Watching Justice Samuel Alito go spelunking in his Dobbs opinion through centuries of so-called history and tradition in search of legal justifications to overturn the right to abortion decided almost 50 years ago in Roe v.
So here we are! But they aren’t dunces. They are evil operatives of corporate America and White Nationalism. They are digging alright, because as you point out, modern precedents reflect the progress in thinking society has made. The Constitution allows amendments because it is a living document. The only way out of this mess is legislation and that requires Democratic majority in both houses and removing the filibuster. The system is rigged against that, and money in politics is the greatest threat to our democracy. The violence from far right groups is just beginning and I fear greatly for the future.
Thank you Lucian. I think this is one of your best, most passionate and inspiring essays. I think, like the ridiculously archaic Electoral College, the current system of lifetime appointments of unelected Supreme Court Justices also needs some serious reform. I learned two rules in the Army. Rule #1; never give up. Rule#2; see rule #1.
Using the perverted, twisted logic employed by the conservative SCOTUS super majority, we can expect the eventual end of women's suffrage and a return to legal slavery
The bleak hellscape envisioned by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid's Tale wasn't bleak enough. A ten year old rape victim forbidden to get an abortion? A two year old child orphaned at a 4th of July parade? School children eviscerated and decapitated in their classroom?
The only remedy we have is to vote out the bastards who are happily creating this dystopian nightmare. As someone on Twitter noted recently, no one is coming to save us.
I am grateful that the 19th Amendment is in the Constitution for all to see, so that at least when it comes to women voting the Court cannot rely on "history and tradition." OTOH, once free and fair elections go by the wayside, it won't matter that once we had the "right" to vote. Same goes for the 13th Amendment, of course, and the 14th and 15th, though I'm afraid these legal casuists will find a way to nullify them too.
I am absolutely serious when I state that if AOC announces her candidacy for the presidency I will support her in every way possible, no matter how quixotic it seems, if only to force "the powers that be" to confront the issues she raises and and the way she fights for them --- both inside the Democratic Party establishment, and everywhere else.
Your friend David learned the most vital lesson about the law, no pun intended, that it's a living thing, which is exactly why reactionary legal thinking, as exemplified by the likes of Alioto and Thomas, must single him out, and those like him, target them, and invent every possible tendentious refutation possible to suppress that obvious line of thinking. It cannot be allowed to flourish, because it allows progress, change for the better, alterations in the power structure, adaptions to technological change --- like the difference between muskets and machine guns, for example.
Btw: Anyone who has missed out on reading A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole, can do worse than finding a copy, and enjoying the savage wit and sense of the absurd in one of the funniest books ever written.
Lucian, at various times in recent weeks, I’ve pointed friends to your work. And I have heard again and again that your passionate determination that this rollback of rights will not stand has given them determination to fight to prove you right. Count me among their number. Thank you, my friend.
Someone needs to challenge the decision in Citizens United on the grounds that nowhere in the constitution does it say corporations are “people”, and originalists should read this to mean they do not have the rights of “personhood”.
I'm not saying that every legislator in the Democratic Party is ultra smart and level headed and wise, band I'm not saying every GOP legislator is just the opposite. but overall if you compare the two the GOP members seem somewhat backward by comparison; sort of like comparing the mullahs that rule Iran or the Taliban, with more enlightened governments around the world. . The Supreme court of course is nothing more than an extension of the Republican party that are basically passing laws on their own. Speaking of which their next target seems to be who gets the last word on which votes count, the state legislators for example, that hearing is coming up soon. I just read an article by a High School science teacher: It is worth reproducing here in full...
."Chris Preece
Thu, July 7, 2022 at 12:24 PM·3 min read
I enjoy my freedom as an American, free speech, freedom to worship how I like, and the comfort of knowing my kid will have opportunities to reach his full potential. This America, the one we have loved but had some tough times with, may be ending. Likely ending sooner than we think.
My wife, many loved ones, and half our population had their right to bodily autonomy (to do with their own body as they see fit) recently ripped from them by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and Kentucky State Legislature. Kentucky’s law on abortion has NO exceptions for rape or incest and only a narrow exemption for the life of the mother. Our wives, daughters, mothers, and friends now have their bodies controlled by our government. This is the first time in American history that SCOTUS has taken rights away from people regarding bodily autonomy.
Access to an abortion had been upheld by SCOTUS for 49 years under the view that we have a right to privacy and bodily autonomy. Since the right to privacy and bodily freedom are being whittled away, Justice Thomas has expressed interest in reexamining our right to contraception (condoms and birth control), as well as our right to marry whomever we love. All these cases center around sex. Do you want the government in your sex life? I do not.
Also, if we do not have a right to privacy, the government could start invading our cars, homes, phones, or worse. Yes, this is extrapolating to make a point. If SCOTUS is not afraid to strip reproductive rights away, how far are they willing to go?
SCOTUS has agreed to hear a case next term (Moore v. Harper) about state legislatures being able to control federal elections, potentially going as far as to allow state electors to cast votes for whomever they like regardless of how we, the people, vote. If SCOTUS allows state legislators to control these elections, the states could make up their own rules and ignore our votes. Then we would no longer have a democracy. Let that sink in. We could potentially no longer have a democracy. Each state would have its own rules on federal elections, and our country would be even more divided Red v. Blue.
Our lives have increasingly gotten harder. Harder to buy gas, food, and a place to live. This is designed to keep us regular folks too busy to pay attention to politics. Now, I ask you to stand up and fight back against SCOTUS and their decisions to strip away our rights and democracy.
You may feel that your actions don’t matter, but they do. We all have a voice and a vote. When we talk to our friends and get more people involved, we amplify our voices. I help organize a group of concerned citizens, Bluegrass Reproductive Justice Coalition, to push back against our government. Check out our Facebook page. If you want to push back against our government in general, you can start your own group or join groups like Kentuckians for the Commonwealth or The Poor People’s Campaign.
Actions you can take now: join a group with a common cause, start your own group, contact all your friends and get them informed and engaged, contact Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to abolish the filibuster, expand SCOTUS, codify Roe, and pass Voting Rights and US Term Limits.
America needs us all to stand up for our freedoms right now. If we don’t fight, fascism will gladly take all our freedoms, leaving us as the Divided Fascist States of America."
Chris Preeece is a high school science teacher in Berea, comic book creator, new dad, and former Democrat candidate for U.S. Congress in Kentucky’s 6th congressional district.
As friend of mine offered :It took 100years from the end of the Civil War to the 1960s for African Americans to get full civil rights. So women still have years to go before this country will allow them to have complete rights to their own bodies without the State claiming the right to interfere with their uterus.
Lucian this by a retired surgeon says it all..."Sun, July 10, 2022 at 2:00 AM
"Peter Gentling points out that with six Catholic justices who were born into its controlling discipline, the Supreme Court has now begun to force its beliefs upon our nation.
It is time for us all to speak up about our newly appointed Supreme Court.
The founding fathers saw our Constitution as a philosophical document with legal implications that could have many interpretations. It could be viewed and manipulated from many different angles. And when it was written, there was no way it could foresee future events to which it would be used legally. For that reason, this Constitution was purposely composed as a philosophical document. It has been tested severely since its beginning. The Constitution’s interpreter, the Supreme Court, is the the only branch of government with essentially no checks and balances. There is no higher court of appeal, and there is no control placed upon it. This court’s only avenue of control is through presidential nomination and congressional approval for a new justice. Our Constitution has given us a specific set of directives, but the real meat is its preamble. This is a philosophical statement and is its most important directive. This should be mandatory recitation for all legislators and justices to read before any session of court or Congress.
“We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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 America.”
Lately we have made egregious errors in choosing some justices. Justices should be philosophers first, then lawyers, particularly since the philosophy makes the constitution and laws needed to protect it and make it function. Secondly, we shouldn’t choose judges who have been indoctrinated by a religion, any religion. These judges must understand that in the U.S. a person’s personal choices are sacrosanct and that no law should be passed that puts one person’s or group’s prejudices or beliefs above another’s. There are now six Catholic justices who were born into its strict controlling discipline. They have now begun to force their beliefs upon our nation. Some say the Supreme Court cannot legislate. True, but when they consider a law unconstitutional they refuse it. Thus, they significantly control legislation in our country.
Some serious people have come to think of human beings as sacred from conception. For them, aborting a pregnancy becomes a sin against God. This thinking even precedes conception. It tends to make the sexual act itself a sacred event. They are certain that humans are in a separate spiritual dimension and revered above other life forms. These people are welcome to their beliefs, but here, now, they are forcing these ideas upon those who believe that an unwanted, unloved child is tragic and that fetuses are not sentient beings. Some of these are the same people who prevent sex education for youngsters. Not only that, many of them believe that unless you are racially white and pure, you don’t deserve to vote; or that sexual identity in our complex human race is cast in stone. They fail to understand that not one of us can select our parents, that we all are effectively dumped into an indifferent world we cannot control. They lose sight of the extreme variability of the human race, that we ourselves are animals with organs and bodily functions just like cats and dogs and bears, that the sexual function of creatures, reptiles, mammals and the rest, is a prime mover in our brains.
As for our Supreme Court and its present justices, anyone who has been born into the Catholic church is aware of its indoctrinations and methods. It teaches its followers these lessons so forcefully that they are imprinted on all parts of the mind, so that the guilt burden of sin is constant. But what if Catholic catechism overwhelms their sense of openness to different ways of thinking, or of their concepts for a more perfect union and the blessings of liberty? Are these six able to promote and preserve this philosophy? This court is now speaking of giving more independence to the states, to limit federal oversight of voting procedures, to allow gerrymandering. Will they force us to become, not a union, but a collection of fifty small, competing countries? What is happening to our more perfect union? We must all re-think what we want our rapidly changing country to be, to use our minds and tongues and pens to set this nation on a productive, kinder course, a new road and vision. Our old one is faltering badly, unkindly, dangerously.
Peter Gentling is a retired surgeon and Asheville resident.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: Catholicism's indoctrinations, methods America's new normal
Good choice of words, because I would not be so very polite.
I am offended by this frat house party they seem to be having right now on the court, and I have lost absolutely all respect I once had for the court.
They are a disgrace to this country. They have dis- served it and have damaged their own institution beyond repair.
Any rights that they can see are not embedded in the Constitution are up for grabs. While Clarence Thomas' wife Ginnie goes gallivanting about trying to aid and abet in a coup.
I read an article the other day that described the efforts the Christian Right made in getting the justices (Alito, Scalia, and Thomas) to pay attention to their side of the story-and it's disgusting to think the Court itself does not have a code of ethics or code of behavior that would forbid such blatant lobbying.
That effort ended but the damage has been done. We'll be a century or more righting the wrongs this court has done-if ever.
May God not save the Supreme Court. It's not worth saving.
Read it. Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, the cozy relationships between right-evangelical groups and certain Supreme Court justices doesn’t surprise me.
So here we are! But they aren’t dunces. They are evil operatives of corporate America and White Nationalism. They are digging alright, because as you point out, modern precedents reflect the progress in thinking society has made. The Constitution allows amendments because it is a living document. The only way out of this mess is legislation and that requires Democratic majority in both houses and removing the filibuster. The system is rigged against that, and money in politics is the greatest threat to our democracy. The violence from far right groups is just beginning and I fear greatly for the future.
Thank you Lucian. I think this is one of your best, most passionate and inspiring essays. I think, like the ridiculously archaic Electoral College, the current system of lifetime appointments of unelected Supreme Court Justices also needs some serious reform. I learned two rules in the Army. Rule #1; never give up. Rule#2; see rule #1.
Using the perverted, twisted logic employed by the conservative SCOTUS super majority, we can expect the eventual end of women's suffrage and a return to legal slavery
The bleak hellscape envisioned by Margaret Atwood in The Handmaid's Tale wasn't bleak enough. A ten year old rape victim forbidden to get an abortion? A two year old child orphaned at a 4th of July parade? School children eviscerated and decapitated in their classroom?
The only remedy we have is to vote out the bastards who are happily creating this dystopian nightmare. As someone on Twitter noted recently, no one is coming to save us.
I am grateful that the 19th Amendment is in the Constitution for all to see, so that at least when it comes to women voting the Court cannot rely on "history and tradition." OTOH, once free and fair elections go by the wayside, it won't matter that once we had the "right" to vote. Same goes for the 13th Amendment, of course, and the 14th and 15th, though I'm afraid these legal casuists will find a way to nullify them too.
Way to go! Give them Hell!
And in related news, also in salon:
www.salon.com/2022/07/09/let-him-eat-cake-aoc-responds-to-kavanaughs-run-in-with-while-dining-out_partner/
I am absolutely serious when I state that if AOC announces her candidacy for the presidency I will support her in every way possible, no matter how quixotic it seems, if only to force "the powers that be" to confront the issues she raises and and the way she fights for them --- both inside the Democratic Party establishment, and everywhere else.
Thanks for the link. I got a badly needed laugh out of it! If he's smart (and he is not), he probably should hire a professional food taster.
😂😂
Your friend David learned the most vital lesson about the law, no pun intended, that it's a living thing, which is exactly why reactionary legal thinking, as exemplified by the likes of Alioto and Thomas, must single him out, and those like him, target them, and invent every possible tendentious refutation possible to suppress that obvious line of thinking. It cannot be allowed to flourish, because it allows progress, change for the better, alterations in the power structure, adaptions to technological change --- like the difference between muskets and machine guns, for example.
Btw: Anyone who has missed out on reading A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy O'Toole, can do worse than finding a copy, and enjoying the savage wit and sense of the absurd in one of the funniest books ever written.
Lucian, at various times in recent weeks, I’ve pointed friends to your work. And I have heard again and again that your passionate determination that this rollback of rights will not stand has given them determination to fight to prove you right. Count me among their number. Thank you, my friend.
Yeah…and btw: Corporations ARE NOT PEOPLE. Congratulations to Roberts for leading THE MOST corrupt, nonsensical Supreme Court in ANYONE’s history.
Someone needs to challenge the decision in Citizens United on the grounds that nowhere in the constitution does it say corporations are “people”, and originalists should read this to mean they do not have the rights of “personhood”.
Excellent idea!
I'm not saying that every legislator in the Democratic Party is ultra smart and level headed and wise, band I'm not saying every GOP legislator is just the opposite. but overall if you compare the two the GOP members seem somewhat backward by comparison; sort of like comparing the mullahs that rule Iran or the Taliban, with more enlightened governments around the world. . The Supreme court of course is nothing more than an extension of the Republican party that are basically passing laws on their own. Speaking of which their next target seems to be who gets the last word on which votes count, the state legislators for example, that hearing is coming up soon. I just read an article by a High School science teacher: It is worth reproducing here in full...
."Chris Preece
Thu, July 7, 2022 at 12:24 PM·3 min read
I enjoy my freedom as an American, free speech, freedom to worship how I like, and the comfort of knowing my kid will have opportunities to reach his full potential. This America, the one we have loved but had some tough times with, may be ending. Likely ending sooner than we think.
My wife, many loved ones, and half our population had their right to bodily autonomy (to do with their own body as they see fit) recently ripped from them by the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) and Kentucky State Legislature. Kentucky’s law on abortion has NO exceptions for rape or incest and only a narrow exemption for the life of the mother. Our wives, daughters, mothers, and friends now have their bodies controlled by our government. This is the first time in American history that SCOTUS has taken rights away from people regarding bodily autonomy.
Access to an abortion had been upheld by SCOTUS for 49 years under the view that we have a right to privacy and bodily autonomy. Since the right to privacy and bodily freedom are being whittled away, Justice Thomas has expressed interest in reexamining our right to contraception (condoms and birth control), as well as our right to marry whomever we love. All these cases center around sex. Do you want the government in your sex life? I do not.
Also, if we do not have a right to privacy, the government could start invading our cars, homes, phones, or worse. Yes, this is extrapolating to make a point. If SCOTUS is not afraid to strip reproductive rights away, how far are they willing to go?
SCOTUS has agreed to hear a case next term (Moore v. Harper) about state legislatures being able to control federal elections, potentially going as far as to allow state electors to cast votes for whomever they like regardless of how we, the people, vote. If SCOTUS allows state legislators to control these elections, the states could make up their own rules and ignore our votes. Then we would no longer have a democracy. Let that sink in. We could potentially no longer have a democracy. Each state would have its own rules on federal elections, and our country would be even more divided Red v. Blue.
Our lives have increasingly gotten harder. Harder to buy gas, food, and a place to live. This is designed to keep us regular folks too busy to pay attention to politics. Now, I ask you to stand up and fight back against SCOTUS and their decisions to strip away our rights and democracy.
You may feel that your actions don’t matter, but they do. We all have a voice and a vote. When we talk to our friends and get more people involved, we amplify our voices. I help organize a group of concerned citizens, Bluegrass Reproductive Justice Coalition, to push back against our government. Check out our Facebook page. If you want to push back against our government in general, you can start your own group or join groups like Kentuckians for the Commonwealth or The Poor People’s Campaign.
Actions you can take now: join a group with a common cause, start your own group, contact all your friends and get them informed and engaged, contact Senators Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin to abolish the filibuster, expand SCOTUS, codify Roe, and pass Voting Rights and US Term Limits.
America needs us all to stand up for our freedoms right now. If we don’t fight, fascism will gladly take all our freedoms, leaving us as the Divided Fascist States of America."
Chris Preeece is a high school science teacher in Berea, comic book creator, new dad, and former Democrat candidate for U.S. Congress in Kentucky’s 6th congressional district.
As friend of mine offered :It took 100years from the end of the Civil War to the 1960s for African Americans to get full civil rights. So women still have years to go before this country will allow them to have complete rights to their own bodies without the State claiming the right to interfere with their uterus.
If we follow Samuel Alito’s logic, shouldn’t Ginny Thomas own her husband?
She does, based on results.
Lucian this by a retired surgeon says it all..."Sun, July 10, 2022 at 2:00 AM
"Peter Gentling points out that with six Catholic justices who were born into its controlling discipline, the Supreme Court has now begun to force its beliefs upon our nation.
It is time for us all to speak up about our newly appointed Supreme Court.
The founding fathers saw our Constitution as a philosophical document with legal implications that could have many interpretations. It could be viewed and manipulated from many different angles. And when it was written, there was no way it could foresee future events to which it would be used legally. For that reason, this Constitution was purposely composed as a philosophical document. It has been tested severely since its beginning. The Constitution’s interpreter, the Supreme Court, is the the only branch of government with essentially no checks and balances. There is no higher court of appeal, and there is no control placed upon it. This court’s only avenue of control is through presidential nomination and congressional approval for a new justice. Our Constitution has given us a specific set of directives, but the real meat is its preamble. This is a philosophical statement and is its most important directive. This should be mandatory recitation for all legislators and justices to read before any session of court or Congress.
“We, the people, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, 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 America.”
Lately we have made egregious errors in choosing some justices. Justices should be philosophers first, then lawyers, particularly since the philosophy makes the constitution and laws needed to protect it and make it function. Secondly, we shouldn’t choose judges who have been indoctrinated by a religion, any religion. These judges must understand that in the U.S. a person’s personal choices are sacrosanct and that no law should be passed that puts one person’s or group’s prejudices or beliefs above another’s. There are now six Catholic justices who were born into its strict controlling discipline. They have now begun to force their beliefs upon our nation. Some say the Supreme Court cannot legislate. True, but when they consider a law unconstitutional they refuse it. Thus, they significantly control legislation in our country.
Some serious people have come to think of human beings as sacred from conception. For them, aborting a pregnancy becomes a sin against God. This thinking even precedes conception. It tends to make the sexual act itself a sacred event. They are certain that humans are in a separate spiritual dimension and revered above other life forms. These people are welcome to their beliefs, but here, now, they are forcing these ideas upon those who believe that an unwanted, unloved child is tragic and that fetuses are not sentient beings. Some of these are the same people who prevent sex education for youngsters. Not only that, many of them believe that unless you are racially white and pure, you don’t deserve to vote; or that sexual identity in our complex human race is cast in stone. They fail to understand that not one of us can select our parents, that we all are effectively dumped into an indifferent world we cannot control. They lose sight of the extreme variability of the human race, that we ourselves are animals with organs and bodily functions just like cats and dogs and bears, that the sexual function of creatures, reptiles, mammals and the rest, is a prime mover in our brains.
As for our Supreme Court and its present justices, anyone who has been born into the Catholic church is aware of its indoctrinations and methods. It teaches its followers these lessons so forcefully that they are imprinted on all parts of the mind, so that the guilt burden of sin is constant. But what if Catholic catechism overwhelms their sense of openness to different ways of thinking, or of their concepts for a more perfect union and the blessings of liberty? Are these six able to promote and preserve this philosophy? This court is now speaking of giving more independence to the states, to limit federal oversight of voting procedures, to allow gerrymandering. Will they force us to become, not a union, but a collection of fifty small, competing countries? What is happening to our more perfect union? We must all re-think what we want our rapidly changing country to be, to use our minds and tongues and pens to set this nation on a productive, kinder course, a new road and vision. Our old one is faltering badly, unkindly, dangerously.
Peter Gentling is a retired surgeon and Asheville resident.
This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Opinion: Catholicism's indoctrinations, methods America's new normal
A 'cacophony of dunces'.
Good choice of words, because I would not be so very polite.
I am offended by this frat house party they seem to be having right now on the court, and I have lost absolutely all respect I once had for the court.
They are a disgrace to this country. They have dis- served it and have damaged their own institution beyond repair.
Any rights that they can see are not embedded in the Constitution are up for grabs. While Clarence Thomas' wife Ginnie goes gallivanting about trying to aid and abet in a coup.
I read an article the other day that described the efforts the Christian Right made in getting the justices (Alito, Scalia, and Thomas) to pay attention to their side of the story-and it's disgusting to think the Court itself does not have a code of ethics or code of behavior that would forbid such blatant lobbying.
That effort ended but the damage has been done. We'll be a century or more righting the wrongs this court has done-if ever.
May God not save the Supreme Court. It's not worth saving.
Speaking of SCOTUS, the following story if true is shocking to say the least:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/wing-evangelicals-bragging-praying-supreme-042532622.html
Read it. Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, the cozy relationships between right-evangelical groups and certain Supreme Court justices doesn’t surprise me.
Beautiful metaphors.
Well done, again, Lucian!
Articles such as this are the reason I subscribe to LKT IV. Such a voice. Such a perspective. Such reason. Thanks!