Last Call For The Road To Gilead Goes Through Ohio, Con't

Having been roundly defeated in their efforts to make the vote in November on Issue 1 enshrining reproductive rights into the state constitution more difficult by requiring 60% of the vote, Ohio Republicans led by GOP Secretary of State and US Senate hopeful Frank LaRose are changing the rules again, trying to put a thumb, arm, shoulder, torso and body on the scale to muddle the language of the ballot initiative.

 

In a 3-2 split decision Thursday, the Ohio Ballot Board rejected using the full text of a proposed reproductive rights amendment on the ballot in November, adopting instead summary language written by the Ohio Secretary of State’s Office that was criticized for being incomplete and inaccurate.

The board’s approval of the language – which is now titled Issue 1 for the November general election – was the next step in the process of voters deciding whether or not the Ohio Constitution will include the right to abortion, as well as contraception, fertility treatment, miscarriage care, and continuing one’s own pregnancy. Those last four items were all left out of the language approved by the ballot board majority.

The summary language does not change what the actual amendment would state in the constitution, but would be the last representation of the amendment voters read before the casting their approval or rejection.

The full text of the amendment will be available at boards of elections during the election, but not in the ballot booths with voters. LaRose said posters with the text will be accessible at voting locations.

In the summary language approved by the board, the medical term “fetus” is changed to “unborn child,” and the amendment’s “decision” language is changed to “medical treatment.”

The leader of the Ohio Ballot Board, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, said the changes were made by “staff” of the board, though Democratic board member and state Rep. Elliot Forhan said “I would assume that the buck stops with the secretary of state.”

LaRose during the meeting also said that, “having worked extensively on drafting this, I do believe it’s fair and accurate.”

LaRose has been vocal in his opposition of the amendment, even saying the effort around the previous Issue 1, which would have changed the threshold to approve a constitutional amendment had it not been roundly defeated, was targeting the abortion rights fight specifically.

At the beginning of Thursday’s meeting, he prefaced the board’s activity by saying the group was not there to “debate the merits” of the amendment or the marijuana ballot initiative also on the table at the meeting.

Board member and state Sen. Theresa Gavarone, however, gave a speech in the middle of the meeting harshly criticizing the amendment and calling it “a bridge too far,” even after multiple comments by LaRose about the neutrality with which the board was supposed to conduct their business.

“This is a dangerous amendment that I’m going to fight tirelessly against,” Gavarone said. “But that’s not why we’re here today.”

Gavarone also claimed, as anti-abortion groups throughout the state do as well, that the amendment is “an assault on parental rights.” Neither the amendment nor the summary approved by the board mention parental rights of any kind.

The senator continued her comments during the board meeting, saying the true nature of the amendment “is hidden behind overly broad language,” despite the fact that the board summary took out pieces of the full text.

The summary passed by the board does not include a list of the rights to “reproductive decisions” spelled out in the ballot measure, including contraception, fertility treatment, continuing one’s own pregnancy, and miscarriage care, all of which would be impacted under the new constitutional amendment.

 

So one more set of hurdles on the amendment itself, and Republicans are forced to rewrite and hide the fact the ballot initiative will protect a number of reproductive rights for Ohioans, because that would be popular and the vote might actually pass.

 

Republicans of course can't have that. I fully expect that should the ballot initiative pass, the most corrupt GOP state legislature in the country will simply turn to the GOP-controlled State Supreme Court to interpret that the state's abortion ban meets the criteria of the language of the ballot amendment, or far more likely in a ruling that favors the amendment and strikes down the law, Republicans will ignore it fully.

I mean, we've already gotten to the point where the state is ignoring the Court's ruling on gerrymandering, now stuck in a permanent limbo where even if the state Supreme Court doesn't play ball, Republicans will ignore the ballot measure and the courts and continue to shut down abortion clinics and hospital procedures in the state anyway.

There just isn't any reason to believe that Republicans will pay attention to the ballot measure if it wins, or they'll just make it impossible to enforce with loopholes and evasions that would make Republicans in Florida and Texas jealous.

I do expect the ballot to win in November.

The real fight begins then.

The Moose Lady Is Loose: Civil War Edition

In a bid to make herself relevant in GOP politics again, Alaska's biggest loser called on people to rise up after Trump's arrest on Newsmax on Thursday night. 

 

Sarah Palin responded to Donald Trump’s arrest in Georgia on Thursday night by talking up the possibility of civil war. Speaking to Eric Bolling as the former president was booked at the Fulton County Jail on election interference charges, Palin slammed “those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice.” “I want to ask them: What the heck?” the former Alaska governor said. “Do you want us to be in civil war? Because that’s what’s going to happen. We’re not going to keep putting up with this.” Addressing Bolling, Palin went on to say: “I like that you suggested that we need to get angry. We do need to rise up and take our country back.

 

If you didn't have Moose Lady on your bingo card calling for open revolt against the US, well, nobody did because she's the kind of GOP "luminary" that has to go on Newsmax to get any attention at all, and while it's pretty disturbing to see he call for civil war, I'm betting she'll have a good time with the attention she'll get in the near future...from federal law enforcement. 

All proving that we dodged a bullet with John McCain's loss to Obama, Jesus.

Going Viral In Kentucky, Con't

Welcome back to school here in Kentucky, kids. You may think Covid is over. Covid doesn't think it's over with you.

Two school districts in eastern Kentucky have canceled in-person classes this week after a rise in illnesses including Covid-19, respiratory viruses and strep among its students and staff, according to local officials.

The Lee County School District, which enrolls just under 900 students, reported an 82% decrease in attendance last Friday, which it attributed to illnesses including flu and colds, Superintendent Earl Ray Shuler said. 

Lee County started the school year on August 8. By Monday of this week, the attendance rate had dropped to 81%, with 14 staff members also out sick, Shuler said.

Shuler said all buildings and buses are being sanitized, and all student activities for the remainder of the week are canceled.

Classwork will be done remotely for the remainder of the week. In-person learning returns Monday.

Students who had Covid-19 will be required to wear masks for five days when students return to school, Shuler said.

Magoffin County Schools, which has approximately 1,800 students, has seen its student attendance plummet from 95% last week to 83% on Wednesday, Magoffin County Schools Superintendent Chris Meadows told CNN by phone.

Meadows said the district made the decision Wednesday to cancel classes for the remainder of the week and will have students return to school Monday.

“We just kept seeing a trend,” Meadows said. “It’s not an easy decision, I don’t like to close school.”

 

A not-so-gentle reminder that the pandemic is still very much with us, and with one out of every five kids sick already in some districts, it's only going to get worse once we hit the heart of flu and Covid season later this fall. 

Believe it, from the guy who's taking care of loads of leave of absence tickets at your local enterprise IT desk because HR forces you on to short-term leave if you're out sick more than 3 straight days. Those tickets are way up too since school started, with snotty little kids bringing diseases to and from the local petri dish with 35 kids stuffed in a classroom and getting mom and dad sick.

It's going to be a bad winter.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

   

What a mug shot.

Hopefully the next one will be in his intake jumper.

Trump Cards, Con't

Last night's GOP primary debate was essentially meaningless as the losers scrambled for who would be the biggest loser to Trump, and Trump was busy having a nice chat with Tucker Carlson and laying down markers for justifying spectacular violence against liberals in the months ahead.

In a rambling interview, speckled with discussion of conspiracy theories from whether the billionaire sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was murdered in his jail cell to the role of federal agencies limiting the amount of water in washing machines, Trump took aim at critics on all sides in his traditional derisory fashion.

But the social media broadcast took a dark turn when, after discussion of the numerous criminal charges against Trump and divisions in the US, Carlson asked if he thinks the US is headed to “civil war” and “open conflict”.

Trump said he didn’t know but then added: “I can say this. There’s a level of passion that I’ve never seen, there’s a level of hatred that I’ve never seen, and that’s probably a bad combination.”

Carlson responded: “That is a bad combination.”

Earlier in the 46-minute interview broadcast on Twitter, Carlson asked Trump if he is concerned “the left”, after impeaching and then indicting him, would try to kill him.

“They’re savage animals. They are people that are sick, really sick,” Trump responded. “You have great people that are Democrats. Most of the people in our country are fantastic. And I’m representing everybody … But I’ve seen what they do.”

Carlson, who is engaged in a protracted dispute with his former network after being taken off air, launched the interview five minutes before the Republican debate aired on Fox. If that was an attempt to upstage both Trump’s rivals in the 2024 election and Carlson’s ex-employer, then it would appear to have been successful. The interview had more than 80m views on Twitter within two hours of being posted.

Carlson opened with a question about why Trump wasn’t at the Milwaukee debate.

“You see the polls that have come out and I’m leading by 50 and 60 points and some of them are at one and zero and two. And I’m saying do I sit there for an hour or two hours or whatever it’s going to be and get harassed by people who shouldn’t even be running for president?” he said.

“I just felt it would be more appropriate not to do the debate.”

 

A casual conversation about the animals - not humans - on the left trying to have Trump killed, and what you, the loyal Trump cultist, should do about it.  Totally normal stuff in a totally healthy democratic country, right?

They are trying to terrify MAGA chuds into violence while we watch, while Trump's mug shot from his surrender to Fulton County Georgia officials happens today, and Trump absolutely planned it.

Meanwhile, Republicans in DC and Georgia are expected to mount a full-on assault on Fulton County DA Fani Willis.

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee is expected to open a congressional investigation into Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis as soon as Thursday, a source tells CNN – the same day former President Donald Trump is slated to surrender at the county jail after being charged for participating in schemes to meddle with Georgia’s 2020 election results.

The committee is expected to ask Willis whether she was coordinating with the Justice Department, which has indicted Trump twice in two separate cases, or used federal dollars to complete her investigation that culminated in the fourth indictment of Trump, the source added. The anticipated questions from Republicans about whether Willis used federal funding in her state-level investigation mirrors the same line of inquiry that Republicans used to probe Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who indicted Trump in New York for falsifying business records to cover up an alleged hush money scheme.

Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans could launch their own state-level investigation into Willis’ probe, according to GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who has spoken to top officials in the state about a potential probe. She has also been pushing for a congressional-led inquiry into Willis, who has previously dismissed GOP accusations accusing her of being partisan and consistently defended her investigation.

“I’m going to be talking to (House Judiciary Chair) Jim Jordan, (House Oversight Chair) Jamie Comer, and I’d like to also ask (Speaker) Kevin McCarthy his thoughts on looking at doing an investigation if there is a collaboration or conspiracy of any kind between the Department of Justice and Jack Smith’s special counsel’s office with the state DA’s,” Greene told CNN. “So, I think that could be a place of oversight.”

It all amounts to a familiar playbook for House Republicans, who have been quick to try to use their congressional majority – which includes the ability to launch investigations, issue subpoenas and restrict funding – to defend the former president and offer up some counter programming amid his mounting legal battles. But they’ve also run into some resistance in their extraordinary efforts to intervene in ongoing criminal matters, while there are questions about what jurisdiction they have over state-level investigations.

 

All I have to say at this point is that whatever protective measures Willis has, she needs to triple them.

Russian To Final Judgment

Vladimir Putin wasn't going to leave Wagner Group head Yevgeny Prigozhin around as a loose end much longer, not after Wagner's putative revolt against Putin's rule earlier this summer was shut down in under 24 hours and as widely expected, apparently that loose end got snipped Wednesday.

 

Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin was on the passenger list of a plane that crashed in Russia's Tver region on Wednesday, according to the press service of Russia's Federal Air Transport Agency.

Ten people were killed in the crash near the town of Kuzhenkino, including Prigozhin.

"An investigation has been launched into the crash of the Embraer aircraft, which occurred tonight in the Tver region. According to the list of passengers, among them is the name and surname of Yevgeny Prigozhin," the department said in a statement.

Among the 10 dead were three crew members and seven passengers. The seven passengers were identified as Sergey Propustin, Evgeniy Makaryan, Aleksandr Totmin, Valeriy Chekalov, Dmitriy Utkin, Nikolay Matuseev and Prigozhin.

The crew was identified as Cmdr. Aleksei Levshin, co-pilot Rustam Karimov and flight attendant Kristina Raspopova.

The Federal Air Transport Agency said the plane was en route from Moscow to St. Petersburg.

Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said in a statement, "The demonstrative elimination of Prigozhin and the Wagner command two months after the coup attempt is a signal from Putin to Russia's elites ahead of the 2024 elections."

President Joe Biden has been briefed on the plane crash in Russia, according to the White House.

Biden told reporters he didn't "know for a fact what happened, but I'm not surprised."

"There’s not much that happens in Russia that Putin’s not behind, but I don’t know enough to know the answer," he told reporters in Lake Tahoe, where he is on vacation.

 

I mean it's possible that Prigozhin is still alive somewhere, but I'm pretty sure whatever plans Putin has for him at this point, he wishes he had been killed in a plane crash if that's the case. 

Russian officials are basically going SURE IS A SHAME HE'S DEAD, ALEXA PLAY BACK IN THE USSR right now, and I strongly doubt we'll ever really know what happened.

But Putin knows, and brother, he's not telling.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead Goes Through South Carolina

After Republicans replaced the only woman on South Carolina's state Supreme Court who blocked the state's "fetal heartbeat" abortion ban earlier this year, a 4-1 decision from the now all-male panel has stripped the right of bodily autonomy from the state's women.

 

South Carolina’s new all-male Supreme Court reversed course on abortion on Wednesday, upholding a ban on most such procedures after about six weeks of pregnancy.

The 4-1 ruling departs from the court’s own decision earlier this year to strike down a similar law.

The continued erosion of legal abortion access across the U.S. South comes after Republican state lawmakers replaced the lone female on the court, Justice Kaye Hearn.

Writing for the new majority, Justice John Kittredge acknowledged that the 2023 law infringes on “a woman’s right of privacy and bodily autonomy,” but said the state legislature reasonably determined this time around that those interests don’t outweigh “the interest of the unborn child to live.”

“As a Court, unless we can say that the balance struck by the legislature was unreasonable as a matter of law, we must uphold the Act,” Kittredge wrote.

It was Hearn who wrote the majority’s lead opinion in January striking down the ban. The court ruled then that the law violated the state constitution’s right to privacy.

Hearn then reached the court’s mandatory retirement age, enabling the Republican-dominated legislature to put Gary Hill on what is now the nation’s only state Supreme Court with an entirely male bench.

 

And yet plenty of women will continue to vote for Republicans in SC and plenty of other red states, and just accept that all women need to be second-class citizen to the axolotl tank imperative in order to keep all the crabs in the bucket, and none can escape.

Increasingly, your rights depend on where you live in America, and solely so in some cases. That's not justice or fairness, it's tyranny.

 

Orange Meltdown: A Rudy Awakening Edition

Rudy Giuliani faces the music in Georgia today for his role in Trump's election-theft conspiracy to defraud the state.

Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump’s personal lawyer who championed the former president’s bogus election fraud claims, said he will turn himself in to authorities in Georgia on Wednesday to face racketeering charges alleging he meddled in the state’s 2020 presidential election.

"I’m going to Fulton County to comply with the law, which I always do," he told reporters before leaving for Georgia. "I don’t know if I plea today but if I do I plead not guilty."


Giuliani and Trump both face 13 counts, more than the other 17 defendants in the case.

The former New York City mayor has maintained his innocence, and claimed the only thing he’s guilty of was zealously advocating for his client.

“I never thought I’d ever get indicted for being a lawyer,” Giuliani said on his radio show last week.

Trump has said he will surrender at the Atlanta jail Thursday.

Giuliani is being represented by New York-based attorney John Esposito, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney.

After their arrival, they will go to his local counsel’s office, where Giuliani will remain as the attorneys go to District Attorney Fani Willis’s office to negotiate a bail amount and sign documents.

Once a judge approves those documents, Giuliani will head to the Fulton County Jail, where he will be fingerprinted and photographed. His arraignment is expected in the next week or two and may take place virtually.

"I get photographed, isn’t that nice? A mugshot for the mayor who probably put the worst criminal of the 20th century in jail," Giuliani complained to reporters when he left his apartment.

The indictment in Fulton County alleges that Giuliani was a key part of a criminal conspiracy, pressing election officials in Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania to act on voting fraud claims that he was repeatedly told were false. Giuliani was also charged with promoting false claims that voting machines were rigged, and making false claims in sworn legal filings.

Additionally, the indictment singles out false claims Giuliani made about Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman, who was targeted with death threats and harassed as a result of the phony allegations.

The main charge against Giuliani — racketeering — is similar to a federal law he used with great success when he was U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Giuliani predicted Wednesday that he will be vindicated. “This will be proven to be like all the rest, a complete hoax and a lie,” he said.

 

I predict Rudy Giuliani will spend the rest of his life behind bars, completing his fall from grace as NYC's Hizzoner to Georgia inmate. Of course, during that meeting with Fani Willis today, he could always cut a deal.

 

We'll see.

Supreme Crooks, Cads, And Creeps, Con't

The conservative network of super-rich donors that have given more than $1 billion to corrupt right-wing Supreme Court justices are now facing investigation by Washington DC's Attorney General.

 

Washington D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb is investigating judicial activist Leonard Leo and his network of nonprofit groups, according to a person with direct knowledge of the probe.

The scope of the investigation is unclear. But it comes after POLITICO reported in March that one of Leo’s nonprofits — registered as a charity — paid his for-profit company tens of millions of dollars in the two years since he joined the company. A few weeks later, a progressive watchdog group filed a complaint with the D.C. attorney general and the IRS requesting a probe into what services were provided and whether Leo was in violation of laws against using charities for personal enrichment.

David B. Rivkin Jr., an attorney for the parties in the investigation, said in a statement that the complaint “is sloppy, deceptive and legally flawed and we are addressing this fully with the DC Attorney General’s office.”

The news of the investigation comes as the nonprofit that was a subject of the complaint quietly relocated in recent weeks from the capital area to Texas, according to paperwork filed in Virginia and Texas. For nearly 20 years the nonprofit, now known as The 85 Fund, had been incorporated in Virginia.

Gabe Shoglow-Rubenstein, Schwalb’s communications director, declined to confirm or deny the existence of the probe, including whether the attorney general took any action in response to the complaint.

Schwalb, who took office in January, has a background in tax law and served as a trial attorney in the tax division of the Department of Justice under President Bill Clinton.

Best known as Donald Trump’s White House “court whisperer,” Leo played a behind-the-scenes role in the nominations of all three of the former president’s Supreme Court justices and promoted them through his multi-billion-dollar network of nonprofits. Trump chose his three Supreme Court picks, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, from a list drawn up by Leo. More recently, Leo was the beneficiary of a $1.6 billion contribution, believed to be the biggest political donation in U.S. history.

He is also the co-chair of the Federalist Society, the academic arm of the conservative legal movement, for which he worked in various capacities for decades while building his donor base.

While Leo grants few interviews, in mid-July he was featured in a two-part podcast with the Maine Wire, a conservative news organization. Asked why he’s become a “lightening rod for criticism,” Leo cited his commitment to “defend the Constitution” and spoke about the “long history” of dark money in U.S. politics.

“It’s not to hide in the shadows,” he said. “It’s because we want ideas judged by their own moral and intellectual force.”

He did not address any allegations of potential misuse of nonprofit tax law.

Real estate and other public records illustrate that the lifestyle of Leo and a handful of his allies took a lavish turn in the course of the making of the current ultraconservative court, beginning in 2016, the year he was tapped as an unpaid adviser to Trump. Citing the report, a progressive watchdog group called on the IRS and D.C. Attorney General a few weeks later to investigate whether the groups may be violating their tax-exempt status by “siphoning” assets or income for personal use.

Anthony Burke, a public affairs specialist with the IRS, declined to comment. “Under the federal tax law, federal employees cannot disclose tax return information,” he said.

The Leo-aligned nonprofit The 85 Fund — which is registered as a tax-exempt charity — paid tens of millions of dollars to a public relations firm in Virginia which he co-chairs in the two years since he joined the firm, known as CRC Advisors.

The watchdog complaint alleges the total amount of money that flowed from Leo-aligned nonprofits to his for-profit firms was $73 million over six years beginning in 2016.

“There are questions as to whether Leo-affiliated nonprofits have diverted substantial portions of their income and assets, directly or indirectly, to the personal benefit of Leonard Leo,” read the Campaign for Accountability’s complaint.

 

This is something long overdue, and while I'm not crazy enough to believe a reckoning is coming, putting this cast of crooks, cads, and creeps in the spotlight may be what starts a real reckoning down the line.

Last Call For Florida Man Draws Challenger

Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott has finally gotten a serious Democratic challenger for his Senate seat, which given the state of Florida Democrats, means former Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell will probably only lose by the low teens instead of being blown out by 20 or 30 points in 2024.

Former Democratic Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell announced Tuesday she will challenge Republican Sen. Rick Scott, a former two-term Florida governor viewed as the favorite in 2024.

Mucarsel-Powell, who came to the U.S. at age 14 from Ecuador, has long been on a short list of potential Democratic candidates. In recent weeks, a number of state and national Democratic leaders have coalesced around her. Florida House Minority Leader Fentrice Driskell, who was also rumored to be considering a run against Scott, said in an interview Monday that she will remain in the Legislature.

Mucarsel-Powell has talked to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee — which conducted a poll on her behalf — and says she anticipates having enough support to mount a serious campaign, even as national Democrats must defend seats in Wisconsin, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Montana and Arizona.

“Rick Scott is trying to raise taxes on our families. He wrote a plan to end Social Security and Medicare Advantage coverage for our seniors,” Mucarsel-Powell said in the interview.

Scott pitched the plan, which he dubbed the “Rescue America” plan, during the 2022 midterms as he chaired the Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee.

The plan included a proposal to sunset all federal legislation after five years, including entitlement programs like Medicare and Social Security. It also included language that “all Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game.” He later revised the proposal, but it is expected to be a prime part of Democratic attacks against him.

In May, Scott said in an interview that he welcomed Democrats’ trying to use the plan against him.

“I will fight over my ideas any day,” Scott said at the time, adding that President Joe Biden, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., “all lied about it. I was never going to cut any programs.”

Democrats were slow to coalesce around a candidate this cycle, reflecting the uphill climb in defeating Scott, who has never lost a statewide race. Scott is also one of the wealthiest members of Congress, with the ability to self-finance his campaign, although he has said he will not need to do so in this election.

While a number of long-shot Democrats have jumped into the race, Mucarsel-Powell is not expected to have serious competition for the nomination at this point.

“We’d like to welcome yet another failed congressional candidate to the crowded Democrat primary,” Scott Communications Director Priscilla Ivasco said. “Former Congresswoman Mucarsel-Powell is a radical socialist who voted 100% of the time with Nancy Pelosi during her short tenure in Congress, which is why the voters of South Florida booted her out of office the first chance they got. Floridians already rejected her once and they will reject her again.”

 

Considering Rick Scott currently runs the NRSC and that the threatened audits against his profligate spending in 2022 that failed to capture the Senate have all but mysteriously vanished, paving the way for a possible presidential run, it's possible that Batboy might overreach and blow both shots.

But considering he has unlimited resources for his Senate bid, I expect that he'll have an easy time of it, the same way Mitch and Rand have done here in Kentucky.

Or maybe...he loses.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Indiana

With the final appeal by the ACLU to Indiana's state Supreme Court denied, the 2022 abortion ban signed into law by GOP Gov. Eric Holcomb now goes into effect.

Indiana’s near-total abortion ban is now in effect after the Indiana Supreme Court on Monday denied a request from the ACLU and Planned Parenthood to rehear the case.

For all practical purposes, health care providers had been following the abortion law since Aug. 1, though the process of the legal case ticked on.

Monday’s news comes more than a year after Gov. Eric Holcomb signed the law at the end of the 2022 special legislative session.

At the end of July, the ACLU and Planned Parenthood asked for a rehearing to clarify exemptions in the law related to an exemption to the life of the mother.

However, Chief Justice Loretta Rush, in an opinion, stated that the parties asking for a rehearing in the case did not “properly” put concerns about the impact of the abortion law on Hoosier women seeking medical care for serious health conditions or on health care providers.

The ACLU and Planned Parenthood wanted the court to maintain the injunction that completely stopped the ban from going into effect while it pursued another injunction in trial court, according to Rush’s opinion.

Justice Christopher Goff was the only member of the state’s Supreme Court to dissent with the denial to rehear the case.

In a prepared statement, Attorney General Todd Rokita said his office has defended the law every step of the way and applauded the court's decision.

“This is great news for Hoosier life and liberty," he said. "We defeated the pro-death advocates who try to interject their views in a state that clearly voted for life.”

In a statement, ACLU of Indiana executive director Jane Henegar said it's a "dark day" in the state's history.

"We have seen the horrifying impact of bans like this across the country, and the narrow exceptions included in this extreme ban will undoubtedly put Hoosiers’ lives at risk," Henegar said in the statement. "We will continue to fight in court to clarify and expand upon the current exceptions. Every person should have the fundamental freedom to control their own body and politicians’ personal opinions should play no part in this personal decision.”

IndyStar has reached out to the branch of Planned Parenthood that includes Indiana.

 

The ban criminalizes the procedure outside of hospitals, and bans all abortions except for cases of rape, incest, the health of the mother is at stake, and fatal fetal anomalies, but even then the exceptions for the life of the mother are limited to 20 weeks and rape and incest, ten. It's horrific across the board and the ban will kill women in the state, but Republicans don't care.

The majority of women of child-bearing age now live under partial or near-total abortion bans in the US, and Indiana's ban is effectively total. It's going to take a massive number of votes in order to beat the gerrymandering in these red states giving Republicans supermajority status in state legislatures. We can't abandon these states and the people in them to these monsters.

The road to Gilead has to end.

The Revenge Of The Return Of The Son Of Shutdown Countdown, Redux

If it's August, House Republicans must be trying to shut down the federal government again, and this year is only different in the respect that there's a large enough bloc in the House GOP Freedom Caucus to force Speaker Kevin McCarthy to get Democratic votes to pass any legislation, and that Democrats get to make their demands too.

The ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus is demanding a series of conservative policy changes in exchange for giving their support to any short-term funding measure designed to avert a government shutdown on Sept. 30.

The Republican rebels are insisting that House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., who floated the idea of a stopgap bill last week, impose conditions that are extremely unlikely to be accepted by the Democratic-led Senate and President Joe Biden.

In a statement Monday, the Freedom Caucus said its official position was that the group’s members would oppose any bill unless it includes their preferred language on border security, new laws to address what they call the “weaponization” of the Justice Department and FBI and a shift in some of the Pentagon’s policies — although they didn’t detail all the changes they want.

“We refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden Administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities,” the statement said, adding that any short-term bill that continues funding at current levels represents a position they “vehemently opposed” months ago.

The speaker will likely have to take the conservative demands into account given his party’s slim margin of control in the House, as he did during the fight over raising the nation’s debt ceiling, when their demands formed the basis for the House Republican negotiating position with the White House.

It is unlikely Democrats would help supply the votes for McCarthy to pass a short-term spending bill that includes the policy demands of the Freedom Caucus. And if they did, conservatives have held open the option to retaliate by forcing a vote to overthrow him as speaker.

After the group issued its demands, House Democratic leader, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, of New York, tweeted: “House Republicans are determined to shutdown the government and crash our economy. We will fight these MAGA extremists every step of the way.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer issued a terse response to the Freedom Caucus demands: “If the House decides to go in a partisan direction it will lead to a Republican caused shutdown,” Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement.

Republicans basically want all the things that lost the last time they tried to shut down the government earlier this year, so we're right back to the same hostage situation were were in a few months earlier.

But it's closer to the 2024 election this time, and crashing the economy now is something these assholes want to blame on Biden heading into November of next year. 

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Don't bother calling the cops on our little white supremacist domestic terrorism problem, because in an increasing number of counties around the US, your local sheriff's department are the domestic terrorists.

 

Against the background hum of the convention center, Dar Leaf settled into a club chair to explain the sacred mission of America’s sheriffs, his bright blue eyes and warm smile belying the intensity of the cause.

“The sheriff is supposed to be protecting the public from evil,” the chief law enforcement officer for Barry County, Michigan, said during a break in the National Sheriffs’ Association 2023 conference in June. “When your government is evil or out of line, that’s what the sheriff is there for, protecting them from that.”

Leaf is on the advisory board of the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association, founded in 2011 by former Arizona sheriff Richard Mack. The group, known as CSPOA, teaches that elected sheriffs must “protect their citizens from the overreach of an out-of-control federal government” by refusing to enforce any law they deem unconstitutional or “unjust.”

“The safest way to actually achieve that is to have local law enforcement understand that they have no obligation to enforce such laws,” Mack said in an interview. “They’re not laws at all anyway. If they’re unjust laws, they are laws of tyranny.”

The sheriffs group has railed against gun control laws, COVID-19 mask mandates and public health restrictions, as well as alleged election fraud. It has also quietly spread its ideology across the country, seeking to become more mainstream in part by securing state approval for taxpayer-funded law enforcement training, the Howard Center for Investigative Journalism found.

Over the last five years, the group has hosted trainings, rallies, speeches and meetings in at least 30 states for law enforcement officers, political figures, private organizations and members of the public, according to the Howard Center’s seven-month probe, conducted in collaboration with the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.

The group has held formal trainings on its “constitutional” curriculum for law enforcement officers in at least 13 of those states. In six states, the training was approved for officers’ continuing education credits. The group also has supporters who sit on three state boards in charge of law enforcement training standards.

Legal experts warn that such training — especially when it’s approved for state credit — can undermine the democratic processes enshrined in the U.S. Constitution and is part of what Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor and executive director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at Georgetown University, called a “broader insurrectionist ideology” that has gripped the nation since the 2020 presidential election.

“They have no authority, not under their state constitutions or implementing statutes to decide what’s constitutional and what’s not constitutional. That’s what courts have the authority to do, not sheriffs,” McCord said.

“There’s another sort of evil lurking there,” McCord added, “because CSPOA is now essentially part of a broader movement in the United States to think it’s OK to use political violence if we disagree with some sort of government policy.”

At least one state, Texas, canceled credit for the sheriffs’ training after determining the course content – which it said included a reference to “this is a war” – was more political than educational. But other states, such as Tennessee, have approved the training, in part because it was hosted by a local law enforcement agency.

Unlike other law enforcement continuing education, such as firearms training, the sheriffs’ curriculum is largely a polemic on the alleged constitutional underpinnings of sheriffs’ absolute authority to both interpret and refuse to enforce certain laws. One brochure advertising the group’s seminars states: “The County Sheriff is the one who can say to the feds, ‘Beyond these bounds you shall not pass.’”

 

When the MAGA chuds say "Make America Great Again" what they mean is "take us back to a time where county and state law enforcement officials refused to enforce federal civil rights laws and engaged in violence against people who did try to enforce those laws".

 

We've got county sheriffs across the nation gladly saying they won't do that now, along with gun safety regulations and anything else they don't like. And nobody's doing a damn thing to remove these assholes from the offices they refuse to uphold.

 

These monsters are only growing in power and scope, and heading into 2024 I suspect we're going to see a lot more nefarious action of them the closer we get to Election Day.

The Big Lie, Con't

Donald Trump's campaign continues to lie about the 2020 Georgia presidential election even after being indicted on state RICO charges over it, and now they are citing the indictments by Fulton County DA Fani Willis as further "evidence" that Georgia state lawmakers and GOP Gov. Brian Kemp are all part of the same massive Big Lie "conspiracy".

Although Trump’s allegations have repeatedly been disproven — often by his own advisers — they’ve taken a firm hold among his party. An Associated Press poll last week found 57% of Republicans said they didn’t view Biden as a legitimately elected president.

The 98-page Georgia indictment lists several false allegations made by Trump that were quickly disproven by fellow Republicans, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, and Gov. Brian Kemp. Still, Trump insists to this day that the election was stolen from him and continues to lie about it.

After the indictment, he promised a press conference this week revealing a report he claimed would show how the Georgia election was stolen from him — a pledge he rescinded on Thursday, saying his lawyers wanted to make his argument in a court filing instead.

“Does anybody really believe I lost Georgia?” Trump asked on his Truth Social network Saturday. “I DON’T.”

By repeating the lie over and over, even when it has been repeatedly exposed as baseless, Trump is not only ensuring that his loyal followers remain energized, but also dominating the discussion and forcing others to relitigate the 2020 election on his terms.

At the recent Iowa State Fair, where he was campaigning for that state’s presidential caucus next year, Trump again claimed the 2020 election was “rigged.” In anticipation of the Georgia indictment, Trump’s campaign issued a statement a week ago saying prosecutors were “taking away President Trump’s First Amendment right to free speech, and the right to challenge a rigged and stolen election that the Democrats do all the time.”

His attorneys have defended his actions by saying the former president sincerely believes fraud cost him reelection.

Lee McIntyre, a Boston University researcher, noted that many of Trump’s followers no longer see other Americans as legitimate opposition, but rather as an enemy. “This is strategic,” McIntyre said. “This is not a mistake. Somebody is profiting from this — politically, ideologically or financially — and we know it’s Trump.”

Known as “affective polarization,” that phenomenon has led to increased violence and political destablization in other nations. This month, FBI agents fatally shot an armed Utah man who had threatened to kill Biden and referred to himself online as a “MAGA Trumper.”

“It’s not just that the other side is wrong, it’s that the other side is evil, and they deserve to be punished, maybe even physically harmed,” McIntyre said. “It is no longer about facts, but about trust. It’s about teams, and which side you’re on.”

 

Increasingly, Gov. Kemp and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger are The Enemy to Trump, and part of The Big Lie now. Trump wants to get rid of Fani Willis for sure, and Georgia GOP lawmakers are trying to make that happen.

 

But Trump also wants Kemp and Raffensperger gone too. Don't be surprised if Trump has a Georgia rally in MTG country in order to turn his MAGA cultists against the two of them as well.

No Labels, Yes Spoilers, Con't

Despite their cries of "nu-huh", bipartisan rodent coitus enjoyers No Labels still plan to try to hand the country over to Donald Trump in 2024 with a third party effort to sabotage President Biden in swing states.

 

Former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) said Sunday that No Labels will “very likely” launch a third-party “alternative” if former President Trump and President Biden win the nominations for their parties.

“But if Trump and Biden are the nominees, it’s very likely that No Labels will get access to the ballot and offer an alternative,” Hogan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “And if most of the voters don’t want A or B, we have an obligation to give them C, I mean, for the good of the country.”

Hogan, who serves as the national co-chairman of No Labels — a political group that has been pushing for a third-party ticket — said two-thirds of the American people are “not interested” in voting for the Republican or Democratic nominee.

“It’s an overwhelming majority of people who are completely fed up with politics,” Hogan said. “They think Washington is broken. And so, even though this normally is not something that we consider and talk about seriously, because it hasn’t happened in the past, this is something that could happen,” noting that it is still a “long way off.”

David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Obama, pushed back against Hogan’s proposal Sunday, saying, “Honestly, doesn’t that pave the way for Donald Trump? Doesn’t that siphon votes from Joe Biden and elect the person that you have criticized so heavily?”

Hogan disagreed and said the third-party candidate would “pull just as many votes from Donald Trump as Joe Biden.”

“I love Larry Hogan, but that’s just not true,” Axelrod responded. “I think that broken glass will be the jagged edge that cuts the throat of the Biden campaign. History shows that. Trump has a high floor and a low ceiling. If you lower the ceiling to where his … high floor is good enough to win, he will win. And he benefited from third parties in 2016. This would be a dreadful mistake if the goal is to deprive Donald Trump of the presidency.” Axelrod called it the former president’s “hope” and “prayer.”

 

Good for Axe to call Hogan out. 2016 is proof of that nonsense. Hogan's still a Republican, and he still wants the Republican candidate to win.

 

Hit these guys as Trump collaborators every time.