The shadow docket: Undermining democracy, the rule of law, civil liberties and the separation of powers

The Throughline program that NPR broadcasts did a deep dive into the USSC's increasing reliance on the shadow docket to quietly reshape American law and society. Tactics like handing down shadow docket decisions at 2 or 3 am minimizes public scrutiny. There is usually no explanation at all and no public argument. The public has no way to know how or why a law is being applied. The USSC now acts with nearly no constraints by Congress or a president. 

An analysis several months ago by two legal scholars led them to conclude that at least since ~2000, the USSC has slowly been accumulating powers taken from Congress and the Executive Branch, including federal agencies. This 49 minute broadcast reinforces that analysis. This dives into the history and context that got us to the point where the USSC is now capable of overthrowing the US government and doling so legally on the basis of its own decisions.

Throughline comments:

Today, the vast majority of the Court's work actually happens out of the public eye, on what's become known as the shadow docket. The story of that transformation spans more than a century, and doesn't fall neatly along partisan lines. Today on the show: how the so-called court of last resort has gained more and more power over American policy, and why the debates we don't see are often more important than the ones we do.

Wikipedia describes what the shadow docket is:

The shadow docket (or non-merits docket) refers to motions and orders in the Supreme Court of the United States in cases which have not yet reached final judgment, decision on appeal, and oral argument. This especially refers to stays and injunctions (preliminary relief), but also includes summary decisions and grant, vacate, remand (GVR) orders. The phrase "shadow docket" was first used in this context in 2015 by University of Chicago Law professor William Baude.

The shadow docket is a break from ordinary procedure. Such cases receive very limited briefings and are typically decided a week or less after an application is filed. The process generally results in short, unsigned rulings. On the other hand, merits cases take months, include oral argument, and result in lengthy opinions detailing the reasoning of the majority and concurring and dissenting justices, if any.  

The term has been used by some justices themselves, with Justice Elena Kagan calling the Court's "shadow-docket decision-making" "every day becoming more unreasoned, inconsistent, and impossible to defend" in a dissent to a denial of an application for injunctive relief in the case Whole Woman's Health v. Jackson (2021). The phrase itself has been criticized by Justice Samuel Alito, who called it "sinister" in a university speech and saying it was "used to portray the court as having been captured by a dangerous cabal that resorts to sneaky and improper methods to get its ways", and by senators, with Ted Cruz, a former solicitor general of Texas, saying: "Shadow docket, that is ominous. Shadows are really bad, like really, really bad."

A transcript of the broadcast is here (and here). A couple points are important to make:

• The modern shadow docket grew out of a federal death penalty case in 2020. Originally, it rose to power under FDR in the 1940s. There, a radical right Supreme Court was bitterly opposed to the New Deal. That USSC was shredding the New Deal in shadow docket decisions. FDR threatened to expand the number of justices on the USSC to get New Deal laws implemented. That scared the radicals off and the shadow docket faded into insignificance until recently.

• At one time, congress completely controlled which cases the USSC would hear. That gave congress a lot of power over the court. President Taft was a life-long lawyer who wanted (i) to be a USSC judge, and (ii) give the court a lot more autonomy, which would give it a lot more power. After he was out of office, Taft because the Chief Justice of the USSC. He lobbied congress for more power. He finally got congress to give the USSC the power of certiorari, i.e., the power to choose which cases to accept and which to reject. At that point, the selection of cases to be heard became a black box. The court did not need to explain why it would choose to accept or reject a case. The Supreme Court gained the power to inject itself into virtually every contentious public policy dispute. 

• The USSC used an emergency order in 1961 to allow the first Black student, James Meredith, to attend Ole Miss university. As usual the emergency order was written by a single justice, Hugo Black in this instance. However, the practice of a single justice writing emergency orders ended in 1976 when the federal death penalty was reinstituted. All justices had to be involved in emergency orders after that. But the court simply said that if there is an order of the full Court, they're not going to explain themselves. And so the Court stopped providing explanations for grants or denials of emergency relief. Before then a single justice usually would have explained why a court order was made. In essence, the USSC was moving further and further from transparency. Opacity is where corruption, authoritarianism and base human impulses thrive, e.g., bigotry, racism and extremism. 

A legal scholar, Steven Vladeck explains his vision of what was going on as opacity displaced transparency (adapted from the transcript):

So I have a slightly more cynical take. You could argue that these procedural shifts, although they could be justified on sort of efficiency and like collegiality metrics, they really were a way of limiting the ability of those justices who are most anti-death penalty to speak for the full Court. And you see, started in the eighties, like a flurry of 54 decisions where the Court is, you know, turning away death penalty appeal.

That's extremely dark. I just wanna sit with that for a second because that's extremely dark. It was a, it was essentially a more actually efficient way to enact death. It's not just that we start to see the Court denying requests for stays from inmates on a much more frequent basis. The even darker part is starting in 82 or 83.

It shouldn't be easy for the state to kill someone like it should be a process and they should have to really be able to prove it et cetera. But essentially you're saying that that lower Court who's like, oh, there's some problems with this. We need to stop it. No, forget their decision. Like, let's just go ahead and do it. Well, it's, it's worse than that. 

I mean like I've got no problem with the Supreme Court saying, hey, lower Court, we disagree with you. The crazy part here is the Court is granting emergency relief. The Court is saying states are irreparably harmed if they have to wait to execute someone.

News bits: Regarding the USSC's anti-democracy agenda; At the gas station; Cranks & crackpots on parade

Slate writes:

Last June, Supreme Court Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh shocked observers by joining the court’s three liberal justices to reject an Alabama congressional map aimed at diluting Black voters’ power. The ruling marked a (likely temporary) hiatus in the Roberts court’s systematic dismantling of the Voting Rights Act. It also invited a bevy of columnists to opine, See, this court isn’t so bad after all!

On the one hand, some fanfare was warranted. The Allen v. Milligan opinion was a genuine surprise, and as a recent lower court ruling in Georgia demonstrates, its effects will reverberate throughout the 2024 election cycle and beyond. A bad ruling would have been disastrous.

On the other hand, focusing on the decision obscures a disturbing reality: In the decade since it decimated the VRA with its notorious Shelby County v. Holder decision, the court’s right-wing majority has used its docket-setting power to tilt the playing field so sharply against democracy that even the rare “wins” simply preserve a degraded status quo.

A new study published on Thursday and led by my colleague Chelsey Davidson found that since the 2012–13 term, more than 80 percent of election-related cases on the Supreme Court’s hand-picked docket could move the law only in a direction that degraded fair elections.

In that time, the Supreme Court accepted 32 cases involving core democracy issues such as redistricting, ballot access, campaign finance, and VRA enforcement. In 26 of them, the lower court had issued a pro-democracy ruling. This means that the best-case scenario at the court was affirmation of the status quo, while a reversal of the lower court would restrict voter participation. By contrast, the justices picked just six cases where they might reverse anti-democracy rulings.

It’s not quite “Heads I win, tails democracy loses,” but it’s pretty damn close.

Roberts and Kavanaugh are shrewd political operatives who have dedicated decades of their personal and professional lives to electing Republicans. They are not afraid to play the long game. Unlike some of their less patient colleagues, they recognize the power of cloaking their anti-democratic project in a veneer of moderation.

By rigging the docket, Roberts and Kavanaugh can have their cake and eat it too. They can win opinion page plaudits for their restraint, knowing that even their “good” decisions do nothing to expand voter access, while decisions like Shelby and Rucho devastate it.

If we want to give democracy a fighting chance, we have to stop taking the bait. Because what makes a dangerously radical court is not just how it decides the cases it hears but how it decides which cases to hear.

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Kerfuffle at the gas station at Costco

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From the Cranks and Crackpots Files: Adding to the growing list of third party candidates, Jill Stein announced that she is running for President in 2024 as a Green Party candidate. Stein ran in 2016, coming in fourth place with 1.07%.

Confirmed third-party candidates:

• Jill Stein (Green Party)
• RFK Jr (Independent)
• Cornel West (Independent)
• The No Labels Candidate (yet to be decided - possibilities include Bill Cassidy, Joe Manchin, Larry Hogan)
• The Libertarian Candidate (yet to be decided)

Potential third-party candidates include:

• Tulsi Gabbard
• Liz Cheney
• Jesse Ventura
• William H. McRaven

Republican candidates include:

• DJT
• Whoever else is still left in the race, but will probably drop out fairly soon

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Radical right authoritarians are ramping up their hate speech and normalizing it:

Hate speech: Trump came under fire Saturday for his post on Truth Social, in which he wrote, “In honor of our great Veterans on Veteran’s Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream. .... The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave, than the threat from within. Despite the hatred and anger of the Radical Left Lunatics who want to destroy our Country, we will MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Normalization: Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel appeared to dodge questions over former President Trump’s Veteran’s Day social media post in which he pledged to “root out the Communist, Marxist, racist and radical left thugs.” McDaniel said she will not comment on candidates and their messaging. Asked by NBC “Meet the Press” anchor Kristen Welker if McDaniel is comfortable with the language being used by the former president, she said, “I am not going to comment on candidates and their campaign messaging. I will say this, I know President Trump supports the veterans, our whole party supports our veterans. And I do think we’re at a very serious moment in our country.”

That comment, we’re at a very serious moment in our country normalizes DJT's hate speech. Corrupt authoritarian radical right Rep elites are corrupt, shameless liars, thugs and hypocrites. That includes the morally rotted, dictator-loving Ronna McDaniel. 

A DJT spokesman made it all better:

Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung defended the former president’s comments with some reasonable language of his own.

“Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House,” Cheung told The Washington Post on Monday.

Cheung later added that he meant to say their “sad, miserable existence” instead of their “entire existence.” 

It's good to know that DJT isn't going to crush our entire existence, just our sad, miserable existence. I feel better already. But why wait? Avoid the rush. Let the crushing commence now! Obliterate the SNOWFLAKES!!

The GOP is alive but not very well

News bits: DJT's plans (again); The drug epidemic is changing

The New Republic reports:

It’s Official: With “Vermin,” Trump Is Now Using Straight-up Nazi Talk | He’s telling us what he will do to his political enemies if he’s president again. Is anyone listening?

Three peanut gallery comments about that article:

1. Not just “political enemies”. American citizens. It’s time to stop tiptoeing. We’ve seen this enough times in history that alarm bells should have been blaring about this guy for a long damn time. He should be in prison based on historical precedent. He’s going to hurt millions. Period. Stop him. 

2. Project 2025 is absolutely a Nazi style takeover of Democracy and they are doing it openly. Summary; Full Plan; Good video explaining. Take this seriously, they are preparing for this right now. This is not a drill. 

3. Voter suppression in a few states is all it takes. Be very concerned.

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The NYT reports:  

‘A Monster’: Super Meth and 

Other Drugs Push Crisis Beyond Opioids

Millions of U.S. drug users now are addicted to several substances, not just opioids like fentanyl and heroin. The shift is making treatment far more difficult.

Rachel, 35, her hair dyed a silvery lavender, ran to greet Dr. Helmstetter. She takes the medicine buprenorphine, which acts to dull her body’s yearning for opioids, but she was not ready to let go of meth.

“I prefer both, actually,” she said. “I like to be up and down at the same time.”

The United States is in a new and perilous period in its battle against illicit drugs. The scourge is not only opioids, such as fentanyl, but a rapidly growing practice that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention labels “polysubstance use.”

Over the last three years, studies of people addicted to opioids (a population estimated to be in the millions) have consistently shown that between 70 and 80 percent also take other illicit substances, a shift that is stymieing treatment efforts and confounding state, local and federal policies.

“It’s no longer an opioid epidemic,” said Dr. Cara Poland, an associate professor at the Michigan State University College of Human Medicine. “This is an addiction crisis.”

The non-opioid drugs include those relatively new to the street, like the animal tranquilizer xylazine, which can char human flesh, anti-anxiety medications like Valium and Klonopin and older recreational stimulants like cocaine and meth. Dealers sell these drugs, plus counterfeit Percocet and Xanax pills, often mixed with fentanyl.

The incursion of meth has been particularly problematic. Not only is there is no approved medical treatment for meth addiction, but meth can also undercut the effectiveness of opioid addiction therapies. Meth explodes the pleasure receptors, but also induces paranoia and hallucinations, works like a slow acid on teeth and heart valves and can inflict long-lasting brain changes.  

The Biden administration has been pouring billions into opioid interventions and policing traffickers, but has otherwise lagged in keeping pace with the evolution of drug use. There has been comparatively little discussion about meth and cocaine, despite the fact that during the 12-month period ending in May 2023, over 34,000 deaths were attributed to methamphetamine and 28,000 to cocaine, according to provisional federal data.  

“Treating someone for opiates is relatively easy,” said Dr. Paul Trowbridge, the addiction medicine specialist at the Trinity Health Recovery Medicine clinic in Grand Rapids, .... But meth, he said, “is a monster.”

Aw geez. Another apparently intractable major problem that’s gone out of control. What a horrible mess.

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As we all know, another government shutdown deadline is coming soon. This Friday actually. As usual, the CARRRP (corrupt authoritarian radical right Repub Party) has its act together, its ducks in a row and its oars in the water and is itchin’ to get ’er done, whatever ’er is. The are 5 groups of CARRRPs squabbling among each other. They are in full blown bickering mode, so that  part of the plan is proceeding nicely. What does the CARRRP Christian nationalist Mike Johnson want? Apparently, he wants to piss everybody off. The WaPo reports:

After attending three meetings with Johnson, Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio) eventually blurted out: “What do you want?”

Joyce and the Republican conference got their answer Saturday. Johnson ultimately decided to move forward with a stopgap funding proposal meant to appease the hard right while trying not to alienate the centrists. [Note: There are no centrists in the CARRRP, only radicals and extremists] The result was a two-tiered funding schedule that does not include other demands from across the GOP conference, like steep budget cuts, a border security proposal and funding for Israel or Ukraine.

Instead of appeasing just one ideological faction, the proposal has angered the hard right, puzzled the middle and was mocked by the White House. But it may attract enough support, including from Democrats in the House and Senate, to land on the president’s desk this week.  

The ADF consists of nearly 400 staff members and over 3,200 allied attorneys. “The whole point is to have a Christian takeover of the government,” says Paul Southwick, a lawyer who litigates, often against the ADF, on behalf of queer students who have experienced discrimination at religious colleges. “In ADF’s eyes, God has dominion over the church, but he also has dominion over the state.”

If some Dems vote for whatever the CARRRP barfs up, it will likely be one of those one-way ratchet toward kleptocratic dictatorship* the Repubs so desperately want to install on all of us, for our own good of course. 

* Some form of deeply corrupt, deeply immoral-evil autocracy, plutocracy and/or Christian theocracy. Guess that’s what ’er is.

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Rolling Stone recently reported about the life of lies, deceit and bigotry that the rabid, morally bankrupt Christian nationalist and pro-dictatorship Mike Johnson mindlessly lives:

Inside the Alliance Defending Freedom, the Anti-LGBTQ Org Where 

Mike Johnson Spent Almost a Decade

The organization pushed to overturn Roe v. Wade. They also have their sights set on rolling back LGBTQ rights

THE ALLIANCE DEFENDING Freedom (ADF) has been busy this year. Its senior legal council, Matt Sharp, has been on the move, parachuting into different state courthouses to testify or voice support for some of the record-shattering 501 anti-LGBTQ bills that have been introduced in legislatures this year — more than 70 of which have passed into law.

The bills, which share many of the same themes and in some cases the exact same language, have been described as part of a coordinated effort by Republican lawmakers to intensify LGBTQ issues as a key wedge in the culture war ahead of the 2024 presidential election.

Johnson comes with quite a resume. He defended Donald Trump at both of his impeachment hearings, helped plot the Jan. 6 attempted coup, and holds hardline positions on everything from abortion to LGBTQ rights. He worked for the ADF from 2002 until 2010, penning op-eds against marriage equality and endorsing briefs filed by the ADF meant to criminalize sexual activity between consenting adults. He now controls the business of the House of Representatives, including which members chair congressional committees and which bills receive floor votes. He’s also second in line for the presidency. 

“ADF zooms into courtrooms domestically and around the world, provides the testimony, and then they spill their talking points, perpetuating false narratives and citing junk science around trans healthcare. The dangerous part is it works and it gives these bills a legislative credibility they don’t deserve,” says a spokesperson for Accountable for Equality, a nonprofit aiming to educate the public about the efforts of anti-LGBTQ extremists.

The ADF? Even the name of the organization is a blatant lie. What a nice guy. /s 

Chapter review: Chapter 1, part 1

The chapters are just numbered, not titled, hence the Chapter 1 title. The 2019 book, This Land: How Cowboys, Capitalism and Corruption are Ruining the American West, by Christopher Ketcham is truly a new book experience for me.  

My new experience, this book is too sad and upsetting for me to read. I got through the 1st chapter and can't take any more, at least for now. Ketcham writes beautifully. His pain and sorrow are real and palpable. Maybe that's what makes this book so sad and uncomfortable. I want him to speak for himself. Nothing I can say is worth much in view of what he says: 

Map of federal public lands 

Ketcham's map

The West = west of the 100th meridian

to the east side of the Sierra Nevada and Cascade mountain

ranges in California, Oregon and Washington

You will be asking what exactly these public lands consist of. The National Parks are a trivial portion, covering less than 50 million acres (78,125 sq mi). Beautiful as they are, consider them a kind of specialty zoo, heavily funded postage stamp island ecosystems, overseen for wildlife but mostly for tourists. For our purposes the West is roughly 450 million acres (7,031,250 sq mi) of grassland, steppe, desert and forest managed in trust for the American people by the Unites States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Unites States Forest Service. These agencies are unsung sisters of the National Park Service, little known and meagerly funded. .... Here you can hike, fish, hunt for meat, raft, ride horseback, roam like the aboriginal tribes of the continent, get lost, stay lost for as long as you wish.

It's an American commons, and the chief requirement to enjoy it is some degree of self-reliance. .... Walk on for a month or so, you might live like an animal, naked in the dirt, howling at the moon. I've done this on occasion.

That the BLM and Forest Service domain accommodates profit hunters is the crucial difference separating it from the national parks. You can prospect on these lands, extract commodities. Congress has enshrined in law this practice of “multiple use.” Look across the public lands and you'll find the myriad uses: oil and gas fields in the deserts and steppe, and coal, copper, silver and gold mines stabbed into cliffs and mountains. Forests are felled, grasslands overgrazed, wildlife slaughtered, and roads carved for all parties to gain access and exploit public ground for private gain. The BLM and Forest service are schizoid. With one hand they protect; with the other they ravage. Such is multiple use. William O. Douglas, a backpacker and outdoorsman who happened to also be the longest-serving Supreme Court justice, shared his suspicions about the real meaning of the term in 1961: “ ‘Multiple’ use was semantics for making cattlemen, sheepmen, lumbermen, miners the main beneficiaries. After they gutted and razed the forests, the rest of us could use them -- to find campsites among stumps, to look for fish in waters heavy with silt from erosion, to search for game on ridges pounded to dust by sheep.”

I wrote this book because little has changed since Douglas was writing.

Here’s what’s happening to our land: it is May 2018, in the Egan Range of Nevada, south of Ely, and a machine called a Bull Hog is approaching. .... It runs on treads like a bulldozer, and affixed at it’s front is a spinning bladed cylinder. It has one use and one use only -- the destruction of the forest in which I stand, a forest of pinyon and juniper that the BLM manages on our behalf. .... The pinyon-juniper forest is the great survivor in the aridlands, drought resistant, adapted to heat, and is deliciously sweet-smelling -- these two species, after the sagebrush, are the perfuming flora of the Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau. But they have no value for logging or wood products, no value that can be measured in money. Therefore, they must be wiped out for other enterprises -- for cattlemen I later learn, so that the land in the Egan Range will be “productive” for cows and not wasted.

The Bull Hog, operated and funded by the Department of the Interior -- at our expense, with our tax dollars -- charges through the forest as I stand in a kind of fugue, incredulous at the pace of its destruction. The beautiful old gnarled trees are devoured in the mouth of the mobile muncher, knocked down and chewed up, defecated out its ass-end in fragments. .... The howl and whine of the engine and the spinning blades, the tortuous toppling of the trees, the crackling and crushing of trunks and limbs, the shattered spitting of being alive seconds before -- it is almost too much to bear.

.... May is prime nesting season for birds in the pinyon-juniper biome. Kestrels and hawks, mountain chickadees and house wrens, black throated gray warblers, flickers, gray flycatchers, scrub jays and pinyon jays live here, and in the soil between the trees nest the poorwills -- all that are caught and ground to red mist by the servo-mechanism, for no reason other than to expedite commerce.

Maybe you can see why this book could so sad and uncomfortable to at least some people. Part 2 of this chapter gives some historical context, just as sad and uncomfortable as this little bit.

A small Bull Hog

A big Bull Hog

News bits: Trump plans a third term; Lawmakers invoke God's authority; Christian flag dustup

CNN reports:

Believe it or not, Donald Trump says he should get a third term

Even as he fights for a second term in November, President Donald Trump already has his eye on extending his stay in the White House for a lot longer.

“We are going to win four more years,” Trump said at a rally in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on Monday. “And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.”

Well, there you have it. He was spied on so he deserves a redo of four years. Makes perfect sense to me. MAGA!! (/s, in case it's needed for clarity)

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This is a juicy one coming at us from the enraged Christian nationalist zealots, theocrats & kleptocrats:

Ohio Republicans Say It’s Their ‘God Given Right’

to Restrict Abortion Access

Republicans in Ohio want to undermine the will of voters who approved a measure enshrining reproductive freedom into the state’s constitution

Ohio Republicans are claiming a constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights, which was approved by voters in Tuesday’s election, doesn’t actually do that — and they’re promising to take steps to prevent the legal protection of reproductive freedom in the state.

“No amendment can overturn the God-given rights with which we were born,” state Rep. Beth Lear (R-Galena) added in the Republican’s statement. Another representative, Jennifer Gross (R-West Chester), claimed the referendum had only passed due to “foreign election interference.”

Rep. Bill Dean (R-Xenia) said the amendment “doesn’t repeal a single Ohio law,” and that its language is “dangerously vague and unconstrained, and can be weaponized to attack parental rights or defend rapists, pedophiles, and human traffickers.”

Well, there you have it. One cannot argue with God Almighty. Darn those rapists, pedophiles, and human traffickers, you know, nasty people like Trump. 

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Hose speaker Mike Johnson is a hard core Christian nationalist. He supports Christian Sharia law over the secular US Constitution. The New Republic reports:

A new report confirmed that the House speaker is displaying an “Appeal to Heaven” flag outside his door

The flag is white with a green evergreen tree in the middle and the phrase “An Appeal to Heaven” at the top. A report published Friday by Rolling Stone confirmed that the flag is outside his district office in Washington.

The flag was originally used as a banner during the Revolutionary War, but over the past decade, it has been embraced by a sect of Christianity called the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR. A central tenet of NAR’s belief system is that it is God’s will for Christians to take control of all aspects of U.S. society—including education, arts and entertainment, the media, and businesses—to create a religious nation.

Available at Amazon for $9.43 + S&H 

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This is an odd snippet. Not sure what it means, but it doesn't sound good:

Israel government spokesperson Eylon Levy claims the Red Cross, the World Health Organization & the UN are "complicit with Hamas"

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Apparently, most of ARRRP (authoritarian radical right Repub Party) elites do not see  anti-abortion laws issue as unpopular. Instead, anti-abortion laws are popular but just the messaging and strategy are not quite right. A WaPo article reports about the ARRRP's thinking and evolving anti-abortion rights tactics:

Voters defended abortion rights and Issue 1 in Ohio lost 

(he's not celebrating)

Opposing abortion rights -- it is a matter of 

protecting parent's rights or children or something else?

Republicans still struggle to find a winning strategy on abortion

Many say the problem is messaging or strategy, while Democrats and some Republicans say the GOP is stubbornly sticking with deeply unpopular policies

Republicans still have no clear strategy on how to talk about abortion, how stringent limits on the procedure should be or how to cope with the ongoing political backlash that Democrats plan to capitalize on next year, according GOP lawmakers, activists and consultants.

In interviews and public statements, Republicans were all over the map on how to address the abortion issue heading into 2024. Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel told NBC News last week that Republicans should campaign more aggressively on the issue, calling for a “consensus as a country” that abortion should be banned with exceptions after “around 15 weeks.” Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America released a memo suggesting that the GOP needs to “define where it stands on the issue nationally,” “put real advertising dollars behind it” and paint Democrats as extreme. Others have argued that Republicans need to emphasize support for exceptions, demonstrate more sensitivity when talking about abortion and use phrases such as “limitations” and “late-term” abortions as opposed to bans.

Given how disciplined, focused and effective ARRRP propaganda has been over the last 40-50 years, it is surprising that their dark free speech Leviathan has failed to settle on a two, three or four-word catch phrase to tip the propaganda war to their advantage. Simple, short slogans tend to be effective. Death tax. Compassionate conservative. Pro-life. MAGA. Deep state. Pedophiles. Stolen election. Legitimate political discourse. Etc. 

Maybe they could pick something catchy like Baby Killer, Murdering Butcher or Satanic monster for abortion rights supporters. That ought to fire up the base.

Regardless, ARRRP elites are not going to give up. They will never admit that most Americans simply support abortion rights, whether they believe or know it or not.

Sunday Sermon - part 2

 Part one is over on my channel.

Here is sermon part two......

Why You've Got to Have Faith

Believing in something bigger than yourself can be good for your mental health.

• Spirituality doesn’t have to mean religion—it also encompasses an array of other belief systems and practices.
• A Gallup study found that "religious" people tended to score higher on well-being indexes.
• Science can also lead to feelings of awe and transcendence not unlike a spiritual experience.

In fact, spirituality has been linked not only to lower rates of anxiety and depression but also to a reduction in other concerns, such as addiction.

Spirituality doesn’t necessarily mean adhering to a religion (although it can); it also encompasses an array of other belief systems and practices.

The Gallup study found that "religious" people tended to score higher than others on well-being indexes measuring five factors: positive coping and sense of purpose in life, faith-based social connections, community and civic engagement, structural stability, and workplace support of holistic well-being.

But fret not, ye atheists and agnostics: You can still partake in some faith-based well-being, albeit from a different source.

Researchers at Warwick University recently discovered that science can also lead to feelings of awe and transcendence not unlike those in spiritual experiences.

In the study, "Spirituality of Science: Implications for Meaning, Well-Being, and Learning," the authors found that meaning in life could be predicted in a group of atheists and agnostics via scientific sources, with the science providing similar psychological benefits as religion and spirituality.

It doesn’t matter whether you believe in a single god or a pantheon of gods and goddesses, or if you have devoted yourself to nature or science, or if you simply like to meditate once or twice a day—having faith in something larger than yourself is definitely good for you.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/keeping-an-even-keel/202310/you-gotta-have-faith