Yesterday, it was leaked that President Biden is considering a few soft-core reforms of the Supreme Court, including an enforceable ethics code and term limits for justices.
The evil orange menace's wife is an immigrant and Vance's wife is the daughter of immigrants....where would they be without their spouses and their spouses' families? The hypocrisy of today's Republicans is beyond the pale!
Vance's wife is a Yale educated lawyer and clerked for both Roberts and Kavanaugh. Her father is a lecturer in Aerospace engineering at San Diego State and her mother is a marine molecular biologist and a biochemist at UCLA San Diego. She has her own bona fides. A very accomplished women in her own right. Her husband is still a world class dick bought and paid for by billionaires.
At the risk of sounding sympathetic (I'm not) I think it's only fair to point out that when she married him, Vance was a different, seemingly reasonable person.
As a general rule, impugning spouses of public figures just coarsens the dialogue, unless they insert themselves into the political process (see Thomas, Virginia).
Everything you say about Vance's wife is true. That does not matter to white supremacists. As far as they are concerned, if you aren't "white", i.e.,of northern European descent, you aren't areal American.
Two wives are immigrants and so was his mother. Iʼm not even related to Trump, and Iʼm related to most presidents, just not the ones whose families got here after 1800.
Strange how millions from Thiel and Musk to tRump have overridden that replacement theory “concern.” The GQP convention must be an awkward place to be for Vance’s wife.
It shouldnʼt, and if it does, the offended should be thrown out of the party. I would say she should come live in the Bay Area, but central or far Northern California would probably be better, or not, I donʼt know.
This is a spot-on assessment of intent and content by Republicans infected with MAGA virus. Sane people and Democrats must put aside small differences and unite to protect democracy. It is that simple, especially after Project 2025 revealed the extent of their desires.
I think it misses the bigger problem with this court, which is that it is poised to hand the presidency to Trump if he does not win it, so they will come up with some trumped up reason that the vote was unfair in his favor. Every other decision might be part of their plan but it is also to acclimate the population to accept them committing judicial treason without overthrowing the court. That is what should have happened. There is a historical precedent for getting rid of treasonists. However, people have been adjusting to more and more extreme actions from the court, and they already accepted them giving the election to Bush and not Gore. So, we shall see what happens. The battles are twofold, to get Biden elected, and then to take down the court if they try to give it to Trump. Dems needs to stop letting the Republicans drive the narrative and double down on the fact that they are breaking the laws of the land.
We the People have agency. The Dems are ineffectual and perhaps complicit, but we still have agency to get the vote out person by person. Let the people around you know about Project 2025. Here is a toolkit for this. https://redwine.blue/project2025/
I personally think Nancy Pelosi is behind this. Her stepping aside is not like Biden stepping aside, but she does not seem to consider this. The Party is tanking the candidate. If they cannot win that in on them. Let Biden take the White House, and let's get the vote out.
You're certainly right that Biden has proposed soft-core reforms. The only reform that would make a significant difference in the short term would be to add four more justices so that the justices outnumber the Republican politicians on the Court by 7 to 6. By the time term limits would have an effect, Trump may have eliminated the Supreme Court.
Is even one Democrat going to point out that Trump's charge that Biden's proposal is illegal and unconstitutional is a lie, just like every other word that he utters?
Over 50 years ago, Leonard Reed taught me that to adequately refute the lies of others that didn't share our ideology, you would first have to know what they are saying and then become even more versed in their subjects than they are. You can't do that if you live in an echo chamber.
For that reason, I spend a considerable amount of time on right and far right sources, such as faux, breitbart, news max, oann, drudge, washington times and epoch times, among others.
Please understand that I neither capitalize the names of tyrants like trump, nor the sources that support him.
The charge that reforming the Supreme Court is illegal is not only a lie, but it is an idiotic lie. Nothing Congress does can be illegal, because Congress makes the laws. If Congress enacted a law that conflicted with a previous law, then it would supersede the previous law.
Of course, some laws are unconstitutional, and term limits would be if they purported to remove justices from their lifetime appointments. But they wouldn't. They would relegate justices to senior status after a specified number of years and provide that they may participate in cases only when, because a justice is ill or recuses him- or herself, fewer than nine are otherwise available.
If this comment means that Congress can fire federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, from their lifetime positions, then it is incorrect. See Article III, section 1. I was not going to reply to this, because, I thought, why should any of you believe me rather than Mr. westre? But now I see that we're competing for "Like"s (although some of mine may derive from my first paragraph, which is on a different subject). Whether Congress can fire federal judges is not something to be voted on. It has a definite answer and the answer is no. Believe me or not; it's your choice, although I did spend years as the editor of a constitutional law treatise.
If Biden were to propose expanding the Court now you can bet the mainstream media would be beyond outraged, screaming about “packing”, not expanding the court, a very derogative term. The media treats this discussion almost as if it were illegal whereas they can’t complain about a mandatory ethics law or term limits although they will likely treat this like Biden is an idiot for proposing these things because they can’t happen — based on the assumption that Republicans will be in control of the Senate and House and the difficulty of introducing term limits. But given the unpopularity of the Court I think Biden’s proposals will be a winner. If voters elect enough Democrats then we can talk about expanding the Court to match the expanded number of federal districts that the Supreme Court Justices must oversee. The media pretends like these are radical ideas but there are Republicans like Texas’s Rick Perry no less who have proposed staggered 18 year terms and expanding the Court.
Yes. That is what “packing” the Court looks like — an unfair political grab. If Democrats propose expanding the Court based on the need to have one justice per federal district so that each justice is only responsible for overseeing only one district as they used to do, the term packing would not be correct. Unfortunately I bet the mainstream media would use it anyway. To accomplish this requires the American people electing enough Democrats to Congress to get the expansion passed which would mean that it is the will of the people, not just some partisan shenanigan.
The mainstream media is driving the Democrats’ panic which is one reason to care what the mainstream media is saying. I seriously doubt that there would still be prominent Democrats calling for Biden’s resignation if the media obsession had died down after Biden’s strong performances in the days after the debate. That circular firing squad is usually the media firing at Democrats who then run around in a panic stomping all over each other.
After the media helped defeat Hillary in 2016 with their egregiously bad, dishonest coverage of her emails they excused themselves by claiming that most people were getting their news from social media. However an in-depth post election study of 2016 information sources (by Harvard's Berkman Klein Center I think) showed that the majority of social media posts had their origins in mainstream media outlets with the Washington Post and NY Times being the biggest followed by Fox, CNN, NBC, etc. then Breitbart and other far right outlets. People would post things from MSM outlets which would then be reposted over and over by others. People were still largely getting their information from major media outlets, just indirectly. I have no reason to think that is any different today.
I will try to find the source of that study but given how bad google search is these days…..
At his substack, constitutional scholar Steve Vladeck agrees that they are soft-core. He writes:
To put that into words: (1) these reforms have no chance of being adopted; (2) even if they’re adopted, they’re unlikely to be effective anytime soon; and (3) these reforms are coming way too late—in July of a presidential election year—to do anything other than confirm everyone in their priors. Ultimately, the real effect of this proposal is to drive home just how much President Biden has missed his chances—in December 2021; in the summer of 2022; and even last summer—to meaningfully change our national conversation about the Supreme Court. He may not get another.
Needs more context - as an aspirational goal they would want to get back to the 790s rather than the 1690s, in the latter era witches were hung but there was resistance even from the likes of Cotton Mather, while hundreds of years earlier the "witches" were done for, along with the various heretics.
Assigned reading in Professor Menard's American History class:
"Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's Salem Possessed explores the pre-existing social and economic divisions within the Salem Village community, as an entry point to understand the accusations of witchcraft in 1692. According to Boyer and Nissenbaum, the village split into two factions: one interested in gaining more autonomy for Salem Village and led by the Putnam family, and the other, interested in the mercantile and political life of Salem Town and led by the Porter family. Boyer and Nissenbaum's deft and imaginative look at local records reveals the contours of communal life in colonial New England and provides a model through which to understand the witchcraft accusations as part of a larger pattern of communal strife. Such a tight focus on communal and social causes for the events of 1692, however, loses sight of the religious, gendered, and individual forces that played equally pivotal roles in the outbreak."
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft redefined the standard for the possibilities social history offers to understand the events and people of early America. Through a painstaking and creative look at local records such as legal records, the Salem Village record book, the minister's book, and tax records Boyer and Nissenbaum discovered a long-standing pattern of contentious behavior of which the witchcraft accusations in 1692 was just one episode. Their analysis provides an invaluable insight into the social history of New England generally, and the factions of Salem Village that led to the tragic events of 1692, in particular. {More}
This would be a real problem for California. In the Bay Area, people have trouble telling what someoneʼs racial background is. Is a person a) light skinned black b) mixed black and white c) mixed black and Mexican d) Asian Indian e) mixed black and Asian????? Such people look at others and wonder this question because they canʼt tell either. Most of the people in the Bay Area have skin that looks like they might be tanned Italians. Very few are like me, blonde (ok, grayish blonde) and blue eyed. Unless youʼre clearly Asian or black or white, thereʼs no way to tell without asking and most donʼt, just make the assumption that theyʼre people just like them. And we all assume immigrants are here to work, which is what they do. When they run into problems, like my nephew-in-law, an illegal, the legal person, my niece, a nurse practitioner, moves the whole family, including three kids born here, to Canada. I wonder how long it will be before the fifth largest economy in the world secedes. I think we do have the power.
Great points, Ellen. I also live in California and have lately been thinking about secession too. I realize how difficult and extreme that would be but good grief. I don't think Lincoln envisioned this when he tried to keep the country together.
My dad and uncle wrote a book years ago (satire) and the title was Who Gives A S#it. Then, the question was--what's it about? Answer: who gives a s#it? In our family, crap like this is just another chapter in the book.
We don't care about racial backgrounds. We hope and believe in sentient human beings. Otherwise we've sunk below the level of worthiness.
The f*cker DT doesn't deserve to be president because of what he's done to the understanding of when and why to capitalize the first letter of words. For that reason alone he should be disqualified.
Did you see the photo of the enraptured nerd at the covention wearing bandages on his ears exactly like Trump's? What were these people doing before Trump came along?
And the ultimate irony (frequently mentioned on this blog and elsewhere) is that Trump’s grandfather, mother, two of his three wives and his current father-in-law and his recently deceased mother-in-law are immigrants. And the MAGATs seem to have no problem with this.
Well, Trump's grandfather who was originally a Bavarian German, and he married a Bavarian woman like himself. Trump's father married a Scotswoman. And yes, Ivana was Czech and Melanija Knavs was from Slovenia.
Of course they have no problem with that! Those people are all WHITE! The people that
T-Rump and others in the GOP rant and rage against are brown-skinned Hispanics. They rarely if ever say that part out loud because they don't have to. Their worshipers know who they're attacking.
Thomas is praying for medical science to advance to the point where he can have a skin transplant, and exchange his despised black skin for holy and pure white.
The decisions rendered by the Supreme Court majority since Mitch McConnell snubbed his noise to the Constitution and refused to hold hearings and provide Advice and Consent on Merrick Garland’s nomination are lawless and a manifestation of Project 2025. It is up to us to stop them by reaching out and educating voters.
yes. I don't know how we could have done it, but we should have stood our ground at Merrick Garland. It has always ben mindboggling to me that they got away with that.
Once upon a time (35 years or so) I took a course in planning law. Stare decisis was a corner stone.
Stare decisis means “to stand by things decided” in Latin. When a court faces a legal argument, if a previous court has ruled on the same or a closely related issue, then the court will make their decision in alignment with the previous court's decision.
The Supremes have determined that this principle should be abandoned. I'm horrified but not surprised. The Court is playing Calvinball with our lives, liberty, and property. For those who are not Calvin and Hobbes fans: Calvinball is a game featured in Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip. There is only one rule: it can't be played the same way twice.
The Supremes are making a mockery of themselves, our country, and, ultimately, our lives. Where does it end?
This is an ugly scene that we glimpse marching down our streets .
It is absolutely critical that we do what we need to ensure we continue to live under our Constitution.
It won’t happen without tremendous effort. We are dealing with mercenaries.
These with little or no compassion or respect for human beings, yes, unless they are bigoted white males.
And one might well question whether these ‘men ‘ are even human ?
Well unfortunately they are , men , who have by their atrocities have created a system of degradation and oppression of women , people of color , immigrants .
Their scale of acceptability is money and the power it brings .
And they like so many other cultures that negate the value of women, are
gaining ground.
The ERA has become a fossil.
This because of the Republican Maga takeover .
We cannot allow this sick system to enlist another even sicker group , Trump and his would be lying administration.
Trump , getting shot at last week , the spin from Maga is Democrats caused this .
That is pure Bull Shit.
They have made guns accessible to everyone that can get ahold of one .
And guns are plentiful.
Money for Medical care - down.
Money for Public Education - down
Money for children to eat - down
Money for Mental Health- down
Red states routinely refuse Federal programs for hungry kids to eat . How ugly and cruel do you have to be .
And they’re against abortion because of their alleged concern for the unborn child .
BS again
What about the Homeless that part of society that was created in many instances because of lack of mental healthcare.
Also these wealthy white men are greedy , those in real estate gouging prices .
Wealthy people from for sign countries are buying up real estate and lands here in America , our own citizens- denied.
Money for corruption in the Supreme Court - Up ( ask Clarence Thomas)
Money for corrupt candidates- Up and Unlimited.
Insurance Companies profits- UP
Coverage - Down
Without Joe Biden in office these past years . We’d have - no roads and bridges
No clean water
No help for education
No vision for how to save us from calamity due to climate change.
No end to price gouging
by Big Pharma
No end to misrepresentation re chemicals that are killing us . So much more .
How many of these above situations has the Supreme Court disregarded the Constitution in dealing with them .
Every one of them directly or indirectly.
We need to stop arresting homeless folks for being in this corruption oriented grip of big corporations , and Maga.
Yes, that is so true- birth rates of whites have been dropping for decades while brown skinned people are having more babies. The population statistics have shifted. You nailed it. The preservation of white europeans population is paramount if they are to "keep" THEIR country. A white fundamentalist christian country is their goal and gee, you know, first to go were those pesky First nations.. when they talk about the criminal Latinos coming into the country they forget many of their forefathers were sent here in exile because of crimes that they committed in Europe. Keep on filling your newsletter with your wisdom and truth and cogent analysis-- it is a grounding force each morning for me and I am sure for most of your followers.
So why be pro-life when all these brown and black babies are being born to take over the USA. I have a feeling some changes will all of a sudden be made in the future.
I have read that Trump won in 2016 because Progressives wouldn't turn out for Clinton. This had a horrendous impact because we got 4 years of Trump and 3 conservative Justices added to the Court. There is concern that the same thing is going to happen in November. Getting the vote out is a crucial thing.
One of the RNC speakers said that an election where Trump is not declared the winner won't be accepted by Republicans. What kind of election is that? Up until Jan 6th, 2021, the peaceful transfer of power was a given. Looks like things are going to be rough for a while.
Yes indeed. And Adam Schiff and his nervous friends don't even have a plan for who we should turn out for. I'm a registered Democrat, and the Democratic Party makes me sick.
Why are they so mean? The SCOTUS immunity ruling is hanging over me. Of all the things that have happened, that feels the most ominous. I guess the combination of a president who has immunity and the increase of absolute whackos in Washington--how long can we fend them off?
Actually, what do you think about an ad campaign with adorable little kids of all colors speaking to the camera, asking "Why do you have to be so mean?" or "I thought people were supposed to be nice" or "You're scaring me" after showing a video of Trump/Vance/et al saying something mean.
These people have to be stopped but Joe's court proposal is three years too late and isn't going anywhere anyway. The weird thing I notice in the little snips of the coronation that I've watched is the complete lack of concern about their Dear King, they get more enthused about the violence and threats of more to come. There is a groundswell of support waiting out there for Democratic ideals but at this point we lack a charismatic leader to make it happen.
That could pose a problem for Vance's biracial children and his Desi wife.
The evil orange menace's wife is an immigrant and Vance's wife is the daughter of immigrants....where would they be without their spouses and their spouses' families? The hypocrisy of today's Republicans is beyond the pale!
Vance's wife is a Yale educated lawyer and clerked for both Roberts and Kavanaugh. Her father is a lecturer in Aerospace engineering at San Diego State and her mother is a marine molecular biologist and a biochemist at UCLA San Diego. She has her own bona fides. A very accomplished women in her own right. Her husband is still a world class dick bought and paid for by billionaires.
Yes, Vance's wife is a brilliant woman married to a horse's patooey!
She is dumb enough to hitch her wagon to that hateful dimwit hairball. Can't fix stupid.
At the risk of sounding sympathetic (I'm not) I think it's only fair to point out that when she married him, Vance was a different, seemingly reasonable person.
As a general rule, impugning spouses of public figures just coarsens the dialogue, unless they insert themselves into the political process (see Thomas, Virginia).
People don't change. Vance's scheister background has ramped up to this moment. Usha built the scaffolding with him.
Everything you say about Vance's wife is true. That does not matter to white supremacists. As far as they are concerned, if you aren't "white", i.e.,of northern European descent, you aren't areal American.
How can she stand the Magots???
Well dear she is one too.
This. She is as much a part of this as she can be. Self loathing there. A maga feature.
Please don't point out donnie's hypocrisy. He is very touchy about that and he may cry.
Two wives are immigrants and so was his mother. Iʼm not even related to Trump, and Iʼm related to most presidents, just not the ones whose families got here after 1800.
Strange how millions from Thiel and Musk to tRump have overridden that replacement theory “concern.” The GQP convention must be an awkward place to be for Vance’s wife.
Or Mitch McConnell's, or a few others . . .
It shouldnʼt, and if it does, the offended should be thrown out of the party. I would say she should come live in the Bay Area, but central or far Northern California would probably be better, or not, I donʼt know.
This is a spot-on assessment of intent and content by Republicans infected with MAGA virus. Sane people and Democrats must put aside small differences and unite to protect democracy. It is that simple, especially after Project 2025 revealed the extent of their desires.
I think it misses the bigger problem with this court, which is that it is poised to hand the presidency to Trump if he does not win it, so they will come up with some trumped up reason that the vote was unfair in his favor. Every other decision might be part of their plan but it is also to acclimate the population to accept them committing judicial treason without overthrowing the court. That is what should have happened. There is a historical precedent for getting rid of treasonists. However, people have been adjusting to more and more extreme actions from the court, and they already accepted them giving the election to Bush and not Gore. So, we shall see what happens. The battles are twofold, to get Biden elected, and then to take down the court if they try to give it to Trump. Dems needs to stop letting the Republicans drive the narrative and double down on the fact that they are breaking the laws of the land.
You are at the crux of the problem - either the dems are complicit or total ineffectual. And we are screwed.
We the People have agency. The Dems are ineffectual and perhaps complicit, but we still have agency to get the vote out person by person. Let the people around you know about Project 2025. Here is a toolkit for this. https://redwine.blue/project2025/
Tell that to Adam Shiff.
Traitor!!
I personally think Nancy Pelosi is behind this. Her stepping aside is not like Biden stepping aside, but she does not seem to consider this. The Party is tanking the candidate. If they cannot win that in on them. Let Biden take the White House, and let's get the vote out.
You're certainly right that Biden has proposed soft-core reforms. The only reform that would make a significant difference in the short term would be to add four more justices so that the justices outnumber the Republican politicians on the Court by 7 to 6. By the time term limits would have an effect, Trump may have eliminated the Supreme Court.
Is even one Democrat going to point out that Trump's charge that Biden's proposal is illegal and unconstitutional is a lie, just like every other word that he utters?
Everything out of his mouth, and everyone's mouth at the RNC, is a lie., When is the press going to keep a running column called "Today's Lies."
Over 50 years ago, Leonard Reed taught me that to adequately refute the lies of others that didn't share our ideology, you would first have to know what they are saying and then become even more versed in their subjects than they are. You can't do that if you live in an echo chamber.
For that reason, I spend a considerable amount of time on right and far right sources, such as faux, breitbart, news max, oann, drudge, washington times and epoch times, among others.
Please understand that I neither capitalize the names of tyrants like trump, nor the sources that support him.
The charge that reforming the Supreme Court is illegal is not only a lie, but it is an idiotic lie. Nothing Congress does can be illegal, because Congress makes the laws. If Congress enacted a law that conflicted with a previous law, then it would supersede the previous law.
Of course, some laws are unconstitutional, and term limits would be if they purported to remove justices from their lifetime appointments. But they wouldn't. They would relegate justices to senior status after a specified number of years and provide that they may participate in cases only when, because a justice is ill or recuses him- or herself, fewer than nine are otherwise available.
Actually Congress can set mandatory retirement ages. It has a constitutional power to define the limits of court jurisdiction.
If this comment means that Congress can fire federal judges, including Supreme Court justices, from their lifetime positions, then it is incorrect. See Article III, section 1. I was not going to reply to this, because, I thought, why should any of you believe me rather than Mr. westre? But now I see that we're competing for "Like"s (although some of mine may derive from my first paragraph, which is on a different subject). Whether Congress can fire federal judges is not something to be voted on. It has a definite answer and the answer is no. Believe me or not; it's your choice, although I did spend years as the editor of a constitutional law treatise.
If Biden were to propose expanding the Court now you can bet the mainstream media would be beyond outraged, screaming about “packing”, not expanding the court, a very derogative term. The media treats this discussion almost as if it were illegal whereas they can’t complain about a mandatory ethics law or term limits although they will likely treat this like Biden is an idiot for proposing these things because they can’t happen — based on the assumption that Republicans will be in control of the Senate and House and the difficulty of introducing term limits. But given the unpopularity of the Court I think Biden’s proposals will be a winner. If voters elect enough Democrats then we can talk about expanding the Court to match the expanded number of federal districts that the Supreme Court Justices must oversee. The media pretends like these are radical ideas but there are Republicans like Texas’s Rick Perry no less who have proposed staggered 18 year terms and expanding the Court.
The Republicans packed the court. When McConnell refused to consider Garland, it disrupted everything.
Yes. That is what “packing” the Court looks like — an unfair political grab. If Democrats propose expanding the Court based on the need to have one justice per federal district so that each justice is only responsible for overseeing only one district as they used to do, the term packing would not be correct. Unfortunately I bet the mainstream media would use it anyway. To accomplish this requires the American people electing enough Democrats to Congress to get the expansion passed which would mean that it is the will of the people, not just some partisan shenanigan.
Please contact me about the charge back dispute your bank made with Substack and my subscription account.
Do that many people care what the MSM says anymore other than the Dems who are trying to get rid of Biden?
The mainstream media is driving the Democrats’ panic which is one reason to care what the mainstream media is saying. I seriously doubt that there would still be prominent Democrats calling for Biden’s resignation if the media obsession had died down after Biden’s strong performances in the days after the debate. That circular firing squad is usually the media firing at Democrats who then run around in a panic stomping all over each other.
After the media helped defeat Hillary in 2016 with their egregiously bad, dishonest coverage of her emails they excused themselves by claiming that most people were getting their news from social media. However an in-depth post election study of 2016 information sources (by Harvard's Berkman Klein Center I think) showed that the majority of social media posts had their origins in mainstream media outlets with the Washington Post and NY Times being the biggest followed by Fox, CNN, NBC, etc. then Breitbart and other far right outlets. People would post things from MSM outlets which would then be reposted over and over by others. People were still largely getting their information from major media outlets, just indirectly. I have no reason to think that is any different today.
I will try to find the source of that study but given how bad google search is these days…..
Yes! I agree.
What happened to Google? It’s awful now.
At his substack, constitutional scholar Steve Vladeck agrees that they are soft-core. He writes:
To put that into words: (1) these reforms have no chance of being adopted; (2) even if they’re adopted, they’re unlikely to be effective anytime soon; and (3) these reforms are coming way too late—in July of a presidential election year—to do anything other than confirm everyone in their priors. Ultimately, the real effect of this proposal is to drive home just how much President Biden has missed his chances—in December 2021; in the summer of 2022; and even last summer—to meaningfully change our national conversation about the Supreme Court. He may not get another.
VOTE! VOTE!! VOTE!!!
DEMOCRATS!!!
If they could get away with it we would be headed back to the 790s, the Dark Ages, no holds barred theocracy.
But they'll settle for the 1890s if that's all that's possible.
Iʼm pretty sure itʼs more like the 1690s.
Needs more context - as an aspirational goal they would want to get back to the 790s rather than the 1690s, in the latter era witches were hung but there was resistance even from the likes of Cotton Mather, while hundreds of years earlier the "witches" were done for, along with the various heretics.
Assigned reading in Professor Menard's American History class:
https://salem.lib.virginia.edu/bnreview.html
"Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's Salem Possessed explores the pre-existing social and economic divisions within the Salem Village community, as an entry point to understand the accusations of witchcraft in 1692. According to Boyer and Nissenbaum, the village split into two factions: one interested in gaining more autonomy for Salem Village and led by the Putnam family, and the other, interested in the mercantile and political life of Salem Town and led by the Porter family. Boyer and Nissenbaum's deft and imaginative look at local records reveals the contours of communal life in colonial New England and provides a model through which to understand the witchcraft accusations as part of a larger pattern of communal strife. Such a tight focus on communal and social causes for the events of 1692, however, loses sight of the religious, gendered, and individual forces that played equally pivotal roles in the outbreak."
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum's Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft redefined the standard for the possibilities social history offers to understand the events and people of early America. Through a painstaking and creative look at local records such as legal records, the Salem Village record book, the minister's book, and tax records Boyer and Nissenbaum discovered a long-standing pattern of contentious behavior of which the witchcraft accusations in 1692 was just one episode. Their analysis provides an invaluable insight into the social history of New England generally, and the factions of Salem Village that led to the tragic events of 1692, in particular. {More}
👍👍
This would be a real problem for California. In the Bay Area, people have trouble telling what someoneʼs racial background is. Is a person a) light skinned black b) mixed black and white c) mixed black and Mexican d) Asian Indian e) mixed black and Asian????? Such people look at others and wonder this question because they canʼt tell either. Most of the people in the Bay Area have skin that looks like they might be tanned Italians. Very few are like me, blonde (ok, grayish blonde) and blue eyed. Unless youʼre clearly Asian or black or white, thereʼs no way to tell without asking and most donʼt, just make the assumption that theyʼre people just like them. And we all assume immigrants are here to work, which is what they do. When they run into problems, like my nephew-in-law, an illegal, the legal person, my niece, a nurse practitioner, moves the whole family, including three kids born here, to Canada. I wonder how long it will be before the fifth largest economy in the world secedes. I think we do have the power.
Great points, Ellen. I also live in California and have lately been thinking about secession too. I realize how difficult and extreme that would be but good grief. I don't think Lincoln envisioned this when he tried to keep the country together.
My dad and uncle wrote a book years ago (satire) and the title was Who Gives A S#it. Then, the question was--what's it about? Answer: who gives a s#it? In our family, crap like this is just another chapter in the book.
We don't care about racial backgrounds. We hope and believe in sentient human beings. Otherwise we've sunk below the level of worthiness.
The f*cker DT doesn't deserve to be president because of what he's done to the understanding of when and why to capitalize the first letter of words. For that reason alone he should be disqualified.
Did you see the photo of the enraptured nerd at the covention wearing bandages on his ears exactly like Trump's? What were these people doing before Trump came along?
Puppets on steel strings! Howdy Doody had more brains!
He's presently the Governor of Ohio.😆😆
Has he really changed anyone's understanding? Have maggots started to randomly capitalize words? I wouldn't know.
Yes, many have.
He only wants to be POTUS to stay out of jail. THAT and only THAT is the root of his re-entry into the race.
👏👏👏
And the ultimate irony (frequently mentioned on this blog and elsewhere) is that Trump’s grandfather, mother, two of his three wives and his current father-in-law and his recently deceased mother-in-law are immigrants. And the MAGATs seem to have no problem with this.
Ah, but they were yt--northern Europeans--and thus were "acceptable".
Ah-ah-ah. The wives are or were Slavs, not Germanic. Slavs are like Poles, just not good enough. Ask the Nazis.
Well, Trump's grandfather who was originally a Bavarian German, and he married a Bavarian woman like himself. Trump's father married a Scotswoman. And yes, Ivana was Czech and Melanija Knavs was from Slovenia.
Of course they have no problem with that! Those people are all WHITE! The people that
T-Rump and others in the GOP rant and rage against are brown-skinned Hispanics. They rarely if ever say that part out loud because they don't have to. Their worshipers know who they're attacking.
Overturning Loving v Virginia would be a little surprising, given the current members of the court.
I'm sure there's a way Thomas will either exempt himself or convince everyone that he's white.
He does seem a little confused about a number of things ( the constitution amongst them)
Thomas is praying for medical science to advance to the point where he can have a skin transplant, and exchange his despised black skin for holy and pure white.
Hypocrisy has never stopped “Clearance” Thomas before. Obviously he thinks he’s above the law and right now he is.
The decisions rendered by the Supreme Court majority since Mitch McConnell snubbed his noise to the Constitution and refused to hold hearings and provide Advice and Consent on Merrick Garland’s nomination are lawless and a manifestation of Project 2025. It is up to us to stop them by reaching out and educating voters.
yes. I don't know how we could have done it, but we should have stood our ground at Merrick Garland. It has always ben mindboggling to me that they got away with that.
I agree, but I don't know what they could have done!
Neither do I.
Once upon a time (35 years or so) I took a course in planning law. Stare decisis was a corner stone.
Stare decisis means “to stand by things decided” in Latin. When a court faces a legal argument, if a previous court has ruled on the same or a closely related issue, then the court will make their decision in alignment with the previous court's decision.
The Supremes have determined that this principle should be abandoned. I'm horrified but not surprised. The Court is playing Calvinball with our lives, liberty, and property. For those who are not Calvin and Hobbes fans: Calvinball is a game featured in Calvin and Hobbes, a comic strip. There is only one rule: it can't be played the same way twice.
The Supremes are making a mockery of themselves, our country, and, ultimately, our lives. Where does it end?
This is an ugly scene that we glimpse marching down our streets .
It is absolutely critical that we do what we need to ensure we continue to live under our Constitution.
It won’t happen without tremendous effort. We are dealing with mercenaries.
These with little or no compassion or respect for human beings, yes, unless they are bigoted white males.
And one might well question whether these ‘men ‘ are even human ?
Well unfortunately they are , men , who have by their atrocities have created a system of degradation and oppression of women , people of color , immigrants .
Their scale of acceptability is money and the power it brings .
And they like so many other cultures that negate the value of women, are
gaining ground.
The ERA has become a fossil.
This because of the Republican Maga takeover .
We cannot allow this sick system to enlist another even sicker group , Trump and his would be lying administration.
Trump , getting shot at last week , the spin from Maga is Democrats caused this .
That is pure Bull Shit.
They have made guns accessible to everyone that can get ahold of one .
And guns are plentiful.
Money for Medical care - down.
Money for Public Education - down
Money for children to eat - down
Money for Mental Health- down
Red states routinely refuse Federal programs for hungry kids to eat . How ugly and cruel do you have to be .
And they’re against abortion because of their alleged concern for the unborn child .
BS again
What about the Homeless that part of society that was created in many instances because of lack of mental healthcare.
Also these wealthy white men are greedy , those in real estate gouging prices .
Wealthy people from for sign countries are buying up real estate and lands here in America , our own citizens- denied.
Money for corruption in the Supreme Court - Up ( ask Clarence Thomas)
Money for corrupt candidates- Up and Unlimited.
Insurance Companies profits- UP
Coverage - Down
Without Joe Biden in office these past years . We’d have - no roads and bridges
No clean water
No help for education
No vision for how to save us from calamity due to climate change.
No end to price gouging
by Big Pharma
No end to misrepresentation re chemicals that are killing us . So much more .
How many of these above situations has the Supreme Court disregarded the Constitution in dealing with them .
Every one of them directly or indirectly.
We need to stop arresting homeless folks for being in this corruption oriented grip of big corporations , and Maga.
Vote them out .
Vote Biden in again .
Brilliantly put!
Yes, that is so true- birth rates of whites have been dropping for decades while brown skinned people are having more babies. The population statistics have shifted. You nailed it. The preservation of white europeans population is paramount if they are to "keep" THEIR country. A white fundamentalist christian country is their goal and gee, you know, first to go were those pesky First nations.. when they talk about the criminal Latinos coming into the country they forget many of their forefathers were sent here in exile because of crimes that they committed in Europe. Keep on filling your newsletter with your wisdom and truth and cogent analysis-- it is a grounding force each morning for me and I am sure for most of your followers.
So why be pro-life when all these brown and black babies are being born to take over the USA. I have a feeling some changes will all of a sudden be made in the future.
I have read that Trump won in 2016 because Progressives wouldn't turn out for Clinton. This had a horrendous impact because we got 4 years of Trump and 3 conservative Justices added to the Court. There is concern that the same thing is going to happen in November. Getting the vote out is a crucial thing.
One of the RNC speakers said that an election where Trump is not declared the winner won't be accepted by Republicans. What kind of election is that? Up until Jan 6th, 2021, the peaceful transfer of power was a given. Looks like things are going to be rough for a while.
Yes indeed. And Adam Schiff and his nervous friends don't even have a plan for who we should turn out for. I'm a registered Democrat, and the Democratic Party makes me sick.
Well, that we know of yet. I am certain they have concocted a plan or scheme.
Yes, the final decision should always be based on, Itʼs the Supreme Court, stupid... Thatʼs why progressives have to turn out for any Democrat.
Why are they so mean? The SCOTUS immunity ruling is hanging over me. Of all the things that have happened, that feels the most ominous. I guess the combination of a president who has immunity and the increase of absolute whackos in Washington--how long can we fend them off?
Actually, what do you think about an ad campaign with adorable little kids of all colors speaking to the camera, asking "Why do you have to be so mean?" or "I thought people were supposed to be nice" or "You're scaring me" after showing a video of Trump/Vance/et al saying something mean.
These people have to be stopped but Joe's court proposal is three years too late and isn't going anywhere anyway. The weird thing I notice in the little snips of the coronation that I've watched is the complete lack of concern about their Dear King, they get more enthused about the violence and threats of more to come. There is a groundswell of support waiting out there for Democratic ideals but at this point we lack a charismatic leader to make it happen.