BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

Jump to content

  • 1071 Pages +
  • « First
  • 962
  • 963
  • 964
  • 965
  • 966
  • Last »
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? Bernie Sanders wants to know who owns America?

#19261 User is online   Chas_P 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 1,511
  • Joined: 2008-September-03
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Gainesville, GA USA

Posted 2021-November-26, 18:36

View Postkenberg, on 2021-November-24, 09:01, said:

I am far from sure that the 20 somethings would think of Mood Indigo as proper background music.

They probably wouldn't think much of Beethoven's Symphony #5 either. Pity. Different strokes for different folks.
0

#19262 User is offline   y66 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 6,496
  • Joined: 2006-February-24

Posted 2021-November-26, 18:56

View Postkenberg, on 2021-November-26, 09:08, said:

I just tried to get Keith Jarrett's Mona Lissa but apparently, I have to sign up for something, perhaps even pay some money. I might do that, it has always seemed a bit like ripping off the artists to just click YouTube. Still, I do it.
My daughter and her husband enjoyed Mood Indigo, so did their two kids, the twenty-somethings.
The six-year-old, the oldest of Becky's som's kids, wanted some kid's music that I didn't have so I went to YouTube for Cow Cow Boogie
She danced to it and admired the woman's dress. The younger siblings followed her lead as best they could.
It's easy to think of pop music from the 1950s as being either Doris Day (and Perry Como and so on) or Elvis Presley (and Bill Haley and so on) but that oversimplifies it. I keep meaning to make a list of some of my favorites. Mood Indigo (yes, composed in 1930, I know, but played in the 50s and forever) would be high on the list.

My son has many friends in the music business. His opinion is that Tidal does a decent job of sharing their revenue with artists.
If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
0

#19263 User is offline   y66 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 6,496
  • Joined: 2006-February-24

Posted 2021-November-30, 06:53

David Leonhardt at NYT said:

Words and deeds

The most effective way to achieve racial justice can sometimes be to downplay race.

That may seem like a counterintuitive idea. And it can certainly feel unsatisfying to people who are committed to reducing the toll of racism in the United States. But it is one of the lessons of the murder convictions last week of three white men in Georgia, in the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man.

I want to revisit the case this morning, because it has a broader relevance to American politics.

By now, you’re probably familiar with the basic facts. Arbery was in a predominantly white neighborhood near his home in coastal Georgia on Feb. 23, 2020, when three men in pickup trucks chased and shot him.

Racism played a clear role in the killing. One of the defendants used a slur shortly after the shooting, according to another defendant. All three had a history of sending online messages tinged with white nationalism.

Nonetheless, the prosecutor in the case, Linda Dunikoski, decided mostly to ignore race during the trial. She accused the defendants of having a racist motive only once, in a single line of her closing argument. She instead portrayed them as lawless figures who killed a young man.

Before the verdicts, some observers criticized the strategy, saying that Dunikoski was weakening her case by ignoring the defendants’ motive. “There were a lot of people who thought that it should have been very central to her argument,” said The Times’s Richard Fausset, who covered the killing and the trial. One law professor accused Dunikoski of “whitewashing” the facts. Another professor said that her strategy would be blamed if the defendants were acquitted.

No doubt, it would have been. Dunikoski was deliberately leaving out a big part of the story. But she was doing so for a reason. (Or so it seems; she has not publicly discussed her strategy.) She evidently believed that emphasizing race would be a gift to the defense.

It could cause the jurors — all but one of whom were white — to retreat to their ideological corners. Conservative jurors would be reminded that they often disagree with allegations of racism. Many political moderates disagree sometimes, too, especially if they’re white. On the other hand, any jurors likely to be appalled by the racial nature of the case — three white men killing a Black man in broad daylight — would recognize the role of race without needing to be told about it.

The anti-Bannon strategy

It was a miniature version of a tension that runs through American politics.

Progressive activists often point out — accurately — the central role that race and racism play in the U.S. Polls show, for example, that a large percentage of Americans feel racial animus. That animus helped fuel Donald Trump’s political rise, starting with his promotion of the lie that Barack Obama was born in Africa. And racial discrimination continues to shape our economy, schools, criminal justice system and more.

Yet when activists try to combat racism by calling it out, they often struggle to accomplish their goals. Focusing on Trump’s racist behavior did not keep him from winning the presidency. The Black Lives Matter movement has mostly failed to implement its policy agenda on policing. Affirmative-action programs generally lose when they appear on the ballot — including a landslide loss in California last year, helped by opposition from many Latino and Asian voters.

Race-based strategies are especially challenging in a country where living standards have stagnated in recent decades: Working-class families of all races have reason to distrust the notion that they enjoy a privileged lifestyle. No wonder that Steve Bannon, the far-right political figure, once said that he wanted liberals “to talk about racism every day.” When they do, Bannon said, “I got ’em.”

‘Attack the design’

The Arbery trial offers a reminder that calling out racism is not the only way to battle it. Sometimes, a more effective approach involves appealing to universal notions of fairness and justice.

Another example is child poverty. Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey was an early advocate of baby bonds — universal savings accounts for children, an idea that helped shape President Biden’s focus on reducing child poverty. The beauty of the policy, Booker told me, is that it substantially reduces racial gaps in child poverty (because children of color are more likely to be poor) while still being inclusive.

“It’s very hard to undo centuries of racial policies by suddenly saying, ‘I’m now going to not be conscious of race in America,’” he said. But, he added, “This is a policy that I think can be embraced by you, whoever you are, whatever your background.”

Representative James Clyburn, the highest ranking Black Democrat in Congress, made a similar argument when explaining why he favored a version of slavery reparations that would also help poor white families. “Race is the reason income is what it is,” he told The Washington Post. “This is by design. So attack the design.”

The downside of this approach is clear enough. Given the long history of intense racism in the U.S., universal programs will never fully solve the problem. Of course, policies that fail to get enacted accomplish much less.

Dunikoski’s trial strategy may have felt uncomfortable to anybody repulsed by the defendants’ racism. But imagine how uncomfortable an acquittal would have felt.

Arbery’s family members, notably, were not among Dunikoski’s critics, as Richard Fausset has reported. Even before the verdict, the family liked the prosecution’s approach.

https://messaging-cu...896ed87b2d9c72a

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
0

#19264 User is offline   kenberg 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 11,051
  • Joined: 2004-September-22
  • Location:Northern Maryland

Posted 2021-November-30, 11:30

I often think we would get better results by going easy with the race card, as Leonhardt is suggesting. Try this:

In the Rittenhouse case, at least the first person that was shot was chasing Rittenhouse. So, the chaser could have avoided the final confrontation, Rittenhouse could not.

In the Arbery case, three guys stopped Arbery and made it very clear that he would not be going anywhere. Avoiding the confrontation was not an option for Arbery, it was an option for those who shot him.

This difference can be described without ever mentioning who was Black and who was White. Most people, I think, would agree that this described difference has at least some bearing on a legal claim of self-defense.

Making such observations does not preclude us from making some obvious observations about race. In the Arbery case, the shooters should have been put under arrest immediately and charged. And the outcome should never have been in the slightest doubt. Surely race played a role there. So yes, race, well, was critical.

We can acknowledge the critical role that race played, and still conclude, or not conclude, that, because of the very different sequence of events, both juries got it right.

I am not claiming that Leonhardt would agree with what I am saying here, he can speak for himself. But Leonhardt is saying that we might get better results if our first and maybe only argument was not based on race. He has a point.
Ken
0

#19265 User is offline   Winstonm 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 17,190
  • Joined: 2005-January-08
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Tulsa, Oklahoma
  • Interests:Art, music

Posted 2021-November-30, 13:51

View Postkenberg, on 2021-November-30, 11:30, said:

I often think we would get better results by going easy with the race card, as Leonhardt is suggesting. Try this:

In the Rittenhouse case, at least the first person that was shot was chasing Rittenhouse. So, the chaser could have avoided the final confrontation, Rittenhouse could not.

In the Arbery case, three guys stopped Arbery and made it very clear that he would not be going anywhere. Avoiding the confrontation was not an option for Arbery, it was an option for those who shot him.

This difference can be described without ever mentioning who was Black and who was White. Most people, I think, would agree that this described difference has at least some bearing on a legal claim of self-defense.

Making such observations does not preclude us from making some obvious observations about race. In the Arbery case, the shooters should have been put under arrest immediately and charged. And the outcome should never have been in the slightest doubt. Surely race played a role there. So yes, race, well, was critical.

We can acknowledge the critical role that race played, and still conclude, or not conclude, that, because of the very different sequence of events, both juries got it right.

I am not claiming that Leonhardt would agree with what I am saying here, he can speak for himself. But Leonhardt is saying that we might get better results if our first and maybe only argument was not based on race. He has a point.

I read today that it was a conscious decision of the prosecutor not to use race or racism as a factor in the Arbery case.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
0

#19266 User is offline   kenberg 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 11,051
  • Joined: 2004-September-22
  • Location:Northern Maryland

Posted 2021-November-30, 15:48

View PostWinstonm, on 2021-November-30, 13:51, said:

I read today that it was a conscious decision of the prosecutor not to use race or racism as a factor in the Arbery case.


Yes, I heard that several times.
Very sensible I think.
They shot the guy.
Focus on that.

Ok, maybe that's a little too quick. But here is the point:
Sure, the fact that Arbery was Black had a lot to do with it. But if you make that part of your case then someone can say "How do you know that is true?" And then it gets difficult. If you just say
A: He shot him
B the self-defense claim is a travesty
then you are done.
Ken
0

#19267 User is offline   Winstonm 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 17,190
  • Joined: 2005-January-08
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Tulsa, Oklahoma
  • Interests:Art, music

Posted 2021-November-30, 18:50

View Postkenberg, on 2021-November-30, 15:48, said:

Yes, I heard that several times.
Very sensible I think.
They shot the guy.
Focus on that.

Ok, maybe that's a little too quick. But here is the point:
Sure, the fact that Arbery was Black had a lot to do with it. But if you make that part of your case then someone can say "How do you know that is true?" And then it gets difficult. If you just say
A: He shot him
B the self-defense claim is a travesty
then you are done.


The same article stated the Arbery family were supportive of the decision. The key takeaway is that no matter who the bad guys cornered and killed it was criminal so no point in claiming a racial motivation.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
0

#19268 User is offline   Gilithin 

  • PipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Full Members
  • Posts: 972
  • Joined: 2014-November-13
  • Gender:Male

Posted 2021-November-30, 20:53

View Postkenberg, on 2021-November-30, 11:30, said:

In the Arbery case, three guys stopped Arbery and made it very clear that he would not be going anywhere. Avoiding the confrontation was not an option for Arbery, it was an option for those who shot him.

This difference can be described without ever mentioning who was Black and who was White. Most people, I think, would agree that this described difference has at least some bearing on a legal claim of self-defense.

You might think so and this is how it works in most of the world. In an increasing number of US states though it is not. You no longer have to look to avoid a confrontation in order to be able to use lethal force. In many states, as long as you are not committing a felony in provoking a confrontation, you only have to feel personally threatened by the response for lethal force to be justified. If you are waving a gun around, it's rather easy to reach that bar.

So my suggestion to American women who are considering a divorce. Don't see a family lawyer, instead get an open carry permit. Then have an argument with your husband and when he moves towards you (possibly for a hug to calm things down but who cares?) feel threatened about his ability to overpower you and take the gun. Shoot. Instant divorce. Easier and cheaper than going the more traditional route.

PS: someone please forward this message to Melania.
0

#19269 User is offline   pilowsky 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 3,616
  • Joined: 2019-October-04
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Israel

Posted 2021-December-01, 03:48

Officer Remington was fired from the Tucson PD because he shot a man in a motorised wheelchair. Nine times.
0

#19270 User is offline   y66 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 6,496
  • Joined: 2006-February-24

Posted 2021-December-01, 08:27

Quote

Lawfare is launching The January 6 Project, which compiles Lawfare’s coverage, analysis and resources related to the legal and policy issues arising out of the Jan. 6 attack and the government response. At its homepage, Confronting the Capitol Insurrection, you can find a collection of Lawfare articles and podcasts, as well as a repository of significant documents, congressional hearings, case information and other materials related to Jan. 6.

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
0

#19271 User is offline   y66 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 6,496
  • Joined: 2006-February-24

Posted 2021-December-01, 09:10

Where are the clowns? They're here.

Quote

https://www.nytimes....reene-mace.html

WASHINGTON — Hostilities between the Republican far right and its typically muted center burst into the open on Tuesday, highlighting deep divisions that could bedevil the party’s leaders if they capture a narrow majority in the House next year.

Initially prompted by the anti-Muslim comments of Representative Lauren Boebert of Colorado, the Republican-on-Republican war of words on Tuesday was remarkably bitter and an indication of a brewing power struggle between an ascendant faction that styles itself after President Donald J. Trump and a quieter one that is pushing back.

First, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called her freshman colleague Nancy Mace of South Carolina “trash” for condemning Ms. Boebert’s remarks in a television interview.

Ms. Mace then used a series of emojis — a bat, a pile of excrement and a crazy clown — to describe Ms. Greene, then kept up a steady stream of social media attacks, calling her a liar, a grifter and a nut.

Representative Adam Kinzinger, Republican of Illinois, came to Ms. Mace’s defense, calling Ms. Greene “unserious circus barker McSpacelaser” — a reference to a social media post that she once circulated suggesting that wildfires in the West had been started by lasers owned by the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family.

Mr. Kinzinger added that Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader and would-be speaker who has done nothing to discipline rank-and-file members of his conference for bigoted and violent statements, “continues his silent streak that would make a monk blush.”

Then Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, an ally of Ms. Greene’s, took to Twitter to amplify an attack by the right-wing provocateur Jack Posobiec denouncing Ms. Mace as a “scam artist” for promoting coronavirus vaccinations on CNN.

The carnival-like behavior would amount to little more than a sideshow if it did not have real implications for midterm campaigns and, possibly, a fractured Republican majority in 2023. Party leaders again chose to remain mum as their backbenchers brawled, and Democrats took full advantage of the spectacle.

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
0

#19272 User is offline   kenberg 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 11,051
  • Joined: 2004-September-22
  • Location:Northern Maryland

Posted 2021-December-01, 09:52

From the NYT article cited above;

Quote

Michael Steel, a former spokesman for Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, the former Republican speaker, said the party's leaders should be working behind the scenes to calm dissent and keep members focused on building a platform and an argument for control.

"The top priority right now should be for everyone in the canoe to have their rifles pointing outward, not at each other," Mr. Steel said. "And the focus should be on addition, not subtraction. That means keeping all the frogs in the wheelbarrow, even if some of those frogs are pretty ugly."




I am impressed with the ability to get canoes, rifles, frogs, and wheelbarrows all into a single metaphor. But I don't think the ugly frogs are about to turn into princes.

When I was a child we spent several days at a lake cabin I had caught a bunch of frogs and placed them in a large container, looking forward to bringing them home. When we got home, the frogs were not in the container I had left them in. My father explained that they had turned into mud. We can hope for a similar transformation.
Ken
0

#19273 User is offline   Winstonm 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 17,190
  • Joined: 2005-January-08
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Tulsa, Oklahoma
  • Interests:Art, music

Posted 2021-December-01, 09:57

View Postkenberg, on 2021-December-01, 09:52, said:

Drom the NYT article cited above;


I am impressed with the ability to get canoes, rifles, frogs, and wheelbarrows all into a single metaphor. But I don't think the ugly frogs are about to turn into princes.


Somethin' tells me it's all happening at the zoo
I do believe it
I do believe it's true

The monkeys stand for honesty
Giraffes are insincere
And the elephants are kindly but they're dumb
Orangutans are skeptical
Of changes in their cages
And the zookeeper is very fond of rum

Zebras are reactionaries
Antelopes are missionaries
Pigeons plot in secrecy
And hamsters turn on frequently
What a gas, you gotta come and see
At the zoo

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
0

#19274 User is offline   y66 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 6,496
  • Joined: 2006-February-24

Posted 2021-December-01, 17:50

Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor said:

Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
0

#19275 User is offline   pilowsky 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 3,616
  • Joined: 2019-October-04
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Israel

Posted 2021-December-02, 05:33

Any takers?
Only $10,000 AND includes a photo with the one on the left.
Posted Image

0

#19276 User is offline   hrothgar 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 15,371
  • Joined: 2003-February-13
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Natick, MA
  • Interests:Travel
    Cooking
    Brewing
    Hiking

Posted 2021-December-02, 05:48

$10K to get within arm's distance of Trump?

???

Hmmm....
Alderaan delenda est
0

#19277 User is offline   Winstonm 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 17,190
  • Joined: 2005-January-08
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Tulsa, Oklahoma
  • Interests:Art, music

Posted 2021-December-02, 09:39

One of the advantages of autocracy is speed. Without the burden of democracy, the autocrat's decisions drive actions that are unchallenged by opposition or courts. This is exciting and extremely enticing to a dissatisfied nation that has been reared on instant gratification.

And the loss of the far-reaching benefits of cognitive-based delayed gratification and the replacement by the emotive-based instant gratification is most likely the explanation for Donald Trump and the increase in anti-democratic autocratic apologists.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." Black Lives Matter. / "I need ammunition, not a ride." Zelensky
0

#19278 User is offline   pilowsky 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 3,616
  • Joined: 2019-October-04
  • Gender:Male
  • Location:Israel

Posted 2021-December-02, 15:03

View PostWinstonm, on 2021-December-02, 09:39, said:

And the loss of the far-reaching benefits of cognitive-based delayed gratification and the replacement by the emotive-based instant gratification is most likely the explanation for Donald Trump and the increase in anti-democratic autocratic apologists.


In order to understand delaying gratification Trump and his pals would first need to understand object permanence.
It turns out that object permanence is absent in ~10% of American high school students.




0

#19279 User is offline   johnu 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 4,828
  • Joined: 2008-September-10
  • Gender:Male

Posted 2021-December-02, 15:17

View Postpilowsky, on 2021-December-02, 15:03, said:

In order to understand delaying gratification Trump and his pals would first need to understand object permanence.
It turns out that object permanence is absent in ~10% of American high school students.


LOL, The Onion strikes again. This would have been more believable if instead of high school students the video was specifically about the QOP in which case the percentage would have been about 90%.
0

#19280 User is offline   y66 

  • PipPipPipPipPipPipPipPip
  • Group: Advanced Members
  • Posts: 6,496
  • Joined: 2006-February-24

Posted 2021-December-03, 06:18

Linda Greenhouse at NYT said:

https://www.nytimes....896ed87b2d9c72a

There are many reasons for dismay over the Supreme Court argument in the Mississippi abortion case, but it was the nonstop gaslighting that really got to me.

First there was Justice Clarence Thomas, pretending by his questions actually to be interested in how the Constitution might be interpreted to provide for the right to abortion, a right he has denounced and schemed to overturn since professing to the Senate Judiciary Committee 30 years ago that he never even thought about the matter.

Then there was Chief Justice John Roberts, mischaracterizing an internal memo that Justice Harry Blackmun wrote to his colleagues as the Roe v. Wade majority was discussing how best to structure the opinion Justice Blackmun was working on. The chief justice was trying to delegitimize the place of fetal viability in the court’s abortion jurisprudence, where for nearly 50 years, viability has been the unbreached firewall protecting the right of a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy.

“It’s an unfortunate source, but it’s there,” he said, referring to Justice Blackmun’s papers, on file and open to the public at the Library of Congress. “In his papers, Justice Blackmun said that the viability line was — actually was dicta.”

“Dicta” is a dismissive word that refers to asides in an opinion that are not actually part of the court’s holding. The entry in the Blackmun papers to which the chief justice was most likely referring was a memo of Nov. 21, 1972 that the author of Roe v. Wade sent along with a new draft opinion to the other justices, noting: “In its present form it contains dictum but I suspect that in this area some dictum is indicated and not to be avoided.”

In that memo, of course referring to what was still a work in progress, Justice Blackmun proposed that the right to abortion be fully protected only until the end of the first trimester of pregnancy. “This is arbitrary,” he wrote, “but perhaps any other selected point, such as quickening or viability, is equally arbitrary.”

But two weeks later, after consulting with other justices, including Lewis Powell and Thurgood Marshall, Justice Blackmun circulated another memo endorsing the viability line. Far from describing this determination as arbitrary, he wrote in a memo dated Dec. 11, 1972, that viability “has logical and biological justifications,” namely, that “few could argue, or would argue, that a state’s interest by the time of viability, when independent life is presumably possible, is not sufficiently developed to justify appropriate regulation.”

In other words, by the time the court issued the final opinion in January 1973, viability was not dicta but rather an essential element of the decision. Chief Justice Roberts may not like viability — as clearly he doesn’t, observing to Julie Rikelman, the lawyer for the Mississippi clinic challenging the state’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy, that “viability, it seems to me, doesn’t have anything to do with choice” — but he was flatly wrong to suggest that it was an unconsidered aspect of Roe v. Wade.

(And of course it is extremely odd for a Supreme Court justice to dig into the court’s private work papers to cast aspersions on a published opinion.)

In fact, as the second Blackmun memo makes clear, the court that decided Roe saw a direct link between the viability line and a woman’s ability to choose abortion. In that second memo, Justice Blackmun referred to the “practical aspect” of the viability line, observing that “there are many pregnant women, particularly younger girls, who may refuse to face the fact of pregnancy and who, for one reason or another, do not get around to medical consultation until the end of the first trimester is upon them or, indeed, has passed.”

And then there was Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who rattled off a list of “the most consequential cases in this court’s history” that resulted from overruling prior decisions. If the court had adhered, for example, to the separate-but-equal doctrine of Plessy v. Ferguson rather than overruling that precedent in Brown v. Board of Education “the country would be a much different place,” he told Ms. Rikelman. “I assume you agree with most, if not all, the cases I listed there, where the court overruled the precedent,” Justice Kavanaugh continued. Why then, he asked, should the court stick with a case it now regarded as wrongly decided?

More gaslighting: The superficial plausibility of Justice Kavanaugh’s analogy between Plessy v. Ferguson and Roe v. Wade dissolves with a second’s contemplation. For one thing, Plessy negated individual liberty, while Roe expanded it. For another, Justice Kavanaugh’s list could have been 1,000 cases long without casting any light on whether today’s Supreme Court should repudiate Roe v. Wade.

But the justice’s goal was not to invite contemplation. It was to normalize the deeply abnormal scene playing out in the courtroom. President Donald Trump vowed to end the right to abortion, and the three justices he put on the court — Neil Gorsuch, to a seat that was not legitimately Mr. Trump’s to fill; Amy Coney Barrett, whose election-eve nomination and confirmation broke long settled norms; and Justice Kavanaugh — appear determined to do just that.

It was Justice Sonia Sotomayor who asked the uncomfortable question. “Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?” she demanded of Scott Stewart, a former law clerk to Justice Thomas who argued for Mississippi as the state’s solicitor general. Listening to the live-streamed argument, I first heard “political acts” as “political hacks,” I suppose because still in my mind were Justice Barrett’s words when she spoke in mid-September at a center in Louisville, Ky., named for her Senate confirmation mastermind, Senator Mitch McConnell. “My goal today is to convince you that the court is not comprised of a bunch of partisan hacks,” she said then.

Justice Barrett’s performance during Wednesday’s argument was beyond head-spinning. Addressing both Ms. Rikelman and Elizabeth Prelogar, the U.S. solicitor general who argued for the United States on behalf of the Mississippi clinic, Justice Barrett asked about “safe haven” laws that permit women to drop off their unwanted newborn babies at police stations or fire houses; the mothers’ parental rights are then terminated without further legal consequences. If the problem with “forced motherhood” was that it would “hinder women’s access to the workplace and to equal opportunities,” Justice Barrett asked, “why don’t safe haven laws take care of that problem?”

She continued: “It seems to me that it focuses the burden much more narrowly. There is, without question, an infringement on bodily autonomy, you know, which we have in other contexts, like vaccines. However, it doesn’t seem to me to follow that pregnancy and then parenthood are all part of the same burden.”

I’ll pass over the startling notion that being required to accept a vaccine is equivalent to being forced to carry a pregnancy to term. “Gaslighting” doesn’t adequately describe the essence of what Justice Barrett was suggesting: that the right to abortion really isn’t necessary because any woman who doesn’t want to be a mother can just hand her full-term baby over to the nearest police officer and be done with the whole business. As Justice Barrett, of all people, surely understands, such a woman will forever be exactly what she didn’t want to be: a mother, albeit one stripped of her ability to make a different choice.

I will give the gaslighting prize to Justice Kavanaugh and his suggestion that the court should simply adopt a position of “neutrality” with respect to abortion. Abortion is a contentious issue with important interests on both sides, he said to Solicitor General Prelogar. “Why should this court be the arbiter rather than Congress, the state legislatures, state supreme courts, the people being able to resolve this?” he said. “And there will be different answers in Mississippi and New York, different answers in Alabama than California because they’re two different interests at stake and the people in those states might value those interests somewhat differently.”

Justice Kavanaugh painted a soothing description of a down-the-middle resolution, but Solicitor General Prelogar, for one, wasn’t fooled. “The nature of fundamental rights is that it’s not left up to state legislatures to decide whether to honor them or not,” she responded.

Can Justice Kavanaugh really believe what he said? We’ll see soon enough. Last month, the court heard arguments in a case that challenges New York’s strict requirement for a license to carry a concealed weapon. Most states have looser restrictions. New York, through its legislative process, is in a minority.

Will Justice Kavanaugh and those of his colleagues who glorify a recently manufactured version of the Second Amendment allow New York City to keep going its own way on gun safety in the name of “letting the people decide”? That’s about as likely as the chance that those very same justices will decide to keep the right to abortion on the books. In both cases, we know what they’re going to do. The only mystery is how they will explain it.

If you lose all hope, you can always find it again -- Richard Ford in The Sportswriter
0

  • 1071 Pages +
  • « First
  • 962
  • 963
  • 964
  • 965
  • 966
  • Last »
  • You cannot start a new topic
  • You cannot reply to this topic

47 User(s) are reading this topic
0 members, 47 guests, 0 anonymous users

  1. Google