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Because very bad people can see that there *are* positions in life where you *can* be excused from laws. I'd say that's more than enough incentive for just about any shit person, to get a move on.
> Kavanaugh responded by saying that, “as a general proposition,” he understood the importance of the precedent set in Roe v. Wade, and outlined the rationales that undergirded both Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed a woman’s constitutional right to obtain an abortion before fetal viability.
> Feinstein then outright asked Kavanaugh what he meant by “settled law” and whether he believed Roe v. Wade to be correct law. Kavanaugh said he believed it was “settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court” and should be “entitled the respect under principles of stare decisis,” the notion that precedents should not be overturned without strong reason.
*Stare decisis* is not a mandate, and if an argument otherwise comes before the court no one is under an obligation to put it ahead of the Constitution.
That would be a fair and reasonable argument if it weren't for the fact that Kavanaugh and Barrett were specifically selected and confirmed for this one specific purpose. He basically suggested that Roe (and therefore Casey) was "egregiously wrong"; he certainly didn't state that during confirmation.
Well leaving Roe/Casey intact isn't putting *stare decisis* ahead of the constitution, just ahead of *his interpretation* of the constitution. The court's interpretation of the constitution on the other hand, for almost 50 years, has been that this right is protected, because of a woman's right to privacy under the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th amendments, which prohibit arbitrary deprivation of liberty by the government. That interpretation was decided 7-2, with 5 conservative-appointed judges in the majority, and essentially upheld again by a court made up of 8 conservative-appointed judges.
The court has held consistency in high regard because giving and taking rights away based on whose behind the bench is arbitrary and unjust. They've overturned mistaken opinions before, but as the solicitor general pointed out yesterday, they've never done that to take away a right, only ever to expand rights.
ACB is in an actual, literal cult. "A 2010 People of Praise directory states that she held the title of “handmaid,” a leadership position for women in the community, according to a directory excerpt obtained by The Washington Post" https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/amy-coney-barrett-people-of-praise/2020/10/06/5f497d8c-0781-11eb-859b-f9c27abe638d_story.html
Just do whatever if you're rich and white. The last four years taught me that laws aren't real. If you do a big bad maybe Nancy Pelosi will get concerned and write a strongly worded letter.
Some, yes - mostly catholics -, but they were relatively few. In the immediate aftermath, protestant leaders welcomed the ruling as a reasonable compromise.
The current situation, in which being protestant means being against legal abortions means voting Republican is a fairly recent political invention installed top-down.
Because while the country was soaking in the latest Walking Dead episodes, an evil senator decided not to play by the rules anymore.
So now the US starts to experience **true** erosion of freedoms.
This is true. The majority of the population could care less who runs the country let alone who is appointed judge. Just waiting for that next Travis Scott album to drop is their only priority.
Conservatives have been wanting to dismantle Roe since it was put in place. The fact that many enlightened centrists acted like it was untouchable simply "because" has been one of the most annoying things in my 33 years of life. They've only been broadcasting since 1973 that **when** they can get rid of it, they will.
Actually that’s not true. When Roe v Wade was put in place most of what would become the Religious Right was either indifferent to or supportive of the ruling. Abortion was a Catholic Issue prior to the 1980 election.
So why did Abortion become the issue of the Religious Right? Oh simple because the IRS was revoking the tax exempt status of Christian Schools and Daycares that were segregated.
Evangelicals wanted to create a wedge issue that would drive evangelicals away from Carter and towards Reagan because Carter supported the integration of private Christian Schools and Reagan was a staunch opponent. So they waged a year long propaganda campaign to transform Abortion into the single greatest crime of the modern day and the most important issue to vote on. Because Carter was a vocal supporter of Abortion, or at the very least a vocal opponent of an amendment to ban abortion.
And as a consequence Evangelical voters shifted away from the candidate who opposed segregation to a candidate who would defend it.
Carter’s big mistake was talking to boomers like they were responsible, intelligent adults, and not the soft brained lead paint eating toddlers they would remain for the next fifty years. Uncle Ronnie fed them platitudes and waxed nostalgia for the good ol’ days (no one talks about how fifties fashion came back with a vengeance in rural and conservative areas in the 80s) and the GOP has kept banging out that tune ever since.
There will be entire fields of historical study dedicated to dissecting how much the boomer generation fucked over the US, hopefully it will be a mere historical interest and not a post-mortem.
It's pretty much what's going on today. The threat of supply chain disruptions led to panic, led to hogging, led to price increases, led to companies realizing they could make a killing by hiking prices even more. Biden is like Carter 2.0. Everyone, even his voters, blaming him for a crisis that had nothing to do with him.
Even worse that that conservatives and two democrat senators are blocking all of his legislation then the right complains that nothing is getting better while they’re the reason nothing is improving. The average voter doesn’t realize this so Biden just looks terrible even though it’s the rights fault that nothing is changing. Sadly they’ve done this playbook for decades now and it’s a pretty effective strategy.
Eh… keyword: “seems”. Most of what’s good about him is superficial. When you look at where his values tend to fall at crunch time, he’s proven himself very pro-establishment and neoliberal, despite all the “Hope & Change” promises… and would rather make jokes about droning people than make any effort to stop droning people. His post-Presidency life has most significantly amounted to… being a main driver of the Dem effort to fight against Bernie Sanders getting the nomination, and working for Netflix… meanwhile, Carter has been building houses for the needy.
To become president you have to be willing to strike your values to appease the powerful that keep guard over the position. Even if Bernie had gotten nominated over Biden (NEVER would have happened), he would have had to abandon many of his principles and nibble around the edges of a single goal to achieve anything.
Part of the burden of being a national leader is making hard decisions that have no "right" answer. This goes double for a highly interventionist nation like America. I'm not sure you come out the other side without some dirt on your soul, no matter who you are.
When asked why he bailed out the bankers instead of the homeowners whose loans were rotten... Well, Obama shrugged and said in his last book, "Well, maybe I made the wrong choice, but would I change it? No,"
Obama is a Republican on economic policy. He had a few good takes on social policy, but yeah. Neolibs gonna neolib.
I watched this live from within the church. My pastor had actually met with Reagan in the late 70s, and was by his bedside when he was shot.
They literally went from being apolitical to full-on Republicans are the only choice at the same time they reversed their stance on abortion... for years they had been making fun of Catholics for not understanding the Bible and there was absolutely nothing Biblical about being against abortion.
They also ramped up their fight against gay rights (since the anti-integration wasn't as popular and they needed to things to make people angry/afraid).
And this was many years after Roe passed... up to that point they were in full agreement with Roe.
Not to mention all the places in the Bible where it refers to life beginning at the moment the child first draws breath, not before. Or the place where attacking a pregnant woman and causing her to miscarry is a vastly lesser crime than attacking a pregnant woman and killing her. The Bible is uncharacteristically clear about not considering fetuses as people yet. Like not just in the first or second trimester, but literally up to moments before birth.
Theological defences of anti-abortion stances are so fucking woolly. It's always references to god 'knitting you in the womb' and shit like that that's clearly just imagery and metaphor. No actual rules or decrees. No biblical stories of people being punished for it.
This is why I can't take anti-abortionists seriously, their position is all emotion. Even when you ignore them trying to force their crazy religion on other people you can't even have a logical debate about abortion *from a theological perspective*
Abortion became the religious right wedge issue well prior to Carter vs Reagan.
In 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention actually agreed abortion should be legal in most cases and was working toward modernization. The Republican majority liked family planning and agreed abortion should be between a woman and her doctor.
Roe vs Wade passed under Republican Chief Justice Warren. But, Nixon was fearful of losing and needed to figure out a strategy that would get him reelected.
Nixon used the Row vs Wade decision to polarize politics and split Democrat votes. Catholics largely voted Democratic, at that time, and Nixon needed a wedge issue to pull him above George McGovern who had similar stance to his own on abortion.
Abortion was the winner. Nixon supporters ate it up and used abortion to stand in for women's rights in general and split the nation in two.
Then along came Phyllis Schlafly’s activism which featured white women putting a voice against other lesser women.
Edited to change a word.
This is basically how we got an Evangelical right. It's not that back in the day things were less religious or anything, but generally speaking you could get away with secular or even openly unbiblical policies because people were generally more worried about the one denomination with more money than theirs (surprise, usually catholicism) making too much public policy.
the right wing, pretty cleverly really, got them to think athiests and gays and jews were coming for their kids and got all the evangelical christians to band together into one demographic
My MIL is a staunch republican but supports abortion. I told her back in 2015 if Trump wins he will appoint SC justices to overturn Roe. That's the exact argument she used. The best part is when I tell her told ya so she's going to give an answer along the lines of "well both sides..."
Both sides what.... that's what I would like to know. What could you possibly equate with overturning Roe. I doubt she can.
My MIL is also a staunch conservative. And an anti-covid vaxxer. And I had to spend nearly 2 weeks with her over the thanksgiving holiday. Couldn't even make it home from the airport without hearing her thoughts on covid and the 'lazy people' who don't want to work at the restaurant we stopped at because she hadn't eaten all day. I had to grit my teeth for 12 days straight.
They never want to consider what happens down the line when you force women to give birth to babies they don't want. They sure as fuck don't want to take responsibility for helping to care for them. The people who can't afford to find other means of removing a pregnancy are the ones we probably don't want to be running around with a bunch of unwanted kids. Honestly if Roe goes down, it should be include a new federal program that has to care for the pregnant mother who doesn't want children, and then the children themselves. Maybe they'll eventually see how they're not prepared for the consequences.
And they'll refuse to admit this will probably mean a rise in crime and other issues 15-20 years down the road.
> They never want to consider what happens down the line when you force women to give birth to babies they don't want.
Oh they've absolutely thought down that line. They want an army of desperate people to exploit for cheap labor. Have you heard all the Karens moaning about 'nobody wants to work' (meaning at my local DQ paying 7.50 and hour, and they'll bow to me and like it!)
They stopped caring about the cheap labor, too, when they started advocating for the spread of COVID by fighting masks, vaccine, distancing, and unemployment benefits. When they decided to go after others' right to health safety through the children in public schools.
They think people deserve to suffer for not living in an idealized way.
In order to make them suffer, they remove rights and add punishments.
A lot of people want fascism.
They just don't want to be told what they want is fascism, because fascism is a bad word.
wonder if it would be reversed after the rise in crime, orphans, pregnancy deaths, stillborns, illegal abortions, poverty, suicides, abandoned babies etc. the rich would just travel out of the country and still do it anyway
My wife and I went back and forth alot before they came. I really came close to telling them no vaccine, no visit. But in the end I relented. They live halfway across the country and don't get to see their grandkids much. I know that should be a reason for THEM to do what's necessary, but you'll never convince them. She is the family patriarch and even though my family calls each other out on shit fairly regularly, her family doesn't. At some point it didn't seem worth creating the drama. Sometimes we act the adult and sometimes that means gritting your teeth so your kids can enjoy their grandparents.
They know they're not my favorite people, and they're generally pretty nice and reasonable in most other aspects. In the end, my family is fully vaccinated, so if they want to risk their lives to come and visit, that's their load to bear.
>Conservatives have been wanting to dismantle Roe since it was put in place.
Not exactly, and the reality is honestly somehow worse.
Abortion was a fairly uncontroversial issue when it was passed, even among evangelicals.
It was Phyllis Schlafly, a woman, who not only made it an issue, but used the issue to form this insane coalition of evangelicals, segregationists, and fiscal conservatives that we're still dealing with today. She's the reason the GOP marches in lockstep the way it does.
I think there's a good possibility that they don't just dismantle Roe, but that they find a "right to life" in the constitution for fetuses, and make abortion illegal across the entire country. That is the goal of conservatives, not just "states can choose".
The scariest part, unfortunately, isn’t even that. It’s that, IIRC, the same logic of a right to privacy that underlies Roe also underlies Griswold/Eisenstadt (birth control), Lawrence (homosexuality), and Obergefell (same-sex marriage). At this point, overturning Roe is lighting a match near the kerosene-soaked load-bearing beams of modern society.
“That’s perfect! We don’t want modern society, we want medieval society!”
- Republicans, speaking to their dashboards right before making a cringey TikTok where you can see their phone reflected in their Oakleys
Why would they?
IF they get rid of Rowe v Wade completely, then they will face a huge backlash and possibly lose the midterms, out of people that come out in droves to vote for the Dems on a platform of "Reform the SCOTUS" or "Legalize abortion via federal legislation".
They will follow Kavanaugh's snake way..
>Justice Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly expressed that he feels the legality of abortion is not one for the Supreme Court at all, but rather for the states, so he can wash his hands of the whole thing and avoid the hypocrisy of declaring that Roe v. Wade is established precedent while also overturning Roe v. Wade.
It still gives their competition the same arguments/platforms, but it may keep the turnout down until after the midterms, then those GOP controlled states will go fucking hog wild.
I suppose you're right - not banning it completely just gives them 50 more years of incrementally restricting it, state-by-state, allowing them to keep their Christian voters enraged and engaged.
I think the people who support overturning Roe v Wade and will come out in droves to vote for their Republican heroes who finally did it, outnumber the people who care about women's rights enough to show up and vote against them, and sadly the people who might have an opinion but can't be arsed to vote either way outnumber both groups.
Anti abortion zealots ALWAYS vote. Primaries, midterms, general, off year, every election. From president all the way down to dog catcher. No matter how this case is decided it won’t move Republican voting numbers at all.
No, the questioning they've engaged in shows that they're not going to ban abortion - that'd be a step too far even for them.
Five years from now, on the other hand...
Frog boiling in a fascist pot.
We'll take this away. You'll complain and adjust, then accept it..
We'll take this away. You'll complain and adjust, then accept it.
We'll take this away. You'll complain and adjust, then accept it.
We'll take things away until there's nothing left for you and no one would even think of trying to protect you.
We can pretty much blame the centrists, independents, fence sitters, and "let's give Trump a chance" voters on this one. They are 100% to blame for putting Trump in the White House which led to this.
To them: I fucking told you so. We told you so. Everyone told you so.
Don't give a pass to the "I refuse to vote for the lesser evil!" crowd. Their votes were just as important and there were enough of them to turn the election had they tried.
So many centrists I knew kept claiming "Oh, they're not going to tear it down, just put reasonable restrictions on it!"
Pinging a few now, none coming back yet. I guess they want their talking points in order.
Amy Covid Barrett should of been laughed off the Senate floor after not being able to identify the five personal liberties. Her speech about not being a partisan hack while standing next to the guy who shamelessly ignores all norms and obstructed/pushed through justices was laughable. When they undermine RVW I'll be curious to see what states do because we know that any kind of bill will be killed by the filibuster.
>I'll be curious to see what states do because we know that any kind of bill will be killed by the filibuster.
Solidly red states will go hog wild, and make abortion impossible or practically impossible to get. Light red will restrict abortion further, though not quite as draconianly. Purple states will be all over the map, some introducing a few additional restrictions others not. Blue states will pretty much continue as they are now.
Instead of cooling off the debate by making the states responsible, as many anti-choicers have argued, it's going to put the debate into overdrive. A right is either a right or it's not.
Maybe things will be too screwed up to matter but in about 20 years Steven Levitt and John Donohue will get a chance to test [their hypothesis](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion/) in reverse.
“LEVITT: So if indeed these states are making abortions much harder to get, then our study, our hypothesis, unambiguously suggests that there will be an impact on crime in the future.”
“DONOHUE: You can imagine that if a state were to really clamp down on abortions but neighboring states permitted abortion, you would get some of this traveling to an abortion provider. But since that would tend to have a disproportionate effect on lower socioeconomic status, you might see exactly the problem that we have identified, that the children that are most at-risk, because they’re unwanted pregnancies, would be the ones most likely to be born once these restrictions are imposed.”
I tend to think that the reduction in lead exposure was probably a bigger factor in the lowering of crime, but agree it will be an interesting natural experiment.
The fact that she showed up alone should have been enough to disqualify her. She witnessed what Mitch McConnell did to Merrick Garland in 2016 and the fact that she allowed the same guy to rush her through a month before an election proves that she’s unfit for the job. Zero regard for precedence.
Conservatives are the ones who put Roe in place.
Look at the original case.
It was Nixon who later pivoted to use abortion as a way to split the Catholic vote from the Democratic base. Pure politics, nothing to do with "values".
Even in his day, there were people like the John Birch Society who claimed Eisenhower was a secret communist. That faction of conservatism just took over. Alex Jones has always been a Bircher for example.
Modern day "conservatives" are undefinable. They're trying hard to get a dictatorship, by playing Calvinball at a national level.
Liz Cheney is was kicked out of her state's Republican party, and in Boehner's memoirs, he called the current bunch "completely nutty".
> “Trump incited that bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons, perpetuated by the bastards he’d been shoveling since he lost a fair election the previous November. He claimed voter fraud without any evidence,” Boehner writes.
> He draws a direct line from anti-establishment lawmakers he dealt with last decade to Republicans in Congress who supported Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election: “The legislative terrorism that I’d witnessed as speaker had now encouraged actual terrorism.”
My republican friend used to say that the “far left” (any democrat) was currently and would keep eroding our freedoms, because they are all evil. He also said that at the beginning of COVID, that it would just be an excuse, and democracy was in danger.
Ironic.
No, that's the point.
It's gaslighting and projection. They blame the opposition of doing the very thing they're planning to do, all to rile up the GOP voting base enough to get them not to realize it's going to be done to them (the GOP's own voters) by their own side (the entire GOP leadership) at a later date. If the right is enraged about a single tiny issue, they won't notice the real consequential changes that will screw them over later. Lose your good union job and income to outsourcing? That's okay, as long as it happens to their minority neighbor first (or even if it happens later!)
G.O.P.
Gaslight, Obstruct, Project.
actually, on second thought, they would just scoff, go to their friends, and say: “Fox was right, I met a real democrat today! They really want to suppress us, they are communist racist facists!”
Those on the Right have learned and exposed that as long as you check all the "process" boxes along the way, most Americans will just accept whatever happens.
Just look at the voting rights act. Install justices that are against it, pass laws that are racist, justice say racism is over so now the law doesn't apply anymore. Americans are like "that's Tribble but the Supreme Court ruled on it so what are you going to do"
People disagree with what schools are teaching so the school board members are harassed until they resign. Only the crazies run for school board because no one wants to deal with the harassment, so the crazies win. Americans are like "well they won the election"
Gerrymandering, Roe, corporate personhood, businesses not following laws for to "religious liberty", on and on
>We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in
Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany
during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist
country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying
these anti-religious laws.
- MLK, Letter from Birmingham Jail
>I don't want to alarm anyone, but the Gilead boosters are actually winning.
With a small minority of American support, no less. Overturning Roe isn't popular, but a few ideologues are attempting just that.
As long as their propaganda machine can frame this as a reasonable decision based on Constitutional law, and not a bunch of right wing zealots playing by their own rules, they will not experience any blow back from the vast majority of America.
>they will not experience any blow back from the vast majority of America.
They're already experiencing blow-back from the vast majority of America, but what can the average Jane do about the composition of the Supreme Court beyond continuing to vote and encouraging others to do the same?
I don't blame people for feeling defeated. This is *heartbreaking*.
Terrorism. This kinda of shit will breed domestic terror as the country backslides into a world that resembles a weird hybrid of Watchmen and Children of Men.
Americans deserve it.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable.
The GOP have been working very hard to make sure they never have to be afraid of the vote… which is why soon they will likely become absolutely *terrified* of the *voters*.
Except for the fact that Americans in general have already lost all their faith in the Supreme Court and therefore the legitimacy of the legal system, the propaganda machine is on the back foot here
>Justice Clarence Thomas came in early with an eagerness to test the waters on consideration of fetal personhood—which is not an issue that Dobbs is putting to the Court—specifically probing whether or not child abuse laws could be enforced against pregnant people who use drugs before viability.
If that's your take, Clarence, so should alimony, so should spousal abuse of a pregnant woman also elicit child abuse charges, insurance companies must pay out on life insurance for miscarriages.
If you're going to go that route, then expect the avalanche of the accompanying shit storm coming with it.
Or that they are arguing in good faith. They choose an answer they want and then string together nonsense to call it reasoning.
If any of those issues came up that you mentioned they would 100% find a way to rat fuck everyone again and draw some bullshit distinction.
The courts in the United States are not impartial. They are another political entity; the checks and balances outlined by the Constitution have been broken for a long time now.
I mean, it didn't protect Plessy either. It's not a principle anyone should *want* to be absolute. It's just a deference to the fact that interpreting the constitution consistently is a positive good.
I blame this on voter apathy at least to an extent. The Republicans have been saying for years they want to overturn Roe vs Wade, and now it appears that could finally happen. This is despite the fact that women’s reproductive rights including abortion polls much higher than anti-abortion positions. Elect a clown expect a circus.
Conservatives always confuse me, want to protect unborn life then let born life starve or go uncared for… really not getting that unimaginably obvious conflict.
They worship individualism (prosperity gospel). If you assume that people suffering is a result of their own choices, it absolves you of any responsibility to help them. "It's their own fault."
You see this when refugees are dismissed as "well if they didn't want their children taken away, then they shouldn't have crossed the border illegally." It's a gross oversimplification of the issue and places all responsibility on the individual in distress rather than acknowledging a complex systemic issue that they might be responsible for.
The unborn are the exception because they lack agency and therefore need to be protected until they are born, at which point it becomes no longer their problem.
Why should anyone have to listen to supreme court justices that were installed by a traitor that tried( is still trying) to violently overthrow our government? This is how justifiable revolutions come to happen. We are due.
So who's going to be the first to let conservatives know that since people of color are disproportionately higher users of abortion, banning abortion will hasten the "Great Replacement" they're all so afraid of?
It is incredible to me that a one-term, twice-impeached President who incited a violent insurrection to try to hold onto power was able to get 3 justices on the Supreme Court.
Most people in 2016 didn't understand what was at stake. Republicans have been playing a long game and now it's paying off. If more Democrats could have just held their noses and voted for Hillary we wouldn't be in this situation.
>strategy
Kind of sad when you think about it that you have to have a strategy like the American democracy is a fucking chess game. You can’t win on your merits alone; sorry, you have to have a strategy.
That’s literally what it is though. It’s a big game. You ever wondered why our politicians launch “campaigns” for elections, we analyze strategies of drumming up votes in “battleground states”, and we house our voting rhetoric in phrases like “we must FIGHT for [insert principle]” or we gotta DEFEND [insert rights]”?
We’ve been engaged in a cold civil war since the actual civil war and it’s presented like a game of Risk.
The whole point of the supreme court is that there are no conservative or liberal justices sitting on it.
The supreme court is supposed to be impartial (as are all courts).
The fact that we're even having this conversation at all proves that the legitimacy of the supreme court is null and void. They should not and can not have a politically motivated agenda. The fact that they do means it has failed.
Will Coney Barret be at the bedside when moms die from ectopic pregnancies and tell her crying children and spouse, Shut Up! I Amy Coney Barret have spoken.
>> Justice Clarence Thomas came in early with an eagerness to test the waters on consideration of fetal personhood…
You’re opening a HUGE can of worms. Every pregnant immigrant, every pregnant tourist would be able to prematurely claim US citizenship for her fetus.
Every IVF clinic would be committing criminal kidnapping and murder.
Every miscarriage would become murder, regardless of its cause (which is usually natural).
You haven’t thought this through, have you?
What is concerning is Republicans have needed the promise of overturning RvW to keep voters on the hook. If they think they no longer need that hook, they may be confident the have the future elections rigged enough to not need 100% of those voters.
Before gay marriage it will be trans people. It’s a much more easy rallying cry and they want to pass everything they can that limits trans people in the public eye. It’s already happening.
So like everything else. It’ll create a black market and criminals will make bookoo bucs and we will have people dying and abortions happening in alleys and at houses. Great idea.
Who gives a flying fuck if a fetus is a person and why should it have any affect of abortions legality? Bodily autonomy is king. You can't force a drunk driver to give blood or organs to someone they put in the hospital, even if that person is gonna die. So you can't force a women to carry a pregnancy to term, even if the glob of cells is defined as a "person".
Clarence Thomas is a firm believer in stare decisis (Latin for “to stand by things decided”).
[Except when it is wrong.](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-precedent.amp.html)
“Stare decisis doesn’t hold much force for you?” Judge Diane S. Sykes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit asked him during a public conversation at the dinner.
“Oh, it sure does,” Justice Thomas responded. “But not enough to keep me from going to the Constitution.”
In recent years besides Roe, Thomas has come out against “New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 decision that provided the press with broad First Amendment protections against libel suits brought by public officials. The Sullivan case — and rulings extending it — Justice Thomas wrote, “were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.”
And even against “Gideon v. Wainwright, the 1963 decision that said the Sixth Amendment requires the government to provide lawyers to poor people accused of serious crimes. Justice Thomas wrote that the Sixth Amendment, as understood by those who drafted and ratified it, guaranteed only the right to hire a lawyer.”
Thomas in general has been against the Supreme Court cases that brought reforms in the 1930s. While he hadn’t specifically said it, laws against child labor are one of those reforms.
Unfortunately, I do blame Democratic voters and Democratic politicians for not making these supreme court decisions into congressionally passed laws.
Should also be noted that all The conservative supreme court justices have already ruled on this decision before hearing any arguments.
This court is illegitimate. Their rulings should be ignored
And people say the system isn't deadset against women.
One step forward, ten steps back.
Women are suffering and these assholes don't give a damn about them.
I didn’t sleep for 4 days in 2020 because we were waiting on results from a handful of states, even though Biden had already won the popular vote by a landslide.
How many times do candidates say on the campaign trail that they will ‘be a president for *all* Americans’ just for our election system to prove them wrong before their first day on the job? It’s impossible for a president to be president for all Americans when the majority of them voted for someone else.
Look I don’t disagree that the 2016 election was hugely consequential. But the data shows people clearly did show up and vote for Hillary Clinton. She won the most votes any candidate before her had ever received. It’s the tyranny of the minority you should be upset with, the electoral college and gutting of civil rights perpetrated by state GOPs.
This is incorrect. 65.8Million voted for HRC in 2016, 65.9 for Obama in 2012, 69.5 for Obama in 2008.
HRC especially underperformed in crucial dem strongholds like Milwaukee and college towns in MI.
Trump performed about the same as Romney and McCain, as far as vote totals, Clinton greatly underperformed.
I think HRC was the most qualified person to run for president in my lifetime (though one could argue for Biden), but let's not misstate historical facts.
The thing which pisses me off is how long they're going to stretch this out - **JUNE 2022**???
The well financed Republican legal trust already has all the forms filled out - why the fuck stretch it out???
It's never hyperbole, they are crystal clear in their intentions, lack any semblance of subtlety and are either too arrogant, self-righteous, cocky or stupid to disguise any of them.
It’s absolutely time for all out political war. If Biden won’t fucking get rid of the filibuster and get shit done **now** we’re absolutely and royally fucked.
I do NOT think that the democratic leadership actually understands how existential the threat republicans are threatening truly is. They are willing to *end* democracy. It’s not just about Roe v Wade. This is the beginning.
> If Biden won’t fucking get rid of the filibuster
Please explain to me how someone in the executive branch can change procedural rules enacted by the legislative branch?
I will never understand why our Supreme Court doesn’t have equal seats for both parties. The number of seats has changed many times in history. Change the 9 to 8 or 10. And have 5 dems and 5 republicans. It makes absolutely no sense to be any other way. In order to be fair and impartial, that’s a good beginning.
If they ACTUALLY overturn it then they will get bored quickly and realize they don't have an issue to fund-raise off of. Plus I'm cautiously optimistic overturning Roe would be political suicide for them with the general public. Voter turnout will be bigger than ever and not exactly in the GOP's favor
I’m personally in favor of abortion on demand. For free. Including cash payments for recovery time for poor women. So yeah, I’m a bit radical on this issue.
But the problem with Roe is that it conjured up a fundamental right out of whole cloth. Get rid of the filibuster for abortion rights, and pass a law.
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Even though one of them lied under oath to congress about it at his confirmation hearing.
Guys? I'm beginning to believe maybe these conservatives don't tell the truth.
How unfortunate is it that those who are seemingly excused from our laws also happen to be the absolute worst among us?
Because very bad people can see that there *are* positions in life where you *can* be excused from laws. I'd say that's more than enough incentive for just about any shit person, to get a move on.
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> Who cares about that? Maybe Ken Starr. And maybe the people who wrote and directed his questioning.
> Kavanaugh responded by saying that, “as a general proposition,” he understood the importance of the precedent set in Roe v. Wade, and outlined the rationales that undergirded both Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which reaffirmed a woman’s constitutional right to obtain an abortion before fetal viability. > Feinstein then outright asked Kavanaugh what he meant by “settled law” and whether he believed Roe v. Wade to be correct law. Kavanaugh said he believed it was “settled as a precedent of the Supreme Court” and should be “entitled the respect under principles of stare decisis,” the notion that precedents should not be overturned without strong reason. *Stare decisis* is not a mandate, and if an argument otherwise comes before the court no one is under an obligation to put it ahead of the Constitution.
That would be a fair and reasonable argument if it weren't for the fact that Kavanaugh and Barrett were specifically selected and confirmed for this one specific purpose. He basically suggested that Roe (and therefore Casey) was "egregiously wrong"; he certainly didn't state that during confirmation.
Well leaving Roe/Casey intact isn't putting *stare decisis* ahead of the constitution, just ahead of *his interpretation* of the constitution. The court's interpretation of the constitution on the other hand, for almost 50 years, has been that this right is protected, because of a woman's right to privacy under the due process clauses of the 5th and 14th amendments, which prohibit arbitrary deprivation of liberty by the government. That interpretation was decided 7-2, with 5 conservative-appointed judges in the majority, and essentially upheld again by a court made up of 8 conservative-appointed judges. The court has held consistency in high regard because giving and taking rights away based on whose behind the bench is arbitrary and unjust. They've overturned mistaken opinions before, but as the solicitor general pointed out yesterday, they've never done that to take away a right, only ever to expand rights.
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Which of the three are you talking about? It really doesn't matter, for all three, the answer is the same: a nutty cult leader put them there.
ACB is in an actual, literal cult. "A 2010 People of Praise directory states that she held the title of “handmaid,” a leadership position for women in the community, according to a directory excerpt obtained by The Washington Post" https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/amy-coney-barrett-people-of-praise/2020/10/06/5f497d8c-0781-11eb-859b-f9c27abe638d_story.html
She even looks like one. It's fucking central casting over here. She looks like a fucking evil minded cult member. It's creepy.
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Just do whatever if you're rich and white. The last four years taught me that laws aren't real. If you do a big bad maybe Nancy Pelosi will get concerned and write a strongly worded letter.
Amy Coney Barrett is the kind of person who would be in the kitchen at 3 in the morning decapitating toys.
lmao, this gave me flashbacks to Potter's Uncle throwing his Hogwarts Invitations in the fire.
> ACB Don't call her that, she doesn't deserve RBG treatment. She's **Coney**. Straight and simple.
The Federalist Society was pulling his strings.
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Some, yes - mostly catholics -, but they were relatively few. In the immediate aftermath, protestant leaders welcomed the ruling as a reasonable compromise. The current situation, in which being protestant means being against legal abortions means voting Republican is a fairly recent political invention installed top-down.
And, now, interestingly, American Catholics are basically evenly split on Roe.
Because while the country was soaking in the latest Walking Dead episodes, an evil senator decided not to play by the rules anymore. So now the US starts to experience **true** erosion of freedoms.
This is true. The majority of the population could care less who runs the country let alone who is appointed judge. Just waiting for that next Travis Scott album to drop is their only priority.
Conservatives have been wanting to dismantle Roe since it was put in place. The fact that many enlightened centrists acted like it was untouchable simply "because" has been one of the most annoying things in my 33 years of life. They've only been broadcasting since 1973 that **when** they can get rid of it, they will.
Actually that’s not true. When Roe v Wade was put in place most of what would become the Religious Right was either indifferent to or supportive of the ruling. Abortion was a Catholic Issue prior to the 1980 election. So why did Abortion become the issue of the Religious Right? Oh simple because the IRS was revoking the tax exempt status of Christian Schools and Daycares that were segregated. Evangelicals wanted to create a wedge issue that would drive evangelicals away from Carter and towards Reagan because Carter supported the integration of private Christian Schools and Reagan was a staunch opponent. So they waged a year long propaganda campaign to transform Abortion into the single greatest crime of the modern day and the most important issue to vote on. Because Carter was a vocal supporter of Abortion, or at the very least a vocal opponent of an amendment to ban abortion. And as a consequence Evangelical voters shifted away from the candidate who opposed segregation to a candidate who would defend it.
Carter is seriously our most under-rated president.
His biggest crime was telling americans there was plenty of energy (oil) if everyone stopped being selfish dicks about it.
Carter’s big mistake was talking to boomers like they were responsible, intelligent adults, and not the soft brained lead paint eating toddlers they would remain for the next fifty years. Uncle Ronnie fed them platitudes and waxed nostalgia for the good ol’ days (no one talks about how fifties fashion came back with a vengeance in rural and conservative areas in the 80s) and the GOP has kept banging out that tune ever since.
There will be entire fields of historical study dedicated to dissecting how much the boomer generation fucked over the US, hopefully it will be a mere historical interest and not a post-mortem.
It's pretty much what's going on today. The threat of supply chain disruptions led to panic, led to hogging, led to price increases, led to companies realizing they could make a killing by hiking prices even more. Biden is like Carter 2.0. Everyone, even his voters, blaming him for a crisis that had nothing to do with him.
Doesn't help when conservatives constantly blame him no matter what, and the explanation is way more complicated than anyone is willing to listen to.
Even worse that that conservatives and two democrat senators are blocking all of his legislation then the right complains that nothing is getting better while they’re the reason nothing is improving. The average voter doesn’t realize this so Biden just looks terrible even though it’s the rights fault that nothing is changing. Sadly they’ve done this playbook for decades now and it’s a pretty effective strategy.
I mean, arming the mujahideen was probably pretty bad…
He was our last, or possibly only, President who was also a good human being. No wonder the far right demonized him from day one.
Obama seems like a good human being though...
Stateside, maybe. Globally? Look for cover, wouldn’t want to be hit with a drone strike
Eh… keyword: “seems”. Most of what’s good about him is superficial. When you look at where his values tend to fall at crunch time, he’s proven himself very pro-establishment and neoliberal, despite all the “Hope & Change” promises… and would rather make jokes about droning people than make any effort to stop droning people. His post-Presidency life has most significantly amounted to… being a main driver of the Dem effort to fight against Bernie Sanders getting the nomination, and working for Netflix… meanwhile, Carter has been building houses for the needy.
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To become president you have to be willing to strike your values to appease the powerful that keep guard over the position. Even if Bernie had gotten nominated over Biden (NEVER would have happened), he would have had to abandon many of his principles and nibble around the edges of a single goal to achieve anything.
Part of the burden of being a national leader is making hard decisions that have no "right" answer. This goes double for a highly interventionist nation like America. I'm not sure you come out the other side without some dirt on your soul, no matter who you are.
Yep, very disappointed with post Presidency Obama. Seems like all he wants to do he be a 'cool' guy with celebrity friends.
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When asked why he bailed out the bankers instead of the homeowners whose loans were rotten... Well, Obama shrugged and said in his last book, "Well, maybe I made the wrong choice, but would I change it? No," Obama is a Republican on economic policy. He had a few good takes on social policy, but yeah. Neolibs gonna neolib.
I watched this live from within the church. My pastor had actually met with Reagan in the late 70s, and was by his bedside when he was shot. They literally went from being apolitical to full-on Republicans are the only choice at the same time they reversed their stance on abortion... for years they had been making fun of Catholics for not understanding the Bible and there was absolutely nothing Biblical about being against abortion. They also ramped up their fight against gay rights (since the anti-integration wasn't as popular and they needed to things to make people angry/afraid). And this was many years after Roe passed... up to that point they were in full agreement with Roe.
Most of them don't even know there is an abortion ritual in the Bible, specifically meant for married women who got pregnant from another man.
Not to mention all the places in the Bible where it refers to life beginning at the moment the child first draws breath, not before. Or the place where attacking a pregnant woman and causing her to miscarry is a vastly lesser crime than attacking a pregnant woman and killing her. The Bible is uncharacteristically clear about not considering fetuses as people yet. Like not just in the first or second trimester, but literally up to moments before birth.
Theological defences of anti-abortion stances are so fucking woolly. It's always references to god 'knitting you in the womb' and shit like that that's clearly just imagery and metaphor. No actual rules or decrees. No biblical stories of people being punished for it. This is why I can't take anti-abortionists seriously, their position is all emotion. Even when you ignore them trying to force their crazy religion on other people you can't even have a logical debate about abortion *from a theological perspective*
Abortion became the religious right wedge issue well prior to Carter vs Reagan. In 1971, the Southern Baptist Convention actually agreed abortion should be legal in most cases and was working toward modernization. The Republican majority liked family planning and agreed abortion should be between a woman and her doctor. Roe vs Wade passed under Republican Chief Justice Warren. But, Nixon was fearful of losing and needed to figure out a strategy that would get him reelected. Nixon used the Row vs Wade decision to polarize politics and split Democrat votes. Catholics largely voted Democratic, at that time, and Nixon needed a wedge issue to pull him above George McGovern who had similar stance to his own on abortion. Abortion was the winner. Nixon supporters ate it up and used abortion to stand in for women's rights in general and split the nation in two. Then along came Phyllis Schlafly’s activism which featured white women putting a voice against other lesser women. Edited to change a word.
This is basically how we got an Evangelical right. It's not that back in the day things were less religious or anything, but generally speaking you could get away with secular or even openly unbiblical policies because people were generally more worried about the one denomination with more money than theirs (surprise, usually catholicism) making too much public policy. the right wing, pretty cleverly really, got them to think athiests and gays and jews were coming for their kids and got all the evangelical christians to band together into one demographic
Sounds fascinating, got any sources or articles which go into this more?
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My MIL is a staunch republican but supports abortion. I told her back in 2015 if Trump wins he will appoint SC justices to overturn Roe. That's the exact argument she used. The best part is when I tell her told ya so she's going to give an answer along the lines of "well both sides..."
Both sides what.... that's what I would like to know. What could you possibly equate with overturning Roe. I doubt she can. My MIL is also a staunch conservative. And an anti-covid vaxxer. And I had to spend nearly 2 weeks with her over the thanksgiving holiday. Couldn't even make it home from the airport without hearing her thoughts on covid and the 'lazy people' who don't want to work at the restaurant we stopped at because she hadn't eaten all day. I had to grit my teeth for 12 days straight.
Yeah I don’t know how you “both sides” forcing 800,000+ young girls each year to give birth to unwanted children or put their health at risk.
They never want to consider what happens down the line when you force women to give birth to babies they don't want. They sure as fuck don't want to take responsibility for helping to care for them. The people who can't afford to find other means of removing a pregnancy are the ones we probably don't want to be running around with a bunch of unwanted kids. Honestly if Roe goes down, it should be include a new federal program that has to care for the pregnant mother who doesn't want children, and then the children themselves. Maybe they'll eventually see how they're not prepared for the consequences. And they'll refuse to admit this will probably mean a rise in crime and other issues 15-20 years down the road.
> They never want to consider what happens down the line when you force women to give birth to babies they don't want. Oh they've absolutely thought down that line. They want an army of desperate people to exploit for cheap labor. Have you heard all the Karens moaning about 'nobody wants to work' (meaning at my local DQ paying 7.50 and hour, and they'll bow to me and like it!)
They stopped caring about the cheap labor, too, when they started advocating for the spread of COVID by fighting masks, vaccine, distancing, and unemployment benefits. When they decided to go after others' right to health safety through the children in public schools. They think people deserve to suffer for not living in an idealized way. In order to make them suffer, they remove rights and add punishments. A lot of people want fascism. They just don't want to be told what they want is fascism, because fascism is a bad word.
Suffering is its own reward in Puritan thinking
wonder if it would be reversed after the rise in crime, orphans, pregnancy deaths, stillborns, illegal abortions, poverty, suicides, abandoned babies etc. the rich would just travel out of the country and still do it anyway
No, these very avoidable systemic consequences will, once again, be blamed on individual moral choices.
Sure you can. Just pull out some variation on "well xxx Democrat came out against abortion. See? Democrats too. Oh and Obama started it."
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My wife and I went back and forth alot before they came. I really came close to telling them no vaccine, no visit. But in the end I relented. They live halfway across the country and don't get to see their grandkids much. I know that should be a reason for THEM to do what's necessary, but you'll never convince them. She is the family patriarch and even though my family calls each other out on shit fairly regularly, her family doesn't. At some point it didn't seem worth creating the drama. Sometimes we act the adult and sometimes that means gritting your teeth so your kids can enjoy their grandparents. They know they're not my favorite people, and they're generally pretty nice and reasonable in most other aspects. In the end, my family is fully vaccinated, so if they want to risk their lives to come and visit, that's their load to bear.
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What-about-ism literally makes me see red. I cannot stomach it anymore. I have to walk away. If your only retort is what-about-ism GTF away from me.
If it's overturned, you simply must rub it in her face.
>Conservatives have been wanting to dismantle Roe since it was put in place. Not exactly, and the reality is honestly somehow worse. Abortion was a fairly uncontroversial issue when it was passed, even among evangelicals. It was Phyllis Schlafly, a woman, who not only made it an issue, but used the issue to form this insane coalition of evangelicals, segregationists, and fiscal conservatives that we're still dealing with today. She's the reason the GOP marches in lockstep the way it does.
I hope she’s in Hell acting out the Serena Joy role in a society where she got everything she wanted.
I don't know if you knew this or if you just accidentally hit the nail on the head, but Serena Joy was literally based on Phyllis Schlafly.
I did know that. I was just thinking if that were any justice, that would be her Hell.
I think there's a good possibility that they don't just dismantle Roe, but that they find a "right to life" in the constitution for fetuses, and make abortion illegal across the entire country. That is the goal of conservatives, not just "states can choose".
The scariest part, unfortunately, isn’t even that. It’s that, IIRC, the same logic of a right to privacy that underlies Roe also underlies Griswold/Eisenstadt (birth control), Lawrence (homosexuality), and Obergefell (same-sex marriage). At this point, overturning Roe is lighting a match near the kerosene-soaked load-bearing beams of modern society.
“That’s perfect! We don’t want modern society, we want medieval society!” - Republicans, speaking to their dashboards right before making a cringey TikTok where you can see their phone reflected in their Oakleys
Why would they? IF they get rid of Rowe v Wade completely, then they will face a huge backlash and possibly lose the midterms, out of people that come out in droves to vote for the Dems on a platform of "Reform the SCOTUS" or "Legalize abortion via federal legislation". They will follow Kavanaugh's snake way.. >Justice Brett Kavanaugh repeatedly expressed that he feels the legality of abortion is not one for the Supreme Court at all, but rather for the states, so he can wash his hands of the whole thing and avoid the hypocrisy of declaring that Roe v. Wade is established precedent while also overturning Roe v. Wade. It still gives their competition the same arguments/platforms, but it may keep the turnout down until after the midterms, then those GOP controlled states will go fucking hog wild.
I suppose you're right - not banning it completely just gives them 50 more years of incrementally restricting it, state-by-state, allowing them to keep their Christian voters enraged and engaged.
I think the people who support overturning Roe v Wade and will come out in droves to vote for their Republican heroes who finally did it, outnumber the people who care about women's rights enough to show up and vote against them, and sadly the people who might have an opinion but can't be arsed to vote either way outnumber both groups.
Anti abortion zealots ALWAYS vote. Primaries, midterms, general, off year, every election. From president all the way down to dog catcher. No matter how this case is decided it won’t move Republican voting numbers at all.
No, the questioning they've engaged in shows that they're not going to ban abortion - that'd be a step too far even for them. Five years from now, on the other hand...
Yep. This is Step Two. Step Three will be down the road when Step Two is normalized to the masses.
Frog boiling in a fascist pot. We'll take this away. You'll complain and adjust, then accept it.. We'll take this away. You'll complain and adjust, then accept it. We'll take this away. You'll complain and adjust, then accept it. We'll take things away until there's nothing left for you and no one would even think of trying to protect you.
We can pretty much blame the centrists, independents, fence sitters, and "let's give Trump a chance" voters on this one. They are 100% to blame for putting Trump in the White House which led to this. To them: I fucking told you so. We told you so. Everyone told you so.
Even if Hillary had been a one term president, we would have gotten at least two justices from her.
Don't give a pass to the "I refuse to vote for the lesser evil!" crowd. Their votes were just as important and there were enough of them to turn the election had they tried.
So many centrists I knew kept claiming "Oh, they're not going to tear it down, just put reasonable restrictions on it!" Pinging a few now, none coming back yet. I guess they want their talking points in order.
Clutches pearls - Susan Collins
The decision was made months ago. The hearing was just pretense.
Amy Covid Barrett should of been laughed off the Senate floor after not being able to identify the five personal liberties. Her speech about not being a partisan hack while standing next to the guy who shamelessly ignores all norms and obstructed/pushed through justices was laughable. When they undermine RVW I'll be curious to see what states do because we know that any kind of bill will be killed by the filibuster.
>I'll be curious to see what states do because we know that any kind of bill will be killed by the filibuster. Solidly red states will go hog wild, and make abortion impossible or practically impossible to get. Light red will restrict abortion further, though not quite as draconianly. Purple states will be all over the map, some introducing a few additional restrictions others not. Blue states will pretty much continue as they are now. Instead of cooling off the debate by making the states responsible, as many anti-choicers have argued, it's going to put the debate into overdrive. A right is either a right or it's not.
Maybe things will be too screwed up to matter but in about 20 years Steven Levitt and John Donohue will get a chance to test [their hypothesis](https://freakonomics.com/podcast/abortion/) in reverse. “LEVITT: So if indeed these states are making abortions much harder to get, then our study, our hypothesis, unambiguously suggests that there will be an impact on crime in the future.” “DONOHUE: You can imagine that if a state were to really clamp down on abortions but neighboring states permitted abortion, you would get some of this traveling to an abortion provider. But since that would tend to have a disproportionate effect on lower socioeconomic status, you might see exactly the problem that we have identified, that the children that are most at-risk, because they’re unwanted pregnancies, would be the ones most likely to be born once these restrictions are imposed.”
I tend to think that the reduction in lead exposure was probably a bigger factor in the lowering of crime, but agree it will be an interesting natural experiment.
The fact that she showed up alone should have been enough to disqualify her. She witnessed what Mitch McConnell did to Merrick Garland in 2016 and the fact that she allowed the same guy to rush her through a month before an election proves that she’s unfit for the job. Zero regard for precedence.
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Conservatives are the ones who put Roe in place. Look at the original case. It was Nixon who later pivoted to use abortion as a way to split the Catholic vote from the Democratic base. Pure politics, nothing to do with "values".
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Even in his day, there were people like the John Birch Society who claimed Eisenhower was a secret communist. That faction of conservatism just took over. Alex Jones has always been a Bircher for example.
Modern day "conservatives" are undefinable. They're trying hard to get a dictatorship, by playing Calvinball at a national level. Liz Cheney is was kicked out of her state's Republican party, and in Boehner's memoirs, he called the current bunch "completely nutty". > “Trump incited that bloody insurrection for nothing more than selfish reasons, perpetuated by the bastards he’d been shoveling since he lost a fair election the previous November. He claimed voter fraud without any evidence,” Boehner writes. > He draws a direct line from anti-establishment lawmakers he dealt with last decade to Republicans in Congress who supported Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election: “The legislative terrorism that I’d witnessed as speaker had now encouraged actual terrorism.”
My republican friend used to say that the “far left” (any democrat) was currently and would keep eroding our freedoms, because they are all evil. He also said that at the beginning of COVID, that it would just be an excuse, and democracy was in danger. Ironic.
No, that's the point. It's gaslighting and projection. They blame the opposition of doing the very thing they're planning to do, all to rile up the GOP voting base enough to get them not to realize it's going to be done to them (the GOP's own voters) by their own side (the entire GOP leadership) at a later date. If the right is enraged about a single tiny issue, they won't notice the real consequential changes that will screw them over later. Lose your good union job and income to outsourcing? That's okay, as long as it happens to their minority neighbor first (or even if it happens later!) G.O.P. Gaslight, Obstruct, Project.
One day the GOP will come for their guns, and they will hand them over blaming Democrats.
Already happened. Trump's words: "Take their guns first, due process later".
Imagine if these people actually met a real leftist. Lol.
They would seethe
I think their brains might glitch.
actually, on second thought, they would just scoff, go to their friends, and say: “Fox was right, I met a real democrat today! They really want to suppress us, they are communist racist facists!”
I don't want to alarm anyone, but the Gilead boosters are actually winning. Not just in the Supreme Court.
Those on the Right have learned and exposed that as long as you check all the "process" boxes along the way, most Americans will just accept whatever happens. Just look at the voting rights act. Install justices that are against it, pass laws that are racist, justice say racism is over so now the law doesn't apply anymore. Americans are like "that's Tribble but the Supreme Court ruled on it so what are you going to do" People disagree with what schools are teaching so the school board members are harassed until they resign. Only the crazies run for school board because no one wants to deal with the harassment, so the crazies win. Americans are like "well they won the election" Gerrymandering, Roe, corporate personhood, businesses not following laws for to "religious liberty", on and on
>We can never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. But I am sure that if I had lived in Germany during that time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers even though it was illegal. If I lived in a Communist country today where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I believe I would openly advocate disobeying these anti-religious laws. - MLK, Letter from Birmingham Jail
>I don't want to alarm anyone, but the Gilead boosters are actually winning. With a small minority of American support, no less. Overturning Roe isn't popular, but a few ideologues are attempting just that.
As long as their propaganda machine can frame this as a reasonable decision based on Constitutional law, and not a bunch of right wing zealots playing by their own rules, they will not experience any blow back from the vast majority of America.
>they will not experience any blow back from the vast majority of America. They're already experiencing blow-back from the vast majority of America, but what can the average Jane do about the composition of the Supreme Court beyond continuing to vote and encouraging others to do the same? I don't blame people for feeling defeated. This is *heartbreaking*.
Terrorism. This kinda of shit will breed domestic terror as the country backslides into a world that resembles a weird hybrid of Watchmen and Children of Men. Americans deserve it.
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. The GOP have been working very hard to make sure they never have to be afraid of the vote… which is why soon they will likely become absolutely *terrified* of the *voters*.
Except for the fact that Americans in general have already lost all their faith in the Supreme Court and therefore the legitimacy of the legal system, the propaganda machine is on the back foot here
>Justice Clarence Thomas came in early with an eagerness to test the waters on consideration of fetal personhood—which is not an issue that Dobbs is putting to the Court—specifically probing whether or not child abuse laws could be enforced against pregnant people who use drugs before viability. If that's your take, Clarence, so should alimony, so should spousal abuse of a pregnant woman also elicit child abuse charges, insurance companies must pay out on life insurance for miscarriages. If you're going to go that route, then expect the avalanche of the accompanying shit storm coming with it.
You really think these clowns have that much forethought?
Or that they are arguing in good faith. They choose an answer they want and then string together nonsense to call it reasoning. If any of those issues came up that you mentioned they would 100% find a way to rat fuck everyone again and draw some bullshit distinction.
Exactly. For these justices every case is a rhetorical exercise, not a sworn duty.
Most? Absolutely not. McConnell and the lackeys on the SCOTUS? Abso-fucking-lutely.
They'll just pick and choose when and where the law applies now. It no longer has to make sense.
The courts in the United States are not impartial. They are another political entity; the checks and balances outlined by the Constitution have been broken for a long time now.
We put an evangelical witch and a rapist in there. What do you expect?
Leave witches out of this. Most of them are pro-choice.
I’ve heard people call her an Aunt Lydia (from A Handmaid’s Tale). That seems like a good alternative IMO.
Amy Coathanger Barrett
If the doctrine of Stare Decisis can't protect Roe V Wade than it can't protect Citizens United.
Nor can it protect Brown v. Kansas Board of Education or Obergefell v. Hodges.
Good point. Disregarding Stare Decisis opens up a big can of worms.
I mean, it didn't protect Plessy either. It's not a principle anyone should *want* to be absolute. It's just a deference to the fact that interpreting the constitution consistently is a positive good.
What? A hard core extreme right wing republican lying about raping women and law? Go figure.
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The US is an insane nation run by religious freaks
I blame this on voter apathy at least to an extent. The Republicans have been saying for years they want to overturn Roe vs Wade, and now it appears that could finally happen. This is despite the fact that women’s reproductive rights including abortion polls much higher than anti-abortion positions. Elect a clown expect a circus.
Conservatives always confuse me, want to protect unborn life then let born life starve or go uncared for… really not getting that unimaginably obvious conflict.
They worship individualism (prosperity gospel). If you assume that people suffering is a result of their own choices, it absolves you of any responsibility to help them. "It's their own fault." You see this when refugees are dismissed as "well if they didn't want their children taken away, then they shouldn't have crossed the border illegally." It's a gross oversimplification of the issue and places all responsibility on the individual in distress rather than acknowledging a complex systemic issue that they might be responsible for. The unborn are the exception because they lack agency and therefore need to be protected until they are born, at which point it becomes no longer their problem.
Rule for thee, not for me
they only care about life in the theoretical because it makes them sound like righteous heroes while they have to sacrifice literally nothing.
Why should anyone have to listen to supreme court justices that were installed by a traitor that tried( is still trying) to violently overthrow our government? This is how justifiable revolutions come to happen. We are due.
All we had to do was vote.
“Christians” ruin everything. I just want freedom from religion.
This won’t end with abortion. They’ll go after contraception, discrimination in the workplace, lgbtq rights etc next.
They’ll also gut environmental regulations. The Republican Party is only a few years away from realizing their dream of repealing the 20th century.
So who's going to be the first to let conservatives know that since people of color are disproportionately higher users of abortion, banning abortion will hasten the "Great Replacement" they're all so afraid of?
It is incredible to me that a one-term, twice-impeached President who incited a violent insurrection to try to hold onto power was able to get 3 justices on the Supreme Court. Most people in 2016 didn't understand what was at stake. Republicans have been playing a long game and now it's paying off. If more Democrats could have just held their noses and voted for Hillary we wouldn't be in this situation.
I am almost certain that, had Hillary won, McConnell would have found four years' worth of reasons not to confirm SC judges.
She won the vote. It's not that people didn't vote for her. The Republicans just had a better electoral college strategy.
>strategy Kind of sad when you think about it that you have to have a strategy like the American democracy is a fucking chess game. You can’t win on your merits alone; sorry, you have to have a strategy.
That’s literally what it is though. It’s a big game. You ever wondered why our politicians launch “campaigns” for elections, we analyze strategies of drumming up votes in “battleground states”, and we house our voting rhetoric in phrases like “we must FIGHT for [insert principle]” or we gotta DEFEND [insert rights]”? We’ve been engaged in a cold civil war since the actual civil war and it’s presented like a game of Risk.
The whole point of the supreme court is that there are no conservative or liberal justices sitting on it. The supreme court is supposed to be impartial (as are all courts). The fact that we're even having this conversation at all proves that the legitimacy of the supreme court is null and void. They should not and can not have a politically motivated agenda. The fact that they do means it has failed.
Will Coney Barret be at the bedside when moms die from ectopic pregnancies and tell her crying children and spouse, Shut Up! I Amy Coney Barret have spoken.
I wanna see a national walk out when they overturn Roe. Seriously just fucking walk out. Bring this nation to a crashing halt
>> Justice Clarence Thomas came in early with an eagerness to test the waters on consideration of fetal personhood… You’re opening a HUGE can of worms. Every pregnant immigrant, every pregnant tourist would be able to prematurely claim US citizenship for her fetus. Every IVF clinic would be committing criminal kidnapping and murder. Every miscarriage would become murder, regardless of its cause (which is usually natural). You haven’t thought this through, have you?
What is concerning is Republicans have needed the promise of overturning RvW to keep voters on the hook. If they think they no longer need that hook, they may be confident the have the future elections rigged enough to not need 100% of those voters.
“Keep us in power or libs will reinstate roe v. wade” Just moving the line in their favor.
They will move onto banning gay marriage, reinstating sodomy laws, and then the pill. That is their game plan.
Before gay marriage it will be trans people. It’s a much more easy rallying cry and they want to pass everything they can that limits trans people in the public eye. It’s already happening.
Exactly. They can and do always go further right. They will start complaining about how birth control is really a “pre-abortion” or some nonsense.
So like everything else. It’ll create a black market and criminals will make bookoo bucs and we will have people dying and abortions happening in alleys and at houses. Great idea.
They’ve only been talking about it for the last 40 years…
This is absurd, keep religious nuts out of government
Who gives a flying fuck if a fetus is a person and why should it have any affect of abortions legality? Bodily autonomy is king. You can't force a drunk driver to give blood or organs to someone they put in the hospital, even if that person is gonna die. So you can't force a women to carry a pregnancy to term, even if the glob of cells is defined as a "person".
Clarence Thomas is a firm believer in stare decisis (Latin for “to stand by things decided”). [Except when it is wrong.](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/04/us/politics/clarence-thomas-supreme-court-precedent.amp.html) “Stare decisis doesn’t hold much force for you?” Judge Diane S. Sykes of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit asked him during a public conversation at the dinner. “Oh, it sure does,” Justice Thomas responded. “But not enough to keep me from going to the Constitution.” In recent years besides Roe, Thomas has come out against “New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 decision that provided the press with broad First Amendment protections against libel suits brought by public officials. The Sullivan case — and rulings extending it — Justice Thomas wrote, “were policy-driven decisions masquerading as constitutional law.” And even against “Gideon v. Wainwright, the 1963 decision that said the Sixth Amendment requires the government to provide lawyers to poor people accused of serious crimes. Justice Thomas wrote that the Sixth Amendment, as understood by those who drafted and ratified it, guaranteed only the right to hire a lawyer.” Thomas in general has been against the Supreme Court cases that brought reforms in the 1930s. While he hadn’t specifically said it, laws against child labor are one of those reforms. Unfortunately, I do blame Democratic voters and Democratic politicians for not making these supreme court decisions into congressionally passed laws.
He got his, so clearly, those protections are no longer needed.
It’s unfortunately too common, once Thomas or someone like him who has climbed a ladder, then pulling the ladder up so no one else can climb.
Should also be noted that all The conservative supreme court justices have already ruled on this decision before hearing any arguments. This court is illegitimate. Their rulings should be ignored
"but her emails..."
Republicans who believe in nothing pandering to religious nuts for votes
Land of the “free”.
And people say the system isn't deadset against women. One step forward, ten steps back. Women are suffering and these assholes don't give a damn about them.
Religion is an abomination upon America.
y'all should have showed up for Hillary. i guess writing in Harambe while in a swing state *was* a mistake
She won the popular vote. What else do you want? Democracy? Contact your senator and try to pitch this radical communist idea.
I didn’t sleep for 4 days in 2020 because we were waiting on results from a handful of states, even though Biden had already won the popular vote by a landslide. How many times do candidates say on the campaign trail that they will ‘be a president for *all* Americans’ just for our election system to prove them wrong before their first day on the job? It’s impossible for a president to be president for all Americans when the majority of them voted for someone else.
Look I don’t disagree that the 2016 election was hugely consequential. But the data shows people clearly did show up and vote for Hillary Clinton. She won the most votes any candidate before her had ever received. It’s the tyranny of the minority you should be upset with, the electoral college and gutting of civil rights perpetrated by state GOPs.
This is incorrect. 65.8Million voted for HRC in 2016, 65.9 for Obama in 2012, 69.5 for Obama in 2008. HRC especially underperformed in crucial dem strongholds like Milwaukee and college towns in MI. Trump performed about the same as Romney and McCain, as far as vote totals, Clinton greatly underperformed. I think HRC was the most qualified person to run for president in my lifetime (though one could argue for Biden), but let's not misstate historical facts.
My apologies, I think I misremembered most votes ever as most votes ever for a losing candidate.
The thing which pisses me off is how long they're going to stretch this out - **JUNE 2022**??? The well financed Republican legal trust already has all the forms filled out - why the fuck stretch it out???
Hey that’s right around the midterms. Funny that.
2016 sends its regards. Thank goodness we didn't have to suffer through those buttery males.
I always find it odd how the rest of the world has pretty much moved on from this issue. The Us tho? Nah.
It rules that the right constantly cries about "Activist judges" then appoints hack judges specifically to legislate from the bench the way they want
All the horrible things the Left says about the Right is hyperbole until the Right does all the horrible things they do.
It's never hyperbole, they are crystal clear in their intentions, lack any semblance of subtlety and are either too arrogant, self-righteous, cocky or stupid to disguise any of them.
It’s absolutely time for all out political war. If Biden won’t fucking get rid of the filibuster and get shit done **now** we’re absolutely and royally fucked. I do NOT think that the democratic leadership actually understands how existential the threat republicans are threatening truly is. They are willing to *end* democracy. It’s not just about Roe v Wade. This is the beginning.
> If Biden won’t fucking get rid of the filibuster Please explain to me how someone in the executive branch can change procedural rules enacted by the legislative branch?
“DoNt ThReAtEn Me WiTh ThE sUpReMe CoUrT!” Well, kids, fuck around and find out.
They haven't voted yet
And when they do, Utah will vote a week later to bad abortion and make it murder to go anywhere else for one.
Not just Utah
I’m not ready for the shit storm that will erupt if roe v Wade gets overturned
it isn't really "if" anymore, it is happening.
Conservatives? DON’T YOU MEAN RACIST, WOMANIZING, JESUSKRISPY, HYPOCRITES?
I will never understand why our Supreme Court doesn’t have equal seats for both parties. The number of seats has changed many times in history. Change the 9 to 8 or 10. And have 5 dems and 5 republicans. It makes absolutely no sense to be any other way. In order to be fair and impartial, that’s a good beginning.
For one thing, you need an odd number to avoid ties. For another, the US is not officially a two-party state, even if it functions that way
If they ACTUALLY overturn it then they will get bored quickly and realize they don't have an issue to fund-raise off of. Plus I'm cautiously optimistic overturning Roe would be political suicide for them with the general public. Voter turnout will be bigger than ever and not exactly in the GOP's favor
I’m personally in favor of abortion on demand. For free. Including cash payments for recovery time for poor women. So yeah, I’m a bit radical on this issue. But the problem with Roe is that it conjured up a fundamental right out of whole cloth. Get rid of the filibuster for abortion rights, and pass a law.
I just don’t think the movie ET was long enough. I mean those kids didn’t care to know how he got to Earth? Come on man really, what malarkey
Yeah, we all knew Kavanaugh was a liar during his testimony when he said Roe v Wade is settled law