The next wave of attacks of abortion rights
A group of anti-abortion organizations sued HHS and the FDA on Friday in a bid to reverse the FDA’s approval of the abortion medication mifepristone.
Lawyers from the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom filed the suit in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Amarillo on behalf of the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the American College of Pediatricians, the Christian Medical & Dental Associations and four doctors.
Last year, the FDA permitted doctors to prescribe mifepristone via telemedicine and to send the pills by mail.
Abortion rights advocates want the agency to assert that its decisions to approve drugs preempt state abortion bans and restrictions.
Notice how radical right political groups that work to take away people’s rights give themselves names like Alliance Defending Freedom. That happens a lot. It will be interesting to see how the Supreme Court eventually decides this case. I suspect that the court will reverse the approval of mifepristone via telemedicine and sending the medicine by mail. Time will tell. We'll know in a few years.
Garland appoints a special counsel to investigate Trump
Former vice president Mike Pence said Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to appoint a special counsel to oversee two criminal investigations into former president Donald Trump is “very troubling.”The special counsel, Jack Smith, will take over investigations surrounding the extent of Trump’s involvement in the events leading to the January 6 Capitol riot and his alleged mishandling of sensitive government documents, Garland said at a press conference on Friday.“The appointment of a special counsel is very troubling,” Pence told Fox News at the Republican Jewish Coalition annual leadership conference. “No one is above the law, but I am not sure it’s against the law to take bad advice from your lawyers.”
He added: “The timing of this decision — just a few short days after the president announced his intention to seek re-election, I think that the history of it, the facts that I am aware of behind it, I think it is very troubling.”
Once again, staggering Republican Party hypocrisy is on display. Neither Pence nor GOP elites complained when the FBI announced opening an investigation into Hillary Clinton a week before the 2016 presidential election. That hurt her. Now, about two years out from the 2024 election, the GOP is howling about an investigation. What a bunch of hypocrite fascists.
And one can see the GOP angling to shift blame from Trump, in this case to his lawyers who Pence claims gave him bad advice. If it was Hillary Clinton in the same position, Pence and the rest of the GOP elites would be howling something like this: “No one is above the law, and if you take bad advice from your lawyers you are still liable for your crimes. LOCK HER UP!! LOCK HER UP!! LOCK HER UP!!”
Also note that in the blame shifting tactic, the Republicans are directly raising the issue of intent. Conviction for most crimes requires intent to commit the crime. If intent cannot be proven, the accused person cannot be found guilty. This is how white collar criminals get off with most of their crimes. They all claim they did not know that what they did was illegal. That is why, in my opinion, about 99.99% of all white collar crimes are never prosecuted. In nearly all cases, there is no way to get all 12 jurors to agree on intent.
Garland appointed the special counsel to avoid the appearance or actuality any political motivation or conflict of interest. Nearly all Republican elites who have opined, say the investigation is a politically motivated Democratic Party witch hunt. The Democrats could appoint Jesus to investigate and they would still claim it is a corrupt, partisan witch hunt.
The Ukraine war
The 96-missile barrage fired across Ukraine on Tuesday was Russia’s biggest aerial attack of the war so far. But it followed months of assertions by Western and Ukrainian officials that Moscow’s stockpile of missiles and other weapons was rapidly dwindling.
Whether the assault on infrastructure targets was long planned, as Ukrainian commanders say they believe, or served as a deadly response to Kyiv’s recapture of the city of Kherson last week, the widespread attack raises questions about how much Russia’s arsenal may be depleted and whether Moscow will endure by finding alternative sources of weapons.
The NYT article goes on to discuss four different ways that Russia might have more sources of weapons than Western military analysts believed, e.g., ramping up Russian domestic missile production. Probably all four are involved. At least all four seem to be plausible.
It looks like in time, the Ukraine will be pulverized and pushed into the Stone Age. That's why it seemed reasonable to urgently push for negotiations to at least see if some form of acceptable peace agreement is possible. As time goes on, the negotiation position of the Ukraine and anti-Russian forces decline. If the infrastructure of the Ukraine is pulverized to sand and dust, what’s left to negotiate?
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