The Fall of Roe v Wade: US Politics, June 2022

Good point Karl

I know that this is acting as some sort of cathartic exercise for you, KM, but it might actually be a good idea to *stop* following what's going on in this horse and pony show.

i've actually barely been following the news this year

I had watched/listened to none of this until this morning for a few minutes. I think they're laying out the (very obvious) allegations calmly, rationally, and logically, with none of the grandstanding you sometimes see in these things. Numerous people telling Trump his fraud allegations were bullshit, juxtaposed with audio clips of him ranting on Fox about "DUMPS! THEY CALL THEM DUMPS! MASSIVE... DUMPS! IT'S... A VERY TERRIBLE THING..." in the weeks after the election makes it clear to me how he could convince a bunch of his most brain dead minions to storm the capitol. But I would think that, I guess...

PS: Just having to hear that fucker's voice again made me turn it off.

"An apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani" is the new "30 to 50 feral hogs". https://t.co/PGYJQ5EKCI

— Andrew Mueller (@andrew_mueller) June 13, 2022

I was thinking about that too Karl - it was so obvious that no matter how badly he lost he was going to call fraud and create some real problems. Sometimes you have to give the way a wide latitude but sometimes he’s the most predictable man on the planet. The entire run up to the election he was blatantly fucking with the mail for no reason other than to manufacture the “red mirage” that literally every election pundit knew was gonna happen! How is there any question to this at all??

I think we should borrow from the Brits phrase "tired and emotional" in place of "stinking drunk."

i remember telling a family member, over a year before the election, that he was going to lose and never, ever shut up about how it was stolen. even then, a year before the election, he was already saying it was going to be stolen. i remember because i think i made a joke here (and elsewhere) that he was telling the truth, it really was going to be stolen, and he was going to try to steal it, the classic trump/conservative projection, etc

the hearings are essential because they put together a picture of what actually happened, all in one place. there's been a lot of reporting on the whole thing, of course, before it happened, the day it happened, and ever since. but so much of what we've learned since 1/6/21 has been related to testimony/evidence collected via this committee's investigation. so it is unquestionably (i think) a good thing for this to happen, to lay out what they know, even if we already know a lot about it.

however, there are 3 separate groups of people involved here. a big one is anyone who paid attention to what happened around that time and isn't a complete liar. a second are the maga people, republicans, conservatives, people who tune out this kind of hearing in order to hear fox instead, on purpose.

the third is all the people who have absolutely no idea what is going on and will never care. this won't get to them, either.

so, yes, all of this is pointless on some level. it's essential on one level that counts and completely meaningless on another which also, brutally, counts

In some ways, it’s the third group that scares me most.

The neighbor across the alley is a Trump supporter who is rocking a Trump hat right now as he coaches some kid and their parent in baseball. I'm going to guess he is in category two or three. I mean, he has a Ben Carson for pres sticker on his (electric!) car, so he's clearly some sort of kook.

Agreed, this is important for reasons beyond what's being generated from the typical punditbrain right now: i.e. "how many Republicans will be convinced by this" & "how will this affect midterms", etc. etc. The greatest grift the Republicans have going right now is that they have lowered the bar so much that everyone expects them to be lying scumbags. Biden is by no means a great president, but had Trump accomplished half of what he did he'd be trumpeted by the media as the best president since Lincoln. The guy got entire days worth of positive press because he got through a fucking SOTU speech on teleprompter. Their party contains some of the dumbest, most nakedly corrupt politicians alive, along with actual pedophiles and criminals. And they get away with it because as far as both the media & public opinion is concerned, this is Just How Things Are. Of course Republicans are gonna back massively unpopular shit like criminalizing abortion and letting your PE teacher molest 14 year old girls who are "too good at sports". Of course Democrats are gonna be taken to task when gas prices are high, even though literally every Republican voted No on a bill that would bring prices down. Of course the GOP is going to campaign on the benefits of the bills they voted against. Everyone expects that of them. And that is how they've gotten to this position where they are still a very dominant and dangerous force in American politicians despite the fact that everything they do is a predictable trainwreck. You have to do shit like this 1/6 commission. If you give up because it's not gonna move the needle then it opens the door for even more horrible shit to come!

Not sure if this is the right thread for it

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2022/jun/12/sheriffs-office-releases-names-of-31-patriot-front/?fbclid=IwAR0TiauC1t7Nm0bQLXEM02GC3SAK78TKMr5Me5kWgABNTW4wN3P6ecOfjNw

Fully half those mugshots indicate some level of fetal alcohol syndrome

meanwhile, here in the ultra-tolerant Bay Area:

Hate crime investigation underway after alleged Proud Boys storm Drag Queen Story Hour at Bay Area library

https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Proud-boys-storm-Bay-Area-Drag-Queen-story-hour-17236693.php

so this one seems directly attributable to the Libs of Tiktok account

The Proudly Latent Boys

Seriously, every one of these cunts needs to have their balls stomped, and hard.

"The big lie was also a big rip-off"

Of all the facts highlighted in today's hearing, the fact that Trump raised $250M for a "official legal defense fund" that didn't even exist should be the headline story, because lying about money gets people's attention in ways that lying about the election doesn't.

yeah but he's a super successful businessman, that's why we voted for him... when it comes to money, he knows best

remember, his 'free' offer during Thursday's hearing was only accessible via a $50 donation, so everything is relative

Always Money In The Covfefe!

oh well, we should probably all just start drinking to forget our hopeless predicament. The Man's too big. The Man's too strong.

The thing about that $250 million is if whether there's not some weird buried legal language basically saying "We can do whatever we want with this and you agree to that by sending it to us." What I'm wondering more is what was exactly done with the money beyond the snippets given.

Toilet paper, in bulk, stored in a Ft. Knox-like vault. You roll your eyes now ...

Interest payments on his loans from the Russian mob.

Rudy Giuliani looks loony in every clip here

they think at least some of the money went to Trump hotels

Like maybe those coin-operated mattress massagers

The Magic Fingers! Those were a highlight of childhood travels.

Trump's Tiny Magic Fingers

Nearing the end, the Al Schmidt section. The committee would do well to dedicate more time to the threats directed at people in the path of this insanity.

Pretty rad how many of these witnesses are Republicans

All of them, isn't it?

Well I'm convinced.

I am disgusted and outraged at the out right lie by Jason Miller and Bill Steppien. I was upset that they were not prepared for the massive cheating (as well as other lawyers around the President) I REFUSED all alcohol that evening. My favorite drink..Diet Pepsi

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) June 14, 2022

The follow-up might be even better

Is the false testimony from Miller and Steppien because I yelled at them? Are they being paid to lie?

— Rudy W. Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) June 14, 2022

Well, are they?!?

I'll have to ask, they're all noticeably shy and retiring.

Meantime I'd strongly recommend reading this.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/14/inside-explosive-oval-office-confrontation-three-days-before-jan-6/

About a third of the way through the 2022 primaries, voters have nominated scores of Republican candidates for state and federal office who say the 2020 election was rigged, according to a new analysis by The Washington Post.

District by district, state by state, voters in places that cast ballots through the end of May have chosen at least 108 candidates for statewide office or Congress who have repeated Trump’s lies. The number jumps to at least 149 winning candidates — out of more than 170 races — when it includes those who have campaigned on a platform of tightening voting rules or more stringently enforcing those already on the books, despite the lack of evidence of widespread fraud.

well, here we go, this year. there's an optimistic version of how this plays out that, fittingly for democratic leadership, resembles something that happened about 70 years ago. maybe these hearings go relatively well, and suddenly all the republicans across the country are shamed that they not only supported white nationalism in the past but that they are still supporting it, and many of 108-149 proud fascists running for office are defeated in November. it could be the 21st century version of "at long last, have you left no decency?" (only, perhaps, we would omit "at long last" and also the word "left", as the history channel's website does). we will all say, "well, we stepped right up to the brink, but you know that Americans, when it really comes down to it, we really stand up for what's right in the end, when it counts!"

either that or it will be as effective as saying that an orc has gross mud stain all over its butt

'HAVE YOU NO SENSE OF DECENCY, SIR, AT LONG LAST, HAVE YOU LEFT NO SENSE OF DECENCY' is the quote. i messed it up too. Welch should have been more pithy

HAVE YOU NO SENSE OF REALITY more like

Sobriety

Instructive.

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/06/14/how-trump-radicalized-tom-rice-00039287

Lol Giuliani deleted both tweets

Rudy is Renfield to Trump's Dracula.

I think this op-ed from the LA Times does an excellent job of spelling out some of the thornier consequences of overturning Roe v Wade:

Leave abortion law to the states? Just look at the Fugitive Slave Act to see how that will go
Ronald J. Granieri

Why not leave abortion to the states?

One of the most common arguments made by those who want to downplay the significance of Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.’s leaked draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health is that it would not make abortion illegal. Rather, it would merely return the abortion debate to the legislative sphere, where it belongs. Individual states would pass their own abortion laws, as restrictive or nonrestrictive as their electorate wants them to be.

There is a certain soothing quality to that argument. But issues of individual rights bearing such heavy moral weight cannot be contained within state boundaries. “Let’s leave it up to the states” will quickly become “we expect other states to comply with our laws and will demand federal action to guarantee it” — and one only needs to look at the Fugitive Slave Act to highlight the very real constitutional challenge before us.

Slavery remains a moral stain on the history of the republic. It demonstrated the weaknesses of American federalism when faced with fundamental issues of human rights. Even as individual states chose different paths on slavery, the question of how to manage relations between slave and free states, and what to do about people who traveled across state lines, became a persistent problem. The Fugitive Slave Act, a revision of a 1793 statute enacted as part of the Compromise of 1850, aimed to offer a legal solution. It allowed California to enter the Union as a free state, but required all states, even those that did not allow slavery within their boundaries, to cooperate with the forcible return of escaped enslaved people.

Moral and legal complexities multiplied. There was the internal warfare of “bleeding Kansas” where pro- and anti-slavery militias fought for control of the territory, and the barbarity of the Dred Scott decision, which denied enslaved people human rights even if they lived in free states. Allowing slavery anywhere required protecting it everywhere. Subsequent compromises that favored popular sovereignty, allowing local majorities to endorse or reject slavery, never satisfied pro-slavery factions if they lost out, and anti-slavery states proved reluctant to help slave catchers.

Federalism did more to exacerbate regional divisions on slavery than solve them. This is the context for Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation that the nation could not continue “half slave and half free.” Indeed, when South Carolina announced its decision to secede in December 1860, its grievances included the charge that the federal government had not done enough to ensure that all states enforced the Fugitive Slave Act. Denouncing “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the Institution of Slavery,” which “led to a disregard of their obligations,” South Carolinians claimed the northern states had essentially canceled the Constitution. By this logic, there could be no guarantee of any state’s rights unless other states respected and supported them. Enforcement of state laws could not end at the state line.

State legislation of abortion could easily create similar paradoxes, especially considering the mobility of people, ideas and goods in our globally linked world. Citizens in a state that bans abortion could travel to other states for the procedure, if they have the means. Gov. Gavin Newsom has made it clear that California will welcome out-of-state patients and Connecticut has already passed a new law protecting medical providers who treat patients from other states. Some large employers, such as Tesla, have recently signaled their willingness to support employees who need to travel to another state for medical care.

Yet the drafters of Mississippi’s abortion law did not go to all this trouble to overturn Roe v. Wade just see it persist elsewhere. Texas’ anti-abortion law already criminalizes aid to women who want an abortion — does that include those who provide travel assistance to a more permissive state? What if a resident of a state that allows abortion has a medical emergency while visiting a restrictive state and cannot travel home?

Florida’s recent struggle with Walt Disney Co. after its leadership spoke out against the so-called “Don’t say gay” bill indicates how states might deal with businesses that challenge their abortion legislation. Furthermore, in an era when medication abortions already make up more than half of the U.S. total, what happens when a state forbids its citizens from ordering such drugs by mail or seeking consultations by telemedicine with a practitioner in a permissive state?

The paradox of states eventually demanding federal recognition and support for their particular laws applies to more than just abortion. In the 20th century, locale-by-locale alcohol prohibition led to a constitutional amendment (and then to its repeal); marijuana laws and gun rights raise similar problems today. States struggle to manage different local laws on issues with which people deeply disagree, as do citizens, especially if they regularly travel from one jurisdiction to another.

Federalism, which allows individual states to become laboratories of democracy by experimenting with different approaches to public problems, is one of the great strengths of our constitutional order. But the republic has to guarantee some baseline rights shared by all citizens, which imposes limitations on how widely states can diverge.

There are few options for resolving conflicts among state laws. The Constitution can be amended, which takes time and requires a great deal of consensus. Or Congress can pass national legislation. If neither happens the issue lands at the Supreme Court.

That was the reality that led to Roe in the first place, and it has not changed. Tossing the issue back to the states, as the Alito draft proposes, will not bring the country any closer to a resolution on abortion rights — it will just open up 50 new fronts in the fight. The formal decision on Dobbs will not be the last federal word on abortion. This isn’t the end of the controversy; we’re barely at the start.

Ronald J. Granieri is a history professor at the U.S. Army War College and a fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

yeah p much anybody that thinks 'leaving it to the states' is ok is a fuckin dum-dum.

Most people need to be taken by the hand and gently escorted to this kind of thinking because, if they've ever ever heard of the Fugitive Slave Act or Dred Scott Decision, they've forgotten what they were.

Yep, we're headed for 50 separate but interlocking fights at the state level, plus a nonstop fight at the federal level. The anti-abortion people will stay active even in places like New York and California, in the same way they've stayed active for the past 40 years of ups and downs in a country where abortion was legal. And in red states that have already or will quickly outlaw abortion, there will be a neverending spiral of tighter and tighter restrictions like those already floated this year in Louisiana and Missouri. Plus of course it will be a rallying cry for both parties at the national level, trying to pass national legislation. It was always a fantasy that overturning Roe would settle anything, but I'm not sure anyone is really prepared for the nonstop hand-to-hand combat this is going to become. (For the rest of the lifetimes of everyone on this board, probably, if not longer.)

It's definitely set up a weird situation with interstate prosecutions.. if I go play blackjack in Las Vegas, they can't bust me for gambling when I get back to Little Rock; not yet, at least

But maybe someone in Arkansas can sue me for gambling?