Jonathan Cohn, Senior National Correspondent - Huff Post
Stephan: America does not like children, does not make them a first priority. The evidence for this, while some may deny it, is overwhelming. To our shame, it is a significant American social characteristic. And take note of the role Joe Manchin played in this report.
Young children playing with educational toys
This past week has been full of news, including the Jan. 6 hearings and bipartisan agreement on a gun violence bill. The Supreme Court handed down a major decision on church and state, with landmark rulings on guns and abortion coming soon ― maybe even this week.
But for today’s newsletter, I’d like to write about something else that really should be getting more coverage: the crisis in American child care, which is causing tangible, serious hardship for millions of parents and their kids.
Stephan: Texas is leading the christofactist side of the Great Schism Trend. This is a measure of where we are in this, as a nation.
The Texas GOP floated the idea of seceding from the US in its latest platform document. Credit: CrackerClips Stock Media/Shutterstock
The Texas GOP is pushing for a referendum on seceding from the US — a split that could lead to the state becoming an independent nation.
The state GOP outlined its intention to press for such a referendum in a document from its Platforms and Resolutions committee, wherein it specified its demand that the state holds a vote on the matter. The document was produced in connection with the Texas Republican Party’s convention in Houston, during which it also voted “overwhelmingly” to reject the legitimacy of the 2020 election.
The document, which contains a section on state sovereignty, calls for the state to hold a vote and outlines the Texas Republican Party’s opinion that the federal government has “impaired” its right to locally self-govern.
Per the document, the Texas GOP proposed that any “federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified.”
Stephan: We are now seeing how the Republicans, who are whores for the polluting corporations who pour money on them, are working to block preparations to help America to deal with climate change. You can also see why the Republicans advised and consented to the incompetent ideologues Trump nominated to the Supreme Court. As you read this I hope you realize that what the Republicans are doing is condemning you and your family to a degraded environment that will render your life more unpleasant and difficult.
Republican attorneys want to hem in what they call the administrative state, the E.P.A. and other federal agencies that set rules and regulations that affect the American environment. Credit: Tamir Kalifa / The New York Times
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Within days, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court is expected to hand down a decision that could severely limit the federal government’s authority to reduce carbon dioxide from power plants — pollution that is dangerously heating the planet.
But it’s only a start.
The case, West Virginia v. Environmental Protection Agency, is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to the oil and coal industries, to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch’s ability to tackle global warming.
Coming up through the federal courts are more climate cases, some featuring novel legal arguments, each carefully selected for its potential to block the government’s ability to regulate industries and businesses that produce greenhouse gases.
Stephan: In the previous story I showed how the Republicans are using the incompettents they put on the court to block desparetly needed remedial work to prepare us for what climate change is doing. Here is why that matters.
Little Blue Penguins run towards the sea after being released by wildlife workers and school children at Mount Maunganui beach in Tauranga. The Penguins were among those affected by New Zealand’s biggest sea pollution disaster when the Monrovia-flagged container ship ‘Rena’ ploughed into a reef on October 5, 2011. Credit: Marty Melville/AFP / Getty
With a vast portion of the U.S. experiencing record high heat indexes, climate change is taking a toll on many other parts of the world as well, with a deadly impact on humans and animals alike.
Graeme Taylor, principal science adviser at the New Zealand Department of Conservation, recently spoke to NBC News about recent “mass die-offs” of the flightless little blue penguin, which is native to that area. According to Taylor, hundreds of the birds have washed up dead on New Zealand beaches since May.
“All the birds were at least half the normal weight, they had no fat on them at all and their muscle tissue had wasted away,” Taylor said. Tests were performed on the birds […]
Stephan: The christofascist majority on the Supreme Court has now delivered something that the christofascist community has sought for decades: a breach of the wall the Founders created. Here one can see clearly that all the originalist arguments put out by the christofascist justices, backed by the Federalist Society, are nothing but political crap. If there is anything originalist about the Constitution it is the absolute separation of church and state. As a result of this, your tax dollars can now be used to fund christofascist schools that teach all the White supremacy, replacement theory, male dominance, and obsessive sex distortions, that such schools vomit out to their students.
The Supreme Court
The U.S. Constitution’s 1st Amendment is crystal clear when it comes to freedom of religion, declaring what while Americans are free to practice whatever religion they choose, the government cannot favor one religion, sect or denomination over another. This means that while Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs and Bahais are all free to practice their religions as they see fit, none of them are entitled to preferential treatment.
But the U.S. Supreme Court’s right-wing 6-3 supermajority, according to Justice Sonia Sotomayor and the retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, is failing to honor that separation of church and state.
These are the 1st Amendment’s exact words: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
Journalist Steve Benen, in an op-ed for MSNBC host Rachel Maddow’s MaddowBlog published on June 21, takes a look at the High Court’s 6-3 ruling in Carson v. Makin — which deals with education subsidies in Maine. According to NBC News, the decision, handed down on June 21, has “relaxed longstanding restrictions on using taxpayer money […]
