Monday, July 4, 2022

The Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Thursday, June 30, 2022

Obsession

Via the Washington Post:

Shortly after the Supreme Court struck down the fundamental right to an abortion, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) appeared to express support for Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion that the high court could review other precedents that may be deemed “demonstrably erroneous,” including those affecting the LGBTQ community.

One of the cases mentioned by Thomas was Lawrence v. Texas, which prevents states from banning intimate same-sex relationships. The landmark 2003 ruling struck down a 1973 Texas law that criminalized the act of sodomy. But as Roe v. Wade was overturned, Paxton said he would defend the state’s defunct sodomy law if the Supreme Court were to follow Thomas’s remarks and eventually revisits Lawrence.

“I mean, there’s all kinds of issues here, but certainly the Supreme Court has stepped into issues that I don’t think there’s any constitutional provision dealing with,” Paxton said in a Friday interview with NewsNation anchor Leland Vittert. “They were legislative issues, and this is one of those issues, and there may be more. So it would depend on the issue and dependent on what state law had said at the time.”

When asked whether the Texas legislature would pass a similar sodomy law and if Paxton would defend it and bring it to the Supreme Court, the Republican attorney general, who is running for reelection in November, suggested he would be comfortable supporting a law outlawing intimate same-sex relationships.

“Yeah, look, my job is to defend state law, and I’ll continue to do that,” Paxton said to Vittert. “That is my job under the Constitution, and I’m certainly willing and able to do that.”

What is it about right-wingers who supposedly believe in limited government and individual freedoms and their obsession with other people’s private lives and what they do in the privacy of their bedrooms? Clarence Thomas wants to revisit all except one of the Supreme Court rulings over the last fifty years that asserted the right to use a condom, to marry your same-sex partner, and to enjoy the intimacy of the bedroom. (The one exception is Loving v. Virginia that overturned bans on interracial marriage probably because of his own marriage.)  I’ve said it before: why are they more interested in overturning those rulings that have virtually no impact on those who are not directly involved with the situations while other rulings that have damaged our elections (Citizens United v. FEC) and threatened the safety of citizens (District of Columbia v. Heller) sail on by?

To put it simply, Ken Paxton and his ilk, and that includes Clarence Thomas, have a very unhealthy fixation on other people’s genitals and how they use them.  Not only is that unhealthy for them, it’s dangerous for us and the Constitution.

Monday, June 27, 2022

Pretty Sure He Meant It

From Salon:

On Saturday morning, Texas Senator John Cornyn tweeted a racist comment along with a share of former President Barack Obama‘s statement regarding Friday’s Supreme Court ruling to reverse Roe v. Wade.

Obama, making his statement on Twitter on Friday morning shortly after the ruling was handed down, said “Today, the Supreme Court not only reversed nearly 50 years of precedent, it relegated the most intensely personal decision someone can make to the whims of politicians and ideologues—attacking the essential freedoms of millions of Americans.”

The following morning, Cornyn shared that statement from Obama to his own Twitter account adding “Now do Plessy vs Ferguson/Brown vs Board of Education.”

Brown v. Board of Education, ruled on by the Supreme Court in 1954, did historical justice in wiping away the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson ruling, making “separate but equal” rightfully unconstitutional.

Following Cornyn’s initial tweet, which received tremendous heated backlash, he fired off another one saying “Thank goodness some SCOTUS precedents are overruled.”

“Let’s help out less intelligent fellow Americans out,” one commenter said in response to Cornyn’s initial tweet. “Plessy stood as law of the land longer than Roe. That was [John Cornyn’s] point. Now if liberals are arguing Brown v. Board of Ed was wrongly ruled because of long standing precedent, then they should openly say so.”

Oh, I get it.  His commenter is saying it’s not about reinstating Plessy and overturning Brown; oh no, it just means that some long-standing precedents can be overturned and it’s about time, too.  It has nothing to do with segregation; how can you even think that?  Uh huh.

I don’t know how anyone could read Mr. Cornyn’s initial tweet and not think that he was advocating overturning Brown v. Board of Education.  If he is advocating overturning long-standing precedents, there are a bunch of  rulings that he could have brought up, such Citizens United v. FEC, that unleashed corporate money on political campaigns, or District of Columbia v. Heller, which turned the Second Amendment into a permit for the O.K. Corral on the streets of America.  But he went with the ruling that finally ended racial segregation in public schools; a ruling that was harmless in its nature and its intent and affirming a right to equality that had been denied.

It’s my nature to give someone at least the benefit of the doubt and see how he and his supporters try to get out of the impression that the gentlebeing from Texas isn’t advocating a return to segregation in the schools.  After all, the Texas Republican Party voted last week to support a plank in their platform calling for the repeal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.  So I’d love to hear his explanation.

But the cynic in me — and it’s been getting a workout recently — is pretty sure he meant what he said.

Sunday, June 26, 2022

Sunday Reading

When A Right Is Taken Away — Jeannie Suk Gersen in The New Yorker.

We have known for some time that this Supreme Court’s manifest destiny was to overrule Roe v. Wade. Now it has fulfilled it. In the ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for a five-Justice majority, eliminated the constitutional right to abortion and handed the states the power to restrict the procedure as they wish. There was little suspense, owing to a leak of the draft opinion last month, from which the Court’s final opinion is not substantially different, but the decision still came down as a surreal shock. The three liberal Justices dissented “with sorrow—for this Court, but more importantly, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection.”

As expected, Chief Justice John Roberts declined to join his conservative colleagues’ opinion, and concurred only in the judgment to uphold the challenged Mississippi law, which bans most abortions after fifteen weeks. Calling the Court’s overruling of Roe “unnecessary to decide the case,” Roberts would instead have allowed states to ban abortion sometime before fetal viability, but would also have reaffirmed a right to abortion that would “ensure a reasonable opportunity to choose.” That more moderate position might have been the Court’s ruling had Ruth Bader Ginsburg not died during the Trump Presidency and been replaced with Amy Coney Barrett, or had the Senate acted on President Obama’s nomination of Merrick Garland, instead of waiting to install Trump’s eventual nominee, Neil Gorsuch. And, had neither of those events occurred, we would still have a constitutional right to abortion in the United States.

The difference between preserving and eliminating a long-held constitutional right involves a crude reality of political machinations and contingency in filling these seats—which makes it galling to read the Court’s righteous condemnation of Roe v. Wade as an exercise of “raw judicial power,” and its self-portrayal as a picture of proper judicial restraint. It is hard to imagine something more like an exercise of raw judicial power than the Court’s removal of the right to abortion, which is precisely what these Justices were put on the Court to achieve. As the dissent put it, the Court is “rescinding an individual right in its entirety and conferring it on the State, an action the Court takes for the first time in history.”

Some have speculated that last month’s draft-opinion leak was intended to make it difficult for Justice Brett Kavanaugh to defect from the majority and join the Chief Justice’s compromise position. Kavanaugh didn’t defect, but he did write a notable concurrence that seemed to take some distance from the possible perceived extremity of the majority. It confirmed that he is the Justice whom the majority will need to worry about keeping on board if they wish to go further than Dobbs in the future.

Kavanaugh flexed this muscle by addressing questions about decisions that may come after Dobbs. “The Constitution neither outlaws abortion nor legalizes abortion,” he wrote. As a result, “this Court does not possess the authority either to declare a constitutional right to abortion or to declare a constitutional prohibition of abortion,” he proclaimed, and in so doing seemed to indicate that a possible future development—the eventual enshrining of a constitutional right of the fetus—is not something for which he would provide a fifth vote. Similarly, regarding the constitutional rights to contraception and same-sex marriage, Kavanaugh made a point of emphasizing, with italics, that “overruling Roe does not mean the overruling of those precedents, and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents.” Additionally, he expressed his view that a state may not bar its residents from travelling to another state for an abortion, because of the constitutional right to interstate travel. To the extent that anyone is grasping for a silver lining, Kavanaugh appears to want us to know that he personally intends to—and can—stand in the way of a post-Dobbs parade of horribles, even if his colleagues might want to go there.

And at least one of his brethren plainly does want the Court to go there. Justice Clarence Thomas’s separate concurrence made crystal clear that he would indeed do away with the entire substantive due-process doctrine on which the right to abortion rested, and that would mean eventually sweeping away the rights to contraception, same-sex intimacy, and same-sex marriage. He referred to the fact that the Court used substantive due process in Dred Scott v. Sandford to affirm the right of enslavers to enslave people, and he concluded that “the harm caused by this Court’s forays into substantive due process remains immeasurable.”

Thomas’s comments contradict the majority opinion he signed, in which the Court claimed that other rights protected by the Court’s substantive due-process precedents are safe, the reason being that only abortion involves an interest in the life of a fetus. The Dobbs ruling’s insistence that the Court should not impede states from making policies in which they weigh the interest in life for themselves, through their democratic processes, is tragicomic, even gruesome, coming the very day after the Court did just that in striking down a New York State gun-licensing law, based on the Court’s expansion of an individual right to bear arms under the Second Amendment.

In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the plurality that reaffirmed Roe v. Wade wrote that “liberty finds no refuge in a jurisprudence of doubt”—meaning that, if the public is in doubt about whether constitutional rights are in danger of disappearing, that is not liberty. Dobbs leaves no doubt that the federal constitutional right to abortion is gone. And it ushers in an era of grave doubt about the status of liberty in the United States.

Doonesbury — 1-800-SHYSTER

Friday, June 24, 2022

Roe v. Wade Overturned

Not unexpected. Still shameful.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Friday overruled Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion after almost 50 years in a decision that will transform American life, reshape the nation’s politics and lead to all but total bans on the procedure in about half of the states.

The ruling will test the legitimacy of the court and vindicate a decades-long Republican project of installing conservative justices prepared to reject the precedent, which had been repeatedly reaffirmed by earlier courts. It will also be one of the signal legacies of President Donald J. Trump, who vowed to name justices who would overrule Roe. All three of his appointees were in the majority in the 6-to-3 ruling.

The decision, which echoed a leaked draft opinion published by Politico in early May, will result in a starkly divided country in which abortion is severely restricted or forbidden in many red states but remains freely available in most blue ones.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. voted with the majority but said he would have taken “a more measured course,” stopping short of overruling Roe outright. The court’s three liberal members dissented.

What’s next in terms of overturning precedent?  Brown v. Board of EducationGriswold v. ConnecticutLoving v. VirginiaObergefell v. Hodges?

Women, your body is now owned by the state.

Thursday, June 9, 2022

They Saw The Carnage

Charles P. Pierce on yesterday’s testimony from Uvalde.

WASHINGTON — They were the witnesses to the unthinkable and now they are witnesses to encroaching oblivion, trying to beat it back with their fresh memories of blood and death. All over Capitol Hill, the talk on Wednesday was all about this country’s insane addiction to its firearms. The Senate debated some bills, the Senate Judiciary Committee having taken on domestic terrorism and white supremacy on Tuesday, and that was about guns, too. Even the breaking news was about guns; an armed man was arrested in the general vicinity of the home of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The Supreme Court did not hand down its expected endorsement of more guns. And in the Rayburn House Office Building, the teeth came right down to the bone.

A young survivor of the Uvalde Massacre testified via videotape, showing unimaginable courage. (I mean, Jesus, it’s only been a couple of weeks since they were all caught up in Salvador Ramos’ unfortunate exercise of his Second Amendment freedom, and now they were asked to tell the Congress of the United States about it.) Miah Cerillo is in fourth grade, and she shouldn’t have to be talking about what an AR-15 can do to the human body. Miah is the student who covered herself with the blood of a slain classmate in order to keep from being shot to death herself. She is now famous for that. She should not be famous for that. Nobody should.

We were just watching a movie. And then [the teacher] heard something and went to lock the door. He was in the hallway and then he came in and attacked. And then she went to the back of the room and she told us to go hide. And then we went to go hide behind my teacher’s desk and behind the backpacks and then he shot the little window. and then he went to the other classroom, and there was a door between our classrooms and he went through there and shot my teacher and killed my teacher, and he shot her in the head and then he shot some of my classmates, and the white board. When I went to the backpacks, he shot my friend that was next to me. I thought he was gonna come back into the room, so I grabbed the blood and I put it all over me.

Miah also talked about how she called 911 using the telephone of one of her murdered teachers. Pause for a moment and ponder the uncommon cool-headedness under fire that Miah Cerillo demonstrated—both in using the blood of a murdered classmate as camouflage and in finding a way to call for help from the police which, as we’ve subsequently learned, never came. Now ponder what kind of a country it is that demands this kind of steadiness under fire from a fourth-grader watching a Disney movie in school. Miah’s father, Miguel Cerillo, came all the way to Washington to testify about his daughter.

Hello, I came here today because I could’ve lost my little girl. She is not the same girl that I used to play with and run with. She was daddy’s little girl … I do not know what to do because I think I would have lost my baby girl. I thank you all for letting me be here and speak out, but I wish something would change, not only for our kids but for every single kid in the world that goes to school and is not safe.

There is a debate going on in journalism right now about whether or not showing pictures of the carnage would help make it more real and help institute real change. People who believe it would cite the precedent established by Emmett Till’s mother, who insisted on an open-casket funeral so that the world could see what his murderers had done to him. If, as I suspect, nothing will come of this, there’s no problem. Just put Dr. Roy Guerrero on TV and let him describe what he saw on May 24.

Guerrero is the pediatrician in Uvalde. He was born and raised there, and he even attended Robb Elementary School. He’s treated every sneeze and sniffle, every fever that unsettled nervous parents. He helped Miah Cerillo through serious liver surgeries when Miah was small, which should have been risk enough for one lifetime. On May 24, though, he walked into his old school and found himself in Fallujah.

The hearing room plunged into a deep, signifying silence.

I will never forget what I saw that day that, for me, that started like any typical Tuesday at our pediatric clinic. Moms calling for coughs, sports injuries, right before the summer rush. School was out in two days and summer camps would guarantee some grazes and ankle sprains, injuries that could be patched up and fixed with a Mickey Mouse sticker as a reward. Then, at 12:30 business as usual stopped and with it my heart … What I did find was something no prayer will ever relieve. Two children whose bodies had been pulverized by the bullets fired at them. Children decapitated. Children whose flesh had been ripped apart, but the only clues to their identities was the blood spatter.

Having virtually laid the bleeding bodies on the floor of the hearing room, Dr. Roy Guerrero got down to the real business he’d come to Washington to discuss—our insane addiction to our firearms.

Adults are stubborn. They are resistant to change even if the change will make things better for ourselves, but especially when we think we are immune to the fallout. Why else would there have been such little progress made in Congress to stop gun violence? Children all over the country today are dead because laws and policies allowed people to buy weapons before they are old enough to buy a pack of beer. They are dead because restrictions have been allowed to lapse. They are dead because there are no rules about where guns are kept, No one is paying attention to who is buying them. The thing I cannot figure out is whether our politicians are failing us out of stubbornness, passivity, or both.

If you figure that out, Dr. Roy, pass the answer along to the rest of us. But it’s clear that he has his hands on one piece of it, that encroaching oblivion that always shrouds the aftermath of horrible crimes like this one.

I said before that as grown-ups, we have a habit of remembering the good and forgiving the bad, never more so than when it comes to our guns. Once the blood is rinsed away from the bodies of our loved ones and scrubbed off of the floors of the schools, supermarkets, and churches, the carnage that we have seen is erased from our collective conscience and we return to nostalgia, to the rose tinted view of our Second Amendment as a perfect instrument of American life.

I chose to be a pediatrician. I chose to take care of children, keeping them safe from preventable diseases. That I can do—keeping them safe from bacteria and brittle bones, I can do. But making sure our children are safe from guns, that is the job of our politicians and leaders. In this case, you are the doctors and our country is a patient. We are lying on the operating table, riddled with bullets like the children of Robb Elementary and so many other schools. We are bleeding out and you are not there.

As eloquent as Dr. Guerrero was, his testimony was not the most dispiriting element of Wednesday’s hearing. That came one panel later, when Dr. Guerrero and Miah Cerillo were replaced by activists and purported experts. There was a guy from the gun-safety group Everytown and a woman from the Heritage Society, and what they said was entirely predictable. The members of the committee chose up entirely predictable sides.

For example, Rep. Andrew Clyde, Republican of Georgia, explained that the answer is to harden schools into firebases in Vietnam’s Central Highlands. Clyde also attempted to soak up the blood in Uvalde with the pages of the Constitution.

For almost 250 years, since the founding of our nation, countless hundreds of thousands of men and women have sacrificed their lives to provide the freedoms we enjoy today. Indeed, those freedoms were bought at a very high price and must be guarded continually so they can be passed on to further generations. If we allow emotions to drive our actions, actions that have constitution-altering consequences, we will destroy the very foundation of our country and break faith with those who gave everything that we would be free. Evil deeds do not transcend constitutional rights. It’s the other way around. Constitutional rights are the ones that transcend evil.

It should be noted that, in his other life, Rep. Clyde owns a gun store, and not a small one, either. From Business Insider:

When not working in Washington, D.C., Clyde leads the No. 4-ranked firearm store in Athens, Georgia, according to Yelp: Clyde Armory. According to Clyde’s 2021 federal financial disclosure, the congressman’s stake in the store is worth anywhere between $5 million and $25 million, and it earned him between $1 million and $5 million in income in 2020 alone. The store’s website shows it sells a multitude of firearms and accessories, including military-style semiautomatic rifles, weapon silencers, and ballistic helmets. Among the items for sale at Clyde Armory: a Colt-manufactured AR-15 rifle for $1,349.95 and a .50 caliber semi-automatic rifle for $11,384.95.

And a familiar oblivion closes in from all sides and only Dr. Roy Guerrero and Miah Cerillo have to live with the memory.

It provides absolutely no solace to anyone, but one can hope that those vultures who dismissed the dead and wounded in the name of “freedom” and their own pocketbook will be reminded again and again of the carnage by their opponents in the mid-terms and common human decency.

Wednesday, May 25, 2022

Another Massacre

Washington Post:

UVALDE, Tex. — A gunman wearing body armor and carrying a rifle killed at least 19 children and two teachers at an elementary school in this Texas city on Tuesday, authorities said.

It was the deadliest mass shooting to unfold at an American school in nearly a decade.

The massacre began at 11:32 a.m., police said, on the third-to-last day of the school year. The shooter opened fire in a fourth-grade classroom, a parent said, sending children fleeing for their lives. They crawled through windows and hid in a nearby funeral home to escape, witnesses said.

Lt. Christopher Olivarez of the Texas Department of Public Safety said that 19 children and two teachers were confirmed dead. The gunman was killed by law enforcement officials.

Before the gunman drove to the school, he shot his grandmother, police said. She was airlifted to a hospital in San Antonio, as were several other victims.

The shooter barricaded himself inside the school and exchanged gunfire with officers as they entered the building, said Marsha Espinosa, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security. One U.S. Border Patrol agent was wounded.

The gunman was identified by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) as Salvador Ramos, 18, a resident of Uvalde.

An emotional President Biden, speaking to the nation Tuesday night from the White House, urged lawmakers to pursue tougher restrictions on guns. For years, Biden has been at the forefront of efforts to pass such restrictions, which have been blocked by Republicans and some Democrats.

“Why are we willing to live with this carnage?” he asked. “Why do we keep letting this happen? Where in God’s name is our backbone?”

Biden noted that mass shootings have become almost commonplace in the United States, unlike in other countries. “It’s time to turn this pain into action,” Biden implored. He concluded his remarks with a prayer for the parents of the victims.

Charles P. Pierce goes to the source:

Fourteen students and a teacher are dead after a shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, according to Gov. Greg Abbott.

The 18-year-old suspect, a student at Uvalde High School, is also dead, he said.

“He shot and killed horrifically and incomprehensibly 14 students and killed a teacher,” Abbott said during an unrelated press briefing.

The suspect also allegedly shot his grandmother before entering the school and again opening fire, Abbott said. He did not say anything further about her condition. Abbott said the shooter had a handgun and also possibly a rifle.

Fuck you and your adverbs, Governor. “Horrifically”? I have no doubt. “Incomprehensibly”? Give me a goddamn break, will you? What’s incomprehensible about it? You signed the permitless carry bill last September. People told you what could happen, and this is what they said. From the Texas Tribune:

“The permitless carry bill will cause more violence and loss,” said U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, in a statement Wednesday. “Despite overwhelming support for common-sense gun violence prevention legislation like universal background checks, Texas Republicans, led by a cowardly governor, are more interested in groveling for the gun lobby’s attention than they are in preventing gun violence and honoring victims and survivors in El Paso and across Texas.”

Back in 2019, after mass shootings in Beaumont and Odessa, Governor, you conjured up a scarecrow of an action plan to get you through the bad news cycle. This, of course, went nowhere, which is precisely where it was intended to go. You got to blame the pandemic, which was nice for you. Profile In Poltroon.

There are too many damn guns in this country. There are too many damn guns in Texas. There are too many damn guns in Uvalde County. There are too many damn guns in the city of Uvalde. And, on Tuesday, there were too many damn guns on Old Carrizo Rd in Uvalde, Texas. And, on Tuesday, there were too damn many guns at 715 Old Carrizo Rd in Uvalde, Texas. And, on Tuesday, there were too damn many guns in the Robb Elementary School at 715 Old Carrizo Road in the city of Uvalde, in the county of Uvalde, in the state of Texas, in the United States of America, where there are too damn many guns.

It is too damn easy to get guns in this country. It is too damn easy to get guns in Texas. It is too damn easy to get guns in Uvalde County. It is too damn easy to get guns in the city of Uvalde. And, on Tuesday, it was too damn easy to get guns on Old Carrizo Rd in Uvalde, Texas. And, on Tuesday, it was too damn easy to get guns at 715 Old Carrizo Rd in Uvalde, Texas. And, on Tuesday, it was too damn easy to get guns in the Robb Elementary School at 715 Old Carrizo Road in the city of Uvalde, in the county of Uvalde, in the state of Texas, in the United States of America, where it is too damn easy to get guns.

Goddamn this country and its politicians and their adverbs. Goddamn them all to hell.

As long as it is acceptable by the lawmakers of this nation to murder children in their classroom in the name of “freedom,” nothing will be done.

Tuesday, May 24, 2022

That Pesky First Amendment

How does Ron DeSantis expect to run a dictatorship when that inconvenient old First Amendment keeps getting in the way?

The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday ruled it is unconstitutional for Florida to bar social media companies from banning politicians, in a major victory for tech companies that are fighting another appeals court ruling that allowed a similar law in Texas to take effect.

In a detailed, 67-page opinion, the court rejected many of the legal arguments that conservative states have been using to justify laws governing the content moderation policies of major tech companies after years of accusations that the tech companies are biased against their political viewpoints.

Though the court struck down the most controversial aspects of the law, it did rule that some provisions could stand, including that people banned from the platforms should be able to access their data for 60 days and disclosure provisions, such as clear content standards.

The three Republican-appointed judges stated that tech companies’ content moderation decisions are protected by the First Amendment, which prohibits the government from regulating free speech.

“Taking stock: We conclude that social media platforms’ content-moderation activities — permitting, removing, prioritizing, and deprioritizing users and posts — constitute ‘speech’ within the meaning of the First Amendment,” the court wrote.

The ruling comes after a surprise decision earlier this month by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that allowed a Texas law that bans companies from discriminating against people based on viewpoint to come into force. Tech companies have filed an emergency application with the Supreme Court to block that law, which awaits a response from Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.

After the 11th Circuit decision was published, lawyers representing the tech companies submitted it to the Supreme Court for consideration in the Texas case.

The apparent split between the circuit courts could add pressure on the Supreme Court to weigh in on whether social media companies’ content moderation decisions should be protected by the First Amendment.

“That’s really likely to prod the Supreme Court to act,” said Corbin K. Barthold, an Internet policy counsel at TechFreedom, a tech policy think tank, during a public discussion about the provision on Twitter.

Any decision would have wide-ranging effects in statehouses and on the floor of Congress, where policymakers have weighed proposals to address perceived abuses by social media companies that could collide with free speech protections.

Out of power in Washington, Republicans have turned to state legislatures to pass bills to address their accusations of social media “censorship,” which were inflamed by major companies’ decisions to suspend former president Donald Trump last year. Florida and 11 other states last week filed a brief supporting Texas in the Supreme Court case, arguing that states have a “strong interest” in ensuring tech platforms do not abuse their power.

Some lawmakers pushing for laws governing online content moderation and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have argued that tech companies should be regulated as “common carriers,” businesses like phone companies that are subject to government regulation because of the essential services they provide. The 11th Circuit panel wrote a blistering rejection of those arguments, arguing states can’t force such restrictions on tech platforms.

“Neither law nor logic recognizes government authority to strip an entity of its First Amendment rights merely by labeling it a common carrier,” the court wrote.

In other words, Facebook and Twitter are not essential services like a utility or even The Phone Company. So the State of Florida cannot tell them what to post — or not to post — nor can they tell them who to let on or who to kick off their platforms.

And besides, Ron, haven’t you been telling the world that Florida is the freest state in the union? What about that?

Sunday, May 22, 2022

Sunday Reading

A Consequential Gun Ruling — Amy Davidson Sorkin in The New Yorker on a pending Supreme Court ruling that could make the problem worse.

During the Supreme Court oral arguments last November, in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc., et al. v. Bruen, a major gun-control case, Justice Clarence Thomas and Barbara Underwood, New York’s solicitor general, had an exchange about the kinds of place a person might carry a gun. “It’s one thing to talk about Manhattan or N.Y.U.’s campus,” Thomas said. “It’s another to talk about rural upstate New York.” The individual plaintiffs in the case, a challenge to New York’s licensing requirements for carrying a concealed pistol in public, live in Rensselaer County, which, Underwood told Thomas, is more “intermediate” than rural. It’s “not that far from Albany,” she said. “And it contains the City of Troy and a university and a downtown shopping district.” There was an echo of those words on May 14th, as reports came in of a shooting in upstate New York: if Payton S. Gendron, from the small town of Conklin, which is near a university, had driven two and a half hours northeast, he would have ended up in Troy. Instead, he drove more than three hours northwest, to Buffalo, where he killed ten people at a Tops supermarket.

Gendron sought out Black victims, according to his online posts; they indicate that he had become fixated on the “great replacement” theory, which posits that there is a plot to supplant white Americans with supposedly more tractable minorities. That world view, in this Trump-distorted era, is not rare. An Associated Press/NORC poll conducted last December asked respondents to assess the statement “There is a group of people in this country who are trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants who agree with their political views.” Thirty-two per cent either “somewhat” or “strongly” agreed. The vitriol of Gendron’s alleged screeds and the brutality of his attack are nonetheless startling—a warning about the prospect of more politicized violence in the country’s near future.

What seems tragically mundane, though, in American terms, is that Gendron, who is eighteen, is reportedly the owner of at least three guns: a Savage Axis XP hunting rifle, which he received as a Christmas gift when he was sixteen, the legal age to own one in New York; a Mossberg 500 shotgun, which he bought, legally, in December; and a Bushmaster XM-15 semi-automatic rifle—the apparent murder weapon—which was also legal when he bought it, in January, for less than a thousand dollars, and which he then easily modified to allow for a larger capacity magazine than is permitted in the state. An alarm that Gendron’s high school raised last year, when he said that his post-graduation goals included “murder/suicide,” was not in itself enough, under the state’s “red flag” law, to forestall the purchases.

Gendron’s arsenal accounted for a handful of the estimated four hundred million guns owned privately in the United States. Four days after the shooting, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives issued a report showing that licensed gun manufacturers produced more than eleven million new weapons in 2020—almost triple the number produced in 2000. The report also documented an increase in the number of “ghost guns”—weapons assembled from parts by illicit dealers or by people at home, and bearing no serial numbers. Law enforcement seized more than nineteen thousand such guns last year, suggesting that a far larger number is unaccounted for. (Last week, Illinois became the eleventh state to pass a law restricting ghost guns.) In 2020, some forty-five thousand Americans died of gun-related wounds, more than half of them suicides. When it comes to guns, no corner of the country is untouched.

The New York State Rifle decision, which is expected by the end of June, could make the rules even looser. It has the potential to be the most significant—and, depending on how broadly it is written, most disastrous—gun-law decision in a decade. The ruling should arrive around the same time as the one in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case that is expected to overturn Roe v. Wade. Both cases are the product of decades of advocacy on the right. New York State Rifle is a long-awaited successor to District of Columbia v. Heller, the landmark 2008 decision that enshrined gun ownership as an individual right under the Second Amendment, rather than as the primarily militia- or community-based right that courts had long understood it to be. Under the New York law—six other states have similar statutes—people who want a license to carry a concealed pistol in public for self-defense must have jobs that make them targets (judges, bank messengers) or show “proper cause,” meaning a need specific to them (for example, a person subject to a particular threat) rather than a general fear of crime. The plaintiffs argued that it is illegitimate under Heller to ask people to explain why they should be granted a license. More broadly, their view is that not just owning a gun but carrying it in public places is a right that should be limited only in extraordinary circumstances.

Heller does allow for some gun regulation, but it is not clear about how much, which is why New York State Rifle presents such an opportune opening for those who’d prefer as little as possible. The plaintiffs’ lawyer, Paul Clement, argued that an injustice is being perpetrated against New York gun owners, because they can’t walk around with their weapons as easily as gun owners in Arizona can. Thomas’s comment about urban and rural New York is not a sign that the conservatives would uphold gun laws focussed on cities. Indeed, Justice Samuel Alito offered the view that carrying a concealed weapon on the subway might make sense for “people who work late at night in Manhattan,” and wondered why they shouldn’t be able to easily do so.

For all that, the goal of implementing sensible gun-control laws is not hopeless—most Americans favor restrictions such as universal background checks. The challenge is that the Republican Party has made gun extremism into an organizing principle. The idea that Americans must be armed to defend themselves against every enemy, stranger, or person of a different race—and, ultimately, against their own government—has become intertwined with Trumpism. Like Trumpism, it needs to be countered with a different political vision.

In the oral arguments, Clement strongly objected to the notion that New York has any legitimate reason to discourage the proliferation of guns. “In a country with the Second Amendment as a fundamental right, simply having more firearms cannot be a problem,” he said. He’s wrong about that. The horror in Buffalo is a reminder that it is a very American problem.

Doonesbury — Kids these days.

Sunday, April 17, 2022

Sunday Reading

What’s Next? — Jeannie Suk Gersen in The New Yorker on the pro-life movement’s plans after Roe v. Wade.

In 2003, when the Supreme Court held, in Lawrence v. Texas, that criminalizing gay sex was unconstitutional, it insisted that the decision had nothing to do with marriage equality. In a scathing dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote, “Do not believe it.” Then, in 2013, when the Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as being between a man and a woman, emphasizing the tradition of letting the states define marriage, Scalia issued another warning, saying that “no one should be fooled” into thinking that the Court would leave states free to exclude gay couples from that definition. He was finally proved right two years later, when the reasoning on dignity and equality developed in those earlier rulings led to the Court’s holding that the Constitution requires all states to recognize same-sex marriage.

Just as rights can unfold and expand, however, they can also retract and constrict in breathtaking ways, pursuing a particular strain of logic one case at a time. In the forthcoming decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Court is widely expected to overturn or severely undermine its abortion-rights cases, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. In fact, following the comments of the six conservative Justices at the oral arguments in December, the strength of this expectation has spurred state legislative efforts to proceed as if Roe were already gone. A handful of states have passed laws, like the Mississippi law at issue in Dobbs, that ban abortion after fifteen weeks of pregnancy, in violation of precedents establishing that abortion cannot be banned before “viability,” at around twenty-four weeks. (On Thursday, Florida became the most recent.) Some of the laws have been blocked by the courts, but, if Mississippi prevails, the states expect to be free to enforce these bans.

Among the more restrictive bills currently under consideration across the country, more than a dozen emulate the Texas “heartbeat” law, which bans abortion after six weeks of pregnancy and allows only private citizens, not state officials, to enforce the ban. That provision insulates the law from being challenged as unconstitutional in federal court. The Supreme Court repeatedly declined to block the Texas ban, but did leave open a possible avenue to challenge it. In March, the Texas Supreme Court closed that avenue.

Idaho became the first state to enact a Texas-inspired law. Idaho’s law bans abortion after about six weeks, and allows family members (including a rapist’s relatives) of the “preborn child” to sue a provider who performs an abortion. The law was passed last month, but Idaho’s Supreme Court has temporarily blocked it from taking effect. Missouri has introduced a bill that allows private citizens to sue an out-of-state abortion provider, or even someone who helps transport a person across state lines for an abortion. Wyoming has passed a law that bans most abortions, which will be triggered if the Supreme Court overturns Roe. The boldest effort thus far, though, has been in Oklahoma, a destination for Texans seeking abortions. Two weeks ago, Oklahoma’s legislature made it a felony punishable by ten years in prison to perform an abortion except to save a woman’s life in a medical emergency. The governor signed the bill last Tuesday; the law is set to go into effect in August.

Overturning Roe would be the culmination of a half-century-long legal campaign singularly focussed on that outcome. And there are signs that, far from being an end in itself, it would launch even more ambitious agendas. In the Dobbs litigation, Mississippi denied that doing away with Roe would cast doubt on other precedents, set between 1965 and 2015, on which Roe rested or which relied on Roe. This series of decisions held that states cannot ban contraceptives, criminalize gay sex, or refuse to recognize same-sex marriage. The state told the Court that those cases are not like Dobbs, because “none of them involve the purposeful termination of a human life.” But all of them involve the question of whether states should be able to make laws that affect some of the most intimate aspects of people’s lives. In recent weeks, in anticipation of the Dobbs decision, various Republican senators have questioned Griswold v. Connecticut, which struck down a state ban on contraceptives; Obergefell v. Hodges, which required states to recognize same-sex marriage; and even Loving v. Virginia, which invalidated a state anti-miscegenation law. Overturning Roe would almost certainly fuel the broader fight to get fundamental moral issues out of the realm of federal constitutional rights and under the control of the states.

A Supreme Court decision overturning Roe would seek to justify itself on the ground that it allows states to resolve the issue of abortion for themselves, through democratic processes, rather than by having a resolution imposed on them. At that point, it will be tempting to echo Justice Scalia’s “Do not believe it” warning. Although the legal arguments against Roe have focussed on returning the issue to the states, for five decades the core moral belief against the ruling has been that abortion is the termination of a human life. Last week, a twenty-six-year-old Texas woman was arrested on murder charges, for “intentionally and knowingly causing the death of an individual by self-induced abortion.” The prosecutor dismissed the case, saying that the Texas law did not apply to it. But the incident suggested a possible post-Dobbs future, in which states pursue criminal charges against people who have abortions as well as against those who provide them.

It may also be only a matter of time, if Mississippi prevails, before pro-life legal efforts turn toward getting the Supreme Court to recognize the constitutional rights of the fetus. These efforts would focus on the same part of the Constitution that was previously held to provide the right to abortion, the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits states from depriving “any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” Fetuses are currently not considered to be persons. But Mississippi’s brief repeatedly notes the human attributes of the fetus, in utero, and it may be a precursor to future constitutional arguments to the effect that fetal personhood prohibits abortion.

In the face of such a push, liberals may one day find themselves advocating for leaving the matter to the states, and perhaps even seeking novel methods—like the one Texas concocted—to circumvent federal-court review of state laws protecting abortion access. Whether or not it would take another fifty years or more for a fetal right to unfold, the pro-life legal movement has demonstrated its ability to fight the long fight.

Doonesbury –Writing itself.

Thursday, December 2, 2021

Hackery In Black Robes

Dana Milbank in the Washington Post on the Supreme Court’s selling their souls to whoever shouts the loudest.

Overturning Roe will complete the court’s decline into political hackery that began with Bush v. Gore, continued with Citizens United (corporations are people!), accelerated with the gutting of the Civil Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder, and reached terminal velocity with the virtual theft of a court seat by Senate Republicans in 2016. Now, after conservatives complained for years about the “arbitrary” standard of fetal viability, the justices are considering a more arbitrary standard of 15 weeks. Is it any wonder public confidence in the Supreme Court just hit a new low?

Justice Stephen Breyer, the court’s senior liberal, referred to the damage. “We have to have public support,” he said, “and that comes primarily from people believing that we do our job.” Breyer said Americans would conclude from the overturning of Roe that justices are “just politicians. And that’s what kills us as an American institution.”

The conservative justices seemed unconcerned. Justice Amy Coney Barrett said respect for precedent is “not an inexorable command.” Kavanaugh claimed the right to abortion was a mere “interest” that states could disregard.

Scott Stewart, arguing for the Mississippi ban, exhorted the justices to “stand strong and stand firm in the face of whatever is going on.”

Here’s “whatever” is going on: About half the states would effectively ban abortion once the Supreme Court rules, many without exceptions for rape or incest. Rich women could still travel for abortions. Poor women, and disproportionately women of color, would go to back alleys or be forced to give birth, often at risk to their lives.

Here’s whatever else is going on: “The court has never revoked a right that is so fundamental to so many Americans,” argued Biden administration solicitor general Elizabeth Prelogar, “and so central to their ability to participate fully and equally in society.”

Until now, that is. Roe is dead. It’s all over but the shouting.

And they’re the ones doing the shouting.

Speaking of shouting, John Cole at Balloon Juice:

I really have no desire to listen to the coverage of the Supreme Court abortion hearings because it’s a foregone conclusion. They’ve worked for decades to stack the court, they’re gonna do whatever they want to do, and pretending there is some legal justification for what they are going to do and providing a thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires, and I just have no interest listening to bullshit artists put on a show.

Literally the only thing holding them back is personal restraint and a fear of overstepping, and I think maybe only John Roberts is mildly concerned about that. The rest of these guys are fanatics and movement conservatives and like their counterparts in the House and Senate, they don’t give a fuck. They understand what Democrats don’t, which is just use your power now and worry about the consequences later, and 99.99% of the time there won’t be consequences. There never are for Republicans.

Right now we should be focusing on how we can help women get from the deep red states where abortion will be completely outlawed to providers in the remaining states where it will be legal. And sorry to be grim, there will be no solution at the ballot box, because Republicans have things so aggressively gerrymandered that until there are fucking riots, we are looking at majority minority rule for a while.

It’s gonna be grim, so keep your head up and keep working and getting out the vote, it is going to matter. And don’t feel like you failed, this has been inevitable since 2016 when Hillary lost.

And btw- they are coming for contraception and gay marriage next.

We, the Democrats, the progressives — hell, the rest of the sane people in America — need to stop whining and get to work.

Sunday, November 21, 2021

Sunday Reading

Must Be Nice — Leonard Pitts, Jr. in the Miami Herald.

They gave him the benefit of the doubt.

Kyle Rittenhouse armed himself with a war weapon and went into an uprising to protect property he didn’t own in a place he didn’t live. He shot and killed an unarmed man who he said threatened him and tried to take his gun. He shot and killed another man who, likely believing Rittenhouse an active shooter, came after him with a skateboard. And Rittenhouse wounded a third man, armed with a gun, who testified that he, too, thought he was dealing with a shooter.

On Friday, Rittenhouse faced a jury in Kenosha, Wisconsin, to learn his fate. Having taken an AR-15-type rifle into the midst of last year’s protests over the police shooting of an unarmed African-American man and having killed two people, the white 18-year-old was acquitted on all charges. He collapsed from sheer relief.

Who can blame him? Must be a wonderful thing to get the benefit of the doubt. Would’ve been nice if somebody had given that to Ahmaud Arbery. Or Tamir Rice. Or, God rest his soul, to Trayvon Martin. He should be a 26-year-old man you never heard of. But nine years ago, when he was 17 — the same age as Rittenhouse last summer — he made the mistake of being Black and crossing the path of a man named George Zimmerman, who decided on sight that he was up to no good, stalked him and shot him to death.

Benefit of the doubt? Trayvon certainly didn’t get that from Zimmerman. Nor from the police in Sanford, Florida. Nor from Geraldo Rivera, who suggested he was killed because he wore a hooded sweatshirt. Nor did he get it from white conservatives, who went to outlandish extremes to portray this kid, this standard-issue boy armed only with Skittles and iced tea, as some scary thug who needed shooting. Nor did he get it from the jury, which set Zimmerman free. Trayvon was essentially convicted of his own murder.

There will be those who don’t understand why race is invoked here. Rittenhouse, after all, was a white boy who shot three white men.

But those men lost whiteness the moment they joined that protest. No, that doesn’t mean they became dark of skin or curly of hair. What it does mean is that to be a white person who stands up for African-American lives is to place yourself in opposition to the great body of whiteness and privilege by which this country is driven.

It is to lose — at least for that moment — the protections afforded to you to by the fact of being white, the assumptions and presumptions that ease your path without you even knowing it. It is to lose benefit of the doubt.

Rittenhouse, on the other hand, was immersed in it. Judge Bruce Schroeder bent himself like Gumby to accommodate him, even ruling that the victims could not be referred to as victims. And while conservatives went out of their way to thuggify Trayvon, they made a folk hero of Rittenhouse. Tucker Carlson even lauded him as someone who “maintained order when no one else would.”

Did Carlson ever once defend Trayvon’s right to simply walk home unmolested? Somehow, it seems doubtful.

Did the judge ever bend like Gumby on Trayvon’s behalf? No example immediately suggests itself.

The killing of one teenage boy and the acquittal of another reflect back to us something ugly and small and mean and true about this country. Namely that some tears matter and some don’t. Some get advantages and some won’t. And yes, some of us get the benefit.

But others get only the doubt.

Doonesbury — The garden spot of the galaxy.

Friday, November 19, 2021

No Surprise

The verdict says more about us than it does about him: he’s a white kid who can carry an AR-15 in the middle of a demonstration and shoot people with impunity. If he were Black or Latino, his funeral would have been the next afternoon.

Wednesday, November 17, 2021

Putting Out One Fire

Following up on yesterday’s post from Charlie Pierce, some common sense prevails.  Via the Washington Post:

A school board in Virginia has reversed a recent decision to remove “sexually explicit” books from school libraries after the move stirred community outrage and drew harsh national criticism — especially over two board members’ apparent suggestion to burn the books.

The Spotsylvania County School Board voted 5 to 2 Tuesday to rescind its decision, a week after two parents complained about inappropriate content. At the Nov. 8 meeting, the board unanimously directed Schools Superintendent S. Scott Baker to reconsider whether every sexually explicit book in school libraries should be kept or permanently removed — forcing a team of about three dozen staffers, including all of the district’s librarians, to start poring through tens of thousands of titles.

Board members Kirk Twigg and Rabih Abuismail voted against rescinding the decision.

On Monday, dozens of students, parents and teachers turned out to show their displeasure with the board. Some hoisted signs reading “Give back the books!” and “Books not bonfires,” according to the Free Lance-Star.

Many Spotsylvanians spoke during a public comment period that stretched for more than four hours. A high-schooler told the board that censorship is “contagious and leads to much worse,” according to the Free Lance-Star. A county librarian added, “If you have a worldview that can be undone by a novel, let me suggest that the problem is not the novel,” the Free Lance-Star reported.

Close to midnight, after public comment wound down, board member Baron Braswell proposed that the previous vote to remove sexually explicit texts “be rescinded immediately,” Braswell said in an interview, “and that was basically it.”

Although Braswell’s motion passed with a solid majority, he warned the decision may not hold for long, noting the board is gaining new members in January.

Braswell said he wanted to rescind the book removal because the school district’s attorney had informed the board it was probably unconstitutional. The attorney argued in a memo to board members Thursday that the removals would prevent children from reading about certain political ideas and social viewpoints, violating the right to free speech.

Braswell added that the school district already has procedures for dealing with parent complaints about books, and that he wants the books challenged at the Nov. 8 meeting to go through the established process. Braswell said he did not know about the existing system for challenged books last week — and if he had, would not have voted in favor of removing the sexually explicit texts.

“None of us, for certain, ever believed in censorship or burning books. That’s just not who we are,” Braswell said. “Everybody was caught off guard last week.”

It’s a reprieve, not a victory, because the forces of ignorance are a beast that forever needs feeding.

Sunday, July 25, 2021

Sunday Reading

We Are All Connected — Vanessa Garcia, Miami-born and raised Cuban-American playwright and writer, on what we all have in common.

Last night I woke up from a dream.

In the dream I was standing in front of Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, one of the leaders of the San Isidro Movement – the movement of artists and Cuban citizens on the island, which has been one of the sparks in the engine that gave rise to this moment in Cuban history. This moment when the Cuban people have begun to take back their voice. When they have bravely taken to the street, despite all odds, risking their lives in order to break the shackles of a 62-year-old dictatorship. Luis Manuel is currently missing, disappeared by the State.

In my dream, however, I was face to face with him, and we were standing on water, several feet apart. From my chest to his there was a twisted root connecting us, heart to heart. It was thorny in places, touched with blood. In other spots, it was beginning to bloom with tiny orange Flamboyant buds. In other sections it was metal, but those parts glowed with a light that was trying to heal the rust. And we, Luis Manuel and I, were looking face to face at each other and I felt as though my heart, which was being tugged by its very root, was going to come out of my chest. But it didn’t come out of my chest, it gripped harder, vibrated inside me. It connected us.

Estamos conectados,” is how Luis Manuel ends many of his social media videos, speaking to the people on the island. And I feel that connection outside the island too in our Diaspora.

Alongside this powerful dream I had, we have also all awoken from a nightmare in which Cuba was a place people went to for fun in the sun while a dictatorship brutally pushed its people to their knees behind closed doors.

A nightmare in which no one heard our voices on this side of the ocean or the other. Not the voices inside Cuba; not the Cassandras of the Diaspora.

We are the children of men and women who threw themselves to the sea. Some whose bodies sunk to the bottom of raging oceans as they tried to cross in makeshift rafts of rubber, shards of canvas.

We are the children of people who cheered: “Next year in Cuba,” until the phrase scraped their throats raw. Until they lost the hope. We carry their voice within us, and we project it to the world now.

We are the people who fled in 1959, 1961, 1974, 1980, 1994, 2014, and yesterday.

We are the people that have had to watch American students wear Che and Fidel on their chests, their images, to us, equal to the dagger of a white pointed hat alongside a cross on fire.

We have sent our family money directly; we have fed our people when the government starved it. We have never embargoed the people; we have only embargoed the government.

The Cuban regime made itself fat on deals with foreign companies as the Cuban people starved. The Cuban regime has blamed the American embargo, when it is the regime itself that has been the blockade. As the Cuban rapper, David D Omni, sings to the regime: “el bloqueo aquí eres tu que no quieres dar la luz,” the blockade here is you, who does not want to give the light.

What we have known for generations, the world knows now – or is, rather, only beginning to know. There are many stories to tell, to carry toward the light.

There is work to do. This is only the beginning.

This past Saturday, July 17th, Willy Chirino spoke to the Cuban American people in front of the freedom tower and quoted Jose Martí, our patriot poet. He said: “When we’re talking about freedom, everything must go to the fire, even the arts, in order to feed the flame.”

No matter what that vibrating root between us and our people feels like right now, how much it hurts – because of how much it hurts – we cannot let go. We must keep the flame alive.

We are a chain of people standing on water and we cannot let go of each other or we will sink to the bottom of the sea, without ever seeing our connective roots blare their glorious bloom.

There is not a single second in which we can turn against each other right now. It doesn’t matter who voted for who in the last election. It doesn’t matter if we have small differences of opinion. We must all join forces under our singular cause: to bring down the tyranny of Cuba, once and for all. It’s time that the people of Cuba take their voice back. They have suffered for it, they are dying in the streets for it, slaughtered by their own government for it. It is our job to amplify their messages and fight alongside them; educate the world into action — peacefully.

The regime will play its game. But it is an old game, and we know it all too well. Let’s play it better. Let’s show the world the regime’s cards, the decks they’ve stacked, the dominoes they’ve locked.

I have a new dream now. In which we are all— the generations torn apart — standing and embracing on the soil of a free Cuba.

We are all connected.

Why Republicans Hate Voting Rights — Elie Mystal in The Nation.

Utah Senator Mike Lee, a raving hypocrite who abandoned his stated principles to play lackey to Donald Trump, is fond of saying, “We’re not a democracy.” Lee thinks that’s a good thing. He’s written: “Democracy isn’t the objective: liberty, peace, and prospefity [sic] are.” When Lee says these things, he’s not merely playing the role of an overzealous high school social studies teacher trying to use “cool facts” to deflect the hail of spitballs. He’s also channeling the deepest fears of the slavers and colonists who wrote the Constitution. Those guys understood, as Lee does, that a true democracy, in which everybody gets to vote and participate in self-government, would be a threat to white male hegemony in the New World.

They’re not wrong. The founders and Lee and Jefferson Davis and Ron DeSantis—and all the other white guys who have stood against the right to vote throughout American history—are correct in their assessment that universal suffrage and equal representation are the surest ways to end white male political supremacy.

That is why the “right to vote” is not spelled out in the Constitution, and why voting rights are under near-constant attack by conservative forces. It’s almost certainly why Lee thought that HR 1, the bill designed to restore and secure voting rights, was “written in hell by the devil himself.”

It’s no accident that the current assault on voting rights started not with the failed reelection of Donald Trump but with the successful election of Barack Obama. After the 2010 midterm elections and the new US census that followed, Republicans promptly used the gains they’d made to go on a gerrymandering rampage. Their allies on the Supreme Court then used two cases—Shelby County v. Holder (2013) and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021)—to effectively neuter the Voting Rights Act.

Those moves set the stage for the legislative attacks on democracy that white conservatives have launched this year. According to the Brennan Center for Justice, 17 states have enacted 28 new laws to restrict voting access. A total of 48 states have proposed a staggering 389 voter restriction bills, which run the gamut from obtuse (requiring notaries to sign absentee ballots), to cruel (denying water to voters waiting in line), to downright racist (excluding from early voting the times Black people get out of church).

The GOP’s current eruption of voter suppression is unrelenting and ferocious, but it’s not a new phenomenon and should not have been unexpected. Everybody knows that voting rights were initially restricted to wealthy white males and only grudgingly doled out to additional humans after war, outrage, or mass grassroots movements.

The solution to these cyclical outbursts has never been incremental change. Radical legislative interventions (the Voting Rights Act), new constitutional protections (the 15th and 19th amendments), and a judiciary willing to uphold them (Earl Warren protected the voting rights John Roberts is now destroying) have been some of the ways people have fought to limit the antidemocratic instincts of the white men in power.

But the current Democratic Party can’t take such bold action. Even though the mass of the party’s Congress members are willing to do whatever it takes, including nuking the filibuster, to ensure that Jim Crow–style voter restrictions never come back, they are all too easily hamstrung by a few timid white senators who seem to think that full and equal access to the rights of citizenship is just one option among many and that basic democratic rights should be put on the bargaining block in the name of bipartisanship.

There are too many people who seem to be willing to give the Biden administration and the national Democratic party a pass if it can’t convince Joe Manchin (and the cabal of spineless Democratic Senators he speaks for) to do the right thing. Given the stakes—the existence of democratic self-government—I don’t think the president can just throw up his hands and say “Welp, I tried.” Nobody looks back on Rutherford B. Hayes, who presided over the end of Reconstruction and the institution of Jim Crow, and says “good effort.” Texas Democrats are fleeing their state in an ultimately futile effort to stop new voter suppression laws; I think it’s fair to expect more than a speech (not even in prime time from the Oval Office but on a random afternoon) from President Biden.

In this speech, Biden was reduced to making a moral appeal to the bigots in the minority. “We will be asking my Republican friends—in Congress, in states, in cities, in counties—to stand up, for God’s sake, and help prevent this concerted effort to undermine our elections and the sacred right to vote,” Biden said, adding: “Have you no shame?”

If that’s all he’s got, we’re going to lose. Because conservative white people have no shame. They’ve never had any. Throughout American history, they have shamelessly regarded the right to vote as the ultimate white privilege.

We are not a democracy. The question has always been whether enough white people even want one.

Doonesbury — So Wily.

Wednesday, July 14, 2021

Annals Of Hypocrisy — Part Infinity

Florida has a strict new law against protests, signed by Gov. DeSantis in April.  Via Rolling Stone:

The Florida law gives police broad new powers to impose collective punishment on those engaged in protest. First, it lowers the threshold of a “riot” to include as few as three people engaging in “violent and disorderly conduct.” This could subject anyone at an otherwise peaceful event where such a disturbance occurs to third-degree felony charges, punishable by up to five years in prison and the loss of the right to vote. The bill also creates a new second-degree felony of “aggravated rioting” for any large group action that, among other not-clearly-harmful and vaguely-described impacts, “endangers the safe movement of a vehicle traveling on a public street, highway, or road.” Further, the law creates a new, hazy, misdemeanor charge of “mob intimidation” that requires anyone so charged to be held until their first bail hearing — effectively giving cops carte blanche to lock up protesters overnight.

While broadly criminalizing protest, the bill also shields Floridians from civil liability if they happen to injure or kill a protester involved in a demonstration the authorities label a “riot.” According to testimony by the state ACLU: “A white supremacist who maliciously drove his car into protesters… like the one in Charlottesville that killed Heather Heyer, would be able to assert an affirmative defense under this bill.” The new law in Florida — a former Confederate state with dozens of public memorials to those who fought to preserve slavery — also heightens punishment for protesters who damage or deface public monuments or flags, subjecting them to felony charges and forcing them to pay restitution for any damages.

Somehow I don’t think they’re going to enforce the law against the hundreds of people who were blocking the Palmetto Expressway here in Miami, a main north-sound artery, during rush hour.

MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, Fla. – A small group of protesters asking President Joe Biden and Gov. Ron DeSantis to help protect Cuban protesters marched to block traffic on the Palmetto Expressway on a rainy Tuesday in Miami-Dade County.

They lined up on the southbound and northbound lanes of the expressway from Coral Way to Flagler Street. Those who have relatives on the island said they fear the Cuban government’s violent crackdown on dissent.

One of their chants in Spanish: “Estados Unidos, acaba el comunismo!” It’s a rhymed request to the Biden administration to put an end to communism.

As of 6 p.m., rush hour traffic was still at a standstill. Miami-Dade Police Department officers and Florida Highway Patrol troopers asked drivers to avoid the expressway and use the Florida Turnpike instead.

Some of the protesters held umbrellas, and white, red, and blue Cuban and U.S. flags. Some used signs and T-shirts to display the “Patria Y Vida,” or “Homeland and Life,” motto of the protests across Cuba Sunday.

The phrase is meant to antagonize the late Fidel Castro’s rallying cry of “Socialism or Death” and the late Che Guevara’s “Homeland or Death” speech at the United Nations in the 1960s.

The irony is worth noting.  From the Miami Herald editorial page:

Gov. DeSantis should have just laid it on the line when a reporter asked about the hundreds upon hundreds of Cuban-American demonstrators and their supporters who shut down a portion of the Palmetto Expressway in Miami-Dade County.

Instead, he deflected, talking about protesters in Cuba.

Implicit in the question, however, was whether the governor’s vaunted anti-riot law — created in the wake of George Floyd demonstrations — would apply in the case of the demonstrators blocking streets and an expressway in Miami-Dade.

Their cause is righteous, of course — bringing down Cuba’s oppressive and regressive regime.

Florida’s misbegotten anti-riot law leaves even peaceful demonstrators subject to being arrested if a protest is arbitrarily deemed a “riot.” The law explicitly makes blocking a highway a felony offense. Worse, it gives civil legal immunity to people who drive through protesters who are blocking a road — basically, encouraging haters to do just that.

Here’s what the governor said when he signed the blatantly un-American bill into law: “Just think about it, you’re driving home from work and, all of a sudden, you have people out there shutting down a highway, and we worked hard to make sure that didn’t happen in Florida.”

But it did happen in Florida, Gov. DeSantis. Demonstrators shut down State Road 826 in both directions Tuesday in solidarity with their counterparts in Cuba. Police obliged and redirected traffic. Mercifully, no one roared through the crowd in a vehicle.

Everything was as it should be in a country that has a high tolerance for free expression. But, unfortunately, for the governor, the reporter’s question trapped him in the hypocrisy of his law, likely to be arbitrarily enforced.

Honestly, we would have been more impressed if he had just responded: “Nah, the Miami-Dade demonstrators seeking human rights in Cuba have nothing to fear from my anti-riot law. We created it to subdue Black folks seeking human rights in the United States.”

One person’s riot is another’s righteous protest. It all depends on whose voter bloc you’re sucking up to.

Monday, May 3, 2021

Don’t Even Try

I’ve had to answer to a few friends about the school here in Miami where the people that run it not only refuse to get vaccinated for Covid-19, they are telling their teachers who have gotten the shots not to come to work because they’re afraid they will spread it: the vaccine, that is; not the virus.

I can’t explain it any more than I can explain any other careless, dangerous, and potentially life-threatening behavior, like the guy driving down the Palmetto Expressway at 65 with not just a flat tire but the rim riding on the pavement leaving a comet-like trail of sparks.  Or the people who get a snootful and drive drunk.  They do it in spite of the danger to themselves and others.

If the Centners want to go without vaccination, that’s their choice.  There is no federal mandate.  But when they run a private school and willfully expose children and staff to a disease that has killed over 580,000 Americans and is raging through other lands, they have an obligation, not just as educators, but just plain human beings, to protect if not themselves, than others.  That’s the whole point behind mask mandates, social distancing, and getting vaccinated.  You want to wallow in your freedoms?  Go ahead.  Just don’t take others unwillingly or unknowingly along with you.

There’s something uniquely narcissistic about the America Fuck Yeah freedom mindset that declares that just because I’m free to expose myself to death, disease, and stupid reality shows on cable TV, everyone else must abide by that or you’re a commie pinko libtard.  The fact that that way of thinking is the exact opposite of what this country stands for doesn’t sink in.  The first words of the Constitution are “We the People,” not “It’s All About Me.”

I’ve tried to explain that to some of the people I encounter who refuse to go along with the way life is now.  But now I don’t bother because while it may be cynical and cruel, life itself has a way of taking care of those who flagrantly and ignorantly snap their fingers under the nose of karma.  All I ask is that they do it far enough away from me and those I love so we’re not taken along with them.

Thursday, April 22, 2021

The Right To Peaceably Assemble

From the Miami Herald:

Civil-rights attorneys are challenging a new set of state laws that establish a crime of “mob intimidation” and enhance penalties for riot-related violence and looting, arguing in a federal lawsuit that the measures unconstitutionally “seek to arrest the peaceful expression of free speech.”

The challenge was filed Wednesday, two days after Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the controversial package (HB 1), one of his top legislative priorities. The governor laid out a framework for the legislation in September in response to nationwide protests after the May 2020 death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Republican lawmakers gave final approval to the changes last week, ignoring objections by Democrats and civil-rights groups that predicted the proposal would be challenged in court. A nonprofit organization known as the Lawyers Matter Task Force and other plaintiffs filed the lawsuit in federal court in Orlando, naming as defendants DeSantis, Attorney General Ashley Moody and Orange County Sheriff John Mina.

The legislation “is a horrendous injustice to Florida citizens and infringes on multiple constitutional rights,” Shannon Ligon, founder of the Lawyers Matter Task Force, said in a prepared statement Wednesday.

The laws, among other things, create a new felony crime of “aggravated rioting” that carries a sentence of up to 15 years in prison and a new crime of “mob intimidation,” which makes it unlawful “for a person, assembled with two or more other persons and acting with a common intent, to use force or threaten to use imminent force, to compel or induce, or attempt to compel or induce, another person to do or refrain from doing any act or to assume, abandon, or maintain a particular viewpoint against his or her will.”

But the plaintiffs allege the laws expose “peaceful demonstrators and social justice advocacy organizations to civil and/or criminal liability” for other people’s conduct.

The laws also fail “to adequately describe what conduct or speech will subject an individual or an organization to liability for ‘inciting a riot,’ ” the lawsuit said.

The measures “target protected speech under the First Amendment” and “retaliate against” protesters by imposing “excessive bail, fines, or cruel and unusual punishment as a means of hindering the speech of dissenting opinions,” Orlando lawyer Aaron Carter Bates, who represents the plaintiffs, wrote in the 22-page lawsuit.

The legislation “unconstitutionally threatens to impose liability on individuals expressing their rights to free speech regardless of their intent to incite violence, the likelihood that their speech will result in violence, or the imminence of the intended violence,” Bates wrote.

From the relevant passage in the United States Constitution:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The U.S. Constitution has supremacy, which means that it supersedes state and local laws, including state constitutions.  It means that states cannot enact laws that violate the Big One.  There’s no provision in the bill to provide for the funds to pay for the legal fees that will be borne by the taxpayers of Florida that have already been incurred and will pile up as it goes from court to court.

There is no doubt whatsoever that law is just part of Ron DeSantis’s plan to run for president in 2024 — he’s been getting serviced by pundits and Very Serious People at Politico — and solidify his hold on the rabble base that has no problem running over a protestor with their Buick.

Monday, April 12, 2021

Corporations Are Voters, Too

From the Washington Post:

More than 100 chief executives and corporate leaders gathered online Saturday to discuss taking new action to combat the controversial state voting bills being considered across the country, including the one recently signed into law in Georgia.

Executives from major airlines, retailers and manufacturers — plus at least one NFL owner — talked about potential ways to show they opposed the legislation, including by halting donations to politicians who support the bills and even delaying investments in states that pass the restrictive measures, according to four people who were on the call, including one of the organizers, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor.

While no final steps were agreed upon, the meeting represents an aggressive dialing up of corporate America’s stand against controversial voting measures nationwide, a sign that their opposition to the laws didn’t end with the fight against the Georgia legislation passed in March.

Marches to the capitol building get attention from cable news, but ignored inside the building itself. But when corporations start talking about withholding donations to candidates and campaigns, ears perk up.

Republicans will carry on about “cancel culture,” and Mitch McConnell can tell the companies to “stay out of politics” (as long as the checks he gets from them clear, that is), but they’re counting on the short-term memory of the voters and their blatant hypocrisy about boycotts.

It also came just days after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned that firms should “stay out of politics” — echoing a view shared by many conservative politicians and setting up the potential for additional conflict between Republican leaders and the heads of some of America’s largest firms. This month, former president Donald Trump called for conservatives to boycott Coca-Cola, Major League Baseball, Delta Air Lines, Citigroup, ViacomCBS, UPS and other companies after they opposed the law in Georgia that critics say will make it more difficult for poorer voters and voters of color to cast ballots. Baseball officials decided to move the All-Star Game this summer from Georgia to Colorado because of the voting bill.

The bottom line is that it’s the bottom line on both sides. Republicans rely on big-money donors to keep them in the lifestyle (if not the job) they’ve grown accustomed to, but corporations such as Coca-Cola and CBS know that their customers can be persuaded to buy Pepsi and watch ABC if they don’t stand up for basic civil rights.

Thursday, March 18, 2021