The original lawgiver was Moses. "Say what?" says Hammurabi

Mark Sumner of Daily Kos reported on Louisiana’s new law requiring the Ten Commandments to be posted in every classroom kindergarten through college. I had mentioned this yesterday. In signing the bill Gov. Jeff Landry said, “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.” Sumner noted the Code of Hammurabi and Code of Ur-Nammu were earlier. Landry also said, “I can’t wait to be sued.” Four civil liberties groups say he doesn’t have to wait. Suits have been filed. There are a lot of details in the law that supporters think will help it get past the Supremes. One is the law doesn’t allocate money, counting on churches and conservative groups to “volunteer” copies. But even if enough copies aren’t volunteered posting the Top Ten is still required. While four of the Top Ten are appropriate for civil affairs (Don’t kill...) and two others (respect your parents...) are good moral teaching, the last four are about religion. The way this Supreme Court has been ruling they just might defy the First Amendment and give their blessing. Sumner also listed nine outrageous things about the law. The version of the Top Ten in the law didn’t come from any translation of the Bible, it came from a 2006 Supreme Court case featuring text from the Fraternal Order of Eagles. The minimum poster size is specified. As mentioned, there is no funding. It tries to use the Mayflower Compact and its many references to God to override the First Amendment. And if that doesn’t work there is the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, passed by the Confederation Congress before the Constitution was approved. On to the other stuff in the law that is getting less news but may be more important. Schools are prohibited from asking students their vaccination status. Teachers can be sued for using a student’s preferred name or pronouns. There is a section that is worse than Florida’s Don’t Say Gay law. Schools can appoint a “volunteer” chaplain. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos wrote about the Louisiana Top Ten. Bill added the Satanic Temple would like the right to post their 7 Tenets. The Satanic Temple does not worship Satan. It does like to push freedom of religion boundaries – if you want to put up a religious display you have to give us equal space. Their 7 Tenets in abbreviated form:

1. Be compassionate to all creatures. 2. The struggle for justice is ongoing and necessary. 3. One’s body is subject to one’s own will alone. 4. Respect the freedom of others. 5. Don’t distort science to fit one’s beliefs. 6. If one makes a mistake, rectify it and resolve any harm. 7. Compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over written or spoken word.

These tenets look pretty good! In a pundit roundup by Greg Dworkin for Kos I’m going to start with the cartoons in the comments because they go with the discussion above. First is a cartoon by Ann Telnaes showing the nasty guy violating nine of the Top Ten. Perhaps it is a stretch for “Honor thy father and they mother” to use Mother Earth instead, upon which the nasty guy is flinging gunk. But not much of a stretch. That was followed by a cartoon by Clay Jones that has Ten Commandments for the nasty guy and Republicans. A few of them:

Thou shalt not make Trump a false idol. Thou shalt not tell 30,000 lies. Thou shalt not be Putin’s puppet. Thou shalt not separate families.

Much further down is a cartoon by Banx. Two office workers are walking and one says, “Elon Musk just earned more that I’ll ever earn in my whole life in the time it took me to say Elon Musk.” Not so far down in the comments Rambler797 posted a tweet by Aaron Nagler showing a video discussing black ball players (which I didn’t watch) and adding, “This is why ‘Make America Great Again’ is so insulting. It wasn’t great, for a lot of folks, for a long time. The country moved forward. Stop trying to drag us back.” Now back up to the body of the post for a pundit. This one is David Rothkopf of “Need to Know” on Substack. He is talking about modern American capitalism destroying democracy. I believe he is accurate on every point.

It is not that capitalism is, as its critics have suggested, inherently evil. However, neither is it, as American political and business leaders have asserted since time immemorial inherently good. It must be regulated. When it is not and it is allowed to morph from being an engine of economic growth to an engine of economic inequity, it undermines not only the principles of democracy but as we have seen, it underwrites the perversion of our institutions from serving us all to serving a wealthy few. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis summed it up perhaps better than anyone else when he said, “We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of the few but we can’t have both.” For Americans today, this can be easily illustrated. The Citizens United Supreme Court decision enshrined as US law the “principle” that spending money on campaigns is a form of protected free expression and therefore could not be regulated. By asserting that “money is speech” it by extension enshrined as the law of the land in the U.S. that those with more money have “more speech,” greater influence, more political power.

In a post from two weeks ago (yeah, I’m looking at articles hiding in browser tabs) KyivGuy wrote about Texty a small journalism outlet in Ukraine. They’ve been doing journalism for several years, winning a respectable list of international awards. At the start of the Russian invasion in 2022 they put their skills to work to monitor and combat Russian propaganda in the internet. They also visualized the amounts of grain Russia stole from Ukraine and mapped Russian war crimes, as well of several other things. All of it well-researched and well-presented. As part of that propaganda mapping last year they published “The Germs of Russian World” that listed

over 1,300 individuals and some 900 organizations [based in Europe] that met the following criteria: voting for pro-Russian decisions and issuing statements in support of the war or calling to drop the sanctions, taking part in pro-Russian propagandist shows, partnering with the institutions which facilitate Russia’s cultural expansion etc.

That was considered boring. Russian experts in Europe said, “Thanks Texty,” and everyone moved on. Those people were already known. This month Texty reported the same kind of information about the US. They covered 388 US individuals and 76 US organizations. This time the criteria for being listed wasn’t necessarily direct support for Russia. Merely stating opposition to aid to Ukraine would do.

The data set includes active politicians (Congress members), political activists, media personalities and bloggers, political organizations, “experts”, think tanks, and businessmen.

Some are well known. Tucker Carlson openly cooperates with Russia to spread Russian lies. Marjorie Taylor Greene may not cooperate, but she has voiced Russian talking points. Many of the people named in this US report are mad! Spreadsheets are no longer boring! There are conservative calls to defund Texty. I didn’t realize the US funded them, but we do through the USAID program supporting Ukrainian media. I followed the links to Texty’s US report. It appears to be quite thorough. As you scroll through it give time for photos and diagrams to load in the blank spaces.