HAHAHA: Washington Post editorial board writes entire op-ed about abortion without once mentioning ‘women.’ It’s hard to have a women’s-rights campaign when you can’t define what a woman is.
Archive for 2022
May 5, 2022
CAMERON ARCAND: I Went to a Roe v. Wade Protest Yesterday. Here’s What I Saw.
IT’S GOOD TO BE THE NOMENKLATURA: Stacey Abrams’ Business Received Special Treatment, Government Program Protected Private Investment.
While most media reports attribute Abrams’ significant increases in net worth to speeches and advances for book projects, her investment in Now Corp. has received little attention. Curiously, the website for the Now Corp. currently has no mention of Abrams under the “About Us” tab, which describes the beginnings of the company. She is also not listed as a member of the management team.
It appears that Abrams – as she embarks on another high-profile political campaign – wants to separate her nine-year financial relationship with Now Corp. from her political ambitions.
A paper trail beginning in 2013 may explain why.
Much more at the link.
KING OF THE GOP: Trump goes 55-0, no endorsements lost.
KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dems’ Disdain for Rural Americans Is Their Real Midterms Problem. “Rural voters who are worrying about financial issues probably aren’t as concerned with abortion on demand and propping up teachers who talk to first-graders about gender reassignment as coastal Dems are.”
THE ALLEGED PARTY OF YOUTH IS LED BY THE OLD AND FRAIL: HEALTH WATCH: ‘Shaken’ Liz Warren Holds Staffer’s Hand for Balance, Raising Fitness Concerns: Episode reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s collapse during failed 2016 campaign.
EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: Why Energy Prices Are Projected to Increase 50% in 2022—After Doubling Last Year.
In its latest Commodity Markets Outlook report, the World Bank projected commodity prices will remain higher for years to come. Perhaps most alarming is that the multilateral bank projects energy prices will soar 50.5 percent this year—after nearly doubling in 2021. The rise in energy prices, the Wall Street Journal reports, has been “the most significant since the early 1970s.”
Food prices, meanwhile, which rose 31 percent last year, are projected to increase 23 percent this year. Needless to say, these price increases come at considerable cost, particularly to the most vulnerable in society.
“The resulting increase in food and energy prices is taking a significant human and economic toll,” said Ayhan Kose, director of the World Bank’s Prospects Group. “It will likely stall progress in reducing poverty…[and] exacerbate already elevated inflationary pressures around the world.”
Anyone born after about 1970 doesn’t really remember the malaise, stagflation, and useless leadership of the Carter years — but they’re about to get a lesson.
BOY, THE LEFTIES ARE TRASHING THE NOTORIOUS RBG NOW FOR NOT RETIRING SOONER, BUT THEY FORGET THIS: Supreme Court leak confirms Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s prescient warning about Roe v. Wade: Ginsburg firmly supported abortion, but she lamented the court’s decision to unilaterally create a new ‘regime’ on the subject.
Ginsburg warned against major judicial shifts in a 1992 lecture at New York University, citing Roe as an example.
“Measured motions seem to me right, in the main, for constitutional as well as common law adjudication,” she argued. “Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable. The most prominent example in recent decades is Roe v. Wade.”
Ginsburg noted that Roe struck down far more than the specific Texas criminal abortion statute at issue in the case.
“Suppose the court had stopped there, rightly declaring unconstitutional the most extreme brand of law in the nation, and had not gone on, as the court did in Roe, to fashion a regime blanketing the subject, a set of rules that displaced virtually every state law then in force,” she said. “A less encompassing Roe, one that merely struck down the extreme Texas law and went no further on that day, I believe and will summarize why, might have served to reduce rather than to fuel controversy.” . . .
Ginsburg went on to contrast the court’s landmark decision in Roe with a slew of decisions from 1971 to 1982 in which the court struck down “a series of state and federal laws that differentiated explicitly on the basis of sex.”
Rather than creating a new philosophy of law and imposing it on the nation immediately, “the court, in effect, opened a dialogue with the political branches of government.”
“In essence, the court instructed Congress and state legislatures: rethink ancient positions on these questions,” Ginsburg noted. “The ball, one might say, was tossed by the justices back into the legislators’ court, where the political forces of the day could operate.”
I suspect that if things had been left to legislatures, we’d have something like what’s common in Europe, easy availability in the first 12 weeks, much more difficult after. By European standards, by the way, the Mississippi law in question in Dobbs, which allows abortion for any reason through week 15, isn’t extreme at all.
LOL, JAMIE RASKIN: Justice Alito’s reasoning for overturning Roe v. Wade could lead to ‘Handmaid’s Tale’-style anti-feminist laws nationwide, says Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Always with the Handmaid’s Tale stuff. And the cosplay. Dems have a Handmaid’s Tale fetish.
PJ MEDIA VIP ROUNDUP: Don’t forget that VODKAPUNDIT promo code if you’ve been thinking of joining us.
Matt Margolis: Democrats Never Miss A Trick. “Democrats have a long history of changing rules to suit their short-term needs. The Senate filibuster is one such rule, and they’ve had a love-hate relationship with it.”
Megan Fox: The Battle of the Forensic Psychologists in Johnny Depp’s Court Drama Illustrates Absurd Junk Science. “These polar opposite findings leave the audience wondering: what good are these psychological evaluations anyway, and why are we wasting days of testimony on them if they are so subjective that the same tests can show opposite results?”
Yours Truly: CDC Spied on Smartphones to Track Americans at School, Church, Pharmacies. “In all, the CDC had — has? — plans for 21 different use-cases for your tracking data.”
THIS IS BASICALLY MY TAKE: Democrats skeptical SCOTUS will save them in November: One Democratic pollster said the issue “will help at the margins,” but to retain control of Congress “we need inflation to go away.”
Also, inflation isn’t going away. As they say, unemployment is a “some people” problem. Inflation is an everybody problem.
May 4, 2022
THE ATLANTIC: What Alito Got Right. “First, it’s important to understand the question before the Supreme Court. It is not ‘Should American women possess a right to abortion?’ but ‘Does the American Constitution protect abortion rights?’ The distinction is of paramount importance. The Court’s job is not to determine which rights we should possess but rather the rights we do possess.”
Sorry, literally shaking over the bigotry of asking if women should possess a right to abortion. It should be “birthing people” or “people with uteruses.” It’s Current Year, people!
ANDREW MCCARTHY: The Supreme Court’s integrity demands its leaker be prosecuted — and the decision released now.
It was entirely appropriate for the court to confirm that Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion in the Mississippi abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, is not at this point an authoritative ruling of the court. There could understandably be public confusion on that point, so it was incumbent on the court to clarify.
But there are unwelcome consequences to even appropriate actions. The obvious one here is that with the court having assured everyone that there is a draft opinion but it is not yet a final ruling, radicals prone to intimidation tactics know that now is the time to act.
Moreover, they have targets. Besides Alito, four conservative justices have been reported as members of a majority that favors overruling Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey — Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
This is why the opinion must be formally issued forthwith. The viability of the court as a deliberative judicial institution is at stake. If the opinion or the vote tabulation were to change in any meaningful way, it would appear that the justices caved to intimidation tactics — which would simply breed more intimidation tactics. We’d have not the rule of law but the law of the jungle.
To be fair, that’s what the Democrats want. Or think that they do.
SOCIALIST SUPER-SPREADER EVENT: Journalists test positive for COVID-19 after White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
Flashback: Buttigieg Makes Absurd Comparison Between Planes and Ballrooms. “Biden won’t have to wear a mask at the White House Correspondents’ dinner on Saturday, yet he’s in court trying to force people on planes to wear masks. Pete Buttigieg: ‘Most of us understand the difference between a hotel ballroom and an airplane.’ In order to justify his attendance at the dinner, Buttigieg implied ballrooms are safer than airplanes, where the administration continues to insist masking is necessary. This is not true. The air on an airplane is circulated every two minutes and is filtered through highly advanced HEPA systems.”
OPEN THREAD: This time, you’ll listen. You’re forgiven.
COMPETITOR ASKS GOVERNMENT TO STOP COMPANY THAT’S KICKING ITS ASS: ‘Mounting evidence’ shows need for Starlink Gen 2 environmental review, says Viasat.
DATA SHOWS RIGHT-TO-WORK STATES GREW DURING PANDEMIC: Latest data compiled by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) shows the 27 states with Right- to-Work laws (RTW) actually added jobs during the Covid Pandemic, while the other 23 states lost nearly 1.5 million jobs.
The presence of such laws was not the only factor involved, to be sure, but the data is strongly suggestive of a correlation of some significance, especially considering that seven of the 10 biggest gainers are RTW states, while seven of the bottom 10 are not.
THE GOAL IS TO INTIMIDATE, SO OF COURSE: LA Abortion Rights Protest Turns Violent.
PARTY OF YOUTH UPDATE: Health Watch: ‘Shaken’ Liz Warren Holds Staffer’s Hand for Balance, Raising Fitness Concerns.
IT’S NOT WHAT YOU THINK, TIK-TIK! Yes, Those Are Dolphins With an Anaconda. There’s a Perfectly Good Explanation. Or maybe it is what you think: “Afterwards, we were able to observe on the photographs that the adult males were sexually aroused while engaging in object play with the anaconda.”
Takeaway: “I don’t think that the snake had a very good time.”
“OPEN MARKETS INSTITUTE” WANTS FCC TO CLOSE MARKETS TO MUSK, GETS OWNED BY FCC: “The FCC has no authority to block Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and to suggest otherwise is absurd. I would welcome the full FCC making it clear that we will not entertain these types of frivolous arguments.”
Who funds the Open Markets Institute? Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
LEGISLATION HAS LIMITS: Can Congress resurrect Roe if it’s overturned? Well, it could try.
Democrats in Congress are calling on their colleagues to “codify Roe” in federal law. The Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) introduced by Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) in June 2021 would do just that. Here’s what you need to know. . . .
When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came before the Supreme Court, even the liberal justices noted the awkwardness of arguing over whether hamburger meat crossing state lines meant a restaurant such as Ollie’s BBQ in Alabama had to allow Black patrons to sit at the counter, or whether an Atlanta hotel near an interstate highway had to allow Black guests because its travelers moved between states. Still, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Civil Rights Act, giving the green light to Congress to use its commerce power to enforce civil rights.
This time around, Congress would again define access to abortion as a case of interstate commerce. People travel across state lines to procure abortion services; medical equipment that provide abortions all moves in interstate commerce; and licensing, training and education for abortion providers all involve interstate travel and commerce. Proponents hope that by codifying Roe in this way, a new federal law guaranteeing the right to abortion would survive the Supreme Court’s inevitable review.
But the Supreme Court has narrowed Congress’s commerce power significantly since the mid-1990s. . . .
It’s possible that the Supreme Court would choose to uphold a WHPA, if passed and signed. Even with these unfavorable rulings, there is ample Supreme Court precedent to support Congress’s regulating abortion through interstate commerce, as law professor Julian Mortenson outlines.
But there is another reason that Democrats in Congress may not want to codify Roe through legislation.
If the Supreme Court rules that Congress has the power to protect abortion through legislation, Congress also would have the power to prohibit abortion through legislation. As Chief Justice John Marshall famously concluded in an 1824 Commerce Clause case, the power to regulate necessarily includes the power to prohibit.
Ultimately, any victory for abortion rights the Democrats might claim with the WHPA would be temporary, lasting only until Republicans regained control.
Congress could also try rooting a statute in the 14th Amendment under its Article 5 power to pass “appropriate legislation” to enforce its guarantees. The problem is, Congress gets to “enforce” only those rights that exist under the Constitution. As the Court held in City of Boerne v. Flores, Congress doesn’t get to define those rights, which means Congress can’t use its 14th Amendment powers to reverse the Court. So they could try.
Meanwhile, Dave Kopel and I were arguing 25 years ago that Congress’s commerce power doesn’t reach abortion.