Tag Archives: Amy Coney Barrett

Political Rants

Our remaining option: A Million Mutinies Now

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As you well know, the other shoe dropped last week regarding Roe v. Wade, which is now history. The joyless anti-abortion zealots up the street from me must be enjoying the closest thing they know to a celebration. Maybe they’ll take the baby-float mobile out for a ride. (No, seriously: they had a vehicle with a plastic baby on the roof and P.A. speakers through which they would read anti-abortion screeds, inaudible because of their cheap audio gear. We called it the “baby float”.)

I wrote a post on the impending abortion decision a couple of weeks ago entitled “The Right To Be Forced Into Childbirth“. What I didn’t get deeply into then was the degree of fraud Trump’s appointees to the Supreme Court committed during their confirmation hearings. That was, of course, their way not only of protecting themselves but of offering their supporters cover by gaslighting everyone who had paid any attention to their careers up to that point.

Perjury and Prevarication

Let’s take Gorsuch, son of Anne Gorsuch Buford, Reagan’s EPA administrator who tried to dismantle the agency, partly through sheer incompetence. (Looks like her son is going to get another shot at it via their upcoming ruling.) During his confirmation hearings, Gorsuch acknowledged the power of precedence with regard to Roe, and affirmed that a “good judge” should take it as seriously as in any other case. Then came last Friday.

How about Kavanaugh, lover of beer, bro of Squee, best bud of P.J.? Kavanaugh referred to Roe as “settled law” and an “important precedent …. reaffirmed many times.” Sure, he suggested that he might be persuaded to overturn it, but who reads the fine print? He made comforting cooing sounds, and the senators nodded contentedly.

I’m not sure what Justice Barrett could possibly have said to counteract her part in publishing a full-page anti abortion ad in the New York Times. She bleated some gas about following the rules of stare decisis, and like her reactionary brethren, hid the ball in plain sight so that the politicians in the audience could pretend they did not see it.

The bastards Bush

It’s easy to blame Trump, of course, because he’s so damn blame-able. But the worst justice on the damn court is Clarence Thomas, and he was appointed by George H. W. Bush, or Bush the First as no one calls him. Bush is now roundly praised by centrists as a man of integrity, etc. Justice Thomas is convincing evidence to the contrary. No other recent Republican president has appointed a more reactionary judge to lifetime tenure on the Supreme Court.

And then there’s Sam Alito, the no- so-smart as Scalia clone of Scalia. George W. Bush appointed him, so to those of you whose hearts are warmed by the sight of W. and Michelle Obama goofing about, all I can say to you is …. Iraq. And Alito. And Afghanistan. And …. Suffice to say, if it weren’t for these two losers (W. and H.W.), Roe would still stand.

All is not lost

Fortunately, there are things we can do. One of them is what so many thousands of people did over this past weekend – make your voices heard. Another is to push our Congress members to support legislation by Elizabeth Warren and other progressives that would support the right to abortion services through the establishment of federal clinics in red states, expansion of access to medication, and so on.

The other thing is, well, a million mutinies now. Vote for the most progressive members of Congress you can find. Encourage everyone around you to do the same thing. We need a progressive tidal wave this fall, and it’s going to take everyone doing that simple thing – voting. With a strong majority in Congress, we can pass and expanded Roe in to law, build a better healthcare system, expand the Supreme Court, impeach Kavanaugh, amend the constitution. All we need is the votes.

Impossible? I think not. If people mobilize, we can take over the works within the confines of the current system. With the right numbers, nothing could stop us. We just have to commit to doing it.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

The right to be forced into childbirth

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Let me put this right on the table. I am a cisgender white male, born into considerable privilege (though not rich) and raised in a rock-rib Republican town that is also home to Congresswoman Claudia Tenney. Unlike Claudia (who is currently warning on Twitter of yet another election-year migrant “caravan” coming north from the brown countries), I am pro-abortion rights, 100%. And if I were against abortion, no one should listen to me …. because I am a cisgender white male who will never need the procedure, and should shut the fuck up.

In light of the leaked Alito draft opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, I feel as though I should map out my reasons for supporting women’s bodily sovereignty. None of my thoughts on this are unique or particularly original, but this is a time when people should voice their opposition to the Taliban-like edicts of our robed overlords on the Supreme Court, in hopes of mobilizing even broader opposition. Aside from organizing, volunteering and donating, it’s all we’ve got left at this point.

Thus far and no farther

First point: I have long felt that our bodies are our own personal nation, and that we are the sovereigns of that nation. Sure, we can’t control everything that happens within our borders, so to speak, but we should have the final word on any interventions from the skin inward. That seems pretty minimal to me in the way of human rights. Men insist on this, and rightly so – no forced vasectomies, thank you very much. And I intend on keeping my gall bladder, so there!

Okay, so when a woman is pregnant – and guys, I hope you’re reading this carefully – the pregnancy happens inside of her. That small province of internal space should be totally within her control. You’ve heard the old saying about politics stopping at the waters’ edge? Well, the law should stop at the skin. If a woman wants to bring the pregnancy to term, that’s her right. If she wants to end it, prevent it, whatever, that’s her fundamental right as well. It’s a question of sovereignty, you see.

Freedom from religion

Last time I looked at the First Amendment, it appeared to say something like this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

This is our guarantee not only of freedom of religion, but freedom from religion. Now, when you hear right-wingnuts and religious zealots talking about when life begins, it’s important to remember that they are expressing a religious belief. The idea that “life” begins at conception has no basis in science. If they are passing laws that force us to comply with this warped take on human biology, by any reasonable standard that amounts to compelling us to live according to the strictures of their religion.

This is indefensible on first amendment grounds. Unless, of course, our hyper partisan Supreme Court decides otherwise.

Card-carrying justices

Let us face it, the Supreme Court is an overtly political institution. Regardless of what they say at their confirmation hearings, conservative justices are only going to vote on way, regardless of the facts or the law. As Elie Mystal has pointed out many times, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett were bred to overturn Roe v. Wade – no amount of argumentation will convince them otherwise.

If the Court decides to overturn Roe, people like me have to stand up. We all know multiple women who have relied on this constitutional right at one point or another. We need to ally with women, support them, and fight for justice. That’s the only way forward.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

The best way to make your vote count

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I know this is not a week when people want to hear about lost elections, but somebody has to say it. This is such an elementary point, I don’t understand why there’s so much resistance to it, but elections have consequences. I feel the urge to tell my leftist friends that (a) I’m further left than they are, (b) the revolution is not just around the corner, and (c) voting strategically doesn’t take anything away from organizing.

This week the Supreme Court gave us their best reason yet to use voting as a political strategy. We are looking at a 5-4 reversal of Roe v. Wade, a decision that will cause enormous hardship for millions of working class and poor women across the country. That five-vote majority could not be arrived at without the appointment of Neil Gorsuch, Amy Coney Barrett, and Brett Kavanaugh to the court. If a Democratic president had filled even just two of those seats, it’s doubtful that Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health would have even made it to the court in the first place.

Not our first rodeo

The sad fact is, because of flaccid support for flaccid Democratic candidates over the past twenty years, we have missed multiple opportunities to flip the Supreme Court over to the centrist-liberal side. There were several points at which a Democratic senate majority and/or Democratic president could have taken advantage of serendipitous vacancies, but alas, they simply were not there. The Republicans have managed to be in the right place at the right time in each instance.

It happened in the Reagan years, but without delving back into the stone age, the first instance I’m thinking of is 2005, right after Bush’s reelection, when Chief Justice Rehnquist died of thyroid cancer. If Kerry had won in 2004, Rehnquist would not have been replaced with Roberts. Neither would Sandra Day O’Connor have been replaced with Alito that same year. Then, of course, there was 2016, when Scalia dropped dead. Much as I couldn’t stand Clinton, she would not have appointed Gorsuch to replace him. And if we had held the Senate in 2014, confirmation of Obama’s nominee would have been assured.

Harm reduction 101

There are plenty of fair complaints on the left regarding how Biden has handled things, how the Democratic House and Senate have used their majorities, etc. But the principle obstacle to better policy is the lack of a firm majority in the Senate. That’s the reason why the Child Tax Credit was not renewed, even though it had cut child poverty in half. That was a wildly successful program that missed renewal by a whisker – really just one vote short in the Senate.

How do you fix that problem? Elect more progressive Democrats. Failing that, elect more Democrats who will at least support core policies, like reducing or ending child poverty, protecting a woman’s bodily sovereignty, and so on. It’s one of those necessary but not sufficient measures. Voting for Democrats will not solve our most serious problems by itself. It will keep things from turning into the dumpster fire we’re seeing now.

Do it for the downtrodden

Hey, I know … it sucks to have to support a lousy candidate. You work like hell in the primaries to get somebody decent on the ballot, and then end up with some watery moderate like Biden. Bad enough, but you know what’s worse? Republicans. And it may not affect you directly, if you’re well situated economically, but for working class and poor people, there is a significant difference between the parties.

So mark your ballot, then march. You can spend the whole year doing the latter. The former will just take you a few minutes.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Making them pay.

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Mitch McConnell and the people he represents (i.e. not so much his Kentucky constituents as mega-donors across the nation) realized their decades-long dream this week – the seating of a sixth hyper-conservative Supreme Court justice who will very likely play an important role in rolling back labor rights, voting rights, the regulatory power of federal agencies, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and much more in the decades to come. Stick a fork in it: the Supreme Court is now locked down by reactionaries for the foreseeable future, thanks to the determination and ruthlessness of the Republicans and the lack of focus and passion on the part of Democrats. We had three major electoral opportunities to regain control of the Court since 2000, and we blew every one of them, and now we’ll have to deal with the consequences.

Readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast, Strange Sound, will know that I grew up in a white, suburban, solidly Republican town in upstate New York, and it will surprise no one to hear that many of my former high school classmates had cause to celebrate the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett this week. I have to say, though, what I saw instead was a shocking amount of whining on the part of my old Republican friends. Instead of high-fiving each other over the awesome news that any future progressive legislation will be knocked back by judicial fiat until kingdom come, they were screaming about the possibility that a new Democratic administration would “pack the courts”, do away with the filibuster, ruin the Senate as a “deliberative” body, etc. Seriously? These folks need to take a day off once in a while.

Of course, that is the source of their strength, in a certain respect. This is a movement fueled by aggrievement. The Republicans have never, ever forgiven the Democrats for failing to confirm Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork back in 1987, when they held the majority. They held a similar grudge over the hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas back in 1991. (Mind you, in both of these cases, the ultimate result was the seating of a tremendously conservative justice on the Supreme Court.) They fumed over George H.W. Bush’s loss in 1992, and subjected Clinton to eight solid years of investigation because of their resentment. This anger is part of what animates them, and I think we need to borrow some of this for our own movement. The Republicans must be made to pay a political price for this, not just in this election, but into perpetuity. We must turn the Garland nomination obstructionism and the Barrett confirmation into our equivalent of the right’s Bork obsession – painful losses that galvanize us to fight all the harder. Our politicians must remind the voters of these wrongs over and over and over.

Anger can be useful, if it’s channeled in the right way. After what happened this past week, I would think we on the left would be more than ready to turn up the heat under these fuckers, and make them pay. We shall see.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Handmaid’s tale.

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Probably the most amazing thing about the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation process is the degree to which she and all of the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee insist that there’s no underlying agenda behind her nomination, even though that agenda has been the most consistently central motivating force in GOP politics for the last four decades. That’s no exaggeration – this has been their core mission since the dawn of the Regan era. It’s been a relentless push over the course of forty years on the part of conservative politicians, political action groups, and the obscenely rich funders who back them, quietly and not so quietly. And yet they all sit in that Senate committee room and attempt to gaslight the American public, making stirring speeches about the roles of the coordinate branches of government and the crucial distinction between politics and civics, assuring us that they’re only interested in applying constitutional principles in a fair and measured way.

If you believe that, then you might be interested in this nice bridge I have for sale. Make no mistake: Barrett is an extremist, and a relatively young one at that – if she is confirmed, which seems more than likely, she will probably serve on that court for forty years or more. That means bloodcurdlingly reactionary decisions on a range of issues, from reproductive rights to same-sex marriage to the constitutionality of the ACA to the outcome of elections. Judge Barrett could not even acknowledge long settled statutory prohibitions on voter intimidation, nor her thoughts on the peaceful transfer of power following a national election. There are issues that she does have an opinion on; she has made that very clear in the form of open letters in publications, speeches, and other means. But we’re expected to believe that those opinions will not play a role in her jurisprudence. My. Smoking. Ass.

We’ve been here before, folks, right? Republican nominees being tight lipped about the very things that put them in front of that committee in the first place. We know that she was chosen by the Federalist Society and others, who pushed her forward for Trump, and our insane clown president of course signed off on the appointment. She has the votes … I’m certain that’s partly why Mitch McConnell is moving forward with this now. So why the hell not just say what you think, expound on the depredations of available abortion services (and birth control), and then flip everyone off? She should then do a little dance out of the room – when McConnell calls the vote, it will be all over. Sure, other things can happen …. but will they? The GOP has the power, and they will use it. It’s to the point where we’re placing a Taliban-like religious extremist on the court – one whose secret society group, People of Praise, had her referring to herself as a handmaid. Seriously, people? We can’t do better than this?

We’re facing a 6-3 Supreme Court, and we have to encourage leaders on the center-left to do the right things to counteract their antidemocratic powers. I’ll talk about some specifics on Strange Sound, so be sure to tune in.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.