They know very well they are lying and so does their audience
Fox News is upset about protesters outside judges’ homes and apparently has no idea what’s been going on for the last 40 years pic.twitter.com/2nrVXsIryD
It’s enraging to see them disappear their history of violence, intimidation and murder like this. I don’t know how we can survive as a culture if they can get away with it.
And by the way, it’s not just abortion clinics. These threats and acts of intimidation and threats have been happening all over the country in just the last year!
A @CDHidaho meeting has been canceled after @BoisePD asked the board to stop due to safety concerns. Commissioner Diana Lachiondo excused herself after she found out her protesters were banging on the door while her son was home alone. https://t.co/OtB2pGhizlpic.twitter.com/1RkUA7kUNj
Last night, an Idaho health department meeting to discuss and vote on COVID-19 mask mandates came to an abrupt end due to safety concerns over protesters raging in the parking lot of the health department building as well as at the homes of some of the officials in attendance.
According to Boise police, three of the officials at the meeting had protesters gathered outside of their homes during the meeting. One health board member, Ada County Commissioner Diana Lachiondo, interrupted the meeting after a phone call to inform her colleagues that she needed to leave.
Astonishing video footage showed the moment Tennessee anti maskers screamed abuse and threats at officials after a school board reinstated mandatory face mask rules.
One enraged looking man was filmed following an unidentified man who had spoken at the Williamson County Schools Board meeting Tuesday night, and roaring: ‘We know who you are, you can live freely, but we will find you.’
Another man stood beside him was filmed telling his pal to calm down, before himself saying: ‘You will never be allowed in public again,’ to the official as he got into his car with the help of a sheriff’s deputy who was escorting him.
The people kept showing up at the small Northern California office where Natalie Adona and her co-workers help run elections. Three days in a row, they came to try to push a petition for recall elections, refusing to wear masks despite a mandate and physically pushing their way into the office, according to legal documents.
Adona and her colleagues asked for a restraining order against the three people, worried about the trio who they say kept showing up to harass them at their jobs. A judge granted it, then later extended it for one of the people, finding “clear and convincing evidence” that the same person “engaged in unlawful violence or made a credible threat of violence.” An attorney for the trio has denied wrongdoing.
The elections office briefly shut down walk-ins. Adona, who is an assistant clerk-recorder for the Nevada County Elections Office, said she has experienced several panic attacks. She still worries about her colleagues.
“It was a really unfortunate incident that led to me and my staff feeling pretty afraid,” Adona told The 19th. “Certainly, I think that having a restraining order is an extreme way to settle a problem that I would have liked to have sort of settled by other means. But the circumstances and our county counsel felt it appropriate to go in that direction.”
Across the country, election administrators such as Adona are facing increasing harassment and threats of violence ahead of the next midterm election — a lasting effect of the lies told by former President Donald Trump that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him. (It was not, according to multiple courts and Trump’s own administration.)
Most of those election workers — nearly 80 percent, according to survey data released last year from the nonpartisan Democracy Fund — are women. But while some states are passing laws that decrease the power of election officials, others are considering legislation designed to protect them against these increasing threats.
How dare these right wing assholes wring their hands over some peaceful, non-threatening protesters at Justice Alito and Kavanaugh’s houses. How dare they.
Russian soldiers, in the top right corner of this image from the video, walk away from the bodies of the men they have just killed, leaving them lying in the shadow. (via CNN)
It’s not clear what David Frum is referencing with his tweet.
MAGA world after some early vacillation seems to have made up its mind it will follow Tucker Carlson/Glenn Greenwald to oppose US aid to Ukraine and favor a pro-Russia resolution of the invasion.
There are those as well on the left whose default position is that whatever “the government” supports they are against. Everything is corrupt. Everyone is corrupt. Everything is suspect. And they wonder why no one wants to jump on their political bandwagons of bitterness.
CNN has obtained surveillance video of what is now being investigated as a war crime by Ukrainian prosecutors.
Both civilians died after the heartless shooting that goes against the so-called rules of war that outlaw the targeting of civilians. CNN has identified the victims. One was the owner of the vehicle dealership that was looted, whose family does not want to be named. The other was Leonid Oleksiyovych Plyats, a 68-year-old grandfather who worked as a guard there.
Video from multiple angles. The two civilians were shot in the back as they walked away after being frisked for weapons by Russian troops who later looted the vehicle dealership. One victim died immediately (apparently). The other bled out after calling for help that arrived too late.
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Republicans will pull out every stop they can get their hands on in 2024
Michigan state capitol, Lansing. Photo by Brian Charles Watson via Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 3.0).
“The Most Important Vote You’ll Cast This Year Will Be for a Politician You’ve Never Heard Of,” reads the teaser on the New York Times landing page. Former U.S. attorney and University of Michigan law professor Barbara McQuade argues that secretary of state elections this fall in 27 states will be key to the administration of 2024 elections. There is a MAGA-style, 2020 election-denying Republican in the hunt in 17. Should they win, they will control the voting process in five crucial swing states:
No elected officials will be more pivotal to protecting democracy — or subverting it — than secretaries of state. While their responsibilities vary from state to state, most oversee elections, a role in which they wield a tremendous amount of power. Secretaries of state own the bully pulpit on voting, and they control the machinery of elections.
They also have a platform to spread disinformation, such as false claims that voting by mail is not secure. A Republican secretary of state could reduce the number of ballot boxes or polling places in Democratic areas and limit staffing to create long lines that dissuade potential voters. They can also refuse to certify the results in particular counties or even the entire state. In a close presidential race, if even one secretary of state in a swing state were to put his thumb on the scale, we could see an election that really is stolen.
Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s incumbent Democrat, has a 14-point lead over her Trump-backed opponent. Even so, warns McQuade, “that margin is small considering Ms. Benson’s greater name recognition.” Elaine Marshall is not up for reelection here this year, and North Carolina’s secretary of state does not control elections. But if there is a secretary of state race in your state, pay heed.
The Times’ headline above, while instructive, is along with McQuade’s focus too narrow. There will be a lot of down-ballot races with no-name candidates that could have a dire impact on the conduct of 2024 state and federal elections. In particular, on the presidential contest.
Blogger Mary Beth Williams posted an alarming thread on that Wednesday:
I drafted a thread, but then took a break from Twitter due to health/family issues—and then decided, as a Twitter nobody, it didn’t matter. But with the new Eastman disclosures, I feel compelled to document a critical issue that should be addressed before the 2022 midterms. 🧵
TL;DR: After the midterm elections, MAGA-controlled legislatures CAN—and some WILL—end presidential elections in states and choose electors themselves—and it will be upheld by SCOTUS, perhaps unanimously, as constitutional.
My knowledge on this issue is informed by experience as state legislative senior staff, political operative, and state house candidate—on top of a law degree. I checked my work with a close friend—a federal agency attorney, who, like me, is a statutory interpretation wonk.
Even before polls closed, Trump and minions advocated to overturn the 2020 election by replacing electors chosen by the voters with ones appointed directly by GOP legislators. Fortunately, the federal and state courts applied Constitutional guardrails preventing this. But wait:
These courts addressed ex post facto appointing of electors, and held there can be no “do-overs.” See also, Bush v. Gore (2000): “When the state legislature vests the right to vote for President in its people, the right to vote as the legislature has prescribed is fundamental.” But these courts did not rule that state legislatures could never appoint electors themselves. Why? Because that authority is expressly delegated to the legislatures in Art. II, Sect. 1, Cl.2, the “Electors Clause.” law.cornell.edu/constitution/a…
This is the only section of the Constitution that addresses the “manner” in which P/VP electors are appointed. In contrast, the 12th Amendment establishes the process for counting the electors’ votes after appointment. See law.cornell.edu/constitution/a…
SCOTUS has held this power to be exclusively held by the state legislatures, and neither Congress, governors, or courts can override it, even if enshrined in state constitutions.
During the decades after ratification, almost all state legislatures appointed electors by a vote of the legislature—with no pop vote by qualified citizens. SCOTUS, in Pherson v. Blacker, 146 U.S. 1 (1892), upheld the authority of state legislatures to make such determinations:
Currently, all state legislatures appoint electors based on popular vote results in the general election. While a few states tally votes by Congressional district, most have adopted a “Winner Take All” statewide approach. Lyman v. Baker, 352 F.Supp.3d 81 (D. Mass. 2018) explains:
By choosing a popular vote model to appoint electors, states are merely exercising their Electors Clause powers to determine the “manner” by which a partisan slate of electors will be appointed to thereafter vote for P/VP.
However, despite the longevity of state statutes relying on voter preference, SCOTUS has consistently ruled that state legislatures retain their appointment power, and may change the manner of appointment, including reassuming it for themselves. See Bush v. Gore (2000):
There are legal folks who argue that states which require the executive to sign off on legislation will stop this; however, such arguments have never been tested, and with the current SCOTUS, it might be a difficult argument to make. Plus, as noted, precedential cases are mixed.
However, most legal scholars I read found it was likely constitutional, but that it would never happen, mainly due to “optics.” I think we can now agree that “optics” won’t hold GOP back in their pursuit of power. /🧵
Post script: If we want to prevent this from happening in 2024, we Democrats need to not only keep Congress, but win back as many state houses as we can, plus state supreme courts—who will rule on the constitutionality of relevant legislation.
Fred Wertheimer at Just Security is thinking along the same lines. The Electoral Count Act of 1887 (ECA) needs some updating, but Wertheimer thinks the scenario above not politically feasible:
Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress […] (Emphasis added.)
Currently, every state legislature in the country has implemented the “manner” of choosing electors by delegating that choice to the voters on Election Day. While it would be constitutional for a state to revoke that delegation and retake the power to name presidential electors, this is not politically feasible.
Wertheimer provides backstory to why this is before pointing to “a gaping loophole” in the Presidential Election Day Act of 1845 (1845 Act) by which state legislatures might still wrest the choice of electors from voters. “The 1845 Act gives a state legislature the power to choose presidential Electors after the election by declaring that the voters in the state ‘failed’ to make a choice on Election Day.”
Wertheimer elaborates:
In the early morning of Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024, the Associated Press declares that President Joe Biden has narrowly won the elections in Arizona and Pennsylvania in tight races against Republican candidate Donald Trump. This gives Biden the electoral votes he needs to defeat Trump, in a repeat of the 2020 presidential election.
But, a week later, the GOP-controlled state legislatures in Arizona and Pennsylvania meet in special sessions and, citing the 1845 Act, pass resolutions declaring, without grounds, that there was widespread voter fraud or that there were other voting problems in their states and therefore the voters “failed to make a choice.”
The two state legislatures then swiftly pass laws which provide that the legislatures shall appoint the presidential electors. This is in accord with the 1845 Act and its exception that provides that following a “failed choice” by a state, presidential electors will be appointed in the “manner as the State shall by law provide.”
The Arizona and Pennsylvania legislatures proceed to name the Trump presidential electors to represent the states in the Electoral College overriding the choice of the voters in their states, giving Trump the votes he needs to win in the Electoral College, and making Trump, not Biden, president.
There’s more. Point being, Republicans will pull out every stop in 2024, as they have already in the courts, and having learned what did not work in 2020. Adhering to norms and traditional interpretations of set law are out the window. The courts are no protection.
Key to making Coup 2.0 work will be control of state legislatures in red and battleground states. So, while you are watching what happens in congressional and statewide races, DO NOT lose sight of what Republican control of your state legislatures can mean in 2024. Volunteer and donate to those no-name Democrats running for state legislative seats where you are.
“The Most Important Vote You’ll Cast This Year Will Be for a Politician You’ve Never Heard Of”
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For The Win, 4th Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free, countywide get-out-the-vote planning guide for county committees at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like.
In the old-fashioned, Chinese communist sense of the word
Accused of bearing a resemblance to Mao, Heilongjiang province Governor Li Fanwu?s hair is brutally shaved and torn by zealous young Red Guards in Red Guard Square. Harbin, 12 September 1966
Ron DeSantis casually moves from banning discussions of certain topics in schools to outright ideological indoctrination — just like his hated long-dead enemies:
Discussions of gender identity and sexual preference are banned in many Florida classrooms because of governor Ron DeSantis’s “don’t say gay” law, alongside dozens of math textbooks blocked for “prohibited topics”.
Now the Republican who has loudly condemned what he sees as the “indoctrination” of young people has made another subject compulsory: students must receive at least 45 minutes’ instruction every November about the “victims of communism”.
In a ceremony Monday at Miami’s iconic Freedom Tower, where tens of thousands of Cuban immigrants fleeing Fidel Castro’s revolution were admitted into the US between 1962 and 1974, DeSantis signed into law House Bill 395, designating 7 November as Victims of Communism Day.
Florida is one of a handful of states to adopt the designation, but is believed to be the first to mandate school instruction on that day.
The instruction will begin in the 2023-2024 school year, DeSantis said, and will require teaching about Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, as well as “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech” endured under their leaderships in the Soviet Union, China and Cuba respectively.
DeSantis, mispronouncing the name of the revolutionary leader Che Guevara as “Che Kay-Farra”, railed against students who wear T-shirts he said were oblivious about what communism represented.
“You can see at a college campus students flying the hammer and sickle from the old Soviet Union flag, you will see students that will have T-shirts with Che Guevara, you will see students that will idolize people like Mao Zedong,” he said.
“To me, this speaks of a tremendous ignorance about what those individuals represented and the evils that communism inflicted on people throughout the world. While it’s fashionable in some circles to whitewash the history of communism, Florida will stand for truth and remain as a beachhead for freedom.”
Educators in Florida are banned, however, from teaching students about racial issues, including the history of slavery, if it makes them “feel uncomfortable”, according to DeSantis’s recently signed Stop Woke Act.
Hyperbole? I dunno. This guy is moving very, very quickly.
Kathy Barnett is making a serious run for the GOP nomination for Senate in Pennsylvania coming on strong against Dr Oz and the establishment candidate David McCormick — by tapping into pure MAGA transgressiveness. She was Trump before Trump was Trump:
Barnette has seen a rise in the polls — notching a close second in a new Trafalgar survey — even as frontrunning candidates Oz and former hedge fund CEO Dave McCormick pump millions of dollars into their campaigns. Barnette has spent far less.
“There’s protests three, four times a week outside my house,” Schumer said Tuesday. “The American way to peacefully protest is okay.”
But while protest is indeed ingrained in American democracy, legally speaking, the comparison between protesting a politician at home and a member of the judiciary at home is inexact. And experts say the latter category of protests is probably illegal regardless of how peaceful the demonstrations are.Advertisement
At issue is a statute enacted in 1950: Title 18, Section 1507, of the U.S. Code. The law states that it is illegal, “with the intent of influencing any judge,” to:
–picket or parade “in or near a building or residence occupied or used by such judge, juror, witness, or court officer”
— “or with such intent,” to resort “to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence”
Tabatha Abu El-Haj, an expert on protest rights at Drexel University’s law school, said that the current protests at justices’ homes qualify under the statute and that the statute, if tested, would probably be found constitutional.
“The statute would seem to apply both because … they appear to be picketing and parading with the relevant intent and at the relevant locations,” Abu El-Haj said, “but also because the statute has a catchall ‘resorts to any other demonstration in or near any such building or residence.’ ”
Timothy Zick of the College of William & Mary agreed.
“The conduct appears to be within the statute’s prohibition,” Zick said. “Picketing includes activities such as demonstrating and protesting. The court has upheld properly tailored restrictions on pickets that target a particular home.”Advertisement
While the Supreme Court has rarely dealt with this specific statute, it has upheld similar ones.
In 1988’s Frisby v. Schultz, the court upheld a local Wisconsin law that banned protesting targeted at a specific home, as long as protesters were allowed to march through a neighborhood.
“A State may adopt safeguards necessary and appropriate to assure that the administration of justice at all stages is free from outside control and influence,” the court ruled in Cox v. Louisiana. “A narrowly drawn statute such as the one under review is obviously a safeguard both necessary and appropriate to vindicate the State’s interest in assuring justice under law.”Advertisement
That case didn’t deal specifically with banning protests outside the home of a judge or another party to a legal proceeding — but it did uphold a law that would seem to involve less potentially problematic efforts to influence them. And the court has repeatedly suggested protests of legal proceedings should be considered differently, since protests could possibly impact nonpolitical proceedings or even inject merely the appearance of political influence or intimidation into decisions that should be based solely on the law, not public opinion.
“There is no room at any stage of judicial proceedings for such intervention; mob law is the very antithesis of due process,” the justices wrote in Cox.
They added at another point that “entirely different considerations would apply if, for example, the demonstrators were picketing to protest the actions of a mayor or other official of a city completely unrelated to any judicial proceedings.”Advertisement
There are instances in which the Supreme Court has limited restrictions on protesting the judiciary, though they don’t appear entirely applicable to the present case.
In 1983, U.S. v. Grace restricted a somewhat similar federal law. The law prohibited the display of “any flag, banner, or device designed or adapted to bring into public notice any party, organization, or movement” in the Supreme Court itself or on its grounds.
The court ruled that the law had been improperly applied to public sidewalks on the outer boundaries of the court’s grounds and that those public sidewalks represented “public forums” where free-speech rights enjoyed more protection. But it would seem unlikely that a public road outside a justice’s home would be considered a similar “public forum.”
Abu El-Haj said there is one way in which the federal law could conceivably be challenged. In 1988’s Boos v. Barry, the court struck down a statute prohibiting picketing against embassies “if [the signs tend] to bring that foreign government into ‘public odium’ or ‘public disrepute.’ ” But in that case, the law was subjected to more scrutiny because it was deemed to be content-based — i.e., prohibiting advocating something specific.Advertisement
Abu El-Haj said that argument isn’t “crazy,” but “I doubt the argument would win the day in this context.”
The tension reflects an increasing politicization of the court — both due to the court’s own actions (in some cases) and how it has been increasingly treated by politicians. The ideal has long been that judges should be insulated from politics. But Americans increasingly view the court as effectively another political branch of government.
The legality of the protests is certainly important. Advocates for abortion rights might argue that, given the stakes and even if illegal, the protests are justified as a form of civil disobedience. (The potential punishments include a fine and up to a year in prison.) But the Biden administration is charged with enforcing federal law. Thus far, the Justice Department hasn’t weighed in.
This isn’t a hill anyone should die on — or get arrested for. There are plenty of people to protest, starting with Mitch McConnell, Leonard Leo, Lindsey Graham and more. They are just as villainous as those Justices.
This hysteria over a few very mild, peaceful protests, mostly held by neighbors, on the streets outside the Supreme Court Justices homes is beyond silly. You’d have to watch Fox to understand how over the top it is. Here’s just one example of the total idiocy they’re producing:
Graham: Trump told them to leave the Capitol. Biden tell them to leave judges alone at home. Do what Trump did. pic.twitter.com/Iyt3J0Od0k
Jonathan Chait, who rarely acknowledges the asymmetry of radicalism on the right and left, takes note:
Last night police descended on the home of Senator Susan Collins in response to what Collins apparently regards as a threat. The threat was a message written on the sidewalk in front of her house asking her to support a pro-choice bill in the Senate.
“The message was not overtly threatening,” allows a police spokesman, as though there was some clear, Vito Corleone–esque undertone of menace. The message in fact read, “Susie, please, Mainers want WHPA —> vote yes, clean up your mess.” I would submit that a message delivered via water-soluble chalk, and including the word “please,” is neither overtly nor covertly threatening.
Collins thanked “the Bangor police officers and the city public-works employee who responded to the defacement of public property in front of our home,” who, working in conjunction, were apparently able to erase the message, without needing to call in an FBI tactical anti-chalk squad.
The fact this episode even made it into a news story (albeit a local one) and that the story was not about elderly snowflakes is a testament to the hyperventilated response to pro-choice protests. Yesterday, rumors that Justice Samuel Alito was forced to flee his home — the source of which turned out to be a right-wing law professor repeating something he thought he saw on Twitter somewhere — was repeated in numerous national news stories. Congress rushed to pass a bill enhancing personal security for the justices.
Moral panics often grow out of real problems, but stripped of any sense of proportion or context. In this case, the base concern about protests staged at the homes of their targets is legitimate. Protesting at the home of a public figure is a moral gray area. Such protests are clearly permitted by the First Amendment, but they also create the potential for menace. In a huge country swimming in guns, public figures have a good reason not to draw attention or regular crowds to their homes. Protests intended to be peaceful can easily provide inadvertent cover for a single armed maniac. There is no reason why a demonstration needs to be held on a street on front of a house when public spaces can accommodate much bigger crowds without a hint of menace.
However, this tactic is not new. Picketers have regularly appeared at the homes of both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (from the left) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (from the right.) Needless to say, anti-abortion protesters have spent decades staging confrontations at clinics, sometimes giving cover for violent terrorists.
The sins of one side do not justify sins by the other. In any case, protesting at a home is a risky and probably counterproductive tactic that activists should stop doing. But the hysterical levels of media attention to a handful of protests, and the spread of false rumors surrounding them, requires some broader explanation. I see three factors at work.
First is a desire by conservatives to make the focus of the Roe v. Wade story something other than the policy implications of the Court’s forthcoming decision. Republicans leaders have spelled out their fear that an unpopular ruling to overturn Roe will shake up an otherwise favorable midterm election. The protests are simply serving the same function that the leak served last week — giving Republicans something to talk about other than banning abortion.
Second is a desire by conservatives to give the Supreme Court a special sanctity. Having gained generational control over the courts, the right’s objective now is to ensure that its legitimacy is not questioned. The idea that Brett Kavanaugh does not deserve the kind of treatment Pelosi has to endure is a knock-on effect of this belief system.
Third, and most important, the episode reveals once again the asymmetrical commitment between the two parties to upholding institutions and norms. Republicans have welcomed violent extremists into their coalition, their candidates for office frequently brandish firearms in their ads, and the party no longer treats the peaceful transfer of power as a baseline requirement. It is impossible to imagine Republicans giving anything close to the display of unanimous support Democrats supplied in response to the protests against the Court.
Ted Cruz, who has apologized profusely for having previously denounced the insurrectionists, last night described the peaceful protesters outside Samuel Alito’s home as “goons” while in the same breath describing the January 6 protests as peaceful. It is a perfect display of the imbalance at work.
And this imbalance is obvious in every way, including all this fulminating about campus speech codes and general wokeness. Compared to the violent radicalism of the right wing it’s child’s play.
Sarah Posner wrote this on twitter and I think it’s something to which we haven’t paid as much attention as we should.
This story, via @washingtonpost, about far-right GOP donor Steven Hotze being prosecuted for a scheme in which he allegedly dispatched a former cop to surveil an HVAC contractor, claiming he was delivering fraudulent ballots in the 2020 election, is something else. Thread:
I’ve written about Hotze, and his lawyer, Jared Woodfill before. Read the story. I have a few thoughts.
There are a lot of twists and turns here, but the gist is that Hotze, who has been criminally charged, allegedly bankrolled the ex-cop, through his nonprofit Liberty Center for God and Country, to find “voter fraud,” and he settled on some random HVAC repairman.
The ex-cop allegedly rammed this poor guy’s van and tried to make a “citizens’ arrest.” The DA in Harris County says of Hotze and the ex-cop:
Read the whole thing for all the twists, conspiracies, mishaps, and denials, including that there is a taped telephone conversation between Hotze and Ryan Patrick, a federal prosecutor in Texas under Trump, and the son of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick (Hotze’s friend).
Hotze has been around in the religious right for a long, long time. For a long time he was considered fringe; now he’s basically regular. For decades he has called for a Christian takeover of government.
Hotze and Woodfill have been highly active around Texas GOP politics, always aiming to push the state party further and further to the right, attacking other Republicans as insufficiently conservative.
Woodfill told me in 2017 that they go to the same church as their friend Dan Patrick, whose son Hotze allegedly tried to convince to prosecute imagined voter fraud.
Starting in 2014, Woodfill and Hotze spearheaded a campaign that became the germ of today’s anti-trans assaults in red states across the country.
Woodfill told me in 2017 his ultimate goal is overturning Obergefell, and that he saw Trump, with his judicial nominations, as the path to doing that. Read the whole piece via @typeinvestigations or @RollingStone
So basically in this really convoluted story about Hotze’s “voter fraud” scheme, you see this progression: Christian nationalist activist believes Christians must take over government. Works tirelessly for decades to achieve result, precinct by precinct, law by law.
Public opinion seems to be turning the wrong way. Obergefell and LGBTQ rights, especially, even as they think they can ultimately reverse Roe. So the task becomes more urgent, in their minds.
So they support Trump. They get the judicial nominees they want. But once they’ve had that power they don’t want to let it go, by any means necessary.
I think a lot of people don’t really appreciate the extent to which the aims of (and disappointments of) the religious right are tied up in Trump’s stolen election lie, and the quest to hold onto power because their ideology and political position is unpopular.
When you have people, like Hotze, who think they are carrying out a divine mission to take over government from secularists, “communists,” or “sodomites,” things get dangerous very fast, as evidenced in this alleged plot, for which hopefully there will be accountability.
L0026618 The History of Witches and Wizards, 1720
Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images
images@wellcome.ac.uk
http://wellcomeimages.org
Witches dancing in a circle with the
devil.
The history of witches and wizards…
Published: 1720
Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
There is much to be shocked by in Justice Samuel Alito’s screed of a draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but his evocation of centuries-old common law shouldn’t be one of them. As it turns out, this is not unusual, particularly among jurists who argue that certain ideas are so firmly entrenched in the culture that there no longer remains any question on their validity. That is not to say, however, that Alito’s use of ancient misogyny to undergird his arguments isn’t disgraceful. In fact, it’s nothing short of grotesque. He goes all the way back to the 13th century to cite Judge Henry de Bracton’s “De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae,” a text about English law and custom that explained that if a person has “struck a pregnant woman, or has given her poison, whereby he has caused an abortion, if the foetus be already formed and animated … he commits homicide” to argue that abortion has been considered murder for centuries.
As the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank points out, Alito failed to mention some of Bracton’s other words of wisdom about fraudulent pregnancies and proper torture techniques. Neither did Alito reference the fact that Bracton believed “women differ from men in many respects, for their position is inferior to that of men.” Milbank notes that Bracton did think women have certain rights:
“When a virgin is defiled,” Bracton writes, “let her defiler be punished in the parts in which he offended. Let him thus lose his eyes which gave him sight of the maiden’s beauty for which he coveted her. And let him lose as well the testicles which excited his hot lust.” The truth of the victim’s accusation would “be ascertained by an examination of her body, made by four law-abiding women sworn to tell the truth as to whether she is a virgin or defiled.”
Perhaps the rapidly accelerating right-wing movement to deny abortion even in cases of rape and incest across the country can adopt this process as a compromise? It wouldn’t be that far out, after all. A few years back when South Dakota passed an abortion ban, state Rep. Bill Napoli was quoted saying that he might accept a rape exception under similar circumstances:
A real-life description to me would be a rape victim, brutally raped, savaged. The girl was a virgin. She was religious. She planned on saving her virginity until she was married. She was brutalized and raped, sodomized as bad as you can possibly make it, and is impregnated. I mean, that girl could be so messed up, physically and psychologically, that carrying that child could very well threaten her life.
Never let it be said that conservatives have no compassion for rape victims — as long as they are virgins who have been horrifically brutalized “as bad as you can possibly make it.” Napoli would fit right in 1250.
And Bracton wasn’t the only ancient legal expert to whom Alito turned.
Sir Matthew Hale, a 17th-century English jurist whose legal philosophy made women’s lives miserable for centuries was also quoted in the draft: “two treatises by Sir Matthew Hale likewise described abortion of a quick child who died in the womb as a ‘great crime’ and a ‘great misprision'” and “Hale wrote that if a physician gave a woman ‘with child’ a ‘potion’ to cause an abortion, and the woman died, it was ‘murder’ because the potion was given ‘unlawfully to destroy her child within her
As it turns out Alito isn’t the only one who considers Hale an authority.
All the way up to the 1990s, Hale’s views on rape, particularly marital rape, were commonly cited in English and American jurisprudence. He said, “the husband cannot be guilty of a rape committed by himself upon his lawful wife for by their mutual matrimonial consent and contract the wife hath given up herself in this kind unto her husband which she cannot retract.” In other words, a woman gives up her bodily autonomy when she marries. But the truth is that Hale and the centuries of legal thinkers after him didn’t believe that women had any autonomy in the first place.
By the way, Hale also energetically prosecuted women for witchcraft. There’s no word on where Alito stands on that issue.
All of this is simply to point out that men rationalizing their need to control women’s bodies and their reproduction has been going on forever. And just because there has been recent progress in that regard doesn’t mean that the underlying impulse has gone away, as reflected in Alito’s draft decision in which he goes back almost a thousand years to illustrate it in living color. Yes, they are “precedents,” but if you want to make the point that some precedents are not well conceived, as Alito claimed was the case with Roe, using such monstrous anachronistic examples is a particularly poor way to do it.
Back in the 1970s, the U.S. also seemed to be on the verge of granting full legal rights to women with the Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution which had first been proposed in 1923. But anti-feminists like Phyllis Schlafly became right-wing heroes for opposing the movement at the final moment of the amendment’s passage. So despite clearing the three-quarters threshold then, it has been stymied over and over again in the ensuing years with shifting rationales preventing its adoption.
Finally acknowledging the ratification of the ERA is fundamental if women are ever to fully emerge from the thousands of years of dominion.
Today there is a dispute with the national archivist about whether or not he can simply declare that it is ratified and part of the Constitution because it met the requirements back then or if the original expired deadline must hold (despite it being extended more than once). The Department of Justice says it’s moot but President Biden promised he would push for Congress to pass a resolution acknowledging the passage of the Amendment — which he did. The House of Representatives passed it but it has not even been brought up in the Senate.
NOW THIS made a short film about the history of abortion that hits some of the highlights referenced above. It features activist Alyssa Milano who says, “the only thing that can truly ensure full gender equality–including control of our bodies–is the Equal Rights Amendment.”
'[Roe v. Wade] is the only thing standing between us and a world where women are criminalized for bodily autonomy' — @Alyssa_Milano breaks down the history of abortion rights in the U.S. and what's at stake in this NowThis exclusive pic.twitter.com/AeYY5d7FHN
There are many fights that must be waged onceRoe is overturned on several different fronts. But finally acknowledging the ratification of the ERA is fundamental if women are ever to fully emerge from the thousands of years of dominion by black robed authorities who seem always to get the last word on what they are and aren’t permitted to do with their own bodies. It is long past time.
As predicted by one of their own, Republicans have rejected democracy. But you knew that. Democracy requires vote-couting. Or it once did. A new batch of John Eastman emails reveals the lengths to which Republicans were prepare to manipulate vote totals to get their desired results in 2020 (Politico):
Attorney John Eastman urged Republican legislators in Pennsylvania to retabulate the state’s popular vote — and throw out tens of thousands of absentee ballots — in order to show Donald Trump with a lead, according to newly unearthed emails sent in December 2020, as Trump pressured GOP lawmakers to subvert his defeat.
This recalculation, he posited in an exchange with one GOP state lawmaker, “would help provide some cover” for Republicans to replace Joe Biden’s electors from the state with a slate of pro-Trump electors, part of a last-ditch bid to overturn the election results.
U.S. District Court Judge David Carter described Eastman’s efforts as “a coup in search of a legal theory.” Not just in Pennsylvania, but in other states.
I’m reminded of a memory I have from a “Wide World of Sports” pool contest featuring an arrogant Minnesota Fats. The Party of Trump approaches elections the same way:
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