Althouse |
- Sunrise — 5:22, 5:23, 5:24, 5:26.
- I've chosen 6 TikToks tonight — chosen them for myself. It's a crapshoot whether you'll like them. But tell me what you like.
- "[S]hortly after he cinched the Democratic nomination, [Bill] Clinton gave a speech to [Jesse] Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition group — in which he attacked the group..."
- Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul "has filed a lawsuit... seeking to block the state's 173-year-old ban on abortions that was triggered after the collapse of Roe v. Wade ...."
- You've heard of the smoking gun. Now comes the splattering ketchup.
- Kamala Harris and her "really interesting" Venn diagram.
- Sunrise — 5:25, 5:47, 5:48.
- I've got 6 TikToks for you tonight. Let me know what you like best.
- "Preoccupied with spiritualism and the occult as well as with her painting, Ms. Keane said nothing publicly even after discovering what her husband was up to..."
- "Hey pal, it’s Dad. It’s 8:15 on Wednesday night. If you get a chance just give me a call. Nothing urgent. I just wanted to talk to you. I thought the article released online, it’s going to be printed tomorrow in the Times, was good. I think you’re clear. And anyway if you get a chance give me a call, I love you."
- "Stardust, an astrology-focused menstrual tracking app that launched on the App Store last year... one of Apple’s top three most-downloaded free apps right now... [had] put in writing that it will voluntarily..."
- "In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, former vice president Mike Pence says abortion should be banned nationwide..."
- "A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 50% of Likely U.S. voters approve of the Supreme Court abortion ruling, including 38% who Strongly Approve..."
- Well, it goes right along with the loss of the right to abortion.
- "Roe v. Wade... invited no dialogue with legislators. Instead, it seemed entirely to remove the ball from the legislators’ court."
- "The bodies of 46 migrants were found in the back of a sweltering tractor-trailer in San Antonio on Monday..."
- "[Elizabeth] Warren called on Biden to declare a national medical emergency, and she said the administration could establish Planned Parenthood outposts on the edge of national parks."
- At the Milkweed Café...
- "One frustrated Title IX coordinator told me she sometimes thought of her job as running 'The Break Up Office.'"
- "We’re never going to be the ones to cross the police barrier or cross something in order to get to somebody."
- "More than 1 million voters across 43 states have switched to the Republican Party over the last year..."
- "A law that would have allowed noncitizens to vote in local elections in New York City was struck down by a State Supreme Court justice in Staten Island who said it violated the State Constitution...."
- "In the end, the [School] District’s case hinges on the need to generate conflict between an individual’s rights under the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses and its own Establishment Clause duties..."
- Oh! I'd forgotten the Supreme Court is doing new case announcements this morning!
- "If we can’t safely go out and have sex and know that we will have a choice after that, then why should we be expected to?"
| Sunrise — 5:22, 5:23, 5:24, 5:26. Posted: 29 Jun 2022 06:14 PM PDT     Write about anything you want in the comments. |
| Posted: 29 Jun 2022 06:06 PM PDT 1. Robot answers the trolley problem. 2. A simple approach to cutting your own hair. 3. Being a Democratic or a Republican should not be a life-style brand. 4. A grown man plays the floor is lava. 5. How different farm birds eat watermelon. 6. Girls who like their own name too much. |
| Posted: 29 Jun 2022 09:40 AM PDT "... for also hosting a relatively obscure rapper named Sister Souljah, who in the wake of that year's Los Angeles riots said in an interview, 'If Black people kill Black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?' Clinton told the Rainbow Coalition that 'if you took the words "white" and "Black" and reversed them, you might think David Duke was giving that speech.' Jackson was furious and called on Clinton to apologize — exactly the response Clinton was hoping for. The Black syndicated columnist Clarence Page later wrote that by picking the fight, Clinton 'impressed swing voters, particularly white suburbanites, with a confident independence from Jackson that other Democratic presidential candidates had not shown.' A loudly performed repudiation of a putative far-left extremist would come to be known as a 'Sister Souljah moment.' Clinton ran for president as a factional candidate, against the Republicans but also against his party's liberal wing, so that when he won, he remade the Democratic Party in his own — and the D.L.C.'s — image. In 1995, midway through Clinton's first term, 23 moderate House Democrats formed the Blue Dog Caucus to, in their words, 'represent the middle of the partisan spectrum.'" From "The Vanishing Moderate Democrat/Their positions are popular. So why are they going extinct?" by Jason Zengerle (NYT). This is a very long article. I've just pulled a little snippet from it. |
| Posted: 29 Jun 2022 06:39 AM PDT
But those 2 won't be in office forever, and acts done now could be prosecuted after they are gone. The 19th century law is very harsh, making abortion a felony unless it's to save the life of the woman. It's been out of use for so many years that it seems wrong for it to suddenly spring into action, though it's not a surprise. We've known all along that this law was there, and the threat to Roe has existed for 50 years, so the legislature could have repealed it. Should the state courts do what the legislature has not? Let's look at Kaul's legal arguments:
It feels like desuetude — pronounced "DEH-swih-tood," not "de-SOO-ih-tood" — but the disuse isn't because government has chosen not to enforce it. Roe blocked its enforcement. There were not violations of the old law that were left unprosecuted. The now-defunct right trumped the old statute, so there was no option to enforce it. As for the newer laws, they seem to have been written to regulate consistently with federal constitutional law, so that makes it harder to read them as intended to supersede the old law. The legislature could have explicitly repealed (or amended) the old law, but it did not. So I don't know what the Wisconsin courts will do with this new case, but it certainly shouldn't be a reason for the legislature to delay in writing a new statute that sets exactly the terms that we Wisconsin citizens want now. It will have to be some kind of compromise, but later legislatures can amend the law, and we need a new law right now. Not that I expect the governor and the Republican-dominated legislature to get anything done together. |
| You've heard of the smoking gun. Now comes the splattering ketchup. Posted: 29 Jun 2022 05:51 AM PDT From "Here's every word from the sixth Jan. 6 committee hearing on its investigation" (NPR): He motioned for me to come in and then pointed towards the front of the room near the fireplace mantel and the TV, where I first noticed there was catsup dripping down the wall and there was a shattered porcelain plate on the floor. The valet had articulated that the President was extremely angry at the Attorney General's AP interview and had thrown his lunch against the wall, which was causing him to have to clean up. So I grabbed a towel and started wiping the catsup off of the wall to help the valet out. And he said something to the effect of, he's really ticked off about this. I would stay clear of him for right now. He's really, really ticked off about this right now..... There were — there were several times throughout my tenure with the Chief of Staff that I was aware of him either throwing dishes or flipping the tablecloth to let all the contents of the table go onto the floor and likely break or go everywhere. Now that we know about the ketchup — "catsup" — what should we do? How off the norm is it to express anger in the White House by throwing an object? I think first of Hillary Clinton throwing a lamp at Bill. Did that happen? I'm seeing "That 'Hillary Clinton threw a lamp/book/Bible' story has been circulating for ages" (WaPo):
Blood! At least it wasn't ketchup. The lore is that Hillary threw "the infamous edition of 'Leaves of Grass' that Bill Clinton eventually gave to Lewinsky and that the first lady had discovered the gift intended for her husband's mistress."
ADDED: Is this post unfair? Yes. That's deliberate. It's intended as a commentary on unfairness. The January 6th committee hearings are unfair. |
| Kamala Harris and her "really interesting" Venn diagram. Posted: 29 Jun 2022 04:27 AM PDT Wanting to write about something Kamala Harris had said about the overturning of Roe v. Wade, I thought I'd find it in The Washington Post. But the name "Kamala" appeared nowhere on the home page and a search for the most recent mentions of her name turned up this:  Her name hasn't appeared in The Washington Post in 20 days. If we go back as far as the beginning of May, there are 3 mentions — 2 of which are about the prospect of the overruling of Roe v. Wade. One is "Kamala Harris finally found her moment and her message"! The moment was before Roe got overruled? What about after?! From thankless, unsolvable issues (e.g., Central America's corruption and violence) to poor staff picks to snippy and misogynistic coverage, she has gotten off to what can charitably be called a rocky start. But in the wake of the leaked Supreme Court draft opinion reversing Roe v. Wade, she seemed to find her voice and gravitas.... That's by Jennifer Rubin. The other, by Kimala Price, is "Women of color want reproductive justice, not just abortion rights." Oh! There's nothing there about Kamala Harris at all. I searched for "Kamala," and I guess the machine thought "Kimala" was close enough. But here's what I was looking for, something Kamala Harris said yesterday: "VP Harris calls for abortion-rights supporters to channel frustration into action." That's at NPR. NPR White House correspondent Asma Khalid interviewed her about post-Roe politics: "It is profound, in terms of where [the decision] takes us back. We have a 23-year-old daughter who is going to know fewer rights than my 80-something-year-old mother-in law," Harris said... "I think we all felt, and rightly, a huge blow when this decision came down," Harris said. "That's real. So I don't deny anybody how they are feeling right now. I know how I'm feeling right now." Okay. It's profound and it's real. "There is no daylight among us who understand the seriousness of this moment and the real consequence to millions of women, and those who love them, around the country," Harris said. It's profound, real, and serious, and did I say real? "Now the question becomes, what can we do?... We cannot underestimate the significance of the upcoming elections and the need for all people who care about this issue to understand that we have to have a pro-choice Congress to pass this law," she said.... It's "really interesting" — but what is in the overlap? As described, there isn't any overlap. There are 3 kinds of attacks, and an attack on voter rights isn't also an against the LGBTQ community or an attack on a woman's right to choose. There are 3 independent circles. I get the feeling somebody explained something to her using a Venn diagram, but she's forgotten what the circles represented and what was in the overlapping parts. It was really interesting, but I guess you had to be there. Would Jennifer Rubin like to revisit the notion that Kamala Harris finally found her moment and her message? I can't see that there's anything there. |
| Posted: 28 Jun 2022 05:51 PM PDT    Talk about whatever you like in the comments. |
| I've got 6 TikToks for you tonight. Let me know what you like best. Posted: 28 Jun 2022 04:23 PM PDT 1. Your girlfriend who has a boyfriend is really annoying. 2. The coffee is the perfect color and the paper towel is repurposed. 3. Moby is displeased with President Biden. 4. Helena Bonham Carter has a poem she sends to people she feels are a bit lonely. 5. In the 80s, Ricky Gervais aimed to be something of a David Bowie. |
| Posted: 28 Jun 2022 04:09 PM PDT "... remaining passively complicit in the fraud for a decade. She even sat through press interviews, nodding approvingly while he told of his own artistic struggles and virtuosities. 'The whole thing just snowballed, and it was too late to say it wasn't him who painted them,' Ms. Keane told The Times years later. 'I'll always regret that I wasn't strong enough to stand up for my rights.'" |
| Posted: 28 Jun 2022 12:16 PM PDT Said Joe Biden, in a voicemail in late 2018, quoted in "Voicemail indicates Joe Biden knew of Hunter deals with 'spy chief of China'" (NY Post). During a campaign appearance in Iowa in September 2019, Joe Biden said, "I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings." His former press secretary, Jen Psaki, and his chief of staff, Ron Klain, have both repeatedly echoed that sentiment. |
| Posted: 28 Jun 2022 09:03 AM PDT "... without even being legally required to—comply with law enforcement if it's asked to share user data.... A widely-shared concern is that law enforcement can use personal data created in apps against people who've sought or gotten abortions illegally." That went up at Vice yesterday, but there's an update saying that "Stardust changed its privacy policy to omit the phrase about cooperating with law enforcement 'whether or not legally required.'" You can attempt to comprehend a TikTok from Stardust, which I'll put after the jump. It's pretty complicated — includes the phrase: "We're not an evil corporation...." Is it paranoid to imagine that the government would aim to keep track of women's menstrual cycles for the purpose of detecting abortions? We're often chided for not caring enough about how much privacy we sacrifice by using apps, and this one is really intrusive, and it's luring in young women who have the gullibility to want to connect their period to astrology.
|
| Posted: 28 Jun 2022 09:13 AM PDT "... and is planning behind the scenes to focus on the issue in the coming weeks, according to advisers.... On Friday, Pence's organization, Advancing American Freedom, shared a video highlighting that record.... Some Republican strategists called the end of Roe an opportunity for Pence.... 'He just needs an issue set that he can really dig into that's not about January 6 or Trump or anything,' said Republican strategist David Kochel, who has worked on six presidential campaigns. 'He's comfortable talking about [abortion],' he added. But Kochel said Trump still has the simplest message to voters about the Supreme Court ruling: 'You're welcome.'... Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich on Friday disputed that Trump has privately expressed misgivings about overturning Roe.... Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R)... said in a recent statement that the state would 'work to expand pro-life protections' but did not chart out specifics.... Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo called for increased support for pregnancy care centers, organizations that counsel people against abortions and provide them with resources..... Nikki Haley... said in a statement that she hopes for 'a renewed commitment from elected lawmakers to support and protect mothers and their pre-born babies.'" |
| Posted: 28 Jun 2022 09:11 AM PDT "Forty-five percent (45%) disapprove of the Supreme Court's new ruling, including 38% who Strongly Disapprove." 38% in the opposing strongly categories. Exactly balanced. But in the larger groups — combining stronglys with other degrees of feeling including the passionless and the utterly bored — there are 5 more percentage points on the side of approving of what the Court did. Why might that be? It could be that some people approve of whatever the Supreme Court does. They're the experts! They ought to know. That said, 50% is way less that the total percentage that know absolutely that they personally will never need an abortion. Maybe there are a lot of people who just want to be rid of the unpleasant subject — either way. Don't ask me. Ask the Supreme Court. |
| Well, it goes right along with the loss of the right to abortion. Posted: 28 Jun 2022 06:31 AM PDT I'm reading "Every branch of the military is struggling to make its 2022 recruiting goals, officials say/With a record low number of Americans eligible to serve, and few of those willing to do it, this 'is the year we question the sustainability of the all-volunteer force,' said an expert" (WaPo). And you thought your body was yours. But wait!
If they bring back the draft, it will be easy to dodge. Might as well get started now. What's your favorite fast food? What's your favorite bagged crunchy snack? Dessert? |
| Posted: 28 Jun 2022 06:18 AM PDT "In 1973, when Roe issued, abortion law was in a state of change across the nation. As the Supreme Court itself noted, there was a marked trend in state legislatures 'toward liberalization of abortion statutes.' That movement for legislative change ran parallel to another law revision effort then underway — the change from fault to no-fault divorce regimes, a reform that swept through the state legislatures and captured all of them by the mid-1980s. No measured motion, the Roe decision left virtually no state with laws fully conforming to the Court's delineation of abortion regulation still permissible. Around that extraordinary decision, a well-organized and vocal right-to-life movement rallied and succeeded, for a considerable time, in turning the legislative tide in the opposite direction." Said Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in 1992, shortly before Bill Clinton nominated her to the Supreme Court, quoted yesterday, in Aaron Blake's WaPo column, "What Ruth Bader Ginsburg really said about Roe v. Wade." Blake is quoting that to correct people who might think Ginsburg thought that Roe was wrong about the existence of a right to abortion. Although Blake included it in his quote from Ginsburg's speech, he doesn't otherwise mention no-fault divorce. Let's talk about why Ginsburg connected the no-fault divorce movement with the abortion-rights movement — and why these movements happened in the same time frame. One could say both movements pushed government out of the intimate sphere that belongs to the individual. Another way to put that was both movements served the agenda of the sexual revolution. There's very little talk about no-fault divorce anymore, even as abortion has remained controversial all these years. What was once "ran parallel" is rarely even thought of anymore. In the 18 years of this blog — according to the search function — there isn't a single post containing the words "no-fault divorce." Of course, abortion is different, unavoidably different, because one can never completely leave behind the knowledge that it cuts off a human life. But abortion and no-fault divorce both minimize something big. Interestingly, it's the bigness of marriage that forms the basis of finding a right to same-sex marriage in Obergefell:
The lifelong union.
ADDED: Abortion responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out and find someone there. |
| Posted: 28 Jun 2022 04:54 AM PDT "... the deadliest smuggling incident of its kind in U.S. history.... Rescuers pulled 16 people from the truck who were still alive and conscious, including four minors, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood told reporters.... According to Hood, the bodies removed from the truck 'were hot to the touch.'... The deaths come amid a surge in migration at the border, with the latest U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures showing that immigration arrests there in May rose to the highest levels ever recorded.... Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) was quick to blame the president for the tragedy, writing that 'these deaths are on Biden' in a tweet.... The deaths 'are the result of his deadly open border policies,' Abbott wrote. 'They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.'" |
| Posted: 28 Jun 2022 05:20 AM PDT "'The point is the acknowledgment of the emergency situation and the urgency of getting help out,' she said in an interview. 'People need help immediately.' Biden and his team have signaled discomfort with many of these ideas.... A senior White House official said Biden is simply being honest with the public about what he can do unilaterally.... The official said that while the proposal to set up abortion clinics on federal lands was 'well-intentioned,' it could put pregnant people and providers at risk, and that in states where abortion is illegal, women and providers who are not federal employees could be prosecuted. Some legal experts have also raised questions about whether such a proposal would stand up in court, and White House officials worry it would violate the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits the use of federal funds for abortion except if a pregnant person's life is in danger or if the pregnancy results from rape or incest.... If Biden pursued aggressive executive actions to expand abortion access, even if those moves were ultimately overturned by a court, it would energize supporters and signal to voters that Democrats are putting up a fight, advocates said.... Some Democrats... say it's critical to show voters what the party would do if it had even slightly bigger majorities...." ADDED: She should have said national forests. |
| Posted: 27 Jun 2022 04:06 PM PDT  ... you can talk about anything you want. |
| Posted: 27 Jun 2022 10:38 AM PDT "She said many young people lacked the skills to navigate relationships themselves, and often didn't want to. Why should they? Instead of focusing on punishing students who commit truly bad acts and aiding their victims, campus administrators transmitted the message that recasting any sexual experience as malign, and then reporting it to school authorities, is an act of bravery." From Emily Yoffe in "Biden's Sex Police/The White Houses's new regulations will gut due-process rights for college students accused of sexual misconduct" by Emily Yoffe (Common Sense). |
| Posted: 27 Jun 2022 10:38 AM PDT Said Enrique Tarrio, the chairman of Proud Boys, in a recorded video conference on Dec. 30, 2020, quoted in "Proud Boys Ignored Orders Given at Pre-Jan. 6 Meeting/The directives, given during a video conference, included obeying police lines and keeping away from ordinary protesters. But members of the far-right group played aggressive roles in several breaches at the Capitol" (NYT). Lawyers for the Proud Boys say the recorded meeting is a key piece of exculpatory evidence, contradicting claims by the government that a conspiracy to attack the Capitol was hatched several weeks before Jan. 6. |
| Posted: 27 Jun 2022 10:07 AM PDT "... according to voter registration data analyzed by The Associated Press. The previously unreported number reflects a phenomenon that is playing out in virtually every region of the country — Democratic and Republican states along with cities and small towns — in the period since President Joe Biden replaced former President Donald Trump. But nowhere is the shift more pronounced — and dangerous for Democrats — than in the suburbs, where well-educated swing voters who turned against Trump's Republican Party in recent years appear to be swinging back." |
| Posted: 27 Jun 2022 10:03 AM PDT "The legislation placed New York City at the forefront of a national debate about voting rights, as some states began to expand eligibility while others went in the other direction, moving to explicitly bar noncitizens from voting." |
| Posted: 27 Jun 2022 10:24 AM PDT "... and then develop some explanation why one of these Clauses in the First Amendment should '"trum[p]"' the other two. But the project falters badly. Not only does the District fail to offer a sound reason to prefer one constitutional guarantee over another. It cannot even show that they are at odds. In truth, there is no conflict between the constitutional commands before us. There is only the 'mere shadow' of a conflict, a false choice premised on a misconstruction of the Establishment Clause. And in no world may a government entity's concerns about phantom constitutional violations justify actual violations of an individual's First Amendment rights. Respect for religious expressions is indispensable to life in a free and diverse Republic—whether those expressions take place in a sanctuary or on a [football] field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head. Here, a government entity sought to punish an individual for engaging in a brief, quiet, personal religious observance doubly protected by the Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment. And the only meaningful justification the government offered for its reprisal rested on a mistaken view that it had a duty to ferret out and suppress religious observances even as it allows comparable secular speech. The Constitution neither mandates nor tolerates that kind of discrimination." From Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, announced just now, written by Justice Gorsuch and joined by the 5 Justices most likely to join Gorsuch. Justice Thomas concurs to note 2 things that the Court did not decide: 1. "whether or how public employees' rights under the Free Exercise Clause may or may not be different from [the speech rights] enjoyed by the general public," and 2. "what burden a government employer must shoulder to justify restricting an employee's religious expression because the District had no constitutional basis for reprimanding Kennedy under any possibly applicable standard of scrutiny." Justice Alito concurred to say that this case is different from other cases about the free-speech rights of public employees: "Petitioner's expression occurred while at work but during a time when a brief lull in his duties apparently gave him a few free moments to engage in private activities." Justice Sotomayor dissents, joined by Justices Breyer and Kagan. She says: "The Court overrules Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U. S. 602 (1971)." Is anyone keeping count of how many times the Court has "overruled Lemon"? Has a case ever been "overruled" so many times and still lived on? It was all the way back in 1993 that Justice Scalia wrote: As to the Court's invocation of the Lemon test: Like some ghoul in a late night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad, after being repeatedly killed and buried, Lemon stalks our Establishment Clause jurisprudence once again, frightening the little children and school attorneys of Center Moriches Union Free School District. Its most recent burial, only last Term, was, to be sure, not fully six feet under: our decision in Lee v. Weisman, 505 U. S. ----, ---- (1992) (slip op., at 7), conspicuously avoided using the supposed "test" but also declined the invitation to repudiate it. Over the years, however, no fewer than five of the currently sitting Justices have, in their own opinions, personally driven pencils through the creature's heart (the author of today's opinion repeatedly), and a sixth has joined an opinion doing so. See, e. g., Weisman, supra, at ---- (slip op., at 14) (Scalia, J., joined by, inter alios, Thomas, J., dissenting); Allegheny County v. American Civil Liberties Union, Greater Pittsburgh Chapter, 492 U.S. 573, 655-657 (1989) (Kennedy, J., concurring in judgment in part and dissenting in part); Corporation of Presiding Bishop of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints v. Amos, 483 U.S. 327, 346-349 (1987) (O'Connor, J., concurring); Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S. 38, 107-113 (1985) (Rehnquist, J., dissenting); id., at 90-91 (White, J., dissenting); School Dist. of Grand Rapids v. Ball, 473 U.S. 373, 400 (1985) (White, J., dissenting); Widmar v. Vincent, 454 U.S. 263, 282 (1981) (White, J., dissenting); New York v. Cathedral Academy, 434 U.S. 125, 134-135 (1977) (White, J., dissenting); Roemer v. Maryland Bd. of Public Works, 426 U.S. 736, 768 (1976) (White, J., concurring in judgment); Committee for Public Education & Religious Libertyv. Nyquist, 413 U.S. 756, 820 (1973) (White, J., dissenting). For my part, I agree with the long list of constitutional scholars who have criticized Lemon and bemoaned the strange Establishment Clause geometry of crooked lines and wavering shapes its intermittent use has produced. See, e. g., Choper, The Establishment Clause and Aid to Parochial Schools--An Update, 75 Cal. L. Rev. 5 (1987); Marshall, "We Know It When We See It": The Supreme Court and Establishment, 59 S. Cal. L. Rev. 495 (1986); McConnell, Accommodation of Religion, 1985 S. Ct. Rev. 1; Kurland, The Religion Clauses and the Burger Court, 34 Cath. U. L. Rev. 1 (1984); R. Cord, Separation of Church and State (1982); Choper, The Religion Clauses of the First Amendment: Reconciling the Conflict, 41 U. Pitt. L. Rev. 673 (1980). I will decline to apply Lemon--whether it validates or invalidates the government action in question--and therefore cannot join the opinion of the Court today. ADDED: Here's how Sotomayor depicts the facts:
She writes:
Given the twin Establishment Clause concerns of endorsement and coercion, it is unsurprising that the Court has consistently held integrating prayer into public school activities to be unconstitutional, including when student participation is not a formal requirement or prayer is silent.... In her balance, the Establishment Clause wins. [T]he Court claims that it "long ago abandoned" both the "endorsement test" and this Court's decision in Lemon 403 U. S. 602. Ante, at 22. The Court chiefly cites the plurality opinion in American Legion v. American Humanist Assn., 588 U. S. ___ (2019) to support this contention. That plurality opinion, to be sure, criticized Lemon's effort at establishing a "grand unified theory of the Establishment Clause" as poorly suited to the broad "array" of diverse establishment claims. All the Court in American Legion ultimately held, however, was that application of the Lemon test to "longstanding monuments, symbols, and practices" was ill-advised for reasons specific to those contexts..... |
| Oh! I'd forgotten the Supreme Court is doing new case announcements this morning! Posted: 27 Jun 2022 07:27 AM PDT They haven't started yet, but the 5-minute-warning buzzer just sounded. Watch the roll out of new cases at SCOTUSblog, here. 1. "The Court holds that both the free exercise and free speech clauses protect [a coach's] right to pray at midfield following high school football games." Here's the opinion, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District. From the syllabus of the opinion:Petitioner Joseph Kennedy lost his job as a high school football coach in the Bremerton School District after he knelt at midfield after games to offer a quiet personal prayer....
2. Concepcion — written by Sotomayor and joined by Thomas, Breyer, Kagan and Gorsuch. With that lineup, how could it be wrong? SCOTUSblog summary: Concepcion is a case about whether, when a court is deciding whether to resentence a defendant under the First Step Act, which gives federal district courts power to resentence offenders in light of changes in the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, a district court must or may consider intervening developments, or whether such developments only come into play (if at all) after courts conclude that a sentence reduction is appropriate.... The Court holds that the First Step Act allows district courts to consider intervening changes of law or fact in exercising their discretion to reduce a sentence. 3. A unanimous case written by Justice Breyer, Ruan: "This is a case about whether a doctor who has the authority to prescribe controlled substances can be convicted for unlawful distribution of those drugs when he reasonably believed that his prescriptions fell within professional norms.... The answer is that once a defendant meets the burden of producing evidence that his or her conduct was 'authorized,' then the government has to show beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant knowingly or intentionally acted in an unauthorized manner." |
| Posted: 27 Jun 2022 01:13 PM PDT Such a crazy question, asked by Caroline Healey, "a 22-year-old event coordinator," quoted in "Sex Strike! Abstinence trends on Twitter in wake of Roe v. Wade ruling" (NY Post). It's not just on Twitter. The Post encountered Healy at a protest. She also said:
Well, first of all, if you're "always worried that they're not going put a condom on," you're conceding that you have been using abortion as a form of birth control! You should have more secure birth control, something more than a condom. And why are you having sex with men who can't be trusted to use a condom? And why don't you look to see if they are using a condom and refuse to have sex if they don't? You should always have been "on strike" about the failure to use a condom! All right. With that appalling argument out of the way, let's look at what's left of the idea of a sex strike. It is premised on the idea that the woman wants to have sex when she is not having sex because she wants to have sex. I would say you should NEVER have that kind of sex, whether you have access to abortion or not. Of course, sexual activity has harsher potential consequences for a woman, and abortion rights may take some of the burden out of the activity, but that doesn't explain why a woman would give sex to a man because he wants it and not because she wants it. Where did Healy get the idea that — while Roe lived — women were having sex because they were "expected to"? That's not feminism! That was subordination all along. It's abuse if someone with power over you is expecting you to give sex when you don't independently want it. And if you feel you are choosing it — you just want to "go out and have sex" — but only because it's "expected," then it's self-abuse. Respect yourself! To say "it's absolutely valid for us to be withholding the Holy Grail that men seem to think is important" is to imply that you don't put the same value on sex, that what's exceedingly precious to the man is just a form of currency for the woman. Of course, it's also perfectly obvious that these sex-strike organizers are doing exactly what social conservatives want: abstaining from sex unless they are open to the gift of life. And what a kick in the head it would be if it turned out that what makes sex as valuable to a women as it is to a man is this potential for creating a child. |
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