A Nebraska teenager who used abortion pills to terminate her pregnancy was sentenced on Thursday to 90 days in jail after she pleaded guilty earlier this year to illegally concealing human remains.
The teenager, Celeste Burgess, 19, and her mother, Jessica Burgess, 42, were charged last year after the police obtained their private Facebook messages, which showed them discussing plans to end the pregnancy and “burn the evidence.”
Prosecutors said the mother had ordered abortion pills online and had given them to her daughter in April 2022, when Celeste Burgess was 17 and in the beginning of the third trimester of her pregnancy. The two then buried the fetal remains themselves, the police said.
Jessica Burgess pleaded guilty in July to violating Nebraska’s abortion law, furnishing false information to a law enforcement officer and removing or concealing human skeletal remains. She faces up to five years in prison at her sentencing on Sept. 22, according to Joseph Smith, the top prosecutor in Madison County, Neb.
The police investigation into the Burgesses began before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June 2022.
But the case gained greater attention after the court issued the ruling, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, fueling fears that women, and those who help them, could be prosecuted for abortions, and that their private communications could be used against them.
At the time, Nebraska banned abortion after 20 weeks from conception. In May, Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican, signed a 12-week ban into law.
Greer Donley, an associate professor of law at the University Pittsburgh School of Law, said in an interview on Thursday that the case was a “harbinger of things to come,” as a flurry of Republican-led states have enacted abortion restrictions and more women in those states have sought abortion pills as a workaround.
“This case is really sad because people resort to things like this when they’re really desperate,” Professor Donley said, “and the thing that makes people really desperate is abortion bans.”
Nebraska Right to Life, an anti-abortion group, had commended prosecutors for enforcing Nebraska’s 20-week law.
The executive director, Sandy Danek, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday. But she said in an interview last year that accountability should extend to providers that mail abortion pills to states like Nebraska that require an in-person physician to oversee medication abortions.
“This disturbing act may become more commonplace as the abortion industry continues to promote the do-it-yourself abortion where there’s no medical oversight for risks and complications,” she said.
Yeah, they really care about risks and complications.
There are many examples of various jurisdictions around the country in recent years jailing women for having abortions. And there are going to be more as these draconian abortion laws take hold. Miscarriages are going to be under scrutiny too. This is just the beginning.
Tim Miller has put his finger on it. That’s all there is to modern “conservatism” (and, frankly, a certain segment of leftism too.)
Basically, the future of American politics is just a bunch of snotty little adolescent bitches saying whatever it takes to get a rise out of their enemies. Gosh I wonder if people with a more … serious agenda might take advantage of this moment?
If you hadn’t heard, cruelty is the point. Government deriving its “just powers from the consent of the governed” is no longer operative for the GOP. Democracy is no barrier to America’s authoritarian right getting its way.
Aside from insurrection, it does not get more blatant than this (NBC News):
Alabama Republicans on Friday defied a U.S. Supreme Court order by passing a new congressional map that includes only one majority-Black district.
The GOP-controlled Legislature had called a special session to redraw an earlier map after the Supreme Court reaffirmed a federal court order to include two districts where Black voters make up voting-age majorities, “or something quite close to it.” But on Friday, state Republicans approved a new map with just one majority-Black seat and a second district that is approximately 40% Black.
[…]
Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed the redistricting map into law Friday night. A federal court will hold a hearing on the map Aug. 14.
The Justice Department has notified Texas that it plans to file a lawsuit over Gov. Greg Abbott’s floating border barrier in the Rio Grande to deter migrants from crossing illegally.
The DOJ sent a letter to Abbott on Thursday demanding that Texas remove the buoys and razor wire along the Rio Grande by Monday, July 24, or legal action will be taken.
“The State of Texas’ actions violate federal law, raise humanitarian concerns, present serious risks to public safety and the environment, and may interfere with the federal government’s ability to carry out its official duties,” the letter read.
“The floating barrier at issue here is a structure that obstructs the navigable capacity of the Rio Grande … which is a navigable water of the United States within the meaning of the Rivers and Harbors Act. Texas does not have authorization from the Corps [of Engineers] to install the floating barrier and did not seek such authorization before doing so.”
House Democrats led by Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro sent a letter to President Biden on Friday decrying Abbott’s actions. A Texas kayaking and canoeing company has also sued Abbott over the river barrier claiming the buoys “represent a hateful policy that intends to create the impression that Mexicans, immigrants, and Mexican Americans … are dangerous.”
Abbott has made fear of immigration central to his political messaging. He is now faced with the reality that Biden’s parole process for migrants at the southern border has dropped unlawful entries by almost 70% since it went into effect in early May, meaning that border agents have more time to patrol and are making it harder to enter the U.S. unlawfully.
Abbott’s barrier seems designed to keep his messaging amped up, accompanied as it is by allegations that troops from the National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety have been ordered to push migrants, including children, back into the river and to withhold water from those suffering in the heat. There are also reports that migrants have been hurt by razor wire installed along the barrier.
Abbott responded to the DOJ’s letter: “I’ll see you in court, Mr. President.”
Abbott denies allegations that his agents pushed migrants back into the river.
It is notable that, for all their talk about law and order, the Republican-dominated legislature of Alabama and the state’s Republican governor have just openly defied the U.S. Supreme Court, which is hardly an ideological enemy after Trump stacked it to swing to the far right.
The Republican governor of Texas is defying both federal law and international treaties. After rampant scandals, the Republican-dominated Supreme Court refuses to adopt an ethics system that might restore some confidence in their decisions. And, aided by his loyalists, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination is threatening mob violence if he is held legally accountable for his behavior.
The rule of law is no longer a constraint on the Trumpian right, as it never was for its namesake. MAGA Republicans’ vaunted principles were all for show, as should have been obvious before Donald Trump’s rise. Their support for law enforcement held only so long as police stuck to enforcing the law punitively and prejudicially against people they considered unworthy of its protection. How dare anyone apply the law equally to them?
From the Nixon pardon to Iran-Contra to “enhanced interrogation,” Republicans have excused their own law-breaking. “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy,” David Frum predicted in January of 2018 long after the horse was out of the barn.
Biden quietly reverses decades of antitrust policy
The Bosses of the Senate, a cartoon by Joseph Keppler. First published in Puck 1889. Image Public Domain via Wikipedia.
A schoolteacher friend from the Boston area once dismisssed the “Taxachusetts” smear. She liked the services Massachusetts provided for her and her child. She did not mind paying for them. Imagine that.
Franklin Foer examines the fetish — for fetish it is — behind making efficiency the highest good in setting business policy and practice. There is more to life than low, low prices. Not that federal policy since the Reagan era recognizes that. Or the Chicago school of economics.
The Joe Biden administration has been quietly resetting federal policy on mergers, on antitrust and economic concentration. Since the Reagan administration stopped enforcing antitrust laws, Foer explains, “the American economy has grown dangerously concentrated, dominated by a shrinking number of airlines, banks, tech companies, and pharmaceutical firms (to name just a few examples). Corporate titans have amassed outsize influence over the political process, smothered start-ups, and often treated consumers with shocking indifference.”
Why did the Reaganites do this? They were in thrall to the idea that the highest, in fact the only, valid goal of economic policy is efficiency—defined narrowly as the maximum output for the lowest prices. And they believed that Big Business was inherently efficient. They were devastatingly successful at entrenching that view. For two generations, their version of efficiency became the driving logic of competition policy (and other areas, including trade), regardless of the party in power. Concern for how monopoly power might affect workers, small-town businesses, or even democracy itself dropped out of the analysis. The Obama administration’s 2010 guidelines, for example, exempted even more mergers from review and praised corporate deals for their “potential to generate significant efficiencies and thus enhance the merged firm’s ability and incentive to compete.”
But a small merger here and a small merger there and pretty soon you have “monopoly power over time.” It both limits consumer choice and places a heavy thumb on the legislative scale. The result is even more clout for corporate oligarchs and less for workers and consumers. Democrats’ acceding to the Reagan efficiency agenda left workers feeling betrayed.
I’ve written before that “efficiency” is like “shareholder value.” When the word starts cropping up around the office, flesh-and-blood consumable resources had better update their resumes, stock up on antacid, and learn to get by with even less sleep.
Like my teacher friend, Bidenomics understands that there is more to life than efficiency.
One of the most overlooked features of the Biden administration has been its willingness to challenge the efficiency fetish. The merger guidelines are its most frontal assault to date. In the view of Biden’s antitrust officials, Washington’s turn toward efficiency—a word that doesn’t appear in any antitrust statute—substituted the preferences of libertarian economics professors for the laws that Congress actually passed. The new guidelines seek to undo that. They don’t reject economic analysis. But their guiding theory is that corporations ought to be prevented from acquiring the kind of power that enables abuses, even if econometric models promise some sort of efficiency gain.
More-to-life guidelines issued by the Biden administration suggest that “government scrutinize how mergers might hurt workers, not just consumers.”
The weakness in steering policy by executive-branch decisions rather than through legislation is that guidelines issued by one administration may be overturned by the next. On the other hand, “bureaucratic policies also have the potential to stick, if skillfully conceived. They can manage not just to survive legal challenges, but to become enmeshed in the culture of the civil service.”
We’ll see if that happens with Biden’s changes. Another four years would help. It might almost be enough for workers to notice the difference.
Foer concludes:
Critics will also argue that the new framework is divorced from economic reality and warn that it will result in higher prices. In fact, efficiency-focused antitrust appears to have failed under its own terms: The leading analysis to date finds that mergers have been more likely to raise consumer prices than lower them. But on some level, to focus on price effects is to miss the point. Efficiency was the coldest metric for evaluating a merger. It reduced Americans into the stylized economic caricature known as the “consumer,” treating cheap goods as our highest and only aspiration. The new guidelines inject a bit of humanity back into the calculus. And they suggest that the ultimate question for government shouldn’t be whether something is efficient, but whether it’s right.
Last summer in The American Prospect, Sen. Sherrod Brown called for Democrats to champion workers again. I summarized:
Brown calls out the greed that drove American companies there to relocate first to the South, then to Mexico, then offshore in the name of “efficiency”—business-school-speak for “pay workers less.” What businesses became more efficient at was destroying people’s lives and desiccating once-thriving towns. This, especially for “people outside big coastal cities and people without college degrees or inherited wealth.”
Once again: the economy should serve people, not the other way around. Humans should be holding the corporate leash, not wearing the collar. But that’s not how our corporate overlords see things.
“We are supposed to be the workers’ party. Democrats must be that party again,” Brown wrote. “We must sharpen the difference between us—historically, America’s party of workers—and the party of big business.”
“Scranton Joe” is making that happen. Problem is, will anyone notice?
When discussing life in the White House during another town hall in July 2021, [Biden] remarked, “It is very hard to get comfortable.”
While you might think the addition of a cat would make the White House feel more like a home, it seems that hasn’t solved the problem. In January 2023 the president revealed that his new cat Willow is adding to his discomfort.
“Willow may walk in here any time now. She has no limits,” Biden said. “You think I’m kidding, I’m not. Especially in the middle of the night when she climbs up and lays on top of my head.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ campaign is planning a reboot, top campaign officials said, with a significant shift on messaging, events and media strategy.
Expect fewer big speeches and more handshaking in diners and churches.
There will be more of a national focus than constant Florida references.
That was just a couple of days ago.
Today:
DeSantis: We are going to launch an inquiry about bud light and it could lead to a derivative lawsuit filed on behalf of the shareholders of the Florida pension fund pic.twitter.com/iAkaknc0fm
Plaskett: "I'm appalled and just so troubled by colleagues I have to work, that these are individuals who would bring a witness who promoted a video that compared the Covid vaccine to the Tuskegee trials." pic.twitter.com/QqiAJcoVeq
Connolly to RFK Jr: "You are here for cynical reasons to be used politically by that side of the aisle to embarrass the current president, and you're an enabler in that effort today. And it brings shame on a storied name that I revere." pic.twitter.com/ocKOUZ25SN
Attendees at Charlie Kirk’s event are asked why they are supporting Trump: “We need to get real about China. And he’s the only one that can handle that with his business background and the respect that he gained around the world.” pic.twitter.com/2KNNvqGDrk
Current and former leaders from the U.S. and around the world are gathering this week at a Colorado geopolitics conference to address some of the dangers facing the world such as Russia’s war on Ukraine and the unknowns surrounding AI.
But if the response of those attending the Aspen Security Forum to questions from reporters over the the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency is any indication, the topic appears to be off limits for public consumption, Politico reports.
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni’s Trump-averse response to a question from a Politico reporter typified the mood at the forum.
“Ha! Thank you. I have enough problems at home,” Livni said walking away from the reporter.
Stephen Hadley, a former national security adviser to President George W. Bush said, “I don’t do politics.”
“I haven’t even begun to think about 2024,” said Stephen Biegun, who served as deputy secretary of State in Trump administration.
Nahal Toosi and Alexander Ward write for Politico that “Many of the people in Aspen say they’re not here to engage in partisanship but rather to seek solutions to problems that require buy-in from both U.S. political parties and global allies. And few of the discussions on stage referenced Trump, and when they did, it was usually in the context of his last administration’s policies.
But Toosi and Ward report that Trump talk is occurring privately, noting that this year’s forum is the last before 2024 race is already in full swing, and some have expressed concern that Trump would seek to undermine efforts to confront the world’s challenges that are being discussed in Aspen this week.
“Chaos is a very difficult way to govern,” a former Trump administration who granted anonymity told Politico.
And here I thought the whole world was looking forward to Trump’s triumphant return as the the leader of the free world. No???
This comment by Mitch McConnell in the wake of January 6th keeps making the rounds:
“President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office as an ordinary citizen,” McConnell said moments after the Senate voted 57-43 to convict Trump for his role in fomenting the J6 Insurrection (short of the two-third majority required). “He didn’t get away with anything. Yet.”
Remember, he also said this:
“The Democrats are going to take care of the son of a bitch for us,” McConnell said of the House’s 2021 impeachment proceedings, according to Times reporters Alex Burns and Jonathan Martin.
What McConnell wanted was for the Democrats to “take care” of Trump and then McConnell and the rest of the Republicans could scream bloody murder about how terrible the Democrats were for doing it.
Today, the DOJ and others are dealing with thDear Leader and the Republicans are rending their garments over the “weaponization of government and further eroding their followers’ trust in government.
Back in April I wrote about the potential sabotage of the 2024 presidential election at the hands of the centrist group No Labels. They were signaling that they planned to run a third party “unity” ticket to satisfy the wishes of the majority of the public who are telling pollsters that it is unsatisfied with what looks to be a replay of the 2020 election. They’d already gathered a lot of money which they are not required to reveal because they claim they are not a political party (even though they are setting up affiliate groups in the states that are calling themselves parties.) They insist they are not trying to be spoilers but that raises the question of what they are doing. If you ask them, they don’t seem to have any idea.
At the time I wrote that piece it was unclear if they were serious at all. There’s a lot of money to be made in organizing groups like this and the argument is tailor made to appeal to wealthy donors who yearn for things like “entitlement reform” (especially privatization of Social Security and medicare) and what they call “common sense” solutions to difficult issues like climate change. But it’s not just about the money, that much is clear. The group has actually started holding events to sell their idea of a unity ticket and this past Monday they hosted one in New Hampshire featuring everyone’s favorite Senate Diva, Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia along with congenial bucket of warm water, former Republican Utah Governor Jon Huntsman.
They called their gathering a “Common Sense Townhall” showing that they have a great sense of humor if nothing else. The GOP is going to run Donald Trump for president, a man who was twice impeached, tried to illegally overturn the election and is now looking at his third indictment in less than a year — and he’s polling very close to Joe Biden. The idea that it’s common sense for any Democrat or moderate Republican to run a third party candidacy at a time when we are facing one of the most serious political challenges in our history is very dark comedy. There has never been a worse time to do something like this.
When asked whether he plans to be a presidential contender Manchin told NBC News:
“It’ll be next year,” Manchin said about his timeline to decide what to do, meaning speculation about it (and his West Virginia Senate seat) will linger into 2024.
“Let’s see where everybody goes. Let’s see what happens,” said Manchin, an outspoken critic of partisanship in Washington. “Maybe they’ll come to their senses and start doing the job they were elected to do.”
That’s so him, isn’t it? What a tease.
Since Manchin is a Democrat, it’s reasonable for his fellow Democrats to worry that the consequence of his candidacy would be to siphon off votes from the other Democrat on the ticket and they are justifiably nervous about it. The very close electoral college win in 2020 was notable for the fact that there were almost no third party votes, unlike previous close elections such as 2000 and 2016 which didn’t turn out so well for them.
Republicans, on the other hand, are so unconcerned by the possibility that they are pouring money into the effort, clearly thrilled by the idea. According to Mother Jones, all those state No Label parties I mentioned are being organized by longtime GOP donors and activists. They obviously feel that No Labels can only help the ball club.
Most of the polling on this issue, from No Labels itself to a group that’s recently formed to oppose them, shows that the Republicans are right. However, this week Monmouth University polled the issue and found that it’s more of a wash and could hurt Trump more than Biden if Manchin were to run because more Republicans like him. And when Monmouth posed the idea to its respondents that the ticket could be a spoiler for Trump, only 7% of Democrats say they would vote 3rd party while 19% of Republicans would. So who knows who this gambit would hurt more in a general election? I think it’s common sense not to take a chance however, given the awful experience of 2017 to 2021.
One thing is very clear: a No Labels ticket doesn’t have a prayer of winning. So once again, you have to wonder why they are doing it? Katherine Miller in the NY Times pondered the question:
Is threatening to run a third-party candidate a leverage thing? Against whom? Do they think that the right unity ticket could reach the ephemeral threshold of belief where enough voters think they could win to make the ticket viable?
No Labels won’t say yet who’s funding it or who its candidates will be or which party will take the presidential slot. There will be a convention, in April in Dallas, with delegates, but who are the delegates going to be? One of the Maine voters who accidentally switched their party registration to No Labels? The group rarely, if ever, seems to mention circumstances in which setting up the logistically challenging mechanisms for a backup candidate would make sense: for instance, if Mr. Biden withdrew late from the presidential race. If Mr. Biden weren’t president, he might even be the hypothetical candidate that Joe Lieberman, a No Labels co-chair — also present in New Hampshire — would be calling for.
Joe Biden would indeed be the guy his former Senate colleague from Connecticut,Joe Lieberman, should look at as the perfect candidate. After all, he’s managed to get several big bipartisan bills passed in the most narrowly divided congress in ages, he talks constantly about the friends he has on the other side of the aisle and makes it clear that he believes he is the president of all the people, not just those who voted for him. Does Joe Lieberman think that Manchin could do better?
Russell Berman in The Atlantic interviewed Lieberman and asked him these questions and Lieberman couldn’t really come up with any concrete reason why now is the time to throw a monkey wrench into the electoral system with all that’s at stake. He insists that he won’t back any effort that could put Trump back in the White House but obviously, a third party effort is designed for that very possibility.
So what’s motivating this effort and Lieberman in particular? I think it’s what’s been motivating him ever since 2006 when progressives, tired of his endless centrist posturing, beat him in the primary at which point he became and Independent and never looked back. He caucused with he Democrats for the rest of his career but made it his mission to stab the progressive wing of the Democratic Party in the back whenever possible, most famously when he single-handedly killed the Public Option in the Affordable Care Act after supporting it for years.
Berman writes that Lieberman can’t really come up with any real reason for opposing Biden except that “‘he’s been pulled off his normal track too often’ by pressure from the left” and points out that this is a common complaint from Republicans and Joe Manchin.
But this isn’t about policy. What these “centrists” really want is for Joe Biden to “own the libs” because in their minds that is the only way you can truly demonstrate your commitment to bringing people together and achieving unity. Biden, to his credit, rejected that stale, failed tactic and the party is more unified than it has been in decades. Let’s hope they stay that way. If they do, Joe Lieberman and his buddies don’t stand a chance.
