Stephan: Here is some potentially excellent good news. These weapons were designed to kill human beings in violent combat as many and as quickly as possible. There is no rational reason that such weapons should be on the streets of America, and I hope the two bills put forward by the Democrats become law.
House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.) has proposed two pieces of legislation aiming to incorporate more accountability measures for the firearm industry.
According to NBC News, the two bills seek to create penalties for gun manufacturers that sell “weapons of war” to civilian customers. The two measures focus on imposing tax increases and the creation of a criminal tracking system.
The first measure, the Firearm Industry Fairness Act would “impose a 20% tax on the total revenue earned by manufacturers who produce assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.”
The Democratic lawmaker explained that the money generated from the newly-imposed tax would be utilized for “gun violence prevention efforts and to support shooting victims.”
✎ EditSign, per the news outlet “would require every company that manufactures guns to create a system that tracks crimes committed with firearms they’ve sold, using data collected by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.”
“This summer, my Committee heard from those touched […]
James Carroll, - Reader support News / The New Yorker
Stephan: In my opinion, there should not be five Roman Catholic conservatives on the Supreme Court, any more than there should be five ultra-orthodox Jews, or ultra-orthodox Sunni Muslims. (Neil Gorsuch, as the article notes was reared as a Catholic but is now an Episcopalian and, I would bet, high church Episcopalian, which is basically Catholic without the pope.) It is not representative of the American population, and this situation only exists because of the MAGAt Party (I have a lot of respect for the old Republican Party, which no longer exists, so I am no longer going to call that party Republican because it is not.)
Here is a very well-researched and thoughtful article on what this skewing of the Supreme Court now means.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts. Credit: Getty
As part of the Vatican’s war on “modernism” in 1899, Pope Leo XIII condemned as heresy the set of principles known as “Americanism.” But, by 1965, at the Second Vatican Council, the Church had begun to embrace such supposedly odious ideas: pluralism, the separation of church and state, the primacy of conscience, the preference of experience over dogma, and—for that matter—freedom of the press. This was a historic reversal of the Church’s panicked nineteenth-century repudiation of, in Pope Leo’s words, “modern popular theories and methods.”
Now five Catholic Justices on the Supreme Court are reversing the Church’s reversal. (Neil Gorsuch, who is now an Episcopalian but was raised and educated as a Catholic, joined his five colleagues in overturning Roe v. Wade.) These Justices are undermining not only basic elements of American democracy, such as the “wall of separation,” but also the essential spirit of Catholicism’s great twentieth-century renewal. It’s no secret, of course, that the Second Vatican Council, or Vatican II, which had been summoned by the […]
Stephan: Louisiana, a state run by MAGAts voted into office by MAGAt voters is one of the worst governed states in the United States. Its social outcome data is so bad that if it were a country it would be considered a failed state. For instance, a pregnant woman in Lousiana, unless she is rich, would be more likely to survive birth, and have her child survive birth if she delivered in Botswana, Africa. And as for early childhood support, Louisiana is definitely third world. Fostering wellbeing, as this article about what is being done to New Orleans illustrates, isn't even a consideration in the state legislature. And yet the people of Louisiana, to their own measurable detriment, vote MAGAts into office election after election.
Flooding in New Orleans in May 2018. Credit: Bart Everson / Flickr
A Louisiana commission is withholding approval of New Orleans flood control funds over city officials’ opposition to the state’s strict abortion ban.
The Louisiana State Bond Commission has twice voted to delay approval of a future $39 million line of credit for a power station to run New Orleans drainage pumps that would protect the city’s 384,000 residents from flooding and have been described as critical for the city’s ability to adapt to climate change.
Both votes, each taken at times when New Orleans was under an active flood advisory, have been at the urging of Republican Attorney General Jeff Landry, who is enraged by city officials’ response to the near-total abortion ban.
“This is them coming right out to the rest of the citizens of the state saying, ‘We don’t care what your law is,’” Landry said at yesterday’s commission meeting.
Louisiana’s abortion ban does not include exemptions for rape or incest, and has forced closure of abortion clinics throughout the state, including in New Orleans. City […]
Stephan: This is how crazy post-Roe women's healthcare has become in Red states, and what women are driven to do in this post-Roe world. The people of Nebraska are responsible for this, they voted these people into office. Only they are going to end it, if they want that, by how they vote in November. We are going to see in less than three months. Abortion has become a major part of the Great Schism Trend. We are, in a growing number of ways, choosing to become two countries.
Pro-woman demonstrators in Nebraska Credit: AP
OMAHA, NEBRASKA — A Nebraska woman has been charged with helping her teenage daughter end her pregnancy at about 24 weeks after investigators obtained Facebook messages in which the two discussed using medication to induce an abortion and plans to burn the fetus afterward.
The prosecutor handling the case said it’s the first time he has charged anyone for illegally performing an abortion after 20 weeks, a restriction that was passed in 2010. Before the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, states weren’t allowed to enforce abortion bans until the point at which a fetus is considered viable outside the womb, at roughly 24 weeks.
In one of the Facebook messages, Jessica Burgess, 41, tells her then 17-year-old daughter that she has obtained abortion pills for her and gives her instructions on how to take them to end the pregnancy.
The daughter, meanwhile, “talks about how she can’t wait to get the ‘thing’ out of her body,” a detective wrote in court documents. “I will finally be able to wear […]
Stephan: I don't think it is properly or fully understood just what a big effect on American society the Roe decision is producing. And it is not just an effect on women, as this article explains.
In March, Mike Pridgen, a 28-year-old comedian based in New Jersey, got a vasectomy and posted the process on TikTok. His doctor, off camera, can be heard saying “little pinch here” and Mr. Pridgen winces, his eyes shut tight behind his glasses, bracing for pain.
“Oh,” Mr. Pridgen says. “That’s not nearly as bad as I thought it was going to be.”
That video has now been viewed more than two million times and the response has been overwhelmingly positive, he said. The comments, which were mostly from women, were celebratory and encouraging. They thanked him for “sharing his journey” and for encouraging other men to do the same.
Vasectomy, a quick, outpatient surgical procedure that cuts the tubes that carry sperm, is one of the most reliable and cost-effective forms of contraception available — with almost none of the side effects or complications of birth control methods that are geared toward women. Yet, it has remained relatively rare: in the United States, an estimated 500,000 men get the procedure each year. Some surveys suggest […]
