Satanists bring their abortion extremism to Boston for 'SatanCon'; Christians respond

 As the Satanic Temple kicks off what is billed to be the largest gathering of Satanists in history this weekend in Boston, one pro-life leader warns about the "connection between Satanism and abortion" as churches are bracing for the influx of Satanists in the city.  

Known as SatanCon 2023, hundreds are slated to gather between Friday and Sunday for a sold-out event hosted by a group known for making fun of Christians and theologically conservative beliefs. 

Many of those gathered are likely to display their support for abortion as the Santinic Temple promotes what it calls abortion rituals and has filed legal challenges against state restrictions on legal access to abortion, arguing that abortion is a religious right. 

Priests for Life National Director Frank Pavone said in an interview with The Christian Post that while many attendees will deny that they are coming together to worship Satan, he was "very sensitive to the connection between Satanism and abortion."

"These Satanists who are gathering will claim that they do not worship the devil. In fact, they will claim that they do not even believe in a personal spiritual being called the Devil or Satan," Pavone said. 

"Anything that even appears to be worship of the devil or being elite with the devil is dangerous stuff because the devil is real."   😈 

https://www.christianpost.com/news/satanists-bring-abortion-worship-to-satancon-christians-respond.html

A Christian event called "ReviveBoston" is also planned in Boston this weekend, with organizers calling for thousands of Christians to overcome evil by gathering for worship, prayer and evangelizing the city.

Good Luck, Jamie!

A decent man who has been through a lot.  Mucho respect.

"Tuesday I thanked nurses, doctors & pharmacists at

@MedStarGUH who serve with splendid kindness—and saved my life over 5 months. I finished 6 rounds of 5-day chemo sessions—which they organized so I didn’t have to miss votes or hearings—and I rang the bell! A new chapter begins."

Tuesday I thanked nurses, doctors & pharmacists at @MedStarGUH who serve with splendid kindness—and saved my life over 5 months. I finished 6 rounds of 5-day chemo sessions—which they organized so I didn’t have to miss votes or hearings—and I rang the bell! A new chapter begins. pic.twitter.com/lAtpGyBG5b

— Jamie Raskin (@jamie_raskin) April 27, 2023\

 

 

 

News bits: The radical right movement to crush transparency; The evolving Twitterland hellscape

Clarence Thomas' failure to disclose his financial entanglements reflects his long-standing opposition to public disclosure laws. The Atlantic writes:

The justice has publicly stated that the failure to comply with the law by disclosing his financial entanglements with Crow was an unintended error, but if so, it was a mistake that is remarkably consistent with his ideological position that people who use their money and influence to steer the American political system ought to be able to do so in complete secrecy. This error was curiously convenient, in that it just happened to conceal a deep financial relationship with a very politically active right-wing donor who has bankrolled organizations that have a winning record before the Court. Perhaps more significant, Thomas’s idiosyncratic views about speech, democracy, and accountability have become more popular among the justices themselves as Republican appointments have moved the Court to the right. As Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern write at Slate, Thomas has argued over decades that laws compelling such disclosure are unconstitutional.  

In the 2010 Citizens United decision striking down limits on corporate electioneering, Thomas was the only justice to argue that the Court “should invalidate mandatory disclosure and reporting requirements,” because donors to the California anti-marriage-equality referendum Proposition 8 had been subject to threats, harassment, and verbal criticism. The first two are potentially illegal acts, and the last is a form of constitutionally protected speech. The conflation foreshadows the current right-wing discourse on free speech, the core of which is that conservatives have a right to prevent others from disassociating from them because they find their views noxious.  

Put simply, the conservative position had moved from heeding Scalia’s reminder in Doe v. Reed of the importance of transparency and civic bravery in a democracy, to embracing Thomas’s 2010 Citizens United opinion, which conflates threats, violence, and harassment with people thinking you’re a jerk.

I post this to warn about a growing sentiment among elite radical right Republicans and other right wing American extremists.* They increasingly see serious danger to their bigoted authoritarian (fascist IMO), pro-corruption and anti-democracy agenda in public disclosure laws. With that kind of an agenda, they should be concerned. Sunshine kills rot, or at least slows its spread.

Deep corruption like what Thomas operates comfortably with can be disrupted by public disclosure law. This important new front in the radical right's authoritarian war on democracy needs to be made well known to all Americans who fear for the fate of our democracy. 

* Another example of authoritarians imposing secrecy by crushing sunshine laws to hide sleaze and to deceive the public about what radicals are doing is happening in Florida (not surprisingly). There, the state legislature passed a law that shields the travel agendas of the governor's office. A news outlet in Orlando FL recently wrote: Florida Senate approves bill that shields travel records and who visits Gov. DeSantis' mansion -- The measure would create a public-records exemption for information held by law-enforcement agencies related to 'security or transportation services'. Given how broadly one can claim security or transportation services are, that covers just about everything the governor does. In other words, DeSantis has gone mostly dark to the public, but not to corrupt rich elites who always meet in secrecy, behind closed, usually guarded doors.

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Regarding the evolving Twitterlandia hellscape: The NYT writes about the toxic early aftermath of Elon Musk forcing people to pay to have their accounts verified: 

In the 24 hours after Twitter last week eliminated the blue check mark that historically served as a means of identifying public agencies, at least 11 new accounts began impersonating the Los Angeles Police Department.

More than 20 purported to be various agencies of the federal government. Someone pretending to be the mayor of New York City promised to create a Department of Traffic and Parking Enforcement and slash police funding by 70 percent.

Elon Musk’s decision to stop giving check marks to people and groups verified to be who they said were, and instead offering them to anyone who paid for one, is the latest tumult at Twitter, .... 

The changes have convulsed a platform that once seemed indispensable for following news as it broke around the world. The information on Twitter is now increasingly unreliable. Accounts that impersonate public officials, government agencies and celebrities have proliferated. So have propaganda and disinformation that threaten to further erode trust in public institutions. The consequences are only beginning to emerge.  

Some cheered the changes.

“Now you can even find me in the search,” tweeted Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of RT, the Russian state television network that has been accused of rampant misinformation and hate speech aimed at Ukraine. She signed off the tweet by saying, “Brotherly, Elon @elonmusk, from the heart.”

Well, at least people like authoritarian thugs, liars, grifters, rabid theocrats and crackpot QAnon-level conspiracy freaks will probably be mostly OK with Musk's new and improved Twitter. 

Russian professional liar Simonyan is pleased 

with the new and improved Twitter 

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Tales from abortion wars: A WaPo opinion comments on a hearing a Senate committee held to consider real-world impacts of forced birth laws:

The most compelling and heartbreaking testimony came from Amanda Zurawski, who lives in Texas. During her prepared remarks, she explained that after sending out invitations to her baby shower she began experiencing symptoms, her membranes ruptured, and she was “told by multiple doctors that the loss of our daughter was inevitable.” However, her doctors “didn’t feel safe enough to intervene as long as her heart was beating or until I was sick enough for the ethics board at the hospital to consider my life at risk and permit the standard health care I needed at that point — an abortion.”

Zurawski couldn’t very well drive to a “safe” state. (“Developing sepsis — which can kill quickly — in a car in the middle of the West Texas desert, or 30,000 feet above the ground, is a death sentence, and it’s not a choice we should have had to even consider.”) Instead, she had to wait — for either the fetus’s heart to stop or to get really sick. She nearly died from sepsis, which is why the standard of care in such circumstances is to perform an abortion before the woman gets very sick and risks death.

In a matter of minutes, I went from being physically healthy to developing a raging fever and dangerously low blood pressure. My husband rushed me to the hospital where we soon learned I had developed sepsis — a condition in which bacteria in the blood develops into infection, with the ability to kill in under an hour. Several hours later, after stabilizing just enough to deliver our stillborn daughter, my vitals crashed again. In the middle of the night, I was rapidly transferred to the ICU, where I would stay for three days as medical professionals battled to save my life. I spent another three days in a less critical unit of the hospital — all because I was denied access to reasonable health care due to Texas’s new abortion bans.

If she had been alone or had lacked good medical care to rescue her, she would have died.

As we all know, forced birth laws will kill some women, including even some who want a baby. That blood is on the hands of forced birthers, and if anything, whatever is left of their moral conscience (as I define it, not as forced birthers define it). 

Comments on jury duty

Sidebar at the bench

Perry: You're crazy!

Judge: I want another opinion

Perry: OK, and you're ugly too!

The case is over and verdicts were unanimous. Defendant not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of misdemeanor domestic violence, assault or battery, and not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of misdemeanor petty theft. 

This kerfuffle could have come from one of those impossibly bizarre domestic squabbles that Judge Judy decides all the time on TV. What a toxic domestic mess this couple was and still is. Married last December, marriage lasted 5 weeks then it blew up at the end of January. That was a couple of days after husband finds out his lovely bride was allegedly cheating on him with five different guys. He looked at the emails on her phone and his head exploded. That caused a serious drop in IQ and some really dumb behavior. 

The elephant in the room was the beyond a reasonable doubt standard of evidence the prosecution had to provide. The prosecuting attorney honestly believed there was plenty of evidence to convict, but it just wasn't there according to those pesky jurors.  

Did he beat her up as alleged? Maybe a little, but not by beyond a reasonable doubt. The alleged punch in the eye? The medical report said no physical damage. The eyeball photo showed no physical damage. The body bruises in the other photos were hard to see unless the lights in the courtroom got turned way down, and then by golly, there were some mild bruises sort of where the lovely bride, her sister and mom said they sort of should have been, kind of, maybe.

My contribution to the case and justice generally was me complaining to the bailiff at the first break after the prosecution started that the court room lights to too bright. Us jurors could not see what was being shown very well. After that first break, it got lots darker in the room when evidence slides were being shown. Germaine struck a huge blow for justice!! Germaine wondered why this issue had not come up in prior cases in that court room.

There was lots of he said-she said stuff in evidence. He allegedly beat her up multiple times. She allegedly tried to strangle him in public at the JC Penny jewelry counter when the happy couple were looking to buy their wedding rings. She allegedly flew into a snit when he wanted to buy a lower cost ring and she wanted a big rock. She allegedly was falling down drunk at a night club where the lovely bride's mom and dad were to be told that the toxic couple were married. Surprise mom and dad, he's not my boyfriend, he's my husband! 

At the club that same night, the husband allegedly lost his wedding ring when he kept catching her as she was falling down due to allegedly waaaay too much alcohol in the lovely bride. The lovely bride and her mom both testified she only had one or two regular margaritas. Singles, mind you, not doubles. Allegedly.

There were some shocking gaps in the evidence. Well, shocking to me at least. One was how far from the apartment window was the car where the alleged domestic violence happened? The sister testified that she saw him hit her from that window. The question was, could she really see in that car from the apartment window? All that had to be done was effing measure the damned distance to give some idea of the distance. Instead we got incoherent blither from the judge, and one or both attorneys about how far away the car was. I had no idea and neither did any other juror. It was pure speculation. We were told that we could not speculate, so how were we to weigh the sister's assertion that she saw the defendant hit her sister? 

Another evidence gap arose from bias. The cops assumed the male was the "dominant attacker" and the female was the victim. They did not pursue the defendant's side of the story. The testimony from the husband was that he was the victim. All in all, that sounded like it might be true. Both could have been domestic abusers of each other. This truly was a toxic couple in a toxic marriage, allegedly (because the marriage certificate was not in evidence and everyone kept calling the husband the boyfriend - my God this case was confusing out the wazoo).

There were some other things in play that us jurors absolutely, positively could not speculate about in deciding, so we didn't. One was, who among the people involved in or close to this drama, were legal residents. There was very little testimony on this at all, only one comment in passing by the accused husband. Nonetheless, it was pretty clear that most everyone involved or close here were probably not US citizens and probably not legal residents. Only the lovely bride and her sister appeared to probably be US citizens. Maybe.

Four thoughts stand out:

1. Circumstantial evidence is just as good as direct evidence. The judge said so and that's that.

2. In he said-she said type criminal cases, the beyond a reasonable doubt evidence standard is a real monster. Now I see why it is so freaking hard to convict rapists, domestic violence perpetrators and the like. 

 3. I'll probably call the judge and ask him to consider putting a suggestion box in the jury deliberation rooms (that we were locked into). Some things really need to be done a lot better than they are being done. For example, when the attorneys questioned the mom (who could not speak English), the translator was translating at the same time the attorney was still talking. It was confusing as hell with two people talking two different languages at once. In my opinion, that is fubar.*

* Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition 

4. California state law forbids jurors from selling their stories for at least 90 days after the end of a trial. So sorry, I can't sell this yet, so I am just giving it away. Well, most of it. There's still a lot of bizarre that's not mentioned above.

Legal argument helps persuade jurors