Nuclear reactor design approved: The AP reports that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission has certified the design for what will be the first small modular nuclear reactor in the US. This is a big deal. The US desperately needs to get away from carbon energy as fast as possible. Doing that will require a lot of non-intermittent power generation unless battery technology makes a vast advance real soon. That’s unlikely. For right now, nuclear power is probably the best option we have for generating a lot of clean power to supplement intermittent solar and wind power. The AP writes:
The rule that certifies the design was published Thursday in the Federal Register. It means that companies seeking to build and operate a nuclear power plant can pick the design for a 50-megawatt [about 37,500 homes], advanced light-water small modular nuclear reactor by Oregon-based NuScale Power and apply to the NRC for a license.
It’s the final determination that the design is acceptable for use, so it can’t be legally challenged during the licensing process when someone applies to build and operate a nuclear power plant, NRC spokesperson Scott Burnell said Friday. The rule becomes effective in late February.
This is really good news. We need hundreds of these little reactors.
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Rut roh! Biden really screwed the pooch this time: After a 13-hour search of Biden’s home in Delaware, DoJ investigators found another batch of classified US government documents. The NYT writes:
Investigators for the Justice Department on Friday seized more than a half-dozen documents, some of them classified, at President Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Del., after conducting a 13-hour search of the home, the president’s personal lawyer said Saturday evening.
The remarkable search of a sitting president’s home by federal agents — at the invitation of Mr. Biden’s lawyers — dramatically escalated the legal and political situation for the president, the latest in a series of discoveries that has already led to a special counsel investigation.
During Friday’s search, six more items with classified markings — including some documents from his time as a senator and others from his time as vice president — were taken by investigators, along with surrounding materials, according to the statement from Bob Bauer, Mr. Biden’s attorney.
Jeez, what a mess. One can just feel Faux News firing up its sanctimonious outrage machine.
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Exemptions in anti-abortion laws are not being granted: One of the things that I greatly fear from radical right Christian nationalism is how it deals with the rule of law. In my opinion, it is often biased and/or incoherent. Therein lies the power of government to discriminate. The NYT writes:
Last summer, a Mississippi woman sought an abortion after, she said, a friend had raped her. Her state prohibits most abortions but allows them for rape victims. Yet she could not find a doctor to provide one.
In September, an Indiana woman learned that a fetal defect meant her baby would die shortly after birth, if not sooner. Her state’s abortion ban included an exception for such cases, but she was referred to Illinois or Michigan.
An Ohio woman carrying triplets faced a high risk of dangerous complications, including delivering too early. When she tried to get an abortion in September through Ohio’s exception for patients with a medical need, she was turned away.
In the months since the court’s decision, very few exceptions to these new abortion bans have been granted, a New York Times review of available state data and interviews with dozens of physicians, advocates and lawmakers revealed.
The NYT article goes on to point out that women with money are travelling out of states that have abortion exemptions because the requirements to qualify are difficult and unpredictable. On top of that, doctors and hospitals turn away patients, because laws are ambiguous and they face of threat of criminal penalty for making a mistake in applying an exemption.
So, even when a law looks neutral, how it is written and/or implemented can be highly discriminatory. In my opinion, this is the kind of result that Christian nationalist elites want. To them, the rule of law is God-given for them to apply as they see fit. That is theocracy, not democracy.
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Blowback against the Supreme Court investigation of who leaked the Dobbs anti-abortion decision intensifies: The NYT writes:
The investigation was an attempt by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. to right the institution and its image after a grievous breach and slide in public trust. Instead, it may have lowered confidence inside the court and out.While noting that 97 workers had been formally interviewed, the report did not say whether the justices or their spouses had been. .... Public reaction was scathing: “Not even a sentence explaining why they were or weren’t questioned,” tweeted Sean Davis, co-founder of The Federalist, a conservative magazine.
A day later, the court was forced to issue a second statement saying that the marshal had in fact conferred with the justices, but on very different terms from others at the institution. Lower-level employees had been formally interrogated, recorded, pressed to sign affidavits denying any involvement and warned that they could lose their jobs if they failed to answer questions fully, according to interviews and the report.
In contrast, conversations with the justices had been a two-way “iterative process” in which they asked as well as answered questions, the marshal, Gail A. Curley, wrote. She had seen no need for them to sign affidavits, she said.But Chief Justice Roberts was a staunch defender of the court’s independence, reluctant to let outsiders interfere. “The Judiciary’s power to manage its internal affairs,” he had written months before, “insulates courts from inappropriate political influence and is crucial to preserving public trust in its work as a separate and co-equal branch of government.”
Once again, the court is blind to the fact that the six Republicans on the bench are seem by many Americans, maybe most, as political partisans. One can imagine that many or most Republicans believe that the three Democrats on the court are political partisans too. In general, some polling indicates that much or most of the public is distrustful.
Roberts cannot or will not see that the unwarranted secrecy he believes insulates the court allows the public to believe that Republican judges are political partisans working for the Republican Party. Supreme Court secrecy can cut two ways. It can make the court less susceptible to outside political influence or it can make it more susceptible to hidden inside political influence.
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