News bits: Abortion wars in Texas, etc.

Fundamentalist Christian zealots 

checking sewage for abortion medication

Antiabortion zealots are continuing to refine ways to track down and report evidence of abortions in any way their zealot minds and hearts can come up with. Like with the presence of COVID, sewage can be tested for the presence of abortion pills being taken. That sounds nutty, but rabid antiabortionists are zealots. Nutty is not a concern. The WaPo writes:

The largest anitabortion organization in Texas has created a team of advocates assigned to investigate citizens who might be distributing abortion pills illegally.

Students for Life of America, a leading national antiabortion group, is making plans to systematically test the water Erin Brockovich-style in several large U.S. cities, searching for contaminants they say result from medication abortion.

And Republican lawmakers in Texas are preparing to introduce legislation that would require internet providers to block abortion pill websites in the same way they can censor child pornography.

Nearly six months since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, triggering abortion bans in more than a dozen states, many antiabortion advocates fear that the growing availability of illegal abortion pills has undercut their landmark victory. Now they are grasping for new ways to crack down on those breaking the law.

“Everyone who is trafficking these pills should be in jail for trafficking,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, who has started to speak with Republican governors about the prevalence of illegal abortion pill networks. “It hasn’t happened, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.”

So far, criminal penalties are only for people who facilitate illegal abortions, but not for the pregnant women. The WaPo reports that for much of the South and Midwest, abortion ban violations is a crime punishable by at least several years in prison. Note the phrase at least. The jail time under such laws is mandatory, not optional. That is how theocratic American Christian fundamentalism deals self-righteously but lovingly with sin. This is the face of an emerging vengeful, bigoted American Christian theocracy. 

Abortion is yet another issue that is tearing America apart in the radical right’s vicious, no-compromise culture wars. This war isn’t over by a long shot. We are just in the middle part of the war of secularism and secular law vs. Christian Sharia law and Christian Taliban-imposed theocracy.

From the vicious liars and crackpots files: QAnon puts 

 a new poison ingredient in its toxic stew

After the weak showing of Trump and a decrease in his presence after the midterm elections, QAnon has been somewhat adrift. It is casting about for new poison ingredient to spice up the vicious crackpot stew it likes to serve the public. The WaPo writes:

Twitter owner Elon Musk’s boosting of far-right memes and grievances has injected new energy into the jumbled set of conspiracy theories known as QAnon, a fringe movement that Twitter and other social networks once banned as too extreme.

And on Tuesday, [Musk] tweeted a message with an emoji that many people interpreted as saying “follow the white rabbit,” possibly harking back to “Alice in Wonderland” or “The Matrix.” But many QAnon believers saw the rabbit as a wink to one of their foundational icons, a secret indicator shared in one of QAnon’s earliest online prophesies, known as “drops.”

🐇

The White rabbit emoji?

Musk mocked the suggestion that the tweet could be interpreted negatively but offered no clarification. Among QAnon promoters, though, the message was clear: Musk was speaking to them.

One QAnon-amplifying account on Telegram with 118,000 followers, known for spreading a bogus claim that Russian fighters were targeting “U.S. biolabs” in Ukraine, said the tweet was only his latest flirtation with QAnon ideology. 

“Elon called out Fauci for creating [covid-19], [is] calling out the woke hive mind, is paving the path for 2020 to be nullified and Trump reinstated … and now he’s directly quoting Q,” the account said. “Elon is an Anon,” the account added, using the term QAnon disciples call themselves.

Logan Strain, a conspiracy theory researcher who uses the name Travis View on the podcast “QAnon Anonymous,” said Musk’s “conspiracist dog whistles” have galvanized a group that was fractured after 2020, when major social networks including Twitter started banning QAnon accounts and Trump lost the White House.

“He’s responding to and validating a rogues’ gallery of right-wing conspiracists … [and] going through a checklist of far-right grievances in a way that has certainly energized them,” Strain said. For QAnon believers, “what they view as a major battlefield in the information war just opened up again.”  

Musk has never explicitly supported QAnon, and some of his closest allies say they doubt he believes some of the wilder things he says online. One person in Musk’s inner circle, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Musk’s views, said he uses the claims merely to win the internet’s most prized currency: attention. “He wants to muck it up,” the person said.

But in QAnon circles, Musk’s ambiguity and plausible deniability have been seen as a strategic way for him to subtly push their dogma into the mainstream. A QAnon-boosting account with 165,000 followers on Truth Social, Trump’s social network, wrote Monday: “At this rate, Elon is on pace to start posting Q drops to millions of normies and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop him.”

It looks like Musk is positioning Twitter to be the main online source for radical right crackpottery, lies, slanders and other anti-democratic, anti-inconvenient truth dark free speech. The trick for him is to do that without alienating too many big advertisers. This is another example of the core capitalist moral, profit talks and everything else walks. 

Among some other good things, everything else includes democracy, inconvenient truth and majority public opinion. For Musk and his now morally and socially rotted Twitter, the goal is to keep those ad revenues flowing. Given that big advertisers are capitalist like Musk, they will try to find a way to continue advertising if there’s insufficient public backlash to force a change. 

It looks like us normies, along with all the crackpotties, are going to get bombarded by a tsunami of Q drops from the hellscape called Twitter. Total bummer.

Now I regret having bought a Tesla. I didn’t see this coming. My mistake.

From the constantly moving goalpost files: Russia is 

running out of bombs to pulverize Ukraine?

For months, reports have been coming out from Western sources saying that Russia is running out of the tens of thousands of tons of bombs needed to pulverize the Ukraine into dust. (lots of  'of' in that sentence, by golly) The Guardian says it again:

Russia faces a “critical shortage” of artillery shells and Moscow’s ability to conduct ground operations in Ukraine is “rapidly diminishing” as a result, Britain’s armed forces chief has said.

Adm Sir Tony Radakin, the chief of defence staff, told an audience at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) thinktank on Wednesday that the Kremlin had only planned for a short period to subjugate Ukraine, and has instead found itself embroiled in a conflict lasting nearly 10 months.

“So, let me tell Putin tonight what his own generals and ministers are probably afraid to say,” the military chief said. “Russia faces a critical shortage of artillery munitions. This means that their ability to conduct successful offensive ground operations is rapidly diminishing.  

The admiral’s statement is the latest in a line of similar assertions by western and Ukrainian leaders and officials, who have been counting the number of missiles fired against known stockpiles – although there has been evidence of Russia making fresh munitions as the war has gone on.

This reporting seems to ring false? Russia can build, barter oil and buy with cash more bombs to drop on Ukraine. Why would the bombs run out? Humans seem to have an endless capacity and enthusiasm to slaughter humans. It would be nice if the running out of bombs story was true. But is it? 

Imposing philosophical choices...

I’m gonna keep this really simple, and I’m throwing it together at the last minute here, so please forgive the lack of polish (not that I'm ever that polished 😉).  Anyway…

Yesterday, we talked about Deanda raising his daughters in the Christian mode/tradition of forbidding them from having premarital sex before marriage.  The point, the question really was (in a nutshell), how far can parents go when imposing their philosophical values on their children?

So, here is what I’d like you to debate. (I’m really interested in your thoughts here because I’ve often wondered about it myself.)

Since parents have the right (?) to shape the personalities/belief systems of their “blank slate upon birth” children:

1. Do vegetarian* parents have the parental right to restrict their children to a vegetarian diet like their own, starting from babyhood/birth (a philosophical choice likely made by the parents in adulthood)?

2. At what point should the child be allowed/free to choose a non-vegetarian diet?  Once its old enough to understand the concept of meat-eating, say about 5 years old?  Too young?  Other age?

Take time to think it over, then discuss the ramifications of this dilemma.

Thanks!

_________________________________________

* Non meat-eating

News bits: Birth control under attack; power shifts on gun safety

Lawsuit attacks federal right to birth control

Radical right judge Trump rejects it

Vox writes:

Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee to a federal court in Texas, spent much of his career trying to interfere with other people’s sexuality.

Last week, Kacsmaryk issued an opinion in Deanda v. Becerra that attacks Title X, a federal program that offers grants to health providers that fund voluntary and confidential family planning services to patients. Federal law requires the Title X program to include “services for adolescents,”

The plaintiff in Deanda is a father who says he is “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.” He claims that the program must cease all grants to health providers who do not require patients under age 18 to “obtain parental consent” before receiving Title X-funded medical care.

This is not a new argument, and numerous courts have rejected similar challenges to publicly funded family planning programs, in part because the Deanda plaintiff’s legal argument “would undermine the minor’s right to privacy” which the Supreme Court has long held to include a right to contraception.

But Kacsmaryk isn’t like most other judges. In his brief time on the bench — Trump appointed Kacsmaryk in 2019 — he has shown an extraordinary willingness to interpret the law creatively to benefit right-wing causes.

And so, last Thursday, the inevitable occurred. Kacsmaryk handed down a decision claiming that “the Title X program violates the constitutional right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children.”  

Kacsmaryk’s decision is riddled with legal errors, some of them obvious enough to be spotted by a first-year law student. And it contradicts a 42-year-long consensus among federal courts that parents do not have a constitutional right to target government programs providing contraceptive care. So there’s a reasonable chance that Kacsmaryk will be reversed on appeal, even in a federal judiciary dominated by Republican appointees.

Nevertheless, Kacsmaryk’s opinion reveals that there are powerful elements within the judiciary who are eager to limit access to contraception. And even if Kacsmaryk’s opinion is eventually rejected by a higher court, he could potentially send the Title X program into turmoil for months. 

Kacsmaryk’s opinion is incompetently drafted and makes several obvious legal errors

Kacsmaryk’s opinion makes a number of legal errors, some of them egregious.

The Constitution, for example, does not permit litigants to file federal lawsuits challenging a government program unless they’ve been injured in some way by that program — a requirement known as “standing.” But Alexander Deanda, the father in this case seeking to stop Title X-funded programs from offering contraception to minors, does not claim that he has ever sought Title X-funded care. He does not allege that his daughters have ever sought Title X-funded care. And he does not even allege that they intend to seek Title X-funded care in the future.

This will probably wind being appealed to the Republican Supreme Court. Given its hostility to the right to privacy, its elevation of religious rights above all others, its radical Christian nationalist ideology and its willingness to blithely overturn precedent, it seems reasonably possible that this decision will be upheld on appeal. But, a final decision is a year or two off. 

This is more evidence of the creeping radical, fundamentalist Christian theocracy that is poisoning too much of America, including federal courts.

Gun safety and politics

A NYT opinion piece written by gun safety advocate Dave Cullen discusses a surprising political shift regarding the politics of gun safety law. The shift is that gun safety laws are starting to be passed in states and the federal government. 

Apparently, years of activism and organization among gun safety groups has gained enough traction that federal and state Republican politicians have come to fear the gun safety lobby more than the NRA and the anti-gun safety law lobby and campaign contributions. Important catalysts in the growing gun safety movement include the 2011 shooting of Gabby Giffords in Arizona, the 2012 Sandy Hook school massacre of 6 and 7 year old children, and the 2018 shootings at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

In congress, Mitch McConnell broke through decades of the rock solid Republican Party opposition to gun safety laws after polls indicated there was overwhelming public support for gun safety. That support was backed by enough anger that Republican politicians were starting to lose bids for re-election in significant part due to this issue. The NYT writes:

After decades of getting trounced by the N.R.A., activists saw 67 gun safety laws passed at the state level in 2019, compared with nine pro-gun laws. This year, 45 new gun safety laws have been adopted in states, while 95 percent of gun-lobby-linked bills have been blocked, according to an Everytown report.

.... Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, warned his conference it was. Before the vote for the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act this June, Mr. McConnell told his conference the game had changed. In a closed-door session, his team presented stunning internal polling of gun-owning households. He summarized it for reporters: “Support for the provisions of the framework is off the charts, overwhelming.”  

And with that, the architect of the gun safety blockade in Congress blew a hole in it. He needed to peel off 10 of his senators, and he got 15. The law strengthens background checks, especially for people under age 21 and provides funding to carry out red flag laws and for mental health, school safety and violence interrupter programs.

This shows the effort and organizing needed to get the corrupt, government and gun safety-hating radical right Republican Party to do what a solid majority of Americans has wanted for years. 

Apparently, about the only thing that moves Republican politicians to respond to usually disorganized majority public opinion in the face of an opposing, organized and well-funded minority is large scale public organization and activism. That needs to be driven by enough anger and votes to threaten politician election or re-election. Once the politicians sufficiently fear public anger for their careers, things can get done.

If that analysis is basically correct, then it points to a way to deal with intransigent Republican politicians. At present, disorganized majority public opinion faces two powerful, opposing, organized and well-funded minority ideologies. One is aggressive theocratic Christian nationalism. The other is authoritarian brass knuckles capitalism.  

Some Republican text messages about the 1/6 coup attempt

Christofascism on TikTok

There is a lot of it out there

Homegirl found some of the text messages that Talking Points Memo published yesterday:

The Messages Included Battle Cries, Crackpot Legal Theories, And ‘Invoking Marshall Law!!’ By Hunter Walker, Josh Kovensky and Emine Yücel | December 12, 2022 5:34 p.m. 

Jason Miller to Mark Meadows: FYI…So I asked Ali Pardo from our press shop to get in touch with Rep. Mo Brooks’ office since he seems to be the ringleader on the Jan 6th deal. They say they will have as many as 50 members on board 1/6…but we won’t have a list of names until Sunday or Monday. This may not surprise you, but no one from the legal team has made contact with them at all. They request examples of fraud, numbers, names, whatever supporting evidence can be provided. We’ve now supplied that, but our legal squad isn’t exactly buttoned up. I bring this up for a simple reason – if we’re hoping to move real numbers on the 6th, I think we need to quickly start mobilizing our real-deal allies. I’m ready to go, I have bodies to help, will follow your lead. 

Mark Meadows reply: Thanks Jason. You are the best. I will bring it up with potus and I plan to meet with them on Saturday. 

Jim Jordan to Mark Meadows: On January 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence, as President of the Senate, should call out all electoral votes that he believes are unconstitutional as no electoral votes at all — in accordance with guidance from founding father Alexander Hamilton and judicial precedence. �No legislative act,� wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist No. 78, �contrary to the Constitution, can be valid.� �The court in Hubbard v. Lowe reinforced this truth: ��That an unconstitutional statute is not a law at all is a proposition no longer open to discussion.� �226 F. 135, 137 (SDNY 1915), appeal dismissed, 242 U.S. 654 (1916). � Following this rationale, an unconstitutionally appointed elector, like an unconstitutionally enacted statute, is no elector at all. 

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) to Meadows on January 17, 2021: Mark, in seeing what’s happening so quickly, and reading about the Dominion law suits attempting to stop any meaningful investigation we are at a point of � no return � in saving our Republic !! "Our LAST HOPE is invoking Marshall Law!! PLEASE URGE TO PRESIDENT TO DO SO!!" 

Rep. Brian Babin (R-TX) to Meadows on Nov. 6, just after the Nov. 3, 2020 elections: Mark, When we lose Trump we lose our Republic. Fight like hell and find a way. We’re with you down here in Texas and refuse to live under a corrupt Marxist dictatorship. Liberty! Babin

It is fact that the 1/6 event was a coup attempt supported by a sitting Republican president and some Republican members of congress. IMO, those people should be tried and jailed for life. Those Republicans apparently seriously believed Trump's crackpot lies and conspiracies about a stolen election. They believed it without one shred of evidence. Some of them apparently seriously believe that the Democratic Party wants to establish a Marxist dictatorship. Now, the fascist GOP publicly stated that it will shut down further investigation on Jan. 3, 2023, the day the fascist Republicans take control of the House. That undeniably shows the GOP’s support for the 1/6 coup attempt. Establishment of an authoritarian regime, probably a bigoted, ruthless Christofascist kleptocracy is the fascist goal.

Acknowledgement: Thanks to homegirl for brining these text messages to my attention.