roe v wade

<div>=</div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">6/24/22 overturned 6-3? no longer roberts ct</div><div style="">SEE HEARTBEAT</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">see states rights</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">see opus dei
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">dobbs?</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div>opus dei?! alito? roberts? clarence, scalia?
BIG WIN KANSASstate scotus Mich save nov ballot=steve marshall<a href="https://www.alternet.org/alabama-attorney-general-abortion-pills/">https://www.alternet.org/alabama-attorney-general-abortion-pills/</a><div align="left">=</div><div align="left">an 922</div><div align="left"><a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/600145-ocasio-cortez-to-clarence-thomas-resign-or-face-impeachment/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; outline: 0px;">Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez</a> of New York City hasn’t been shy about calling for U.S. Supreme Court Justice <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/impeach-supreme-court-justice-clarence-thomas-ginni-mark-meadows-2022-3" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Clarence Thomas</a> to either <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jun/27/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-supreme-court-justices-impeach-kavanaugh-gorsuch-thomas" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">be impeached or resign</a>, arguing that the activism of his wife — far-right MAGA Republican and conspiracy theorist Ginni Thomas — presents a major conflict of interest. After the 2020 presidential election, Ginni Thomas was heavily involved in MAGA efforts to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/24/virginia-thomas-mark-meadows-texts/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">get the election results overturned</a> and promoted the Big Lie in a series of <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/ginni-thomas-texts-mark-meadows-explained-1691740" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">text exchanges with Mark Meadows</a> (who served as White House chief of staff under President Donald Trump). Justice Thomas, AOC has argued, has no business serving on the High Court in light of his wife’s unwillingness to accept democratic election results.Another conflict of interest for Justice Thomas, according to abortion rights activists, is his wife’s extensive involvement in the anti-abortion movement. That involvement goes way beyond attending or helping to organize anti-abortion rallies. In an <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/09/ginni-thomas-abortion-roe-v-wade-supreme-court" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">article published by The Guardian</a> on September 9, journalist Ed Pilkington reports that Ginni Thomas was extensively involved in lobbying efforts to get the High Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.On June 24, those lobbyists got their way when the High Court’s radical-right majority overturned Roe v. Wade with its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. Clarence Thomas was one of the Republican-appointed justices who voted to overturn Roe, along with Samuel Alito and all three of Trump’s High Court appointees: Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett.READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/ginni-thomas-2657538725/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Ginni Thomas continued to associate with Big Lie promoters even after Trump left office: report</a>“Ginni Thomas, the self-styled ‘culture warrior’ and extreme right-wing activist, has links to more than half of the anti-abortion groups and individuals who lobbied her husband Clarence Thomas and his fellow U.S. Supreme Court justices ahead of their historic decision to eradicate a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy,” Pilkington reports. “A new analysis of the written legal arguments, or ‘amicus briefs,’ used to lobby the justices as they deliberated over abortion underlines the extent to which Clarence Thomas’ wife was intertwined with this vast pressure campaign. The survey found that 51 percent of the parties who filed amicus briefs calling for an end to a federal abortion right have political connections to Ginni Thomas, raising concerns about a possible conflict of interest at the highest levels of the U.S. judiciary.”Pilkington notes that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization “attracted an almost unprecedented 130 amicus briefs from both sides of the legal argument.” The analysis of those amicus briefs was carried out by the group Advance Democracy, Inc. and shared with The Guardian.“Of those, 74 were filed in favor of overturning the right to an abortion, enshrined in 1973 in Roe v Wade,” according to Pilkington. “In turn, the new analysis shows that 38 of the 74 anti-abortion amicus briefs — 51 percent — were produced by entities and individuals with links to Ginni Thomas. They included right-wing groups, religious interests, prominent conservative individuals and lawyers…. The revelation that there is substantial overlap between Ginni Thomas and the anti-abortion lobbying effort focused on her husband and the other conservative justices will intensify the growing sense of unease surrounding her hyper-energetic conservative activism.”Pilkington continues, “In recent years, she has placed herself in the thick of some of the most bitterly contested political controversies that have come — or could come — before the Court…. Thomas has been dubbed a ‘radical insurrectionist’ for her role in backing Trump’s attempt to subvert the 2020 presidential election. Yet her husband has refused to recuse himself from cases relating to the insurrection, including one in January in which he became the only justice to dissent in an 8-1 decision over allowing hundreds of documents held by the National Archives to be reviewed by the House committee investigating the January 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol.”READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/ginni-thomas-full-fledged-coconspirator/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">'Layers of a rotten onion': Experts say Ginni Thomas looks like 'a full-fledged potential co-conspirator'</a>Melissa Murray, a New York law University law professor and co-host of the Supreme Court-related podcast <a href="https://strict-scrutiny.simplecast.com/" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">“Strict Scrutiny,”</a> believes that there is a major conflict of interest where the Thomases are concerned.Murray told The Guardian, “The Thomases are normalizing the prospect of too close an association between the Supreme Court and those who litigate before it. This isn’t the first time that Mrs. Thomas has had dealings with those who come before the Court and seek her husband’s vote.”When the Dobbs ruling was handed down, Justice Thomas urged the High Court to “reconsider” rulings that offered protections for <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/with-roe-overturned-clarence-thomas-is-now-preparing-for-a-full-frontal-on-contraception-gay-rights/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">contraception and gay rights</a> — and the cases he specifically mentioned were 1965’s Griswold v. Connecticut, 2003’s Lawrence v. Texas and 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges.“Ginni Thomas’ ties with groups responsible for the whirlwind lobbying campaign over abortion could have serious ramifications in future cases that come before the Court,” Pilkington notes. “Clarence Thomas made it clear, in his concurring opinion in Dobbs, that he intends to use exactly the same arguments that were deployed in overthrowing Roe v. Wade to challenge the constitutional right to same-sex marriage, same-sex relations and contraception. Many of the interests to which Ginni Thomas was connected who filed anti-abortion amicus briefs have a parallel track record of anti-LGBT agitating.”READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/ginni-thomas-john-eastman/" target="self" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="color: rgb(11, 13, 101); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Emails raise ‘obvious suggestion’ Ginni Thomas was feeding John Eastman inside information: Carl Bernstein</a></div><div align="left">=</div>---AN 822With the overturning of Roe v. Wade, far-right religious Republicans celebrated their most substantial policy victory in four decades. However, a new analysis is <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/roe-kansas-religious-right_n_62ed2034e4b0ecfe3f704a0a" 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;">explaining the drawbacks</a> of the ruling and how it could negatively impact the Republican Party's political agenda, going forward.The HuffPost's Paul Blumenthal explained how the idea of banning abortion differs from the reality of it. At this point, many Americans in Republican-controlled states are already feeling the strain of the new law.Blumenthal offered a brief overview of the latest poll results detailing the reaction to Roe v. Wade being overturned.<blockquote style="margin: 1em 40px 1em -5px; border-left: 4px solid rgb(11, 13, 101); background: rgb(245, 245, 245); width: 602.542px; line-height: 32px; padding: 10px 20px 10px 24px;">"The public broadly disapproves of the court’s decision to overturn Roe, and opposes policies that ban abortion. Nearly two-thirds of Americans opposed the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/28/politics/cnn-poll-abortion-roe-v-wade/index.html" 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;">CNN poll</a> found. Sixty-two percent believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to a <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2022/07/06/majority-of-public-disapproves-of-supreme-courts-decision-to-overturn-roe-v-wade/" 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;">Pew Research poll</a>. Sixty-five percent said the same thing in a <a href="https://www.prri.org/research/political-and-religious-activation-and-polarization-in-the-wake-of-the-roe-overturn/" 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;">PRRI poll</a>."</blockquote>READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/02/republicans-arizona-florida-abortion-bans/" target="self" 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;">Republicans in Arizona and Florida approve draconian abortion bans</a>"The problem? The religious right’s unpopular policy of banning abortion is now reality, at least in certain states," Blumenthal wrote. "Republicans can no longer hide behind Roe and express support for unpopular policies that will never become law. They will have to defend abortion bans, and other unpopular restrictions pushed by an emboldened religious conservative movement."He added, "Republicans are already seeing how unpopular banning abortion can be. In the first vote on abortion since the court’s June decision, voters in Kansas ― a state that decisively voted to reelect Donald Trump ― rejected a referendum that would have overturned a state Supreme Court decision protecting abortion rights, and did so by a double-digit margin that exceeded Trump’s win there."Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, which focuses on maintaining record of public opinion, also weighed in on the impact of a possible abortion ban. “It’s no longer a theoretical possibility,” Deckman said. “It’s actual reality, and we’re seeing a backlash.”She also noted: “The Christian right currently has very disproportionate influence based on public opinion. Their views on those issues are not held by other Americans.”READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/right-wing-extremism-gop-abortion/" target="self" 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;">Right-wing religious extremism is the only excuse Republicans have in opposing abortion</a>However, Blumenthal also explained why the backlash should not be a surprise for Republican lawmakers. "This should come as no surprise to Republicans," he wrote. "The religious right’s policy agenda has always played second fiddle to other priorities of the conservative coalition that powered Ronald Reagan to victory in 1980 and secured dominance for decades to come."Now, there are possible consequences. Blumenthal noted that Republicans will likely have to face the adverse effects of putting such aggressive policies in play. Bradley Onishi, an associate professor with an academic emphasis on religion at Skidmore College, recently put the lawmakers' actions into perspective.“It’s like when the dog catches its tail, it’s kind of like, ’What’s next?” Onishi said.The reaction to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization also appears to align with the response to Roe v. Wade.In response to the court rulings, it appears Democratic voters are now more motivated to head to the polls. "<a href="https://www.prri.org/research/political-and-religious-activation-and-polarization-in-the-wake-of-the-roe-overturn/" 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;">Polling by PRRI</a> in the wake of the Dobbs decision showed a dramatic increase to 43% of Democrats saying they would only vote for a candidate who shares their position on abortion," he wrote. "A higher percentage of Democrats than Republicans named abortion as a litmus test issue."READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/05/texas-republicans-ban-retailers-abortion/" target="self" 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;">'Free market' Texas Republicans want to ban retailers that support abortion rights</a><div>=</div><div>states rights</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/ted-cruz/">https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/ted-cruz/</a></div><div></div><div>an 7 22The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has not only drawn vehement criticism from Democratic Party members and abortion rights activists in the United States — it has also been <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/06/24/roe-wade-abortion-ruling-world-leader-reactions" 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;">condemned by leaders</a> of other major democracies, from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to French President Emmanuel Macron to Belgium Prime Minister Alexander De Croo. Even on the right, the Dobbs ruling is controversial in Europe; outgoing U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a member of the Conservative Party, has blasted the ruling as an assault on human rights.As unpopular as the Dobbs ruling is in the U.S., it is even more unpopular in Europe. A <a href="https://morningconsult.com/2022/07/27/americas-reputation-in-europe-dips-after-uvalde-shooting-roe-reversal/" 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;">Morning Consult poll</a> focusing on <a href="https://www.axios.com/2022/07/28/americas-brand-europe-roe-v-wade-uvalde" 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;">five European countries</a> found that net favorability of the U.S. had gone down to only 11 percent in early July when Germany, the U.K., Italy, France and Spain are combined. The Dobbs ruling and the massacre in Uvalde, Texas on May 24 were cited as key factors; before those events, the U.S. enjoyed net favorability of around 25 percent in those countries, according to Morning Consult.But when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito — who wrote the majority opinion in Dobbs — attended the <a href="https://law.nd.edu/news-events/news/2022-religious-liberty-summit-rome-justice-samuel-alito-keynote/" 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;">Religious Liberty Summit</a> in Rome in late July, he made it clear that he couldn’t care less what European officials thought of him. Alito gave the keynote address at the event’s gala dinner on Thursday, July 21, and he had a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-62344354" 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;">mocking, dismissive tone</a> when discussing the reactions of non-U.S. officials to the Dobbs ruling.[READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/former-obama-speechwriter-explains-why-most-americans-now-hold-the-high-court-in-such-low-regard/" target="self" 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;">Former Obama speechwriter explains why most Americans now hold the High Court in such low regard</a>Alito told the crowd, “I had the honor this term of writing I think the only Supreme Court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders who felt perfectly fine commenting on American law. One of these was Boris Johnson, but he paid the price.”Alito’s joke about Johnson drew laughter from attendees. The scandal-plagued British prime minister, who is resigning, slammed the decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as a “big step backwards.”Alito also mocked Prince Harry, who condemned the Dobbs decision during a United Nations speech — saying, “From the horrific war in Ukraine to the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the United States, we are witnessing a global assault on democracy and freedom.”Alito, in response to Prince Harry’s comments, mockingly told Religious Liberty Summit attendees, “What really wounded me was when the Duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare the decision whose name may not be spoken with the Russian attack on Ukraine.”[READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/with-roe-overturned-clarence-thomas-is-now-preparing-for-a-full-frontal-on-contraception-gay-rights/" target="self" 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;">With Roe overturned, Clarence Thomas is now preparing for a full-frontal assault on contraception, gay rights</a>All five of the U.S. Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade after 49 years were appointed by Republican presidents: Alito, Clarence Thomas and Donald Trump appointees Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and Neil Gorsuch. Handed down in 1973, the landmark Roe decision established abortion as a national right. But with Roe having been officially overturned on June 24, individual states in the U.S. now have the option to outlaw abortion — and many of them already have.One of the dissenters in Dobbs was Justice Elena Kagan, a Barack Obama appointee. At a conference in Montana, Kagan warned that the U.S. Supreme Court’s image has <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/394103/confidence-supreme-court-sinks-historic-low.aspx" 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;">suffered considerably</a>.“I'm not talking about any particular decision or even any particular series of decisions, but if over time, the Court loses all connection with the public and with public sentiment, that's a dangerous thing for a democracy,” Kagan warned. And Justice Sonia Sotomayor, another Dobbs dissenter and Obama appointee, has even used the word “stench” to describe U.S. public opinion on its High Court.A Gallup poll released in June found that only 25 percent of Americans have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the U.S. Supreme Court.Watch Alito’s Religious Liberty Summit speech below <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/samuel-alito-mocks-reactions-ruling" 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;">or at this link</a>.</div>=an 7 22With the U.S. Supreme Court having overturned Roe v. Wade after 49 years, the United States no longer has a national standard on abortion rights, but rather, a wide range of state laws — and on July 1, the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/14/media/abortion-debate-reliable-sources/index.html" 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;">Indianapolis Star</a> reported that a ten-year-old Ohio girl had an abortion in Indianapolis, Indiana because of abortion restrictions in her own state. Other media outlets reported that she was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/14/media/abortion-debate-reliable-sources/index.html" 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;">allegedly raped</a>, and on July 13, the Columbus Dispatch reported that a man had been <a href="https://www.dispatch.com/story/news/2022/07/13/columbus-man-charged-rape-10-year-old-led-abortion-in-indiana/10046625002/" 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;">arrested and charged</a> in the case.Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California, during a <a href="https://twitter.com/jbendery/status/1547614150037188615" 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;">July 14 hearing</a>, discussed the case with anti-abortion activist Catherine Glenn Foster, president and CEO of Americans United for Life — and Foster denied, much to Swallwell’s shock, that the pregnancy’s termination qualified as an abortion.When Foster was asked if a “ten-year-old” would “choose to carry a baby,” Foster responded, “I believe it would probably impact her life. And so therefore, it would fall under any exception and would not be an abortion.”READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/fox-news-jesse-waters-boasts-on-his-own-reporting-after-claiming-child-rape-report-was-actually-a-hoax/" target="self" 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;">Fox News’ Jesse Watters boasts about his own reporting after claiming child rape report was actually a hoax</a>Sounding shocked by her response, Swalwell interjected, “Wait, it would not be an abortion if a ten-year-old, with her parents, made a decision not to have a baby that was the result of a rape?”Foster replied, “If a ten-year-old became pregnant as a result of rape and it was threatening her life, then that’s not an abortion. So, it would not fall under any abortion restriction in our nation.”Swalwell directed his next question to another witness at the hearing, Sarah Warbelow, legal director of the Human Rights Campaign — asking her, “Miss Warbelow, are you familiar with disinformation?.... Did you just hear some disinformation?”Warbelow responded, “Yes, I heard some very significant disinformation…. An abortion is a procedure; it’s a medical procedure that individuals undergo for a wide range of circumstances, including because they have been sexually assaulted — raped in the case of the ten-year-old. It doesn’t matter whether or not there is a statutory exemption; it is still a medical procedure that is understood to be an abortion. Beyond that, I think it’s also important to note that there is no exception for the life or the health of the mother in the Ohio law. That’s why that ten-year-old had to cross state lines in order to receive an abortion.”READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/06/scotus-abortion/" target="self" 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;">SCOTUS condemned for voting to overturn Roe v. Wade</a>Far-right MAGA Republican <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/gop-rep-jim-jordan-deletes-213558806.html" 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;">Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio</a> has claimed, in a tweet that he deleted, that reporting on the ten-year-old was a “lie,” and Swalwell <a href="https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1547607076406366208" 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;">called him out</a> for it during the hearing.“Speaking of disinformation,” Swalwell told Warbelow, “Jim Jordan called a ten-year-old rape victim a liar…. I know that he did that because he hates the president…. This law…. will bring us government-mandated pregnancies for ten-year-olds.”Watch the video below or <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/anti-abortion-activist-makes-shocking-claim-about-ten-year-old-victim/" 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;">at this link</a>.<div style=""></div><div style="">an 7 22</div><div style="">Indiana's Republican Attorney General Todd Rokita told Fox News anchor Jesse Watters on Wednesday evening that he intends to open a criminal investigation into the provider who performed an abortion on a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio that had to travel to The Hoosier State to obtain the procedure.The girl was 45 days along and unable to terminate the forced pregnancy because The Buckeye State banned most abortions past six weeks – with no exceptions for rape or incest – immediately following the United States Supreme Court's right-wing majority decision retracting the constitutional right to abortion in its reversal of Roe versus Wade on June 24th.Indiana allows abortions up until the 13th week <a href="https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/judge-lifts-order-against-indiana-abortion-procedure-ban/2877548/" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">as long as mandated conditions are met</a>. Its rules are likely to tighten, however, when state lawmakers convene in an <a href="https://www.aclu-in.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">emergency session on July 25th to discuss post-Roe </a><a href="https://www.aclu-in.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">policy plans</a>.
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/a-fanciful-tale-ohio-republicans/" target="self" title="view post: 'A fanciful tale'? Ohio rape suspect arrested after Republicans cast doubt on 10-year-old girl's story" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">'A fanciful tale'? Ohio rape suspect arrested after Republicans cast doubt on 10-year-old girl's story</a>
<a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/a-fanciful-tale-ohio-republicans/" target="self" title="view post: 'A fanciful tale'? Ohio rape suspect arrested after Republicans cast doubt on 10-year-old girl's story" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">In Ohio, the restrictions are predicated on what legislators and anti-choice activists claim is the detection of a heartbeat. But that contention is not supported by empirical medical data. </a><a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/health/womens-health/heartbeat-bills-called-fetal-heartbeat-six-weeks-pregnancy-rcna24435" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">As an April 17th NBC News report</a> noted, embryos have no structured heart at six weeks. Instead, there is "a tube that generates sporadic electrical impulses that eventually coordinate into rhythmic pulses."<a href="https://www.livescience.com/65501-fetal-heartbeat-at-6-weeks-explained.html" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Live Science also explained in detail last September</a> that "after the detection of the flutter at six weeks, the heart muscle continues to develop over the next four to six weeks, undergoing the folding and bending that needs to happen for the heart to take its final shape."On Tuesday, a 27-year-old suspect was taken into custody and confessed to twice assaulting the child. The arrest occurred while numerous Ohio Republicans – including Governor Mike DeWine, Attorney General Dave Yost, <a href="https://twitter.com/JuddLegum/status/1547307766557155333?s=20&t=c7xhfu1k2r0i6tUauA9E5Q" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">and Congressman Jim Jordan</a> – were publicly suggesting that the story was a fabrication. The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board called the account "a fanciful tale." None of them have issued a formal apology in light of the accused rapist's capture.
Incidentally, Yost had expressed his doubts on Monday's Jesse Watters Primetime. During Wednesday's broadcast, Rokita blamed President Joe Biden's immigration policies for the crime despite the alleged perpetrator <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/ohio-man-charged-rape-10-163914748.html" target="blank" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">having lived in Columbus, Ohio for seven years</a>.
[READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/witnesses-dismember-house-republican-infanticide/" target="self" title="view post: 'That does not happen': Witnesses refute House Republican's 'outrageous' claims of 'infanticide'" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Kevin McCarthy cites disputed fentanyl overdose report to push anti-immigration rhetoric</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/witnesses-dismember-house-republican-infanticide/" target="self" title="view post: 'That does not happen': Witnesses refute House Republican's 'outrageous' claims of 'infanticide'" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">"I shouldn't be here. I mean, first of all, this is an illegal immigration issue because likely of Biden's lawlessness at the border and everything going on down there. That's why Indiana as a non-border state has actually filed several independent lawsuits on that," Rokita said.</a>While justice for the victim may be served in an Ohio courtroom, Rokita is taking a much different approach in neighboring Indiana.
"Then we have the rape, and then we have this abortion activist acting as a doctor with a history of failing to report," he continued as Fox displayed a picture of the doctor who aided the underaged victim. "So we're gathering the information, we're gathering the evidence as we speak, and we're gonna fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure. If she failed to report in Indiana, it's a crime to not report, to intentionally not report."
Next, Rokita fired off several conspiracy theories.
READ MORE: <a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/house-republican-women-birth-turtles/" target="self" title="view post: House Republican asks if women give birth to turtles or tacos" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">House Republican asks if women give birth to turtles or tacos</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/house-republican-women-birth-turtles/" target="self" title="view post: House Republican asks if women give birth to turtles or tacos" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;" /><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/house-republican-women-birth-turtles/" target="self" title="view post: House Republican asks if women give birth to turtles or tacos" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">"This is a horrible, horrible scene caused by Marxists and socialists and those in the White House who want lawlessness at the border. And then this girl was politicized – politicized – for the gain of killing more babies, alright? That was the goal," Rokita declared. "And this abortion activist is out there front and center. The lame stream media – the fake news – is right behind it and unfortunately in Indiana, the paper of record is fake news and they were right there jumping in on all this thinking that it was gonna be great for their abortionist movement when this girl has been so brutalized."</a><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/house-republican-women-birth-turtles/" target="self" title="view post: House Republican asks if women give birth to turtles or tacos" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Watch below or at this link.</a></div><div style=""><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2022/07/house-republican-women-birth-turtles/" target="_self" title="view post: House Republican asks if women give birth to turtles or tacos" class="rm-stats-tracked" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;"></a></div>===an 7 22 lucien t 4
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.

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. 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. 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.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 stare decisis, 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.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. Legal scholars have been

predicting that the court will use its new jewel of a doctrine to

overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, 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.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, states' rights. 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.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.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.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 make 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.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. Legal scholars use the term "vertical stare decisis"

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....</div><div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">===fac so index: <time datetime="2019-05-26T04:00:00">May 26, 2019</time> by <a href="https://www.southernstudies.org">Facing South</a> <div class="block"><div class="views-articlebody prose nodebody"><div class="article-body"><div class="field-body">Rank of Brett Kavanaugh's 2018 appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court among the reasons there's a new <a href="https://rewire.news/article/2019/05/17/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-extreme-abortion-bans-sweeping-the-country/">push to ban abortion</a> in state legislatures across the South and elsewhere: <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/three-reasons-theres-a-new-push-to-limit-abortion-in-state-legislatures/">1</a>In

the fiscal year before it spearheaded Kavanaugh's confirmation, amount

the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) — a secret-money 501(c)(4) "social

welfare" nonprofit that promotes conservative judges — received in

anonymous donations, according to a tax return recently obtained by

campaign finance watchdogs: <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/dark-money-group-funded-by-17million-mystery-donor-before-kavanaugh/">$22 million</a>Size of a single anonymous donation JCN got during the period between July 2017 and June 2018, when <a href="https://www.scotusblog.com/2018/07/justice-kennedy-abortion-and-the-legacy-of-a-third-choice/">abortion rights-protecting</a> Justice Anthony Kennedy resigned, opening the door to Kavanaugh, who was backed by anti-abortion groups: <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/dark-money-group-funded-by-17million-mystery-donor-before-kavanaugh/">$17 million</a>Number of other anonymous donations JCN got that year, all of them at least six-figure: <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/dark-money-group-funded-by-17million-mystery-donor-before-kavanaugh/">9</a>JCN's spending in 2017 to support the confirmation of President Trump's other Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch, who has also <a href="https://prochoice.org/senate-confirms-gorsuch-for-scotus/">shown hostility</a> to the Court's 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion: <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/dark-money-group-funded-by-17million-mystery-donor-before-kavanaugh/">$10 million</a>Year in which Carrie Severino — a former law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and spouse of <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/22/trump-religious-activists-hhs-351735">Catholic anti-abortion lawyer</a> Roger Severino, who now runs the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Civil Rights and <a href="https://www.hrc.org/blog/trump-appoints-radical-anti-lgbtq-activist-to-lead-hhs-civil-rights-office">opposes</a> contraceptive access under the Affordable Care Act — took the helm of JCN: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judicial_Crisis_Network">2014</a>Among

JCN's top funders, rank of the Wellspring Committee, a secretive

nonprofit that serves as a conduit for anonymous contributions to

conservative causes and is led by <a href="https://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/fl-xpm-1990-05-25-9001100227-story.html">hard-line Opus Dei Catholic</a> Ann Corkery and her husband, Neil Corkery, who <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2013/11/wellsprings-flow/">has served</a> as JCN's treasurer: <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/11/trump-inauguration-money-links-secretive-dark-money/">1</a>Amount Wellspring funneled to JCN between 2010 and 2018: <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2018/11/trump-inauguration-money-links-secretive-dark-money/">more than $54.2 million</a>According

to the newly released tax return, amount JCN paid that fiscal year to

the BH Group, a Virginia limited liability company connected to Trump

advisor Leonard Leo, who's also the executive vice president of the

Federalist Society, an influential conservative legal organization whose

current or former members <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federalist_Society">include</a> five sitting Supreme Court justices: <a href="https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/05/dark-money-group-funded-by-17million-mystery-donor-before-kavanaugh/">$241,000</a>Decades for which Leo — also <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Leonard_Leo">reportedly</a>

an Opus Dei member who plays a key role in hiring at George Mason

University's law school in Virginia — has worked to push the judiciary

to the right in order to enable an abortion crackdown: <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2018/jul/06/leonard-leo-supreme-court-replacement-trump-justice-nomination-abortion">3</a>According

to conservative commentator Ed Whelan, number of people "more dedicated

to the enterprise of building a Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade" than Leo: <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Leonard_Leo#Anti-Abortion_Views">0</a>Month

in which Leo told a gathering of conservative activists in Florida that

they had to mobilize in "very unprecedented ways" to finish their

transformation of the U.S. Supreme Court: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/leonard-leo-federalists-society-courts/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.54c229acd84b">2/2019</a>Between

2014 and 2017 alone, amount Leo and his allies raised for JCN and other

secret-money nonprofits to carry out their court-transforming agenda: <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/leonard-leo-federalists-society-courts/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.54c229acd84b">more than $250 million</a>Year since JCN has also been funneling millions of dollars to state supreme court races, money that has bought misleading or <a href="https://www.facingsouth.org/2018/05/secret-money-courts-group-accused-libel-arkansas">even libelous</a> ads: <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/conservative-group-behind-kavanaugh-confirmation-has-spent-years-reshaping-state-and-federal">2012</a></div></div></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">==<a href="https://www.nationofchange.org/2022/07/07/opus-dei-supreme-indecency-extreme-deceit/">https://www.nationofchange.org/2022/07/07/opus-dei-supreme-indecency-extreme-deceit/</a>the current Supreme Court majority that just denied women a legal right to abortion (Dobbs vs. Jackson)

consists of religious fanatics whose careers have been fast-tracked (so

that young Justices can serve for decades) by ultra-wealthy,

like-minded lobbyists and political operatives. The nexus of this

activity lies with a powerful arch-conservative organization within the

Catholic Church, Opus Dei, that in the U.S. operates out of the Catholic

Information Center in Washington D.C.

I am not targeting Catholics but rather the Church’s reactionary,

fundamentalist wing. Many Catholic organizations are dedicated to

upholding the rights and lives of minorities (and majorities, such as

women), victims of pedophilic priests, gays, the poor, immigrants, etc.

The fundamentalist wing of any religion has more in common with other

creeds’ fundamentalisms than with many of its own co-religionists, whom

they often regard as enemies. Catholic fundamentalism is obviously not

the only “brand” influencing American politics, but it is the one with a

dominant insidious influence on the judiciary.

Opus Dei and its partner organizations have poured tens of millions of dollars into <a href="https://rollcall.com/2019/08/06/conservative-judicial-group-is-top-donor-to-gop-state-elections-arm/">promoting the careers and appointments</a>

of Chief Justice Roberts and the five Justices who overturned Roe:

Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett (Roberts, an

arch-conservative, nonetheless dissented on the abortion case).

Opus Dei was founded in Spain by Escriva de Balaguer in 1928 and grew

in power, wealth, and influence during the Fascist dictatorship of

Francisco Franco who, with significant military help from Nazi Germany,

overthrew the legitimate Spanish government and ruled over a police

state from 1939-1975. The group extended its power throughout Latin

America, supporting Pinochet’s murderous regime in Chile and other

terrorizing dictatorships. It consistently opposes gay, sexual, and

reproductive rights, and the Catholic liberation movements that champion

the poor in Latin America. It has been involved in the Vatican’s

banking scandals but still wields enormous influence over Vatican

finances, as detailed by Robert Hutchison in his book, Their Kingdom Come.
Opus Dei’s assets as of 2008 were $2.8 billion, but they have undoubtedly grown since. Popes <a href="https://www.population-security.org/cffc-97-01.htm">John Paul II</a> and <a href="https://opentabernacle.wordpress.com/2014/04/05/pope-francis-increases-opus-dei-power/">Francis </a>both elevated Opus Dei officials to the highest Church offices. One of Opus Dei’s core principles, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20130531231642/http://www.catholicsforchoice.org/oppositionwatch/documents/OpusDeiinLatinAmerica.pdf">as articulated by its founder</a>,

is to engage in “the sphere of public life”, not because they are human

or Catholic rights but because “they are God’s rights…May such

‘fanaticism’ for the Faith…become stronger every day.” Opus Dei is not

simply a conservative religious group, it is openly dedicated to

wielding political and financial power in nations throughout the world.

And that often means promoting and aligning itself with the most

violent, reactionary regimes and acting in the shadow realms of

political influence.

Opus Dei members were prominent in <a href="http://churchandstate.org.uk/2019/03/opus-deis-influence-on-the-u-s-judiciary/">Trump’s White House</a>, including Attorney General William Barr and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/06/29/1108798387/jan-6-committee-subpoenas-pat-cipollone-trumps-former-white-house-counsel">Pat Cipollone</a>, Trump’s former <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/white-house-counsels-betrayal-his-office/605980/">White House counsel</a>. Opus Dei had <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/koch-lobbyists-and-opus-dei--whos-dropping-in-on-trump-budget-czar-mick-mulvaney.html">access to Trump’s budget </a>director,

Mick Mulvaney, along with other noted right-wing lobbyists (Heritage

Foundation, Koch Industries), meetings the Trump administration<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/21/koch-lobbyists-and-opus-dei--whos-dropping-in-on-trump-budget-czar-mick-mulvaney.html"> tried to keep secret</a>. <a href="https://churchandstate.org.uk/2019/06/opus-deis-influence-is-felt-in-all-of-washingtons-corridors-of-power/">Member Larry Kudlow</a>

was Trump’s director of the National Economic Council. It may well be

the most powerful political lobby in the world and yet its explicit

political agenda is absolutely subservient to its extreme, authoritarian

religious agenda.

A key fixer in this effort is Leonard Leo. <a href="https://churchandstate.org.uk/2019/06/opus-deis-influence-is-felt-in-all-of-washingtons-corridors-of-power/">Leo is on the board of directors</a> of the Catholic Information Center (William Barr was a past director) and <a href="https://www.politico.com/interactives/2018/politico50/leonard-leo/">Executive Vice President </a>of

the Federalist Society, a lobbying group that adheres to an

“originalist” interpretation of the Constitution (more on this below).

The two organizations are close political allies, as Leo’s dual role

suggests. As Trump’s close advisor during his presidency, Leo was

responsible for selecting and guiding the Supreme Court nominations of

Alito, Barrett, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch and was instrumental in riddling

the lower Federal courts with <a href="https://abovethelaw.com/2017/03/lower-court-judicial-nominations-by-the-trump-administration/">Trump appointees</a>. Meanwhile, members of both Opus Dei and The Federalist Society include

Alito, Clarence Thomas, and the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Chief

Justice Roberts is a Federalist Society member and the Society’s <a href="https://fedsoc.org/contributors">members and supporters</a>

are prominent in many of nation’s top law schools and most powerful law

firms, which allows it to have an untoward influence over judicial

selections. When Clarence Thomas headlined a <a href="https://www.commoncause.org/democracy-wire/justice-thomas-crosses-the-line-again/">2013 Federalist Society fundraiser</a>,

guests were seated in proximity to him according to the size of their

donations. In effect, the Federalist Society and Opus Dei have become

the Supreme Court of the land.

Much of Opus Dei’s influence was exerted via the Wellspring

Committee, established and run by Opus Dei members Ann and Neil Corkery

in 2008. The Koch brothers were instrumental in providing Wellspring

with its first $10 million in seed money. <a href="https://www.salon.com/2021/03/30/behind-the-dark-money-web-that-put-barrett-and-kavanaugh-and-gorsuch-on-the-supreme-court/">According to Robert Maguire</a>

of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Corkerys

“have been the overseers of massive amounts of money that have gone into

federal judicial races.”
Wellspring closed down in 2018 but not before

passing its mantle to the Judicial Crisis Network (JCN); in 2017

Wellspring transferred <a href="https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/262046485/02_2019_prefixes_25-26/262046485_201712_990O_2019022016111921">$14,814, 998.00</a>,

or 94% of its donations that year, to JCN. JCN was formerly directed by

Leonard Leo and now by Carrie Severino, who served as Thomas’s law

clerk. (Opus Dei’s Roger Severino, Carrie’s husband, was Director of

Trump’s Office for Civil Rights). JCN is a 501(c)(4) organization so its

donors can remain secret. JCN <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/05/26/secret-money-behind-push-ban-abortion?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=twitter">poured millions</a> into supporting Bush and Trump’s Supreme Court nominees (Roberts, Alito, Kavanaugh, Gorsuch, and Barrett) and millions <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/billionaires-try-to-buy-the-supreme-court">blocking </a>Obama’s Court nominee, Merrick Garland.

Given Opus Dei’s absolute anti-choice ideology,  global power, and

influence over the Supreme Court, it is clear the Court’s anti-choice

decision was not driven by legal arguments over the right to privacy,

strict or “originalist” interpretations of the Constitution, or states

rights. These were all just window dressing. The Supreme Court—and much

of our judiciary—has been taken over by fanatics with a strictly theological agenda: to replace “separation of Church and State” with “the Church runs the state”. It is a narrow, fanatical religious ideology that decided the case.

The so-called “originalist” theory of interpreting the Constitution

claims the Constitution only protects rights explicitly mentioned in the

text. The Constitution itself rejects the “originalist” idea so central

to conservative ideology. The Ninth Amendment reads, “The

enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be

construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” This

clearly states that interpreting the Constitution is a living, evolving

process, for how else can those “other[s]” rights be “retained by the

people”? The Ninth is also a safety valve: “If we left out any important

rights, sorry, our bad, it doesn’t mean those rights aren’t protected

as well.” The Ninth has been used to uphold such diverse rights as

teaching non-English languages, sending kids to private schools,

protecting against forced sterilization, and the 1965 Griswold decision

overturning bans on contraception, in which privacy was deemed a

“penumbra” (also called “unenumerated”) right. The penumbra concept was

then applied to abortion in 1973’s Roe decision.

Justice Harry Blackmun wrote the majority decision in Roe v. Wade, citing both the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments: “This

right of privacy, whether it be founded in the Fourteenth Amendment’s

concept of personal liberty and restrictions upon state action, as we

feel it is, or…in the Ninth Amendment’s reservation of rights to the

people, is broad enough to encompass a woman’s decision whether or not

to terminate her pregnancy. The detriment that the State would impose

upon the pregnant woman by denying this choice altogether is apparent.” The Court also recognized that “When

those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy,

and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary…is not

in a position to speculate as to the answer.” Blackmun’s decision

includes an overview of the dramatic shifts in cultural and legal

attitudes towards abortion, though most views differentiated abortions

in the first 12-16 weeks (before the baby is usually felt moving inside

the womb) from those occurring later.

The “sanctity of the foetus”, that is, viewing abortion at any stage

of pregnancy as equivalent to murder, is the linchpin of the anti-choice

position and its driving emotional trigger. However, even the Catholic

Church’s historical opposition to abortion had nothing to do with the

sanctity of the foetus; it was <a href="https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12178868/">aimed at the “sin” of sexual pleasure</a>.

Church policy varied over the centuries but the foetus’s life was

either absent as an issue or secondary to sexual sin and other

theological concerns. St. Thomas Aquinas asserted that in its earlier

stages <a href="https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/st-thomas-aquinas-c-1225-1274">a foetus is in a “vegetal”</a>

and then “animal” state before achieving person-hood at some point,

most likely at the end of the third month. It wasn’t until 1965 that the

Church banned abortion on the basis of sanctity of life rather than

sexual sin. However, the Bible passages used to justify this claim 1) do

not really address abortion (the BIble is much more direct in advising

that adulterers be stoned to death); 2) are drawn mostly from the Old

Testament, a Jewish document, significant since the Jewish religion

allows abortion; and 3) are in the Bible, which has no legal standing in

the United States. Or didn’t.

The Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson is only the

beginning, as anti-abortion activists and GOP-led extremists mobilize to

assault a wide range of rights. The anti-choice movement was never only

about abortion. Abortion was used as the emotional catalyst for a broad

attack on the values of tolerance and social commitment embodied in

Federal guarantees backed by Constitutional authority. The well-being of

Americans and our system of government is now in the hands of religious

fanatics on a crusade against all those who do not believe in their

degraded, medieval version of truth. They are welcome to their beliefs

but are not welcome to impose those beliefs on the rest of us, nor to

challenge the fundamental values of the United States, which holds the

value of human beings above adherence to extreme and rigid political or

religious ideologies.
=</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=
</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">an</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">... DHS advisory came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court announced its ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, rolling back a half-century precedent on abortion rights. As protests took place across the country, one incident has already escalated to violence. In Cedar Rapids, Iowa, a truck driver crashed into demonstrators protesting the overturn. The incident led to one victim being hospitalized.</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</div></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">6 22 mma sorta random</div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div>Fox host criticizes “the eugenics mentality of the pro-choice movement”</div><div>06/26/22 11:27 AM EDT</div><div>Mark Levin downplays Roe decision: “Really Roe v. Wade wasn't overturned”</div><div>06/26/22 11:08 AM EDT</div><div>Fox News coverage of Roe being overturned featured a lot of men</div><div>06/24/22 11:01 PM EDT</div><div>On Fox News, Lila Rose likens “pro-abortion advocates” to Nazis</div><div>06/24/22 9:23 PM EDT</div><div>
</div><div>Fox News correspondent complains that too many protest signs are “vulgar”</div><div>06/24/22 8:48 PM EDT</div><div>Fox guest: “We're in the middle of a pro-abortion Kristallnacht” </div><div>06/24/22 8:39 PM EDT</div><div>How right-wing media reacted to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade</div><div>06/24/22 6:42 PM EDT</div><div>Charlie Kirk says that overturning Roe v. Wade “means more parents” will now be “pushing back against” critical race theory and gender-affirming care</div><div>06/24/22 6:00 PM EDT</div><div>Newsweek's Josh Hammer: “What this opinion does is it kicks it back to the states. That's all it does, full stop, end of story.”</div><div>06/24/22 5:15 PM EDT</div><div>Pagination</div><div>Current page1</div><div>
</div></div><div><div></div><div>4 22</div><div>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.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 national problems – becomes clearer. That source is the politics of the American south.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.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.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.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.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.”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.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.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.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.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.Missouri and Texas are debating bills to restrict out-of-state travel of pregnant people seeking abortions in states where access is legal.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.Only we’re not talking about nations.We’re talking about states within a region within a nation that are acting like nations, thus belying the belief in America as one.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.To learn more, I talked to professor of political science and contributor to the Editorial Board Elizabeth F. Cohen. She’s the author of Illegal: How America's Lawless Immigration Regime Threatens Us All. “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.”Is freedom of movement as fundamental as freedom of speech?
Yes.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.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.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.Also ask: Why do people move?We’d find reasons to call the right fundamental.They move to escape repression, to reunite with families, to exercise other rights and to sustain their and their loved one’s well-being.It’s hard to say freedom of movement is not fundamental, even though that right is often overridden by claims of national sovereignty.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?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.After all, no one was blocking flights to Las Vegas to keep people from going there to gamble when gambling was largely illegal elsewhere.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.But I’m making no prediction of what any court will do in 2022.Some say the proposed law in Missouri would encroach on the sovereignty of other states. But as you said, it's hard to predict....</div><div>=</div></div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510333/throughline">https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510333/throughline</a></div><div>
</div><div><h3 class="episode-date" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;" gotham="Gotham" ssm="SSm" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" webkit-font-smoothing="webkit-font-smoothing" antialiased="antialiased" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-transform="text-transform" uppercase="uppercase" background-color="background-color"><time datetime="2021-09-23" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">SEPTEMBER 23, 2021</time></h3><h2 class="title" data-metrics="{" action="action" click="click" rundown="rundown" story="story" category="category" podcast="podcast" directory="directory" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.2;" gotham="Gotham" ssm="SSm" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" webkit-font-smoothing="webkit-font-smoothing" antialiased="antialiased" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/09/22/1039822099/the-supreme-court-2020" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">The Supreme Court (2020)</a></h2><p class="teaser" style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-family: " gotham="Gotham" ssm="SSm" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" important="important" padding="padding" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height" float="float" none="none" position="position" static="static" width="width" auto="auto" max-width="max-width" background-image="background-image" initial="initial" background-position="background-position" background-size="background-size" background-repeat="background-repeat" background-attachment="background-attachment" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" color="color" text-rendering="text-rendering" webkit-font-smoothing="webkit-font-smoothing">When, why, and how did the Supreme Court get the final say in the law of the land? The question of the Court's role, and whether its decisions should reign above all the other branches of government, has been hotly debated for centuries. And that's resulted in a Supreme Court more powerful than anything the Founding Fathers could have imagined possible.<p class="teaser" style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-family: " gotham="Gotham" ssm="SSm" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" important="important" padding="padding" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height" float="float" none="none" position="position" static="static" width="width" auto="auto" max-width="max-width" background-image="background-image" initial="initial" background-position="background-position" background-size="background-size" background-repeat="background-repeat" background-attachment="background-attachment" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" color="color" text-rendering="text-rendering" webkit-font-smoothing="webkit-font-smoothing">covers switch in time that saved 9; after marbury v ? scotus carved out indiv rights which later got leveraged by Warren Ct? to judicial supremacy; CRM but last gasp was Roe; now right wants to use tool to undo warren progress.<p class="teaser" style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 10px !important; padding: 0px !important; line-height: 1.4 !important; float: none !important; position: static !important; width: auto !important; max-width: none !important; background-image: initial !important; background-position: initial !important; background-size: initial !important; background-repeat: initial !important; background-attachment: initial !important; background-origin: initial !important; background-clip: initial !important; text-rendering: auto !important; -webkit-font-smoothing: initial !important;"><a href="https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1039822099/1046005946">https://www.npr.org/player/embed/1039822099/1046005946</a></div><div>
</div><div><h3 class="episode-date" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 2px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit;" gotham="Gotham" ssm="SSm" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" webkit-font-smoothing="webkit-font-smoothing" antialiased="antialiased" color="color" rgb="rgb" text-transform="text-transform" uppercase="uppercase" background-color="background-color"><time datetime="2021-09-30" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;">SEPTEMBER 30, 2021</time></h3><h2 class="title" data-metrics="{" action="action" click="click" rundown="rundown" story="story" category="category" podcast="podcast" directory="directory" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.2;" gotham="Gotham" ssm="SSm" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" webkit-font-smoothing="webkit-font-smoothing" antialiased="antialiased" color="color" rgb="rgb" background-color="background-color"><a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/09/29/1041650865/the-shadows-of-the-constitution-2020" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; text-decoration-line: none;">The Shadows of the Constitution (2020)</a></h2><p class="teaser" style="box-sizing: border-box; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; font-family: " gotham="Gotham" ssm="SSm" helvetica="Helvetica" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" vertical-align="vertical-align" baseline="baseline" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" margin="margin" px="px" important="important" padding="padding" font-size="font-size" line-height="line-height" float="float" none="none" position="position" static="static" width="width" auto="auto" max-width="max-width" background-image="background-image" initial="initial" background-position="background-position" background-size="background-size" background-repeat="background-repeat" background-attachment="background-attachment" background-origin="background-origin" background-clip="background-clip" color="color" text-rendering="text-rendering" webkit-font-smoothing="webkit-font-smoothing">The Constitution is like America's secular bible, our sacred founding document. In her play, What the Constitution Means to Me, Heidi Schreck goes through a process of discovering what the document is really about – who wrote it, who it was for, who it protected and who it didn't. Through Heidi's personal story, we learn how the Constitution and how it has been interpreted have affected not just her family but generations of Americans.</div><div>1021 an

no lnx
Justice Alito lashes out at a journalist's criticism as 'ridiculous'Cody Fenwick September 30, 2021
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito singled out a specific journalist for criticism on Thursday during a defensive speech at the University of Notre Dame. He used the event to respond to growing outrage about the court's use of the "shadow docket," in which it weighs in on ongoing cases without oral arguments or extended opinionsAdam Serwer of the Atlantic has been among those to recently call out the court's increasingly aggressive use of the shadow docket. Writing about its recent decision to allow a Texas law banning abortions after 6 weeks of pregnancy to go into effect, Serwer wrote: "The conservative majority on the Supreme Court was so eager to nullify Roe v. Wade, the 1973 precedent securing the right to abortion, that it didn't even wait for oral arguments."Without naming Serwer or the Atlantic, Alito latched on to this quotation and attempted to refute it."Put aside the false and inflammatory claim that we nullified Roe v. Wade," Alito said. "We did no such thing, and we said that expressly in our order. I quote: 'The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue. ... this order is not based on any conclusion about the constitutionality of Texas's law...'"He continued: "So, the statement is flatly wrong, and the suggestion that we should've held oral argument is ridiculous."Here is Justice Alito condemning @AdamSerwer’s Atlantic article about the Texas abortion order as “false,” “inflamm… https://t.co/DxItCd85D6— Mark Joseph Stern (@Mark Joseph Stern) 1633027821.0Alito's response is wholly unresponsive to Serwer's actual claim. First, most clearly, Serwer did not suggest that the justices should've held oral argument before issuing their order. His point, quite obviously, is that at the very least the court should wait to hold oral arguments and before doing something as upending precedent on abortion law. That's what the court did by allowing the Texas ban to go into effect based on a technicality, even though there were clear immediate harms caused by the obviously unconstitutional law. Alito's cheap shot here shows either a lack of interest in taking criticism seriously or poor critical reading skills, neither of which are qualities one would hope to see in a Supreme Court justice.More to the point, though, Alito's claim that the court didn't nullify Roe v. Wade because it didn't address the constitutionality of abortion bans doesn't hold up either. If Serwer had claimed that the court had overturned Roe, Alito would arguably be right on a technicality. But nullifying isn't the same as formally overturning precedent. Serwer's point is that the court effectively rendered Roe's protections void in Texas, which is undoubtedly true. The Texas ban, which clearly flies in the face of Roe, is in force and is in fact impeding the ability of women to get abortions. That's what it means for the protection of a legal right to be nullified.Alito's argument that the majority in the Texas case claimed it wasn't making a decision on the constitutionality of the law doesn't change the fact that rights have been nullified. And the claim that the decision was solely based on the technical aspects of the law, and not the justices' beliefs about the merits of case, doesn't pass the laugh test. There's no serious doubt that the court would've acted differently if, for example, Massachusetts had used a similarly structured law to ban gun ownership.Serwer, responding to Alito, noted that the justice's comments offered more evidence for an argument he made in a separate article.More seriously, it’s not often the justices make your point for you. So thanks. https://t.co/ySFCF7q5uu https://t.co/aXYISPFfbQ— Adam Serwer ?? (@Adam Serwer ??) 1633035101.0In that piece, Serwer wrote:The current makeup of the Roberts Court is itself the outcome of a partisan battle that has spanned decades, one in which the conservative legal movement has won a tremendous victory that is certain to shape American life for generations to come. Anticipating their future triumphs, though, the very justices championed by this movement have taken to denying both this victory and its implications, insisting that this casino is resolutely opposed to gambling—in fact, it's not a casino; it's a church, and its critics are engaging in acts of civil blasphemy. With absolute control of the Court, the conservative legal movement's main obstacle is the fact that its extreme views are unpopular. When those views are imposed on the public in the future, the justices want to be able to claim that their decisions are the result of impartial legal reasoning, rather than motivated reasoning by committed right-wing ideologues. But that doesn't make the proposition that the justices are free of partisanship any less ridiculous.=</div><div>
</div><div><div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">=</div></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">history.com</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">Originally adopted after the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/american-civil-war/american-civil-war-history" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" rem="rem" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" webkit-tap-highlight-color="webkit-tap-highlight-color" transparent="transparent" transition="transition" all="all" s="s" ease="ease">Civil War</a> to protect the rights of formerly enslaved people, the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fourteenth-amendment" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" rem="rem" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" webkit-tap-highlight-color="webkit-tap-highlight-color" transparent="transparent" transition="transition" all="all" s="s" ease="ease">14th Amendment</a> has exponentially expanded the protection of civil rights for all Americans over the past 150 years. It’s been cited in more litigation than any other amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and has been at the center of many of the most famous <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/supreme-court-facts" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" rem="rem" box-sizing="box-sizing" border-box="border-box" webkit-tap-highlight-color="webkit-tap-highlight-color" transparent="transparent" transition="transition" all="all" s="s" ease="ease">Supreme Court</a> decisions, including school desegregation (Brown v. Board of Education), abortion (Roe v. Wade) and same-sex marriage (<a href="https://www.history.com/news/the-tragic-love-stories-behind-two-landmark-supreme-court-cases" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s;">Obergefell v. Hodges</a>).</div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><div class="m-detail--contents l-content-well" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px auto; width: 1100px; padding: 30px 0px;"><section class="l-grid lm-grid--detail lm-grid--with-right-rail" style="box-sizing: border-box; display: flex; flex-flow: row nowrap; margin: 0px auto; overflow: unset; grid-template-columns: minmax(1100px, 1fr); grid-template-rows: auto; width: auto; gap: 20px; align-items: flex-start; justify-content: space-between;"><div class="l-grid--content-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; width: 700px;"><div class="m-detail--body" style="box-sizing: border-box; word-break: break-word; overflow-wrap: break-word; letter-spacing: 0.05rem; line-height: 1.65em;">Under U.S. law, these essential rights belong not only to American citizens, but also corporations—thanks to a few key Supreme Court cases and a controversial legal concept known as corporate personhood.So, what is the 14th Amendment again? Ratified in 1868, it was one of three amendments to the U.S. Constitution designed to grant full citizenship rights to formerly enslaved people. While the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/thirteenth-amendment" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s;">13th</a> and <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/fifteenth-amendment" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s;">15th Amendments</a> were relatively limited in scope—the first abolished slavery and the second granted voting rights to black men—the 14th Amendment exponentially expanded the protection of civil rights for all Americans.The two most important provisions of the 14th Amendment guarantee that states, like the federal government, cannot “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.”What is due process and how does it work? The fundamental principle of due process goes back to the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/british-history/magna-carta" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s;">Magna Carta</a>, the 13th century English charter that inspired the framers of the U.S. Constitution. Due process ensures that all levels of government operate within the law and provide fair procedures for everyone. In practice, the Supreme Court has used the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to guarantee some of the most fundamental rights and liberties we enjoy today. It protects individuals (or corporations) from infringement by the states as well as the federal government.In <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1964/496" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s;">Griswold v. Connecticut</a> (1965), the Supreme Court ruled that a state ban on the use of contraceptives violated a couple’s right to marital privacy, which according to the Court was an essential liberty protected under the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause. The ruling famously drew that right to privacy from the “penumbras” (or shadowy zones) cast by other specific guarantees in the Bill of Rights, including free speech (First Amendment), freedom from forced quartering of troops (Third Amendment), unreasonable searches and seizures (Fourth Amendment), forced self-incrimination (Fifth Amendment) and other unenumerated rights (Ninth Amendment).Later verdicts would expand this right to privacy, including <a href="https://www.oyez.org/cases/1971/70-18" rel="noopener" target="blank" style="box-sizing: border-box; -webkit-tap-highlight-color: transparent; transition: all 0.25s ease 0s;">Roe v. Wade</a> (1973), when the Court found that a woman’s right to an abortion fell within the zone of privacy protected under the 14th Amendment.</div></div></section></div></div><div times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">=</div></div><div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/supreme-court-2655063879/">https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/supreme-court-2655063879/</a></div><div>
</div><div>It is a central principle of law: Courts are supposed to follow earlier decisions – precedent – to resolve current disputes. But it's inevitable that sometimes, the precedent has to go, and a court has to overrule another court, or even its own decision from an earlier case.In its upcoming term, the U.S. Supreme Court faces the question of whether to overrule itself on abortion rights. Recent laws in <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/05/19/texas-abortion-law-abbott/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Texas</a> and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-abortion-roe-v-wade/2021/05/17/cdaf1dd6-b708-11eb-a6b1-81296da0339b_story.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Mississippi</a> restrict the right of women to terminate pregnancies in ways that appear to challenge the long-standing precedent of the Supreme Court's 1973 decision in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/410/113" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Roe v. Wade</a>, which allowed women to have abortions in most circumstances.Over the centuries, courts have stated many reasons they should adhere to precedent. First is the idea of equity or justice, under which “ <a href="https://cgc.law.stanford.edu/commentaries/15-john-walker/#:%7E:text=I.-,How%20Does%20a%20Case%20Become%20a%20Binding%20Precedent%3F,cases%20should%20be%20decided%20alike.&text=First%2C%20as%20compared%20with%20the,as%20applied%20to%20similar%20facts." style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">like cases should be decided alike</a>," as one senior federal judge put it. If a court in the past reviewed a particular set of facts and decided a case in a specific way, fairness dictates it should decide another similar case the same way. Precedent <a href="http://www.nonpublication.com/schauer.htm" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">promotes uniformity and consistency</a> in the law.In addition, precedent promotes judicial efficiency: Courts do not have to decide from scratch every time. Finally, following precedent promotes predictability in the law and <a href="https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/wlulr/vol47/iss2/2/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">protects people who have come to rely on past decisions as a guide for their behavior</a>.But not all precedents are equal, and several current Supreme Court justices have signaled that they might be open to overturning even long-standing rulings that interpret the Constitution.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Reversing precedent is unusual</h2>The Supreme Court rarely overturns its past decisions or precedents.In my forthcoming book, “Constitutional Precedent in Supreme Court Reasoning," I point out that from 1789 to 2020 there were 25,544 Supreme Court opinions and judgments after oral arguments. The court has reversed its own constitutional precedents only 145 times – barely one-half of one percent.The court's historic periods are often characterized by who led it as chief justice. It was not until the 1930s under Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes that it started to overturn precedents with any frequency. These were cases such as <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/312/657/USSC_PRO_312_100_82" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">United States v. Darby</a>, in which the court began to affirm President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal economic policies after previously rejecting them as unconstitutional.Before then, of course, many cases asked the court to interpret clauses of the Constitution for the first time, so there were often no precedents to confront or overturn.Under Chief Justices Earl Warren, Warren Burger, William Rehnquist and now John Roberts, the court overturned constitutional precedent 32, 32, 30 and 15 times, respectively. That is well under 1% of decisions handled during each period in the court's history.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">When is precedent overturned?</h2>For most of its history the court changed its mind only when it thought past precedent was unworkable or no longer viable, perhaps eroded by its subsequent opinions or by changing social conditions.This happened in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/304/64" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Erie Railroad v. Tompkins</a>, a 1938 Supreme Court case overturning a <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/41/1" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">96-year-old precedent</a> in which the court had constructed rules about how federal courts should handle cases involving parties from different states. The court in Erie said that the original decision proved to be unworkable and had been undermined by the court's own later decisions.The court has also said that its precedents based on <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/90-5721.ZO.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">constitutional grounds</a> deserve less respect than those in which the court interprets statutes or laws. The reason is that if Congress thinks the court has erred in a matter of interpreting a statute or law, it is relatively easy for them to overturn it by passing a new law. But it's quite hard to pass a constitutional amendment, so the only real way to update the judicial understanding of the Constitution is to overrule a precedent.Of course the most famous reversal of precedent is the 1954 <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/brown_v_board_of_education(1954)" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Brown v. Board of Education</a> under the Warren Court, in which it reversed <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/163/537" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Plessy v. Ferguson</a> and struck down segregation under the “separate but equal" doctrine.Roe v. Wade is an important precedent. In 1973 the Supreme Court ruled that women have a right to terminate their pregnancies. That right was reaffirmed in 1991 in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/505/833" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Planned Parenthood v. Casey</a>, with Justices Sandra Day O'Connor, Anthony Kennedy and David Souter noting that an entire generation of women came of age relying upon their right to control their bodies and terminate pregnancies in most circumstances. The justices said it would be wrong to upset that expectation.<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Rights-Turn-Conservative-Christian-Politics/dp/1108405606/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=abortion+politics&qid=1631829608&s=books&sr=1-4" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Roe has also spurred opposition</a>, with many wanting to overturn it. For years, presidents including Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Donald Trump sought to appoint justices to the Supreme Court with <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2017/live-updates/trump-white-house/neil-gorsuch-confirmation-hearings-updates-and-analysis-on-the-supreme-court-nominee/trump-promised-judges-who-would-overturn-roe-v-wade/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">the goal of overturning Roe</a> and, with it, abortion rights. Now with a <a href="https://theconversation.com/3-ways-a-6-3-supreme-court-would-be-different-146558" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">6-3 conservative majority</a>, the court may be poised to do that.<h2 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Justices get more comfortable reversing precedent</h2>Beginning with the Rehnquist court, justices have become more willing to reject precedents they think were badly reasoned, simply wrong, or inconsistent with their own senses of the constitutional framers' intentions. Justice <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/18-1323" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Clarence Thomas</a> has taken this position on abortion. Justice Amy Coney Barrett during her <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/daily-202-big-idea/supreme-court-nominee-does-not-consider-roe-v-wade-a-super-precedent/" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Senate confirmation hearing</a> argued that Roe is not a so-called superprecedent, a decision so important or foundational that it cannot be overturned.Chief Justice Roberts has been willing to overturn settled law when he thinks the original opinion was not well argued. He did so in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/08-205.ZC.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Citizens United</a>, a 2010 decision overturning two major campaign finance decisions, <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/494/652" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Austin v. Michigan Chamber of Commerce</a> and part of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/02-1674.ZS.html" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102); text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">McConnell v. FEC</a>.In 2020, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/18-5924" 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;">Ramos v. Louisiana</a> went out of their way to explain and justify their views on when constitutional precedent may be overturned. They echoed Justice Samuel Alito's discussion in 2018 in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/cert/16-1466" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Council Number 31</a>. All three justices said constitutional precedent is merely a matter of court policy or discretion, more easily overturned than a precedent about a law. Sometimes, they said, constitutional precedents can be overruled if later judges view them as wrongly decided or reasoned.Abortion foes have been preparing practically since Roe was decided to overturn it. They have set both the political conditions and legal justification to overturn Roe, and perhaps this year it will be the time when it finally happens. <img alt="The Conversation" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168052/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" style="border: 0px; vertical-align: middle; max-width: 100%;" width="1" height="1" /><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/david-schultz-541364" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">David Schultz</a>, Professor of Law, University of Minnesota; Professor of Political Science, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/hamline-university-2113" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;">Hamline University</a></div><div>
</div><div>=</div></div><div>"evang" more about politics than theology</div><div>=</div><div><div>=</div><div>at 1st silent then 6-2 soto ~</div><div><h1 class="widgetheadline h1" style="margin: 10px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; cursor: pointer; overflow-wrap: break-word; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="widgetheadline-text custom-post-headline" href="https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/supreme-court-abortion/" aria-label="The Supreme Court's latest salvo exposes the trick John Roberts has played on the country" data-type="text" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s;" open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" word-break="word-break" break-word="break-word" overflow-wrap="overflow-wrap" font-size="font-size" px="px" line-height="line-height"> Supreme Court's latest salvo exposes the trick John Roberts has played on the country</a></h1><div class="social-author clearfix" style="margin-top: 10px; display: inline-block; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/amanda-marcotte" data-type="text" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">Amanda Marcotte</a> <a class="social-authorname" href="https://www.alternet.org/author/salon" data-type="text" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word; line-height: 1.4; display: inline; overflow: hidden; text-overflow: ellipsis; white-space: nowrap; position: relative; vertical-align: baseline;">Salon</a></div> <div class="social-date" style="margin-top: 8px; display: inline-block; vertical-align: top; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> September 01, 2021</div><div class="body js-expandable clearfix js-listicle-body css-listicle-body-2654869782" style="margin-top: 10px; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; text-overflow: ellipsis; overflow: hidden; display: -webkit-box; -webkit-line-clamp: 4; line-height: 31px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="body-description">At the stroke of midnight on Wednesday, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/texas-six-week-abortion-ban/2021/09/01/e53cf372-0a6b-11ec-a6dd-296ba7fb2dce_story.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; opacity: 1; transition: color 0.25s ease 0s, background 0.25s ease 0s, opacity 0.25s ease 0s; overflow-wrap: break-word;">the Supreme Court suddenly overturned Roe v. Wade</a>.The move was quiet and it very well may be temporary (they could still issue a short decision any minute...</div></div></div><div>=</div></div><div>=</div><div>
</div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/justice-clarence-thomas-bucks-neutrality-and-expresses-total-disdain-for-legal-precedents-report/" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://www.alternet.org/2019/03/justice-clarence-thomas-bucks-neutrality-and-expresses-total-disdain-for-legal-precedents-report/</a></div><div>
</div><div>Now 70, Justice Clarence Thomas has become the elder statesman of the far-right “strict constructionist” or “originalist” wing of the U.S. Supreme Court.Thomas, who was nominated by the late President George H.W. Bush in 1991, has made it abundantly clearly that he believes many of the liberal and progressive Warren Court decisions of the 1950s and 1960s were wrongly decided—and journalist Adam Liptak examines the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-precedent.html" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">“originalist” nature of Thomas’ views</a> in a March 4 article for the New York Times.<div class="p1_9" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Liptak never actually mentions the late Chief Justice Earl Warren in his piece, but some of the rulings he examines—rulings Thomas is critical of—came from the Warren Court. For example, Liptak notes that Thomas is critical of the High Court’s 1964 ruling in New York Times v. Sullivan (which protects journalists against frivolous libel suits from politicians) as well as 1963’s Gideon v. Wainwright (which said that the 6th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires the government to provide defense attorneys for people accused of serious crimes). And not surprisingly, Thomas is highly critical of the post-Warren Court 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which Thomas has described as “notoriously incorrect.”<div class="p2_9" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">In the article, Liptak quotes some legal scholars who address Thomas’ “originalist” views, including Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston. According to Blackman, “Justice Thomas, more than any other justice, is willing to revisit and reverse old precedents that are inconsistent with the Constitution’s original meaning.”<div class="p3_9" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Liptak also quotes Stephen L. Wasby, an emeritus professor of political science at the University at Albany in Upstate New York. According to Wasby, Thomas “has written more than 250 concurring or dissenting opinions seriously questioning precedents, calling for their reconsideration or suggesting that they be overruled.”<div class="p4_9" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Thomas’ views on Gideon v. Wainwright are a perfect example of his “originalist” thinking. When the Warren Court handed down that decision 56 years ago, it was taking an expansive, broad-minded view of the 6th Amendment. Liberal and progressive legal scholars, citing Gideon, will argue that government is obligated to provide defendants in a criminal case with first-rate public defenders—and that defendants should be represented by sharp legal minds regardless of their financial status. But Thomas, Liptak notes, “wrote that the Sixth Amendment, as understood by those who drafted and ratified it, guaranteed only the right to hire a lawyer.”<div class="p5_9" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Liptak’s article examines Thomas’ views on the doctrine of “stare decisis,” which, in essence, means respect for legal precedent. Thomas, Liptak writes, doesn’t believe in the doctrine at all.<div class="p6_9" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Sen. Susan Collins addressed stare decisis when she voted to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh, Collins has insisted, would not vote to overturn Roe v. Wade because he considers it “settled law” and precedent—and Collins’ critics have argued that she is delusional if she truly believes that.<div class="p7_9" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">To Thomas, the fact that Roe v. Wade was handed down 46 years ago is irrelevant because stare decisis is a bogus concept. Liptak quotes the late Justice Antonin Scalia as saying that Thomas “does not believe in stare decisis, period.”<div class="p8_9" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Donald Trump’s presidency has been a game changer on the U.S. Supreme Court. The death of Scalia in 2016 wasn’t really a game changer, as Trump replaced a far-right social conservative with another far-right social conservative: Justice Neil Gorsuch. But by replacing libertarian Justice Anthony Kennedy with Justice Kavanaugh in 2018, Trump made the “originalist” or “strict constructionist” mindset more prominent on the Supreme Court. And as Liptak’s New York Times piece illustrates, the “originalist” view of jurisprudence—and its disdain for 1960s and 1970s precedents—is alive and well in Justice Clarence Thomas.</div><div style="">
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