Category: Social Cohesion

Run On Roe And Reform

The Daily Escape:

Perkins Cove, Ogunquit, ME – July 2022 photo by Adam Silverman Photography

From the Kansas City Star:

“The right to an abortion will remain in the Kansas Constitution. In the first ballot test of abortion rights in a post-Roe America, Kansas voters turned out in historic numbers to overwhelmingly reject a constitutional amendment that would have opened the door for state lawmakers to further restrict or ban abortions across the state.”

Kansas voters showed that the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs doesn’t sit well, even in one of the country’s most conservative states. Democrats should adjust their 2022 Midterms messaging and strategy accordingly, to make it clear that Roe and Reform are what they’re running on.

Across party lines, abortion rights remain popular while the Supreme Court’s ruling is not. The most recent CNN poll found that 63% of Americans disapproved (51% “strongly”) of the court’s decision.

The NYT reported about Kansas:

“From the bluest counties to the reddest ones, abortion rights performed better than Mr. Biden, and opposition to abortion performed worse than Mr. Trump,”

The NYT had several observations:

  • Abortion opponents under performed even in conservative areas. In Hamilton County, which voted 81% Trump in 2020, less than 56% chose the anti-abortion position. In Greeley County, which voted more than 85% for Trump, only about 60% chose the anti-abortion position.
  • Kansas’s swing areas swung left. Wyandotte County, (where Kansas City is located), voted 65% for Biden in 2020, but 74% for abortion rights. Neighboring Johnson County, the state’s most populous, voted 53% for Biden but more than 68% for abortion rights.
  • Turnout was high. Before the election, the Kansas secretary of state’s office predicted turnout of about 36%. But anecdotal evidence indicated turnout might hit 50%, an extraordinary increase over what was expected.

Here’s TPM’s Josh Marshall’s Twitter thread on what Kansas means to the Democrats’ Mid-term road map: (emphasis by Wrongo)

2/ When a result is this lopsided & this unexpected for most political observers it’s not only a political earthquake but a sign many political professionals have seriously mistaken the political terrain. When there’s a political backlash as strong as the one against Dobbs …

3/ and one party is as firmly tied to it as Republicans are here, clearly the opposing party needs to grab on to it with both hands. Abortion rights will be central to numerous races this fall. But Democrats need to make the connection as explicit and tangible as possible.

4/ The way to do that is to make a firm pledge that if Democrats hold the House and add two Senate seats they will make Roe into federal law in January 2023. They are at present kinda sorta suggesting something like that, maybe. But clarity is everything. Give us this …

5/ specific result and this is specifically what we will do. Kansans didn’t turn out in these lopsided numbers to make a statement about Dobbs or Roe. They did so because they knew that the outcome of this one vote would immediately and dramatically affect the right …

6/ to a safe and legal abortion in the state. Democrats need to approximate the same clarity at the federal level, both to undo Dobbs and also to secure their hold on Congress. The way to do that is to get all 48 (non-Sinema/Manchin) senators to make a firm pledge that …

7/ if the House is held and two Democratic senators added they will vote for a Roe law in January 2023 AND suspend the filibuster rules to guarantee that bill gets an old fashioned up or down majority vote. So far 31 Senate Democrats have said they’ll do that (though not …

8/ yet on the specific date). All but two of the 17 are basically there but still refuse to say it clearly. There are two potential hold outs. Angus King of Maine and Mark Warner of Virginia. They will all certainly fall in line quickly if constituents apply pressure now.

The Kansas vote shows that the anti-abortion Republicans have misjudged how deeply this issue resonates for voters. When a Constitutional right simply disappears, apparently, the voters will turn out.

The polls have consistently shown that the majority of this country is pro-choice. The rejection of the Kansas amendment shows that if the election were to be a referendum on pro-choice, Democrats will win.

The Republicans should be afraid that they have gone too far. Let’s hope this is a bellwether for the midterms.

(Hat tip to long-time blog reader and Kansas resident Monty B. for keeping Wrongo apprised of the Kansas fight to turn back this amendment).

Facebooklinkedinrss

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – July 31, 2022

Q: Why do people take an instant dislike to Justice Samuel A. Alito?  A: It saves time.

Alito spoke in Rome dismissing criticism from foreign officials who he said “lambasted” his opinion that overturned Roe v. Wade. Alito spoke at a conference promoting religious liberty, saying:

“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…”

Alito called out Prince Harry as making a particularly hurtful comment. What Harry said at the UN:

“This has been a painful year in a painful decade….Climate change wreaking havoc on our planet, with the most vulnerable suffering most of all. The few weaponizing lies and disinformation at the expense of the many. And from a 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, the cause of Mandela’s life.”

Alito said in response:

“But what really wounded me…was when the Duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare the decision…with the Russian attack on Ukraine…”

To quote Charlie Pierce:

“The conservatives on the Supreme Court are now not simply ruling like political animals, they’re behaving like political animals as well.”

This guarantees that Alito will be forever known internationally as a dickhead. On to cartoons.

Manchin had a surprise:

The GOP’s burning its mid-term chances by walking away from the PACT act:

And this incarnation of GOP plumbers need tech support:

The stuff of nightmares:

Change brings things to light:

DHS scrapped the effort to collect agency phones in order to try to recover deleted Secret Service texts:

Putin’s staff misunderstands:

Facebooklinkedinrss

Tuesday Wake Up Call, Unhappiness Edition – July 26, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Smoke in Yosemite Valley from the nearby Oak fire – July 25, 2022 photo via Today’s California

At a family party this weekend, my daughter who owns an upscale restaurant, mentioned that while post-Covid, the restaurant is full again, the patrons are much more mean and nasty. That made Wrongo revisit the answers to the latest data on the happiness of Americans from the General Social Survey (GSS), produced by NORC, a nonpartisan research organization at the University of Chicago.

The GSS has been monitoring societal change since 1972. The last GSS survey came out in January 2022. Here’s a significant chart:

Since 1972, the GSS has asked the question: “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days–would you say that you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” As you can see above, historically the “very happy” people have outnumbered the “not too happy” group by about 3:1 for about 45 years.

But in 2021, the very-happies plummeted from 31% of the population in 2018 down to 19%, while the not-too-happies surged to 24% (the “pretty happys” remained constant at about 57%). For the first time in polling history, Americans are more likely to say they’re not happy than to say they’re very happy.

The Institute for Family Studies (IFS) has taken a look at the GSS data to see what’s driving this precipitous change. Here’s their chart of unhappiness by age:

Until 2018, fewer than 18% of Americans ages 35 and over claimed to be “not too happy”, while fewer than 16% of Americans under 35 had done so. But in 2021, unhappiness rocketed upwards for both groups, to 22% for those 35 and over, and to 30% for those under age 35.

The sharp increase for those under 35 indicates young adults are carrying a unique burden. They’re taking an extraordinarily dim view of the world and their own lives.

Among young adults, different groups had different levels of unhappiness even before Covid. For example, only 6% of married people said they were “not too happy,” versus 16% of the unmarried. The question is whether all groups saw the same spike in unhappiness. Here’s another chart from the IFS:

Unhappiness rose for every group: In each case, the red bars are higher than the blue bars.

In the GSS, social class didn’t protect people very much: Unhappiness rose about 16% for people with prestigious jobs vs. 15% for other people. People who attended college saw their unhappiness rise by 16% vs. 15% for people who didn’t attend college.

Some demographic traits did matter: Men saw their unhappiness rise 18%, vs. 12% for women. Unhappiness rose about 17% for non-Hispanic whites, vs. 12% for racial and ethnic minorities.

Religion seems to have buffered unhappiness. Among people who attended religious services at least two times per month, unhappiness rose only 4%, the smallest increase of any group.

Liberal Americans saw the largest increase in unhappiness of any group, by 19%. For moderates, it was 15%, and for conservatives, 13%. Despite what Tucker Carlson might try to make of this, the IFS says that given the sample sizes involved, those differences aren’t statistically significant.

We can blame the Covid pandemic for much of the increase in unhappiness, but we’ve also seen huge social disruption. Here’s a chart showing the percentage of 25-34 year-olds living with parents or relatives in the US:

In 1970, 11% lived with their parents, while in 2020, it was 29%. Note the decline in living with a spouse. From 80% to 38%. While people are getting married later, living alone is relatively unchanged since 1980.

This has occurred during a period when there was very little upside in real wages, and a huge increase in financial assets, which few young adults have, and in the cost of housing. This may also partially explain why young people are unhappy.

We’re about to head into a global recession and most of our politicians have zero idea how bad it will be, or how to fix it. When it comes to the midterm elections, nearly a third of voters say it doesn’t matter who wins.

Time to wake up America! We’re hoping that demography will save us before climate change slays us, or fascism overtakes us.

To help you wake up, listen to 9 year-old musical prodigy Ellen Alaverdyan perform a cover of Geddy Lee‘s iconic bassline on the classic Rush song “Tom Sawyer”:

Scroll away from the video, and she sounds like a pro. Very nice!

Facebooklinkedinrss

Saturday Soother – July 23, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Mount Teneriffe, WA, with Penstemon flowers in foreground – July 2022 photo by Edwin Buske Photography

Wrongo and Ms. Right watched the House Select Committee hearing on Thursday night. It was supposed to be the final hearing, but it turned out to be only the “season finale”. The Committee members made it clear that additional witnesses are giving up their reluctance to testify on the record, so there’s more coming in September.

Thursday night laid out that Trump and his enablers had a plan to subvert our democracy even after their legal effort to change votes in swing states had failed. And it’s frightening how close they came to pulling it off.

The 18-month focus of the media about how Trump did nothing while the rioters took over the Capitol was absolutely the wrong way to look at the White House’s inaction. Charlie Sykes has it right: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Trump didn’t call off the mob because it was doing precisely what he wanted; and he was using the delay caused by the attack to lobby his allies to help execute his coup. Only when it was apparent that the assault on the Capitol had failed, did he bother to call off his Insurrection.”

The Committee charged that Trump was derelict in performing his duties as president. He was aware in real time of the violence at the Capitol. He could have given orders to his followers to end the attack, or counter it with troops, but he did nothing.

Given every American president’s Constitutional obligation to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” Trump was derelict. Liz Cheney said it best:

“Can a president who was willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of Jan. 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?”

You already know the answer.

And if you think that it might be acceptable for Trump to return to the office of president, check out what Axios reported on Friday: (brackets by Wrongo)

“Former President Trump’s top allies are preparing to radically reshape the federal government if he is re-elected….Trump allies are working on plans that would potentially strip layers [of staff] at the Justice Department — including the FBI, and reaching into national security, intelligence, the State Department and the Pentagon, sources close to the former president say.”

They’re building the breeding grounds for a new wave of right-wing personnel to infiltrate and run the US government should Trump be elected president:

“The heart of the plan is derived from an executive order known as “Schedule F,” developed and refined in secret over most of the second half of Trump’s term and launched 13 days before the 2020 election.”

That’s when Trump started selectively placing his toadies in key positions in various agencies in case he needed to get shit done. More from Axios:

“Well-funded groups are already developing lists of candidates selected often for their animus against the system….The preparations are far more advanced and ambitious than previously reported…..These groups are…curating an alternative labor force of unprecedented scale and preparing for legal challenges and defenses that might go before Trump-friendly judges, all the way to a 6-3 Supreme Court.”

Scary, or what?

Trump signed the executive order, “Creating Schedule F in the Excepted Service,” in October 2020, which established a new employment category for federal employees. It was rescinded by Biden after he took office.

Axios says that an initial estimate by the Trump official who came up with Schedule F found it could apply to as many as 50,000 federal workers, enough to make a profound difference in shaping and interpreting US policy, or to help Trump succeed in establishing an autocracy.

Schedule F could make many civil service managers political hires, meaning nearly 100% turnover when a new Party takes the White House. That would take us back to how the civil service operated in 1883, prior to the Pendleton Act.

Both Parties are lining up. Democrats have attached an amendment to this year’s defense bill to prevent a future president from resurrecting Schedule F. The House passed Connolly’s amendment but Republicans plan to block it in the Senate.

If democracy survives only because America gets lucky, or because pro-democracy forces play an almost perfect game, then we’re in big trouble.

This should give you the jitters. But it’s Saturday, and time for us to chill out in a hot country. Here on the Fields of Wrong, the grass is brown and crunchy. There will be no fixing that until the heat wave breaks and the rains return.

To help you chill, grab a mug of iced coffee, and sit by a window with an air conditioner. Now, listen to the most melodic of the 37 concertos for solo bassoon composed by Vivaldi. Here’s his “Concerto in E minor for Bassoon“, played in 2015 by the Karol Szymanowski School of Music Orchestra in Warsaw, Poland with Klaudia Abramczuk, bassoon soloist. These are school kids:

Bach never wrote a bassoon concerto.

Facebooklinkedinrss

US Military Needs Recruits

The Daily Escape:

Old Victorian farmhouse between Santa Cruz and Salinas, CA – photo by Dave Alvin

The NYT has a report about how hard it is for the US military to find new recruits:

“Almost across the board, the armed forces are experiencing large shortfalls in enlistments this year — a deficit of thousands of entry-level troops that is on pace to be worse than any since just after the Vietnam War. It threatens to throw a wrench into the military’s machinery, leaving critical jobs unfilled and some platoons with too few people to function.”

More:

“The Army is the largest of the armed forces, and….As of late June, it had recruited only about 40% of the roughly 57,000 new soldiers it wants to put in boots by Sept. 30, the end of the fiscal year.”

Still more: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Less than a quarter of young American adults are physically fit to enlist and have no disqualifying criminal record, a proportion that has shrunk steadily in recent years. And shifting attitudes toward military service mean that now only about one in 10 young people say they would even consider it.”

This is shocking. You don’t have to be a competitive athlete to join the Army. Too many young men have prison records. The military should seriously consider issuing waivers for criminal history. A willingness to die for one’s country should be seen as a gigantic step towards rehabilitation.

And since just 10% of potential recruits are willing to consider serving, young people have obviously understood the lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq. Why would young people want to die for wasteful wars of choice that have nothing at all to do with protecting their country?

These shortfalls put pressure on the military to bring in people who are either marginally qualified or unqualified. Wrongo ran a US Army unit in Germany during the Vietnam war. Back then, the US Army couldn’t recruit enough people who met its basic standards. The DOD came up with a program called Project 100,000 in October 1966 to recruit new soldiers who previously had been below the military’s mental or medical standards.

Project 100,000 personnel died at higher rates than other Americans serving in Vietnam. In Germany, more of our Project 100,000 soldiers served time in military jails than did our regular recruits. The project was ended in December 1971.

It looks like the Army is currently walking toward implementing a similar solution to the same problem it had 45 years ago.

Since jobs are plentiful in America, and wages have increased, the military has to compete by sweetening their deal with signing bonuses (up to $50,000). The military has also downsized. The number of active-duty service members is now about half of what it was in the 1980s and it’s projected to keep decreasing.

Also, the shabby way we treat our veterans hasn’t gone unnoticed by young people. The Watson Institute researches the cost of the Afghan war. They say that more than 40% of the troops who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan have already been approved to receive lifetime disability benefits. This is what happens when you continually redeploy the same soldiers into a 20-year long battle. Many get permanently injured.

And most of the costs associated with caring for post-9/11 veterans have yet to be paid, and will continue to accrue for years into the future.

July marks the 40th anniversary of doing away with the draft. We instituted the all-volunteer army because during the Vietnam War, significant numbers of draftees didn’t want to serve. The all-volunteer army was a bad idea then, and it’s still a bad idea. The post-9/11 wars were the first major test of our all-volunteer military.

Leaving aside their bravery and personal sacrifice, which was profound, how do you think they did?

On September 11, 2001, roughly one in every four American men were military veterans. But over the past two decades, the number of veterans in the population has declined to fewer than one in eight.

We need to re-institute the draft to spread the responsibility for our defense to all Americans. Barring reinstituting the draft, the number of military in our population will continue to decline. The Census Bureau projects that the number of veterans will be just 1 in 14 by 2040. By 2050, when the costs of providing medical care and benefits for veterans of the post-9/11 wars reaches its peak, few Americans will have a direct relative who was involved in those wars.

The other benefit of a draft is that it exposes young people to others of all races, ethnicities, and beliefs, and forces them to find ways to get along to accomplish a mission.

That would be both a refreshing and necessary change.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Saturday Soother – July 9, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Abandoned homestead, Sanpete County, UT – photo by Jon Hafen Photography

Wrongo hates writing about dysfunction among Democrats, but lately, they seem to be all too willing to assemble the circular firing squad. And they’re doing it at a time, as we said yesterday, that the Dems seem to be getting back in the mid-terms race.

Wrongo heard an NPR reporter asking if Democrats were angry with Biden because he wasn’t doing more after the Dobbs decision. The point was that many Dems seem to think there’s a magical way of reinstating the Constitutional right to abortion when Democrats have at best, barely nominal control of Congress. Here are some media comments:

  • The WaPo reported that “some Democrats” think Biden “risks a dangerous failure to meet the moment” and quoted a Democratic consultant lamenting Biden’s “leadership vacuum.”
  • Politico reported that “Democrats have grown increasingly frustrated at what they perceive has been the White House’s lack of urgency” and “Biden’s seeming lack of fire.”
  • CNN reported: “Top Democrats complain the president isn’t acting with … the urgency the moment demands.” Anonymous Democratic lawmakers called the White House “rudderless,” with “no fight.”

Is it time to remind Democrats that the radical change in the Supreme Court was a self-inflicted wound? It was Democrats who failed to turnout in Obama-strength numbers in 2016 for an admittedly weaker candidate, Hillary Clinton.

Also, by not electing a few more Dems to the Senate in 2020, Democrats gave their majority over to Manchin and Sinema, and by extension, gave Republicans more control than they had earned.

As Dana Milbank said in the WaPo:

“The fratricide is…stoked by the press, which likes a “Dems-in-disarray” story and would love a presidential primary. Democrats are habitually more self-critical than their Republican counterparts…. And there’s genuine frustration that more can’t get done.

But that’s the fault of Joe Manchin, not Joe Biden — and of a broken political system that protects minority rule. What’s depressing Biden’s (and therefore Democrats’) poll numbers isn’t alleged timidity…but inflation and gas prices.”

One issue that is particularly galling to Wrongo is that many Dems want Biden to do more about Britney Griner, a WNBA basketball player who was arrested in Russia on a drug possession charge. She took vape vials containing cannabis to Russia, and was arrested when she tried to leave the country with them. She has now pleaded guilty to the charges.

While Wrongo and all Americans can feel sorry for her plight, her decision-making was terrible. As a Black lesbian American celebrity athlete, she became a perfect target for the Kremlin. Now she’s placed the US government in a difficult position, and many Democrats are pushing on Biden to do something. But his calculation has to be based on geopolitics. Her decisions aren’t Biden’s fault.

Once again, we’re seeing that Democrats are a herd of cats and Republicans are a herd of cattle. Republicans are satisfied to follow the bell cow, while Dems want to change the world to reflect their individual needs on the first day we get in power.

Republicans worked 50 years to achieve what they have today. They never gave up. Democrats always look for a shortcut to power, and then are angry when that door isn’t opened immediately. All we do is complain.

It’s fair for Democrats to ask whether they should re-nominate an 82-year-old man for the 2024 presidential election. But right now, we need to bear down and add to our Senate majority in November.

Holding on to the House isn’t a bad idea either.

Enough politics, it’s time for our Saturday Soother, those few moments stolen from our overly-scheduled lives when we can prepare ourselves for the trouble to come. If you are feeling exhausted by the news and the lack of action on the part of politicians, it’s understandable. But right now, we must recharge our batteries and throw ourselves back into the fray on Monday.

We’re back on the Fields of Wrong from 10 days in the south, including a stop on July 4 at Monticello. The fourth is also the date of Jefferson’s death, in 1826, 50 years after the Declaration of Independence. Here’s a photo of Jefferson’s gardens and his view to the east in Virginia. The white building is the textile workshop:

July 2022 iPhone photo by Wrongo

To help you prepare for what’s coming, listen to Rossini’s Overture to “La Gazza Ladra” (“The Thieving Magpie”). Rossini hadn’t finished the overture to the piece on time, so the day before the premiere, the conductor locked him in a room at the top of La Scala with orders to complete it. He was guarded by four stagehands whose job was to toss each completed page out the window to a copyist below. The opera was first performed in May, 1817. Here, it’s performed in 2012 by the Mannheim Philharmonic, a youth orchestra conducted by Boian Videnoff. You should watch just to see Videnoff’s conducting style:

 

Facebooklinkedinrss

More Rights May Be Flushed By The Supremes

The Daily Escape:

Denali from Byers Lake, AK – June 2022 photo by Todd Salat

In his concurring opinion to the decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, that dismantled Roe, Justice Thomas basically begged Red states to send the Court more culture war cases that they could dismantle.

The Houston Chronicle reports that Texas GOP AG Ken Paxton is ready to do just that:

“Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last week seemingly expressed support for the Supreme Court potentially overturning past rulings on cases involving the LGBTQ community following the downfall of Roe v. Wade on Friday.”

Paxton, in an interview, said he would support the Supreme Court revisiting the cases mentioned in Thomas’ concurring opinion. Here are the decisions Thomas would like a shot at overturning:

He questioned a number of earlier Court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, which established the right of same-sex couples to marry, and Lawrence vs. Texas—a 2003 decision in which the court ruled against the state of Texas regarding its 1973 law criminalizing the act of sodomy.

Thomas also mentioned Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the right of married couples to use contraception without government interference:

“In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell….We have a duty to ‘correct the error’ regarding these established in those precedents.”

For those who don’t fully understand legal shorthand, the judicial theory Thomas is pursuing is that these issues should be in the hands of state legislatures, and not be decided by the courts.

Conservatives in other states have also expressed support for Thomas’s opinion, including Utah Senate President Stuart Adams, who said he would support the Supreme Court reconsidering same-sex marriage. Utah’s constitutional ban on same-sex unions still exists and could be reinstated if the high court were to overturn its earlier decision.

We shouldn’t forget that Obergefell was a 5-4 decision. Lawrence v. Texas was also a 5-4 decision. Since these cases were decided, the Court has moved three seats to the right. We should expect that both of these decisions will be overturned, assuming some state AG sends a case up to the Supremes.

After all, the Court’s Conservatives haven’t gotten more liberal on these issues in the last 10-15 years.

Some more history: Griswold v, Connecticut was decided 7-2, Loving v. Virginia was unanimous; and Brown v. Board of Education was unanimous. All of that said, while history shows that very few 5-4 decisions get overturned, in this time of Conservative Justice grievance, that’s not the way to bet. Even if those cases had been 6-3, 7-2 or 8-1, it wouldn’t matter to the current Justices on the Court.

Pundits are talking as if they would be shocked if the Court reverses Obergefell and Lawrence. That’s because they’re comforted that Thomas’s revolutionary concurrence wasn’t joined by other Justices. But all of them voted to end Roe, and Alito said:

“…abortion is not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. Therefore, there is no right to an abortion.”

We should also remember that the Court used nearly word for word, the failed Robert Bork’s reasoning why there isn’t a Constitutional right to privacy in Griswold v. Connecticut.

If there’s no right to privacy because the Constitution does not explicitly state there is such a right, then according to the Court’s Conservative 6, all of the rest of our privacy rights are in play. That means nearly nothing in the Fourth Amendment may remain, because you have no right to privacy in your home or in your vehicle.

But if you bet that the Court’s Conservative majority will somehow find that the founders explicitly wanted corporations to have a right to privacy, you’ll earn some folding money.

The naked desire by the Furious Five to achieve their ideological goals as quickly as possible is most likely, uncontrollable. Chief Justice Roberts is being increasingly sidelined because he wants to (at least) try to hide their ideological agenda. But the Furious Five doesn’t have any interest in hiding what they’re doing.

No more calling “balls and strikes” as Roberts said during his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing.

In closing, the music world has reacted strongly to the Supreme Court ruling on abortion. NPR has a nice roundup of what artists are saying and doing in response. Check it out if you have time.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Wednesday Wake Up Call – June 29, 2022

The Daily Escape:

Asheville morning, June 28, 2022 – iPhone photo by Wrongo. The log house we’re renting this week is at 4,000’ above sea level.

Wake up calls by the Wrongologist rarely happen on Wednesdays, but since the Roberts Court dismantled the line between church and state in public education with Justice Gorsuch’s decision in Kennedy v Bremerton School District, on Monday, it seems right.

Voting 6-3, the Court declared that an Oregon public high school football coach’s post-game prayer sessions with students were Constitutional, whether the students wanted them or not. That made Monday part of a pretty good run for American theocracy:

“The decision came less than a week after the court ruled, by the same vote, that Maine could not exclude religious schools from a state tuition program.”

The line between church and state is being erased before our eyes. Gorsuch, cherry-picking the facts of the case, wrote that football coach Kennedy had sought only to offer a brief, silent and solitary prayer:

“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 field, and whether they manifest through the spoken word or a bowed head…”

Justice Sotomayor responded that the public nature of his prayers and his stature as a leader and role model meant that students felt forced to participate, whatever their religion and whether they wanted to or not. She gave a different account of the facts, taking account of a longer time period:

“Kennedy consistently invited others to join his prayers and for years led student-athletes in prayer…”

In an unusual move, Sotomayor’s dissent included photographs showing Mr. Kennedy kneeling with players, which debunked Gorsuch’s selective use of facts.

Do you really think that this decision would have been the same if those prayers had been offered by a Muslim?

In the process of ruling for Mr. Kennedy, the majority overturned a major precedent on the First Amendment’s establishment clause, Lemon v. Kurtzman. That ruling was decided by an 8-0 vote under Republican Chief Justice Warren Burger. As an aside, John Dean (of Watergate fame) has said that during the Nixon administration, Burger threatened to resign from the Court if Nixon nominated a woman to it.

It came to be known as the Lemon test, which required courts to consider whether the challenged government practice had a secular purpose, whether its primary effect is to advance or inhibit religion, and whether it fosters excessive government entanglement with religion.

Sotomayor acknowledged that while the Lemon test had been frequently criticized by various members of the court:

“The court now goes much further…overruling Lemon entirely and in all contexts.”

So, by tossing out Lemon and saying that Coach Kennedy was not speaking for the school because it was an extra-curricular activity, the barrier between prayer and secular school has been permanently breached.

In today’s America, outside money will fund your culture wars grievance in the courts. The longer you can keep your case moving up through the courts, the better chance you have of running into a conservative Christian judge who will find a precedent for the White people’s Jesus in the Bill of Rights.

Teachers will now feel empowered to “invite” a group to pray with them. A few kids will jump in right away, while others will look around uncomfortably and gradually agree to join in, because the social opprobrium that comes with refusing is huge for kids. And since the person inviting you to pray is an authority figure: a teacher, coach, or principal, you really risk a lot by having them decide you aren’t:  A.Good.Christian.

When given the choice between upholding traditional case law or creating de novo judicial principles, the Roberts Court is almost always going to favor the latter.

Wrongo isn’t a lawyer, but many lawyers are now pointing to the extraordinarily shoddy nature of the Court’s majority opinions, including all three of the precedent-shattering ones the Court has issued over the last week.

It’s time to wake up America! Why is it so hard for Christians in the United States to just practice their religion without involving the rest of us?

We’re getting very close to the establishment of a default Christian American religion. We know that there are many public school teachers who have been silent despite their sincere religious beliefs while at school. Now they will be actively pressured by their pastors to begin proselytizing while on the clock.

To help you wake up, let’s travel to the 2022 Glastonbury music festival, which always creates great live music. On June 25, Olivia Rodrigo and Lily Allen dedicated the latter’s song “Fuck You” repurposed to express anger at five of the six Conservative members of the court.

Rodrigo named the Justices one by one, while Allen raised alternating middle fingers to them:

These artists aren’t afraid of controversy. Millions of us now feel exactly the same.

Facebooklinkedinrss

Sunday Cartoon Blogging – June 26, 2022

(New columns will be light and variable for the next week, since Wrongo and Ms. Right are attending grandson Conor’s wedding in NC. Regular programming will resume on July 6.)

We’re not talking about the Supreme Court or the J6 news this morning. We’ll leave that for the cartoons below. Instead, let’s focus on an enlightening article from Curbed: “Hoboken Hasn’t Had a Traffic Death in Four Years. What’s It Doing Right?”:

“Hoboken feels downright roomy. Wander down the wide, busy sidewalks of Washington Street, the city’s main strip…and one thing becomes clear….A pedestrian doesn’t have to play the…perilous game of New York City crosswalk chicken, where you squint through the windows of a massive metal box to catch a glimpse of another speeding metal box whose driver doesn’t see you.”

More:

“Few drivers park next to crosswalks in Hoboken because they can’t. Those spots are blocked off with bike racks or planters or storm drains or extra sidewalk space for pedestrians or vertical plastic pylons that deter all but the boldest delivery-truck drivers. Stand at a corner, and you can see what is coming toward you, and drivers can see you too, and you don’t have to step out into the road and risk your life to do it.”

This concept is called Vision Zero, a strategy that municipalities across the US and abroad have adopted that seeks to alter traffic and engage pedestrians to lessen the severity of accidents. In total, Hoboken has had three traffic fatalities since 2015.

As Hoboken’s streets get safer, the rest of America is getting less safe. Traffic fatalities in NYC were up 44% percent in the first quarter of 2022. Hoboken has empowered it’s pedestrians and every corner makes it clear they have the right of way. Hoboken’s streak of zero fatalities could end at any time, and eventually will, but that’s no reason for other cities and towns not to enable similar change. On to cartoons.

Somebody should remind the Conservative ideologue Justices that America is a multi-belief country:

It’s on the ballot in November:

Clarence rewrites the 2nd Amendment:

Now concealed carry has multiple meanings:

The scales of justice get a Conservative makeover:

The J6 hearings have inspired criticism from Texas. The late Molly Ivins referred to Texas as the “national laboratory for bad government”:

Uvalde ,TX failures give new meaning to an old idea:

Facebooklinkedinrss

Saturday (Un) Soother, Supreme Court Edition – June 25, 2022

The Daily Escape:

North River, Marshfield, MA – June 2022 photo by Laurie France

Roe overturned. Gun laws on the books since the Taft administration overturned. Miranda weakened. The separation of church and state required by the First Amendment, no longer Constitutional.

Remember when Republicans railed against “unelected, activist judges”? They always meant judges appointed by Democrats. Here’s a quote from the National Review:

“The Left views the judicial branch as no different from the executive or legislative branches. To them, judges are supposed to ‘take sides,’ making sure that some political interests win and others lose.”

Or, this from a Baptist minister in 2014:

“Unelected liberal activist judge delivers Michigan to Big Faggotry.”

As always, Conservatives were projecting their actual views as the views of their opposition.

Today, we do have unelected activist judges running America, and they are Conservatives. We’re living in an ahistorical time: There are six justices who are practicing Catholics. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, and Brett Kavanaugh.

Five routinely vote as a bloc. There have only been 15 Catholic justices (out of 115 justices total) in the history of the Supreme Court. Forty percent of all Catholic justices are now sitting on the Court.

The Conservative majority on the Court has walked away from Stare Decisis, the doctrine that courts will adhere to precedent when making their decisions. Stare decisis means “to stand by things decided” in Latin.

Here’s how stare decisis has evaporated: On Thursday, the Court said that the individual right to bear arms is an inviolable fundamental right, meaning states cannot infringe the right to carry a gun. Clarence Thomas held that a NY statute enacted during the Taft administration was not part of the American tradition of regulating firearms.

The right to an abortion, in place for 50 years, was overturned and sent back to the states because it’s just not as fundamental as the God-given right to have a gun which you can use to shoot up elementary schools.

The NY gun law dates from 1913. The right to abortion was decided in 1973. But the radical judges tout the notion that the former violated a fundamental right, while the latter isn’t even a thing.

Also on Thursday, the Conservative justices voted 6-3 to block lawsuits against police who neglect to read the Miranda warning, (“You have the right to remain silent”). It also includes language about Constitutional protections against self-incrimination. From Alito’s opinion:

“A violation of Miranda does not necessarily constitute a violation of the Constitution, and therefore such a violation does not constitute ‘the deprivation of [a] right…secured by the Constitution,'”

Miranda was decided in 1966, but Alito now says it’s a “prophylactic rule”, meaning that Miranda warnings aren’t required by the Constitution, but are instead judicially-crafted rules designed to protect people’s core Fifth Amendment right against compelled self-incrimination. His signal to prosecutors is clear: Miranda is suspect, and we’re willing to entertain arguments that we should do away with it for good.

So the Conservative wing has knocked off three “settled law” items in one week, despite each – John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh – all saying under oath some version of what Roberts said during his confirmation hearing:

“…[Roe] is settled as a precedent of the Court, entitled to respect under principles of stare decisis. It is settled.”

You should know that Alito and Barrett didn’t lie quite so egregiously about Roe during their hearings, although with hindsight, both were disingenuous. Obviously, a judge who lies under oath should be removed from office, but that won’t happen since “everyone” knew they were lying.

These Conservative unelected activist judges are placing ideology above precedent.

That elections have consequences was the key takeaway from the 2016 presidential election won by Trump. Democrats didn’t turn out for Hillary Clinton as much as they had turned out for Obama or that would turn out for Biden. Trump won because he got 78,000 more votes than Clinton in just three counties in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, and thus got to appoint three reactionary justices.

Reactionary justices will issue reactionary rulings. And there are many more to come.

But it’s time to forget (if you can) about the Supreme Court gutting legal precedent for ideology. It’s time for your Saturday Soother.

Our long-term lawn guy has decided to close his business. It’s a combination of higher costs that couldn’t be passed along to customers and getting too old for outdoor physical labor. So we’re scrambling at the height of the season.

It will be a warm weekend in the Northeast, so grab a seat outdoors in a shady spot, put on your wireless headphones and listen to “As steals the morn” composed by Handel in 1740. “As Steals the Morn” is adapted from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”. Amanda Forsythe and Thomas Cooley are the soloists, and their voices are beautiful:

Lyric:

As steals the morn upon the night,
And melts the shades away:
So Truth does Fancy’s charm dissolve,
And rising Reason puts to flight
The fumes that did the mind involve,
Restoring intellectual day.

 

Intellectual day is gone, my friends.

Facebooklinkedinrss