The Commentariat -- June 30, 2015
Internal links removed.
Afternoon Update:
Sarah Larimer of the Washington Post: The Girl Scouts of Western Washington (state) received a $100,000 donation -- which would cover about a third of their operating budget -- but it came with the stipulation that the donation not support transgender girls. So the Scouts sent the money back. This week, they get up an Indiegogo page, & they've already recouped the $100K. ...
Illustration by DonkeyHotey.
This Can't Be Good. Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court said Tuesday that it will consider next term whether the rights of government workers are violated when they are compelled to pay fees to unions they do not want to join."
Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post: "The Supreme Court barred Texas on Monday from implementing a law that would have forced more than half the state's 19 abortion clinics to close their doors later this week. The law, which was to take effect Wednesday, would require clinics to adhere to strict new physical standards and the doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. The court granted the reprieve after abortion rights groups requested an emergency stay, having unsuccessfully sought to have the law overturned."
Adam Liptak of the New York Times: "The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to take a second look at the use of race in admissions decisions by the University of Texas at Austin, reviving a potent challenge to affirmative action in higher education. The move, which supporters of race-conscious admissions programs called baffling and ominous, signaled that the court may limit or even end such affirmative action." CW: Yeah, the boys in black are liberal, all right.
Pick Your Poison. Forget the Eighth Amendment. Ian Millhiser of Think Progress: Justice Samuel Alito's "Glossip v. Gross is a crushing blow to opponents of the death penalty.... It effectively enlists death row inmates' attorneys to become agents of their clients' demise. And it elevates the death penalty to a kind of super-legal status that renders it impervious to many constitutional challenges.... [The] key paragraph in Alito's opinion is a declaration that, no matter what happens, there must always be a way to execute inmates." ...
... "So Sick." digby: "I'm going to guess that the only hope for this lies in some application of 'religious liberty' in the future in which anyone who isn't a total cretin, from the corporate reps to the lawyers to the public officials, will claim that it violates their religious beliefs to participate in the premeditated killing of a human being who is in custody and presents no threat to them." ...
... CW: It's pretty remarkable that the four other confederate justices, including the Chief, signed onto this sick opinion. ...
... Arit John of Bloomberg: "While Justice Sonya Sotomayor wrote the dissent to Samuel Alito's majority opinion [in the case re: Oklahoma's use of midazolan in executions], [Stephen] Breyer used his dissent to consider a different question...: 'whether the death penalty violates the Constitution.'... He argued that it's 'highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment.'" ...
... Adam Lerner of Politico: "... Breyer, in his dissent in Glossip v. Gross, recognized that while the issue of the death penalty, in and of itself, perhaps could be viewed as a legislative matter, 'the matters I have discussed, such as lack of reliability, the arbitrary application of a serious and irreversible punishment, individual suffering caused by long delays, and lack of penological purpose are quintessentially judicial matters.' He concluded, 'At the very least, the Court should call for full briefing on the basic question' of the death penalty." You can read Alito's opinion, Scalia's & Thomas's concurrences, Breyer's (Ginsburg joining) & Sotomayor's (Breyer, Ginsburg, & Kagan joining) dissents here. Breyer's dissent begins on page 51 of the pdf, Sotomayor's on page 97.
Erik Eckholm & Manny Fernandez of the New York Times: "The country's last major pockets of resistance to same-sex marriage were rapidly shrinking on Monday as officials in states across the South, citing the rule of law, softened their defiance and began offering marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples.... Louisiana was the last holdout.... By the end of the day, a majority of the state's parishes ... had ... begun issuing licenses to same-sex couples, according to Forum for Equality.... Marriages in Mississippi, which had been temporarily halted on Friday by an order from Attorney General Jim Hood, resumed in some cities on Monday after Mr. Hood clarified his statement and gave county clerks the right to make their own decisions.... In Alabama ... marriage licenses were being issued in most of the major population centers, although a few county probate judges stopped issuing any kind of marriage licenses, saying they did not want to violate their religious beliefs.... Still..., Roy Moore, chief justice of the Alabama court, said ... county officials should not be required to issue same-sex marriage licenses for 25 days." Then there's Texas. ...
... Juan Cole schools wingers on the Biblical prescriptions for marriage. It's rather difficult to understand how Preacher Huckabee & Altar Boy Santorum missed all the passages Cole cites.
CW: The other day, I suggested that maybe Chief Justice Roberts was just getting sick of frivolous lawsuits & that's why he agreed to take the King case, then wrote the opinion against it. Ian Millhiser, who doesn't mention this possibility, does however demonstrate (he gets into the weeds) how both Roberts' majority opinion on King and his dissent in Obergefell convey his disgust with the growing ultra-conservative trend to make stuff up that they have decided is implied by the Constitution. This doesn't make Roberts a liberal; it just means that he's not a rabid flamethrower. Unlike me, Millhiser knows what's he's writing about, so despite his deep dive into the details, his post is worth a read. ...
... Shorter Millhiser: Charles Pierce pegs Roberts. CW: Other than his failure to wish Sadistic Sam a happy, carefree summer vacation on the Jersey Shore, I can't find any fault with Pierce's post. ...
... Lincoln Caplan of the New Yorker makes the case that CJ Roberts is working on the "rebuilding of the Supreme Court's reputation." CW: Frankly, Roberts can't do that as long as Scalia, Thomas & Alito are on the Court, & in the case of Alito, that is likely to be a long time. Besides their abhorrent philosophies, one cannot ignore Scalia's offensive mockery, which he inserts in every dissent. On Breyer's dissent, which Caplan cites, Scalia writes, "A vocal minority of the Court, waving over their heads a ream of the most recent abolitionist studies (a superabundant genre) as though they have discovered the lost folios of Shakespeare, insist that now, at long last, the death penalty must be abolished for good." If Roberts has tried to restrain Scalia, it hasn't worked. And it won't: Scalia loves the public attention. He loves to belittle his colleagues. He's a bully. When he can't win -- and even when he does -- he exits right, scorning.
Mark Dorning of Bloomberg: "The Obama administration plans to raise the wages of millions of Americans who work more than 40 hours a week by requiring their employers to pay them overtime. Workers who earn as much as $970 a week would have to be paid overtime even if they're classified as a manager or professional, based on draft rules to be announced as soon as Tuesday, said an administration official." ...
... Noam Scheiber of the New York Times: "The administration has the power to issue the regulation, which would restore the overtime salary threshold to roughly where it stood in 1975 in terms of purchasing power, without congressional approval.... 'The president said he wanted to go big here and he did,' said Jared Bernstein, a former White House economist who co-wrote an influential report on the benefits of expanding overtime pay after leaving the administration in 2011. 'I can't think of any other rule change or executive order that would lift more middle-class workers.'" CW: If I were Obama, I would have followed Bernstein's advice the Friday before the 2012 election. He's a better person than I. ...
... President Obama, in a Huffington Post opinion essay: "Right now, too many Americans are working long days for less pay than they deserve. That's partly because we've failed to update overtime regulations for years -- and an exemption meant for highly paid, white collar employees now leaves out workers making as little as $23,660 a year -- no matter how many hours they work.... In this country, a hard day's work deserves a fair day's pay. That's at the heart of what it means to be middle class in America."
Elections Matter. Jonathan Chait: If Republicans win control of the House, Senate & presidency in 2016, Senate Republicans plan to eliminate the filibuster in order to end the ACA, among other GOP priorities, like deregulating the financial industry.
The Blue Nation Review publishes activist Bree Newsome's statement about her reasons for taking down the confederate flag flying on the South Carolina state capitol grounds: "I removed the flag not only in defiance of those who enslaved my ancestors in the southern United States, but also in defiance of the oppression that continues against black people globally in 2015...." CW: So, Newsome is part of the international anti-white supremacy movement. The kind of "lone wolf" & civil disobedience the world needs. Read her essay. ...
... Caroline Bankoff of New York has more on Newsome. ...
... Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post profiles South Carolina state Sen. Paul Thurmond, son of rabid segregationist U.S. Sen. Strom Thurmond. ...
... NEW. Adam Lerner: "The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan's Pelham, North Carolina, chapter have reserved the Statehouse Grounds in South Carolina for a rally next month. James Spears, the Great Titan of the chapter, said the group would be rallying to protest 'the Confederate flag being took down for all the wrong reasons. It's part of white people's culture,'..."
Paul Krugman: "... yes, Greece was overspending [in the 2000s], but not by all that much. It was over indebted, but again not by all that much. How did this turn into a catastrophe that among other things saw debt soar to 170 percent of GDP despite savage austerity? The euro straitjacket, plus inadequately expansionary monetary policy within the eurozone, are the obvious culprits.... If Europe as currently organized can turn medium-sized fiscal failings into this kind of nightmare, the system is fundamentally unworkable."
Presidential Race
The Platitudes Race. Jeffrey Frank of the New Yorker: "... seventeen months before the general election, and despite the welcome offstage diversions of those Supreme Court decisions..., the language of the 2016 race has been unnervingly free of thought.... What is so dispiriting this year is listening to candidates ... who sound less like people eager to understand the world and lead a diverse nation and more like human-resource counselors, offering sympathy and help they can't deliver to a fretful, underpaid workforce."
** Peter Beinart of the Atlantic: "Over the last two weeks, Republican presidential candidates have repeatedly missed opportunities to demonstrate that they care about communities outside of their traditional base."
Robert Costa & Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "Chris Christie ... told supporters Tuesday that he is running for president. Christie -- who broke the news in a morning conference call -- enters a crowded field as an underdog, wagering his retail political skills and brash style will propel him into serious competition for his party's nod." ...
... You can watch live on the WashPo front page (at 11:20 am ET). ...
... Michael Barbaro of the New York Times: "Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, whose meteoric rise as a national Republican in his first term was matched only by his spectacular loss of stature at home in his second, is set to enter the 2016 presidential race on Tuesday morning bearing little resemblance to the candidate he once expected to be.... With two pillars of his presidential run -- his record and his judgment -- looking wobblier than ever, Mr. Christie must build a campaign around his most raw and prodigious asset: his personality."
Jason Horowitz of the New York Times: "Nearly two weeks after canceling a campaign event scheduled the morning after the deadly attack on a South Carolina church, Jeb Bush on Monday called the Confederate battle flag a 'racist' symbol, reflecting the new Republican normal in a Southern primary state vastly altered by the racially motivated killings. The flag was one of 'the symbols that have divided the South in many ways, the symbols that were used in most recent modern history, perhaps not at the beginning of the time, but the symbols were racist,' Mr. Bush told an interracial crowd" in South Carolina. ...
... CW: Actually racist since the beginning of its time, Jeb!
Stardust. Tom Hamburger & Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "How Marco Rubio turned political star power into a soaring personal income.... During nine years in Tallahassee, as Rubio rose in prominence and ascended to the state House speakership, he became increasingly well compensated as he walked a narrow line between his work as a lawmaker and an employee of outside firms with interests before the state government.... Rubio's annual income grew from about $72,000 when he was elected to the state House in 2000 to $414,000 in 2008, when his two-year speakership ended."
NEW. The Distinguished Gentleman from Texas. Manu Raju of Politico: "Ted Cruz's campaign against his Republican colleagues -- especially Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell -- is getting increasingly personal.... [In a new book,] Cruz accuses McConnell and GOP leadership of maneuvering to dry up his fundraising and plant hit pieces in the press aimed at hurting him politically. He says GOP leaders cowered from joining him in big fights over the debt ceiling, Obamacare and gun control, accusing his colleagues of 'mendacity' and capitulating to Democrats to avoid bad headlines.... And he accuses a GOP rival, Rand Paul of Kentucky, of parroting McConnell's talking points by seeking to 'undermine' his efforts to defund Obamacare during the 2013 fight that led to the government shutdown." ...
... CrazyCruz Urges States to Ignore Marriage Equality Ruling. Adam Lerner of Politico: "'Those who are not parties to the suit are not bound by it,' [Sen. Ted Cruz] told NPR News' Steve Inskeep in an interview published on Monday. Since only suits against the states of Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan and Kentucky were specifically considered in the Supreme Court's Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which was handed down last Friday, Cruz ... believes that other states with gay marriage bans need not comply, absent a judicial order." ...
... CW: By Cruz's logic, school boards can provide "separate but equal" education every place but Topeka, Kansas. In fact, what Cruz is suggesting is among the many tactics Southern officials used to avoid racially integrating public schools. Remember that Ted is a former law clerk to the U.S. Chief Justice, a deputy U.S. attorney general, Texas solicitor general, a "constitutional scholar" & of course a U.S. senator; that is, one of the country's most prominent Constitutional experts. This "suggestion" of Cruz's puts him right up there with George Wallace & Orval Faubus -- oh, & with William Renquist, the CJ for whom Cruz clerked & who once wrote that the Supremes should have upheld the "separate but equal" ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson. ...
... Ben Kamisar of the Hill: "Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Monday bashed 'elites' on the Supreme Court for imposing their will on America's heartland in its decision to legalize same-sex marriage. 'You've got nine lawyers, they are all from Harvard or Yale -- there are no Protestants on the court, there are no evangelicals on the court,' the 2016 GOP presidential candidate said on NBC's 'Today,' echoing criticism from Justice Antonin Scalia's dissenting opinion. 'The elites on the court look at much of this country as flyover country; they think that our views are simply parochial and don’t deserve to be respected.'" CW: Maybe we should mention here that Cruz was graduated from Princeton & Harvard Law School.
NBC to Trump: "You're Fired." Maria Puente of USA Today: "NBC dumped [Donald Trump's] beauty pageants and reiterated he will not be in The Apprentice anymore. The network, which has been under pressure to fire Trump since last week when Univision announced it would not air Trump's Miss USA pageant in Spanish, said in a statement..., 'Due to the recent derogatory statements by Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBCUniversal is ending its business relationship with Mr. Trump.'... 'To that end, the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe Pageants, which are part of a joint venture between NBC and Trump, will no longer air on NBC. In addition, as Mr. Trump has already indicated, he will not be participating in The Apprentice on NBC,' because he is an announced Republican candidate for president." ...
... Charles Arbogast of Entertainment Weekly: "Donald Trump slammed his longtime partner NBC on Monday after the broadcaster announced it was cutting ties with him. 'Mr. Trump stands by his statements on illegal immigration, which are accurate,' read a statement from his office.... 'NBC is weak, and like everybody else is trying to be politically correct -- that is why our country is in serious trouble....' Moreover, Trump is threatening to sue NBC for announcing they would no longer air his beauty pageants.... 'Furthermore, they will stand behind lying Brian Williams, but won't stand behind people that tell it like it is, as unpleasant as that may be.'" Trump said.
Beyond the Beltway
Justin Carissimo of the (U.K.) Independent: "The Missouri franchise owner of Dixie Outfitters, a store specialising in 'Southern Heritage' clothing, was revealed to have family ties to the Ku Klux Klan. 'It has nothing to do with slavery, which the media always want to bring in,' Anna Robb said, defending the sales of Confederate flags during an interview with the Springfield Missouri News-Leader. Just days following the News-Leader's initial interview with Ms Robb, readers alerted the news outlet and it was discovered that her husband Nathan, co-owner of Dixie Outfitters, was the 'den-commander' of the KKK's Arkansas chapter."
The Emigrants. Andy Newman of the New York Times: "The escaped killers David Sweat and Richard W. Matt had intended to go to Mexico before their plan unraveled when a prison worker accused of helping them did not show up with her car, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Monday. Mr. Cuomo said that Mr. Sweat, who is hospitalized for gunshot wounds sustained during his capture on Sunday, had 'relayed some information' to investigators."
When the U.S. sends its people to Mexico, they're not sending the best. They're sending people that have lots of problems and they're bringing those problems. They're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime. They're bringing murderers who dismember their victims. They're rapists and some, I assume, are good people. -- Constant Weader, with a hat-tip to the Donald
... Benjamin Mueller of the New York Times: "... on Monday, a day after Mr. Sweat was shot and taken into custody by a state trooper in a freshly cut hayfield and three days after Mr. Matt was killed by a federal agent, new details surfaced about the three-week manhunt.... It was a history of hesitation and interagency conflict, and also of lucky breaks for law enforcement officers...." CW: Remember, people, cops are selected for dumb. ...
... William Rashbaum of the New York Times: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation in Albany has opened a corruption inquiry focusing on employees and inmates at the maximum-security prison in northern New York State where two convicted killers escaped this month, one official with knowledge of the matter said on Monday.... News of the federal inquiry also came one day after Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, reiterated that the state's inspector general, Catherine Leahy Scott, was conducting a full investigation into the policies and procedures at the prison and the circumstances that led to the escape."
News Ledes
New York Times: "With just hours to go before Greece hits a deadline for a debt payment it cannot afford, Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday asked the other nations that use the euro to extend another bailout and buy Athens time to renegotiate its crippling debt load." ...
... New Lede: "The International Monetary Fund said shortly after midnight Wednesday that Greece had missed a crucial debt payment to the fund."
New York Times: "The Iranian foreign minister rejoined the nuclear talks [in Vienna, Austria,] Tuesday morning as the United States looked for signs that he had arrived with more flexible negotiating instructions."
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Reader Comments (8)
@CW: I believe you said some time ago that you thought Justice Roberts was more a politician than a jurist. (Or something to that effect.) I agree with what I think you said. It is quite clear to me that he is a conservative in the "old school" tradition, and has little use for the wing nut rantings of Scalia, Alito and Thomas (when he says anything). Plus, those three are all members of Opus Dei, and I am guessing that John Roberts recoils at that. Not his generation or persuasion of Catholicism.
That is to say: He seems not to believe that Universal Health Care--at least when it is corporate ruled--makes us a Socialist country. And I can only imagine what a pain-in-the ass he considers Tonio to be! And Tonio's siamese twin, Clarencio, must be a complete enigma to him--unless he has studied psychology, which I doubt. As for Sammy, yikes! I think he has descended into cognitive functioning problems. Plus, and perhaps most important of all--I think John Roberts is aware that his legacy could be permanently fucked up by the "wing nut triumvirate." He, as a pol, wants to leave a respectable, if not outstanding, record as Chief Justice. Siding with the nut cases most of the time would ruin his chances for a decent legacy, IMHO.
@PD Pepe: Yes, I too (some time ago) entered New Yorker Cartoon Captioning Contests, and was soundly rejected every time--despite submitting brilliant captions. I think we are sisters in the bond, since I also do not see the humor or creativity in either the cartoons or the winning captions. Maybe that is sour grapes, but I prefer to think I have gained maturity and perspective! (Except for immediately "getting" sly Marie's brilliant sidelights!) (-:
@Kate Madison & PD Pepe: You have a lot of company, including Zach Galifianakis, whose understated, urbane brand of humor would seem to make him overqualified to write New Yorker cartoon captions.
Marie
I know what I would do were I Greece, or Puerto Rico: Declare independence. Seize the assets of foreign banks, and tell the bankers to go hump their mothers (confident that, if the price was right, they'd do it.) In short, pull a Cuba. What's Europe, or the US gonna do? Invade? Tried that. Stop lending more money? Done that. And Cubans at least have good medical care, public education, and are not malnourished -- which is more than can be said of large numbers of Americans.
So what else we got? Unfriend them? They'll have friends -- Russia and China are gleefully standing by.
@D.C.Clark:
"In Communist Cuba..., you will find shortages of everything except ironies." -- Pico Iyer, in "Falling Off the Map"
"Cumma, cumma, down dooby doo down down. Breaking up is hard to do." -- Neil Sedaka
Secession is always tempting in a bad relationship, but it brings its own set of major problems. Sometimes an unhappy status quo has merits greater than a contemplated break-up is likely to present. Not that it isn't pleasing to see those '57 Chevies in Havana.
Marie
Marie,
Thanks for the New Yorker caption link. Nice to find out that I'm not the only one whose ideas have been rejected, although I admit the winning ones are pretty much always better (except for one, the schmucks!).
When I was about 12 or 13 I started drawing political cartoons. At the time I was enthralled by the idea that artists could do something more than advertising, book illustrations, or fine art and since I was already devouring newspapers, I got to love Herblock and later Oliphant. Also Jules Feiffer. Remember those "Dance to..." cartoons? They were always a great Sunday features treat.
I believe political cartoonists played an enormous role in pointing out the absurdities and inconsistencies of the differences between the theater of politics and the theater of war during Vietnam. And where would we have been without political cartoons during the years of the Tricky One? I remember reading an interview with some cartoonist who bemoaned Nixon's abdication because, as he put it, he had lost the best subject a cartoonist could hope for. A guy who was already part cartoon, the nose, the five o'clock shadow, a president surrounded by a cast of characters straight out of a gangster movie: Agnew, the two Nazis Haldeman and Erlichman, the Plumbers, Kissinger. During the dark days of the Bush Debacle, political cartoonists, especially Ted Rall, with his monstrous Generalissimo El Busho character, helped keep me off window ledges.
During my short stint as a political cartoonist I could do a mean LBJ and an even better Nixon (he was so easy). I remember attempting characterizations of all the presidential candidates in the 1968 election. It was hard not to be influenced by other artists. I recall a great David Levine impression of Curtis Lemay (remember "Bombs Away Lemay?) which made me realize there were more layers to this thing than I had suspected.
Then I worked out a situation with my dad that's very much like the New Yorker contest. I'd draw something and he'd caption it. He was much better at it than I. A very funny guy. I'd give anything for a few of those today.
As far as caption contests go, I've fared a little better on Dan Wilbur's site which invites readers to come up with Better Titles for books. For instance, an illustrated version of Clement Moore's "Night Before Christmas" is retitled as "Botched Home Invasion" and "King Lear" morphs into "Time to Put Dad in a Home". You get the idea. There are a few well renamed political memoirs (The Decider, Loofah Boy) as well.
So forget about the New Yorker contest. You ain't gettin' in anyway. Save your bons mots for people who will really appreciate them.
Us.
The estimable Digby suggests that perhaps the only way around the snarling, teeth-clenching gnarliness of the Alito faction of execution fanbois on the Court may be to appeal to religious liberty in an attempt to deflect their thirst for blood and vengeance.
Not gonna work.
The Confederates on this court are notorious cherry pickers and religious liberty has already been shown to be available only for the few, the connected, and the righty-right, far right Christians. Scalia set the stage for denying claims of religious liberty for religions he doesn't cotton to in Employment Division v Smith (1990) in which the court, led by The Dark Lord, discounted the use of peyote in Native American religious rituals (a case which, as Marie pointed out the other day, would sit in J.S, Mill's camp of self-regarding acts, ie, those acts which harm no one else). The claims of Hobby Lobby, on the other hand (which Mill would place solidly in the camp of other-regarding acts--acts which do, in fact, harm others) were considered paramount and worthy of court protection (it was a two-fer for the Confederates: a win for the fundies and a kick in the ass for uppity women).
So, as much as it seem that such a tactic might eke out a few victories, once it got back to Alito, et al that someone was trying to curtail their blood sport by appeals to religious freedom, that plug would be pulled; pulled posthaste, baby.
One More Reason to Wonder About Stuff in the Bible
Marie links an excellent Juan Cole piece that dances the tarantella on the soft heads of fundies who have been whining and whining and whining about marriage this and marriage that and Bible this and Bible that.
Cole points out, with plenty of citations, that the Bible's view of marriage is.....er, varied, to say the least. It never states outright that gay marriage is verboten, as the Christianists like to claim, but it passes on some pre-tty wild descriptions of marriages that ARE acceptable, including those involving slavery, bondage, sadism, polygamy, open marriages, sex trafficking and even advice to not get married in the first place (First Corinthians, Paul tells anyone who is not already married to fuggedaboutit. If you ain't married, don't do it. Sounds like a first century Henny Youngman...).
But the Bible also has an interesting sidebar on how to treat wives. Let's say you get into a beef with a much larger and better weaponized guy who is eating your lunch. Your wife sees you on the ground looking like one of those clown punching bags with the air wheezing out of it and she runs over, grabs the guy by the balls and lets him have it, thereby saving your ass from an even worse beating. How to repay her courage and fortitude? Why, cut off her hands. And right away. "No pity" says this passage in Deuteronomy:
"If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts, you shall cut off her hand. Show her no pity.”
Whaaaa?.......
Tell ya what kids, if I was in a fight with some guy who was beating me senseless and my wife came over, grabbed him by the balls and saved my ass, I'd take her to Hawaii.
And not for nothin', but was this a regular thing back in Biblical times, or what? I mean so regular that they needed a law against it? "Looka there....the Abrahams are at it again. And that Mrs. Abraham, hooo-weee, she just about Joni Ernsted that dude. Gotta do somethin' 'bout that shit."
Anyway, this is the sort of crap idiots like Santorum and Huckabee and Cruz want us all to bow down to.
Fuck that for a game of soldiers.
"C'mon honey, we're goin' to Hawaii..."
Unions and the ACA
Healthcare for millions in this country was saved because the Chief Justice opted for sense and sensibility over pride and prejudice. In other words, he decided to look to the rationale for the law, the sense of the legislation and to call upon the sensibility that would allow him to discern the complicated ins and outs that, together, comprised an effort to provide affordable healthcare to Americans trying to make do without it.
Next year, not to be a party pooper, the Court will consider three targets that have populated Confederate dart boards for decades: affirmative action, abortion, and unions. All three are roundly despised and Samuel (The Killer) Alito has already said that they (meaning the Confederates) have been looking for a union case that had broad enough implications that would allow the Court to kill unions (for the betterment of the Party, of course) for good.
And here's where we see the jiggery-pokery of the Court wingers.
Rather than look at the sense of unions, they whys and wherefores, the vicious and vile history of capitalism run amok that brought unions into existence in the first place to protect the powerless, the Dwarfs will stand upon their pride and prejudice in using a loophole excuse, free speech, to throw out the bath water and kill the baby as well.
Some union members don't agree with stances the union takes as a whole? There are other ways to handle that problem that don't involve unioncide. But very likely not for this Court.
We'll see. But don't be surprised if the Confederates on this Court make unions a thing of the past and thrust all American workers back to the Gilded Age where the billionaire oligarchs can hire and fire at will and decide on whether or not workers will ever again get a decent wage.
It's the Republican Way.
We'll see.