In November ...

 

Dr. Kara Beasley protests the overturning of Roe vs. Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court, in Denver, Colorado on June 24, 2022.Jason Connolly/AFP via Getty Images

In Dobbs, doctors and patients are almost totally ignored in the court's zealous push to protect the unborn at all costs. In many ways, this parallels the inquisition whereby thousands of inocent people were put to death based on beliefs proven to be patently false but brutally enforced according to the rule of god. 

The Supreme Court ruled in doctors' favor in Roe v. Wade in 1973. The majority opinion spoke of "the right of a woman in consultation with her physician to choose an abortion," Murray says.

Yet doctors and patients are all but absent from the latest Supreme Court majority opinion on abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization. In fact, in the opinion, Justice Samuel Alito uses the derogatory term "abortionist" instead of physician or doctor or obstetrician-gynecologist.

Legal experts say that signals a major shift in how the court views abortion, and creates a perilous new legal reality for physicians. In states where abortion is restricted, health care providers may be in the position of counseling patients who want an abortion, including those facing pregnancy complications, in a legal context that treats them as potential criminals.

For doctors, abortion restrictions create an 'impossible choice' when providing care

"Alito's framing is that abortion is and was a crime – that's the language he uses," says Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis. There's no dispute, she says, that "the result of a decision overruling Roe in the short term is going to be the criminalization of doctors."

A 19th-century depiction of Galileo before the Holy Office, by Joseph-Nicolas Robert-Fleury

The message in November ... Vote democratic if you want to save this country.

Separation of church & state

Seems the SC doesn't understand the 1st Amendment in any way, shape or fashion.

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Equal and Inalienable Rights ...

Image Credit: Mariam Zuhaib

One cannot make this up. No writer, even five years ago, could have predicted the terminal insanity happening to America as we speak with particular emphasis given to the Supreme Court, a rogue entity hell bent on attacking the constitution and our inalienable rights with a ferocity driven by religious fanaticism of the highest order. From separation of church and state to a woman'e right to choose, this court is violating its charter to defend the constitution at all costs. 

Let’s go back to the very basics of democracy, as it’s instituted in America. The executive branch carries out — executes — laws. The legislative branch — Congress — makes law, in accordance with the constitution. And the judicial branch — whose ultimate arbiter is the Supreme Court — decides whether legislation is constitutional.

But there are limits even to all that, and those limits are in the constitution itself. Constitutions contain inalienable rights. Even a Supreme Court doesn’t have the authority to take such rights away. And when and where those rights have been amended — in constitutional amendments — the Supreme Court has no authority to take those rights away, either.

But they are and we're allowing it to happen. The very existence of this country is as stake thanks to this court from hell, a notion the Dems seem to not understand given just how tepid and meek the so called leadership of the party has been. The repugs, however, are driven and organized and have hijacked the court and our rights in plain sight thanks to the Bushes, Trump and Mitch. Will this country survive? A good question is it not? 

AMENDMENT I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

AMENDMENT II

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

AMENDMENT IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized

AMENDMENT XIV - Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

Section 1.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

This sentence is false ...

 Illustration by Nicolás Ortega. Source: "Turris Babel," Coenraet Decker, 1679.

Dazed and Confused, the song by Led Zeppelin, sums up the insanity raging through America as the country's vibe is not only crazed but stupid to a fault thanks to the rise of social media and the ability for the intellectually challenged to make their voices heard no matter how ridiculous their thought process may be, something exemplified by QAnon, a site proselytizing truly stupid shit 24/7. 

What would it have been like to live in Babel in the days after its destruction? In the Book of Genesis, we are told that the descendants of Noah built a great city in the land of Shinar. They built a tower “with its top in the heavens” to “make a name” for themselves. God was offended by the hubris of humanity and said:

Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.

The text does not say that God destroyed the tower, but in many popular renderings of the story he does, so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension.

Babel is not a story about tribalism. It’s a story about the fragmentation of everything.

Read the rest of Jonathan Haidt's excellent piece as he delves into the details of the tech equation of why Babel lives in the year of our lord 2022.

Illustration by Nicolás Ortega. Source: Belshazzar’s Feast, John Martin, 1820.

The final insult

 

A coal-fired power plant in Winfield, W.Va. At question in the case was whether the Clean Air Act allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to issue sweeping regulations across the power sector.

Credit...Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

The final insult from the court from hell, this time, the environment because it's ok to pollute the planet because it's all about the money, right?

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday limited the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate carbon emissions from power plants, dealing a blow to the Biden administration’s efforts to address climate change.

The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three liberal justices in dissent, saying that the majority had stripped the E.P.A. of “the power to respond to the most pressing environmental challenge of our time.”

Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times; 

photograph by Garen Meguerian, via Getty Images

Addendum: The ramifications of the West VA vs the EPA sc ruling goes beyond pollution, it goes to the right of government to protect the citizens of America.

The Supreme Court Sabotages Efforts to Protect Public Health and Safety

The decision amounts to a warning shot across the bow of the administrative state. The court’s current conservative majority, engaged in a counterrevolution against the norms of American society, is seeking to curtail the efforts of federal regulators to protect the public’s health and safety. The court already invoked a similar logic during the Covid pandemic to strike down workplace Covid testing requirements and a federal moratorium on evictions. And by refraining from defining a threshold for what constitutes a “major question,” the court is leaving a sword hanging over every new rule.

Toons yet again ...

Agent Orange + One

Dividing lines ...

Statute of limitations

The 9 month window ...

Not quite there yet

Caveats, caveats ...

Illegitimate

Evan Vucci/Getty Images

Outgoing Justice Stephen Breyer was one of the authors of the dissenting opinion in Dobbs, which suggested the majority’s decision was illegitimate.

You know when it's bad when members of any organization states that said organization's illegitimate, something never thought possible until the Roberts' court came into full fruition, thanks to the Bushes, Trump and MeConnell. Pushing for a fascist theocracy, this court gutted not only Roe but also the 1st Amendment, you know, the one stating the separation of church & state to be rather important in putting together a valid government designed to serve all people no matter what their religion or non religion might be, a concept alien to the zealots occupying a judicial body no longer considered legitimate in any way, shape or fashion.

In Supreme Court cases where at least one justice disagrees with the majority, three words almost always appear: “I respectfully dissent.” The formulation signals a polite disagreement, one where the justices recognize that different jurists can read the law and the Constitution in different ways and still act in good faith. Collegiality is a virtue to the court for a pragmatic reason: The justices have to work with each other for most, if not all, of the rest of their lives.

So it is notable when any of the justices writes a dissent that simply says, well, “I dissent.” The three liberal justices did just that in Friday’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. In their 60-page joint dissent, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan do more than just disagree with the majority’s reasoning—they cast the majority’s actions and outcome as illegitimate. It’s quite possible that this idea will be the nucleus of whatever argument eventually recovers the rights lost in Friday’s decision.

“Now a new and bare majority of this Court—acting at practically the first moment possible—overrules Roe and Casey,” the three justices wrote. “It converts a series of dissenting opinions expressing antipathy toward Roe and Casey into a decision greenlighting even total abortion bans. It eliminates a 50-year-old constitutional right that safeguards women’s freedom and equal station. It breaches a core rule-of-law principle, designed to promote constancy in the law. In doing all of that, it places in jeopardy other rights, from contraception to same-sex intimacy and marriage. And finally, it undermines the Court’s legitimacy.”

First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The best of both worlds ...

Yours truly has often thought about Brave New World and 1984 as the first used soma and eugenics to sculpt a world most pleasant to behold if one is an Alpha while the other waxed 

"poetic" about the all consuming push for goevernment to accrew power at all costs with 24/7 surveillance and a draconian porlitical environment from hell enforced by the Thought Police, something beginning to happen in the land of the brave and home of the free thanks to the machinations of a far right sc bent on taking away our fundamental rights using religion as the raison diet as to why this state of affairs should happen. Seems the two had a personal connect as well, which is most appropriate, as their take on the 20th century was both profound and disturbing at the same time.

In 1949, George Orwell received a curious letter from his former high school French teacher.

Orwell had just published his groundbreaking book Nineteen Eighty-Four, which received glowing reviews from just about every corner of the English-speaking world. His French teacher, as it happens, was none other than Aldous Huxley who taught at Eton for a spell before writing Brave New World (1931), the other great 20th century dystopian novel.

Huxley starts off the letter praising the book, describing it as “profoundly important.” He continues, “The philosophy of the ruling minority in Nineteen Eighty-Four is a sadism which has been carried to its logical conclusion by going beyond sex and denying it.”

Then Huxley switches gears and criticizes the book, writing, “Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World.” 

From this writer's perspective, both approaches to a controlled society could work in tandem by taking the "best" of both to create the "perfect" government for us rubes but reality always play the joker with its biggest one being GW, an onrushing catastrophe of our own making.

GAIA

Eye candy of the galactic kind. :)

It’s here! The third and largest data release (DR3) from the ESA’s Gaia Observatory has officially been made public. As promised, the DR3 contains new and improved details for almost two billion stars in our galaxy, including the chemical compositions, temperatures, colors, masses, ages, and the velocities at which stars move. The release coincided with a virtual press event hosted by the Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium (DPAC) on June 13th, which featured ESA officials and guest speakers who addressed the significance of the new data.

Much of this information consists of newly released spectroscopy data, a technique in which starlight is split into the color spectrum and analyzed to determine how it is being shifted. This technique is known as radial velocity (aka. Doppler Spectroscopy), where light is shifted towards the red or blue end of the spectrum (i.e., redshift and blueshift) based on whether the object is moving towards or away from Earth (respectively). Astrophysicists use this technique to determine how a star is moving relative to our own and also for the sake of detecting exoplanets.

How cool is that? :)

Pro Life