Yesterday was pretty quiet. Which is just fine with me. I’ll just mention that the yard sign below is the brainchils of John Pavlovitz. You can find it, along with some shirts with the design, in his merch. I’m not trying to be pushy, but so many times I’ve read “I want one of those!” as a comment on an article sharing something clever – I’m trying to be pro-active.
Here’s another feel-good story from Colorado. The video will keep playing as long as you let it, and there are some other popups which I hope won’t annoy you too much. Vallecito is down in the southwest corner of Colorado, 18 miles from Durango.)
In case this got lost … I’ve seen a couple of mentions of it but this is the most detailed (and I love the lede.)
Glenn Kirschner – With J6 committee revelations, it’s time for DOJ to indict Donald Trump & his co-conspirators
Meidas Touch – BREAKING: Democrats SLAM GOP for voting AGAINST contraception bIll
The Lincoln Project – Josh Hawley Is A B*tch
“Nyet Vladimir” – Ukrainian War Song (The Ukrainian version of the Finnish song “Nyet Molotov.” The Finns wrote the song during the 1939-1940 Winter War they were fighting against the Russians. Sadly, the Ukrainians had to adopt the tune with different lyrics in 2022.)
John Fugelsang – America’s Next President, Ron DeSantis
Beau – Let’s talk about privacy and your cell phone….
Yesterday, I of course watched the hearing. It doesn’t appear there will be another this week, but rather probably next week. The last two witnesses today were, I thought, impressive, although who knows what it takes to impress MAGAts. It’s not exactly the Committee’s mission to address political violence in general (as opposed to political violence in the service of Trump**) in the hearings, but I certainly hope it will be addressed as they draft legislation. Political violence at low levels (i.e., without a dominant leader common to the groups involved) can lead to fascismut as surely as a narcissistic ambitious dictator can. Besides the eharing, I didn’t do much else. I did a load of laundry comprising a few sweaters which are machine wash/dry flat and that’s about it.
Cartoon – This reminds me of an anecdote about a sweet elderly lady who had had massive surgeries bu never lost hersense of humor. She called one of her scars “Market Street.”
Short Takes –
Letters from an American – July 10, 2022
Quote – Democratic president Joe Biden appears to be centering his presidency around the idea of rebuilding the middle class through government investment in ordinary Americans. This is a major shift—a sea change—from the past 40 years of Republican policy saying that the economy would prosper if only the government slashed taxes and regulation, leaving more money and power in the hands of business leaders, those “makers” who would invest in new industries and provide more jobs. Watching the effect of his policies is a window into what works and what doesn’t. Click through for more, and why ir matters politically.
The 19th – What will happen if Obergefell is overturned? Queer legal experts are scrambling
Quote – A concurring opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case that ultimately overturned Roe indicates he wants to reexamine whether other rights based on substantive due process have been interpreted correctly. “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents,” Thomas wrote. Other opinions written by conservative justices show division over how the court should handle similar civil rights issues in the future. Click through for more legal thinking. Don’t forget Pastor Niemoller’s famous poem – no one is safe.
Experts in autocracies have pointed out that it is, unfortunately, easy to slip into normalizing the tyrant, hence it is important to hang on to outrage. These incidents which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them will, I hope, help with that. As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as “unceasing,” “grudging,” and “vengeful destruction.”
Overtrning Roe isn’t all the Supreme Court did this week which was disastrouus. It also weakened the rights of states to administer their own policies, with its decision to overtuen New York’s concealed carry law, and that opens another wholw can of worms. As well, it made the separation of church and state unconcstitutional. But what I want to address here is the overturning of Roe v Wade.
The basis for the Roe v Wade decision in the first place was the concept that, though it nowhere says so in so many words, the Constitution guarantees every American a right to privacy, including a right to make personal decisions for oneself, without interference from the government. It is that which the Court has stripped away (and pretty explicitly too.) It has been stripped from men as well sa from women, from children as well as adults, from white people as well as from black and brown people, fron straight people as well as from LGBTQIA+ people. Those who are worried about this decision have mentioned Loving and Obergefell and whichever decision it was that guaranteed access to contracepton. All these depend on the right to privacy. And now that’s gone. What now?
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Privacy isn’t in the Constitution – but it’s everywhere in constitutional law
Almost all American adults – including parents, medical patients and people who are sexually active – regularly exercise their right to privacy, even if they don’t know it.
Privacy is not specifically mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. But for half a century, the Supreme Court has recognized it as an outgrowth of protections for individual liberty. As I have studied in my research on constitutional privacy rights, this implied right to privacy is the source of many of the nation’s most cherished, contentious and commonly used rights – including the right to have an abortion – until the court’s June 24, 2022, ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson.
For instance, the First Amendment rights of speech and assembly allow people to privately decide what they’ll say, and with whom they’ll associate. The Fourth Amendment limits government intrusion into people’s private property, documents and belongings.
Relying on these explicit provisions, the court concluded in Griswold v. Connecticut that people have privacy rights preventing the government from forbidding married couples from using contraception.
In short order, the court clarified its understanding of the constitutional origins of privacy. In the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision protecting the right to have an abortion, the court held that the right of decisional privacy is based in the Constitution’s assurance that people cannot be “deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” That phrase, called the due process clause, appears twice in the Constitution – in the Fifth and 14th Amendments.
Decisional privacy also provided the basis for other decisions protecting many crucial, and everyday, activities.
The right to privacy is also key to a person’s ability to keep their family together without undue government interference. For example, in 1977, the court relied on the right to private family life to rule that a grandmother could move her grandchildren into her home to raise them even though it violated a local zoning ordinance.
Under a combination of privacy and liberty rights, the Supreme Court has also protected a person’s freedom in medical decision-making. For example, in 1990, the court concluded “that a competent person has a constitutionally protected liberty interest in refusing unwanted medical treatment.”
Limiting government disclosure
The right to decisional privacy is not the only constitutionally protected form of privacy. As then-Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist noted in 1977, the “concept of ‘privacy’ can be a coat of many colors, and quite differing kinds of rights to ‘privacy’ have been recognized in the law.”
This includes what is called a right to “informational privacy” – letting a person limit government disclosure of information about them.
According to some authority, the right extends even to prominent public and political figures. In one key decision, in 1977, Chief Justice Warren Burger and Rehnquist – both conservative justices – suggested in dissenting opinions that former President Richard Nixon had a privacy interest in documents made during his presidency that touched on his personal life. Lower courts have relied on the right of informational privacy to limit the government’s ability to disclose someone’s sexual orientation or HIV status.
All told, though the word isn’t in the Constitution, privacy is the foundation of many constitutional protections for our most important, sensitive and intimate activities. If the right to privacy is eroded – such as in a future Supreme Court decision – many of the rights it’s connected with may also be in danger.
This story was updated on June 24, 2022, to reflect the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.
============================================================== Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone, without the right to privacy, and with this particular Court comprising these particular justices, there may be no limit to the rights which may be stripped away, from all of us. In fact, with this Court, it may not even matter if progressives achieve commanding majorities in Congress and the White House. We may already be living in a fascist country, details to be released as the fascists deem appropriate.
Yesterday, the radio opera was “The Marriage of Figaro” by Mozart. It’s been up before, so I won’t go into details. The performance was at the Paris Opera, and the cast included three pretty well-known bass baritones (one American, one Englishman, and one Italian [married to the daughter of another American one]) and pretty much no one else I had ever heard of. But no major company is ever going to put on a bad performance of this opera. It’s kind of ironic that it’s on today – something which was planned long ago – because it high;ights the position of women in a male-dominated society (that was probably unconscious) and also how class status affects everyone, but women especially (and that was definitely conscious and led to censorship.)
Of course I could not ignore SCOTUS. Both here and with the Furies I have chosen to explore “Now What?” One of today’s short takes is hopeful, but hope needs effort to come to fruition. And in one piece of good news, NATO has granted candidate status to Ukraine. President Zelenskyy thanked each nation’s leader by name and the name of the country, and also the President of the EU, on the Zoom call which notified him. Mitch (I had missed it.)
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
We’re Not Going Back to the Time Before Roe. We’re Going Somewhere Worse
Quote – If a fetus is a person, then a legal framework can be invented to require someone who has one living inside her to do everything in her power to protect it, including—as happened to Savita Halappanavar, in Ireland, which operated under a fetal-personhood doctrine until 2018, and to Izabela Sajbor, in Poland, where all abortion is effectively illegal—to die. No other such obligation exists anywhere in our society, which grants cops the freedom to stand by as children are murdered behind an unlocked door. Click through for full article, including optional audio. The New Yorker is right. There has never been a time in history when women have been quite as discounted as this decision ad its eventuality imposes. And the article does not even go into other rights wich are likely to disappear – and h=not just women’s rights – as subsequent decisions come to reflect the logical consequences of this one.
POGO – Accountability: The Path to Improve Government Effectiveness and the Antidote to Authoritarianism
Quote – There are six primary mechanisms that, if working properly, serve as pillars of accountability in federal government. They are: whistleblowers, who expose wrongdoing; inspectors general, who serve as independent watchdogs at each government agency; congressional oversight, which provides a check on executive power; transparency and civil society participation, which ensure that the government answers to the people; independent journalism, which investigates and exposes wrongdoing; and the equal application of the rule of law to the highest levels of government. Click through for full analysis. Progressives’ work is never done. Of course, that is true of all whose work is or includes cleaning up the messes made by others.
Yesterday,I slept in again, due to shoulder issues again, although, because I resomved them a couple of hours earlier than the night before, I also got more sleep than the night before. Hopefyllu I have figures out the frmula and can resolve them earlier still while they last. I al assuing they are arthritis, and arthritis (and sciatica) hae a habit of coming in flare-ups and gong away again after 2-6 weeks, depending. That doesn’t mean they won’t ever come back, but – touching wood – after my knee flareup in February 2020 (which was agonizing), that knee has been fine ever since – unlike some other body parts I could mention. So there can be good long periosof no to minimal pain also.
Cartoon –
Short Takes –
Project on Government Oversight – How to Protect Yourself from Surveillance While Seeking Reproductive Health Care
Quote – Living under an abortion ban in 2022 will not be similar to 1972, before Roe v. Wade. Due to the massive surveillance powers the government now possesses, the consequences of the ban could be much more draconian. Law enforcement not only has powerful tools to monitor individuals, but can capture a stream of sensitive data we produce in our daily lives, often without us realizing it’s happening. And investigating individuals for prohibited abortions will likely direct the government’s immense surveillance powers at the most intimate medical, familial, and sexual details of people’s lives. Click through for other aspects. I know a lot of readers here will never be pregnant – I won’t myself. But, in addition to at least some of us having people in our lives we care about whoo could, I found reading this made me think about other things I tend to take for granted. You may also.
Science alert – The Human Heart Can Repair Itself, And We Now Know Which Cells Are Crucial For It
Quote – Key to the study was the discovery of the role played by macrophages, specialist cells that can destroy bacteria or initiate helpful inflammation responses. As the first responders on a scene after a heart attack, these macrophages produce a particular type of protein called VEGFC, the researchers report. “We found that macrophages, or immune cells that rush to the heart after a heart attack to ‘eat’ damaged or dead tissue, also induce vascular endothelial growth factor C (VEGFC) that triggers the formation of new lymphatic vessels and promotes healing,” says pathologist Edward Thorp from Northwestern University in Illinois. Click through for full info. There’s nothing here that makes any recommendations for current patients – but it’s hopeful that such recommendations may come as we understand more.
Glenn Kirschner – Draft opinion shows Supreme Court about to revoke women’s constitutional privacy rights
Meidas Touch – Texas Paul REACTS to Supreme Court Justices Lying UNDER OATH!
Rebel HQ – Ojeda v. Gaetz
Really American – GOP Plans To Take Right to Privacy (It’s been suggested that future movemets for abortion [and birth control] should not focus on the 14th Amendment but on the 13th, which prohibits involuntary servitude, and I concur.)
Mitch (I had missed it.)
