As always, please go to the links for the full articles/op eds.
Professor Lawrence Tribe outlines several actions the Attorney General could take to counter the Texas anti- abortion law, among them:
The attorney general should announce, as swiftly as possible, that he will use federal law to the extent possible to deter and prevent bounty hunters from employing the Texas law. If Texas wants to empower private vigilantes to intimidate abortion providers from serving women, why not make bounty hunters think twice before engaging in that intimidation?
For example, Section 242 of the federal criminal code makes it a crime for those who, “under color of law,” willfully deprive individuals “of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
This statute — originally designed to go after the Ku Klux Klan — fits the Texas situation perfectly: The bounty seekers, entitled under the Texas law to collect penalties of at least $10,000, have been made, in effect, private attorneys general of Texas. They act “under color of state law,” and unless and until Roe v. Wade is overruled, they unmistakably intend to prevent the exercise of a constitutional right.
In addition, Section 241 of the federal criminal code makes it an even more serious crime for “two or more persons” to agree to “oppress, threaten, or intimidate” anyone “in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same.” This crime may be committed even by individuals not found to be acting “under color of law” but as purely private vigilantes, as long as they’re acting in concert with others.
Get moving, AG Garland!
James Downie sends a message to elected Democrats:
In short, one party has maximized the power it does have, and is still aiming so high that even the “compromise” version is still a major win. The other has fiddled away its years in power, yet once again is settling for less than half a loaf. This is not a recent phenomenon. The very foundation for Republicans’ looming “success” on abortion is that Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — both as majority and minority leader — has squeezed Democrats repeatedly on the judiciary, culminating in the theft of a Supreme Court seat in 2016. While the Manchins of the world whine about decency and decorum, McConnell and company played hardball — and won.
To be sure, Democrats’ current caution might make some sense if Republicans’ priorities were more popular. But the opposite is true. The new Washington Post-ABC poll, for example, found Americans support the reconciliation package by 53 to 41 percent, with an similarly wide gap of 13 percent among independents and a 32 percent gap among self-identified moderates. By contrast, an AP poll found that almost 60 percent believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. And yet, maddeningly, Democrats act like they’re the ones on the back foot with the public.
The conventional wisdom in Washington is that voters reward action and punish parties that stray too far from the middle. The first part is true, but as the past decade has shown, the latter is misleading at best. Republicans certainly haven’t paid any price for taking the Supreme Court from delicately balanced to decidedly conservative, nor for making the county’s tax system as unequal as possible. And when Democrats have faced rebuke at the polls, they’ve been hurt more by blunting the effectiveness of their best ideas — the stimulus, the ACA, etc. — rather than doubling down on them.
Stop fretting, Democrats, and use the power you have.
We're proud to be members of the only party supporting democracy in America, but damn, it's so frustrating, too.
Ed Kilgore has constructed a historical timeline tracing the roots of the January 6 insurrection and the malignant loser's long campaign to stay in office. Here's his intro:
The House select committee’s investigation into the Capitol Riot and the various media ticktocks explaining what Donald Trump and his allies were doing in the days immediately leading up to it are casting new light on an important threat to American democracy. But the intense focus on a few wild days in Washington can be misleading as well. Trump’s campaign to steal the 2020 presidential election began shortly after the 2016 election, and arguably the moment of peak peril for Joe Biden’s inauguration had already passed by the time Trump addressed the Stop the Steal rally on January 6.
A full timeline of the attempted insurrection is helpful in putting Trump’s frantic, last-minute schemes into the proper context and countering the false impression that January 6 was an improvised, impossible-to-replicate event, rather than one part of an ongoing campaign. If Congress fails to seize its brief opportunity to reform our electoral system, the danger could recur in future elections — perhaps with a different, catastrophic outcome.
We have confidence that the select committee will provide a rigorous examination of the machinations of the malignant loser and his Christo-fascist toadies in Congress who attempted to overthrow the results of the election -- and are still at it. Stay tuned.
E.J. Dionne, Jr., writes about how "freedom" is a purpose of organized labor:
Lane Windham, the author of “Knocking on Labor’s Door,” a history of labor organizing in the 1970s, says that’s precisely the point of the union movement: Without countervailing power to the authority of employers, workers have remarkably few, if any, rights in their workplaces.
In an interview, she argued that in the coming debate over President Biden’s Build Back Better program, one focus of the conversation should be on how assisting workers by providing government help for child care and elder care advances “the freedom that comes from security and peace of mind.”
“We continue to rely on women who are in the workplace to take on the task of unpaid child care,” she said. “They need that infrastructure, they need that support, if we want them to work in the economy. We’ve been patching it together for 40 years.”
One of the contributions of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s 2020 presidential campaign was his insistence that progressives must no longer cede to the political right rhetorical control over the word and the idea of “freedom.” Noting the role legal recognition of same-sex marriage played in his life as a gay man, he argued that “the chance to live a life of your choosing” is “freedom in its richest sense.”
His point applies to the world of work as well. Labor Day honors the struggles of American workers to live lives of their own choosing with a degree of prosperity and security. No less than July 4, this September day is a celebration of freedom.
Balloon Juice's Mistermix counters the "don't make fun of the covidiots" argument made by people like writer Elizabeth Bruenig:
I see variants of Bruenig’s “stop making fun” argument all the time. The issue is that many of the vaccine “hesitant” don’t want rational colloquy — they want engagement with their stupidity, so they can trot out their dumb Facebook-inspired ideas. They are thirsty for attention, not for a free, easily obtainable vaccine.
In contrast to Bruenig’s unicorn and rainbows outlook on humanity, let me share two vaccine success stories. One is from a young man that I know who has two elderly grandparents who weren’t vaccinated. They live in NYC. What got them to get their first shots a couple of days ago was the new requirement that you must be vaccinated to dine indoors. There wasn’t a rational conversation. To be fair, these people weren’t nutty Trumpers — in fact, they’re very sweet people. Still, their kids and grandkids trotted out all the usual arguments, and the only thing that moved them was inability to get dinner in places they liked to visit.
So, that’s one approach. Another was related in a comment on the Herman Cain subreddit that I can’t find right now. The gist of it was that a woman was concerned about her friend, an unvaccinated single mom with 5 kids. She began sending her friend instructions on how to claim the burial reimbursement for death from COVID, instructions on how to apply for life insurance, and other useful advice for the vaccine “hesitant”. Her friend texted her a picture of her vaccine card shortly thereafter.
Unlike scaring your friends with almost-certain death, vaccine mandates are scalable. I also think that vaccine mandates and proof of vaccination to travel will work with a good number of these stubborn assholes, no matter how loudly they squeal. Unfortunately, the combination of their loud noisemaking, the unfairness of making essential workers enforce these mandates, and the fact that a lot of the loudest anti-vaxxers are cops who won’t enforce the mandate has slowed us down.
To which we offer a secular "amen."
Finally, you're encouraged to visit Infidel 753's link round-up for a comprehensive digest of links to posts of interest from around the Internet. He also posts stimulating essays on a variety of topics, so maybe you should bookmark his blog if you haven't already done so?
