News bits: Abortion wars could get super ugly, etc.

From the Arrest That Mailman! Files: An article in Politico discusses a strange legal defense the DoJ issued for people who deliver abortion drugs by US mail in states where abortions are banned. This one might wind up in the Supreme Court in the next couple of years. Politico writes:

The Justice Department has cleared the U.S. Postal Service to deliver abortion drugs to states that have strict limits on terminating pregnancy, and has offered limited assurances that a federal law addressing the issue won’t be used to prosecute people criminally over such mailings.

A legal opinion, from Justice’s Office of Legal Counsel, concludes that a nearly 150-year-old statute aimed at fighting “vice” through the mail is not enforceable against mailings of abortion drugs as long as the sender does not know that the drugs will be used illegally.   

“We conclude that [the statute] does not prohibit the mailing, or the delivery or receipt by mail, of mifepristone or misoprostol where the sender lacks the intent that the recipient of the drugs will use them unlawfully,” OLC chief Christopher Schroeder wrote in the 21-page opinion posted online Tuesday.

“There are manifold ways in which recipients in every state may use these drugs, including to produce an abortion, without violating state law,” Schroeder added. “Therefore, the mere mailing of such drugs to a particular jurisdiction is an insufficient basis for concluding that the sender intends them to be used unlawfully.”

One can easily imagine some creepy anti-abortion zealot-busybody reporting a mailman or mail-lady to the cops and the cops arresting them and charging them with murder or whatever crime red state law specifies. That a 150 year old law is at issue seems a bit odd. 

Anyway, the take-away is clear here. Don’t put labels on abortion medicines that get sent through the mail. That way the mailman cannot know what is in the package and thus cannot have the requisite criminal (mens rea, i.e., ‘guilty mind’) intent to establish criminal liability.

----------------------------

----------------------------

Moral rot in congress: In surprising comments, a Democratic representative in the House commented about the serial liar George Santos (R-NJ). Rep. Don Beyer (D-VT) said this: “He’ll get sworn in. Politicians lie. He may have gone a little overboard.”

A little overboard? Santos lied blatantly about most of the things on his resume. He brushed it off as just a little thing: “If I disappointed anyone by my résumé embellishment, I’m sorry. I will be sworn in. I will take office.”

Clearly, the profound moral rot in American politics is not confined to Republicans in congress. At least some Democrats are just as rotted, rancid and immoral. I want a third party in power with the other two left out as small permanent minority fringes. 

----------------------------

----------------------------

In a WaPo opinion piece, Jennifer Rubin writes about the GOP’s direct attack on House ethics:

Once they figure out how to resolve their leadership dispute (however long that will take), they will get straight to work disrupting good governance. 

Among their first tasks: neutering the Office of Congressional Ethics.

The OCE, which Democrats created in 2008, was designed as an independent office with the power to investigate ethics violations among House members.

Ever since the office’s conception, Republicans seeking to avoid independent scrutiny have attempted to dismantle it.

The MAGA majority’s current plan to gut the OCE is telling. As Norman Eisen, who served as ethics counsel in the Obama administration, observed, “When there is a change of control in a branch of our government, incoming leaders usually like to signal their commitment to ethics as the first order of business. But the new House GOP majority is doing the exact opposite. .... the Republican caucus is inviting more corruption in their ranks.”

Republicans in congress = deep moral rot, deep corruption & deep Christofascist theocracy. Or, is that assessment going just “a little overboard” as the morally rotted Democratic Rep. Beyer might say?

----------------------------

----------------------------

Abortion wars update: The Statanists are at it again: An interview with Lucien Greaves (at the Satanic Temple) updates us on the secularists’ fight against America’s bigoted, evil Christofascist Christian nationalist movement:

The overturning of Roe v Wade last June opened the door for more than half of US states to effectively ban abortion or restrict access to it, horrifying supporters of reproductive rights. The Satanic Temple – and many other observers – believe the decision of the supreme court was made on the basis of religion: specifically the extreme form of Christianity that has come to dominate Republican politics in the US.

The Temple has “seven fundamental tenets”, one of which states: “One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.” This, it believes, offers a way around these draconian new laws. It is arguing that its members are exempt from bans or restrictions on abortion, due to their right to a “Satanic Temple religious abortion ritual”, more of which later. With lawsuits already filed in Indiana, Idaho, Texas and Missouri, the Satanic Temple is about to find out whether US courts agree.

.... Lucien Greaves, who co-founded the Satanic Temple in 2012, points to the success the Republican party has had in overturning Roe v Wade – a decision brought before the court through decades of lobbying and legislating.

“I get messages from people denigrating us for taking legal action to assert our rights, saying: ‘You can’t change the system from within the system,’” Greaves says.

“And I keep asking them: ‘What the fuck do you think you just saw happen? That’s what they just did.’”

“We have to play the long game,” Greaves says. “They spent generations doing this.”

Satanists don’t believe in Satan in a literal, demonic sense, Greaves explains, but rather as a symbol of rebellion and opposition to authoritarianism. According to the Satanic Temple’s website: “To embrace the name Satan is to embrace rational inquiry removed from supernaturalism and archaic tradition-based superstitions.”

“Right now, we have a minority religious theocratic movement, so entrenched in politics and getting away with whatever they want,” Greaves says. “Now they’ve got the courts on their side and everything – and they don’t need to bend to the will of the majority.”  

“It’s getting really frustrating now with the overturn of Roe v Wade, when people are still treating us not like we’re a minority religion – which we are – but more like, we’re just this kind of clever tactic that may or may not work,” Greaves says.

“That gets to be really tedious, because I think people aren’t terribly invested in the outcomes of the Satanic Temple’s lawsuits. And it shows that they don’t understand that the outcomes of what the Satanic Temple is doing have ramifications for everybody: all minority religious organizations, all different types of viewpoint positions that might be outside the Christian nationalist perspective.”

The article comments that the fascist American group Sovereign Citizens has offered a $100,000 bounty to the person who murders Greaves.

TST’s Baphomet is a pagan idol used in popular culture as a representation of the devil, with the head, horns and feet of a goat, the torso of a man and the wings of an angel

Here's the Sovereign Citizens crackpot lies and slanders notice from Dec. 2021 calling for Greaves to be captured dead or alive. It is getting dangerous for Americans to stand up for civil liberties, democracy and truth.

INTERNATIONAL, NATIONAL AND LOCAL PUBLIC NOTICE

That Douglas Mesner A.k.a. Douglas Misicko and doing business as “Lucien Greaves” is hereby classified as a domestic and International terrorist along with his group known as The Satanic Temple, a terrorist organization that is advocating for the sacrifice of babies in their so-called “religious ceremonies”. Furthermore Douglas Mesner is WANTED DEAD or ALIVE on grounds of an act of international terrorism with multiple witnesses; against The United States of America, a Sovereign country under the Law of Nations. Members of the LGBTQ community were cooperating and were a part of the terrorist attack.

On the 3rd vote for House speaker

I'm watching the 3rd vote. The roll call is in the H's at the moment. 

One thing that is striking about what Scalise said when nominating McCarthy is that Republicans would pay great heed to the federal debt, the border with Mexico and some other unspecified Democratic horrors. Scalise laid out no specific policies that Republicans want. That is standard Republican Party propaganda. What the GOP wants is Christofascist tyranny and a shift of power and wealth from government and the people to the GOP and wealthy and/or powerful elites.

That is what the FGOP (fascist GOP) stands for but refuses to say in public.

Q: Is that analysis wrong?

Part of a 1/6 Committee transcript: What John Eastman had to say

The following is part of a transcript of questions the 1/6 Committee asked to Trump's fascist attorney John Eastman. The interview was under oath, so Eastman could be theoretically be liable for perjury if he lied. Eastman was the one who cooked up most of the legal rationale that Trump relied on to try to overthrow the government on 1/6. During the interview, he invoked the 5th Amendment at least 208 times in refusing to answer questions. That included refusing to answer questions about things he had previously discussed in public. Eastman's contempt for the 1/6 Committee was obvious.

For context, invoking the 5th Amendment allows a person to refuse to incriminate themselves in crimes or law breaking generally. The legal system cannot attach any inference of guilt from a person's refusal to answer any questions. Before he got in hot water, this is how Trump viewed people when they invoked the 5th Amendment:

Mr. Trump previously contended that invoking one’s Fifth Amendment rights was virtually an admission of wrongdoing.

“So there are five people taking the Fifth Amendment, like you see on the mob, right? You see the mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” Mr. Trump said at a rally in Iowa in 2016, referring to investigations into Hillary Clinton’s handling of potentially classified material as secretary of state.

For obvious reasons, Trump is now an enthusiastic supporter of invoking the 5th Amendment.

From the transcript

Question: If nobody has any questions about the background of the witness, I'll just start getting into the more substantive questions. Dr. Eastman, in an interview with Larry Lessig and Matt Seligman on the "Another 25 Way" podcast, September 27th, 2021, you were asked about the memoranda that you wrote regarding the role of the Vice President in counting the electoral college votes on January 6th, and you said, quote, "Although I did have a client in this, the client, the President, the former President of the United States, has authorized me to talk about these things. I want to make that clear upfront," close quote. Did President Trump authorize you to talk publicly about the memoranda that you wrote? 

Answer: On the advice of counsel, I hereby assert my Fifth Amendment right against being compelled to be a witness against myself. And with the committee's permission, I will invoke this right as necessary in response to further questions by simply stating "The Fifth."  

Q: So is it your position that you can discuss those memoranda in public settings, but will not discuss those memoranda with the committee pursuant to a 15 subpoena? 

A: Fifth. 

Q: So is it your position that you can discuss in the media direct conversations you had with the President of the United States, but you will not discuss those same conversations with this committee? 

A: Fifth. 

Q: Dr. Eastman, you've not produced any documents in response to the subpoena, which is in exhibit 1. Why have you not produced any documents to the committee? 

A: Fifth. 

Q: Just so I understand, is it your position that the act of producing documents, as opposed to the content of the documents themselves, could tend to incriminate you? 

A: Fifth. 

Q: Dr. Eastman, did you use a Chapman University email account for any 21 communications related to the 2020 election? 

A: Fifth. 

Q: Dr. Eastman, did you use any other email account for communication related to the 2020 election? 

A: Fifth. 

Q: Did you send or receive any text messages related to the 2020 election using your personal cell phone? 

A: Fifth. 

Q: Do you have any documents regarding the 2020 election on your personal computer. 

A: Fifth. 

Q: Do you have any documents regarding the 2020 election on any server? 

A: Fifth. 

Q: Dr. Eastman, were you in Philadelphia in connection with your participation in a panel on federalism and separation of powers at the Federalist Society National Lawyers Conference that took place in November 2020? 

A: Fifth. 

You get the idea. It went on like this for a long time. Like Trump would think, did Eastman invoke the 5th because he was guilty of breaking a law(s)? Probably, ~98% chance IMO. This is part of the reason it is so hard to convict white collar criminals of just about anything illegal. Our system is heavily rigged to protect the wealthy and powerful. This exemplifies an important advantage that smart white collar criminals enjoy.

News bits: Some thoughts about bothsidesism, etc.

From the Faux Investigations Files: An article in Salon warns the mainstream media not to take the bait when Republicans in the House enters its crazy-go-nuts investigations of Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and every other thing they think they can turn into a scandal. Salon writes:

Dark Brandon strikes again! Republicans have been drooling openly for weeks now over the small House majority they will have in the new year, and not because they have plans for legislation that will improve the lives of Americans. Nah, the blueprint for 2023 is all revenge on Democrats, all the time. Republicans are still salty over House Democrats investigating Donald Trump for minor transgressions like attempting to overthrow democracy and sending a murderous mob after Congress and his own vice president. 

And, because Republicans have no limits to their pettiness, we can expect two years of taxpayer money being used to show off pictures of Hunter Biden's penis, excused with the vague pretext that it's necessary to investigate his "business dealings."

Republicans no doubt are aware that they look like a bunch of clowns when they do stuff like this, but they don't care for one reason: Traditionally, these antics work to bait the mainstream media into giving credulous coverage to fake scandals about Democrats. The gold standard, of course, is how the phony Whitewater investigation in the '90s took a winding road to the discovery that President Bill Clinton .... Even more preposterous pumped-up scandals have followed, from President Barack Obama's birth certificate to Benghazi, which became a national catchword, even though no one can really explain what was supposed to be so scandalous about it.

Republicans understand all too well the Achilles heel of the mainstream media: The cavernous longing for "balance." Journalists want desperately to be seen as objective and the cheapest way to achieve that is to present "both sides" as equally corrupt. The problem, of course, is that simply isn't true. Democrats, like all political parties, have their problems, and when they mess up or engage in corruption they should be held accountable. But their issues at the moment are a pittance compared to the endemic lying and corruption of the party of Donald Trump. One way for the press to achieve "balance" is to make mountains out of Democratic molehills — or worse, to cover flat-out fake or unimportant stories as if they were for-real scandals.  

It's probably pissing in the wind to write this, but I would implore the editors at the New York Times, CNN, and other such outlets to resist the bait. Just because Republicans cast aspersions doesn't mean they need lavish coverage for doing so. The role of the press is not to "balance" very real, bad stories about Trump and other Republicans with fictitious nonsense about Democrats. The first duty should be to the truth. And the truth is there's no equivalence between Biden and Trump, or, at this point, Republicans and Democrats, broadly speaking.

I think that Benghazi and Hillary's deleted emails should be looked into once again.

----------------------

----------------------

From the Treasonous Republicans Don't Care About Their Own Treason Files: Time writes:

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy spent the first two days of the new year trying to shore up GOP support for his bid to be Speaker by releasing a series of proposals aimed at winning over hard-right detractors who stand to torpedo his ascension.

The part of his proposed changes to House rules that drew the most attention was allowing just five House members to call for a vote at any time on ousting the Speaker; that would render McCarthy beholden to the most extreme members of his caucus, should he get on their wrong side. But buried in the text was another provision that could be highly consequential for the new Congress being sworn in on Tuesday: language that would effectively gut the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE), as the independent panel faces pressure to investigate lawmakers who participated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Most significantly, McCarthy’s proposal would require OCE to hire its staff for the 118th Congress within 30 days of the resolution’s adoption, a requirement that sources familiar with the process tell TIME would make it exceedingly difficult for the office to have the resources it needs to conduct its investigations, given how long it takes to hire candidates for roles in the federal government. The proposal would also block OCE from hiring new employees over the next two years if someone leaves their position, sources say.

“Republicans get to take control of the House, and on their first day in Congress, they are not trying to take a hammer to the OCE—they’re being a little smarter about it—but they’re taking a scalpel to it,” a Hill source familiar with the ethics process tells TIME.

So there goes any possibility of Republican traitors investigating Republican traitors in the House. Too bad the Democrats didn't do it while they had those precious two years in power. 

Fox = Republicans in congress

What a peach!

 Let's play "What's wrong with this picture?":

News bits: MAGA fascists in Arizona, etc.

MAGA fascists in Arizona: Adrian Fontes was elected to be the next Secretary of State for Arizona. He defeated a Trump-chosen election denier and enthusiastic 1/6 coup attempt participant, Mark Finchem. Fontes commented in a news article: 

“We won by about 120,000 votes – we put it away handily.” But the result is not grounds for complacency, Fontes believes. From his perspective, given the scale of the danger posed by Finchem and his ilk, the outcome should have been much clearer. “Our victory was more narrow than we would have liked. We should have won by 20 points, and sent a much stronger message. Nobody should sleep easy on the Maga fascist threat that still exists.”

“I use the words ‘Maga fascists’ because it’s the truth,” he said. “These people are not Grand Old Party Republicans; they are Maga fascists. There is no reason for me to call them by anything other than what they are. If they feel a little sensitive about that, then maybe they ought to reconsider their position vis-a-vis American democracy and stop acting like fascists.”  

“We had folks with long rifles and camouflage gear ‘guarding’ our ballot drop boxes,” Fontes said. “That was asinine. Those folks should be prosecuted as the domestic terrorists that they are.”

I agree with Fontes. They are fascists, MAGA!! or not.

------------------------------

------------------------------

Racism in the GOP: The New Abnormal column at the Daily Beast discusses how some historians are aggressively attacking the lies the Republican Party has relied heavily on to create myths that many or most of rank and file Republicans believe are truths.

Republicans co-opting Martin Luther King Jr.’s quotes while pushing policy and supporting legislation directly in opposition to the Civil Rights leader’s wishes is just one example of the party attempting to rewrite history.

In fact, there are so many examples of revisionist history happening these days, particularly among conservatives, that historian and University of Princeton professor Kevin M. Kruse felt the need to publish a book alongside fellow historians, and join this episode of The New Abnormal politics podcast, to set the record straight. 

He talks about his book Myth America: Historians Take On the Biggest Legends and Lies About Our Past, which is a compilation of historian-written chapters that crush those myths, and shares proof that contrary to Republicans’ denials, the party actively engages in “Southern Strategy,” which is, as New Abnormal co-host Andy Levy explains, the “idea that as the Democratic Party moved away from being the party of slavery and segregation, the GOP sort of consciously moved to fill that void and to become the champion of white Southerners.”

From speaking in coded racial language to antagonizing white voters through fear and taking starkly pro-police stances, they’re absolutely following the knowingly racist playbook of conservatives past, says Kruse.

“This is not some wishful thinking theory that we’ve imposed in the past. The people we’re talking about in documents at the time, in interviews at the time, in books, talk about this,” says Kruse. “[Richard] Nixon talks about this in his memoirs. Harry Dent, his adviser, talks about it in his memoirs. Lee Atwater gives an interview where he talks about the old coded racism of the Nixon-era Southern Strategy. This has long been conventional wisdom. Heads of the Republican National Committee apologized for this. The thought that suddenly people are saying, ‘Oh, this never happened. This is all a myth,’ was just kind of insane and frustrating.”

------------------------------

------------------------------

Musk is killing people: Researchers report that COVID misinformation is surging once again now that Musk has dropped restrictions on lies and conspiracy theories. The NYT comments:

“It’s easy to forget that health misinformation, including about Covid, can still contribute to people not getting vaccinated or creating stigmas,” said Megan Marrelli, the editorial director of Meedan, a nonprofit focused on digital literacy and information access. “We know for a fact that health misinformation contributes to the spread of real-world disease.”

Twitter is of particular concern for researchers. The company recently gutted the teams responsible for keeping dangerous or inaccurate material in check on the platform, stopped enforcing its Covid misinformation policy and began basing some content moderation decisions on public polls posted by its new owner and chief executive, the billionaire Elon Musk.

From Nov. 1 to Dec. 5, Australian researchers collected more than half a million conspiratorial and misleading English-language tweets about Covid, using terms such as “deep state,” “hoax” and “bioweapon.” The tweets drew more than 1.6 million likes and 580,000 retweets.

Whether he likes it or not, Musk’s policies at his expensive Twitter toy is leading to people’s deaths and illness. He is a killer, plain and simple. So are the people who post lies and crackpottery that cause people to wind up ill or dead. One could say ‘shame on you’, but that would be pointless. People like Musk and Twitter cranks and crackpots have no shame. Heck, some (most?) of them probably actually enjoy seeing their ‘free speech’ poison injure and kill people.

That raises a question. How many ice-cold psychopath killers like these are there in America? According to the psychologists, about 1.2% of U.S. adult men and 0.3% to 0.7% of U.S. adult women are considered to have clinically significant levels of psychopathic traits. So, if we round it off to about 1%, that means there are up to about 3.3 million of these potential killers, mostly men, wandering maliciously among us. That raises a question. Are some men genetically defective or are the bad ones just mean and evil?

😵‍💫