Stephan: If I were a woman in Idaho I would be furious. The christofascist MAGAts in the state legislature have passed a law which would allow the family of a rapist to sue a girl or woman who has been raped if they chose to have an abortion. The same state legislators have also repeatedly tried to make it more difficult or impossible for women and girls in the state to get access to contraception. If I were a fertile female in Idaho I would immediately plan to move to Washington or Oregon. There is obviously no limit to what the christofascist MAGAts will do to let the state control women's bodies. This is like something put forward by the Taliban.
People demonstrate against the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in Boise, Idaho, on July 20, 2022. Credit: Sarah A. Miller / Idaho Stateman / Tribune New Service / Getty
Idaho is the westernmost state to embrace the extremist bans that now characterize much of the South and Midwest U.S. Its ban, based on a trigger law passed a couple years back and intended to kick in as soon as Roe was overturned, allows for exceptions only in the cases of rape, incest or medical emergencies. But the penalties it imposes on doctors who perform abortion — five years in prison — are so severe that it’s hard to see how more than a handful will be willing to take the chance. Its language was so vague that the Justice Department ended up suing the state, arguing it would prevent people from receiving abortions even when their lives were at risk. On August 24, a judge blocked the provider-punishment […]
Stephan: Thanks to Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, and the Senatorial MAGAts, the U.S. Supreme Court has been transformed from a court committed to justice and the law into a majority made up of a MAGAt cabal of incompetents, committed to ideology and power not justice. Nowhere is this more obvious and important than in the decisions coming out of this cabal pertaining to the environment.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
Eco-Grade: F
Start date: September 29, 2005
Appointed by: President George W. Bush (R)
Of the cases we considered, Roberts voted in favor of environmental victories 26.08% of the time.
Roberts spent the first eight years as chief justice voting against stronger environmental protections.
Roberts helped pass two significant environmental victories in his ninth year in office.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. is a practitioner of “judicial constraint,” and has been quoted saying he’s an “avid supporter of the belief that the role of the court is an umpire, meaning that the role is to interpret the rules, not create them.”2
In 2007, Roberts voted against Massachusetts v. EPA. In this landmark case, the majority voted in favor of Massachusetts, ruling that greenhouse gas emissions are considered “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act and that states can sue the EPA if it fails to regulate them.
Roberts voted against the state, saying he would have dismissed its claims. Chief Justice Roberts’ dissenting opinion argued that Massachusetts should not have had standing to sue, because the potential […]
David Badash, Staff Writer - New Civil Rights Movement
Stephan: I find it amazing and very sad that Clarence Thomas has not been impeached and removed from the Supreme Court because both he and his wife are so blatantly corrupt and clearly working to defile American democracy. Here is the latest report on this loathsome couple and their machinations.
Two christofascist MAGAt couples working to destroy American democracy
Ginni Thomas‘ efforts to influence the overturning of the 2020 presidential election are even wider than previously known. Thomas, a far-right activist and lobby who happens to also be the spouse of the most right-wing U.S. Supreme Court justice, not only engaged in a months-long pressure campaign to influence then-Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to help overturn the results of the election, and pressured 29 GOP lawmakers in Arizona to overturn the election, but also pressured lawmakers in another critical battleground state, Wisconsin, to do so as well.
The Washington Post Thursday reports “new emails show that Thomas also messaged two Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin: state Sen. Kathy Bernier, then chair of the Senate elections committee, and state Rep. Gary Tauchen. Bernier and Tauchen received the email at 10:47 a.m. on Nov. 9, virtually the same time the Arizona lawmakers received a verbatim copy of the message from Thomas. The Bernier email was obtained by The […]
Stephan: Climate change is well underway as this story describes, and think about what it lays out and the fact that one-third of Pakistan is presently underwater. If you own coastal property I would also be thinking about selling it in the next few years, before you can't get insurance, and coastal real estate values collapse.
Melting Greenland Ice
Widespread ice losses from Greenland have locked in nearly a foot of global sea level rise that’s set to come in the near future — and new research suggests there is no way to stop it, even if the world stopped releasing planet-heating emissions today.
The study, published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that the overall ice loss from Greenland’s ice sheet will trigger at least 10 inches of sea level rise, no matter the climate warming scenarios. That’s generally the same amount that global seas have already risen over the last century from Greenland, Antarctica and thermal expansion (when ocean water expands as it warms) combined.
Researchers from the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland observed changes in ice-sheet volume in and around Greenland and saw that meltwater runoff has been the primary driver. Using “well-established theory,” the scientists were able to determine that around 3.3% of the Greenland ice sheet — equivalent to 110 trillion tons of ice — will inevitably melt as […]
Stephan: When people look back from the future the commentary will be about how willfully ignorant the governments of our time were. According to Pew Research Center, about half of MAGAts (48%) think the government is doing about the right amount and another 26% say it is doing too much about climate change.
As Pakistan and the United Nations asked the world for $160 million in response to catastrophic flooding in the country, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday also issued a broader warning about the human-caused climate emergency.
“It is outrageous that climate action is being put on the back burner as global emissions of greenhouse gases are still rising.”
“Let’s stop sleepwalking toward the destruction of our planet by climate change,” Guterres said. “Today, it’s Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.”
Tens of millions of Pakistanis are contending with over 1,000 deaths and the widespread destruction of buildings and crops, the result of what Guterres called “a monsoon on steroids—the relentless impact of epochal levels of rain and flooding.”
“Millions are homeless, schools and health facilities have been destroyed, livelihoods are shattered, critical infrastructure wiped out, and people’s hopes and dreams have washed away,” he noted. “Every province of the country has been affected.”
Recalling his time as high commissioner for refugees, Guterres said in the aid appeal video that he witnessed Pakistan welcome people from war-torn Afghanistan, and “its breaks my heart to see […]
