Who's walking down the path with her?

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote a Ukraine update and discussed the city of Kherson. I had written before that there was evidence Kherson had fallen to Russia because the mayor had accepted a Russian bribe. Sumner quoted Joseph who tweeted about the dire situation in the city. Then Sumner wrote:

That incredibly bad situation includes ongoing efforts to turn Kherson into an outpost of Russia. Kherson has been taken off the Ukrainian internet and placed on a Russian network. Russian cell towers are going up. Ukrainian products are being replaced on the shelves with ones brought in from Russia as Russian troops insist that business be done in rubles. There are checkpoints throughout the city where Russian forces demand strip searches at gunpoint. And, “My friend says that when they go out now they don’t see familiar faces. Russians are arriving to replace Ukrainians and live in their homes.”

In a second update Sumner wrote about what Putin is describing as his goals in the war and how those goals are changing. First Kherson was to be an independent protectorate, then a Russian protectorate, and now a Russian colony. The Department of Defense says there are things – such as capturing all of Donbas – Putin can call a victory. ... Sumner wrote:

But there’s absolutely no reason to think Putin will stop there if those goals are achieved. In fact there is no red line, neither in the sense of goals achieved, or materiel losses, that will cause Putin to call a stop. He won’t stop if 50,000 Russian soldiers are dead. He certainly won’t stop if his forces enjoy enough success to achieve goals one and two. Putin will stop when he is made to stop. When it becomes clear that every day the invasion continues things are going to get worse for both Russia and the Russian military, and most importantly, that they’re going to get worse for Vladimir Putin.

I wrote yesterday about Russia trying to get across the Siverskyi Donets River on a pontoon bridge and were pummeled by Ukraine, losing a lot of men and equipment. Sumner reported Russia tried again. Same result. Michael Harriot tweeted a thread about the extent of allyship. His story is about abolitionist Charles Turner Torrey. He founded the Boston Vigilance Committee in 1841. Torrey was hated by other abolitionists because they had limits on how they would help and Torrey didn’t. That limit was whether a particular action would harm themselves. In one incident the white allies gave up.

And the Black folks were like "WHAT??? Y'all going home? I thought y'all were real ride-or-die abolitionists!" And the white dudes said: "Wait... Y'all were serious about the die part?" ... None of those Black dudes left the Vigilance Committee. They weren't even mad. Because they understood the limits of white allyship. The Black folks knew white allies would only go so far to fight for Black people's freedom.

Back to things swirling around the abortion rights debate. Nancy Kaffer, an opinion columnist for the Detroit Free Press, wrote in last Sunday’s edition that overturning Roe would be a spiraling disaster for Michigan. That’s because a 1931 abortion ban would be back in effect. Kaffer talked about the economic consequences: Michigan is already not very attractive to highly skilled young people. We don’t have civil rights protections for LGBT people. We don’t have a transit system that covers all of the Detroit Metro area. Criminalizing abortion and being hostile to women would be another reason to not select Michigan as a place to live and work. Already Michigan has the second slowest rate of population growth. We lost a Congressional seat in 2012 (and one or two before then) and will lose another in 2022. It is hard to be pro business (which Republicans say they are) when policies convince young talent not to come. Aldous Pennyfarthing of Kos discussed the Senate’s show vote on abortion protection. Of course it was going to fail – there was no way it would get 60 votes to clear the filibuster. Joe Manchin voted against it so it lost 49-51. Pennyfarthing wrote that since it was going to fail, Democrats should have written it to give them a political talking point. He quoted a few tweets by Christopher Ingraham. Saying Republicans voted against abortion is boring. Saying Republicans voted against abortion for ectopic pregnancies has serious political heft. Dartagnan of the Kos community reminded us who is most affected when they are forced to carry babies to birth. And, if the expected ban on contraception goes through, there will be tens of thousands more of these babies. The people most affected are the poor. The ones imposing these bans are definitely not poor. Leila Fadel of NPR spoke to Getty Israel, founder and CEO or Sisters in Birth in Mississippi. The segment mostly talked about disparities in reproductive health. I’ll skip the grim statistics. Israel talked about another aspect of her service to pregnant people, which is listening to their stories. Why do you feel you need an abortion? This isn’t asked to judge, but to understand and help. Israel said:

So the problem I have with people who are on the pro-choice side is that they only care about defending the law. What they don't care about, it seems to me, are the lives of the women who are really being impacted. I see, for instance - and I've already been very critical of the so-called pro-life side. Right here locally, I take them to task all the time. But the pro-choice people are willing to wage a war - a political war - to protect this law. But they're not willing to help create any community-based interventions to address the various underlying risk factors that will lead a woman to look for an abortion. ... What's missing is the women who are most likely impacted by this law or by abortion in general are never invited to the table. No one ever says, what do you need? What can we do to help improve your life so that you don't find that you need to have an abortion? What's going on with you? What can we do in your community? But those are the - that's what's missing, the social component. When a woman is seeking an abortion, 9 times out of 10, she is alone. She is alone in this process. Pro-choice people aren't walking down that path with her, and neither are the pro-life people, beyond beating her over the head with a Bible and scripture. Who's walking down the path with her to have the baby or to have the abortion? Neither group is. The social compact, the human component is missing from this story. Women need more than simply access to abortion. Women need a higher quality of life to start with.

Clarence Thomas had complained about protesters who were unable to “live with outcomes we don’t agree with.” Walter Einenkel of Kos reported Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, in a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee, had a few things to say to Thomas:

Jeffries didn’t mince words, going right for Thomas, saying that if he “really wants to deal with bullying in America, or this problem of people supposedly unwilling to accept outcomes that they don’t like, I’ve got some advice for Justice Thomas. Start in your own home.” ... Jeffries goes right to heart of the matter from here: “[Ginni Thomas] refused to accept the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election. Why? Because she didn’t like the outcome. And so instead, she tried to steal the election, overthrow the United States government, and install a tyrant. That’s bullying.” It is here that I will give one note of criticism to Jeffries and say that’s not simply “bullying,” that’s “sedition,” that’s a “coup d’etat,” that’s “fascism.” But, please go on, I’ve gotten another bag of popcorn! ... And then Jeffries did what good orators do: He revved up the engines and drove home everything wrong with Clarence Thomas and his spouse Ginni. “And lastly, let me ask this question of Brother Thomas: Why are you such a hater? Hate on civil rights. Hate on women’s rights. Hate on reproductive rights. Hate on voting rights. Hate on marital rights. Hate on equal protection under the law. Hate on liberty and justice for all. Hate on free and fair elections. Why are you such a hater?”

Dartagnan asks how can we ever trust this Court again? Since the leak of Alito’s opinion saying a majority had voted to gut Roe there have been multiple follow up leaks. The Court has thrown away its integrity. And Roberts, as Chief Justice is responsible.

The entire premise underlying the judicial resolution of disputes in this country rests on the idea that the public is not privy to the internal deliberation process, either by an individual judge or multiple ones, unless the court itself chooses to reveal that process in its final opinion. Otherwise, its rationale is always subject to question and accusations of bias, undue influence, or worse. The ultimate validity of a single, uniform result—a “decision”—whatever that result may be, necessarily relies on the confidentiality of the process used to achieve that result. ... Supreme Court justices know this better than anyone—or they should. The initial leak—however profound and revelatory—was thought to be an anomaly. But the repeated, continued leaks we are now seeing allowed in this case bespeak a court that has completely lost its bearings and ability to control the most sacrosanct of its responsibilities. And for that failure, the chief justice is ultimately responsible.

Michel Martin of NPR spoke with Kristin Kobes Du Mez, a professor of history and gender studies at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan and the author of the book Jesus and John Wayne. Du Mez said that in the 1960s Christianity Today, the flagship magazine of American Evangelicalism, discussed abortion and called it a complicated moral issue. The Southern Baptist Convention was in favor of better access to abortion in 1971 and reaffirmed that in 1974 and 1976 – those last two after Roe. What changed was a backlash against feminism and abortion linked to that. Add to that political activist Paul Weyrich who saw abortion as a way to politically mobilize conservative evangelicals. Martin asked if evangelicals are pro-life why aren’t they also talking about maternal mortality and medical bills that bankrupt people. Du Mez replied that in the evangelical world poverty and health care are about personal responsibility. If one were more responsible – had a higher income – one could weather those problems. But a fetus is dependent on the responsibility of the mother and must be protected. Add to that the belief that God’s primary calling for women is to be a mother. Abortion strikes at the heart of that belief. The March/April 2022 issue of the Hightower Lowdown discussed how the Supremes got to this point. I’m not linking to the article directly because the site says I get only so many free articles unless I subscribe. I do subscribe, yet they aren’t able to match up a subscription paid by check through the mail and one paid by card through the website. But enough of that grumbling. The trajectory towards the current court began with the Powell Memorandum, written by Lewis Powell in 1971. In it Powell lamented Corporate America wasn’t getting its due respect and provided a guide to how corporations can take over American government – including the courts. The memo prompted Nixon to award Powell with a seat on the Supremes. Hightower lists big problems with our Supremes. These nine people have huge power with no appeal or accountability. Their term is for life. They have no concept of poverty. They make their own ethics rules. Even so, the court has no way to enforce their rulings, no “sword or purse.” I note, however, there are plenty of people willing to enforce what the court rules. Hightower then lists many bad rulings from the Supremes. They’re consistently for corporations and against workers and their unions. In the last decade they’ve consistently undermined the right to vote. They do not represent the common man. Martin of NPR spoke to David Kaplan, author of the book The Most Dangerous Branch: Inside the Supreme Court in the Age of Trump. Towards the end of the segment Kaplan said:

Well, we got to this point because we have had a triumphalist court for 50 years. And whether you're a liberal politically or a conservative, I think that's a bad thing. I think for better and for worse, we ought to be leaving most of our tough social issues to the political branches. You don't have to think well of Congress, and I surely don't these days, to think that they are still the most legitimate branch of government to be resolving these issues. And I argued in the book that Roe in the first place should not have been considered by the court 50 years ago. They should have ducked the issue. That isn't because I'm anti-abortion. If I were a legislator, I would be - vote for extremely lenient abortion laws. But it's because I don't think these issues belong at the Supreme Court. And the price we've paid for that is the politicization of the court over the last 50 years and it becoming the focal point of confirmation hearings and of at least the radical right's whole electoral campaign. That's what Trump partially ran on in 2020, and he - part of the reason he won in 2020 was because of the Supreme Court. That's bad for the court, and it's bad for the country.

Which leads me to the question: What is the Supreme Court for? I haven’t looked at a copy of the Constitution, so I’m not looking directly at what it says, though I’m pretty sure in general the Court is there to be some sort of final arbiter in disputes between Congress and the President and, in general, between citizens. The Court is supposed to tell the other parts of government and the general citizenry that this is what our Constitution says and what you did or want to do conflicts with that, so don’t do it. I don’t think the phrase “tyranny of the majority” is in the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson and is colleagues knew about that problem. That phrase means in a democracy a majority, simply by being a majority, can pass laws to oppress a minority. The minority, because they don’t have enough votes (partly because the majority rigged the system so the minority can’t get enough votes), can’t throw off the oppression. So one purpose of the highest court should be to stop tyranny of the majority, to say there are basic rights that all humans have and this system the majority has rigged violates the rights of the minority. Therefor that rigging must be removed. Alas, the American Supreme Court rarely does that. It is appointed by the majority, many times with the expressed goal of supporting and maintaining the oppressive rigging. This isn’t new. There have been way too many rulings through our nation’s history in support of slavery or the oppression of black people and other minorities. Lately the oppressive rigging has gotten so bad we are on the precipice of tyranny of the minority, in which a minority of citizens have rigged things so much they oppress a majority of other citizens – and this court is helping to make that happen.