supreme court

Oh brother

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

scotuscare

A little while back Rachel Maddow did a wonderful segment that had me nodding my head in furious agreement and applauding (I seriously clapped my hands at the TV, you guys). She expressed her bewilderment at certain political concepts that aren’t really meaningful when closely examined or helpful when put into practice, but are wildly popular with some segments of the public. Things like term limits (which regular people looooove but aren’t really conducive to effective governance), or nepotism (thinking someone is qualified to hold office simply because his or her relative did). It culminated in her main thesis about Donald Trump (to quote John Oliver, why is he still a thing?) but I’m going to draw from her build-up to laugh at the latest stunt by the GOP majority in the House to get back at the Supreme Court for upholding the ACA subsidies in their decision announced Thursday.

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Anti-choicers jailing women because they care?

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

pro choice logo

Anti-choicers are such prodigious and unabashed liars that when they don’t even bother pretending and just show their true natures it can startle even the jaded likes of me! Two developments this past week did just that. First was the conservative Fifth Circuit Court’s decision to uphold Texas’ draconian HB2, an anti-choice omnibus law passed in 2013 (amidst thunderous protest at the State Capitol and after then-Senator Wendy Davis’ now-famous filibuster) that imposed onerous and unnecessary “safety” requirements on abortion clinics in what was obviously an attempt to shut them down. The implementation of the law was delayed due to lawsuits, with a federal judge last summer calling the anti-choicers right out on their bullshit.

The most remarkable portion of Yeakel’s opinion, however, may be the fact that he does not simply analyze the effect of Texas’s law. He also accuses the state of outright dishonesty. Responding to the state’s argument that some Texans can seek abortions in New Mexico if they are unable to obtain one in Texas thanks to HB2, Yeakel notes that this argument completely undermines any suggestion that these laws are supposed to protect women’s health:

If the State’s true purpose in enacting the ambulatory-surgical-center requirement is to protect the health and safety of Texas women who seek abortions, it is disingenuous and incompatible with that goal to argue that Texas women can seek abortion care in a state with lesser regulations. If, however, the State’s underlying purpose in enacting the requirement was to reduce or eliminate abortion in parts or all of Texas, the State’s position is perfectly congruent with such a goal.

Yeakel, in other words, calls a sham a sham. He recognizes, in the words of the Supreme Court, that the purpose HB2 is to “place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability.” And he comes just one step from outright accusing the state of lying when it claims that the law was actually enacted to protect women’s health.

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Gay is the new abortion?

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

This remarkable item has gone viral:

Columnist Dan Savage calls it a “new variation on the “straight people are terrible” argument against marriage equality.”

Religious conservatives have already argued that straight people will stop getting married if gay people can and that marriage must be reserved for straight people because only straights can get pregnant by accident, and without the special inducements of marriage (a big party, a special cake, a honeymoon), straight people won’t take care of all those babies they’re having by accident. Now they’re arguing that straight people will abort their babies if gay people get married.

Man, straight people are terrible—why were they ever allowed to get married in the first place?

The anti-choice movement is an entire parallel bizarro world of crackpot bullshit so it would be easy to dismiss this as yet another weird myth, like the belief that abortions can be reversed, that has taken hold there. But there is an important context for this. The argument is being put forth in an amicus brief to the Supreme Court as it considers the latest challenge to same sex marriage.

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Tom Horne plays doctor

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Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

sad tom horne

Some good news for reproductive rights in Arizona, and elsewhere, from the Supreme Court:

The U.S. Supreme Court this morning rejected a bid by attorneys for the state to overturn a federal appellate court ruling which had concluded the limits illegally infringe on the constitutional right of women to terminate a pregnancy. The justices gave no reason for their decision.

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How do you like your Hobby Lobby now, Doug Ducey and other GOP candidates?

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Crossposted at DemocraticDiva.com

hobby lobby

Per Ian Millhiser:

Citing Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, the Supreme Court’s decision last June holding that the religious objections of a business’ owners could trump federal rules requiring that business to include birth control coverage in its health plan, a federal judge in Utah held last week that a member of a polygamist religious sect could refuse to testify in a federal investigation into alleged violations of child labor laws because he objects to testifying on religious grounds…

…The federal child labor investigation arose from a CNN report investigating claims that Jeffs “ordered all schools closed for a week so children could go to work picking pecans off trees at a private ranch” in Utah. The report included video of “hundreds of children, many of them very small” working on the ranch. When the reporters arrived, CNN also caught video of the FLDS children fleeing the cameras.

Yet, according to an order signed by Judge David Sam, a Reagan appointee to a trial court in Utah, the federal officials investigating this alleged violation of child labor laws will not be able to require an FLDS member named Vernon Steed to provide information that could aid the investigation because Steed objects to giving certain testimony on religious grounds. Steed claims that he’s made “religious vows ‘not to discuss matters related to the internal affairs or organization of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.’” According to Judge Sam’s opinion, that’s enough to exempt him from providing the testimony he does not want to give.

Whoops.

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