Stephan: As I wrote several days ago when the Alito brief was leaked what struck me about it was the mediocrity of its thinking and that it was an expression of political and religious bias, not wise jurisprudence. It read to me like something male dominance-obsessed college-sophomore boy would write to toady up to his conservative religious professor. The arguments are intellectually flawed, and the justification upon which the document is based go back to medieval thinking. It is the equivalent of using pre-Copernican thinking to argue that the Sun goes around the earth. I find it utterly shameful that this is the quality of thinking advanced by five justices of the Supreme Court.
Please notice that the United States is not even in the top 12 nations on the issue of women being equal to men.
There is much to be shocked by in Justice Samuel Alito’s screed of a draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade, but his evocation of centuries-old common law shouldn’t be one of them. As it turns out, this is not unusual, particularly among jurists who argue that certain ideas are so firmly entrenched in the culture that there no longer remains any question on their validity. That is not to say, however, that Alito’s use of ancient misogyny to undergird his arguments isn’t disgraceful. In fact, it’s nothing short of grotesque. He goes all the way back to the 13th century to cite Judge Henry de Bracton’s “De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae,” a text about English law and custom that explained that if a person has “struck a pregnant woman, or has given her poison, whereby he has caused an abortion, if the foetus be already formed and animated … he commits homicide” to argue […]
Stephan: The full Alito opinion and its references is too long for SR, so I went looking for something that would present what I saw as the bizarre medieval thinking upon which Alito grounds the opinion he wrote and found Dana Milbank's essay which did exactly that. This is how weird Alito's thinking is. Where one would expect from a Supreme Court Associate Justice wise nonpolitical thinking grounded in law we are given sophistry, personal bias and... well, crap.
Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. Credit: Jonathan Ernst / Reuters
Many have speculated that Samuel Alito, in his draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, is trying to take us back to the 1950s, when White Christian men still ruled.
The Supreme Court justice is actually revisiting the 1250s, when the judge Henry de Bracton completed his summation of English law and custom “De Legibus et Consuetudinibus Angliae.” Alito’s opinion, after mocking the Roe decision for its “discussion of abortion in antiquity,” then provides a discussion of abortion in medieval times: “Henry de Bracton’s 13th-century treatise explained that if a person has ‘struck a pregnant woman, or has given her poison, whereby he has caused an abortion, if the foetus be already formed and animated … he commits homicide.”
Case closed?
Over the weekend, “Saturday Night Live’s” cold open featured a 13th-century Benedict Cumberbatch proposing such a law against abortion (like the “law we have against pointy shoes”) and then threatening to […]
Stephan: Today, I saw more than two dozen stories in the media about police violence and general thuggery. Go to news.google.com search on "police violence today" and see for yourself what comes up. The one that particularly caught my attention was this account about a 61-year-old grandmother who went into a police station in New York to file a police report on a theft, as required by her insurance carrier, and ended up with a broken arm when the cops threw her to the floor and handcuffed her. I think every applicant for police or sheriff employment should be subjected to an intensive independent psychiatric evaluation with a lie detector.
Patricia Rodney went to an NYPD precinct in Brooklyn to get a police report for a lost glucometer. She ended up with a broken arm when she attempted to film the rude police behavior. Credit: NYPD body camera footage
New York Police Department officers threw a screaming, 61-year-old grandmother to the ground, breaking her arm in the process of an arrest captured on video inside a police station in Brooklyn. Her alleged crime: filming the police.
The body camera video, first reported on by the local news blog Hell Gate, shows Patricia Rodney surrounded by cops before one of them grabs her, takes her to the ground, and handcuffs her.
Rodney, a diabetic, was visiting the police station on Dec. 2, 2020, to pick up a copy of a police report she’d filed about a missing glucometer, as required by her insurance provider. But instead of helping Rodney, NYPD officers turned her away. When she became frustrated and pointed her phone camera toward them, cops grabbed her as she shrieked for help.
Stephan: Should anyone be surprised that Donald Trump, a blatant criminal, appointed to high office in his administration fellow criminals? Is it possible to be a Republican official without being criminal and corrupt? On the basis of the evidence, it would appear that the answer is, no. Corruption and criminality appear to be requisites for high office in the Republican Party.
Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and President Donald Trump in the White House on July 8, 2019. Credit: Carlos Barria/Reuters
The House Natural Resources Committee announced its first-ever criminal referral to the Department of Justice on Wednesday, asking it to investigate whether Mike Ingram, an Arizona real estate developer and a campaign donor to Donald Trump, bribed public officials during Trump’s tenure as president, including then-Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt.
Since 2019, the House committee has investigated a decision by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in October 2017 to reverse its previous opposition to a proposed housing development in Benson, Ariz., called Villages at Vigneto. That decision was reversed again in July 2021, after Joe Biden took office as president.
According to a committee report in August 2017, Steve Spangle, who was then an FWS field supervisor, received a phone call during which an attorney from the Interior Department’s Office of the Solicitor asked Spangle to reverse his decision that the Army Corps of Engineers must consult […]
Ruth Graham, National Correspondent - The New York Times
Stephan: This story is an early report of an emerging trend that I see as quite important. White evangelicals are the core demographic of MAGAt world, and they are beginning to schism. Add this to the fact that educated younger people are dropping their involvement with evangelical churches, and often Christianity (at least the christofacist cult that has become Christianity in the U.S. altogether). This, I suspect will be reflected in how those falling away vote in November, and could significantly impact the Republican Party's success.
Kevin Thompson in an old cemetery where he spent a lot of time before leaving for California. Credit: September Dawn Bottoms / The New York Times
FORT SMITH, ARKANSAS — In the fall of 2020, Kevin Thompson delivered a sermon about the gentleness of God. At one point, he drew a quick contrast between a loving, accessible God and remote, inaccessible celebrities. Speaking without notes, his Bible in his hand, he reached for a few easy examples: Oprah, Jay-Z, Tom Hanks.
Mr. Thompson could not tell how his sermon was received. The church he led had only recently returned to meeting in person. Attendance was sparse, and it was hard to appreciate if his jokes were landing, or if his congregation — with family groups spaced three seats apart, and others watching online — remained engaged.
So he was caught off guard when two church members expressed alarm about the passing reference to Mr. Hanks. A young woman texted him, concerned; another member suggested the reference to Mr. Hanks proved Mr. Thompson did not care about the issue […]
