The Supreme Court on Friday overruled Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion after almost 50 years in a decision that will transform American life, reshape the nation’s politics and lead to all but total bans on the procedure in about half of the states.
The ruling will test the legitimacy of the court and vindicate a decades-long Republican project of installing conservative justices prepared to reject the precedent, which had been repeatedly reaffirmed by earlier courts. It will also be one of the signal legacies of President Donald J. Trump, who vowed to name justices who would overrule Roe. All three of his appointees were in the majority in the 6-to-3 ruling. …
The decision, which echoed a leaked draft opinion published by Politico in early May, will result in a starkly divided country in which abortion is severely restricted or forbidden in many red states but remains freely available in most blue ones.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voted with the majority but said he would have taken “a more measured course,” stopping short of overruling Roe outright. The court’s three liberal members dissented.
The case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, No. 19-1392, concerned a law enacted in 2018 by the Republican-dominated Mississippi Legislature that banned abortions if “the probable gestational age of the unborn human” was determined to be more than 15 weeks. The statute, a calculated challenge to Roe, included narrow exceptions for medical emergencies or “a severe fetal abnormality.” …
(AP) — The Supreme Court has ended constitutional protections for abortion that had been in place nearly 50 years in a decision by its conservative majority to overturn Roe v. Wade. Friday’s outcome is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states.
The decision, unthinkable just a few years ago, was the culmination of decades of efforts by abortion opponents, made possible by an emboldened right side of the court that has been fortified by three appointees of former President Donald Trump. …
It puts the court at odds with a majority of Americans who favored preserving Roe, according to opinion polls.
Alito, in the final opinion issued Friday, wrote that Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the 1992 decision that reaffirmed the right to abortion, were wrong the day they were decided and must be overturned.
“We hold that Roe and Casey must be overruled. The Constitution makes no reference to abortion, and no such right is implicitly protected by any constitutional provision,” Alito wrote.
Authority to regulate abortion rests with the political branches, not the courts, Alito wrote.
Joining Alito were Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The latter three justices are Trump appointees. Thomas first voted to overrule Roe 30 years ago.
Chief Justice John Roberts would have stopped short of ending the abortion right, noting that he would have upheld the Mississippi law at the heart of the case, a ban on abortion after 15 weeks, and said no more.
Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — the diminished liberal wing of the court — were in dissent. …
Having cleared the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Samuel Alito is one step closer to a seat on the Supreme Court and an important role on the issue of abortion.
Judiciary Committee Democrats aggressively questioned Alito on his commitment to abortion rights throughout his Senate confirmation hearings. Alito vowed to approach the issue with an open mind. But he did not call Roe “settled law” and did not say whether he would uphold the precedent. Alito’s views on abortion were also addressed by outside witnesses testifying before the panel. …
The speculation over how Justice Alito might treat abortion cases stems from several opinions he wrote in the 1980s. The first, a 1985 memo he produced while working as a Justice Department lawyer, discusses whether the government should take a position on an abortion rights case pending before the court. In his memo, Alito wrote that the government “should make clear that we disagree with Roe v. Wade,” the pivotal 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion. …
During his confirmation hearings the week of Jan. 9, Alito said repeatedly that Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion, warranted respect. But he declined to call it “settled law.” Alito is nominated to succeed Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, who over the past decade has held a key vote in favor of Roe. …
I found another good site also. To which the result are the same for Others although the number vary slightly.
Those are the sites I used initially. Since then I found I was shy 50.000 write in votes for Pennsylvania. Even so it just makes my argument stronger. Others were more historically in 2016 than previously and were the determining factor in this election. Who is bugging you?
Y’know, further proof of how accurate this account is was provided in the 2020 election, where in all 3 states the third party votes went right back to 2012 numbers.
Erik Loomis at LGM and some people at Eschaton. They always point to Comey, and campaigns and other important, but unmeasurable effects on the election and refuse to take these actual voting records into account.
Screw them pompous asses. I did this about a week ago. I just did not count counties yet. Too damn busy in a new house, establishing myself, and keeping healthy
Democrats blew it in Michigan. I was there in the midst of it all. a minor Township official in a Republican county and watching us fall on our faces as the DNC ignored all the warning signs in the last two months. Sure some of the Comey shit had an impact. We took trump lightly and Clinton had a legacy thanks to Bill Clinton.
We did it to ourselves just like we are doing again now. And the party muck-amucks still have not learned.
I have been opening my mouth about this since 2016 on Economist’s View. Recently on LGM and Eschaton, as the 2016 election has made clear the effect it had on the entire country. And effects that will go on for quite awhile.
Meaning . . . if you need something, tell me. I probably have the data or can find it. I had the update done weeks ago just out of curiosity. I do numbers.
The bill is the most significant gun measure to clear Congress in nearly three decades, though it falls short of more restrictive gun control proposals that Democrats favor.
President Biden on Saturday signed into law a bipartisan gun bill intended to prevent dangerous people from accessing firearms and invest in mental health across the country, breaking through years of stalemate over whether to toughen the nation’s gun laws.
Mr. Biden signed the bill a day after it cleared the House, and two days after it passed the Senate, where a small bipartisan group of senators labored to reach a compromise that could break a Republican filibuster, a hurdle that has long stymied any effort to change gun laws.
Passage of the legislation came one month after a horrific mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, left 19 children and two teachers dead, as the country was already reeling from a racist attack at a supermarket in Buffalo, N.Y. And while Mr. Biden acknowledged that the bill fell far short of the sweeping gun control measures he had pushed for, he noted that it included some long-sought priorities.
The interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that asserts gun-rights is more about personal-protection than paramilitary defense because it’s in the English Bill of Rights is an arguable reason for Clarence Thomas to assert it’s mainly about personal protection. There definitely needs to be a similar right-to-abortion on demand written into federal law, as Liz Warren & others have pointed out. However, it still won’t be’ in the Constitution.
However, since the Constitution says nothing at all about this matter, that leaves it up to the states to permit it if they choose. For now. The same applies to marriage and reproductive rights, presumably.
The US system has been observed to be a laboratory for offering rights that are not prohibited (or mentioned) in the Constitution.
So, yes the banning of assault style weapons is legal in the US. The other part of this is a bullet-spewing-weapon owner is not a militia. Article 1 Section 8 Clauses 15 and 16 explains what constitutes a militia. Claiming you are a militia does not entitle you to own an assault style weapon or to live a fantasy.
Read Article 1.
This is so, up to a point. Even Clarence Thomas agrees that military-style weapons can be regulated, at least somewhat. But the self-protection aspect comes out of the English Bill of Rights, and from the Virginia Constitution, which much influenced the US document.
Article I. Bill of Rights
Section 13. Militia; standing armies; military subordinate to civil power
That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people, trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state, therefore, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.
(In the English Bill of Rights, the focus is on personal protection, perhaps from the guv’mint.)
[The Congress shall have Power . . . ] To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; . . .
Clause 16 Organization of Militias
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
(Details are scant. The FF’s were notoriously afraid of ‘standing armies’.)
Clarence Thomas apparently supports regulation of military-style weapons.
The US constitutional language is derived from the same topic in the Virginia Constitution & its Bill of Rights. The right to bear arms was previously enshrined in the English Bill of Rights, where it seemed to focus on personal protection, but that may have meant ‘protection from the guv’mint’ mostly.)
The immediate concern here is the Supreme Court going after various ‘unenumerated rights’ (birth-control, same-sex marriage, the list goes on…) because they seem to feel they have a mandate. (Really?)
Freedom of speech & religion, the right to bear arms, no quartering of troops, are probably not in jeopardy. Atheists beware however.
The Right to Bear Arms is baked into what it means to be an American.
I guess “up to a point” is what makes it tricky. You seem to prefer “interpreting the words of dead white men” to looking at the needs and “natural'( god given?} rights of the people as against their government. also, without even noticing it perhaps you prefer the rights “your side” demands, and discount the rights other people foolishly think they have and want.
there is a chance we could all just get along, but not if we start out that way.
what’s wrong with the current SC is that they don’t even pretend to make sense. they might as well be quoting Tucker Carlson as James Madison…who, himself, was not god nor even the voice of god. Just a pretty good man doing the best he could (which was petty good, even if he was slave-holder). the SC and other “original intent’ findamentalists want us to give up our own best thinking and defer to what they tell us was the god-like wisdom of the framers. who probably never heard of speed limits, either.
or, we could try to amend the constitution. agree with our neighbors to write laws we can all live with (they would be surprised to learn what Christ said about such things), or we could prosecute cerain Justices for lying under oath, or we could impeach them.. if, of course, the other party did not control the elections, due to a mistake we say those otherwise perfect beings we like to quote made at the beginning.
It’s fine to quote famous men, or women, even if they were white, if we think what they said sheds light on some current issue. but it is idle to quote them and demand other people agree with us because we found something a famous person once said that proves we are right and always were, from the beginning.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Institutional constraints are sufficient not because said institution can do what we most want when our side controls said institution, but rather only when said institution cannot do what we most despise when their side controls said institution are institutional constraints sufficient. Power corrupts…
Various pieces appeared in the NYer after the 2016 election asserting that it was Russian meddling that swung the vote to Donald Trump, or that it was third-party voting that did the trick. Also it was believed that it was due to Fox News influence. Probably it was all of this & more. Or Hillary was ‘just not likeable enuf’. Look for a repeat in 2024, probably not with Jill Stein as a culprit.
The flavor that says Susan Sarandon is not very much to blame for our troubles.
The flavor that says the Russians were really excited about Trump becoming US president, if only to get even for all the effort the US has made to ‘liberalize’ Russia.
Well, I dunno. I am not a student of election politics. But I assume both parties hire real experts to do esactly that. Why the R’s stumbled on the fact that the very stpid outnumber the reasonably sane, and the D’s stumbled upon victim-group feel-good-words politics, may just have been the flip of a coin, since nobody on either side seems to be interested in, or capabe of, finding real solutions to real problems.
I did listen to the 5th Jan 6 panel, and it struck me that the people running the Justice Department sounded at least very competent, far more competent than Congessmen ever sound, or than I could ever be at the kind of job they were doing. So I had to wonder why often enough the job they are doing results in terrible injustice, And of course, there was that terribly honorable man from Arizona (was it?), who in spite of knowing that Trump is a bully and a crook would vote for him again if it was a choice beween Trump and Biden.
Does he know something I don’t know?
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
D’s & R’s stumbled through history pandering for votes following the path of least resistance as accorded by the fateful consequences of institutional realities while simultaneously courting the donor class alongside voting majorities rather than chosen by a mere coin toss. IOW, it could have had no other possible outcome from the starting point of inequality and elite institutions. However, the outcome is exactly as you wrote.
The conscientiousness of many bureaucrats maintains a life in the US far better than the political reality of it. We are fortunate to be surrounded by many good, decent people, just not good, decent, powerful people. OTOH, entirely well meaning people find themselves powerless against the political reality leading to strange flights of desperation. Either not understanding anything about the institutional requirements for forging a nation state that operates for the good of its general population or merely being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the joint public effort required, then settling for irrational personalizing of the the conflict into a virtual mud-wrestling act can be satisfying in a mind-numbing way. Trump certainly has the character of a mud-wrestler far more than the character of a leader. Ordinary Joe is routinely underwhelming in his performance, but better than the alternatives in my mind.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
Unintended consequences and exogenous events can overwhelm even political elites and their rich and powerful sponsors. So, there is no way to know what tomorrow may bring; it is always darkest before the dawn and all that.
as far as I know, and it’s not much. the Republican Party of 1856 and 1860 arose AGAINST the institutional realities of their time. Fortunately for them a hayseed lawyer from somewhere out west arose at the same time to lead them. By appealing not to (that is, against) racial prejudice, he appealed to their native sense of justice and their own economic reality, and ultimately to their patriotism, to overthrow the prevailing institutional reality and set American on a course, for a while, toward fulfilling that mission of liberty and justice for all, government for the people, upon which it had been founded…contrary to Justice Alito’s vision of it having been founded on the foundation of 17th Century British common law.
We had a bit of a revival of this dedication following World War Two, but, as always, the Enemy simply changed his coat and his tactics and patiently restored the institutional reality of Time since the fall.
[I am thinking not of that other crusader (so to speak) against the worship of Self, but of an earlier critic who observed “All things are created out of Chaos through injustice, the one against the other, until they are returned by retribution according to the order of time.” or something like that.]
The beginning of the end of Roe v. Wade arrived on election night in November 2010.
That night, control of state houses across the country flipped from Democrat to Republican, almost to the number: Democrats had controlled 27 statelegislatures going inand ended up with 16; Republicans started with 14 andended upcontrolling 25. Republicans swept not only the South but Democratic strongholds in the Midwest, picking up more seats nationwide than either party had in four decades. By the time the votes had been counted, they held their biggest marginsince the Great Depression. …
A slow-burning hostility to constitutional abortion rights runs through the career of the author of the Supreme Court opinion overturning them.
In the spring of 1985, a 35-year-old lawyer in the Justice Department, Samuel A. Alito Jr., cautioned the Reagan administration against mounting a frontal assault on Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that declared a constitutional right to abortion. The Supreme Court was not ready to overturn it, he said, so urging it to do so could backfire.
In a memo offering advice on two pending cases that challenged state laws regulating abortion, Mr. Alito advocated focusing on a more incremental argument: The court should uphold the regulations as reasonable. That strategy would “advance the goals of bringing about the eventual overruling of Roe v. Wade and, in the meantime, of mitigating its effects.”
More than three decades later, Justice Alito has fulfilled that vision, cementing his place in history as the author of a consequential ruling overturning Roe, along with a 1992 precedent that reaffirmed that decision, Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The reversal means tens of millions of women in conservative-controlled states are losing access to abortion. …
<a href=”https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/25/us/how-roe-ended.html?smid=tw-share”>How Did Roe Fall? Before a Decisive Ruling Came a Powerful Red Wave.</a>
<a href=”https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/us/politics/samuel-alito-abortion.html?smid=tw-share”>Decades Ago, Samuel Alito Laid Out Methodical Strategy to Eventually Overrule Roe</a>
but as for the coin toss, i have a private “parable” in which i imagine the parties are poker players at an elite country club. they play for real money, so it is not “just” a kabuki, but don’t imagine they are going to let the help staff sit in on a game. or — this parable — the people are just the cards, and the players divide up the cards either randomly as in normal cards, or carefully so that each player has an equal chance at winning not decided by the mere fall of the shuffle. then the players decide what issues each will represent according to what votes they expect them to attract. none of the players care about the issues, but they are guessing which combination of issues will get the most votes in the end, according, of course, as to how they are played. who gets what issue is decided by strategy of course, but if both sides think an issue might benefit them, who gets to use it is decided by a coin toss…or somethigng like that. in other words a real game for real money, but the issues, or the voters, are just the cards. and the help staff is not invited to play..
i think the technocrats are necessary to keep the ship (new parable) running, and they need to be reaonably competent, but they don’t decide where the ship is going, nor can they overrule a captain who is more worried about the business advantages of a new cross-atlantic record than he is about ice bergs in the dark. also, if you have had the fortune of working in a bureaucracy…buxiness or government…there is a large about of politics, personal dominance issues, corruption and plain stupidity even among the technocrats and middle managers to keep things from ever becoming as rational as we might like.
personally, i believe the Fed is too wired in to interest rate manipulation to even imagine they might not be the tool for the present job. or maybe, for technical reasons, we just need another recession right now. and when was the last time anybody remembered that Social Security was invented as a way for working people to save their own money for their own retirement, insured against the disasters that capitalism, in spite of it’s virtues, inevitably creates, as well as the disasters that Congress inevitably creates by lying to the people and then having to play to the lies that the people believe.
Ron (RC) Weakley (A.K.A., Darryl For A While At EV) says:
I appreciate your Constitutional and historical analysis, but I’d like to push an alternate view;
What was written “then” does not have as much effect on the law we get as what the appointed (for political reasons) Justices want to stretch it (constitution and history) to mean. We all know that, and just pretend it isn’t so. Hard to get confirmed if we don’t piously assert we believe in “the law” and will not change it to suit our personal preferences.
That said, a lot of people actually believe that abortion is murder, and that they need guns to defend themselves…from the government if necessary. It might help us to call them names if it energizes us and convinces those not already convinced. But when the belivers are very many, organized, and well led, name calling becomes counterproductive. Or maybe I am wrong about that, and screaming in the streets will have an effect. But I think that in these time an undeground railroad would do more good for women who “need” an abortion. and behavioral changes on their part might reduce the numbers of those who “need” one. only guessing here.
as for the Constitutional right to bear arms, i think that could be met by “militias” that satisfied the desire to bear arms while keeping assault weapons out of the hands of people who should not have them. but don’t look for anyone to actually try to do something like that when it is so much more fun to scream at each other and do effectively nothing.
Constitutional and historical argument may do some good with the people who believe in such things. but political reality is something quite different. By ignoring, or despising, the feelings (i woudn’t call them “opinions”) of (a little less than) half of the population, we have given the Enemy a political base we cannot reliably oppose, and by escalating the fears on both sides we may have created a situation where civil war or authoritarian coup is at least no longer unthinkable. Maybe the boys in blue will save us again, but it will be harder for them to know who to shoot at, and there is no Lincoln in sight.
I can only add that I wish the ‘originalists’ on the Court now had a better sense of how language & meaning changes over 230 years and, therefore, were significantly ‘smarter’ than they seem to be about ‘original intent’.
then we could stop arguing about commas and at least honestly argue about what is good for the country.
which won’t stop the arguing but might get us to start thinking about what matters.
i was wondering if instead of packing the court it isn’t time for a Constitutional Amendment. It would have to start with a Constitutional Convention, because it won’t start with any Congress or State Legislature we are likely to see. that would be like asking King George to write the Declaration of Independence.
Article V (of the Constitution) allows the states to call a Constitutional Convention if two-thirds (or 34) of 50 states submit a resolution proposing an amendment on one or many topics (or just a general call for convention without proposing a specific topic).
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of …
Note, the Constitution is only the “framework”. At first it did not have a Bill of Rights because, they said, such a bill would tend to make people believe we had no other Rights than those enumerated. so they threw in the Tenth to make sure future courts would remember that enumerated Rights did not mean to exclude other Rights.
Alito clearly has not understood this.
At some point we, all of us, need to stand up and say this: we have a rogue Court whose intention is to destroy the Rights of the people and establish A Rule of whatever the Court says the Law is, despite their protestations to the contrary.
Sam Alito all along, apparently, had an agenda, and that was to get Roe overturned. I did watch a clip from his confirmation hearing today in which he referred to the stare decisis aspects of that decision, which is tantamount to calling that decision ‘settled law. Previously, I had read that he never had said such. I have also read & posted that as a DoJ attorney in the Reagan administration in 1985, he submitted memos about a strategy to get Roe overturned.
NYT: During his confirmation hearing in January 2006, Mr. Alito said he would approach the issue of abortion with an open mind.
“Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. It was decided in 1973, so it has been on the books for a long time,” he said.
But he stopped short of calling the landmark ruling settled law.
“If settled means it can’t be re-examined, then that’s one thing,” he told senators on the Judiciary Committee. “If settled means that it is a precedent that is entitled to respect as stare decisis, and all of the factors that I’ve mentioned come into play, including the reaffirmation and all of that, then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis in that way.”
Usually, if not always, SC nominees have refuse to state how they will decide on future cases before the court. It appears that some of them also decided they would refuse to respond because such responses might incriminate them eventually. I’m pretty sure that one doesn’t have to specifically cite the 5th Amendment in order to employ it, but I am not a lawyer.
Should the Dems pick up more House and Senate seats this fall, then expect impeachment proceedings (for perjury in confirmation hearings) for at least four Justices to begin forthwith.
Presumably, SC nominees are sworn in for their confirmation hearings, wherein they promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, etc. And presumably that means they would necessarily reveal hidden agendas about future decisions when questioned. However citing the 5th Amendment protection for self-incrimination would be such ‘bad optics’ in those hearings.
(Previously a Florida GOP guv’nah, currently a Dem Congressman, also running to be FL guv’nah again, as a Dem, wants to impeach justices for perjury.)
“Today’s ruling makes clear that Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh lied to Congress when they testified, under oath, that in their view Roe v. Wade was settled precedent. Perjury is a crime. If perjury is found to have occurred, the correct remedy is impeachment,” Crist said in a statement issued in the wake of Friday’s bombshell announcement of the decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade. …
Impeachment should be “very seriously considered” if Supreme Court justices lied in their confirmation hearings about their intentions to overturn Roe v. Wade, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told “Meet the Press” Sunday. …
… The floodwaters that raged through Yellowstone this week changed the course of rivers, tore out bridges, poured through homes and forced the evacuation of thousands of visitors from the nation’s oldest national park.
It is difficult to directly connect the damage in Yellowstone to a rapidly warming climate — rivers have flooded for millenniums — but scientists are raising the alarm that in the coming years destruction related to climate change will reach nearly all 423 national parks, which are particularly vulnerable to rising temperatures.
The litany of threats read like a biblical reckoning: fire and flood, melting ice sheets, rising seas and heat waves.
Rangers in Glacier National Park in Montana are counting down the years to when the park will have no glaciers left. …
The cactuses in Saguaro National Park in Arizona, icons of the rugged, arid West with prickly arms that reach for bright blue desert sky, are dying from the heat.
Extreme heat is also a major problem in Joshua Tree National Park, where scientists are mulling a future when the park would be mostly denuded of the trees it was named after.
Joshua trees are dying from both rising temperatures and wildfires. A blaze in the nearby Mojave National Preserve in 2020 killed 1.3 million trees, leaving the park management to describe one area as “a graveyard of Joshua tree skeletons.”
Climate change has increased temperatures across the United States. But because so many national parks are at high elevations, in the arid Southwest or in the Arctic, they are being disproportionately affected by global warming. A 2018 study found that temperatures in national parks are rising at twice the rate as the country as a whole.
“Every single one of our more than 400 national parks are suffering,” said Stephanie Kodish, the director of the climate change program at the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit and nonpartisan advocacy group. …
… Climate change has increased temperatures across the United States. But because so many national parks are at high elevations, in the arid Southwest or in the Arctic, they are being disproportionately affected by global warming. A 2018 study found that temperatures in national parks are rising at twice the rate as the country as a whole.
“Every single one of our more than 400 national parks are suffering,” said Stephanie Kodish, the director of the climate change program at the National Parks Conservation Association, a nonprofit and nonpartisan advocacy group.
Ms. Kodish said the culprit of the extreme weather was in most cases clear: Human-caused temperature rises are destroying the very places that Americans saw as the pristine escapes from the traffic-clogged and built-up landscapes of their daily lives.
“We are literally making a choice to wipe out these things that are gems of our world, that are gifts for us to pass down,” she said.
Damage linked to climate change is occurring from Florida to Alaska.
At Everglades National Park, the vast wetlands southwest of Miami, rising sea levels are causing the salinization of groundwater, endangering tropical orchids and other endangered wildlife.
Wildfires are a constant threat during summer months in and around Yosemite National Park, the gem of the Sierra Nevada. For the past several years, visitors to the popular park have driven through vast landscapes of charred stumps. Park rangers have also been confronted by freak weather events they had never before witnessed: In January last year, gusts tore through a grove of giant sequoias and brought down 15 mature trees, wrecking recently constructed visitor facilities.
Supreme Court Overturns Roe v Wade
NY Times – June 24
Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, allowing states to ban abortions
Boston Globe – June 24
Judging Samuel Alito on Abortion Rights
NPR – January 24, 2006
Run,
Can you give me the link to your numbers about third party voters in 2016 in WI, MI and PA that caused this abortion?
https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_election_in_Pennsylvania,_2016
https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_election_in_Michigan,_2016
https://ballotpedia.org/Presidential_election_in_Wisconsin,_2016
I found another good site also. To which the result are the same for Others although the number vary slightly.
Those are the sites I used initially. Since then I found I was shy 50.000 write in votes for Pennsylvania. Even so it just makes my argument stronger. Others were more historically in 2016 than previously and were the determining factor in this election. Who is bugging you?
Y’know, further proof of how accurate this account is was provided in the 2020 election, where in all 3 states the third party votes went right back to 2012 numbers.
Erik Loomis at LGM and some people at Eschaton. They always point to Comey, and campaigns and other important, but unmeasurable effects on the election and refuse to take these actual voting records into account.
EM
Screw them pompous asses. I did this about a week ago. I just did not count counties yet. Too damn busy in a new house, establishing myself, and keeping healthy
Democrats blew it in Michigan. I was there in the midst of it all. a minor Township official in a Republican county and watching us fall on our faces as the DNC ignored all the warning signs in the last two months. Sure some of the Comey shit had an impact. We took trump lightly and Clinton had a legacy thanks to Bill Clinton.
We did it to ourselves just like we are doing again now. And the party muck-amucks still have not learned.
Perfect. Thanks.
EM
Gotta open your mouth. I was wondering the same a while back.
I have been opening my mouth about this since 2016 on Economist’s View. Recently on LGM and Eschaton, as the 2016 election has made clear the effect it had on the entire country. And effects that will go on for quite awhile.
EM
Meaning . . . if you need something, tell me. I probably have the data or can find it. I had the update done weeks ago just out of curiosity. I do numbers.
Biden Signs Bipartisan Gun Bill, Ending Years of Stalemate
NY Times – June 25
Enjoy it while you can. Figure a year or so before the Supreme Court kills it.
The interpretation of the 2nd Amendment that asserts gun-rights is more about personal-protection than paramilitary defense because it’s in the English Bill of Rights is an arguable reason for Clarence Thomas to assert it’s mainly about personal protection. There definitely needs to be a similar right-to-abortion on demand written into federal law, as Liz Warren & others have pointed out. However, it still won’t be’ in the Constitution.
However, since the Constitution says nothing at all about this matter, that leaves it up to the states to permit it if they choose. For now. The same applies to marriage and reproductive rights, presumably.
The US system has been observed to be a laboratory for offering rights that are not prohibited (or mentioned) in the Constitution.
The US system has been observed to be a laboratory for states to offer rights that are not prohibited (or mentioned) in the Constitution.
So, yes the banning of assault style weapons is legal in the US. The other part of this is a bullet-spewing-weapon owner is not a militia. Article 1 Section 8 Clauses 15 and 16 explains what constitutes a militia. Claiming you are a militia does not entitle you to own an assault style weapon or to live a fantasy.
Read Article 1.
This is so, up to a point. Even Clarence Thomas agrees that military-style weapons can be regulated, at least somewhat. But the self-protection aspect comes out of the English Bill of Rights, and from the Virginia Constitution, which much influenced the US document.
(In the English Bill of Rights, the focus is on personal protection, perhaps from the guv’mint.)
(Details are scant. The FF’s were notoriously afraid of ‘standing armies’.)
Clarence Thomas apparently supports regulation of military-style weapons.
The US constitutional language is derived from the same topic in the Virginia Constitution & its Bill of Rights. The right to bear arms was previously enshrined in the English Bill of Rights, where it seemed to focus on personal protection, but that may have meant ‘protection from the guv’mint’ mostly.)
The immediate concern here is the Supreme Court going after various ‘unenumerated rights’ (birth-control, same-sex marriage, the list goes on…) because they seem to feel they have a mandate. (Really?)
Freedom of speech & religion, the right to bear arms, no quartering of troops, are probably not in jeopardy. Atheists beware however.
The Right to Bear Arms is baked into what it means to be an American.
Just like the Right to Consume Alcohol.
Dobbs
I guess “up to a point” is what makes it tricky. You seem to prefer “interpreting the words of dead white men” to looking at the needs and “natural'( god given?} rights of the people as against their government. also, without even noticing it perhaps you prefer the rights “your side” demands, and discount the rights other people foolishly think they have and want.
there is a chance we could all just get along, but not if we start out that way.
what’s wrong with the current SC is that they don’t even pretend to make sense. they might as well be quoting Tucker Carlson as James Madison…who, himself, was not god nor even the voice of god. Just a pretty good man doing the best he could (which was petty good, even if he was slave-holder). the SC and other “original intent’ findamentalists want us to give up our own best thinking and defer to what they tell us was the god-like wisdom of the framers. who probably never heard of speed limits, either.
or, we could try to amend the constitution. agree with our neighbors to write laws we can all live with (they would be surprised to learn what Christ said about such things), or we could prosecute cerain Justices for lying under oath, or we could impeach them.. if, of course, the other party did not control the elections, due to a mistake we say those otherwise perfect beings we like to quote made at the beginning.
It’s fine to quote famous men, or women, even if they were white, if we think what they said sheds light on some current issue. but it is idle to quote them and demand other people agree with us because we found something a famous person once said that proves we are right and always were, from the beginning.
Institutional constraints are sufficient not because said institution can do what we most want when our side controls said institution, but rather only when said institution cannot do what we most despise when their side controls said institution are institutional constraints sufficient. Power corrupts…
Various pieces appeared in the NYer after the 2016 election asserting that it was Russian meddling that swung the vote to Donald Trump, or that it was third-party voting that did the trick. Also it was believed that it was due to Fox News influence. Probably it was all of this & more. Or Hillary was ‘just not likeable enuf’. Look for a repeat in 2024, probably not with Jill Stein as a culprit.
So, what flavor is that Kool-Aid you are drinking?
The flavor that says Susan Sarandon is not very much to blame for our troubles.
The flavor that says the Russians were really excited about Trump becoming US president, if only to get even for all the effort the US has made to ‘liberalize’ Russia.
Well, I dunno. I am not a student of election politics. But I assume both parties hire real experts to do esactly that. Why the R’s stumbled on the fact that the very stpid outnumber the reasonably sane, and the D’s stumbled upon victim-group feel-good-words politics, may just have been the flip of a coin, since nobody on either side seems to be interested in, or capabe of, finding real solutions to real problems.
I did listen to the 5th Jan 6 panel, and it struck me that the people running the Justice Department sounded at least very competent, far more competent than Congessmen ever sound, or than I could ever be at the kind of job they were doing. So I had to wonder why often enough the job they are doing results in terrible injustice, And of course, there was that terribly honorable man from Arizona (was it?), who in spite of knowing that Trump is a bully and a crook would vote for him again if it was a choice beween Trump and Biden.
Does he know something I don’t know?
Coberly,
D’s & R’s stumbled through history pandering for votes following the path of least resistance as accorded by the fateful consequences of institutional realities while simultaneously courting the donor class alongside voting majorities rather than chosen by a mere coin toss. IOW, it could have had no other possible outcome from the starting point of inequality and elite institutions. However, the outcome is exactly as you wrote.
The conscientiousness of many bureaucrats maintains a life in the US far better than the political reality of it. We are fortunate to be surrounded by many good, decent people, just not good, decent, powerful people. OTOH, entirely well meaning people find themselves powerless against the political reality leading to strange flights of desperation. Either not understanding anything about the institutional requirements for forging a nation state that operates for the good of its general population or merely being overwhelmed by the magnitude of the joint public effort required, then settling for irrational personalizing of the the conflict into a virtual mud-wrestling act can be satisfying in a mind-numbing way. Trump certainly has the character of a mud-wrestler far more than the character of a leader. Ordinary Joe is routinely underwhelming in his performance, but better than the alternatives in my mind.
Unintended consequences and exogenous events can overwhelm even political elites and their rich and powerful sponsors. So, there is no way to know what tomorrow may bring; it is always darkest before the dawn and all that.
yeah, but madame guillotine didn’t really do much good in the long run.
Ron,
as far as I know, and it’s not much. the Republican Party of 1856 and 1860 arose AGAINST the institutional realities of their time. Fortunately for them a hayseed lawyer from somewhere out west arose at the same time to lead them. By appealing not to (that is, against) racial prejudice, he appealed to their native sense of justice and their own economic reality, and ultimately to their patriotism, to overthrow the prevailing institutional reality and set American on a course, for a while, toward fulfilling that mission of liberty and justice for all, government for the people, upon which it had been founded…contrary to Justice Alito’s vision of it having been founded on the foundation of 17th Century British common law.
We had a bit of a revival of this dedication following World War Two, but, as always, the Enemy simply changed his coat and his tactics and patiently restored the institutional reality of Time since the fall.
[I am thinking not of that other crusader (so to speak) against the worship of Self, but of an earlier critic who observed “All things are created out of Chaos through injustice, the one against the other, until they are returned by retribution according to the order of time.” or something like that.]
The downfall of the constitutional right to abortion began 12 years ago, after Republicans swept state house elections
NY Times – June 25
Decades Ago, Alito Laid Out Methodical Strategy to Eventually Overrule Roe
NY Times – June 25
<a href=”https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/25/us/how-roe-ended.html?smid=tw-share”>How Did Roe Fall? Before a Decisive Ruling Came a Powerful Red Wave.</a>
<a href=”https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/25/us/politics/samuel-alito-abortion.html?smid=tw-share”>Decades Ago, Samuel Alito Laid Out Methodical Strategy to Eventually Overrule Roe</a>
Ron
agree.
but as for the coin toss, i have a private “parable” in which i imagine the parties are poker players at an elite country club. they play for real money, so it is not “just” a kabuki, but don’t imagine they are going to let the help staff sit in on a game. or — this parable — the people are just the cards, and the players divide up the cards either randomly as in normal cards, or carefully so that each player has an equal chance at winning not decided by the mere fall of the shuffle. then the players decide what issues each will represent according to what votes they expect them to attract. none of the players care about the issues, but they are guessing which combination of issues will get the most votes in the end, according, of course, as to how they are played. who gets what issue is decided by strategy of course, but if both sides think an issue might benefit them, who gets to use it is decided by a coin toss…or somethigng like that. in other words a real game for real money, but the issues, or the voters, are just the cards. and the help staff is not invited to play..
i think the technocrats are necessary to keep the ship (new parable) running, and they need to be reaonably competent, but they don’t decide where the ship is going, nor can they overrule a captain who is more worried about the business advantages of a new cross-atlantic record than he is about ice bergs in the dark. also, if you have had the fortune of working in a bureaucracy…buxiness or government…there is a large about of politics, personal dominance issues, corruption and plain stupidity even among the technocrats and middle managers to keep things from ever becoming as rational as we might like.
personally, i believe the Fed is too wired in to interest rate manipulation to even imagine they might not be the tool for the present job. or maybe, for technical reasons, we just need another recession right now. and when was the last time anybody remembered that Social Security was invented as a way for working people to save their own money for their own retirement, insured against the disasters that capitalism, in spite of it’s virtues, inevitably creates, as well as the disasters that Congress inevitably creates by lying to the people and then having to play to the lies that the people believe.
Coberly,
Yes sir. Two too good parables.
Dobbs
I appreciate your Constitutional and historical analysis, but I’d like to push an alternate view;
What was written “then” does not have as much effect on the law we get as what the appointed (for political reasons) Justices want to stretch it (constitution and history) to mean. We all know that, and just pretend it isn’t so. Hard to get confirmed if we don’t piously assert we believe in “the law” and will not change it to suit our personal preferences.
That said, a lot of people actually believe that abortion is murder, and that they need guns to defend themselves…from the government if necessary. It might help us to call them names if it energizes us and convinces those not already convinced. But when the belivers are very many, organized, and well led, name calling becomes counterproductive. Or maybe I am wrong about that, and screaming in the streets will have an effect. But I think that in these time an undeground railroad would do more good for women who “need” an abortion. and behavioral changes on their part might reduce the numbers of those who “need” one. only guessing here.
as for the Constitutional right to bear arms, i think that could be met by “militias” that satisfied the desire to bear arms while keeping assault weapons out of the hands of people who should not have them. but don’t look for anyone to actually try to do something like that when it is so much more fun to scream at each other and do effectively nothing.
Constitutional and historical argument may do some good with the people who believe in such things. but political reality is something quite different. By ignoring, or despising, the feelings (i woudn’t call them “opinions”) of (a little less than) half of the population, we have given the Enemy a political base we cannot reliably oppose, and by escalating the fears on both sides we may have created a situation where civil war or authoritarian coup is at least no longer unthinkable. Maybe the boys in blue will save us again, but it will be harder for them to know who to shoot at, and there is no Lincoln in sight.
I can only add that I wish the ‘originalists’ on the Court now had a better sense of how language & meaning changes over 230 years and, therefore, were significantly ‘smarter’ than they seem to be about ‘original intent’.
Dobbs,
yes. that would be a good pace to start.
then we could stop arguing about commas and at least honestly argue about what is good for the country.
which won’t stop the arguing but might get us to start thinking about what matters.
i was wondering if instead of packing the court it isn’t time for a Constitutional Amendment. It would have to start with a Constitutional Convention, because it won’t start with any Congress or State Legislature we are likely to see. that would be like asking King George to write the Declaration of Independence.
Article V (of the Constitution) allows the states to call a Constitutional Convention if two-thirds (or 34) of 50 states submit a resolution proposing an amendment on one or many topics (or just a general call for convention without proposing a specific topic).
what does the constitution say if more than
one third of the states are in the hands of a coup which controls the outcome of elections?
and a majority of the Supreme Court are part of the coup?
maybe we could join the Organization of Banana Republics.
Or perhaps The pFree Trade Axis of China, US, and Russia.
Dobbs
The original intent of the Framers was
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of …
Note, the Constitution is only the “framework”. At first it did not have a Bill of Rights because, they said, such a bill would tend to make people believe we had no other Rights than those enumerated. so they threw in the Tenth to make sure future courts would remember that enumerated Rights did not mean to exclude other Rights.
Alito clearly has not understood this.
At some point we, all of us, need to stand up and say this: we have a rogue Court whose intention is to destroy the Rights of the people and establish A Rule of whatever the Court says the Law is, despite their protestations to the contrary.
Of course this could be tricky.
Sam Alito all along, apparently, had an agenda, and that was to get Roe overturned. I did watch a clip from his confirmation hearing today in which he referred to the stare decisis aspects of that decision, which is tantamount to calling that decision ‘settled law. Previously, I had read that he never had said such. I have also read & posted that as a DoJ attorney in the Reagan administration in 1985, he submitted memos about a strategy to get Roe overturned.
Sam Alito in his confirmation hearing – Jan 2006
NYT: During his confirmation hearing in January 2006, Mr. Alito said he would approach the issue of abortion with an open mind.
“Roe v. Wade is an important precedent of the Supreme Court. It was decided in 1973, so it has been on the books for a long time,” he said.
But he stopped short of calling the landmark ruling settled law.
“If settled means it can’t be re-examined, then that’s one thing,” he told senators on the Judiciary Committee. “If settled means that it is a precedent that is entitled to respect as stare decisis, and all of the factors that I’ve mentioned come into play, including the reaffirmation and all of that, then it is a precedent that is protected, entitled to respect under the doctrine of stare decisis in that way.”
Usually, if not always, SC nominees have refuse to state how they will decide on future cases before the court. It appears that some of them also decided they would refuse to respond because such responses might incriminate them eventually. I’m pretty sure that one doesn’t have to specifically cite the 5th Amendment in order to employ it, but I am not a lawyer.
ey, nobody said these guys don’t know the law. but they also know how to lie without technically being guilty of perjury.
me, i am not so gullible as the senators who believed him. you’d think, being professional liars themselves they’d be on to the weasel words.
A slow-burning hostility to constitutional abortion rights runs through the career of Sam Alito
Should the Dems pick up more House and Senate seats this fall, then expect impeachment proceedings (for perjury in confirmation hearings) for at least four Justices to begin forthwith.
Presumably, SC nominees are sworn in for their confirmation hearings, wherein they promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, etc. And presumably that means they would necessarily reveal hidden agendas about future decisions when questioned. However citing the 5th Amendment protection for self-incrimination would be such ‘bad optics’ in those hearings.
I respected it
I examined it
I changed my mind
There is no case for perjury here.
Maybe the Dems need to work on getting out the vote.
Floridian Charlie Crist calls for impeachment of justices
(Previously a Florida GOP guv’nah, currently a Dem Congressman, also running to be FL guv’nah again, as a Dem, wants to impeach justices for perjury.)
“Today’s ruling makes clear that Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh lied to Congress when they testified, under oath, that in their view Roe v. Wade was settled precedent. Perjury is a crime. If perjury is found to have occurred, the correct remedy is impeachment,” Crist said in a statement issued in the wake of Friday’s bombshell announcement of the decision to overturn Roe vs. Wade. …
wouldn’t hurt my feelings.
‘Maybe the Dems need to work on getting out the vote.’
If they don’t, and the House & Senate are lost, then Impeachment of Justices won’t happen, nor will Trump be prosecuted.
Actually, Trump may be prosecuted regardless.
Biden & the DoJ can see to that.
AOC says impeachment possible if Supreme Court justices lied under oath
Impeachment should be “very seriously considered” if Supreme Court justices lied in their confirmation hearings about their intentions to overturn Roe v. Wade, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told “Meet the Press” Sunday. …
In other news…
a Sign of Crises to Come
NY Times – June 15