states rights
<font size="4" face="Times New Roman">818</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">oops see 2 others gubmint
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">because of polarysis, fight moves to state level (also cheaper media) but hypocrisy b/c when raga wants to fight fed eg CPP, they evoke states rights, and when they don't like state law, they go for fed (eg__)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[also used state level to quash community local regs]</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">opus dei?! alito? roberts? clarence, scalia?
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/10/10/supreme-court-pork-california-rights/">https://theintercept.com/2022/10/10/supreme-court-pork-california-rights/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">F<span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: none; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 30px;">OR DECADES,</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"> </span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">Supreme Court justices on the right have framed themselves as committed to “states’ rights.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">” True, they might appear to be, and even act like, extremist activists, driven to serve the Republican Party and forge a Christo-nationalist state. <b>They are, however, in fact simply federalists to the bone — which we know for sure because of their insistence on it.</b></span></span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">
</span></font></div><div data-reactid="166" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As such, in a significant case on this term’s docket, I’m sure we can expect these right-wing justices to duly rule in favor of the state of California and its right to pass animal welfare laws, allowing the state to regulate the pork sold within its sovereign state borders.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Well, maybe we can’t really expect the ruling for “states’ rights.” We must remember, after all, that this is a case about a progressive law, passed in a blue state, that challenges the unbridled power and private interests of a major industry.</font></p></div><blockquote class="Pullquote Pullquote--right" data-reactid="167" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 1em; box-shadow: none; line-height: 1.125; float: right; max-width: 55%;"><div data-reactid="169" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ruling in favor of industry would set yet another grim precedent, potentially curtailing the ability of states to enforce progressive industry regulations.</font></div></blockquote><div data-reactid="170" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On Tuesday, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">oral arguments will begin in <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/national-pork-producers-council-v-ross/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">National Pork Producers Council v. Ross</a>, a case in which the pork industry is <b>challenging the constitutionality of a California law regulating the worst cruelties of mass meat and egg production</b>. The pork producers are arguing that California’s law ends up forcing them to change their procedures outside California’s borders at significant cost.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">If the justices rule on the side of the pork producers, it will be only the latest case to expose the illusion of so-called states’ rights that conservative legal forces have spent 200 years pushing on the public.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">There would also be widespread implications: Ruling in favor of industry would set yet another grim precedent, potentially curtailing the ability of states to enforce progressive industry regulations and protections. Everything from state laws on workers’ rights to environmental standards to further animal welfare issues could be challenged.</font></p></div><div class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo" data-reactid="171" style="box-sizing: border-box; border-top: 1px solid rgb(238, 238, 238); padding: 20px 0px 10px; margin: 7px 40px 20px 0px; float: left; width: 400px;"><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2022/10/08/smithfield-animal-rights-piglets-trial/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; flex-direction: row;" /><div class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-thumbnail" style="box-sizing: border-box; padding-right: 20px; position: relative; z-index: 1;"><a class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link" href="https://theintercept.com/2022/10/08/smithfield-animal-rights-piglets-trial/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none; display: flex; flex-direction: row;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">
</font></a></div><div class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-text" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><h2 class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-eyebrow" style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: normal; line-height: 16px; margin: 0px 0px 0.3em; font-kerning: normal; font-feature-settings: "kern"; padding-bottom: 5px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Related</font></h2><h3 class="PromoteRelatedPost-promo-link-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 22px; margin: 0px; font-kerning: normal; font-feature-settings: "kern";"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="font-weight: normal;">Activists Acquitted in Trial for Taking Piglets From Smithfield Foods</font></h3></div></div><div data-reactid="223" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Meanwhile, there could be another layer of irony: With the court’s <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/05/04/roe-abortion-supreme-court-samuel-alito/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">proven</a> selective <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/10/20/intercepted-american-mythology-trump-judges/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">federalism</a>, we can be sure that any such precedent would be no barrier to conservative states enacting laws with economic consequences far beyond their state lines in future.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: none; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 30px;">THE LAW IN</span> question at the Supreme Court this week is California’s Prop 12, passed through a resounding 2018 ballot victory</span>. The law bans the sale in California of meat and eggs from animals raised in extreme and brutal confinement, including in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/oct/03/supreme-court-proposition-12-pig-gestation-crates-california-animal-welfare-law" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">gestation crates</a> where pregnant pigs are held, barely able to move, for most of their lives.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Such confinement has been <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-468/233565/20220815174931670_Broom%20et%20al.%20amicus%20brief%20-%20Natl%20Pork%20v.%20Ross%20-%20No.%2021-468.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">condemned</a> by all major animal welfare and veterinary organizations, and has been deemed a “profound danger to food and public health,” given the rife spread of disease, according to a <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-468/233519/20220815153028184_21-468_Amicus%20Brief.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">brief</a> written by the American Public Health Association and the Infectious Diseases Society of America, among others, for the case.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em; background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">the pork producers contend that the law creates unconstitutional constraint on their business, as farmers in other states must change their practices to abide by Prop 12’s standards if they hope to sell pork in the nation’s most populous state.</font></span></p></div><div data-reactid="234" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The plaintiffs argue that the law violates the “dormant commerce clause” in the Constitution, which bars states from placing an “undue burden” on interstate commerce. They are arguing that, though the federal government has not actively weighed in on these regulations, the rules remain an issue of interstate commerce, for which federal oversight is constitutionally enshrined</font></p></div><div data-reactid="236" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Since most of the pork consumed in California is indeed produced out of state, and that the state is a market too big for major producers to forego, there’s little doubt that the Californian regulations would indeed affect interstate practices. The industry plaintiffs are suggesting that it would be an “undue burden” to move away from <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/10/opinion/pig-farming-cruelty.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">torturing</a> animals in factory farms.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; font-weight: bold; letter-spacing: 0.1em; box-shadow: none; text-transform: uppercase; line-height: 30px;">THE PORK PRODUCERS</span> in the case say that upholding Prop 12 would mean that California voters are able to assert their policy choices onto the entire country’s economic practices — which the commerce clause is intended to prevent.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Given the nature of contemporary U.S. supply chains, however, most every in-state regulation of an industry will affect interstate commerce. The burden on commerce must be shown to be “excessive” for the law to be considered unconstitutional.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to the plaintiffs, abiding by Prop 12 will increase farmers’ production costs by over $13 per pig, <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-468/227679/20220610132221228_Natl%20Pork%20Producers%20v%20Ross%20No.%2021-468%20Brief%20for%20Petitioners.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">a 9.2 percent cost increase</a>, raising the price of pork products considerably. At present, the prices of meat and animal products are kept low only <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/business/pork-factory-regulations.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">by virtue</a> of mass, high-speed production that keeps animals in abhorrent conditions, while workers in <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/07/24/meat-industry-coronavirus-lawsuits/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">dangerous</a> slaughterhouse <a href="https://theintercept.com/2020/04/19/smithfield-foods-wisconsin-coronavirus/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">jobs</a> are horrifically underpaid. This is not an industry whose status quo should be defended.</font></p></div><blockquote class="Pullquote Pullquote--left" data-reactid="237" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 1em 0px; padding: 0px 1em 0px 0px; box-shadow: none; line-height: 1.125; float: left; max-width: 60%;"><div data-reactid="239" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">M<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">any of the industry giants are not aggressively siding with the National Pork Producers Council</span>.</font></div></blockquote><div data-reactid="240" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And many of the industry giants are not aggressively siding with the National Pork Producers Council, an association of pork interests. Other major pork producers have stated that the material costs of abiding by Prop 12 would be nowhere near so high. <b>In a statement, Hormel Foods <a href="https://www.hormelfoods.com/newsroom/news/hormel-foods-company-information-about-california-proposition-12/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">wrote</a> that it “faces no risk of material losses from compliance with Proposition 12,” beyond adding manageable “complexity” to their supply chain. Other industry giants like <a href="https://s22.q4cdn.com/104708849/files/doc_financials/2021/q3/08-11-21_Tyson-Foods-080921.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Tyson Foods</a>, <a href="https://www.smithfieldfoods.com/getmedia/7ecf12e2-da3b-4d31-8796-d07e38b39e51/2021-Sustainability-Impact-Report.pdf" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Smithfield Foods</a>, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/us-pork-producer-resume-shipments-california-after-farm-animal-law-delayed-2022-02-08/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Seaboard</a>, and <a href="https://clemensfoodgroup.com/brands/hatfield/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">Clemens Food Group</a> have said they are able to comply with the law</b>.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s not a foregone conclusion that a majority of justices will side with the National Pork Producers Council. Both conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have, from an originalist stance, previously criticized the dormant commerce clause. And, of course, all six of the court’s right-wing justices have ruled in favor of state laws that have significant economic effects on the lives of those outside those states — such is the nature of living in an entangled national body politic. Just <a href="https://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/politics/2022/08/31/abortion-services-have-taken--emotional-toll--on-patients--advocates-say-" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">ask</a> the abortion clinics now overwhelmed by <a href="https://theintercept.com/2022/06/18/abortion-roe-state-laws-missouri-illinois/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; text-decoration-line: none;">out-of-state travel</a>. Yet we should never underestimate the conservative majority’s pro-business bent, and its unabashed desire to quash any and all liberation struggles — be they for human or nonhuman lives.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; margin: 0px 0px 1em; letter-spacing: 0.01em; hyphens: auto;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the pork producers succeed in overthrowing Prop 12, many millions of animals will continue to live and die in the most appalling suffering. The message will be sent too that when big business wants to challenge democratically passed state laws, they have several right-wing Supreme Court justices — those storied defenders of states’ rights — on their side.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">states rights</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/ted-cruz/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/ted-cruz/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">===</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">an 7 22 lucien t 4
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>watching Justice Samuel Alito go spelunking in his Dobbs opinion
through centuries of so-called history and tradition in search of legal
justifications to overturn the right to abortion decided almost 50 years
ago in Roe v. Wade was like watching a boy play in a pile of dirt</b>.
Where do I dig next, he seemed to be muttering to himself as he shoveled
manure from a slave-era law in Virginia onto an 18th-century pile of
garbage he quoted from some doofus who believed women were inferior
beings. Clarence Thomas was right there behind him in his decision that
New York can't prevent people from carrying concealed weapons, plowing
through statutes from jolly old England and the American frontier to
show that Dodge City didn't really mean it when they told cowboys they
had to check their six-guns with the sheriff if they came into town. </font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>And
then along came Chief Justice Roberts as clean-up man, swinging the
club of something known as the "major questions doctrine" to deny the
Environmental Protection Agency its statutory authority to — duh —
protect the environment unless Congress spells out exactly how they
should do it.</b> According to Roberts, it is Congress, not the EPA, that
has to write a rule telling corporations they can't empty industrial
waste directly into creeks, rivers or the ocean because it's a "major
question" if it costs corporations a lot of money, so let's make it as
hard as possible for the government to take a chunk out of our golf
buddies' bottom lines.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Throughout the entire year of decisions by a
court that for the first time included all three of the Supreme Court's
newest and most conservative members, the Republican majority decided
to jettison the doctrine of <em>stare decisis</em>, which means to stand by things decided, and employ their own doctrine on how precedents should be treated: Stare quisquilias acervum
or "stand by the trash heap," where they proceeded to throw the court's
previous decisions and entire articles of the Constitution.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>All
of this in service to their favorite doctrine of all — rights granted
by the Constitution must be "deeply rooted in the nation's history and
tradition" or they aren't really rights at all.</strong> Legal scholars have been
predicting that the court will use its new jewel of a doctrine to
overturn Obergefell v. Hodges,<em> </em>not to mention other recent
decisions recognizing rights under the privacy provision of the equal
protection clause of the 14th Amendment … because we have no "history
and tradition" of same-sex marriage or gay sex or rubbers or the pill,
or anything else they simply don't like.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>To justify its
abandonment of the court's "history and tradition" of respecting and
upholding its previous decisions, the Supreme Court called upon a
favorite from an era they apparently revere, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">states' rights.</span> </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Speaking
for the court's conservative majority, Alito decided to "return"
abortion to the control of the states, several of which promptly made
performing abortions illegal and effectively established new rules — or
re-established old ones — which dictated that women must carry to term
babies resulting from rape or incest, and then give birth to them,
relying, it would seem, on our deeply rooted history and tradition of
slavery.</span></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What can be done about the court's prejudice masquerading
as reason? Doesn't the wrongheadedness of the "history and tradition"
of the way women were treated at the time the 14th Amendment was written
tell us something about all the anti-abortion laws of the past Alito
quoted in the world's longest footnote? Women weren't allowed to vote,
to sit on juries, to own property separate from husbands or male members
of their families, and in some states they did not have the right to
sign contracts. Oh, by the way, they weren't allowed to have abortions,
either.</font></p><p><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It took decades of fighting for women's rights for us to
get rid of some forms of prejudice against women. But "history and
tradition" demands we go back to banning abortions, according to Alito.</font></b></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alito's
decision features a gigantic hole not even the dissenters pointed out:
To have "history and tradition," it has to start somewhere. Precedents
become part of history only after they <em>make</em> history. If the
court is going to require that all our rights must be grounded in
history and tradition, that's exactly what Obergefell and the other
privacy rights decisions do. They establish a baseline of history that
can be depended upon in the future rather than reaching back to 1868 in
search of one.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I say if they're not going to respect their own
decisions, then neither should we, and neither should lower court
federal judges and state judges and legislatures. </font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Legal scholars use the term "vertical <b>stare decisis</b>"
to describe the principle that lower courts should follow and respect
the decisions of the Supreme Court. But the law is not something handed
down from a higher power or engraved on a tablet with a hammer and
chisel. It is a living thing, and it has to breathe and move and eat and
expel waste in order to stay alive, and some of the waste that must be
expelled can be found in the court's most recent decisions.</font></p></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">4 22</font></div><div><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The US isn’t one country. The more we believe it is, the less sense our politics makes. By insisting on “the truth” when the truth is diametric from “the truth,” we end up doing a helluva lot more work. We end up doing all kinds of mental acrobatics to make sure “the truth” is true.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Once we drop the idea of America being one country, things make more sense. We do less work, too, because on seeing the US isn’t one country, the source of our problems – our <em>national</em> problems – becomes clearer. That source is the politics of the American south.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Quarantine self isolation. Pandemic anxiety. Social distancing. Textured art portrait of bored unhappy annoyed trapped woman in black touching plastic bubble wrap wall in darkness.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There we find the reason the US isn’t one country. The states making up that region don’t want it to be. They have instead committed themselves to a wholly imagined confederacy of the mind and spirit, a fictional subnation inside a factual nation in which “real Americans” fight to restore God’s country to its rightful “constitutional” origins.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While the rest of America is animated by the principles of democracy and union, the south (and its interested and ideological allies spread around 50 states) is animated by the goals of division and control. If the south can’t control the machinery of the federal government, as it has since the beginning, the south declares itself a victim of tyranny.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">I think the central tension of our history has been between Americans willing to sacrifice for the greater good and Americans eager to kill themselves to prevent sacrificing anything to anyone who’s “against them.” Democracy isn’t what we think it is. It’s not a tool of a sovereign people to effectuate self-rule. It’s a tool of the few to rule the many.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The south is the source of national division for another reason. Its loyalty to the United States as a union of states is conditional. It depends on the south maintaining its grip on the machinery of the federal government. If and when challenged, the south reserves the right to mutiny. Its social contract includes a “treason option.”</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Secession before the Civil War is an obvious example. Less well known are negotiations between the Confederate States of America and foreign leaders who dithered long enough for the choice to be clear. Less understood, too, is the relationship, direct and indirect, between Russia and the Republican Party, the American south’s dominant party.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That relationship ranges in degree from passively allowing Russian operatives to sabotage a Democratic candidate for president to coordinating to spread the Big Lie (thus seeding the ground for a failed coup d’etat) to cheering in unison its invasion of democratic Ukraine.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There does exist a Trump-Putin axis in the Republican Party, as Jamie Raskin said. But obscuring that reality for most Americans, I think, is their belief in America being one country. Treason can’t be optional for some Americans. It just can’t be. That would mean “the truth” isn’t true.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The last reason the American south is why we can’t have nice things is this: the states in that region are acting like they are sovereign nations, as if reifying a wholly imagined confederacy of the mind and spirit, as if finally putting into practice the dream of restoring America’s origins.</b></font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Tennessee, Missouri and others have nullified federal gun laws. Mississippi, Florida and others have nearly totally outlawed access to abortion. Texas is now doing its own border security and immigration enforcement. Next is regulating the free movement of citizens.</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Missouri and Texas are debating bills to restrict out-of-state travel of pregnant people seeking abortions in states where access is legal.</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Stopping nonwhite people from crossing the border and taking up residence, terrorizing nonwhite people already here at gunpoint, forcing white women to repopulate their states and preventing white women from traveling “abroad” – altogether these are the things nations do as they’re slouching toward a totalitarian future.</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Only we’re not talking about nations.</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">We’re talking about states within a region within a nation that are acting like nations, thus belying the belief in America as one.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That states are now attempting to put limits on the right to free movement is only the latest in a series of violations of individual liberty. The trend will no doubt continue, as a GOP supermajority of the US Supreme Court decides increasingly that the rights of states to behave like sovereign nations overrules the rights of their people.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">To learn more, I talked to professor of political science and contributor to the <em>Editorial Board</em> Elizabeth F. Cohen. She’s the author of<b> Illegal: How America's Lawless Immigration Regime Threatens Us All</b>. “If you can keep women you suspect are seeking abortions from crossing state lines,” she told me, “you can probably keep them from doing other things in public and interfere with their rights as citizens.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong>Is freedom of movement as fundamental as freedom of speech?</strong>
</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yes.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">First, look at freedom of movement within a country. Seen that way, we find a lot of attention paid to the protection of freedom of movement. We also find that exceptions to the right to move freely are associated with other forms of political oppression.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">For example, restrictions on the free movement of Black Americans was integral to Jim Crow. Sundown towns were towns in which Black people risked their lives being in public after sundown. Sharecroppers were not permitted to leave their land until debts were paid off.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the former Soviet Union, internal restrictions on free movement were associated with attempts to centrally control the ethnic makeup of different republics making up the USSR. Needing permission to move around is a sign one has limited liberties of other sorts as well.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Also ask: Why do people move?</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We’d find reasons to call the right fundamental.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">They move to escape repression, to reunite with families, to exercise other rights and to sustain their and their loved one’s well-being.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s hard to say freedom of movement is not fundamental, even though that right is often overridden by claims of national sovereignty.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A legislator in Missouri has proposed a law forbidding pregnant people from leaving the state to get abortions. Can a state override a fundamental individual right in the interest of enforcing its laws?</font></strong></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">At any other point in the previous, oh, say, 50 years or so, I would have said that attempts by a state government to restrict the freedom of movement rights of women who seek to engage in activities that are perfectly legal in another state would be instantly shot down.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After all, no one was blocking flights to Las Vegas to keep people from going there to gamble when gambling was largely illegal elsewhere.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">We know teenagers under the legal drinking age in the US go abroad and drink alcohol. No one prevents them from leaving on this basis.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But I’m making no prediction of what any court will do in 2022.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Some say the proposed law in Missouri would encroach on the sovereignty of other states. But as you said, it's hard to predict.</font></strong></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><strong><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></strong></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha not an accident it's women's rights roe v wade and griswold AND brown v bd for AA POC that are under attack by trump gubmint authoritarian xian nat'list STATES RIGHTS BS</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">AN 2 22</font></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">A debate between the Republicans running for Michigan attorney general confirmed warnings from reproductive rights advocates that Republicans aren’t going to stop with abortion bans—</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">they’re coming for birth control next</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> In the last question of last Friday’s debate, </span><a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/02/michigan-republicans-give-terrifying-answers-on-a-landmark-contraception-case/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">all three men said</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> they thought the 1965 Supreme Court decision striking down laws banning the sale of contraception had been wrongly decided, because states’ rights.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>At least two of the three candidates did not know what <em>Griswold v. Connecticut</em> was about—</b>which itself is kind of an issue in people campaigning to be Michigan’s top lawyer, since <em>Griswold</em> is a pretty damn famous case. (I literally learned about it in high school, and I am not a lawyer.) But all three agreed, once they learned what it was, that it was bad.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Connecticut law struck down in <em>Griswold</em> allowed the prosecution of married couples for buying contraception. In <em>Griswold</em>, the Supreme Court said that the law violated the “right to marital privacy,” foreshadowing the privacy right that would be invoked in <em>Roe v. Wade</em> in 1973.</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s what the Michigan Republicans seeking to be the state’s top law enforcement officer had to say about the marital right to privacy around birth control decisions.</font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Remind me,” Tom Leonard, the former speaker of the state House, said. After an explanation, he was ready to condemn the decision.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“Yeah, okay, I just, and I wanted clarification,” Leonard said. “This case, much like <em>Roe v. Wade</em>, I believe was wrongly decided, because it was an issue that trampled states’ rights and it was an issue that should have been left up to the states.”</b></font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">State Rep. Ryan Berman literally pulled out his phone during that exchange.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">”Yeah, you know what, I wasn’t familiar with <em>Griswold v. Connecticut, </em>but I’m an advanced legal researcher so I pulled it up real quick to look what it’s about,” </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">he said. “And it says the court ruled that the Constitution did in fact protect the right of marital privacy against state restrictions on contraception. Again, I would have to look more into it and the reasoning behind it, but I’m all about states’ rights and</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 102, 0);"> limiting federal judicial activism.”</b></font></p><p><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Matthew DePerno, endorsed by Donald Trump for enthusiastically signing on to the Big Lie about the 2020 elections, had the same basic answer, minus the admission that he didn’t know what he was talking about.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">”Listen, all these cases that deal—<em>Griswold</em>, <em>Roe v. Wade</em>, <em>Dobbs</em>— these are <b>all state right issues. </b>I think that’s what we’re gonna see with the US Supreme Court. They’re gonna come down on the side that these liberty issues—number one, the wide expanse that was given on <em>Roe v. Wade</em> and this litany—are unworkable. The Supreme Court has to deal with that, has to decide, mark my words, that the privacy issue currently is unworkable. It’s going to be a state right issue on all of these things—as it should be!”</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">DePerno <a href="https://michiganadvance.com/2022/02/20/gop-attorney-general-hopefuls-seek-to-overturn-landmark-contraception-law-push-for-election-audit/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">wasn’t done</a>. “We need to start defending state rights as attorney generals, across this country</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">,” he said. “Too many people, even in our own party, too many people have lost the idea of what states’ rights means. They haven’t read the works of our Founding Fathers. They haven’t read The Federalist Papers. They continue to push the idea that we need to give rights away to the federal government. We don’t.</span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> We need to take state rights back. We need to stand in our borders. When the feds come and try to take our rights, we need to stand as citizens in Michigan and hold the line and </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">protect states’ rights.”</span></b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">So, yes. Republicans are 100% coming for the right to obtain birth control once the Trump Supreme Court strikes down <em>Roe v. Wade</em>, with that decision likely coming this June. Already some states are advancing <a href="https://rewirenewsgroup.com/article/2022/01/19/how-the-anti-abortion-movement-is-already-building-a-post-roe-world/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">personhood legislation</a>, which would declare an embryo or fetus to be a legal person. Such laws criminalize abortion, but they also potentially ban forms of birth control like the pill, IUDs, and emergency contraception.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">”All 3 Republicans running for Michigan Attorney General just stated that they oppose the ruling in Griswold v Connecticut which outlawed prosecuting married couples for using contraception,”<b> Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel <a href="https://twitter.com/dananessel/status/1494833301110116355" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">tweeted Friday evening</a>. “You read that right. Terrifying.”</b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Lots of people who support abortion rights spent years responding lackadaisically to warnings that Republicans were stacking the Supreme Court to overturn <em>Roe v. Wade</em> and legalize abortion bans. Now we see how true those warnings were, as they come to fruition. It’s time to sit up and listen to the warnings that Republicans won’t stop there.</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/jerry-falwell-jr-just-unmasked-conservatism-and-we-should-seriously-thank-him-for-it/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/03/jerry-falwell-jr-just-unmasked-conservatism-and-we-should-seriously-thank-him-for-it/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Jerry Falwell Jr. just unmasked conservatism — and we should seriously thank him for it</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by John Stoehr, The Editorial Board March 15, 2020</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>I suppose we owe Jerry Falwell Jr. a debt of gratitude. I’m serious.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Falwell is the son of the late Jerry Falwell, the man most responsible for bringing fundamentalist Christianity out of the political wilderness during Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Junior, along with Franklin Graham, himself a scion of a religious dynasty, is perhaps the president’s greatest champion among white evangelical Christians.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>He appeared on “Fox & Friends” yesterday. </b>Among other things, he accused Donald Trump’s enemies, including the press, of hyping COVID-19, the new strain of the coronavirus spreading around the world, panicking global markets and closing down entertainment and cultural events here and elsewhere.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> He, like Tom Cotton, the fascist senator from Arkansas, believes the disease outbreak can be blamed on totalitarian regimes in the east. For Cotton, that’s China. For Falwell, that’s North Korea. (While Falwell was on air, the president announced a state of national emergency related to the outbreak, undermining his and Cotton’s search for a scapegoat for his sake</span>.)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Falwell’s demagoguery isn’t what we should be thankful for. What we should be thankful for is his confessing, without appearing to know it, that a pillar of “principled conservatism” in the United States is no pillar at all. Not in practice. Once you see that this pillar rests on a bed of sand, rather than constitutional bedrock, you start seeing other “conservative principles” do, too. “States’ rights,” “gun rights,” “the right to life” and even “religious freedom” are nearly always about something other than what they seem to be. Falwell and his ideological confederates can’t be honest about it, though. If they were, they’d lose. Dishonesty, fraudulence and bad faith are central to their aims.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What would Jesus do? Not that.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Here’s some context, courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor (my italics):</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">“As in many states, residents in parts of rural, conservative Virginia say they seem to inhabit an increasingly different daily reality than that of urban and suburban districts. That feeling of separation was compounded by last November’s Democratic sweep of the state’s elected offices. <b>Now residents in Frederick County are mulling a radical proposal: seceding from Virginia and joining neighboring West Virginia.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Apparently Falwell is part of the effort. He’s the head of something called “Vaxit,”</b> according to Fox & Friends. Whether that’s a real organization I have no idea, but that’s not what I’m most interested in. I’m most interested in expressing gratitude to the good reverend for admitting that “states’ rights” have nothing to do with conservatism.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Think about it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If the principle of “states’ rights” meant what conservatives have said it meant to them, not one of them, not Jerry Falwell Jr. nor anyone calling him or herself a “principled conservative,” would dare suggest that a county secede from a state. If states are sovereign, as conservatives have alleged since Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat in 1948, calling for a county to secede from a state is traitorous. If “states’ rights” are as sacred as conservatives have said they are, the idea of secession is an abomination.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In saying counties should leave the state as casually as ordering unsweet tea with his burger and fries, the Rev. Falwell told us without knowing he was telling us that conservatism in theory is authoritarianism in practice. It cannot and will not tolerate democratic change, despite change coming with the blessing of the majority. If the majority rules, Falwell and his confederates will abandon commitments to democracy.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">Once you abandon democracy—once you open the door to treason—there’s no end in sight. Once it seceded, “the Confederacy began to deny states’ rights,” wrote James W. Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me. </font><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Jefferson Davis denounced states’ rights as destructive to the Confederacy</font><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);" size="4" face="Times New Roman">. The mountainous counties in western Virginia bolted to the Union. Confederate troops had to occupy east Tennessee to keep it from emulating West Virginia. Winn Parish, Louisiana, refused to secede from the Union. Winston County, Alabama, declared itself the Free State of Winston. Unionist farmers and woodsmen in Jones County, Mississippi, declared the Free State of Jones.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">By February 1864, Davis despaired: “Public meetings of treasonable character, in the name of state sovereignty, are being held.” Thus states’ rights as an ideology was contradictory and could not mobilize the white South for the long haul.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What mobilized the white South was the defense of slavery. Falwell and his new breed of confederate aren’t doing that, of course, but the spirit of treason, if not the act of treason, is the same. Conservatives tell us they prefer slow and gradual change, and stand united against radical attempts to bring it swiftly. But that’s not their true face. Conservatism in practice is a radical ideology reserving the right to betray its stated principles, and to betray community and brotherhood, if it doesn’t get what it wants.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thanks to Jerry Falwell Jr., that’s now easy to see.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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