A question about how society should deal with anti-abortionists

An odd article in The Guardian raised the issue of the role of leaders who publicly advocate for bans on abortions. TG writes about the context:

Louisiana anti-abortion group calls on doctors to stop denying care exempted by ban

Group speaks out after hospitals refused to offer treatment for a woman who had a near deadly miscarriage citing ambiguous law

An influential group in Louisiana that has long opposed abortion access is calling out medical providers and their legal advisers who – for an apparent fear of liability – have cited the state’s ban on most abortions to deny treatments that remain legal.

Even though Louisiana has some of the tightest restrictions against abortion in the US, Joshua was legally entitled to the care she sought under an exception to the ban which involves miscarriages, Sarah Zagorski of Louisiana Right for Life said.

Zagorski, whose organization has been involved in anti-abortion legislation since 1970, said it is clear under Louisiana’s abortion ban that it is legal to provide and receive miscarriage treatments, even if they closely resemble some abortions.

“It was just a gross misunderstanding of the law from the practitioners handling the case, unfortunately,” Zagorski said.

The comments by Zagorski triggered some thinking and questions. Who is Zagorski to interpret Louisiana law? Multiple news stories have been written about ambiguity in anti-abortion laws and bad consequences for the women involved. Who bears responsibility for women whose lives are damaged or ruined by being forced to have a baby they do not want, cannot afford and/or otherwise face years of who knows what hardships? And how should Americans who support abortion rights react, if at all? Should people like Zagorski just be given a pass even though they identify themselves in public?

I searched and found things like this:

Since Zagorsky gives her email and speaks publicly, is it impolite or wrong to write and respectfully but clearly convey a few thoughts. Thoughts such as: 

• You are not a lawyer, so how do you know what the scope of Louisiana forced birth law is? Laws can be enforced aggressively, not at all or in between. Prosecutors usually have a lot of discretion.

• Forced birth advocates like have a shared responsibility for all the harm that anti-abortion laws cause.   

• Your shared responsibility includes the injuries, ruined lives, broken relationships and deaths to women that comes from ambiguity in forced birth laws, or in caution by people and businesses who shy away from laws they do not feel they know the exact limits of.

• Shared responsibility also includes the injuries, ruined lives, broken relationships and deaths to women that comes from their desperate attempts to obtain abortions that forced birth laws have made illegal, including women who were raped.

• Yes, forced birth advocates might deny any responsibility for what they have fomented, e.g., because God allegedly demands it. However, that does not change the fact that anti-abortion laws literally force some women to have a baby. That is unlike legal abortion under Roe, which never forced even one woman to bear a child against her will.

Link to poll

So what makes sense. Say nothing because criticisms of forced birth laws will be ignored or rejected? Or say something, e.g., because it sends a message that a majority of Americans disagree with extremist forced birth laws?

Long-term covidiocy and other new political diseases

A long, long WaPo opinion piece discusses how the radical right GOP House leadership is doing as the radicals begin their witch hunts with its attendant festival of partisan crackpottery. At this point, it is insane to think that most of the Republican Party in congress is sane. Most of those people are truly nuts. Columnist Dana Milbank writes:

The pandemic has faded, but one of the least understood effects of the virus still eludes treatment: There is no known cure for long covidiocy.

Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) kicked off with the unsupported allegation that “covid was intentionally released” from a Chinese lab because “it would be impossible for the virus to be accidentally leaked.”

Rep. Richard McCormick (R-Ga.) advanced the ball by informing the panel that coronavirus booster shots “do more harm than good.”

And then Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) scored with this extraordinary medical discovery: “Researchers found that the vaccinated are at least twice as likely to be infected with covid as the unvaccinated and those with natural immunity.”

Vaccines make you more likely to get covid! Thank you, Dr. Jewish Space Lasers.

Another witness, Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University (also a Fox News regular, on matters medical and nonmedical), had called coronavirus testing “actively harmful” and warned about “great harm” and “danger” from vaccination.

Makary, mocking “King Fauci,” claimed that “the greatest perpetrator of misinformation during the pandemic has been the United States government.” Bhattacharya repeatedly complained that they had been “censored,” “marginalized” and “slandered” by public health “dictators.”

And then there are leaders such as James Comer. The Kentucky Republican, chairman of the House Oversight Committee (which includes the covid select subcommittee), has shown himself to be a bear of very little brain.

Last week, he sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg about the Ohio train derailment in which he referred to “DOT’s National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB)” and demanded of Buttigieg “all documents and communications regarding NTSB’s progress on the cause of the derailment.”

Buttigieg responded by saying he was “alarmed to learn that the chair of the House Oversight Committee thinks that the NTSB is part of our department. NTSB is independent (and with good reason).”

Comer, on Fox News, claimed it was “a typo” — a 19-word typo, it would seem.  

Last month, Rep. Jim Jordan’s Judiciary Committee featured as a witness a man who is part of the far-right “constitutional sheriff” movement. Constitutional sheriffs — an outgrowth of the white-nationalist posse comitatus movement — claim they are above federal and state government and are the ultimate arbiters of the law. The nonprofit Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting found that the witness, Cochise County Sheriff Mark Dannels, spoke at a constitutional-sheriff’s event and supports allowing sheriffs to nullify laws.  

Then, it was the House Homeland Security Committee’s turn for some extremism. It hosted as a witness Pinal County, Ariz., Sheriff Mark Lamb — another constitutional sheriff. Though eschewing the term, Lamb is the “frontman” for one constitutional-sheriff group, has spoken to a second and also supports nullification, AZCIR reports. A booster of the “Stop the Steal” rally (he called the Jan. 6 rioters “very loving, Christian people”) and anti-vaxxer movements (he refused to enforce the stay-at-home orders of Arizona’s Republican governor), he responded to the Black Lives Matter movement by creating a “Citizens Posse” of residents to be deputized at Lamb’s pleasure.

Little more than a week before he came to Washington, Lamb spoke at a Second Amendment rally attended by Oathkeepers, Proud Boys and other extremists. He teased a Senate run and took photos with a few Proud Boys.

And there he was, just 10 days later, at the witness table in the Homeland Security Committee’s hearing room. Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) hailed Lamb’s “essential role in defending our nation’s homeland.”

This is precisely how Republican lawmakers bring dangerous extremists into the mainstream.

Milbank’s opinion did point out that one Republican committee chairman, Mike Gallagher (R-WI), is acting professionally and seriously. Gallagher is in charge of the House select committee on the Chinese Communist Party. Milbank writes that this committee “is everything the covid committee isn’t: bipartisan, serious and productive.” That's good, because the issue of China urgently needs to be dealt with seriously and competently. Unfortunately, so do a slew of other important issues, e.g., climate change and defense of democracy, but that is just not going to happen.

On balance, it is reasonable to expect mostly partisan witch hunting, political disease like covidiocy and radical right anti-democracy crackpottery, with far too little seriousness or competence from the radical right in congress. 

Pew Research 2022 data

News loafs 'n culture wars: Rooskis pay Musk to be verified liars; Rewarding the morally worthy; Etc.

From the lying thugs are ruthlessly opportunistic and capitalists give them the opportunities files: This blast of miscreancy come by way of a tip from Larry Motuz. The WaPo writes: 

Russian propagandists are buying Twitter blue-check verifications

The verification means their tweets, mostly opposing U.S. aid to Ukraine, are given added prominence

Accounts pushing Kremlin propaganda are using Twitter’s new paid verification system to appear more prominently on the global platform, another sign that Elon Musk’s takeover is accelerating the spread of politically charged misinformation, a nonprofit research group has found. 

The accounts claim to be based outside of Russia, so they can pay for verification without running afoul of U.S. sanctions. But they pass along articles from state-run media, statements by Russian officials, and lies about Ukraine from Kremlin allies, according to the research group Reset, which shared its findings with The Washington Post.

One of the accounts describes itself in English as “No woke. No BLM. No gender pronouns … Just Anti-Imperialism.” Purporting to be based in San Francisco, its profile picture shows a blond woman wearing a fur hat with a hammer and sickle badge. Another account’s biographical blurb says it is “Doing my part to stop Western support for the Ukrainian war machine, one taxpayer at a time.” It regularly tweets videos it says show Russians killing Ukrainian soldiers.

Welp, Musk is delivering the Twitter hellscape/crapscape he promised he would not deliver. Of course as we all know, lies like that are -- ALL RISE! -- protected free speech -- BE SEATED. There is no reason to believe that a person as intelligent as Musk did not know this would happen. He’s acting just like a tax-hating elite American fascist that admires and supports murdering dictators. He’s just doing his best to kill democracy and civil liberties, just like any other self-respecting fascist. 

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Christian nationalist (CN) fangs are sinking into the tax code: I’ve warned many times in multiple blog posts about the intense hate that CN dogma holds for certain hated groups, prominently non-heterosexual people. God demands severe punishment for such evil sinning. In the great state of Texas, a law is being drafted that give tax breaks to heterosexual couples but not same-sex couples. The CN movement desperately wants this done on a national scale, but CN elites need to first control congress and the White House. The Rolling Stone writes:

A NEWLY INTRODUCED Texas House bill proposes property tax cuts for couples who get married, stay married, and have lots of children. There’s a catch though. In order to qualify for the tax benefit, couples need to be heterosexual, never divorced, and their children born or adopted after their date of marriage. LGBTQ couples, single parents, divorced parents, and blended families will not qualify for full benefits.

H.B. 2889 would provide qualifying couples with a 40 percent property tax reduction if they have four children, with the tax break increasing for every additional child. Couples with 10 or more children would pay no property tax at all. Just getting started? A couple that meets the requirements laid out by the bill gets a 10% reduction even before they have children.

“Supporting Texas means supporting Texas families,” said Rep. Bryan Slaton, who introduced the bill. “Texas will start saying to couples, ‘Get married, stay married, and be fruitful and multiply.” 

This law will support only those Texas families and children that the state’s Republican party says are morally acceptable in God’s eyes. Blatant, cruel discrimination like this and accompanying poor public policy is what the modern radical right CN Republican Party stands for. No one can deny or downplay it any more. Enraged, vengeful freaks are in control of the anti-democratic, authoritarian-theocratic GOP. For those who cannot believe such a horrible, cruel thing is possible, some of the proposed law is shown below and the entire act of radical right CN savagery can be read at this link.

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QAnon-level crackpottery & lies: Like it or not blatant lies, culture wars and rising radical right authoritarianism are the new normal. Respect for facts, true truths and sound reasoning have all completely fallen for the radical right Republican Party. The AP writes about one of the amazing lies gushing from the radical right propaganda Leviathan:

CLAIM: The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a case to remove President Joe Biden from office and reinstate former President Donald Trump in his place.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. The Supreme Court has not decided to hear such a case. On Feb. 21, the justices rejected for a second time to hear a case that cites baseless 2020 election fraud claims to call for the court to oust from office hundreds of elected officials, including Biden, as well as to prevent them from holding any elected government position again. Several days later, a website published an article incorrectly stating that the case was going ahead, but the post has since been taken down.

THE FACTS: Nearly one week after the Supreme Court justices doubled down on their decision not to hear the suit, social media users falsely claimed the opposite.

One Instagram post shared a screenshot of a headline reading: “Supreme Court To Hear Case To Reinstate Donald Trump Over ‘Rigged’ Election.” It had received nearly 1,400 likes as of Wednesday.

About the Dominion lawsuit against Faux News

The most recent burp from Faux lawsuitlandia is comments by the owner Rupert Murdoch. He knew Faux was broadcasting lies about the 2020 election. But given the near-impossibility of proving defamation in situations like this, it is not clear if Murdoch’s comments will make any difference. After Dominion released a redacted version of the 192 page lawsuit a few weeks ago, legal experts and commentators believed the case was a slam dunk win for Dominion. Now, some of the current commentary is more cautious. A WaPo analysis comments: 

As The Post and other news outlets have reported, Fox Corp. patriarch Rupert Murdoch admitted in a deposition that Fox News hosts “were endorsing” lies that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from President Donald Trump. “Not Fox,” Murdoch testified on the media outlet he founded. “But maybe Lou Dobbs, maybe Maria [Bartiromo], as commentators.” He conceded similar activity by host Jeanine Pirro and “a bit” by host Sean Hannity.

Murdoch’s comments are 1) true, as anyone who watched Fox News after the election can attest; 2) scandalous, considering that Murdoch could well have acted to stop such atrocities; and 3) likely to have a marginal impact on Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

U.S. defamation law requires a lot more than an embarrassing post hoc admission by a network mogul.

to prevail in court, Dominion needs to prove that Fox News proceeded with actual malice, meaning that Fox knew the falsity of statements it was broadcasting or made them with reckless disregard of their truth. And those requirements aren’t the only hurdles. Per the 1964 case New York Times v. Sullivan — which instituted the legal standard of “actual malice” — a plaintiff like Dominion must bring "home” the evidence, linking the required state of mind to the people responsible for the challenged statements.

It’s an arduous legal undertaking. In a mid-February filing, Dominion devotes more than 70 pages to the considerations needed to establish actual malice. .... A separate section explores the of role of executives and producers responsible for various Fox News programs, rummaging through their states of mind during allegedly defamatory broadcasts.

In its own filing Monday, Fox News argues that Dominion’s approach to imputing “actual malice” bears little relation to legal standards. “Dominion tries to distract from its evidentiary deficiencies by cherrypicking anything it can find from any corner of the Fox News organization that shows that anyone at Fox News doubted or disbelieved the President’s allegations,” reads the brief. “From there, it posits that ‘Fox’ writ large—not the specific person(s) at Fox News responsible for each statement—‘knew’ that that specific statement was false.”

The analysis goes on to point out that Faux is arguing that Dominion tried to establish that 16 specific employees had skeptical views about stolen election claims but failed to identify anyone who was responsible for making the statements. In essence, what Faux is arguing is (i) no executive in the Faux corporation was responsible for defamation, and (ii) executives’ state of mind is irrelevant if they weren’t personally involved in the allegedly defamatory broadcasts. 

I do not know if the Faux defense tactic is a red herring diversion for the point that defamatory statements were knowingly made on air by program hosts, not by executives. The show hosts certainly had plenty of malice in them when they asserted their lies on air. So why focus on the executives? One expert suggested there is no court decision on whether the executives’ state of mind is relevant. I presume that Faux has hired about the best lawyers that money can buy. Maybe they can make it relevant.

Maybe this legal tactic of proving intent in the minds of executives will allow Faux to weasel off the hook. I firmly believe that Dominion was defamed by knowing Faux lies, but that is just a non-binding personal opinion. I just do not know how this lawsuit will play out where it counts, i.e., in court.