Liars for a Lifetime

RBG always said that the right to abortion should have been decided

...not on the right to privacy but on equal protection of women's rights.

snip..........

Both as an advocate for women’s rights before the Court and then as member of that Court, Justice Ginsberg consistently asserted that a woman’s right to seek an abortion was grounded in the wrong part of the Constitution. She always maintained that it would have been much better grounded, and therefore better guaranteed, as an equal protection right instead of as a privacy right.

If the fate of Lochner taught anything, it taught that when the Court locates a right in a liberty interest stemming from substantive due process, it is building a house on theoretical sand. Yet, in 1965 the Court began construction of a new house upon the rubble of Lochner. In Griswold v. Connecticut, a privacy right was found for married couples to use contraceptives in their own homes as a liberty interest stemming from substantive due process. Griswold’s progeny ultimately led in 1973 to Roe, where the Court took this privacy right to encompass a woman’s decision to seek an abortion. Perhaps sensing this infirmity, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in 1992 declined in Planned Parenthood v. Casey to use the word privacy in upholding this right, yet nevertheless replaced Roe’s strict scrutiny standard with a lower undue burden test on state actions limiting abortions.

Now, nearly 50 years after Roe, if five conservative justices decide in the Mississippi case to aim their arrow not at the edges of Casey, but to shoot over the heads of all the reproductive rights cases and strike at the heart of Griswold, the privacy right as a liberty interest will collapse just as the freedom to contract as a liberty interest collapsed. Roe will be as dead as Lochner and for the same reasons. Justice Ginsberg foresaw this. She argued that considering a woman’s right to seek an abortion as part and parcel of a woman’s right to gender equality, guaranteed by the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, would anchor it in constitutional text in a way that Griswold and Roe do not.

Dissenting in Gonzales v. Carhart, where the Court upheld a federal abortion law in 2007, Justice Ginsberg noted, “[L]egal challenges to undue restrictions on abortion procedures do not seek to vindicate some generalized notion of privacy; rather, they center on a woman’s autonomy to determine her life’s course, and thus, to enjoy equal citizenship stature.” In other words, women cannot be fully equal, as the Constitution demands, if they lack control over their own bodies and therefore, over their own destinies. Not surprisingly, the Roe era Court should have been listening to RBG all along. How the Supreme Court handles the upcoming Mississippi case may bear this out. Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s notion of “super precedent” (which she applies to Brown v. Board of Education but not Roe v. Wade) could be troubling. Justice Ginsberg’s fear for women, and for society, was that Lochner’s cautionary tale might become a post-Roe handmaid’s tale. However, if the Court takes the more cautious approach, it will leave Justice Ginsberg’s ghost to rest a bit longer.

If you're more concerned about the "leak" than about women,

You are doing it wrong.

Don't be distracted with the leak. They want us to take our eye off the ball.

This political SCOTUS desperately needs to be reformed.

DAMN RIGHT

My body, my choice. I don't give a fuck that I am too old for this to affect me, IT AFFECTS WOMEN, and that is not acceptable. And I am FULL of RAGE.

I am hoping that once the sheer, white-hot rage of a thousand white-hot burning suns dissipates a little, we can formulate a plan of action. Maybe we need another Women's March, maybe we need to fight like hell for all Democratic challengers to republican Senators in the midterms so we can get some goddamned laws passed. Maybe we need to pressure Manchin and Sinema to abolish the filibuster or THEY WILL BE REPLACED.

I don't know yet. I am seething and can't think straight.

And the next woman who says, "Oh well, it doesn't affect me" will receive a throat punch.

PASS THE ERA

Once women have equal rights on the basis of sex, any law limiting what that sex can do is unconstitutional. In other words, women get abortions, men don't. So a ban violates the right to privacy and sexual equality. It's sexual discrimination.

The states have ratified the ERA. Now PASS IT. And don't give me any bullshit about ratification deadlines. These are arbitrary and not constitutional. Article V makes no mention of a time limit for the ratification of a constitutional amendment, and no amendment before the 20th century had a time limit attached to it. The House lifted the deadline. Unfortunately the filibuster prevents the Senate from agreeing.

J6 hearings to start June 9

Just heard Zoe Lofgren say it on msnbc.

More on Pence, the insurrection, and the Secret Service

i first got interested in politics through paranoia. (As the years have gone by, I’ve found that this was the best kind of introduction I could have had.) I devoured political thrillers about dark doings in Washington, D.C. Seven Days in May was my gateway drug. There was Night at Camp David, about a president who went crazy, and Vanished, about a secret peace conference, and the self-explanatory The President’s Plane Is Missing, about another secret peace conference. There was Fail-Safe, the classic about an accidental nuclear exchange. If you dig deep enough, you find that my politics were formed as much by Fletcher Knebel as by anyone else. However, this early reading has become increasingly relevant in recent weeks as we steadily discover that we actually had a half-mad president* who plotted to overthrow the government. Air Force One, I presume, is still where it’s supposed to be.

Over the weekend, speaking at Georgetown, Rep. Jamie Raskin brought us back to a genuinely scarifying tale that emerged concerning what happened with then-Vice President Mike Pence during the height of the violence at the Capitol. It came from an excerpt in the Washington Post from a book by the Post team of Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker published in July of last year:

At that moment, Pence was still in his ceremonial office — protected by Secret Service agents, but vulnerable because the second-floor office had windows that could be breached and the intruding thugs had gained control of the building. Tim Giebels, the lead special agent in charge of the vice president’s protective detail, twice asked Pence to evacuate the Capitol, but Pence refused. “I’m not leaving the Capitol,” he told Giebels. The last thing the vice president wanted was the people attacking the Capitol to see his 20-car motorcade fleeing. That would only vindicate their insurrection.

At 2:26, after a team of agents scouted a safe path to ensure the Pences would not encounter trouble, Giebels and the rest of Pence’s detail guided them down a staircase to a secure subterranean area that rioters couldn’t reach, where the vice president’s armored limousine awaited. Giebels asked Pence to get in one of the vehicles. “We can hold here,” he said.
“I’m not getting in the car, Tim,” Pence replied. “I trust you, Tim, but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car.”

Wait. The vice president refused to obey his Secret Service detail because he was worried that the driver, also from the Secret Service, would abscond with him and Pence would be unable to complete the certification ritual that would make Joe Biden president? And, according to Leonnig and Rucker, this wasn’t the only scene of the Grab Pence drama.

Around this time, [Pence’s national security advisor Keith] Kellogg ran into Tony Ornato in the West Wing. Ornato, who oversaw Secret Service movements, told him that Pence’s detail was planning to move the vice president to Joint Base Andrews. “You can’t do that, Tony,” Kellogg said. “Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it.”

I fear our society is too damaged to repair

I am old enough to remember that it was a good thing to tolerate the other side of politics, even when you didn't agree.

I am old enough to remember when people taught their children to be kind.

I am old enough to remember that if you wanted respect, you extended respect to others.

I am old enough to remember that people apologized when they said or did something thoughtless.

I am old enough to remember when people tried not to purposely offend others in their daily lives.

I am old enough to remember when society was just that - a society. A group who shared this planet.

I am old enough to remember it wasn't cool to be an asshole for the sake of being an asshole.

I am old enough to remember when people respected others instead of making childish jabs at them just because they can.

I am old enough to remember when adults mostly acted with maturity around children instead of acting at their level.

I am old enough to remember when people strived to be positive role models for others.

I am old enough to remember what unselfishness is.

I am old enough to remember what kindness is.

I am old enough to remember what respect is.

I am old enough to remember what integrity is.



I'm not old enough to feel like I belong to some ancient out-of-touch generation because I value respect and tolerance and kindness and I try not to be an asshole. I am 60, not 100 years old. It wasn't that long ago when people were decent and kind just because it's the right thing to do.

Michigan state senator hits back at Republican who claimed she was a pedophile for supporting equali

Source: RawStory

Michigan Republican Lana Theis accused a Democratic state Senate colleague of being a pedophile because she supports LGBTQ+ equality.

Sen. Mallory McMorrow took to the Senate floor Tuesday to respond to allegations Theis made in a fundraising email saying Democrats and McMorrow are “trolls” and “groomers” that “sexualize” children. It's part of a QAnon conspiracy that Democrats are kidnapping children to drink their blood in Satanic rituals and traffick them.

One of the most notable pieces of the conspiracy was Pizzagate, in which QAnon claimed there was a trafficking ring in a DC pizza parlor. It led a man to show up with guns trying to save the children. He was shown that there was no basement in the building and no children being abused. He's now in prison for four years.

When Theis delivered a prayer last week telling God that there are “forces that desire things for them other than what their parents would have them see and hear and know.” That, she concluded was Democratic pedophiles trafficking children.

In response to the allegations on Tuesday, McMorrow said that Theis is accusing her of being a pedophile simply because she stood up to Theis' homophobic attempt to score campaign cash.

"I sat on it for a while wondering why me? Then I realized... I’m the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme," tweeted McMorrow. "Because you can’t claim that you’re targeting marginalized kids in the name of 'parental rights' if another parent is standing up and saying no. So, you dehumanize and marginalize ME. You say I’m one of THEM. You say she’s a groomer, she supports pedophilia, she wants children to believe they were responsible for slavery and to feel bad about themselves because they’re white. Here’s a little background on who I really am."

Read more: https://www.rawstory.com/michigan-republican-groomers-allegations-destroyed/

Multiple Injured After Shooting at South Carolina Mall

Source: Daily Beast

At least 12 people have been injured following a shooting at a South Carolina mall, authorities said Saturday. Columbia Police Chief Skip Holbrook said three people have been detained in a connection to the non-fatal shooting at a Columbiana Centre Mall in Harbison, South Carolina. Of the 12 people that sustained injuries in the shooting, Holbrook said 10 of them were hit by gunfire and two were injured while exiting the mall. Eight people were taken to a local hospital for treatment and two remain in critical condition. “We don't believe this was random,” the chief said, adding that at least one of the detained individuals opened fire at the mall. “We believe that the individuals that were armed knew each other and there was some type of conflict that occurred that resulted in gunfire.”

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/multiple-injured-after-shooting-at-south-carolina-columbiana-centre-mall