortion safe and legal" is part of the Minimum Requirement for distinguishing the Democrats from the Republicans. Most other issues, the Democrats typically exhibit a preference for punting on 2nd down.
Look just a recent history: using the IRS to go after political opponents; lying on court documents to get approval to spy on an opposition party candidate; enlisting big tech to censor political opponents; Reid getting rid of the filibuster; having the DOJ go after parents who dissent in school board meetings; suppressing cheap and effective COVID treatments to exert power; telling kids to hide stuff from their parents; colluding with the CIA to get the Hunter laptop story buried; the Russia hoax; I could go on and on...but the brass knuckles are inseparable from the democrat hands.
It's about DAMN time the Republicans started fighting back. There are still plenty who use pillows, but that number is dwindling.
That's about partisan warfare, not the standard content of making US government policy in Congress. There are a couple of exceptions.
"Reid getting rid of the filibuster" is a false claim; he didn't eliminate the filibuster, he made some limited exceptions. The Democrats having been abused for years by massive GOP stonewalling, based almost entirely on filibuster threats. For no other reason than to show the Democrats who's boss. To name just one lasting result, a perfect storm of opportunity to upgrade national infrastructure and public works was squandered. We're over a decade behind where we should be.
I never liked the filibuster. But if the Democrats actually had any idea of playing political hardball with getting legislation passed, they would have gotten rid of it entirely (or perhaps reduced the number of Senators required to override it to 55) in 2009, and then changed it back right before the November 2010 midterms.
The Russia impeachment was dreadful. A waste of Congressional energy.
As for the rest of it: politics in a democracy is supposed to be about having a dialogue, not a cage match to the death.
That goes for both the Democrats and the Republicans. Neither side has any business issuing false claims. And several are included in your list of charges. Insinuation is not evidence.
Neil, perhaps we can discuss 'advise and consent'..
If we were to deconstruct the term, to 'advise' would (or could) be meant to mean 'under advisement.' And to go further, to deconstruct the word 'advise' means, upon careful consideration, we (the Senate) make a recommendation to either accept the validity of this nomination and proceed to a vote, or reject the nomination entirely and another nominee must be chosen.
So, how can the Senate 'advise' when there is no consideration? When there is not even a hearing to discuss the merits of the person considered? Where is the advisement here?
McConnell would have been better served, in my opinion, had he accepted Garland's nomination as given by Obama, discussed it (the advisement part), and then try to corral his caucus to vote en mass to reject him.
I suspect Mitch did what he did in not even considering Garland was his worry that some Republican Senators would support him, and he couldn't take that chance.
There was advisement, and the leader of the Senate decided not to move forward. Just because it doesn't mean it met your "advisement" requirements does not mean it didn't occur.
Oh wait...you guys define terms to meet your needs at the time...
My guys? I don't belong to anyone. I impugn everyone equally. As I expect to be.
Your meaning of advisement does not match mine. Advisement, to my mind, is the hearing itself. Held and recorded. Do we go forward with this nominee or do we not? That hearing that was never held. That fact is not in dispute. And if a Dem did that to a Republican President I would say the same.
Or maybe when Ted Kennedy issued his screed against Robert Bork on the day he was nominated and called on the Senate to reject the nomination without any hearings.
"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy."
Uh, no - he was extremely qualified. Republicans voted against him because, back then, they were unwilling to engage in the same tactics as Dems. It's only been a couple of years since Republicans decided to fight - and even then, there are too many who still want to be nice, even though they are repeatedly punched in the face.
It was Bork’s exposition of his legal philosophy that showed how far out of the mainstream he was, and that had two consequences, one immediate and the other long lasting. First, Bork’s nomination was rejected. Second, since then every nominee, regardless of political affiliation, has refused to engage in any substantive legal discussion, mostly using the dodge that “the issue may come before the Court.”
How sweet of you to think so. But why was the spineless survivor of the Saturday Night Massacre (you do remember Richard Nixon?) even nominated. Why would these ever so “decent” Republicans want someone on the court who had so little sympathy for individual rights and protections. Why do you?
Most serious legal scholars is code word for my team. Legal scholars did not all think that Bork was not fit. He most definitely was by the qualifications used for all SC nominees.
I support the right of married people to use contraceptives, the right of people not to be sterilized against their will, the right to marry, establish a home and bear children; a right to be taught a foreign language and a right of parents to send their children to private schools. These are all things that Bork rejected because of his view on the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. Many people at the time considered this to be an extreme view- on both sides of the political divide. I certainly do.
Given the partisanship demonstrated by Garland as AG, the country escaped a giant mistake when Republicans honored the Biden Rule. Garland is not a real jurist... he is an activist hack.
His fealty to the school board national lobby proves what a hack he is. Garland wanted to sic the FBI on parents who objected to injecting CRT in schools.
You know, Frank, you could very well be right. Perhaps Garland is a 'hack.' But what hack would wait fifteen months to indict either Trump or anyone on his White House team for the funhouse of Jan 6? Certainly a true partisan would have moved by now, don't you think?
What could Garland or anyone else possibly indict Trump for? He told people to go "peacefully and patriotically". Is that indictable? Or would you indict Trump because he didn't say enough to calm things down, for what he didn't say?
Blaming Trump for January 6 is as unfounded as all the allegations of "collusion" with Russians.
Well, Dean - a partisan hack as described by the person I was responding to just might be 'partisan' enough to find something indictable on the events of that day. That's what partisan hacks do. Benefit one side at the expense of another.
I'm not saying he should. (Though Jan 6 was indeed something to behold..)
“ Certainly a true partisan would have moved by now, don't you think?”
No. Just the opposite. Garland is a political hack and he is 100% focused on moves to benefit the Democrat party. Not a good look for any AG… but especially one that would have been a SCOTUS judge.
A related question. Why didn’t Biden nominate Garland to replace Breyer?
Wouldn't a move on indicting Mark Meadows, a few Republican congresspeople or Trump himself benefit the Dems? Democrats are scared witless that Trump will be around in 2024. Attempting to eliminate that possibility would be in their best interests, I would think. (Not that I personally think that's a smart move politically).
And as for your good question - Biden made the promise (a mistake, imo) to pick a Black woman jurist. Otherwise, Biden might have gone back to Garland.
Yeah… the JD Vance win in Ohio is confirmation that Dems should be shaking in their jackboots.
Democrats are fighting a Trump headwind which is ironically fueled b the Democrat singular focus on attempting to take out Trump with abuses of power.
I was just thinking about the activists that came out in DC chanting threatening slogans to SCOTUS judges. If the parties were reversed… Trump in power… the dem and media narrative would have been another insurrection attempt and the protestors would be jailed.
The problem that Dems have is that they really do think they are better and smarter than everyone else, and they thus ignore the voters seeing right though their dirty tricks. And so they just do more of the same and this strengthens Trump instead of weakening him.
Biden promised to nominate a black woman. But then he failed to get a biologist to determine whether Ketanji Brown Jackson is a woman, so he may have broken that campaign promise.
Joe Biden was the one who, as a senator, said that a president should not get to make a supreme court appointment during the final year of his term when the other side controlled the senate:
"Instead, it would be our pragmatic conclusion that once the political season is underway — and it is — action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over. That is what is fair to the nominee, and essential to the process. Otherwise, it seems to me Mr. President, we will be in deep trouble as an institution."
This was a speech Biden made on the senate floor during 1992, so don't blame McConnell. Look it up.
The key is “until after the election campaign is over”. That is very different than saying until after the winner is inaugurated. And, of course, when Senator Biden spoke, there was no nomination (or even open court seat) pending and no vote was ever taken on his suggestion.
The irony, of course, is that Senator McConnell had no basis for preventing the Garland nomination from being brought up in the Senate - a precedent that might come back to bite a Republican President working with a Democratic Senate.
Senator Biden’s suggestion was ignored again when Senator McConnell rushed through Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination weeks before the 2020 election.
Only if the Senate had taken up the Barrett nomination after the election results were in would the so-called Biden Rule have arguably been complied with.
Do you really think that Biden would have given a hearing to a supreme court nominee from George H.W. Bush between the election and inauguration day? Phrasing it as being about the campaign is just a ruse. Biden would not allow a nominee to get a hearing during Bush's final year.
The difference between Garland and Barrett is that the president's party controlled the senate in the latter case. That was part of Biden's precedent. If the Dems had been in the minority in the senate in 1992 Biden could not have set his precedent.
The slight turn of phrase you used “Biden’s precedent” reminded me of the abuse of language Senator McConnell engaged in. As a matter of historical fact, Senator Biden set no “precedent” as there was no nomination whose hearing was pushed off until after the 1992 election. Nor could he alone have set a “rule”, as that requires a Senate vote.
All he did was to make a theoretical suggestion that over two decades later, Senator McConnell dusted off to cover a break in Senate tradition, turning one Senator’s musing into a Senate precedent. He had the numbers and got away with it - and that’s just raw politics, as allowed by the system. The whole “precedent” claim was for public consumption.
But what goes around, comes around and, as they say, payback (in whatever form the Democrats may administer it when that time does inevitably come) will surely be a b***h (not sure what the rules of etiquette here are, but it’s an old saying with which everyone should be familiar).
I'll take Joe Biden at his word that he would not have allowed a nomination by George H.W. Bush to move forward. I believe Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee when he made that speech.
We will never know, will we, as he was speaking hypothetically. And after Senator McConnell’s unprecedented and heavy handed actions, we can be sure that no candidate will pass after an election who is too far in either political direction.
No. That was a question of POLITICS. That was political warfare.
The court, as in institution just took a body blow.
There will never again be the kind of collegiality, open sharing of opinion, debate among colleagues, that has allowed the court to proceed forward for two centuries.
All trust has been destroyed.
Clerks and staff will no longer share information with each other. They will hold information and perhaps intentionally mislead their peers to hide the real thoughts of their principles.
THAT is going to effect every single case......every one....from here on out.
And at the end of the day, this action that just substantially undermined the functioning of the court, will make NO difference. The decision would have been handed down in June, well before the election anyway. The justices are not going to change their votes and reward this kind of behavior. It has zero practical impact on Roe or the outcome. All this did was undermine the foundations of the Supreme Court.
That's reflective of the Senate, and within the Senate's authority, and doesn't reflect on the Supreme Court unless you specifically choose to do so. That's on you not the Court.
Undoubtedly this left-wing zealot is unaware that Democrats promised to do in 2008 (had a SCOTUS vacancy occurred that year) what Republicans did in 2016.
But it ought to be aware of the Bork and Thomas confirmation fiascos. It is beyond absurd for a Leftist to pretend that Republicans "did it first".
I haven’t replied to anyone but I will make an exception in your case. I’m not a “left-wing zealot” and I’m not an “it.” You, however, are unbelievably rude.
You were well aware when you wrote your original post that it was rude, but it was a rudeness that promotes your cause. You forfeited standing from which to complain about comeuppance.
article3project.orgWomen & Minorities - A3P: The Article III Project
Judicial Nominees Actions speak louder than words. Democrats talk a lot about diversity, but Democrats opposed the confirmation of each of these highly qualified minority and women judicial nominees....
"In 2013, Democrats used the move to eliminate the 60-vote threshold to confirm executive branch and non-Supreme Court judicial nominations under President Barack Obama. Republicans did the same to clear the way for Supreme Court nominations, confirming Neil Gorsuch to the high court in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh last year."
Joe Biden, 1992, Biden's statement at the time was emphatic. "It is my view that if the president goes the way of Presidents Fillmore and Johnson and presses an election year nomination, the Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over," the then-Judiciary Committee Chairman said.
"On January 25, 2006, Biden was one of only 24 of the Senate's 44 Democrats who tried to filibuster Alito. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Biden — who reneged on an earlier promise to give Alito a vote — were joined by Vermont Independent Senator "Jumping" Jim Jeffords."
“The Senate will continue to observe the ‘Biden Rule’ so the American people have a voice in this momentous decision. The American people may well elect a president who decides to nominate Judge Garland for Senate consideration. The next president may also nominate somebody very different. Either way, our view is this: Give the people a voice in filling this vacancy.”
Any questions by Republicans as to the nominee's qualifications are met with charges of misogyny, racism, etc., so I suppose I respect your point, but I can't agree with it.
If you look at those pictured as nominees by the Republicans, they met all of the beloved basic requirements embraced as paramount to Democrats; gender and race, but they ignored the qualifications or painted them as extremists, whereas a nominee that refuses to define "woman," well, that's "mainstream?"
I think you're spot on. Whenever I hear the Republicans trying to make a big deal out of the first whoever who was whatever, it just seems to me like they're trying to play the Left's game. But then again, I suppose our whole culture is playing it to a certain degree.
Because after the Senate asked every nut job in America to assert their knowledge of Kavanaugh's teenage raping ways, legitimacy of advice and consent was waving its flag on high. Right. The issue with the decay of America and its institutions is deeper than D vs R.
I agree with the decay "deeper than D or R" but my position highlights what the D's, and some RINO's are doing in that arena of decay, eroding faith in the legal system.
At a grassroots level, is theis attribuitable to a D or an R?
EXCLUSIVE: Arizona’s Soros-Backed Sec. of State, Katie Hobbs, Has Glaring Conflicts of Interest With Senate’s Maricopa Audit, She Must Immediately Recuse Herself
"In 2008, Mr. Reid himself swore that as long as he was the leader, he would never turn to the nuclear option, saying it would be a "black chapter in the history of the Senate."
Senator Obama - Nuclear Option Not What the Founders Had in Mind:
Yep ... totally aware. Did you like that? Was it cool when a Democratic Senate did that? Does it make what McConnell did with Garland and then Justice Coney Barrett okay?
I'm aware. We're all aware of the Harry Reid thing. How'd you feel about that? Does that change anything about the garbage Mitch McConnell has pulled? Never mind, you're clear that it doesn't matter.
I was actually happy with what McConnell did because after watching the R's get rolled over and over again for decades it was good to see them start to fight back. They still have a lot of learning to do in order to catch up to the D dirty tricks, but at least some of them are playing the game before them instead of the one they wish they were playing.
Did you ever name a Democrat you don’t like? You can put me in the “doesn’t support Trump” not liking Mitch category. Mitch got his job because of Trump.
You know, Marek, there are theocracies where you can execute women for "not keeping their legs closed." It seems like that would be a better fit for you.
You know, there'd be no unplanned pregnancies if men didn't ejaculate in women who don't want to have babies in them. Maybe they should keep their pants zipped?
"Don't be so sensitive." Maybe you shouldn't be garbage?
I hereby propose the establishment of the Roger B. Taney Award for Excellence in Discrediting the U.S. Supreme Court. The inaugural winner will be announced at a later date…
An excellent question. The reason is that the exchange of preliminary opinions is an essential part of the Justices' deliberations. They take an early vote, and then--based on that--draft opinions are circulated for both a majority opinion and a dissent, as well as any concurring opinions that seek to find a middle ground. (The assignment of these drafts is an interestingly aspect of this process--the Chief Justice assigns the draft if he is in the early majority, but the senior justice in that early majority--in this case Justice Thomas--assigns the draft if the Chief is in the early minority.) Only then does the real fun begin, as the Justices grapple with the detailed arguments on both sides. It is often the case that these initial drafts bear no relation to the opinion that ultimately emerges from the deliberation process. Leaks like this will forestall this, freezing the Justices into their initial positions and making true deliberation by the entire Court impossible. More fundamentally, it is just another step down the slippery slope toward making the Court simply another political institution--when it was designed by the Framers to play a different function. Hope this helps.
I just read that there were two separate leaks from the court re: the Roe v Wade decision. One, early on, to the Washington Post, and one -of the final opinion- to Time Magazine.
Regardless of one's politics, one of the concepts that the integrity of the Supreme Court rests on (or any legit court for that matter) is the idea that the justices can and should come to an opinion on a given case with little to no outside influence. It's one of the cornerstones to having an honest and fair judicial system.
Someone leaking court documents before they are actually released throws a huge wrench in all of that because it opens up the court to all sorts of political and public pressure before the opinion is given.
Transparency doesn't really have anything to do with this, it's not a catch-all term for everyone having to divulge everything at all times. For instance, you wouldn't demand and HR dept. release personnel documents on all of their employees in the interest of 'transparency', that's not how it works. Some things fall into the absolute transparency pool, some partially, and some not at all...it entirely depends on the thing you are talking about and the context therein.
Transparency is not an on-off switch. It takes wisdom, reason, and precedent to know where to set that line for each case. The Supreme Court had all three of those, especially the latter, in spades up until recently.
Great thoughts here Elliot, as I was reading your note it occurred to me that the leak effectively introduces a 10th voice to the conversation in a wholly unproductive way.
They gave honor a juice box and trophy and took its picture along with sloth, beauty, craven, saintly, venal, jealous, covetous, banal, and ambivalent, all of which were given their fair equity.
Then, in my book, they should stand up, publicly resign in protest, and take the risk of being disbarred for breaching their duty of confidentiality to the Court. I wouldn't like it, but I'd respect it a lot more.
Yes, I take your point. Take responsibility for your actions and public opinions and accept the consequences. As in old school, right?
But it's new school now. As it is here on this comment section on an ever more popular online magazine; how many of us are actually going by our own names? I would say the majority do not. Anonymity is everywhere. Self expression is cheap (but still effective) when you don't have to account for it.
I'm not entirely happy at the leak. Integrity in an institution used to mean something. (Then again, the Supreme Court itself as an institution used to mean something - but that's another conversation.)
But in 2022? Not at all surprised.
I'm actually more surprised at the shock people have of the leak.
You’re probably right not to be surprised, Lee, but I guess I’m still old-fashioned enough to believe that some things ought to remain sacred. Getting to feel more quixotic every day, though…
In some countries, judges must wear hoods during trials. Their identities must be concealed or they will be assassinated if any ruling falls short of mob justice. This is what the left obviously wants.
Sean...i do not disapprove nor disagree with your comment but my 2 cents ask , what could be wrong with receiving knowledge about a court decision prior or during a case? Oh i know it is "hands off", but nothing personnel. no harm...bees me.
People conflate 2 issues: (1) what should abortion policy be, and (2) who should decide abortion policy. I don’t think there is an intellectually honest answer to the second question other than that “the legislative branch of government should decide.” Once Roe v. Wade is overturned, each of us is free to go to the voting booth and vote our conscience. Since Roe was handed down, I have not had that freedom.
Wholeheartedly agree with this point! This is a political issue that should be resolved through the political process of legislation. Catholic Ireland was able to legalize abortion by referendum. Abortion advocates should have sought to build a durable political consensus on this issue, rather than hiding behind a constitutionally flawed and highly divisive judicial opinion.
When the Court chose to decide Roe instead of leaving it to the legislature, it set this train wreck in motion. And now the train has finally left the rails . . . .
Ham, it could work here (though I know it will never happen) - federal legislation enacted to make legally binding a national referendum here in the United states on the legality of abortion (within a period of viability). It could well be the answer, a la Ireland. Circumvent the courts and state legislatures altogether. A direct vote for a direct result.
Because as Benjamin Franklin supposedly noted when he emerged from the Constitutional Convention, “it’s a Republic if you can keep it.” It’s no coincidence that Article 1 of the Constitution is titled “Congress” and it begins “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States…” It doesn’t say “some,” it says “All.” This is what makes us a republic—that the laws are made exclusively by the people’s duly elected representatives. Sometimes those laws are wise, and sometimes they are foolish. If they are foolish, the people can elect new representatives who can change the laws. But when Roe v. Wade was decided, the Court arrogated to itself the sole right to make laws concerning abortion. Half of the people in this country have felt disenfranchised for 50 years. They can’t vote for legislators at the state or federal level who can change a law that they perceive as wrong. At least when it comes to abortion, this country does not function as a Republic. Instead, it is an oligarchy ruled by 9 unelected Justices whose decisions can’t be overruled T the ballot box. This is not what the founders intended. Franklin would not think of it as republican with a small r. Overruling Roe v. Wade will not mean that abortion is illegal. Rather it will mean that power is returned to the people who will be able to act through their elected representatives. Roe v. Wade, through the fiction of penumbral rights, has always been intellectually dishonest. Not only that, it has been enormously divisive. Indeed, I would argue that it is one of the primary causes of the political polarization which is destroying this country. After it is overruled, there will be anger. But then the issue can be hashed out in the legislatures as the Founders intended. In time, we can begin to heal.
You’re reply is non-responsive. Rather you want to know if I am consistent. But it seems that you would support any process if it yielded your chosen result.
“ Here’s Bernie Sanders on Twitter last night: “Congress must pass legislation that codifies Roe v. Wade as the law of the land in this country NOW. And if there aren’t 60 votes in the Senate to do it, and there are not, we must end the filibuster to pass it with 50 votes.””
Sorry, Bernie, that’s not how this works. Considering this is a conversation about what the constitution ACTUALLY SAYS, let’s take a brief look into Article I.
Do you see anything in there giving congress the enumerated power to define a whether a surgical or medical procedure is legal in one of the many states? Oh, no? Yeah, me neither, since it’s not in there.
The fact of the matter is that the federal congress has no power to actually do this. It isn’t interstate commerce, so don’t try that either. It’s a single decision, between a patient and physician in a single state, and babies are not economic considerations for the law.
I’m pro-choice, but that doesn’t matter. Congress simply does not have the power to legislate this issue federally.
third should be whatever case(s) led to Chevron deference...that one virtually eliminated all accountability for Congressional representatives. So between the first and the third, you have "do whatever you want" and "no accountability for what you do". Pretty sweet deal.
It’s called the 14th amendment: “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.”, Where is the right enumerated that the state or federal government can deny a woman the right to an abortion?
Where in that language does abortion fit? Restricting abortion does not deny any person of life, liberty, or property, nor deny any person equal protection.
And you have it exactly backwards, which most libs always do: a power (not a right) that is not specifically enumerated to the federal government belongs to the state.
Interesting perspective. You seem to think humans are property, and that school of thought died, in the US, 160 years ago - except within Dems.
Also - the deprivation of property is through the act of abortion, not preventing abortion. Restrictions on abortion actually protect what you call property.
Also - most states will still allow abortion, with reasonable restrictions.
Not a human being? The majority of the people in the US disagree with you, at least after the first trimester. And now that you (the left) believe men can give birth, you must accept the opinion of men in the same way as you accept the opinion of women.
The government does not protect personal property, but it is responsible for protecting human beings to a certain extent.
At least you admit that some restrictions can be reasonable. That's a start.
And what about the 10th? If the power is not specifically and explicitly granted to the federal government, then the federal government can’t act on it. Period. Those powers are reserved for the states, or for the people.
I’d also add that I made the same gripe when the Republican congress passed the “born-alive” bill (its official title escapes me). This is simply not a federal power
Check out Exodus 20:21. If a woman miscarries as a result of being inadvertently hit while 2men fight, the assailant must pay damages for the lost dreams of the couple, but if harm comes to the woman then the usual criminal law (eye for an eye…) applies. The fetus is not a person, the woman is
I'd be careful trying to use scriptural justifications from the Torah. Those laws were probably written down in the late Bronze Age, and therefore conveyed the best moral standard for a society at that time. Would you, for instance, say that a man who buys a slave must free him after seven years unless he gives him a wife? (Exodus 21:2-6)
True enough, I personally believe that terminating a pregnancy is a profoundly personal and often agonizing decision and as an American , I’m content to entrust that decision to the woman who must make it. However since the opposition to choice is grounded in religious belief, I thought quoting the Bible as source material is appropriate
This is what choice means; Jewish belief is usually grounded in Genesis, when God breathes Life into the newly formed Adam. Traditionally, for Jews, Life begins at birth with the first breath. Orthodox Jews believe differently, hence the necessity of choice
Federal law would be supreme over state law , in a way it would be doing what the court asked. Elected reps making the decision rather then judges. In this case federal ones.
I don’t think you’re wrong. Frankly, the interstate commerce clause has been used to justify some pretty dubious legislation in the past.
I don’t think this is a left-wing specific issue though. In fact, the federal ban on partial birth abortions indicates that the pro-life right is similarly uninterested in which powers are actually granted to the Congress, and which are made up for political advocacy.
I wish that were true. But recently one of the midwest states...Missouri, maybe? (Sorry Missourians, if that's wrong!)... had legislation pending that includes ectopic pregnancies. Can't recall where I read it, it was a few weeks ago. But I was so shocked and disbelieving that I went to the actual text of the law being proposed and sure enough, ectopic pregnancy was included in the prohibition. Someone close to me has suffered two such pregnancies and I could NOT fathom how it could be that law-makers were so ignorant as to include a medical emergency in an anti-abortion bill. Hopefully that will be (or already has been) corrected before the bill is voted on.
There was some proposed legislation in one state that said IF it became possible to transplant a baby from an ectopic pregnancy, THEN it would be illegal to kill that baby. Is that what you were talking about? This proposed legislation did not pass. The language was included because the legislator had been told it could be possible in the future, and he (I think it was a he) wanted to include that in the bill so it wouldn't have to be relegislated in that eventuality. The legislation didn't pass, in part because of that wording. Bad wording in a bill does not mean "conservatives want women to die from ectopic pregnancies." There is currently no option, even under consideration, to removing a tube in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, and that is not considered an abortion -- an abortion is the deliberate death of the mother. This is the removal of the tube to prevent the mother's death. I worked for years in the pro-life movement, everyone understands this.
I did not see anything in the portion of the bill I read that indicated the ban was contingent on the fetus (embryo, really, at that stage) surviving; if it was in the text somewhere else in the bill then I missed that section. Fwiw, I am conservative and lean strongly pro-life, but it was astonishing to me that ectopic pregnancies could land in an anti-abortion bill. I do hope it was removed entirely if the bill was voted on. I just wish I could recall where I saw it/what state is was.
There could not be a circumstance where a woman presenting with an ectopic pregnancy would not be treated immediately. It is a life threatening emergency recognized as such by any medical person.
I found it bizarre, too, and can only presume and hope the language of the bill would be amended to exclude ectopic pregnancies. I found a link to the bill; it was Missouri:
Oh THAT one. No, you're not correct. That is saying (or is meant to say) it outlaws performing a surgical or "medical" (giving abortion drugs) abortion to anyone with an ectopic pregnancy. A woman with an ectopic pregnancy MUST have her tube removed, that's a completely different surgery and must be done in a hospital. If a woman is pregnant and an abortionist does a D&C or gives her RU486, it won't "terminate the pregnancy," it will do nothing and she will die if not treated for the ectopic pregnancy. In such cases, the abortionist doesn't determine what is really going on -- a huge dereliction of basic medical care.
The legislation is pending, you say? It hasn't passed and been signed by the governor? I would be incredulous if it was signed as is with ectopic pregnancies in a total abortion ban. There is no way a woman with an ectopic pregancy would be left to die. I can't believe it.
I can't believe it would be passed into law, as written. I also can't believe doctors would abide by it if it did. But I also can't believe it would be proposed in the first place. Horrifying.
I can believe it could be proposed. There seems to be no shortage of stupid people. However, there is NO way this would make it into a law, that a half way intelligent governor would sign it, and that ANY doctor would abide by it.
It is indeed a race to the bottom. I try not to allow myself to drift into conspiracy theories, but given the current state of the Democratic Party, it seems like too big of a coincidence that this happened. Someone is trying to be a hero to the party. This is a chilling event, suggesting that the country is destroying itself.
I've seen a lot of social media posts saying that CONSERVATIVES decrying the leak are just covering up for it. Yo, NOT betraying your profession and responsibilities for politics is a conservative principle.
Once the leaker is found, disbarred, and expelled from the profession, they will be greeted by a Nobel Prize, songs and flowers, and an MSNBC Contributor gig for life - which will validate that this was not the work of a single rogue individual who lacks respect for the institution, but a movement bent on destroying ALL our institutions when the don't get their way...
I am strongly pro-life and feel that if this holds that it will be not only a victory for the unborn but also for those women who have been victimized by the abortion industry. However, I think that all of us should agree that this breach is a sad testament to the society we live in and what we are becoming. It shouldn't have happened this way.
If you are pro-life, would you be in favor of tax supported child care or at least post-natal care to insure that such babies, who may or may not be wanted by their mother, have a chance of a good and healthy life?
Would you grant such minimal assistance to all or limit it to the subgroup of women “who have been victimized by the abortion industry”?
Or does your pro-life view encompass your interest in state intervention only for the period from conception to birth, after which you are happy for the state to stand back and let the mother and child figure it all out from there?
It just seems to me that some humility is in order and those not directly involved should respect the decision of those who are.
Thank you for the comment Charles. My response to that is that there are a number of avenues of help, some public and some private, to assist a mother with the demands of raising a child. There is also the viable option of adoption which is available to her as well. However, taking the life of the child because she or he is unwanted, should not be a legal option in a civilized society.
I'm pro-life and this is one of those "let's pretend we don't already have Medicaid, WIC, food stamps, housing vouchers, and free public education" posts. Killing innocent people is always wrong, at any age and wherever they are.
It is dishonest and logically absurd for left-wing people to suggest that people who understand that social welfare is bad for people have to support it or else they're hypocrites for opposing murdering people.
You are entitled to your view, but should you ever find yourself, for whatever reason, in need of such government programs to st least tide you and your family over, I can’t imagine your turning away.
It reminds me of Senator Rand’s less than principled stance against federal aid to states hit by natural catastrophe ... other than his own, when Kentucky eventually needed help.
Yep, JDFree, social welfare is really terrible for people! I mean, look at Finland and Denmark, the top two happiest countries in the world; Let’s face it, good culture warriors don’t want happy people!
Charles... the present administration is asking to send 44 billion dollars to Ukraine.. and you're asking if someone is willing to fund a support structure for abortion survival victims? Your line of questions is a preposterous politicization of abortion, shame on you.
Satire suits you, nicely done. But so that others are clear, read in its proper context, my comment was addressed to the states that seek to ban abortion and not to the federal government.
I'm not sure why you took the conversation where you did with Wayne. He said he was pro-life and had reservations about the abortion industry but that's reasonable enough.
I agree with the statement about humility. And the topic is first and foremost about decisions. If you don't want a baby, then use contraception or don't have sex. If you make a mistake, are raped, etc. then abortion before fetal viability is emotionally painful but I wouldn't vote to disallow it. If a woman begins to use abortion as contraception, to me that is wrong - and there is no easy answer to that that doesn't stink of coercion. I got nothing on that one.
Regarding state support, well thats a whole other question. JDFree goes there, in a very black and white fashion. Many more welfare dollars go Medicaid/Medicare than food stamps, subsidized housing, etc. I'll just speak to the latter.
Welfare was always meant to be a hand helping you up not one inducing dependence. Even the most casual observer must see it frequently has and continues to induce long term dependence. When surveyed, most in those situations hate it, don't want to be there, but have many issues of their own and other's makings that are hard to overcome. It is foolish that we do not have public debate about how to solve the real problem, that problem. It is not primarily racism, it is way harder than that.
It is always wrong to kill an innocent person. Anyone you know -- your best friend, your spouse, your coworker -- could have been the product of rape or a one-night stand. Their lives are not less worthy than anyone else's.
Thank you for your thoughtful intervention. What I would say is this. First, let’s dispense with the canard about people using abortion as birth control. If there are such people, it is an infinitesimally small group (unless you have evidence to the contrary). Public policy should not be driven by such extreme and extremely rare outliers.
Second, I think something similar applies to the welfare created dependence idea. I have yet to see actual evidence that it too is true in large numbers. I agree with your perception about people’s grudging acceptance. Underlying both, though, is the 19th century concept of the “deserving poor”. Falling into hard times is overwhelmingly, it seems to me, the result of unforeseen circumstances or legitimate decisions that led to bad outcomes. Our welfare system needs perhaps to be redesigned to set certain benchmarks toward returning someone (perhaps in the interim by affording them access to the necessary tools) to return as productive members of society.
In a sense, it’s a change similar (but not identical, obviously) to divorce law which went from lifetime alimony to time limited maintenance to encourage that spouse to find employment.
“Our welfare system needs perhaps to be redesigned to set certain benchmarks toward returning someone (perhaps in the interim by affording them access to the necessary tools) to return as productive members of society. In a sense, it’s a change similar (but not identical, obviously) to divorce law, which went from lifetime alimony to time limited maintenance to encourage that spouse to find employment.”
Very interesting, that is an idea worth exploration. Thank you.
Regarding welfare dependence, I went back through my research. It is hard to find a holistic view of federal and state assistance programs and I don’t have time for it. I’ll stand by the claim there is too much of it.
There are too many perverse incentives, e.g. you change jobs to make $20 a month more than a “means” threshold and you lose your assistance worth $200 a month. A rational person trying to feed kids would stay put and stay stuck. Means testing is a good idea, but its implementation is more complicated than simple-minded bureaucrats work through.
Regarding the level of women having multiple abortions, I agree that abortion as a contraceptive is likely an outlier. However, based on a quick review of four peer-reviewed studies (Canada, US, EU) on Research Gate, roughly 1/3 of women who have abortions have more than one.
Just as anecdotal evidence, I've seen twice today that there were more abortions than live births in NYC. Read long while ago that Sowell pointed out a year, back in the day, when that was true too.
How else do You explain that kind-a thing? Just asking for another view.
"Second, I think something similar applies to the welfare created dependence idea. I have yet to see actual evidence that it too is true in large numbers."
J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" shows an underclass where manufacturing was hollowed out. Lotta issues to discuss there, but there are some who would prefer to live off the fat of the land rather than take proactive measures to support themselves.
That's anecdotal evidence, true. Just puts a human face on, what I think most people understand, is *way* too many people dependent on Welfare for their whole lives. LBJ justified The Great Society money by saying it was necessary to keep people from *becoming* dependent on welfare. We now know how that turned out.
Numbers? Dunno. Cures? My guess is they'd be similar to the ones that would aid people to get outta the Urban Centers, or whatever they call a ghetto these days. Partly opportunities. Partly change in culture. Of course, ICBW.
The first step in dealing with welfare and similar government programs is to figure out what the problems actually are. Specifically, the question of whether welfare really creates dependence as opposed to being a temporary lifeline. If it creates dependence, how big an issue it is really.
We have been hearing about “welfare queens” at least since the Reagan Administration. In a sense, it’s part of the ongoing rhetoric where you get to feel superior, you would never accept public assistance but if you did, it would be grudgingly and you’d get off as quickly as possible. I suspect that such a view represents the overwhelming number of Americans. There will always be examples of abuse, but the question is whether they are representative or outliers.
The point is that until someone looks into the matter, each side gets to argue their opinion with no hard facts. It’s sort of like arguing over someone’s batting average when all you need to do to settle the argument is to look it up. That’s the missing piece here.
The welfare queen thing does not stand up to empirical analysis - I mentioned that above. I find those types of claims offensive. By far the biggest spend is on medicare and medicare and encompasses almost every tax bracket.
The issue is very much culture, education and individual responsibility and sometimes the lack thereof.
Regarding facts, they are out there. Try some of these sources:
Victims of abortion industry? Yes women are frail and simple-minded and cannot be trusted to make decisions about their own body or life. Any woman who thinks she has any value outside of giving birth and motherhood has obviously been brainwashed by those godless feminists! Neither I nor any other woman I know who have had an abortion regret it. Forced birthers biggest fear is women having agency over their own life. You're not pro-life, you just hate women.
I don’t think the argument of the term “victims of abortion industry” is trying to imply that women cannot think for themselves. I think the essence of the argument is that some women may indeed regret having an abortion later on in their life. I do not doubt that you and your friends do not regret y’all’s decisions, but I myself have met women who have regretted the same decision. Also, there are those who fund and encourage abortion as a way to buy/sell fetal tissue. James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has done excellent work on covering this issue, so I would direct you to his website if you would like to know more.
There is no "abortion industry". The right tries to create this myth of some dark underworld bloodthirsty organization conspiring to murder babies to harvest human tissue for evil human experiments to cover up the fact the people who actually pressure women to have abortions are the men who got them pregnant and it is not uncommon for those men to murder them if they refuse to get an abortion. Google "murdered pregnant girlfriend." Another myth is women use abortion as birth control when it's actually men who use abortion as birth control because condoms "don't feel as good". Mysteriously the "pro-life" argument never includes men being held accountable and taking responsibility for their role in creating the pregnancy. Ever wonder why that is? It's deliberate because one of the things they want is more babies put up for adoption and easier to coerce a woman to give up her baby for adoption if she's alone. US adoption agencies openly admit that as more and more foreign countries restrict international adoptions, options and babies available to adopt are decreasing so they are incentivized to support banning abortion. The pro-life movement states women are traumatized by abortion and mourn the loss for the rest of their lives and that instead they should give up their baby for adoption instead implying that giving birth to a baby and handing it off to strangers never to be seen again isn't taumatic. Ironically women are more likely to regret giving up their baby than aborting it.
LeeLane, I mean no personal disrespect, but your total denial ("There is no "abortion industry"), ignorance of ("tries to create this myth of some dark underworld bloodthirsty organization conspiring to murder babies to harvest human tissue") and singular focus ("the people who actually pressure women to have abortions are the men who got them pregnant") calls into question your intellectual honesty. Couple these examples with your statement that the "pro-life" argument NEVER...
Have you ever heard the old saying, "Never say never because you might live to regret it"?
Many of your statements are too definitive, discrediting your desire (ability?) to consider (not necessarily embrace) other points of view. Before most of us grow into mature adults (and even afterward for many) we lack the humility of understanding that "we don't know what we don't know".
Is it possible that maybe there are things that you have or have not personally encountered in your life (since each of us only has 'one life to live') that others have or have not encountered in theirs?
People who pro forced-birth call abortion providers the "abortion industry" because they want what is actually women's healthcare to appear to be a predatory organization that seeks out women and coerces them to have abortions they don't want. Which is obviously not true. Well the women speak for themselves and state it's men who pressure them into abortions they don't want, not abortion providers are you saying these women are lying? Also it is not uncommon for a "pro-life" woman to protest outside abortion clinics one day and come into the clinic the next to get an abortion and the next day, go back to protesting stating she had her abortion was justifiable not like the reasons those whores and sluts get abortions. It is actually the anti-abortion side of the debate that won't consider other points of view and want to ban all abortion regardless of circumstance because they honestly believe they personally would never get an abortion for any reason and apply their personal circumstances to everyone else. The truth is there is always a scenario in which even a pro-life woman would seek an abortion and they would justify by saying my abortion is a moral abortion. It's a failure of empathy, lack of humility, and lure of self-righteousness that prevents them from even considering that the option of abortion should be available to all women so it's their failure to consider situations they have not personally encountered, not mine. I know there are other opinions on abortion and people are entitled to their own opinion. I gladly share the facts that I find but pro-lifers refuse to listen and absolutely nothing will get them to change their mind until it personally affects them.
I'm not saying there is a vast underground, sinister, fill-in-the-blank, industry at work. It does seem to me, however, that there is a market for fetal tissues for medical research (I wouldn't necessarily call that "evil human experiments", but the line is somewhat difficult to draw at a certain point).
I'm not sure what exact information I should look up by simply Googling "murdered pregnant girlfriend". Douglas Murray gives a wonderful analysis of algorithms in his book, "The Madness of Crowds".
I've heard several pro-life arguments that are on-board with enforcing harsher laws for men in the case of unwanted pregnancies. It does take two to tango, after all. Pretend for a moment you are pro-life. What statutes would you recommend in order to hold men more accountable? I'll probably agree with most of what you would propose.
I'm not sure about US adoption agencies encouraging pro-life policies solely for better business. However, let us say that this is their primary goal. Is that so terrible? I do not doubt the suffering a woman must go through if she must give up her baby for adoption. I've known many very good men and women who grew up in foster homes or were adopted. No doubt, it is a rough upbringing, but does that mean that it would be better for them not to have lived at all?
Fundamentally, I believe the core of the pro-life movement is the belief in the infinite value of each human being. Often, this is in religious terms (Image of God), or humanistic terms (the assumption that every human being has the same capacity to feel suffering), or on terms that have to deal with this issue on a societal/practical, rather than a moral/ethic level.
That is, from my understanding, the heart of the issue.
Pro-lifers state they want to protect the unborn implying the fetus has a right to life which one would assume also means caring about the child's health and quality of life post-birth which would mean advocating for free birth-control, full sex education, universal healthcare, paid maternity leave, government-funded childcare, housing assistance, guaranteed healthy food, employment for the parents at a living wage and well-funded public education. But I've never met anyone who claims to be pro-life that supports any of these policies. The only thing to conclude from their position is that their stated concern for the "innocent child" ends at birth. Are you really pro-life if you don't give a shit about the baby's life after it's born? Of course not. They just want to punish women and produce babies for adoption. Also banning abortion doesn't actually reduce abortions they're just done illegally and dangerously. Studies have proven that the policies l listed above actually DO reduce the abortion rate, but the "pro-life" movement is against all of those things. So the "pro-life" position isn't about reducing abortions or saving innocent lives or caring about children, it's just plain old women-hating.
Woman hatred? Doesn’t that seem a bit extreme? Does anything I’ve said really strike you as hateful? I’m sorry if it has, because I assure you that that was certainly not the message I was trying to convey.
"universal healthcare, paid maternity leave, government-funded childcare, housing assistance, guaranteed healthy food, employment for the parents at a living wage and well-funded public education"
I see YOur politics, LeeLane. But what does any-a that do about abortions. The other stuff I didn't quote? Yeah, I can see that would help.
It's a strawman to claim that Pro-lifer's necessarily *hafta* agree with Your ideas on the welfare state, or they really don't care about the unborn, right?
And what You've shown in Your *entire* discussion is that You have ZERO, zip, zilch, NADA interest in even finding *out* what the Pro-Life position *is.* You sure don't know much about it, other than leftist talking points.
Now lemme tell You where *I* come from. Obviously male. I don't appreciate what *seems* to me to be a femininst male-bashing attitude. But *ICBW.* Be glad to change mind. I was raised during the second wave. All the females in our family were feminists.
My position on abortion has changed tho. I used believe in the feminist position (tho in no way the manner You think of it). Now I recognize that there are a significant number of people who don't feel that Way. Some go all the Way to believing it's murder to abort a zygote. I don't agree with that, but I'm not sure I'm willing to say that nobody is *allowed* to feel that way either.
Therefore, a while back, I thought it should go to the states. Women can vote with their feet, right? Or they can get the laws passed that suit them. What problem with that?
The capture of our major institutions by this cultish ideology, and the so-called grown-ups actively encouraging or enabling it, is a national disgrace. The principles and values they so readily sacrifice on the alter of partisan piety and as a function of fundamentalist adherence to sectarian identitarianism jeopardize the fabric of our Nation.
Comity, probity, and integrity used to be watch words by which our so-called elites governed their own behaviors and, to a large extent, the general populace. These have been supplanted with zealotry, bigotry, and sophistry that are leading us to a societal cul de sac with grave implications for our polity. When any means justify an end, and when the appropriateness and nobility of that end are predicated on poorly conceived and unfalsifiable premises, hell follows.
This truly is a time that tries our respective souls, and it remains to be seen if we can reclaim even the vestiges of what once made our Country great.
This Substack, among others, remains an example of thoughtful, well considered, nuanced, and reasoned exposition encouraging readers to challenge their biases and preconceived notions. It offers a glimmer of hope for our future (just as the corporate media strives always to rip it away!) and I will hold on to that hope as we continue our trudge forward in this campaign to reclaim reason.
Steve R, when you say: “The principles and values they so readily sacrifice on the alter of partisan piety and as a function of fundamentalist adherence to sectarian identitarianism jeopardize the fabric of our Nation.” Who Senator Susan Collins is talking about.
Thank you, again, Bari. I respect you, your courage and your viewpoints - specifically because you come from the left of where I sit - a different camera angle which must be fairly considered for the sake of intellectual integrity. You sharpen and clarify, reminding me of the Jewish Proverb, "As iron sharpens iron, one man (or woman) sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17). Keep up your very good work.
We have a faction of the country that has abandoned any interest in staying within the lanes, not just ethically, but legally, in order to achieve their ends. They have strong allies in media and the permanent government who amplifies their messages and distorts the percentage of the country that believes in their causes. The midterms can't come soon enough, nor can the '24 elections.
And if you encounter any members of that faction on social media, you will be told in no uncertain terms that all of this is completely the other way around.
How stupid and short sighted this leak is. The decision would've been made public anyway in a month or so. What was to be gained here? Let's hope the leaker is found and fired/disbarred immediately. All the signs of a hoax or a fake, actually. Are we sure it is real?
The identity of the leaker is being bandied about online, and there is one prime suspect to be sure who I will not name, but the fact that the leaker was one of Sotomayor's clerks is an almost certainty. Sotomayor, who never understood that you could disagree with someone's politics and not hate them, and who is, by all accounts, the least liked and respected Justice among the nine for her contentiously Woke interactions with her colleagues.
Knowing what we know of how Jackson thinks, believes, and behaves, be prepared for more of these kind of Woke Leftist intimidation tactics moving forward. This won't be the last time.
Over on HotAir there is a speculative case made by "AllahPundit" that the leaker could very well be a conservative who is worried that one of the 5 in the majority was going wobbly. That makes sense when you consider that a week ago the WSJ reported that Roberts was trying to pry one of the 5 away to preserve Roe in some way.
The only thing that doesn't line up like that is WHO are the people that believe everything that disagrees with their beliefs is violence? It's the Woke.
When you believe in something so ridiculous, there is no line you will not cross to preserve your beliefs.
She is easily the least qualified, least intelligent, and most radically ideological of any Justice who has ever served.
Jackson is Woke like Sotomayor, but you can't say Jackson is unintelligent. Jackson may be far to the left of my own liberalism, but she's no dummy. Sotomayor, bless her heart, is.
This leak is the most depressing political event that I know of. As Bari and Turley put it, this means nothing -- no norm, no ethical constraint, no concept of discretion of any substance matters anymore. It is a bipartisan societal fall. It began before Trump, but the 2016-2020 presidency accelerated and intensified these trends. It all feels like a sudden fall from whatever sliver of grace we all hoped to share with one another regardless of our political and policy preferences. The most extreme people I know will now all feel emboldened to do the same or worse. It feels like all restraint is gone. This doesn't feel like democracy cracking up as has been so often talked about of late. No, this feels worse, like the foundations of our civilization are eroding before our eyes.
Their lives depend upon it? Whose lives Bari? Not the baby’s that’s for sure. Not black babies in NYC where more are aborted than born.
The left is racing us to the bottom. Period.
But not to worry. If a woman wants to abort her child, it’s still eminently doable. Oh you may have to travel to a neighboring state although I would bet most who want to get the abortions already live in a state where even infanticide is now allowed.
Perhaps planned UNparenthood should gin up classes on birth control PRE pregnancy. It’s safe, it’s easy and it’s cheap. But then, they couldn’t make the money from abortions or selling baby body parts. What to do, what to do.
Thank you Bari. You always make sense of things that don't make sense. I feel anger right now at the Left for not mentioning the violation of the breach, not even Biden. It bothers me so much. I just wish for my (former) side to be less hypocritical, less hysterical, and less like toddlers who need a nap. Can we not have a reasoned debate without it becoming mass hysteria?
I appreciate Bari’s piece on this--I think she is clearly pro-abortion, but takes the high road and tackles the bigger principle at stake. Despite the fact that I sense every shred of her person screaming silently to not overturn Roe, she addresses how this leak impacts the institution. To me she demonstrates a massive amount of integrity.
I think the issue with Roe is that it is bad law, even if it provides something considered good by some people. There is nothing in the Constitution that enshrines abortion as a right, but there is also nothing that denies it. But Roe has had people thinking wrongly about SCOTUS and the Constitution.
If you are pro-abortion then work within the bounds of the state where you live to pass the laws that you and your fellow citizens want. Or conversely if you are anti-abortion do the same in your state. That is the mechanism that exists.
Agreed. I think the biggest issue here—that people are wholeheartedly ignoring—is the damage this does to what is probably the most stable institution in the United States.
For as much crap as the Supreme Court gets, there are nine, very level-headed people on it who are some of the most highly scrutinized judges in our legal system BEFORE they even get appointed to the court. In my experience, those who are criticizing the SCOTUS, usually have a bad understanding of the law in the first place. Whoever leaked this should be ashamed. This does incredible damage to the institution.
Institutions don’t fall from outside pressure. They fall from internal instability.
Sotomayor, Kagan and the new one who can't define the meaning of woman, whose name I refuse to.write, are progressive ideologues. They are not highly scrutinized, o felt headed people. They are radical, rabid ideologues voted into their.position by other radical, rabid ideologues.
Sotomayor is an idiot.
On here? What was the mechanism of that? I have seen worse than idiot on here.
The three of them are actually pretty bland. They get pegged at ideologues because of who nominated them and when—it was pretty divisive back then.
Jackson not defining a woman is probably not as political as you think:
1) There is no legal definition of a woman. Asking her to answer a biology question is way outside her lane and was kind of the fault of the senator who asked her. It was a dumb and irrelevant question.
As far as the biological definition, if you’re a regular listener of the podcast, you’ve definitely heard a few of Bari’s guests cover this. If you go with the “has a uterus and ovaries” definition, where does that leave women who’ve had hysterectomies? If you go strictly by external genitalia, what about biological males whose body formed like that of a girl’s? Is it defined as someone who presents as female in all the traditional ways? One of Bari’s early guests, Carole Hooven, argued that humans only produce two types of gametes: eggs and sperm and that’s the basic tiebreaker on male v female.
But then again, none of that is legally defined, and a Supreme Court nominee would not want to step in that political minefield.
While there are extremely rare birth anomalies, all humans throughout all time have been able to define 'woman' (an adult human female)...except the modern Western leftists. It doesn't take a biologist, or a judge, to define 'woman.' It was a pertinent and useful question and Jackson's refusal to answer it spoke volumes. She's a captive to a cult religion (which I don't think she is a member of), but so are most Democrats these days.
"Where does that leave women who’ve had hysterectomies" it leaves them exactly as you said - as women who have later had surgery on certain organs. A human is a biped, but humans who have lost their legs, or were born without them, are still humans.
Thank you. - LM
Sorry but y'all are just as captive to your cult where you can't see the nuance of what the commenter just described. It's amazing how many o you in these comments don't realize how extreme, un-nuanced, and tribal you are.
Do tell. I'm listening. The values "the far right neo nazis" (as breathless leftists like to describe all opposition) like me have are basically Barrack Obama 2005.
Ridiculous blather. XX XY. There helped you out.
Well, you've defined human female, but not woman.
Adult human female. Done.
What about people with XXX, XXY, or XYY? If two Xs make a woman, then XXY is a bit of an outlier, isn’t it?
And before you answer I’d suggest either going back and listening to the episode on Testosterone or at least googling the definition of gametes.
Please. Why strain at gnats? There are people born with all sorts of anomalies but we don’t normalize them.
Sex differences are obvious except to those who pretend they don’t exist. Those who aren’t one sex or the other are few and far between. Katanji Brown is intellectually dishonest.
Does she know if (s)he is a woman? Or does she only know that she is a Black Woman because Biden said he would nominate a Black Woman. Also, relatedly, is RuPaul a Black Woman? If not, why not?
Wouldn't the 19th amendment slam home the definition of the sexes?
I hadn’t really thought that far back, actually, but I appreciate your thinking on it. If it were to ever be brought up before a court, going based on the historical definition in context is one way to go about defining it.
My argument above is mostly based on a lot of the arguments I hear from people who view gender and sex as completely relative. If we’re going to mail it down to one thing that’s black and white, I would argue, “does this person’s body—in a natural state—produce egg cells or sperm cells.”
Nevertheless, I think the 19th Amendment does bolster the idea of what was historically defined as a woman should be respected. Thanks for bringing that up!
Yeah.. "on account of sex" was the reference that came to mind. The amendment might have avoided sex entirely and just granted all citizens the ability to vote in a way that didn't specify gender, but the suffrage movement was clearly orientated for women and even the language kind of backhands you with it since one of the sexes could already vote.
But hey that's clearly a constitutional right that is specifically granted to males and to females (and a candidate for SCOTUS should know that).
Now see, THIS is a good argument.
Do you know what "disinformation" is? Disinformation is when I point out that Kathleen has a broken fingernail, and expand this minor flaw to conclude Kathleen is a broken and bad person. This is wrong of course. Likewise, about one out of a hundred thousand people have some minor genetic defect which affects the development of their gonads ... and then project that onto the entire population. Yes, some 300 or so people alive today in our country have genetic defects which affect their gametes ... but its no category in which to stuff all people.
Dick Morris, the former Clinton adviser, had no choice but to remark,
"Generally, it is a good political rule never to say anything
that the average 6-year-old knows isn't true."
HEARTWARMING! ♥️ Woman keeps trying to get on the same side of an argument as the people antagonizing her in the comments by using the arguments elite intellectuals use against them, but the people who PAY for the privilege to comment on this Substack can’t argue with nuance! 🫠
"There is no legal definition of a woman. Asking her to answer a biology question is way outside her lane and was kind of the fault of the senator who asked her. It was a dumb and irrelevant question."
It is a high-school level question. Perhaps she didn't attend her classes regularly? The definition is well-known and may even be in junior-high classes: A man has an XY 23rd chromosome and a woman has an XX 23rd chromosome. That is definitive. There is no dispute about it at all. Someone who identifies as some different gender still has the 23rd chromosome to determine if he/she is male or female, especially for genome-based medical care.
It is really perplexing that she did not know this elementary fact, and it suggests she is poorly educated and thus not appropriate to serve on the Supreme Court.
It’s a biology minefield where elite institutions are muddying the waters significantly and drawing attention away from actual biological factors that DO have a binary. (Chromosomes have too many variabilities that intellectuals will fight you on).
Answering the question that way would have been suicide to her career—whether or not she was confirmed. She was smart to deflect it to a field with more authority on the subject.
The XX and XY chromosomes are definitive with very rare exceptions.
Here is one quote: "According to the World Health Organisation, the biological differences between men and women result from the differences in the genes the X and Y chromosomes carry. If the Y chromosome is present, then these genes cause a male sexual differentiation pathway to be followed, causing the offspring to be a man. On the other hand, if the Y chromosome is absent, then the female sexual differentiation pathway is followed and the offspring will be a woman."
https://hippocratesweekly.wixsite.com/blog/post/x-and-y-chromosome-23
They provide numerous sources.
Why would her answering be a problem? It is a fact, like the earth is round. Being able to answer the question would have made her seem intelligent.
I think your entire comment is hogwash. I would use a stronger term, but probably would be censored.
What part of my “argument” do you not like and why?
Also, what do you believe I’m arguing here?
Jackson’s answer was either disingenuous or she buckled under pressure. Given the woke ideology of the school who’s board she sits on and who she choose to educate here kids, I suspect the former.
The academic, social Justice priesthood’s argument is not biological it is that gender is “a social construct” and she must know this as she appears to agree with it. The priests believe everything, including empiricism and “science” are socially constructed and are thus subjective and malleable to their wills.
Cruz’s question was not a “dumb question.” It was designed to reveal her ideology which is critically important to evaluate a judge for the highest court. It is relevant precisely because the constitution’s framers found the definition of man and woman self evident.
The subjectivist or nihilistic type of belief system he fears she follows is not new and has been the author of most of the world’s evil since the dawn of the human race, this includes those post enlightenment periods where Christianity was corrupted by fanatics.
The new priests are very, very clever. They are chipping away at objective reality by manipulating language, leveraging psychological techniques, selling shame and building identity based resentments . If we, you, me, all of us don’t fight their ideology then the fine grained intellectual points you effectively made in you comment on defining man v woman will be made moot.
Please help us.
People are getting hung up on her confusion around sex, the real issue here is that she is being cheeky in a confirmation hearing with a sitting Senator, and not being forthcoming on the school of thought that got her there.
Cruz failed to follow up to nail her, though. He could have asked if she was an astronomer and then whether or not she thought the earth was flat. Or if (s)he was a nutritionist and whether or not drinking 2 liters of Coke a day was good for your health... What kind of judge can she be if she has to defer to experts about everything simple.
So hilarious that you don't see all of Trumps choices this way. The newly elected judge was highly qualified in every sense of the word and went through a ridiculous political circus to get nominated. Imagine is she would have cried like Kavanaugh. Amy Comey Barrett was a religious puppet put in to do this very job of un-turning Roe v Wade and this was the plan all along. How is any of that not a rabid idealogue and going into the job with an agenda instead of impartiality? I don't care ifnyou think some of the left is impartial, but at least open your eyes and see that the new right judges are not impartial either. It is not one sided. It is ALL jaded and we need more moderates--full stop.
You're right that they should be ashamed, but shame is alien to the mind-set of po-mo progressivism. Already, I suspect, the leaker or leakers are angling for book deals and MSNBC gigs. Maybe Biden will decorate them with the Presidential Medal of Freedom...
I usually don’t advocate for shame, but I feel we can make an exception here. 😒
There is no honor among thieves.
The damage starts when the court doesn't reflect the will of the majority and judges care more about political allegiance than impartiality.
I would argue that the highest function of the Court is to NOT succumb to the majority.
Let's see. First you declare that courts should reflect the will of the majority, then, you say that courts should be impartial rather than reflecting political allegiances. So which is it? Because it can't be both...
They should not be unfairly or unlawfully stacked. They should be impartial. There is no mutual exclusivity there.
Define “impartial” and explain how that standard could possibly be enforced. Mind reading, perhaps…?
I completely disagree with the first part of this sentiment. The SC is not and should not be ruled by the "will of majority". It is ruled by the constitution. It is set up specifically not to be bound by pressure from outside the law. (Lifetime appointments and such). It is meant to be a counter balance to that, where what is considered is "does this abide by the law", specifically the constitution
With that said I completely agree with the second. Judges should be impartial, which is exactly why this leak is so bad. I believe it was possibly released for political expediency (affect the upcoming mid terms) or more likely and way worse, to try to pressure the judges to NOT be impartial. Regardless of where you fall in the debate of the issue before the court, that should seriously worry you.
You don't know the will of the majority until it's voted on.
I used to be prochoice. I thought the rabid prolife people were a bunch of hardcore Christian fundamentalist nut cases.
I said I used to be prochoice until a friend was having trouble getting pregnant. She and her husband tried invitro fertilization and it worked but she miscarried the first child. The miscarriage devastated her. They tried again and it worked. Her husband brought me the sonogram disk of the fetus.
I watched it and I had a road to Damascus moment and epiphany. I watch this living strange looking creature's heartbeat. and thought "This is a human being." and it was.
I read the article in Bari's post by Caitlin Flanagan. It’s called “The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate”. She said, "The argument for abortion, if made honestly, requires many words: It must evoke the recent past, the dire consequences to women of making a very simple medical procedure illegal. The argument against it doesn’t take even a single word. The argument against it is a picture."
She described my change from prochoice to prolife in that one sentence. The fetus I saw was a human being and as such had all the rights and privileges of any other US citizen and one of those rights is to be protected by the law, specifically being protected, against being murdered. And that is what abortion is, murder.
Just because I am now prolife, I would never tell a woman what she can or cannot do with her body. But is not just her body we are talking about, is it? It's also about the human being she is carrying in that body.
There are no simple answers to complex problems. Only idiots, fanatics and politicians give simple answers to complex problems there are fanatics on both sides of this terribly complex problem.
It's appropriate that you write this was a "road to Damascus" moment. It showscases that the question on when a fetus becomes a person is, in fact, a religious argument. Being a religious argument, your comment also makes the case for why Freedom of Choice is the only conceivable outcome in this pluralistic country of ours. I do not subscribe to Christianity nor do substantial numbers of our fellow citizens. I 100% respect the right you have to practice the religion of your choosing within the boundaries of your life. I expect that you will respect the right of each and every other citizen and resident of this country to practice the religion of THEIR choosing within the boundaries of their lives.
Just as your freedom of expression to swing your fist ends at your neighbor's face, so to does your freedom of religious expression end at your neighbor's religiously held believes (or lack thereof). There is NO science which determines when a "fetus," which cannot live independently of a woman, becomes a "child," which can live independently. As such, we ONLY have religion to make that determination. Ergo, abortion is solely a religious question up to the point of viability. The 1st amendment clearly expresses that neither the US government nor the states may rule on a religious question. Ergo, abortion cannot be made illegal by the courts, an act of congress, or even the state legislatures.
Dan0, you are mistaken. It takes not a whit of religion to be antiabortion. In fact, I would argue that being antiabortion is much more a humanist thing than a religion thing.
Like so many others, I started out as a rabid believer in abortion. It was just a clump of cells. Its a parasite.
Then, well, I saw my daughters 3D sonogram at 3 months. Saw her face and her fingers and I saw her move. That was it for me. I had the same experience with my son.
That opened my mind to considering the possibility that maybe things were not as clear cut as I had thought. So, I started listening more to people who had real experiences with abortion and people who had done real research into it. I got to hear the experiences of women who had abortions and were traumatized because they discovered it was not what they had been told to expect. I got to see the images that were surreptitiously taken inside abortion clinics that showed dismembered babies. You might have seen the case in NY recently where they opened up a murder investigation over 3 dead babies that were found in the trash only to discover that they were discarded by an abortion clinic.
But then, I used to be pro- death penalty too. Then I woke up to the number of people who were being sentenced to death who were ultimately found innocent.
Being anti-abortion is NOT a religious question. The fact that so many religious people are antiabortion does not make it a religious issue. I am about as lapsed a catholic as your gonna find and if I have any faith it would probably be Buddhism.
And...let's clarify your last statement. The courts are NOT making abortion illegal. To whatever degree abortion is illegal or legal, it will be determined by state legislatures, elected officials. The court is in no way saying that abortion is illegal. It is simply saying that the states may pass laws to make it illegal. For that to happen, the states elected officials must pass laws. For those officials to have that power, they have to be elected by the states voters. SO, in short, it is the voters of those states that will or will not make it illegal, to whatever degree they do.
I know a number of atheists who are anti-abortion. Even among libertarians (many of whom are atheists), people are pretty evenly split on the issue. (They also tend to make more rational arguments for their position, whichever it is.)
I, too, am less in favor of the death penalty than I used to be, for exactly the same reason. I had believed--naively, perhaps--that anyone who got the death penalty was *unquestionably* guilty of a heinous murder. Then I began to read the stories about people who had been exonerated by DNA evidence, and discovered that many of them had been convicted on the basis of very, very questionable evidence. Now we know that too many DAs have *knowingly* falsely charged people, despite having evidence that excluded them as suspects. Until that rot can be purged, our system cannot be dealing out the death penalty without 100% solid proof.
My point is that since this can't be determined by science, it becomes a religious question by default. I'm not suggesting it's due to a belief among a specific religion. I'm simply saying that we have not yet been able to objectively determine when Human life begins. We know that a collection of cell is life, but we haven't been able to identify it as a human life. It's only a potential life.
There are many in this thread who believe that it begins at conception. I expect that for their own conscience they follow that believe with action and would never use a form of birth control which could result in a fertilized egg being rejected by a person's body. There are likely others who believe human life begins further down the development process. They, as well, should follow their own conscience.
No one is dictating that another person MUST have an abortion. No one should be required to do something which is against their own conscience within the bounds of public accommodation. I would fully support the doctor or nurse who chooses not to partake in abortion proceedings. However, an administrator or a hospital should not be able to forestall their employee from performing what the state determines to be a medical procedure. Similarly, employers should not be able to impose their religious beliefs on their employees. I'm aware that SCOTUS disagreed, but that's an argument for a different day.
My personal belief is that everything should be done to avoid an abortion of an otherwise viable fetus. That includes adoption, economic assistance to the family, and supportive counseling. We cannot simply focus on the ethics of the medical procedure without also focusing on the ethics of how we treat those in our communities who are facing hardships and challenges. I firmly believe you should not judge a person until you understand their life experience (i.e. walk a mile in their shoes). There should be better education about the impacts of abortion on an individual and their families. Conversely, no one should restrict an individual from making the choice that they determine is right for them, especially when context and circumstances are different for each one of us.
Courts cannot and should not interject their own beliefs about the unknown when their continues to be rational and vigorous debate. I welcome the day when science allows us to objectively determine the difference between a fetus within a womb and a fetus created the invitro fertilization. Then we can make laws respecting the situation. ONLY THEN can the government get involved in deciding this issue. Until that day, this is and will remain a matter of belief. Belief is the realm of religion and not of the government.
DanO,
I generally concur with your analysis and I empathize with your position.
Although I do not believe that a fertilized egg constitutes a human being, I do believe that somewhere between fertilization and birth a sentient human being develops. Where that line is and when in fetal development it occurs is a brutally hard question to answer. That said, I would suggest that both science and general human experience would say that by the time you hit the end of the first trimester you have crossed that line. I say human experience for two reasons, both simply observational. First, based on my wife's experience and those of my sisters and cousins, the 3 month mark is where they first seem to be constantly aware of the baby and it seems to be the point where they are confident in sharing that they are pregnant with others. Second, as someone who has witnessed 3D ultrasounds of a 3 month old fetus and seen others from before that point, it strikes me that at that 3 month mark what we see is a fully human form that is responsive to its mothers body, its mothers mood and to external stimuli. There are those who would argue that for various reasons such as size, intellectual development, physical dependency, that it is not a "baby" but is in fact the more clinical term "fetus". I would argue that we do not want to get into the business of defining a persons humanity based on size, intellectual development or physical dependency.
As a side note, have you ever noticed how when a baby is wanted, it is CLEARLY a baby the mother is carrying. She and her friends and family celebrate every heartbeat, every kick, every milestone on the way to birth. Yet, when a baby is NOT wanted, it is a "fetus", a parasite, something that must be destroyed and removed. Do we really want to define a persons humanity based on whether or not that persons presence is desired?
I believe that this is why most Americans support unquestioned abortion in the first trimester but balk at anything after that point.
I doubt any of us support the wanton killing of a sentient human being in a horrific way, except under the most extreme circumstances. I think the vast majority of us would say that any time the mother's life is put at risk would constitute such an extreme circumstance. By the same token, I think most people would be horrified to hear that a woman aborted at 7 months because she is divorcing her husband and does not want to raise his child. Do we as a society want to say that it is ok to abort at 5 months because the parents discovered that it will have Downs Syndrome and they do not want to deal with it?
Now, granted, all of this comes into direct conflict with the right of each human being to control their own body. And that is no small thing.
If this were an easy question, we would not all still be discussing it and it would have been resolved within our society decades ago. Its NOT an easy question. It is morally, and scientifically complex. That some abortions are inherently necessary cannot reasonably be questioned. But then neither can the fact that many abortions are done for the most heinous of reasons such as parents who select for sex or due to a potential birth defect like Down Syndrome or a missing arm, something that is more common than is regularly recognized. Imagine if parents could select for a child being inclined to be gay or for dwarfism. Both are either possible now or will be in the near future with DNA analysis. Should they be allowed to abort at any point in time? You think that extreme, but I actually know a man that said had he known his son (great kid by the way and on his way to UVA) was going to be gay he would have pressed his wife to abort. Knowing her, I think she would have agreed.
A moment on your last paragraph. You say that "Courts cannot and should not interject their own beliefs....". I agree. I would argue that Roe did exactly that. It enforced that courts belief on the whole country. This new decision, if it actually happens, undoes that. It takes it out of the courts hands and places it in the hands of legislatures. Legislators, unlike court justices, DO have to face election and re-election. Although imperfect, legislatures do generally reflect the social and moral judgments of the citizens of the state. In that, there is a general collective wisdom of the society as a whole and not the opinion of a few elite people who are all lawyers.
Honestly, I think overturning Roe may be the best thing to happen to abortion rights. Here is why. First, Roe was a very very weak, poorly reasoned decision that was the act of a court reaching for the outcome it desired. Even RBG admitted that. For that reason, it always left the issue on shaky ground. Second, it has allowed both republicans and democrats to demagogue the issue. Both sides have been able to be more and more extreme in support of extreme laws in order to fund raise or pump up portions of their base for votes, and to do so knowing they will never have to face the consequences because the court would always stop them. Legislators that want to pass laws outlawing all abortions will now have to deal with ectopic pregnancies. People like senator Warren will have to deal with the idea that saying abortion should be legal until the cord is cut now have to face the reality of that perhaps happening.
This is now an issue that the American people cannot avoid working to reach a working consensus on. The court is no longer there to protect them from themselves. Do I ever think we will have standardized abortion law across the country? No. I do however think that as time goes on we will find that every state has some minimum access to legal abortion that is centered on that 3 month mark and the life of the mother, rape or incest. I suspect that more liberal states will open the floodgates for awhile and then back off as reports of particularly heinous abortion practices force them to back off. Ultimately, we will end up with something that a majority of voters can accept, with variations by state, and that has to be better than what we have had for 5 decades, which is constant warfare that has polarized our politics and corrupted the process of nominating and appointing Supreme Court Justices.
That is a simple out. It is not a matter of religion. It is a matter of when life begins and when, if ever, it is okay to snuff it out.
The simple logic is this.
The product of human conception cannot be anything other than human life.
Is it wrong to take a human life?
By this thinking, outlawing murder is also a religious question. What it comes down to is intellectual honesty, of which the loudest activists on both sides have none.
If the "pro-choice" people (who are for vaccine mandates) were to honestly say that this is about sexual liberation and the idea that a (wo)man should not have to worry about pregnancy if s/he (gotta look out for those "birthing persons") doesn't desire to have a child, they would receive more credit from the other side.
At the same time, if the "pro-life" people (who love the death penalty) were to honestly say that they do believe that one of their concerns is that people need to take responsibilities for their own actions (e.g. intercourse), and should be "punished" for doing something irresponsible, we would finally get to a point where the argument could be toned down by everyone.
Instead we whinge about rights to privacy, clumps of cells, fetal heartbeats, viability, ectopic pregnancies, "except rape and incest" yada yada yada
Neither can it exist as a right expressed in the constitution. This complex issue must be decided by the community.
I went in the opposite direction: I started out pro-life but am now pro-choice. And it's because I'm adopted.
Maybe that doesn't make sense to some--I'm adopted, so I ought to be favor of adoption over abortion, shouldn't I? Except that I'm not.
I have struggled all my life as a result of my birthmother's DNA. The only thing that saved me was my birthfather's less-messed-up DNA and my wonderful and terminally *sane* adoptive parents. (Okay, meeting my birthmother and realizing that my struggles were a physical disease passed on in her DNA helped a lot.) But I have felt for a long time that it would have been better to have been aborted than to suffer through all that I've suffered through.
Despite the fact that adoption saved me, I can't recommend it. Children are rarely ever given up for adoption because "a nice girl from a nice family accidentally got pregnant." Children who end up being given up for adoption almost always come with DNA that is coded for a host of issues, including addiction and mental illness. Those infants are also burdened with epigenetic damage resulting from a history of abuse in the family, particularly abuse suffered by the birthmother throughout her own life. And they are damaged *directly* by addiction and abuse experienced by the birthmother during her pregnancy.
People who adopt these damaged children often have no idea what they're getting into. They believe the "nice girl/nice family" lie. And they suffer tremendous heartbreak as a result.
So I now have a painfully pragmatic approach to abortion: those infants are better off. They do not need the heavy, heavy burdens with which they would be born.
Courageous response, Celia. You have my respect.
Oh Celia I am so sorry. I have said in connection with other issues that there are things worse than dying. You in essence are saying there are things worse than living. I respect, and accept your position, but that may be the saddest thing I have ever heard.
Suicidality is one of those "gifts" from my birthmother's DNA. I've never had the guts to go through with it, but still it's very mentally wearing to have your brain randomly sending you the impulse. Whenever I answer one of those "where would you go if you could travel through time?" questions, the answer is always the same: I would prevent my conception, or failing that, I would make sure my birthmother got an abortion.
As sad as that might be for my adoptive parents (who took great joy from my presence in their lives, despite sometimes not knowing how to deal with a kind of pain they couldn't understand) and for my lifelong best friend, I genuinely feel that a life cut short in the womb would have been less horrible for me than my near-56 years-so-far on this planet have been.
I've been thinking about this for a while, Celia. I'm sorry You feel that Way about Your life. I wish someone could change that for You. I, too, never made a serious attempt at suicide for the same reason. When i was 22 I had a combination of some Spiritual experiences and outta-balance neurotransmitters that upset me one night. One. Be taht as it may, I was hospitalized and branded Bipolar II. You probably recall back in the day that was called manic-depressive. Heavy on the depressive side.
Still, i can only imagine what Your life is truly like. Dunno what a "good" day is for You, to hope You have more-a them than the "bad" ones. Me? I've been very lucky.
I dunno this gives You any comfort, and admit I'm only 50% Religio-Spiritual. And part Atheist Religion. But my sense is that if You hadn't been born, there would-a been a ripple effect on all the people You've touched. PRobably hundreds or thousands of people in large and small Ways You may not even know about. As Lynne "said," US for example. Your light is worth it to us, and hope You know that, is about all.
Thank you for the kind words. My life is much better now than it once was--age and perspective helps a lot. And fortunately--although I've mentioned addiction in the context of children who are better off not being born--that was not one of the griefs I inherited. More than a little grateful for that!
Even as a child I had some weird paranoias--I *recognized* them as irrational (thanks to my upbringing), but that didn't make them go away. But everything crashed in on me in my mid-teens: OCD, religious mania (that was a HUGE one in my birthmother's family), panic attacks, and crippling levels of depression. My 20s ushered in the suicidal impulses.
My birthmother found me when I was 19, and proceeded to emotionally abuse me in the name of "love" for the next ten years (At which point I moved across the country and didn't leave her any contact info). The only good thing that came out of that was the realization that it wasn't my soul or my character that was broken; it was my DNA.
Armed with that knowledge, I fought back. The reality was that my brain was perfectly capable of lying to me. When I had panic attacks, it lied to me that I wasn't getting any air, completely against the solid evidence that I was breathing and I hadn't passed out. Instead of accepting my brain's lies, I had to focus on discovering the truth. And after a while, my brain stopped trying to lie to me quite so often, since it wasn't getting the results it wanted. But it will still randomly throw shit at me. It's exhausting.
I suspect from your comments on here that you have a far broader reach than your parents and your best friend. Including me albeit in a far different way. I always look forward to your insight.
I used to have a lot of friends that are pro choice. In college especially it was prevalent. I generally did not voice my view because of the general hatred towards the prolife attitude. Being female everyone pretty much assumed what my stance was. I had one of those friends ask me once why I never said anything during these discussions. I told them what my opinion was and they were utterly shocked. "How could I?!?" People tend to treat it like a forgone conclusion of how you should think and you must be evil to think otherwise, or some religious wacko.
To me its actually fairly easy to see both sides. I do not think anyone here would argue you should be able to kill a baby after its born? Why? Because it is a person and has rights. It would be murder to virtually anyone. We (pro life and choice) do not have some major divide on how we think, its just simply one small issue that causes all the trouble. We disagree on "when" the baby is considered a "human with rights"
I do tend to disagree with the Roe decision especially viewed through the "viability" lens. Think about it this way. As our medical knowledge gets better and better the "viability" date actually changes. So does that mean that 100 years ago a "human fetus" was not "a human" until even later? By the time of Roe it was (24 months?). Now with all our medical advances it is less than that. So depending on the time you were born, it changes the definition of when you became "a human being" and would have rights. That to me says it is a faulty measure of life.
I try to stay away from the emotional or religious side of things when discussing this because in a large sense it really does not matter except maybe to influence the "when" question for you as an individual. Yes I know there are some horrible situations that can happen. It does not change the simple fact that once that baby is "considered a human being" it has rights that must be protected too.
Even the Roe vs Wade decision agreed with this. They tried to balance the woman's "right to privacy" against the rights of the states to protect potential life. If you have not ever read the Roe decision it was the "right to privacy" in the Bill of Rights for the argument that abortions should be legal.
As far as the legal issues, the abortion debate doesn't revolve around someone's personal opinions about the circumstances where abortion might be justifiable (most people view it as a more complex question than "yes" or "no"). It revolves around whether one supports the prerogative of the government- the State- to stringently restrict abortion and criminalize any act of abortion outside of the ordained limitations.
That might sound like weaseling, but in my opinion supporters of abortion criminalization haven't thought through exactly how much power a State gets granted by that punitive "remedy". They might also reflect on the reality that the previous era of criminalization of abortion did not stop large numbers of abortions from being performed illegally. Criminalization simply drove the practice underground. It should also be pointed out that the first law in the US forbidding abortion wasn't passed until 1821, enacted in the State of Connecticut. https://currentpub.com/2022/04/26/the-story-behind-the-first-abortion-law-in-the-united-states/
as a surprise pregnancy myself, I thank you.
Excellent response. Thank you.
This is NOT a federal issue. Period. Tenth amendment.
Oh wow, just read it again. "the Supreme Court has ruled that laws affecting family relations, commerce within a state's own borders, and local law enforcement activities, are among those specifically reserved to the states or the people." Does that mean that Federal legislation is out of scope for new Abortion law?
If there is federal legislation it will be challenged and ultimately may rest with the Supreme Court. It is the nature of checks and balances.
Dunno. Is abortion "family relations"?
Do you agree, then, that a federal ban on abortions, which some on the right are crafting as the "next step," would be illegal and unconstitutional?
I would say that a federal ban OR legalization of abortion would be unConstitutional. But the lack of Constitutionality hasn't prevented a mountain of federal legislation in the past 100+ years.
Perfect post. Thank you.
I believe they seek to delay the opinion until a new voice can be added. This leak provides the reason to abort this case - just as they abort everything else. Those who crave power love abortion, not just for babies, but for every process of humanity...
Abortion of Humanity is achieved through abortion of Justice
I appreciation what you said about Bari's taking the high road on this issue. Yes, she did, and thank you for pointing it out so eloquently.
The only quibble I will offer is that nobody including me is "pro-abortion," and I don't believe Bari is, either. We are pro-choice, which is profoundly different from being cheerleaders for the procedure.
Sorry, but I've seen numerous women (such as Lena Denham) being cheerleaders for the procedure. I'm pro-choice for pragmatic reasons, but there are ABSOLUTELY Leftists out there who promote abortion as some kind of necessary rite-of-passage for a "true" feminist.
You're right, Celia--"nobody" is too broad, because there certainly are those who believe abortion is a happy rite of passage. I don't know any personally, which is what I should have said. I believe the percentage of the United States that says "abortion is awesome!" is pretty tiny. And, correct so: abortion is, even when necessary, sad.
"Liberal sluts get knocked up because they can't keep their legs closed and murder their own babies to hide the evidence."
Shut the fuck up. You're no Jew; I've never met a Jew who is as vile as you are constantly on Bari's feed. You're just a piece of sexist, hating trash. You hate gays, you hate women, you hate liberals, you hate Christians, you hate Jews you consider "not real," you hate hate hate hate all day long.
Thank Yahweh most of my fellow Jews are reasonable. If they were all like you, I'd have to convert back to being a Lutheran. As for you, move to Israel and throw yourself on a Hamas grenade. I promise I'll recite Kaddish.
This feed has turned into an absolute nightmare.
"Any decent human being "hates" evil, as the Torah says."
Yup. That's exactly why I wrote what I did about you and your hate-filled diatribes: because decent human beings hate evil and call it out whenever possible. The truth hurts, eh?
As a proud Jew whether you like it or not, I will call God whatever the fuck I want, thanks.
As for "pet victims," I have no use for pedophiles, they're the scum of humanity. Gay people are not pedophiles and you slander them endlessly for God knows what twisted reason marinates in your brain. In the United States, where you seem to forget you live, you are entitled to believe whatever you want religiously, but you cannot impose those views on anyone else. We are a secular nation of laws, where gays can marry and women can legally seek abortions. You want to be the religious cop on the beat, find another country.
What you wrote here deepens my conviction that you are a sick and twisted hater of anything that does not comport with your claim of being a "real Jew," and as such, this will be my last response to you. Life is too short to argue with anyone who calls women "liberal sluts parading their anorexic bodies on social media, getting used and degraded, and murdering their own babies to hide the evidence."
It’s a fair argument to make. People try and simplify the abortion debate so flatly, but there are a lot of stakeholders and the decision is never made in a vacuum.
Men do have rights. They have the right to take responsibility for their role in creating the pregnancy by discussing with their female partner before having sex about how they would handle an unwanted/unplanned pregnancy and if they have opposing views they can choose to not have sex with them. Men can educate themselves about birth control and learn that when both partners use birth control the odds of pregnancy are greatly reduced. They can take responsibility for their actions by choosing to wear a condom for all of their sexual encounters or getting a vasectomy or by not having sex at all. Men's options/rights are all pre-conception. If that seems unfair it is because the burden of pregnancy is unfair.
So you take the feminist position that men (and men alone) need to keep their pants zipped?
As long as women have the right to get an abortion, men should have the right to legally disown any child that results within the same timeframe of knowledge (within 9 months of finding out that a child resulted).
Pregnancy is no more "unfair" than gravity is. If you step off a cliff, even an abortion won't save you.
Burden of pregnancy isn't unfair? So biological males can get pregnant and give birth? Heterosexual vaginal intercourse always has a risk of pregnancy. We all know this. Men who make the "financial abortion" argument make it sound like fatherhood was forced upon them against their will and without their willing participation. I listed above men's options in preventing an unwanted pregnancy. Basically a lot of men feel entitled to sex on demand without taking any responsibility for the children they father blaming the woman for having a child they don't want and feel the woman should just support the kid themselves. What these men fail to realize is that these fatherless children then become society's and the taxpayer's problem (lower education achievement, higher likelihood of incarceration, higher unemployment, lower earnings), so if a "financial abortion" were made legal resulting in millions of men refusing to financially support their children the negative effects on our society would be catastrophic. That it is why the courts will never allow a financial abortion.
I repeat, it's no more unfair than gravity. If you don't understand that, nothing I could say would make sense to you.
Really? Gravity affects all humans regardless of sex, only the female sex can get pregnant so your argument doesn't make any sense.
The right to decide the fate of the pregnancy is unfair because the burden of pregnancy is unfair. If men are afraid of their conceived child being aborted then those men should only have sex with women who share their abortion beliefs. Just because you don't like the choices available to you doesn't mean you don't have any choices.
No I'm saying only 1 person can ultimately decide the fate of the pregnancy either the man or the woman, it can't be both. So as it's the woman's body it should be her decision. Are you arguing that it should be the father's decision and men and only men can decide if a woman is allowed to carry her pregnancy to term?
I absolutely agree with your assessment of the left.
My assessment of the the right....they sit idly by....
There are many of us on the right that have not sat idly by. We have connected the dots on the coming woke tyranny for many years. We have gone to work to vote in candidates who have connected the dots and developed an entire movement to peacefully, and through the ballot box, combat this tyranny.
But the ever so clever woke who own all the means of propaganda in the country have convinced the rest of the nation that we are violent insurrectionists. Because most people are so late to realize the awful reality we live in, it is likely that we are doomed to live pitifully controlled lives, and the only thing left would be violent revolution, and we would lose. I consider myself a classical liberal but I believe I see through the masterfully crafted (by Hollywood) matrix, to a somewhat more accurate reality. Until more people understand that when in, even a peaceful war, sometimes an ill-mannered General Patton is needed. Forget the delicate manners of old liberals, fighters come with different personalities. Even the extraordinarily well-mannered Douglas Murray has concluded it is past the time for politeness. DeSantis, Larry Elder, Candice Owens, Charlie Kirk, Tom Cotton, Jim Jordan, and Trump may not be your cup of tea but there is NO ONE else willing to fight. And never pay attention to how Hollywood paints these very brave, intuitively street smart people, always remember who owns Hollywood and the media.
The people you identified have not just the will, but the skill to fight. And it is a fight.
I would like this over and over again. The ONLY path to sanity is a plurality of democrats to wake up and fight with us before it is too late. We need them.
"always remember who owns Hollywood and the media."
Please specify who you think owns Hollywood and the media.
William & Comprof, thx for the Qs. I am not exactly on the inside but I have spent most of my life in Beverly Hills, have a wife who was in entertainment for a couple of decades, and I know a great many people in entertainment, some at the management level.
I believe Hollywood, (except for the much smaller "faith-based" film industry) is largely owned by exceptionally woke corporations such as Disney, Netflix, Apple, Universal. China invests also. I believe these are the real "owners" of Hollywood. Jews, of which I am one, are disproportionately involved in the business, however the real ownership of these corps many not have a disproportionate number of Jews. It is true German Jews built and "owned" early Hollywood, but the industry ownership today is much more diverse. I will say there are a crazy number of Jews who are writers (also real influencers) for the industry. 75-80% of Jews are very left, and I believe Hollywood writers, Jews or not, are very left, AND forbidden to stray from their employers' enforced woke standards.
As far as media, there are six major media companies and they own virtually all the outlets we are exposed to. These companies are all very woke and enforce woke standards. I think there could be a disproportionate number of Jews in media as it has been a career of choice for a long time for Jews. How many Jews have a position of ownership control would only be understood by knowing how many of those owners/executives are Jewish. Again these corps are so large and diverse that it would be very inaccurate to say Jews own Hollywood. But it seems quite obvious to me that the woke do "own" Hollywood.
Thanks for this nuanced explanation, Dennies. Clearly you were NOT going for the old antisemetic tropes of "the Jews own everything," and that is much appreciated. Your take seems accurate to me because a small number of corporations DO own virtually all media outlets in this country, from cable to broadcast to Internet to film to, probably, Substack. Whether these corporations are Woke or not I'll leave to your judgement. I tend to think of them as Hey, Whatever Brings In the Money. If hard-rightism did, they'd be hard right. Since Woke seems to sell, they do that.
The rich irony of antisemitism is that Jews formed Hollywood because they were blocked from many other industries. As soon as Hollywood became important, the same people who ghettoized Jews into film started screaming, "How dare the Jews have a monopoly on Hollywood!"
In TV, it's all about eyeballs and subscribers. You said writers are "forbidden to stray from their employers' enforced woke standards" but the vast majority of TV shows, and CERTAINLY network TV shows, are written to appeal to the widest possible audience to bring in the most advertising. If a conservative message was one that drew viewers, you can bet there'd be a lot more conservative shows on TV. Personally, I find most TV shows inane rather than "woke."
Yes....the "woke tyranny" that overturned Roe and is gerrymandering black voting districts out of existence.
"Always remember who owns Hollywood and the media."
The Jews?
Do you prefer your totalitarianism from the Woke Tyranny or China? Remember, they will never own all of us.
There is no "woke totalitarianism" - you are deranged. Installed right-wing justices in Supreme Court overturning Roe, next gay marriage, then Loving decision, then the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
And you'll still be talking about "woke totalitarianism." Lol.
The right hardly "sat idly by." They packed the court by refusing a hearing on a president's pick a full year before an election, then crammed through another judge after that. And before that, they conveniently got "impartial" judges to decide who got to be president. And Al Gore conceded gracefully, unlike the right-wing troll who still hasn't conceded AT ALL.
The ONLY way Republicans still win presidential elections is due to the Electoral College which disenfranchises the highly populated states in favor of the lightly populated states. Justice Roberts is the only SCOTUS justice who seems concerned with the integrity of the court itself. The reality, though, is that, at this point, it's pretty much just another branch of the Republican Party .
Bullshit. Republicans followed all the rules. In the cases you mention, the rules worked in their favor. It doesn't always work out that way. And you had to reach back 22 years to dredge up the Gore example?
Where is it written that they owed Garland a hearing? Gore didn't concede gracefully. He and his lawyers had enough realism to see there was no path for him to become president. Had the SC not settled the matter, it would have gone to the House of Representatives where Bush would have prevailed. In the following years, Gore perpetrated the "I just wanted all the votes to be counted" lie. All the votes in only the four counties where he thought a recount would give him an advantage.
You say Roberts is concerned with the integrity of the court. I say he's preoccupied with the likes of the NYT saying bad things about him... His vote on Obamacare was farcical.
Yes, the electoral college shifts some of the power away from the small handful of most populous states. Without it, those of us in flyover country would be the subjects of the Chuck Schumers and Nancy Pelosis. The electoral college is working as designed.
Anytime Democrats don't get their way, they whine that "Democracy is broken."
Quit whining.
Preach brother. We are in many respects wrestling with the same dilemma the founding fathers did - rural versus urban. I do not want to exist in a world of urban values. That is why I left city life behind. Why should I be denied an existence? The Court's leaked opinion, if accurate,is nothing more than a recognition that some things belong to the states. Good for the Court.
You're not "denied an existence" but you ARE trying to force your values (pro-life, anti-gay, guns everywhere, watering down teaching about slavery) on urban areas. (By "you" I don't mean you personally--I have no idea of your views on these things--I'm referring to general right-wing talking points).
I get that religion is a necessary means of controlling uneducated people, i.e. "you have a crappy life now but you'll get your reward when you die if you behave yourself," but many of us do just fine with no religious values whatsoever and don't need to have those values forced on us.
Oh no, American democracy is working EXACTLY how it is intended.
'Gore didn't concede gracefully.'
Of course he didn't, Evil Incarnate (like the handle). You are right. But he did, in fact, concede. Trump never could find a way to do that.
You go on to say that Gore and his lawyers 'had enough realism to see there was no path to become president' - to which I must add..
Trump and his lawyers clearly did not..
They did not see the realism all around them, hence the infamous recorded Jan call to the Georgia Sec of State looking for votes..
Polls show more than half the public thinks something wasn't right about the election. Saying it another way, they're not confident it was an honest election.
Maybe if everything was all good with the economy, and Putin wasn't threatening to start WWIII, they wouldn't be wondering. But they are.
Followed the rules?? So, followed the rules and precedent when merrick garland was denied. OK. Give me an f'n break. They lie, cheat and steal every chance they get. We just need democrats to start doing the same.
They do. You just ignore it and overlook it because its your side doing it. Probably because CNN or Maddow explained it away for you.
The rules were followed re Garland. That is why it worked. But it was absolutely a power play. Moral? IDK. Fair? Probably not. But after his less than admirable stint as AG, I am very glad he was shut out.
Repeating- where is it written they owed Garland a hearing?
Hmmm?
Scott, packing the court is not nominating and confirming justices; that is following the terms of the Constitution. I defy you to tell me a president who has not nominated someone to the Supreme Court who didn’t closely align with their ideals. They all do that. Packing the court is when an administration adds more justices to the existing court. The electoral college is there to prevent densely populated states from deciding every election. I don’t want California and New York deciding every damned election, and if the modern urban centers were constructed largely of conservatives, you might understand the need for the electoral college. But you won’t, because you see yourself as having the moral high ground, and you won’t admit, even to yourself, that have no morals at all, only your righteous anger.
Some of your comments are really puzzling!
"They packed the court by refusing a hearing on a president's pick a full year before an election". The Republicans were following the Biden rule, which he used to block a nominee in 1992 because the Senate and the Presidency were in different parties. And there is general agreement that Merrick Garland is one of the most corrupt Attorneys General, given his intervention with the NSBA to increase his son-in-law's company's income.
"unlike the right-wing troll who still hasn't conceded AT ALL." Just a slight correction and you are fine: "unlike the left-wing troll who still hasn't conceded AT ALL." You are of course referring to Hillary Clinton, who made daily claims for three+ years that she had won, and still now and then makes that claim.
"in favor of the lightly populated states". Yes, like Texas and Florida.
Scott, I assume you are ok with toddlers encouraged to become a new sex, with the lose of free speech, with wholesale cancelling of anyone who does not toe the woke party line, with abandoning our citizens, allies and billions in equipment in Afghanistan, with no southern border, soon no constitution as Jurists are threatened by the same violent mobs that destroyed our cities in 2020, with anitfa & BLM backed by mayors and the Democrat party eliminating freedom of assembly for the majority of Americans, and with unchecked violent crime in our cities. It is hard to have a polite conversation with you if this is what you support with your anger.
Hilary didn't concede either.
Nor Stacey Abrams and let's not forget dear old Maxine Waters meltdown after George Bush's win.
“Pack the court” has a specific meaning and this isn’t it. Playing politics with the nomination? Sure. McConnell should have let the nominee get voted down properly. It also seems you just fundamentally disagree with the nation’s intentional restraints on majoritarian tyranny.
Go Brandon, very conveniently explaining 2 sides to the square, or 1...rejoice.
Who do you like in the Derby? thanks.
The cowardly right. Sad.
I too think the Republican problem is the wolf in sheep's clothing.
Thank you, Golfer. But what will they ultimately “create”? That is never defined, but history has examples…Marx, Mao, Lenin, Stalin and their comrades
I want to say I completely agree except there may be a few good souls remaining on the political left and right. Now that I got the exceptional few out of the way, I describe the vast majority on the left as preferring mustard on their bullshit, and those on the right preferring ketchup on their bullshit. And I shouldn't get started on the apathetic masses because they just like their bullshit with pretty much any condiment that happens to be near the couch. :(
Mike
You attack both the left and the right without providing any specifics. Your lazy attacks are worse than useless. A pox on you and your whole useless approach.
Terence,
Civility is as much a strength of yours as profanity is a weakness of mine. A pox on me for not providing specific examples that are abundantly obvious to most adults is a bit of an overreaction, isn’t it? If it was the profanity that triggered you, please accept my apology. If not, maybe consider staying on Twitter where your type of confrontational and hysterical behavior is common place. Regardless, if you really haven’t seen an absurd amount of BS on the left and right, you’re either too young to continue the conversation, or you’re suffering from a significant case of cognitive dissonance, in which case we probably can’t have a productive exchange of ideas. I’d say it was nice to meet you, but it’s painfully obvious that you won’t appreciate the sarcasm.
Precisely what all of the aforementioned dictatorial mass murderers did. Great “re-creation”, plan. They can call it Build Back Badly.
Mankind loves to play God to try to suppress human nature. The only way is self-control through our own personal relationship with our Creator.
That's pretty much the essence of the book of Exodus, only on a societal level, isn't it?
you forgot the proviso: "...except if they hold a "leadership" position in society, like CEO (or Chief Diversity Officer) of TindUberBookStaGoogle, or Black Lives Matter, or hold elected office, or was college roommate of someone in the previous categories."
how has the left's "white privilege" BS had anything to do with the Court? I'm on the left ,but I want to gag almost every time I hear that phrase, but I don't think it's relevant here.
By the way, here's a book that shows how wrong headed the left's mantra of white privilege is: Back of the Hiring Line: A 200-Year History of Immigration Surges, Employer Bias, and Depression of Black Wealth, by Roy Beck. ($9 on Amazon).
The book is highly readable (Beck is a former journalist, now head of NumbersUSA.com) despite being a thorough exposition of the relevant academic economic history (296 footnotes), along with statements from Black leaders, quotes from Black periodicals, accounts of gov't commissions on immigration reform (all of which recommended substantial reductions in immigration), and Beck's own journalism.
The book also gives the lie to the notion tht there are no jobs Americans won't do. But when employers import scads of immigrants, they pay them wages that leaves them living a bunch of people to a room, and don't want to pay even the lowest of American wages.
The book also notes that the left is full of charity for immigrants, but not for our own fellow citizens, and that the kinds of people who come to the US are often those who--if they stayed in their own countries--would be likely to help them pull themselves up.
Immigration is great for business, terrible for the working class.
Legal immigration is great. It is intentional and arrived thru a democratic process. Illegal immigration is a deceit that gives us immigrants based on something other than the merit that we as a nation define & deserve because we are a sovereign nation.
Why do we have to reinvent common sense and timeless wisdom in 2022? Because we now have two generations devoid of knowledge of human history, human nature and the human condition.
Not only that--we reward despots, tyrants and dictators in foreign countries by taking their most impoverished.
A million-plus a year is way too much immigration. We need to stabilize our population.
And my sympathy is definitely with the working class.
Immigrants are more likely to start a business than native born people. They also consume goods and services, creating a larger customer base for businesses. Immigration is good for job creation and the economy overall.
They suppress wages. Period.
There is no consensus on that among economists. If there is a suppression of wages, it is small. However, there is plenty of evidence that increased immigration lowers unemployment due to the higher entrepreneurship among immigrants and the increase in aggregate demand. Immigration also increases GDP.
They grow the overall economy, but not per capita income. More people reduces quality of life. More traffic, higher housing prices, more sprawl, etc. And too much has kept the working classes poor. Half the people in this country couldn't afford a big car repair or a major medical bill.
Even indication throughout the history of capitalism is that as the economy grows, quality of life grows with it. As for your concerns, take a cross country flight with a window seat and tell me there isn’t enough room for more people.
Thanks for the book reference
You're welcome
They must be stopped. Bravely stand against them. They are evil.
I agree. Trump, his administration and his supporters were/are the epitome of civility, virtue and respect. ;)
There has never been a classier bunch.
And don't even get started about the people who don't trust elections or think their candidate lost because an election was stolen. "If you can't persuade, destroy and recreate..." Indeed, indeed.
Lol! You got Roe overturned. Be happy!
And now women who are violent victims of rape will be forced to carry their rapist's progeny, extending a trauma for nine long months.
That is a silly statement. Just silly.
The court is NOT making abortion illegal. It is simply saying that the states have the right to regulate abortion as its voters see fit to support.
That has two sides. Some states may choose to allow abortion right up until birth and may even define birth as occuring only after the cord is cut.
Other states will pass laws with varying levels of illegality and scope as to time etc.
Others may try to eliminate it altogether and find that they have to make a bunch of exceptions.
The bottom line is that each state, through its elected officials, can determine what laws it sees fit and those elected officials are subject to being voted out.
The consequences of overturning Roe and how that plays out in law is going to years to shake out.
I would also point out, that every citizen has the right to up and move from a state who's laws and values do not align with their views. I did it. Got out of MA as fast as I could. Despite a lot of job offers I will not move back and neither will I move to NY or CA.
In some states this is true, but many have NO EXCEPTION for rape or incest.
And you are not required to approve of that. I do not approve of that.
BUT....I DO believe that this issue is SO divisive, particularly among states, that it needs to be left to the voters in each state to determine.
Abortion, like war, to my mind at least, is an evil that is on occasion necessary, but it is always evil. There is nothing good or to celebrate in an abortion. There is nothing noble in an abortion. There is only death and often a gruesome and disgusting death.
As I said, it may, on occasion, be necessary, but it is always evil.
Name them.
I'm a lawyer and member of the Supreme Court Bar, and I can hardly describe how devastating this leak is to the integrity and legitimacy of the Court. Irrespective of the specific case at issue, this is a new low for our political and legal culture. What ever happened to honor?
I am as well. Cannot fathom the low character responsible. The perpetrator must be publicly identified.
And their legal career destroyed.
But the public speaking career just became enormous!
A career on The View
Fine. Let whoever it is have a show on MSNBC with the rest of the screechers. But NO career in law.
I don't worry about the 100 or so people they will reach on MSNBC.
The perp is a leftie......so will never be caught....and if caught............not punished.
The left runs everything...........
They are winning our race to the bottom.
This is just guessing. The perp could just as easily be a right-wing person wanting to lock in votes. We won't know until we know.
Yip I agree on that point at the moment we rock bottom I doubt if we can fall any further
The ship of legitimacy sailed when Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues refused to grant President Obama a Supreme Court pick. Merrick Garland should be on the court. I find it puzzling that so many people are "shocked" by the leak. The SCOTUS is as political as the House and Senate.
Have you ever heard of "advise and consent"?
Do you remember what the left did to Judge Janice Brown? What they did to Alberto Gonzalez? What they did to Thomas and Bork?
The left has, since at least when Biden was on the Judiciary committee, been politicizing the courts.
The left has always fought with brass knuckles, while the right has mostly fought with pillows. That has changed in the last few years and the left doesn't like it one bit.
I wish I could give you more than a like for this post...
Of the four judges mentioned here the only one that bears any semblance to truth is Bork. Alberto Gonzalez? Please. Thomas? Biden conducted a hearing that wouldn’t be possible today given the heated topic. I suppose Anita should have been branded with a red letter instead of being listened to. Bork was the first and most egregious example of liberal (Edward Kennedy) overreach and prejudice. Bork was a titan and deserved a fair hearing.
Bidens remarks about Janice Rogers Brown showed his unrelenting unrelieved racism.
https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/former-judge-janice-rogers-brown-was-not-nominated-to-the-supreme-court/. Just in case we want to know what actually happened.
She was on the short list, and might have been the nominee.
Gonzalez and Rogers were both blocked by Biden and the Democrats before they could even be nominated. Thomas was treated atrociously by Biden and the Dems.
They were blocked by Democrats for the sleaziest of reasons - because the Democrats did not want the Republicans to be the party that appointed the first Latino (Gonzales) or the first black woman (Rogers Brown) to the Supreme Court. They insisted on preserving the lie that the Democrats are more supportive of minorities.
And the cowardly, scared, worthless Republicans should have excoriated them for it. That is why I love Trump, he tells the truth and goes after them
How about Miguel Estrada? Strong chance he would have been one of the 9 by now....if not blocked
He should at least had a shot at the DC district court - I make no excuses for Dem actions nor Republican. Both have engaged in anti-democratic behavior and I have a special place in hell for Harry Reid
By "heated topic", do you mean sexual assault?
If so, what about the Kavanaugh scandal?
The left is scum
Scum has a wide ownership - I’ve been at this too long and it’s why I became an independent decades ago.
True. Lots of scum on the right. The uniparty is a plague on our country.
Agree with both-a YOu. My hope is a *different* kind-a party rises from the ashes. Better yet, before the ashes.
"he left has always fought with brass knuckles, while the right has mostly fought with pillows"
Pop-media definitions of "left" and "right" aside: one of the few issues where the Democrats have really played hard, arguably underhanded politics over the years is in preserving a pro-choice majority on the Supreme Court.
The Democrats do this because "keeping abortion safe and legal" is part of the Minimum Requirement for distinguishing the Democrats from the Republicans. Most other issues, the Democrats typically exhibit a preference for punting on 2nd down.
Look just a recent history: using the IRS to go after political opponents; lying on court documents to get approval to spy on an opposition party candidate; enlisting big tech to censor political opponents; Reid getting rid of the filibuster; having the DOJ go after parents who dissent in school board meetings; suppressing cheap and effective COVID treatments to exert power; telling kids to hide stuff from their parents; colluding with the CIA to get the Hunter laptop story buried; the Russia hoax; I could go on and on...but the brass knuckles are inseparable from the democrat hands.
It's about DAMN time the Republicans started fighting back. There are still plenty who use pillows, but that number is dwindling.
That's about partisan warfare, not the standard content of making US government policy in Congress. There are a couple of exceptions.
"Reid getting rid of the filibuster" is a false claim; he didn't eliminate the filibuster, he made some limited exceptions. The Democrats having been abused for years by massive GOP stonewalling, based almost entirely on filibuster threats. For no other reason than to show the Democrats who's boss. To name just one lasting result, a perfect storm of opportunity to upgrade national infrastructure and public works was squandered. We're over a decade behind where we should be.
I never liked the filibuster. But if the Democrats actually had any idea of playing political hardball with getting legislation passed, they would have gotten rid of it entirely (or perhaps reduced the number of Senators required to override it to 55) in 2009, and then changed it back right before the November 2010 midterms.
The Russia impeachment was dreadful. A waste of Congressional energy.
As for the rest of it: politics in a democracy is supposed to be about having a dialogue, not a cage match to the death.
That goes for both the Democrats and the Republicans. Neither side has any business issuing false claims. And several are included in your list of charges. Insinuation is not evidence.
Post rationalization is a blast!
Everything I stated is backed up by facts.
Neil, perhaps we can discuss 'advise and consent'..
If we were to deconstruct the term, to 'advise' would (or could) be meant to mean 'under advisement.' And to go further, to deconstruct the word 'advise' means, upon careful consideration, we (the Senate) make a recommendation to either accept the validity of this nomination and proceed to a vote, or reject the nomination entirely and another nominee must be chosen.
So, how can the Senate 'advise' when there is no consideration? When there is not even a hearing to discuss the merits of the person considered? Where is the advisement here?
McConnell would have been better served, in my opinion, had he accepted Garland's nomination as given by Obama, discussed it (the advisement part), and then try to corral his caucus to vote en mass to reject him.
I suspect Mitch did what he did in not even considering Garland was his worry that some Republican Senators would support him, and he couldn't take that chance.
There was advisement, and the leader of the Senate decided not to move forward. Just because it doesn't mean it met your "advisement" requirements does not mean it didn't occur.
Oh wait...you guys define terms to meet your needs at the time...
nevermind...
My guys? I don't belong to anyone. I impugn everyone equally. As I expect to be.
Your meaning of advisement does not match mine. Advisement, to my mind, is the hearing itself. Held and recorded. Do we go forward with this nominee or do we not? That hearing that was never held. That fact is not in dispute. And if a Dem did that to a Republican President I would say the same.
But I do agree with your last word..!
Nevermind.
Or maybe when Ted Kennedy issued his screed against Robert Bork on the day he was nominated and called on the Senate to reject the nomination without any hearings.
"Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy."
Most serious legal scholars agree that Bork was a terrible nomination. Even Republicans voted against him.
Uh, no - he was extremely qualified. Republicans voted against him because, back then, they were unwilling to engage in the same tactics as Dems. It's only been a couple of years since Republicans decided to fight - and even then, there are too many who still want to be nice, even though they are repeatedly punched in the face.
It was Bork’s exposition of his legal philosophy that showed how far out of the mainstream he was, and that had two consequences, one immediate and the other long lasting. First, Bork’s nomination was rejected. Second, since then every nominee, regardless of political affiliation, has refused to engage in any substantive legal discussion, mostly using the dodge that “the issue may come before the Court.”
Right.
And my opinion of Bork was guided by some conservative state supreme court justices that I knew at time.
How sweet of you to think so. But why was the spineless survivor of the Saturday Night Massacre (you do remember Richard Nixon?) even nominated. Why would these ever so “decent” Republicans want someone on the court who had so little sympathy for individual rights and protections. Why do you?
On what do you base your conclusion that he had little sympathy for individual rights and protections?
Let me guess...you've heard it from "legal experts"...
Most serious legal scholars is code word for my team. Legal scholars did not all think that Bork was not fit. He most definitely was by the qualifications used for all SC nominees.
That's ridiculous revisionism. The thing that made his hanging so egregious was that he was so eminently qualified
I don’t think that’s accurate. Bork was the most distinguished legal scholar of his day.
I bet most of those "serious legal scholars" would probably, on demand, issue a statement on how qualified Ketanji Brown-Jackson is.
What? Bork was highly respected and more than qualified.
I support the right of married people to use contraceptives, the right of people not to be sterilized against their will, the right to marry, establish a home and bear children; a right to be taught a foreign language and a right of parents to send their children to private schools. These are all things that Bork rejected because of his view on the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment. Many people at the time considered this to be an extreme view- on both sides of the political divide. I certainly do.
Baloney.
That is far from an accurate description of Robert Bork's positions.
I don't say this lightly, this may have been one of the most misinformed posts that I have ever read on this board.
Wrong. Again.
Rich coming from a misogynistic rapist that left a woman to die in his car.
Funny. Poor Mary Jo. Say HER name.
So Left!
Prophecy
With either materialistic theory(Big Bang) or creationist theory faith is involved. Both are hard to understand and believe.
Given the partisanship demonstrated by Garland as AG, the country escaped a giant mistake when Republicans honored the Biden Rule. Garland is not a real jurist... he is an activist hack.
His fealty to the school board national lobby proves what a hack he is. Garland wanted to sic the FBI on parents who objected to injecting CRT in schools.
You know, Frank, you could very well be right. Perhaps Garland is a 'hack.' But what hack would wait fifteen months to indict either Trump or anyone on his White House team for the funhouse of Jan 6? Certainly a true partisan would have moved by now, don't you think?
What could Garland or anyone else possibly indict Trump for? He told people to go "peacefully and patriotically". Is that indictable? Or would you indict Trump because he didn't say enough to calm things down, for what he didn't say?
Blaming Trump for January 6 is as unfounded as all the allegations of "collusion" with Russians.
Well, Dean - a partisan hack as described by the person I was responding to just might be 'partisan' enough to find something indictable on the events of that day. That's what partisan hacks do. Benefit one side at the expense of another.
I'm not saying he should. (Though Jan 6 was indeed something to behold..)
“ Certainly a true partisan would have moved by now, don't you think?”
No. Just the opposite. Garland is a political hack and he is 100% focused on moves to benefit the Democrat party. Not a good look for any AG… but especially one that would have been a SCOTUS judge.
A related question. Why didn’t Biden nominate Garland to replace Breyer?
Wouldn't a move on indicting Mark Meadows, a few Republican congresspeople or Trump himself benefit the Dems? Democrats are scared witless that Trump will be around in 2024. Attempting to eliminate that possibility would be in their best interests, I would think. (Not that I personally think that's a smart move politically).
And as for your good question - Biden made the promise (a mistake, imo) to pick a Black woman jurist. Otherwise, Biden might have gone back to Garland.
Yeah… the JD Vance win in Ohio is confirmation that Dems should be shaking in their jackboots.
Democrats are fighting a Trump headwind which is ironically fueled b the Democrat singular focus on attempting to take out Trump with abuses of power.
I was just thinking about the activists that came out in DC chanting threatening slogans to SCOTUS judges. If the parties were reversed… Trump in power… the dem and media narrative would have been another insurrection attempt and the protestors would be jailed.
The problem that Dems have is that they really do think they are better and smarter than everyone else, and they thus ignore the voters seeing right though their dirty tricks. And so they just do more of the same and this strengthens Trump instead of weakening him.
Biden promised to nominate a black woman. But then he failed to get a biologist to determine whether Ketanji Brown Jackson is a woman, so he may have broken that campaign promise.
Joe Biden was the one who, as a senator, said that a president should not get to make a supreme court appointment during the final year of his term when the other side controlled the senate:
"Instead, it would be our pragmatic conclusion that once the political season is underway — and it is — action on a Supreme Court nomination must be put off until after the election campaign is over. That is what is fair to the nominee, and essential to the process. Otherwise, it seems to me Mr. President, we will be in deep trouble as an institution."
This was a speech Biden made on the senate floor during 1992, so don't blame McConnell. Look it up.
The key is “until after the election campaign is over”. That is very different than saying until after the winner is inaugurated. And, of course, when Senator Biden spoke, there was no nomination (or even open court seat) pending and no vote was ever taken on his suggestion.
The irony, of course, is that Senator McConnell had no basis for preventing the Garland nomination from being brought up in the Senate - a precedent that might come back to bite a Republican President working with a Democratic Senate.
Senator Biden’s suggestion was ignored again when Senator McConnell rushed through Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination weeks before the 2020 election.
Only if the Senate had taken up the Barrett nomination after the election results were in would the so-called Biden Rule have arguably been complied with.
Do you really think that Biden would have given a hearing to a supreme court nominee from George H.W. Bush between the election and inauguration day? Phrasing it as being about the campaign is just a ruse. Biden would not allow a nominee to get a hearing during Bush's final year.
The difference between Garland and Barrett is that the president's party controlled the senate in the latter case. That was part of Biden's precedent. If the Dems had been in the minority in the senate in 1992 Biden could not have set his precedent.
Exactly. This is an easy concept to grasp. The democrats and their followers act like it is some convoluted theory. Pretty simple.
The slight turn of phrase you used “Biden’s precedent” reminded me of the abuse of language Senator McConnell engaged in. As a matter of historical fact, Senator Biden set no “precedent” as there was no nomination whose hearing was pushed off until after the 1992 election. Nor could he alone have set a “rule”, as that requires a Senate vote.
All he did was to make a theoretical suggestion that over two decades later, Senator McConnell dusted off to cover a break in Senate tradition, turning one Senator’s musing into a Senate precedent. He had the numbers and got away with it - and that’s just raw politics, as allowed by the system. The whole “precedent” claim was for public consumption.
But what goes around, comes around and, as they say, payback (in whatever form the Democrats may administer it when that time does inevitably come) will surely be a b***h (not sure what the rules of etiquette here are, but it’s an old saying with which everyone should be familiar).
I'll take Joe Biden at his word that he would not have allowed a nomination by George H.W. Bush to move forward. I believe Biden was chairman of the Judiciary Committee when he made that speech.
We will never know, will we, as he was speaking hypothetically. And after Senator McConnell’s unprecedented and heavy handed actions, we can be sure that no candidate will pass after an election who is too far in either political direction.
No. That was a question of POLITICS. That was political warfare.
The court, as in institution just took a body blow.
There will never again be the kind of collegiality, open sharing of opinion, debate among colleagues, that has allowed the court to proceed forward for two centuries.
All trust has been destroyed.
Clerks and staff will no longer share information with each other. They will hold information and perhaps intentionally mislead their peers to hide the real thoughts of their principles.
THAT is going to effect every single case......every one....from here on out.
And at the end of the day, this action that just substantially undermined the functioning of the court, will make NO difference. The decision would have been handed down in June, well before the election anyway. The justices are not going to change their votes and reward this kind of behavior. It has zero practical impact on Roe or the outcome. All this did was undermine the foundations of the Supreme Court.
That's reflective of the Senate, and within the Senate's authority, and doesn't reflect on the Supreme Court unless you specifically choose to do so. That's on you not the Court.
Undoubtedly this left-wing zealot is unaware that Democrats promised to do in 2008 (had a SCOTUS vacancy occurred that year) what Republicans did in 2016.
But it ought to be aware of the Bork and Thomas confirmation fiascos. It is beyond absurd for a Leftist to pretend that Republicans "did it first".
I haven’t replied to anyone but I will make an exception in your case. I’m not a “left-wing zealot” and I’m not an “it.” You, however, are unbelievably rude.
You were well aware when you wrote your original post that it was rude, but it was a rudeness that promotes your cause. You forfeited standing from which to complain about comeuppance.
Really? What was rude? I’d like you to enlighten me.
Not rude at all. Just historically blinkered.
But it didn't sail when;
https://t.co/gTbTtXGjgP
article3project.orgWomen & Minorities - A3P: The Article III Project
Judicial Nominees Actions speak louder than words. Democrats talk a lot about diversity, but Democrats opposed the confirmation of each of these highly qualified minority and women judicial nominees....
https://article3project.org/resources/women-minority-nominees/
Democrats who opposed her confirmation:
Akaka (D-HI), Baucus (D-MT), Bayh (D-IN), Biden (D-DE), Bingaman (D-NM), Boxer (D-CA), Byrd (D-WV), Cantwell (D-WA), Carper (D-DE), Clinton (D-NY), Conrad (D-ND), Corzine (D-NJ), Dayton (D-MN), Dodd (D-CT), Dorgan (D-ND), Durbin (D-IL), Feingold (D-WI), Feinstein (D-CA), Harkin (D-IA), Inouye (D-HI), Johnson (D-SD), Kennedy (D-MA), Kerry (D-MA), Kohl (D-WI), Landrieu (D-LA), Lautenberg (D-NJ), Leahy (D-VT), Levin (D-MI), Lieberman (D-CT), Lincoln (D-AR), Mikulski (D-MD), Murray (D-WA), Nelson (D-FL), Obama (D-IL), Pryor (D-AR), Reed (D-RI), Reid (D-NV), Rockefeller (D-WV), Salazar (D-CO), Sarbanes (D-MD), Schumer (D-NY), Stabenow (D-MI), Wyden (D-OR)
Regarding Justice Thomases wife and messages:
Obama Judge: Being Married to a DOJer in Russia Probe Not Disqualifying for Roger Stone Jury
https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2019/11/obama-judge-being-married-dojer-russia-probe-not-daniel-greenfield/#.XcOvrpQ7so8.twitter
The level and degree of abuses in Obama's ongoing Watergate is truly spectacular. Here's a scene from the Roger Stone trial.
Drew Holden
Justice Elena Kagan, nominated by President Obama, had never served a day as a judge before joining the Supreme Court.
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1314314402745774081.html
McConnell invokes 'nuclear option' to clear the way for lower-level Trump nominees https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/mcconnell-invokes-nuclear-option-clear-way-lower-level-trump-nominees-n990551
"In 2013, Democrats used the move to eliminate the 60-vote threshold to confirm executive branch and non-Supreme Court judicial nominations under President Barack Obama. Republicans did the same to clear the way for Supreme Court nominations, confirming Neil Gorsuch to the high court in 2017 and Brett Kavanaugh last year."
Obama Opposed Black, Conservative Judge for Two Years: http://www.frontpagemag.com/point/261876/obama-opposed-black-conservative-judge-who-was-daniel-greenfield#.VsX4UEud2N0.twitter
3/19/2016 Now, Obama, SCOTUS Roadblock Could Hurt Process "Beyond Repair": http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/273636-obama-scotus-roadblock-could-hurt-process-beyond-repair
Obama, First US President in History to Filibuster a Supreme Court Nominee Hopes for Clean Process: http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/05/first-president-in-us-history-to-have-voted-to-filibuster-a-supreme-court-nominee-now-hopes-for-clea.html
With the tables turned, Obama now 'regrets' his 2006 Alito filibuster https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2016/02/17/obama-now-regrets-his-2006-alito-filibuster-white-house-says/80514152/
Hillary and Senator Obama Filibustered and Obstructed Bush Nominees: http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2016/02/16/hillary-scotus-tweet-storm-n2120008
As to Garland nomination;
Joe Biden, 1992, Biden's statement at the time was emphatic. "It is my view that if the president goes the way of Presidents Fillmore and Johnson and presses an election year nomination, the Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over," the then-Judiciary Committee Chairman said.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/biden-walks-back-1992-supreme-court-remark/article/2583910
White House Defends Biden's SCOTUS Comments: http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/270438-white-house-defends-biden-scotus-comments
"On January 25, 2006, Biden was one of only 24 of the Senate's 44 Democrats who tried to filibuster Alito. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and Biden — who reneged on an earlier promise to give Alito a vote — were joined by Vermont Independent Senator "Jumping" Jim Jeffords."
No hearing for Obama’s Supreme Court nominee, McConnell says https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/273230-mcconnell-no-hearing-for-garland/
“The Senate will continue to observe the ‘Biden Rule’ so the American people have a voice in this momentous decision. The American people may well elect a president who decides to nominate Judge Garland for Senate consideration. The next president may also nominate somebody very different. Either way, our view is this: Give the people a voice in filling this vacancy.”
JULY 2, 2018
Senate Democrats invoke "Biden Rule" to halt Trump's Supreme Court Plans https://aminewswire.org/stories/kennedy/
Obama Challenges GOP to 'Win an Election' If They Want New Policies - http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/obama-challenges-gop-win-election-policies/story?id=20593955
That's odd, being it's the Democrats that always push race and diversity of nominees before wanting to look at qualifications. Most recent example; "I'm going to nominate a black woman..." J. Biden, Democrat. https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/biden-supreme-court-black-woman-pick-february/
Any questions by Republicans as to the nominee's qualifications are met with charges of misogyny, racism, etc., so I suppose I respect your point, but I can't agree with it.
https://article3project.org/resources/women-minority-nominees/
If you look at those pictured as nominees by the Republicans, they met all of the beloved basic requirements embraced as paramount to Democrats; gender and race, but they ignored the qualifications or painted them as extremists, whereas a nominee that refuses to define "woman," well, that's "mainstream?"
https://www.dailywire.com/news/im-not-a-biologist-supreme-court-nominee-says-she-cant-define-the-word-woman
I think you're spot on. Whenever I hear the Republicans trying to make a big deal out of the first whoever who was whatever, it just seems to me like they're trying to play the Left's game. But then again, I suppose our whole culture is playing it to a certain degree.
Exactly. As a veteran myself, I always roll my eyes when a politician tries to play the veteran card.
Because after the Senate asked every nut job in America to assert their knowledge of Kavanaugh's teenage raping ways, legitimacy of advice and consent was waving its flag on high. Right. The issue with the decay of America and its institutions is deeper than D vs R.
I agree with the decay "deeper than D or R" but my position highlights what the D's, and some RINO's are doing in that arena of decay, eroding faith in the legal system.
At a grassroots level, is theis attribuitable to a D or an R?
All the evidence about this was presented to the US Attorney, the PA AG, and the local Delaware County DA. They all refused to act. (George Soros, buying a district attorney near you https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/may/30/george-soros-buying-district-attorney-near-you) Just Google it, Soros buying DA’s.
Jerry Nadler and AOC: 'Releasing a Significant Number of Incarcerated People…Will Surely Save Lives' https://www.cnsnews.com/article/washington/cnsnewscom-staff/jerry-nadler-and-aoc-releasing-significant-number-incarcerated
The Biden Administration Drops Dozens of Charges Against Violent Protesters in Portland https://jonathanturley.org/2021/05/04/the-biden-administration-drops-dozens-of-charges-against-violent-protesters-in-portland/
Soros-backed St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner loses bid to stay on McCloskey case https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/missouri-supreme-court-upholds-ruling-booting-kim-gardner-mccloskeys
Soros Backed Sheriff Penzone and the Maricopa County Board Wouldn’t Turn Over Router Data to AZ Senate Audit – He’s Now Likely Facing Contempt Charges In Another Case https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/06/soros-backed-sheriff-penzone-maricopa-county-board-wouldnt-turn-router-data-az-senate-audit-now-likely-facing-contempt-charges-another-case/
EXCLUSIVE: Arizona’s Soros-Backed Sec. of State, Katie Hobbs, Has Glaring Conflicts of Interest With Senate’s Maricopa Audit, She Must Immediately Recuse Herself
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/04/arizonas-soros-backed-sec-state-katie-hobbs-blaring-conflicts-interest-senates-maricopa-audit-must-immediately-recuse/
Biden Taps Soros Fellow As WH Criminal Justice Adviser.
https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/biden-taps-soros-criminal-justice-adviser/
Exclusive–Wilcox: How Soros Money, Radical DAs Are Killing Our Cities https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2021/03/18/exclusive-wilcox-how-soros-money-radical-das-are-killing-our-cities/
And, not to be forgotten, the Jan 6 protestors still held in jail without bail. Where's the ACLU left? Compromised, that's where.
I could go on but I hope you take my point; it's top to bottom or bottom to top. Either way, it must be stopped.
The ship of legitimacy didn’t sail with Robert Bork or the Anita Hill faux-scandals?
McConnell plays chess while Democrats play checkers.
I could not disagree with you more.
You need to remove yourself from this discussion. "Are you retarded?" Seriously?
There is a gulf of difference between not being PC and just being rude, uncivil, offensive, insulting and abusive.
You are wrong on all counts.
Unfortunately this Substack is full of people who love the damage that McConnell has ushered in, because he's got the magic R behind his name.
Does the name Harry Reid ring a bell?
Damage begins with a "D". Restoration begins with an "R".
Good point; Nuclear Options Harry Reid: http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2013/11/21/qa-what-is-the-nuclear-option/
"In 2008, Mr. Reid himself swore that as long as he was the leader, he would never turn to the nuclear option, saying it would be a "black chapter in the history of the Senate."
Senator Obama - Nuclear Option Not What the Founders Had in Mind:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q6aqw_SfU0#action=share
November 2013, Reid, Democrats, Trigger Nuclear Option to Eliminate Most Filibusters on Nominees: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/senate-poised-to-limit-filibusters-in-party-line-vote-that-would-alter-centuries-of-precedent/2013/11/21/d065cfe8-52b6-11e3-9fe0-fd2ca728e67c_story.html
Senate Dems, powerless to stop Trump nominees, regret 'nuclear option' power play http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/05/politics/senate-democrats-nuclear-option-donald-trump/index.html
Yep ... totally aware. Did you like that? Was it cool when a Democratic Senate did that? Does it make what McConnell did with Garland and then Justice Coney Barrett okay?
I'm aware. We're all aware of the Harry Reid thing. How'd you feel about that? Does that change anything about the garbage Mitch McConnell has pulled? Never mind, you're clear that it doesn't matter.
I was actually happy with what McConnell did because after watching the R's get rolled over and over again for decades it was good to see them start to fight back. They still have a lot of learning to do in order to catch up to the D dirty tricks, but at least some of them are playing the game before them instead of the one they wish they were playing.
Hilarious.
LOL, I wish McConnell were voted out. I have never been a fan of "cocain" Mitch, but the one good thing he did was keep Garland off of the court.
How about you; got any Democrats you want to be voted out?
Yep.
I know a lot of Rs that are not McConnell supporters.
Me too, but they don't like him because he's not pro-Trump enough. So...
Some. Others don't like him because he is an establishment hack and doing little to combat the nasties on the other side of the aisle.
I was referring to the people I know. I'm guessing there's some overlap between those two groups.
Did you ever name a Democrat you don’t like? You can put me in the “doesn’t support Trump” not liking Mitch category. Mitch got his job because of Trump.
And people who refuse to look at what part Democrats play in this political theatre.
Not at all.
Hey Bari - these are your new allies? Awesome.
You know, Marek, there are theocracies where you can execute women for "not keeping their legs closed." It seems like that would be a better fit for you.
You know, there'd be no unplanned pregnancies if men didn't ejaculate in women who don't want to have babies in them. Maybe they should keep their pants zipped?
"Don't be so sensitive." Maybe you shouldn't be garbage?
Bush v. Gore
Could be? We'll never really know about that one or any of them until we tighten up our election proceedures. https://edition.cnn.com/2015/10/31/politics/bush-gore-2000-election-results-studies/index.html
If you truly believe that, then you deserve what you're going to get
I hereby propose the establishment of the Roger B. Taney Award for Excellence in Discrediting the U.S. Supreme Court. The inaugural winner will be announced at a later date…
Deep cut, but I do love this joke.
100% agree. It’s a nuance that is getting lost in the debate.
Institutions fail from the inside, not from external forces, and this is a perfect example of that.
I appreciate your comment. Can you please explain why this is so devastating? Why is having some transparency in the process a bad thing?
An excellent question. The reason is that the exchange of preliminary opinions is an essential part of the Justices' deliberations. They take an early vote, and then--based on that--draft opinions are circulated for both a majority opinion and a dissent, as well as any concurring opinions that seek to find a middle ground. (The assignment of these drafts is an interestingly aspect of this process--the Chief Justice assigns the draft if he is in the early majority, but the senior justice in that early majority--in this case Justice Thomas--assigns the draft if the Chief is in the early minority.) Only then does the real fun begin, as the Justices grapple with the detailed arguments on both sides. It is often the case that these initial drafts bear no relation to the opinion that ultimately emerges from the deliberation process. Leaks like this will forestall this, freezing the Justices into their initial positions and making true deliberation by the entire Court impossible. More fundamentally, it is just another step down the slippery slope toward making the Court simply another political institution--when it was designed by the Framers to play a different function. Hope this helps.
Greatly appreciated. Thank you for the explanation!
I just read that there were two separate leaks from the court re: the Roe v Wade decision. One, early on, to the Washington Post, and one -of the final opinion- to Time Magazine.
Someone within the ranks breaks trust. That is the problem. It has never been done before says it all. Without trust the institution cannot function.
It can function, just rather badly. Which I suppose may be the same thing, depending on how you look at it.
It also increases the risk of violence to the conservative members of the court BEFORE the ruling is handed down...
Because it's en effort to pressure the court to change its mind before the ruling becomes the official case law.
Regardless of one's politics, one of the concepts that the integrity of the Supreme Court rests on (or any legit court for that matter) is the idea that the justices can and should come to an opinion on a given case with little to no outside influence. It's one of the cornerstones to having an honest and fair judicial system.
Someone leaking court documents before they are actually released throws a huge wrench in all of that because it opens up the court to all sorts of political and public pressure before the opinion is given.
Transparency doesn't really have anything to do with this, it's not a catch-all term for everyone having to divulge everything at all times. For instance, you wouldn't demand and HR dept. release personnel documents on all of their employees in the interest of 'transparency', that's not how it works. Some things fall into the absolute transparency pool, some partially, and some not at all...it entirely depends on the thing you are talking about and the context therein.
Transparency is not an on-off switch. It takes wisdom, reason, and precedent to know where to set that line for each case. The Supreme Court had all three of those, especially the latter, in spades up until recently.
Great thoughts here Elliot, as I was reading your note it occurred to me that the leak effectively introduces a 10th voice to the conversation in a wholly unproductive way.
Because it's en effort to pressure the court to change its mind before the ruling becomes the official case law.
Once again, Glenn gets to the meat of the matter. Check it out:https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-irrational-misguided-discourse?s=r
Great article. Thanks.
They gave honor a juice box and trophy and took its picture along with sloth, beauty, craven, saintly, venal, jealous, covetous, banal, and ambivalent, all of which were given their fair equity.
Sean, somebody wanted to make a statement. You may call it extreme free speech. Something which is usually applauded around here.
Then, in my book, they should stand up, publicly resign in protest, and take the risk of being disbarred for breaching their duty of confidentiality to the Court. I wouldn't like it, but I'd respect it a lot more.
Yes, I take your point. Take responsibility for your actions and public opinions and accept the consequences. As in old school, right?
But it's new school now. As it is here on this comment section on an ever more popular online magazine; how many of us are actually going by our own names? I would say the majority do not. Anonymity is everywhere. Self expression is cheap (but still effective) when you don't have to account for it.
I'm not entirely happy at the leak. Integrity in an institution used to mean something. (Then again, the Supreme Court itself as an institution used to mean something - but that's another conversation.)
But in 2022? Not at all surprised.
I'm actually more surprised at the shock people have of the leak.
You’re probably right not to be surprised, Lee, but I guess I’m still old-fashioned enough to believe that some things ought to remain sacred. Getting to feel more quixotic every day, though…
Now that I can relate to.
Honor? Ok boomer
Legitimacy? The "court" lost its legitimacy in 1803 when it stole the legislative powers. Since then the "constitution" has been void.
In some countries, judges must wear hoods during trials. Their identities must be concealed or they will be assassinated if any ruling falls short of mob justice. This is what the left obviously wants.
Progressives (as in the Left) want judges assassinated? Gee, how did we all miss that obvious conclusion?
Sean...i do not disapprove nor disagree with your comment but my 2 cents ask , what could be wrong with receiving knowledge about a court decision prior or during a case? Oh i know it is "hands off", but nothing personnel. no harm...bees me.
How do you know the “leak” is real? I don’t buy it.
Justice Roberts has said it is real, and the document is authentic, and is implementing an investigation. The leak is real.
Thanks
I had that thought, too. But the Court confirmed it this morning, according to CNN.
“According to CNN” sets off alarms in me, too!
I will be enormously relieved if it's revealed to be a forgery.
People conflate 2 issues: (1) what should abortion policy be, and (2) who should decide abortion policy. I don’t think there is an intellectually honest answer to the second question other than that “the legislative branch of government should decide.” Once Roe v. Wade is overturned, each of us is free to go to the voting booth and vote our conscience. Since Roe was handed down, I have not had that freedom.
Wholeheartedly agree with this point! This is a political issue that should be resolved through the political process of legislation. Catholic Ireland was able to legalize abortion by referendum. Abortion advocates should have sought to build a durable political consensus on this issue, rather than hiding behind a constitutionally flawed and highly divisive judicial opinion.
When the Court chose to decide Roe instead of leaving it to the legislature, it set this train wreck in motion. And now the train has finally left the rails . . . .
Ham, it could work here (though I know it will never happen) - federal legislation enacted to make legally binding a national referendum here in the United states on the legality of abortion (within a period of viability). It could well be the answer, a la Ireland. Circumvent the courts and state legislatures altogether. A direct vote for a direct result.
Article 1 of the Constitution grants no such power.
Because as Benjamin Franklin supposedly noted when he emerged from the Constitutional Convention, “it’s a Republic if you can keep it.” It’s no coincidence that Article 1 of the Constitution is titled “Congress” and it begins “All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States…” It doesn’t say “some,” it says “All.” This is what makes us a republic—that the laws are made exclusively by the people’s duly elected representatives. Sometimes those laws are wise, and sometimes they are foolish. If they are foolish, the people can elect new representatives who can change the laws. But when Roe v. Wade was decided, the Court arrogated to itself the sole right to make laws concerning abortion. Half of the people in this country have felt disenfranchised for 50 years. They can’t vote for legislators at the state or federal level who can change a law that they perceive as wrong. At least when it comes to abortion, this country does not function as a Republic. Instead, it is an oligarchy ruled by 9 unelected Justices whose decisions can’t be overruled T the ballot box. This is not what the founders intended. Franklin would not think of it as republican with a small r. Overruling Roe v. Wade will not mean that abortion is illegal. Rather it will mean that power is returned to the people who will be able to act through their elected representatives. Roe v. Wade, through the fiction of penumbral rights, has always been intellectually dishonest. Not only that, it has been enormously divisive. Indeed, I would argue that it is one of the primary causes of the political polarization which is destroying this country. After it is overruled, there will be anger. But then the issue can be hashed out in the legislatures as the Founders intended. In time, we can begin to heal.
You’re reply is non-responsive. Rather you want to know if I am consistent. But it seems that you would support any process if it yielded your chosen result.
“ Here’s Bernie Sanders on Twitter last night: “Congress must pass legislation that codifies Roe v. Wade as the law of the land in this country NOW. And if there aren’t 60 votes in the Senate to do it, and there are not, we must end the filibuster to pass it with 50 votes.””
Sorry, Bernie, that’s not how this works. Considering this is a conversation about what the constitution ACTUALLY SAYS, let’s take a brief look into Article I.
Do you see anything in there giving congress the enumerated power to define a whether a surgical or medical procedure is legal in one of the many states? Oh, no? Yeah, me neither, since it’s not in there.
The fact of the matter is that the federal congress has no power to actually do this. It isn’t interstate commerce, so don’t try that either. It’s a single decision, between a patient and physician in a single state, and babies are not economic considerations for the law.
I’m pro-choice, but that doesn’t matter. Congress simply does not have the power to legislate this issue federally.
Wickard v Filburn essentially gave Congress the precedent to do whatever they want, Constitution be damned.
that case should be the first to be reversed, Miranda second.....
third should be whatever case(s) led to Chevron deference...that one virtually eliminated all accountability for Congressional representatives. So between the first and the third, you have "do whatever you want" and "no accountability for what you do". Pretty sweet deal.
It’s called the 14th amendment: “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.”, Where is the right enumerated that the state or federal government can deny a woman the right to an abortion?
Where in that language does abortion fit? Restricting abortion does not deny any person of life, liberty, or property, nor deny any person equal protection.
And you have it exactly backwards, which most libs always do: a power (not a right) that is not specifically enumerated to the federal government belongs to the state.
The biological mass inside a woman’s body is not the property?
Interesting perspective. You seem to think humans are property, and that school of thought died, in the US, 160 years ago - except within Dems.
Also - the deprivation of property is through the act of abortion, not preventing abortion. Restrictions on abortion actually protect what you call property.
Also - most states will still allow abortion, with reasonable restrictions.
The biological mass inside a woman is not a human being!
When did the government start protecting personal property?
One woman’s reasonable restrictions is another woman’s unreasonable restriction!
Not a human being? The majority of the people in the US disagree with you, at least after the first trimester. And now that you (the left) believe men can give birth, you must accept the opinion of men in the same way as you accept the opinion of women.
The government does not protect personal property, but it is responsible for protecting human beings to a certain extent.
At least you admit that some restrictions can be reasonable. That's a start.
And what about the 10th? If the power is not specifically and explicitly granted to the federal government, then the federal government can’t act on it. Period. Those powers are reserved for the states, or for the people.
I’d also add that I made the same gripe when the Republican congress passed the “born-alive” bill (its official title escapes me). This is simply not a federal power
Check out Exodus 20:21. If a woman miscarries as a result of being inadvertently hit while 2men fight, the assailant must pay damages for the lost dreams of the couple, but if harm comes to the woman then the usual criminal law (eye for an eye…) applies. The fetus is not a person, the woman is
I'd be careful trying to use scriptural justifications from the Torah. Those laws were probably written down in the late Bronze Age, and therefore conveyed the best moral standard for a society at that time. Would you, for instance, say that a man who buys a slave must free him after seven years unless he gives him a wife? (Exodus 21:2-6)
True enough, I personally believe that terminating a pregnancy is a profoundly personal and often agonizing decision and as an American , I’m content to entrust that decision to the woman who must make it. However since the opposition to choice is grounded in religious belief, I thought quoting the Bible as source material is appropriate
This is what choice means; Jewish belief is usually grounded in Genesis, when God breathes Life into the newly formed Adam. Traditionally, for Jews, Life begins at birth with the first breath. Orthodox Jews believe differently, hence the necessity of choice
The biological mass inside a woman is not a person!
A living organism inside a woman is not a person!
What if the living organism inside a woman is formed enough to live outside her body?
Federal law would be supreme over state law , in a way it would be doing what the court asked. Elected reps making the decision rather then judges. In this case federal ones.
Except that there’s no enumerated power to justify taking any action at all.
I could see the left trying to justify it under the interstate commerce clause.....
I don’t think you’re wrong. Frankly, the interstate commerce clause has been used to justify some pretty dubious legislation in the past.
I don’t think this is a left-wing specific issue though. In fact, the federal ban on partial birth abortions indicates that the pro-life right is similarly uninterested in which powers are actually granted to the Congress, and which are made up for political advocacy.
Ectopic pregnancy is ALWAYS a medical emergency and would never be part of any abortion legislation.
I wish that were true. But recently one of the midwest states...Missouri, maybe? (Sorry Missourians, if that's wrong!)... had legislation pending that includes ectopic pregnancies. Can't recall where I read it, it was a few weeks ago. But I was so shocked and disbelieving that I went to the actual text of the law being proposed and sure enough, ectopic pregnancy was included in the prohibition. Someone close to me has suffered two such pregnancies and I could NOT fathom how it could be that law-makers were so ignorant as to include a medical emergency in an anti-abortion bill. Hopefully that will be (or already has been) corrected before the bill is voted on.
There was some proposed legislation in one state that said IF it became possible to transplant a baby from an ectopic pregnancy, THEN it would be illegal to kill that baby. Is that what you were talking about? This proposed legislation did not pass. The language was included because the legislator had been told it could be possible in the future, and he (I think it was a he) wanted to include that in the bill so it wouldn't have to be relegislated in that eventuality. The legislation didn't pass, in part because of that wording. Bad wording in a bill does not mean "conservatives want women to die from ectopic pregnancies." There is currently no option, even under consideration, to removing a tube in the case of an ectopic pregnancy, and that is not considered an abortion -- an abortion is the deliberate death of the mother. This is the removal of the tube to prevent the mother's death. I worked for years in the pro-life movement, everyone understands this.
Thank you for clarifying this. I KNEW it couldn't be true.
I did not see anything in the portion of the bill I read that indicated the ban was contingent on the fetus (embryo, really, at that stage) surviving; if it was in the text somewhere else in the bill then I missed that section. Fwiw, I am conservative and lean strongly pro-life, but it was astonishing to me that ectopic pregnancies could land in an anti-abortion bill. I do hope it was removed entirely if the bill was voted on. I just wish I could recall where I saw it/what state is was.
There could not be a circumstance where a woman presenting with an ectopic pregnancy would not be treated immediately. It is a life threatening emergency recognized as such by any medical person.
I find that really bizarre and perhaps that is different legislation than what I saw.
I found it bizarre, too, and can only presume and hope the language of the bill would be amended to exclude ectopic pregnancies. I found a link to the bill; it was Missouri:
https://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills221/hlrbillspdf/5798H.01I.pdf
Oh THAT one. No, you're not correct. That is saying (or is meant to say) it outlaws performing a surgical or "medical" (giving abortion drugs) abortion to anyone with an ectopic pregnancy. A woman with an ectopic pregnancy MUST have her tube removed, that's a completely different surgery and must be done in a hospital. If a woman is pregnant and an abortionist does a D&C or gives her RU486, it won't "terminate the pregnancy," it will do nothing and she will die if not treated for the ectopic pregnancy. In such cases, the abortionist doesn't determine what is really going on -- a huge dereliction of basic medical care.
The legislation is pending, you say? It hasn't passed and been signed by the governor? I would be incredulous if it was signed as is with ectopic pregnancies in a total abortion ban. There is no way a woman with an ectopic pregancy would be left to die. I can't believe it.
You're correct. They would not.
I can't believe it would be passed into law, as written. I also can't believe doctors would abide by it if it did. But I also can't believe it would be proposed in the first place. Horrifying.
I can believe it could be proposed. There seems to be no shortage of stupid people. However, there is NO way this would make it into a law, that a half way intelligent governor would sign it, and that ANY doctor would abide by it.
The extreme right woke culture warriors; forcing motherhood on the poor against their will is destructive and cruel!
It is indeed a race to the bottom. I try not to allow myself to drift into conspiracy theories, but given the current state of the Democratic Party, it seems like too big of a coincidence that this happened. Someone is trying to be a hero to the party. This is a chilling event, suggesting that the country is destroying itself.
How much you want to bet not one democrat condemns this breach of ethics. Instead they will all shriek and join the screaming meemies.
I've seen a lot of social media posts saying that CONSERVATIVES decrying the leak are just covering up for it. Yo, NOT betraying your profession and responsibilities for politics is a conservative principle.
Once the leaker is found, disbarred, and expelled from the profession, they will be greeted by a Nobel Prize, songs and flowers, and an MSNBC Contributor gig for life - which will validate that this was not the work of a single rogue individual who lacks respect for the institution, but a movement bent on destroying ALL our institutions when the don't get their way...
I am strongly pro-life and feel that if this holds that it will be not only a victory for the unborn but also for those women who have been victimized by the abortion industry. However, I think that all of us should agree that this breach is a sad testament to the society we live in and what we are becoming. It shouldn't have happened this way.
If you are pro-life, would you be in favor of tax supported child care or at least post-natal care to insure that such babies, who may or may not be wanted by their mother, have a chance of a good and healthy life?
Would you grant such minimal assistance to all or limit it to the subgroup of women “who have been victimized by the abortion industry”?
Or does your pro-life view encompass your interest in state intervention only for the period from conception to birth, after which you are happy for the state to stand back and let the mother and child figure it all out from there?
It just seems to me that some humility is in order and those not directly involved should respect the decision of those who are.
Thank you for the comment Charles. My response to that is that there are a number of avenues of help, some public and some private, to assist a mother with the demands of raising a child. There is also the viable option of adoption which is available to her as well. However, taking the life of the child because she or he is unwanted, should not be a legal option in a civilized society.
I'm pro-life and this is one of those "let's pretend we don't already have Medicaid, WIC, food stamps, housing vouchers, and free public education" posts. Killing innocent people is always wrong, at any age and wherever they are.
Social welfare is bad for people. Period.
It is dishonest and logically absurd for left-wing people to suggest that people who understand that social welfare is bad for people have to support it or else they're hypocrites for opposing murdering people.
You are entitled to your view, but should you ever find yourself, for whatever reason, in need of such government programs to st least tide you and your family over, I can’t imagine your turning away.
It reminds me of Senator Rand’s less than principled stance against federal aid to states hit by natural catastrophe ... other than his own, when Kentucky eventually needed help.
Yep, JDFree, social welfare is really terrible for people! I mean, look at Finland and Denmark, the top two happiest countries in the world; Let’s face it, good culture warriors don’t want happy people!
I genuinely wonder if you realize that you've completely surrendered the point we were disagreeing about.
Charles... the present administration is asking to send 44 billion dollars to Ukraine.. and you're asking if someone is willing to fund a support structure for abortion survival victims? Your line of questions is a preposterous politicization of abortion, shame on you.
Satire suits you, nicely done. But so that others are clear, read in its proper context, my comment was addressed to the states that seek to ban abortion and not to the federal government.
More like petty misdirection.
I'm not sure why you took the conversation where you did with Wayne. He said he was pro-life and had reservations about the abortion industry but that's reasonable enough.
I agree with the statement about humility. And the topic is first and foremost about decisions. If you don't want a baby, then use contraception or don't have sex. If you make a mistake, are raped, etc. then abortion before fetal viability is emotionally painful but I wouldn't vote to disallow it. If a woman begins to use abortion as contraception, to me that is wrong - and there is no easy answer to that that doesn't stink of coercion. I got nothing on that one.
Regarding state support, well thats a whole other question. JDFree goes there, in a very black and white fashion. Many more welfare dollars go Medicaid/Medicare than food stamps, subsidized housing, etc. I'll just speak to the latter.
Welfare was always meant to be a hand helping you up not one inducing dependence. Even the most casual observer must see it frequently has and continues to induce long term dependence. When surveyed, most in those situations hate it, don't want to be there, but have many issues of their own and other's makings that are hard to overcome. It is foolish that we do not have public debate about how to solve the real problem, that problem. It is not primarily racism, it is way harder than that.
So what say you, Charles?
It is always wrong to kill an innocent person. Anyone you know -- your best friend, your spouse, your coworker -- could have been the product of rape or a one-night stand. Their lives are not less worthy than anyone else's.
Thank you for your thoughtful intervention. What I would say is this. First, let’s dispense with the canard about people using abortion as birth control. If there are such people, it is an infinitesimally small group (unless you have evidence to the contrary). Public policy should not be driven by such extreme and extremely rare outliers.
Second, I think something similar applies to the welfare created dependence idea. I have yet to see actual evidence that it too is true in large numbers. I agree with your perception about people’s grudging acceptance. Underlying both, though, is the 19th century concept of the “deserving poor”. Falling into hard times is overwhelmingly, it seems to me, the result of unforeseen circumstances or legitimate decisions that led to bad outcomes. Our welfare system needs perhaps to be redesigned to set certain benchmarks toward returning someone (perhaps in the interim by affording them access to the necessary tools) to return as productive members of society.
In a sense, it’s a change similar (but not identical, obviously) to divorce law which went from lifetime alimony to time limited maintenance to encourage that spouse to find employment.
“Our welfare system needs perhaps to be redesigned to set certain benchmarks toward returning someone (perhaps in the interim by affording them access to the necessary tools) to return as productive members of society. In a sense, it’s a change similar (but not identical, obviously) to divorce law, which went from lifetime alimony to time limited maintenance to encourage that spouse to find employment.”
Very interesting, that is an idea worth exploration. Thank you.
Regarding welfare dependence, I went back through my research. It is hard to find a holistic view of federal and state assistance programs and I don’t have time for it. I’ll stand by the claim there is too much of it.
There are too many perverse incentives, e.g. you change jobs to make $20 a month more than a “means” threshold and you lose your assistance worth $200 a month. A rational person trying to feed kids would stay put and stay stuck. Means testing is a good idea, but its implementation is more complicated than simple-minded bureaucrats work through.
Regarding the level of women having multiple abortions, I agree that abortion as a contraceptive is likely an outlier. However, based on a quick review of four peer-reviewed studies (Canada, US, EU) on Research Gate, roughly 1/3 of women who have abortions have more than one.
Just as anecdotal evidence, I've seen twice today that there were more abortions than live births in NYC. Read long while ago that Sowell pointed out a year, back in the day, when that was true too.
How else do You explain that kind-a thing? Just asking for another view.
TY Charles Knapp and PatriotD.
"Second, I think something similar applies to the welfare created dependence idea. I have yet to see actual evidence that it too is true in large numbers."
J.D. Vance's "Hillbilly Elegy" shows an underclass where manufacturing was hollowed out. Lotta issues to discuss there, but there are some who would prefer to live off the fat of the land rather than take proactive measures to support themselves.
That's anecdotal evidence, true. Just puts a human face on, what I think most people understand, is *way* too many people dependent on Welfare for their whole lives. LBJ justified The Great Society money by saying it was necessary to keep people from *becoming* dependent on welfare. We now know how that turned out.
Numbers? Dunno. Cures? My guess is they'd be similar to the ones that would aid people to get outta the Urban Centers, or whatever they call a ghetto these days. Partly opportunities. Partly change in culture. Of course, ICBW.
The first step in dealing with welfare and similar government programs is to figure out what the problems actually are. Specifically, the question of whether welfare really creates dependence as opposed to being a temporary lifeline. If it creates dependence, how big an issue it is really.
We have been hearing about “welfare queens” at least since the Reagan Administration. In a sense, it’s part of the ongoing rhetoric where you get to feel superior, you would never accept public assistance but if you did, it would be grudgingly and you’d get off as quickly as possible. I suspect that such a view represents the overwhelming number of Americans. There will always be examples of abuse, but the question is whether they are representative or outliers.
The point is that until someone looks into the matter, each side gets to argue their opinion with no hard facts. It’s sort of like arguing over someone’s batting average when all you need to do to settle the argument is to look it up. That’s the missing piece here.
The welfare queen thing does not stand up to empirical analysis - I mentioned that above. I find those types of claims offensive. By far the biggest spend is on medicare and medicare and encompasses almost every tax bracket.
The issue is very much culture, education and individual responsibility and sometimes the lack thereof.
Regarding facts, they are out there. Try some of these sources:
1. Aftermath by Thomas E. Hall
2. https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/CRS%20Report%20-%20Welfare%20Spending%20The%20Largest%20Item%20In%20The%20Federal%20Budget.pdf
3. https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/reassessing-facts-about-inequality-poverty-redistribution#state-taxes
Totally agree. At least the good news is that Roe will be overturned. Thank God.
Victims of abortion industry? Yes women are frail and simple-minded and cannot be trusted to make decisions about their own body or life. Any woman who thinks she has any value outside of giving birth and motherhood has obviously been brainwashed by those godless feminists! Neither I nor any other woman I know who have had an abortion regret it. Forced birthers biggest fear is women having agency over their own life. You're not pro-life, you just hate women.
I don’t think the argument of the term “victims of abortion industry” is trying to imply that women cannot think for themselves. I think the essence of the argument is that some women may indeed regret having an abortion later on in their life. I do not doubt that you and your friends do not regret y’all’s decisions, but I myself have met women who have regretted the same decision. Also, there are those who fund and encourage abortion as a way to buy/sell fetal tissue. James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas has done excellent work on covering this issue, so I would direct you to his website if you would like to know more.
Let me know what you think.
There is no "abortion industry". The right tries to create this myth of some dark underworld bloodthirsty organization conspiring to murder babies to harvest human tissue for evil human experiments to cover up the fact the people who actually pressure women to have abortions are the men who got them pregnant and it is not uncommon for those men to murder them if they refuse to get an abortion. Google "murdered pregnant girlfriend." Another myth is women use abortion as birth control when it's actually men who use abortion as birth control because condoms "don't feel as good". Mysteriously the "pro-life" argument never includes men being held accountable and taking responsibility for their role in creating the pregnancy. Ever wonder why that is? It's deliberate because one of the things they want is more babies put up for adoption and easier to coerce a woman to give up her baby for adoption if she's alone. US adoption agencies openly admit that as more and more foreign countries restrict international adoptions, options and babies available to adopt are decreasing so they are incentivized to support banning abortion. The pro-life movement states women are traumatized by abortion and mourn the loss for the rest of their lives and that instead they should give up their baby for adoption instead implying that giving birth to a baby and handing it off to strangers never to be seen again isn't taumatic. Ironically women are more likely to regret giving up their baby than aborting it.
LeeLane, I mean no personal disrespect, but your total denial ("There is no "abortion industry"), ignorance of ("tries to create this myth of some dark underworld bloodthirsty organization conspiring to murder babies to harvest human tissue") and singular focus ("the people who actually pressure women to have abortions are the men who got them pregnant") calls into question your intellectual honesty. Couple these examples with your statement that the "pro-life" argument NEVER...
Have you ever heard the old saying, "Never say never because you might live to regret it"?
Many of your statements are too definitive, discrediting your desire (ability?) to consider (not necessarily embrace) other points of view. Before most of us grow into mature adults (and even afterward for many) we lack the humility of understanding that "we don't know what we don't know".
Is it possible that maybe there are things that you have or have not personally encountered in your life (since each of us only has 'one life to live') that others have or have not encountered in theirs?
People who pro forced-birth call abortion providers the "abortion industry" because they want what is actually women's healthcare to appear to be a predatory organization that seeks out women and coerces them to have abortions they don't want. Which is obviously not true. Well the women speak for themselves and state it's men who pressure them into abortions they don't want, not abortion providers are you saying these women are lying? Also it is not uncommon for a "pro-life" woman to protest outside abortion clinics one day and come into the clinic the next to get an abortion and the next day, go back to protesting stating she had her abortion was justifiable not like the reasons those whores and sluts get abortions. It is actually the anti-abortion side of the debate that won't consider other points of view and want to ban all abortion regardless of circumstance because they honestly believe they personally would never get an abortion for any reason and apply their personal circumstances to everyone else. The truth is there is always a scenario in which even a pro-life woman would seek an abortion and they would justify by saying my abortion is a moral abortion. It's a failure of empathy, lack of humility, and lure of self-righteousness that prevents them from even considering that the option of abortion should be available to all women so it's their failure to consider situations they have not personally encountered, not mine. I know there are other opinions on abortion and people are entitled to their own opinion. I gladly share the facts that I find but pro-lifers refuse to listen and absolutely nothing will get them to change their mind until it personally affects them.
I'm not saying there is a vast underground, sinister, fill-in-the-blank, industry at work. It does seem to me, however, that there is a market for fetal tissues for medical research (I wouldn't necessarily call that "evil human experiments", but the line is somewhat difficult to draw at a certain point).
I'm not sure what exact information I should look up by simply Googling "murdered pregnant girlfriend". Douglas Murray gives a wonderful analysis of algorithms in his book, "The Madness of Crowds".
I've heard several pro-life arguments that are on-board with enforcing harsher laws for men in the case of unwanted pregnancies. It does take two to tango, after all. Pretend for a moment you are pro-life. What statutes would you recommend in order to hold men more accountable? I'll probably agree with most of what you would propose.
I'm not sure about US adoption agencies encouraging pro-life policies solely for better business. However, let us say that this is their primary goal. Is that so terrible? I do not doubt the suffering a woman must go through if she must give up her baby for adoption. I've known many very good men and women who grew up in foster homes or were adopted. No doubt, it is a rough upbringing, but does that mean that it would be better for them not to have lived at all?
Fundamentally, I believe the core of the pro-life movement is the belief in the infinite value of each human being. Often, this is in religious terms (Image of God), or humanistic terms (the assumption that every human being has the same capacity to feel suffering), or on terms that have to deal with this issue on a societal/practical, rather than a moral/ethic level.
That is, from my understanding, the heart of the issue.
Pro-lifers state they want to protect the unborn implying the fetus has a right to life which one would assume also means caring about the child's health and quality of life post-birth which would mean advocating for free birth-control, full sex education, universal healthcare, paid maternity leave, government-funded childcare, housing assistance, guaranteed healthy food, employment for the parents at a living wage and well-funded public education. But I've never met anyone who claims to be pro-life that supports any of these policies. The only thing to conclude from their position is that their stated concern for the "innocent child" ends at birth. Are you really pro-life if you don't give a shit about the baby's life after it's born? Of course not. They just want to punish women and produce babies for adoption. Also banning abortion doesn't actually reduce abortions they're just done illegally and dangerously. Studies have proven that the policies l listed above actually DO reduce the abortion rate, but the "pro-life" movement is against all of those things. So the "pro-life" position isn't about reducing abortions or saving innocent lives or caring about children, it's just plain old women-hating.
Woman hatred? Doesn’t that seem a bit extreme? Does anything I’ve said really strike you as hateful? I’m sorry if it has, because I assure you that that was certainly not the message I was trying to convey.
"universal healthcare, paid maternity leave, government-funded childcare, housing assistance, guaranteed healthy food, employment for the parents at a living wage and well-funded public education"
I see YOur politics, LeeLane. But what does any-a that do about abortions. The other stuff I didn't quote? Yeah, I can see that would help.
It's a strawman to claim that Pro-lifer's necessarily *hafta* agree with Your ideas on the welfare state, or they really don't care about the unborn, right?
And what You've shown in Your *entire* discussion is that You have ZERO, zip, zilch, NADA interest in even finding *out* what the Pro-Life position *is.* You sure don't know much about it, other than leftist talking points.
Now lemme tell You where *I* come from. Obviously male. I don't appreciate what *seems* to me to be a femininst male-bashing attitude. But *ICBW.* Be glad to change mind. I was raised during the second wave. All the females in our family were feminists.
My position on abortion has changed tho. I used believe in the feminist position (tho in no way the manner You think of it). Now I recognize that there are a significant number of people who don't feel that Way. Some go all the Way to believing it's murder to abort a zygote. I don't agree with that, but I'm not sure I'm willing to say that nobody is *allowed* to feel that way either.
Therefore, a while back, I thought it should go to the states. Women can vote with their feet, right? Or they can get the laws passed that suit them. What problem with that?
The capture of our major institutions by this cultish ideology, and the so-called grown-ups actively encouraging or enabling it, is a national disgrace. The principles and values they so readily sacrifice on the alter of partisan piety and as a function of fundamentalist adherence to sectarian identitarianism jeopardize the fabric of our Nation.
Comity, probity, and integrity used to be watch words by which our so-called elites governed their own behaviors and, to a large extent, the general populace. These have been supplanted with zealotry, bigotry, and sophistry that are leading us to a societal cul de sac with grave implications for our polity. When any means justify an end, and when the appropriateness and nobility of that end are predicated on poorly conceived and unfalsifiable premises, hell follows.
This truly is a time that tries our respective souls, and it remains to be seen if we can reclaim even the vestiges of what once made our Country great.
This Substack, among others, remains an example of thoughtful, well considered, nuanced, and reasoned exposition encouraging readers to challenge their biases and preconceived notions. It offers a glimmer of hope for our future (just as the corporate media strives always to rip it away!) and I will hold on to that hope as we continue our trudge forward in this campaign to reclaim reason.
It’s what happens when trained hysteria is let loose and principles are mocked.
The document was from February, I believe. Why leak it now?
Agreed
Steve R, when you say: “The principles and values they so readily sacrifice on the alter of partisan piety and as a function of fundamentalist adherence to sectarian identitarianism jeopardize the fabric of our Nation.” Who Senator Susan Collins is talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv6N3HAb4hk
Thank you, again, Bari. I respect you, your courage and your viewpoints - specifically because you come from the left of where I sit - a different camera angle which must be fairly considered for the sake of intellectual integrity. You sharpen and clarify, reminding me of the Jewish Proverb, "As iron sharpens iron, one man (or woman) sharpens another" (Proverbs 27:17). Keep up your very good work.
more fuel for the division of the country and lost faith in government institutions
We have a faction of the country that has abandoned any interest in staying within the lanes, not just ethically, but legally, in order to achieve their ends. They have strong allies in media and the permanent government who amplifies their messages and distorts the percentage of the country that believes in their causes. The midterms can't come soon enough, nor can the '24 elections.
And if you encounter any members of that faction on social media, you will be told in no uncertain terms that all of this is completely the other way around.
How stupid and short sighted this leak is. The decision would've been made public anyway in a month or so. What was to be gained here? Let's hope the leaker is found and fired/disbarred immediately. All the signs of a hoax or a fake, actually. Are we sure it is real?
An extra month to drumup outrage and fundraising for the mid-terms.
The identity of the leaker is being bandied about online, and there is one prime suspect to be sure who I will not name, but the fact that the leaker was one of Sotomayor's clerks is an almost certainty. Sotomayor, who never understood that you could disagree with someone's politics and not hate them, and who is, by all accounts, the least liked and respected Justice among the nine for her contentiously Woke interactions with her colleagues.
Knowing what we know of how Jackson thinks, believes, and behaves, be prepared for more of these kind of Woke Leftist intimidation tactics moving forward. This won't be the last time.
Do you recall what Scalia said to Obama prior to his nomination of Kagan, after the appointment of Sotomayor?
"We know you are going to send us a liberal. At least send us a smart one."
Over on HotAir there is a speculative case made by "AllahPundit" that the leaker could very well be a conservative who is worried that one of the 5 in the majority was going wobbly. That makes sense when you consider that a week ago the WSJ reported that Roberts was trying to pry one of the 5 away to preserve Roe in some way.
The only thing that doesn't line up like that is WHO are the people that believe everything that disagrees with their beliefs is violence? It's the Woke.
When you believe in something so ridiculous, there is no line you will not cross to preserve your beliefs.
I was thinking that was a possibility. Not likely, but possible.
The more I think about it the more sense it makes.
I've heard exactly the opposite about Sotomayor.
She is easily the least qualified, least intelligent, and most radically ideological of any Justice who has ever served.
Jackson is Woke like Sotomayor, but you can't say Jackson is unintelligent. Jackson may be far to the left of my own liberalism, but she's no dummy. Sotomayor, bless her heart, is.
She's not a "Wise Latina"?? That's what they called her, back in the day...
She is, to be as frank as possible, a useful idiot.
This leak is the most depressing political event that I know of. As Bari and Turley put it, this means nothing -- no norm, no ethical constraint, no concept of discretion of any substance matters anymore. It is a bipartisan societal fall. It began before Trump, but the 2016-2020 presidency accelerated and intensified these trends. It all feels like a sudden fall from whatever sliver of grace we all hoped to share with one another regardless of our political and policy preferences. The most extreme people I know will now all feel emboldened to do the same or worse. It feels like all restraint is gone. This doesn't feel like democracy cracking up as has been so often talked about of late. No, this feels worse, like the foundations of our civilization are eroding before our eyes.
Their lives depend upon it? Whose lives Bari? Not the baby’s that’s for sure. Not black babies in NYC where more are aborted than born.
The left is racing us to the bottom. Period.
But not to worry. If a woman wants to abort her child, it’s still eminently doable. Oh you may have to travel to a neighboring state although I would bet most who want to get the abortions already live in a state where even infanticide is now allowed.
Perhaps planned UNparenthood should gin up classes on birth control PRE pregnancy. It’s safe, it’s easy and it’s cheap. But then, they couldn’t make the money from abortions or selling baby body parts. What to do, what to do.
Indeed, that was very ironic phrasing, given that all voters have survived to be born and reach age 18. I wonder if Ms. Weiss did it on purpose.
Thank you Bari. You always make sense of things that don't make sense. I feel anger right now at the Left for not mentioning the violation of the breach, not even Biden. It bothers me so much. I just wish for my (former) side to be less hypocritical, less hysterical, and less like toddlers who need a nap. Can we not have a reasoned debate without it becoming mass hysteria?