The Road To Gilead: Reaching The Gates

 The end of safe, legal abortion in half of the Unites States is now upon us.

The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade on Friday, holding that there is no longer a federal constitutional right to an abortion.  

The opinion is the most consequential Supreme Court decision in decades and will transform the landscape of women's reproductive health in America.   

Going forward, abortion rights will be determined by states, unless Congress acts.  Already, nearly half of the states have or will pass laws that ban abortion while others have enacted strict measures regulating the procedure.   

"Roe was egregiously wrong from the start," Justice Samuel Alito wrote in his majority opinion. "Its reasoning was exceptionally weak, and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have enflamed debate and deepened division." 

The vote was 5-3-1. In a joint dissenting opinion, Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan heavily criticized the majority, closing: "With sorrow -- for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection -- we dissent." 

The opinion represents the culmination of a decades-long effort on the part of critics of abortion seeking to return more power to the states.  It was made possible by a solid six-member conservative majority -- including three of Donald Trump's nominees.  

 

Now the country begins down the road to a federal abortion ban, and worse, overturning Griswold v Connecticut. Along this road will be thousands, tens of thousands, of women dying yearly.

If you personally don't care about access to safe abortions, you already know and care about somebody whose life will be affected by this, right now, today. Texas is already dancing on graves over this.

They won't stop with this, unless we stop them in the future. It's not the end of the battle. It's the start of the war.

Vote like your country depends on it.

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Pardon The Insurrection, Con't

The big legal issue for Trump's inner circle continues to be the slates of fraudulent electors. But the additional problem for Republican in Congress who went all in on Trump's coup is that several of them asked Trump for blanket pardons of their imminent criminal actions, those requests themselves being illegal as all hell.

In the days after Jan. 6, several of Mr. Trump’s political allies on Capitol Hill, who had helped stoke the false election claims and efforts to overturn the results, sought pardons from Mr. Trump, who considered granting them, according to testimony on Thursday.

Among those looking for a pardon was Representative Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida. Mr. Gaetz was seeking a blanket pardon that would have essentially covered any crime he had committed in his entire life. Although it was not known publicly at the time, Mr. Gaetz was under Justice Department investigation for paying a 17-year-old girl for sex.

“The general tone was, ‘We may get prosecuted because we were defensive of, you know, the president’s positions on these things,’” Mr. Herschmann, the White House lawyer, said in a video clip of his testimony. “The pardon that he was requesting was as broad as you could describe. I remember he said ‘from the beginning of time up until today. For any and all things.’”

“Nixon’s pardon was never nearly that broad,” Mr. Herschmann recalled saying at the time in response to the request.

A slew of other allies asked for them. Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama, sent an email to the White House seeking so called pre-emptive pardons for all House and Senate members who had voted to reject the Electoral College vote certifications of Mr. Biden’s victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania.

A former aide to Mr. Meadows, Cassidy Hutchinson, testified that several other Republican House members expressed interest in pardons, including Mr. Perry and Representatives Louie Gohmert of Texas and Andy Biggs of Arizona.

Ms. Hutchinson said she had also heard that Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia had reached out to the White House Counsel’s Office about a pardon.

Mr. Trump “had hinted at a blanket pardon for the Jan. 6 thing for anybody,” Mr. Trump’s former head of presidential personnel, John McEntee, testified.

Mr. Kinzinger suggested that the pardon requests were evidence that Mr. Trump’s allies had consciousness of guilt.

“The only reason I know to ask for a pardon is because you think you’ve committed a crime,” he said.

One of the other Republican crooks to request a pardon was Sen. Mo Brooks, who lost his primary on Tuesday  

Brooks, who this week lost a primary runoff for a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama, defended his pardon request. Brooks told CNN there was "a concern Democrats would abuse the judicial system by prosecuting and jailing Republicans."

I mean, he's right. Brooks deserves to be prosecuted and jailed. And he'll be out of the Senate very soon... 

You'll have to pardon him, you see.