#do supreme court justices count as politicians?

[oneefin]

nonapology

n.

the study of the supreme court

[nuadaargetlamh]

One is a convicted criminal that wants to:

Institute a dictatorship “on day one only” (with majority support from his party!)

Give a greenlight to Project 2025

Use a weakened Schedule F to install THOUSANDS of cronies

Institute military tribunals for his political enemies (and allies!)

Gun down “enemies from within”

Support Russia in wiping Ukraine off the map

Use the combo of the removal of the Chevron deference/the Supreme Court allowing people to openly bribe them/Schedule F to extend the far-right’s reach into every government agency and deregulate everything to the benefit of his rich capitalist buddies

Has gotten total immunity for “official acts” (what counts as “official”? Whatever his Schedule F appointed judges choose of course.)

Already took away so many freedoms from racial minorities/queer people/women/anyone-that-isn’t-a-rich-white-man that it would take ages to list them all in this post

and so so so so SO MUCH MORE.

The other is a typical neoliberal politician.

Remember also, you’re not just choosing a president, you’re choosing their cabinet, potential Supreme Court justices, federal employees as well. With the above listed ALONE, Trump would do so much more damage than just what he can do himself. That’s not including everything else his Federalist Society Supreme Court would and have given him on a silver platter. Supreme Court Justices are for LIFE, and we’ve already seen the potentially irreparable damage this far-right activist court has done to the fabric of democracy.

Project 2025 really deserves a part to itself just to list some of what it includes: complete abortion/contraceptive ban (no exceptions), destroying worker’s unions and protections, remove Social Security/Medicare/Affordable Care Act, end civil rights protections in government, ban teaching the history of slavery, remove climate protections while gutting the EPA, end equal marriage and enforce the “traditional family ideal”, use the military to gun down protests, mass deportation of legal immigrants (especially Muslims), ending birthright citizenship, pack the lower courts, and plenty more. The far-right wasn’t able to take full advantage of Trump’s presidency the first time since it was so unexpected. They’re preparing so that they won’t make the same mistake again. THERE ARE OVER 900 PAGES OF POLICIES AND PLANS THAT THEY ABSOLUTELY WILL IMPLEMENT IF THEY WIN. READ IT. Anyone that says they won’t is either a liar or already drank the Kool-Aid. Isn’t it interesting that every politician that supports it, including his vice president, wants Trump to win?

Not to mention, if you care about Palestine (like I do, a lot), Trump would be MUCH WORSE for Palestine than the other candidate, supporting Bibi going “from the river to the sea” and already cut off millions in aid to Palestine in 2018 (which Dems reversed!). If you support a free Palestine and don’t vote blue, you have categorically hurt them more than if you did. Even Palestinians themselves want the Democrat candidate over Trump. There is no quick and bloodless peace deal that both Palestine and Israel would ever agree to. The road to an end of the Palestine-Israel conflict is going to be long and difficult, probably decades of dedicated de-radicalization in both states, and will involve far more than one person’s decisions in the end. Unless Trump takes power, and avoids all that by sending enough bombs to turn the Gaza Strip into dust.

There are a few reasons you would choose to vote third party in a FPTP system (support ranked choice voting btw) or not vote “in protest” while ignoring all the state and local elections that affect your area more than the president. Either you’re privileged enough to not be affected by what Trump would bring, you’re ignorant of the consequences, or you care more about doing nothing perfectly rather than doing something, anything that isn’t 100% ideologically “pure” to fight against the far-right fascist movement.

Am I a democratic socialist? Yes. Am I a realist? Also yes. In every single down-ballot race, and through my activism, I will fight for the rights of the oppressed and working-class. But the Presidency isn’t fucking winnable right now, and probably won’t be for decades. Pro-corporatist/anti-worker sentiment is baked into the fucking bones of this country and its people. A majority of eligible voters wouldn’t vote for Bernie, and he’s barely center-left. Voting for anything other than one of the two big parties is a useless feel-good gesture at the moment. Or you’re a dumbass accelerationist, and if you are, honestly go fuck yourself.

Let’s say you want a socialist revolution, full-tilt government takeover. I want that too, in my wildest dreams! We’re on the same page there. So how are you going to do it. How? HOW? What pro-worker activist groups are you working with? Are you encouraging your workplace to form a union? Volunteering for/donating to your local farmers’ co-op? Canvassing for pro-worker legislation? Hell, even something as small as distributing free copies of high-school/college textbooks, so that those of poorer means have a better chance at affording advanced education? Are you doing anything to help? Any praxis at all, rather than typing wishful thoughts of revolution alongside insults to people who aren’t as “correct” as you on the internet?

Every voter that still supports Trump is energized by every cruelty he enacts, while millions of Democrats and third-partyists care more about purity tests and manifesting socialist revolution tulpas than avoiding a fascist dictatorship.

Have a brain, touch grass, and vote blue all the way down that fucking ballot.

[kirbylover34]

VOTE!!!

I know how everyone is feeling currently about the genocide of Palestine right now. People are angry and furious that we Americans are complicit in the ongoing violence that revokes the lives of innocent people. How our politicians are sending weapons and defending Zionism, and silencing those that speak out. As it stands both political parties, our democratic and republican candidates are fully onboard with the slaughter of women and infants. I feel that pain, seeing videos of children crying for their deceased families and the vileness I never thought humans were capable of doing. As it stands democratic candidate Kamala Harris has fully shown support for the Israelis. So why as an average normal American citizen who detests the ongoing genocide am I telling you to vote for Kamala? If you have been paying attention to our current politics. You would know who Donald Trump is. But many of you have seem to have forgotten the various warning signs that should alarm everybody. Trump has recently ramped up fascist rhetoric, calling immigrants and minorities like vermin, threatening to arrest political opponents, spreading deceitful lies such as how Haitians are eating cats and dogs, many of you have also seem to forgot that he incited an insurrection on our capital after sleepy joe was fairly elected. He did nothing when people were dying from COVID and even sent our tests to Vladimir Putin. He has been convicted of 34 felonies. Many of you should also know about his Project 2025 playbook,if you don’t. It details plans to replace the federal civil workers with MAGA Loyalists, and using Unitary Executive Theory to give the Executive branch more power over other branches of government. He also wants to send illegal immigrants to concentration camps, give a tax cut to 1%, defund the department of education and EPA, cut back on social security and Medicare. Also many seem to be ignoring the fact that he was given immunity by 6 out of 3 Supreme Court justices. Which the sane court also overturned Roe V. Wade. He also plans to take abortion away nationwide making it illegal. Also most of his current administration want the same things he wants. He plans on turning our country into a military state as a local police force. Hell that’s not even counting the fact that the republicans request he be put in MILITARY VEHICLES FOR TRANSPORTATION. He wants to outlaw rights for Gay and LgbtQ. Thats not even counting the fact that he is clearly suffering from dementia and could be in control of NUCLEAR CODES! Yet many people say Kamala is the same shit from the toilet bowl as trump. I can’t sit here in good faith and watch people ask for a revolution that may never even happen. We are literally hanging by a thread over a black abyss we may never escape from. We are looking at the next Nazi Party, but instead they call themselves MAGA. I’m telling you to vote for Kamala not because I support her. I’m voting for her for the lives of every American. People of color, women, children, LGBTQ, elderly, average normal people who just want to live their lives. Literal lives are at stake here. People should be coming together to make sure Trump never gets back in. And yet I still see people insist to not vote for Kamala. I’m sending this as a warning and message to everyone to vote Blue, no matter what stupid shit the democrats do or how much you dislike them. Do it for your neighbors, do it for the good people who stand in solidarity with Palestinians! VOTE!!! 🔵🇵🇸

[nearmidnightannex]

A comment about the political mess the Democrats have created for themselves

And hopefully one of the very few such comments I'll make for quite some time.

Biden decision on future expected in coming days, and Harris is considered heir apparent BY ALEXANDER BOLTON AND AMIE PARNES - 07/18/24 7:21 PM ET

Well-connected Democratic Party insiders say they expect President Biden to make a major announcement about his future soon after the Republican National Convention concludes in Milwaukee and that congressional leaders expect that Vice President Harris will become their nominee for president if Biden drops his reelection bid. […] Biden has come under intense pressure from party leaders, including former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), who have told the president directly that a majority of Democratic senators and large number of House members don’t think he can beat former President Trump….

Obama tells allies Biden’s path to winning reelection has greatly diminished (washingtonpost.com) By Tyler Pager and Michael Scherer July 18, 2024 at 12:05 p.m. EDT

Former president Barack Obama has told allies in recent days that President Biden’s path to victory has greatly diminished and he thinks the president needs to seriously consider the viability of his candidacy, according to multiple people briefed on his thinking....

Man, that last one has to sting for Biden. A lot.

Here's the thing: all of this is happening because the Democrats are understandably twitchy. About everything. Seeing yourselves as the last bulwark against incoming fascists might do that, yes.

But none of this need have been this type of crisis if they had just shut the fuck up. If they had just said, "Eh, it was a bad debate, they've happened before, they'll happen again. Let's move on." But they didn't.

And, of course, the "responsible news media" has been feeding this frenzy, because It's A Great Story. It sells! (Er ... assuming you don't count what seems to have been, for example, a notable number of people who have been canceling subscriptions to the NY Times over their startlingly slanted coverage.) And they kind of maybe might want The Orange One back in office because a constant state of crisis ALSO sells! (They, of course, are not thinking this through. Do they think that what may become an Even Trumpier Supreme Court will preserve either Hustler Magazine (Larry Flynt) vs Falwell or Sullivan vs New York Times? Oh, HELL, no, they won't! Some of the current justices (Alito and Thomas, of course) are already on record as thinking the latter was overexpansive and wrongly decided.) Also, the owners of the major newspapers are billionaires and/or venture capitalists, who think The Orange One will be better for their money.

The news media have also abdicated their responsibility as citizens of this country, and have not considered how they are viewed and their actual role in our civic life. Whether we like it or not, the news media shapes how we see the world. We know about things we don't have direct experience of, because they tell us about them. Essentially, they tell us what to think about things while trying vaguely to give just the facts. And for a while now, they've been telling us, over and over and over again, that Biden is now a weakened candidate, that he may not be able to win against Trump, that his support inside the party is wavering, that this, or this, or this, all means he can't win. But here's the thing: if they weren't banging this drum so long and so loud, it probably wouldn't be true. If they hadn't been banging this drum so long and so loud, politicians wouldn't see so many stories about how their coworkers are wavering, and they wouldn't in turn be wavering. Basically, if they had calmed the fuck down and thought about their actual responsibilities as people who live in this country, and as people who tell us what's happening -- hell, as people, period -- we might not be in this situation.

It would be one thing if this agita about Biden were all based purely on polling that, as we have seen in the past several elections, both presidential and midterm, can be deeply flawed. But most of this agita preceded the polling. It was all based on feels. Yes, the later polling appears to have justified the feels. But even so, none of them are showing large margins, and if it weren't for all this mess, they would probably move back in Biden's direction after the Democratic National Convention. That's what presidential season polls do.

Here's the thing about Biden: the Democrats agitating for his withdrawal have also not thought this through.

First, regardless of who might be chosen to replace him, there is likely to be an ungodly onslaught of lawsuits, some from Republicans hoping to keep the replacement off their state's ballot, some from Democrats trying to deal with money and other issues, some from people just being nuisances. After all, it is our way. (And do you really REALLY want those lawsuits going up to be ultimately decided by THIS Supreme Court? NO, YOU DO NOT! As it stands, it's very likely that there will be court cases dealing with the election outcome anyway -- presuming we don't have another coup attempt to mix things up -- and that will be enough to deal with.)

Second, do they really think that ambitious politicians will simply stand aside and let Harris be anointed as Biden's successor? Apart from the sincerely anti-democratic (small "d") look of a brokered convention, there are other politicians, governors and senators, who may sincerely believe that they would be better candidates for reasons other than "I wanna be president! It's my turn!" And the floor fight may be vicious enough to bring the just-concluded RNC convention to mind and revolt everyone. Even a non-brokered convention, if somehow Harris does simply get anointed (which is wildly unlikely), is a truly terrible look for people who say they're fighting for democracy to survive in this country.

Third: there are people who are already wavering about whether or not they even want to vote -- the people who don't particularly like either Biden or Trump, or the people who know that Trump will be much much worse but who also have deep and sincere disagreements with some of Biden's policies, or younger people who object to having to vote for these old guys who don't address any of their concerns, or or or ... In any event, for those people, some of whom undoubtedly held their noses and voted for Biden in the primary even though they may not have wanted to, those people will be revolted by this process and by their vote being set aside with no input into what happened. Not even the very distant input that we normally have, of voting for representatives and senators whom we hope will reflect our views.

Apart from all that: Should Biden decide to step aside, there may be actual legal issues to be decided. Apart from anything else, there's a question of whether or not a replacement can even get on the ballots of some states if they didn't participate in the primary/caucus processes. There's also the weird question of finances. (US News and World Report, so take that with a small grain of salt; it was the cleanest discussion I could find.) Harris as the replacement nominee is the least complicated option ... though I expect there would be lawsuits anyway. There's also a question of timing. And I'm sure there are all sorts of legal issues that I have no idea what they could be that will appear.

There's also the fact that this is being driven by major donors spooked by, as has been noted, polling of dubious quality, and by elected officials afraid of losing access to their money. (We may take the corrosive effect of money on politics as a given at this point, I think.) The elitism is rife and rank, people. It's also noteworthy that many of these elitists apparently also don't want Harris on the ticket (independent.co.uk, quoting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' Instagram). Presumably because she's not an old white guy ... or maybe just because she's not a white guy, period. (see below)

All that aside: do I think Biden should withdraw? No, not particularly. Frankly, I think when all this mess started, he should have told the quavering Democrats to go fuck themselves, and he should have said it loudly and forcefully and REPEATEDLY. (No, I do not mean simply that he should have said that he wouldn't withdraw. After all, he's been doing that, over and over, and it hasn't done any good. I mean that he should have taken each quavering Democrat into the Oval Office, and, in fits of profanity not heard in that room since the days of LBJ, told them Quite Explicitly to GET FUCKED AND GET OUT; if they were so ready to surrender to fascism, they needed to rethink what they were doing in Congress at all. Which, honestly, I think might have been persuasive. After all, this is all about perception, not reality. They perceive Biden to be abruptly weaker, and so they make it reality, whether it was true or not. Unfortunately, ripping people a new one -- especially when they're nominally his people -- is not his way.)

However: If he does decide to withdraw, then I think he should go all the way. Which is to say, to resign the presidency, not simply to withdraw from the campaign. Not because I don't think he can do the job; I think he's capable, even if he does stammer and even if he does have moments where he seems to mix things up. After all, he's overall done a good job so far. Are there things he's done that I sharply disagree with? Yes, but that would be true of any president. When looked at as a whole, he's been a good president.

The reason I say he should resign is because of the rest of the country. Remember what I said earlier about Harris not being an "old white guy"? Despite the fact that we've had a black president, and Obama was a very good president, the mood of the country for the past few years seems to be "We'd like old white guys, please." (Trump was, to put it mildly, a truly SAVAGE "old white guy" overreaction to the Obama presidency. And it took another old white guy to get Trump out of office.) Harris is most certainly not an "old white guy" in any way, shape, or form. I have a suspicion that the only way to persuade a large chunk of the country that she can do the job is, in fact, to let her do the job, even if it is for a fairly short time. And when they see that she can, in fact, do the job, then they might actually vote for her.

However. I suspect that will not happen either.

And so, on we go .....

[mariacallous]

A Brazilian court has announced that it will be opening an investigation into X owner Elon Musk for obstruction of justice, after Musk reactivated far-right accounts that the Brazilian government had flagged for removal. The announcement came after Musk called for Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who heads the country’s Superior Electoral Court (TSE), to “resign or be impeached,” and a statement from X alleged that the orders to remove the accounts violate the Brazilian constitution.

While the court has not released the list of accounts it requested for blocking or investigation, the São Paolo–based newspaper Estadão reported that it includes the fugitive far-right influencer Allan dos Santos, a supporter of president Jair Bolsonaro. (Dos Santos fled the country in 2020 to avoid investigation for disseminating disinformation.) The list also includes right-wing YouTuber Bruno Aiub, known as Monark, who has over 1 million followers on X and has argued that Brazil should recognize the Nazi party, and Brazilian billionaire and Bolsonaro-supporter Luciano Hang.

Separately, after taking over the company, Musk reactivated the accounts of Brazilian far-right politicians Carla Zambelli, Gustavo Gayer, and Nikolas Ferreira. Ferreira, a Bolsonaro supporter, openly questioned the security of Brazil’s electronic voting machines, even though he won his local legislative race.

“All of these names have been problematic for years on social media,” says Flora Rebello Arduini, campaign director at the nonprofit advocacy organization Ekō. “They've been pushing for the far-right and election misinformation for ages.”

When Musk purchased Twitter in 2022, later renaming it X, many activists in Brazil worried that he would abuse the platform to push his own agenda, Arduini says. “He has unprecedented broadcasting abilities. He is bullying a supreme court justice of a democratic country, and he is showing he will use all the resources he has available to push for whatever favors his personal opinions or his professional ambitions.”

Under Musk, X has become a haven for the far right and disinformation. After taking over, Musk offered amnesty to users who had been banned from the platform, including right-wing influencer and convicted human trafficker Andrew Tate. A 2023 study found that hate speech has increased on the platform under Musk’s leadership. The situation in Brazil is just the latest instance of Musk aligning himself with and platforming dangerous, far-right movements around the world, experts tell WIRED. "It's not about Twitter or Brazil. It's about a strategy from the global far right to overcome democracies and democratic institutions around the world," says Nina Santos, a digital democracy researcher at the Brazilian National Institute of Science & Technology who researches the Brazilian far right. “An opinion from an American billionaire should not count more than a democratic institution.”

This also comes as Brazil has continued working to understand and investigate the lead-up to January 8, 2023, when election-denying insurrectionists who refused to accept right-wing president Jair Bolsonaro’s defeat stormed Brazil’s legislature. The TSE, the country’s election court, is a special judicial body that investigates electoral crimes and is part of the mechanism for overseeing the country’s electoral processes overall. The court has been investigating the dissemination of fake news and disinformation that cast doubt on the country’s elections in the months and years leading up to the storming of the legislature on January 8, 2023. Both Arduini and Santos believe that the accounts Musk is refusing to remove are likely connected to the court’s inquiry.

“A life-and-death struggle recently took place in Brazil for the democratic rule of law and against a coup d'état, which is under investigation by this court in compliance with due legal process,” Luís Roberto Barroso, the president of the federal supreme court, said in a statement about Musk’s comments. “Nonconformity against the prevalence of democracy continues to manifest itself in the criminal exploitation of social networks.”

Santos also worries that Musk is setting a precedent that the far right will be protected and promoted on his platform, regardless of local laws or public opinion. “They are trying to use Brazil as a laboratory on how to interfere in local politics and local businesses,” she says. “They are making the case that their decision is more important than the national decision from a state democratic institution.”

Though Musk has claimed to be a free-speech advocate, and X’s public statement on the takedowns asserts that Brazilians are entitled to free speech, the platform’s application of these principles has been uneven at best. In February, on order of the Indian government, X blocked the accounts Hindutva Watch and the India Hate Lab in India, two US-based nonprofits that track incidents of religiously motivated violence perpetrated by supporters of the country’s right-wing government. A 2023 study from the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard found that X complied with more government takedown requests under Musk’s leadership than it had previously. In March, X blocked the accounts of several prominent researchers and journalists after they identified a well-known neo-Nazi cartoonist, later changing its own terms of service to justify the decision.

X did not respond to a request for comment about why the company made a public statement condemning the Brazilian court’s takedown orders but not those issued by other governments.

“We have a background that is different from the US. It’s more similar to the European concept of freedom of expression,” says João Brant, digital policy secretary for Brazil’s Secretariat of Social Communication. “You can discuss the elections, of course. The problem was, affirming categorically that there has been fraud and that the electoral court has not acted upon. It’s perfectly OK to discuss judicial orders, but it’s also important to comply with them.”

[imagine-all-the-people]

There’s some similarities between a city and a desert, in both we can lose ourselves and find ourselves!

I totally agree with your sentiments regarding your twice impeached, 4 times indicted with 92 counts, rapist, sex offender, misogynistic, narcissistic, psychopathic “former guy”, who miraculously was elected in 2016. Sadly, your hollowed out liberal democracy with a delinquent GOP, affects other democracies too, such as us in the UK and in the EU, because post WWII, the “rules based international order”, provided a baseline for progressive change.

Over the last 30-40 years, with the advent of neo-liberal economics, widening of inequality, and billionaires being able to buy both politicians and Supreme Court Justices, it seems like 2024, is a make or break year for the US and other liberal democracies. We are trying to do our best to actively oppose the ongoing fascistic trends, but it feels like swimming against the tide.

Here’s lyrics to a song you may enjoy:

Song Of Choice

Early every year, seeds are growing

Unseen, unheard, they lie beneath the ground

Would you know before the leaves are showing

That with weeds all your garden will abound?

If you close your eyes, stop your ears

Hold your mouth, how can you know?

The seeds you cannot see may not be there

The seeds you cannot hear may never grow

In January you've still got the choice

You can cut the weeds before they start to bud

If you leave them to grow higher, they'll silence your voice

And in December you may pay with your blood

Close your eyes, stop your ears

Close your mouth and take it slow

Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear

And later you can say you didn't know

Everyday another vulture takes flight

There's another danger born every morning

In the darkness of your blindness the beast will learn to bite

How can you fight if you can't recognize a warning?

Close your eyes, stop your ears

Close your mouth and then you know

Let others take the lead and you bring up the rear

And later you can say you didn't know

Today you may earn a living wage

Tomorrow you may be on the dole

Though there's millions going hungry, you needn't disengage

For it's them, not you, that's fallen in the hole

It's alright for you if you run with the pack

It's alright if you agree with all they do

If the fascist's party slowly climbing back

It's not here yet, so what's it got to do with you?

The weeds are all around us and they're growing

It will soon be too late for the knife

If you leave them on the wind that around the world is blowing

You may pay for your silence with your life

Close your eyes, stop your ears

Close your mouth, they're never there

And if it happens here, they'll never come for you

Because they'll know you really didn't care.

By Peggy Seeger

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=okas_K7g89s

Thank you for your posts and your activism! We need to build bridges to a better world!

Thank you for your note! Love this ❤️

Listening to the song by Peggy Seeger, brought me back to my childhood where my hippie mother took me to quite a few live music sit-ins. Growing up listening to folk music, listening to activists and running around barefoot and dirty are fond memories for me :).

I still have a hard time reconciling how we as a country could have elected a pos like Trump. As long as I live I’ll never understand how he’s still running around campaigning to do it all over again, and he has support! It’s unfathomable to me.

I appreciate your support from the other side of the pond.. and I thank you for your thoughtful words and time ✨

“The weeds are all around us and they’re growing”

[asmuchasidliketo]

Under the cut: a long article by the author about gay marriage

Source

Here’s How 9 Predictions About Gay Marriage Turned Out

Not often—in fact, pretty much never—have I been lost for words in the gay-marriage debate. But the Supreme Court’s national legalization of marriage equality leaves me gaping and gawping like a guppy. For a homosexual man of my generation, born in 1960 and deeply etched with wounds of self-loathing, discrimination, and bigotry, events in America now feel like the end of a Hollywood movie. Or, perhaps, the beginning a classic rock song, by Queen. Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

Although most people correctly predicted how the Supreme Court would rule in Obergefell v. Hodges, my overriding feeling is still, in a word: surprise. How—how in the world—did we get here? I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words about same-sex marriage over a period of two decades, including many predictions. Perhaps there is insight to be had by looking back on nine of them.

How did I do? A mixed bag. Three of my predictions have been wrong, indeed spectacularly (and revealingly) so. Three have been borne out (also revealingly). The jury remains out on three more. Let’s start with those.

1) “A Supreme Court decision imposing gay marriage will spark a fierce backlash.”

For years, I said the federal courts should butt out of the gay marriage debate and leave it to states, where consensus could be gradually and organically developed. I feared that involving the U.S. Constitution too soon would short-circuit a vital process of social persuasion and deprive us of the deeper kind of civil rights victory that comes only from broad public consensus, not from courts.

It’s too early to know how Obergefell will go down. Republican presidential candidates are mostly hostile. But I believe my prediction, although sensible at the time, has passed its sell-by date. A solid national majority now supports same-sex marriage, and holdout states are moving in that direction. When I asked a couple of well-connected social conservatives whether they or others in their world were likely to go to the barricades in a multi-decade campaign of resistance like the one over abortion, both said no. One of them told me, “We could all see that the battle over same-sex marriage was over, and that was true regardless of how the court ruled in this case.”

Here is my guess: Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, the author of the court’s five-member-majority decision, is the most astute politician in America (counting Bill Clinton as retired). He has shown a flawless knack for knowing how far he can bend public opinion without breaking it, and I believe he has correctly judged that the country is ready to accept his decision.

2) “Gay marriage won’t lead to polygamous marriage.”

Predictably, the Court’s decision led to another of countless rounds of forecasts that the marriage-rights movement will now expand to multiples. (Like this.) Again, we’ll see, but I’m willing to stand by what I’ve long said: the case for gay marriage is the case against polygamy, and the public will be smart enough to understand the difference.

Gay marriage is about extending the opportunity to marry to people who lack it; polygamy, in practice, is about exactly the opposite: withdrawing marriage opportunity from people who now have it. Gay marriage succeeded because no one could identify any plausible channels through which it might damage heterosexual marriage; with polygamy, the worries are many, the history clear, and the channels well understood.

I won’t repeat the reasons; you can read some of them in this article by me or this new book by Stephen Macedo, among many other places. Predicting politics is hard, but I believe polygamy, if it even gets traction as a matter of public debate, will be decided as a policy question, not a civil-rights question—and the answer, correctly, will be no.

3) “Same-sex marriage will be part of a broader renewal of the culture of marriage.”

I’ve always believed that cultural conservatives misunderstood the gay-marriage movement: far from being an attack on the culture of marriage, it represented a shift back toward family values by a group that had learned the hard way, through eviction by their own parents and suffering in the AIDS crisis, how important marriage and commitment and family really are.

Perhaps same-sex marriage will not have cultural coattails. I hope and believe, however, that gay America’s embrace of marriage has sparked renewed interest and appreciation among straight Americans. And the marriage-equality movement has warmed many on the social left to a pro-family agenda. It’s possible now, as never before, to be pro-marriage without being anti-gay. And the big message of gay marriage—“Pro-marriage is pro-equality”—resonates across the spectrum. More than 100 prominent Americans, of varied political and partisan stripe, have already signed a statement calling for a new Marriage Opportunity movement building on the cultural momentum of gay marriage. This is only a beginning, but it is a breeze in the right direction.

So those are predictions where the jury remains out. Now for three I was right about.

4) “Marriage will transform gay culture.”

I supported same-sex marriage for many reasons: its message of legal and civic equality; its promise of support and stability for gay couples and their kids; its potential to broaden and universalize the culture of marriage; and more. Right up there was my belief that the gay culture I grew up in was toxic and that marriage could change it.

In the 1970s, when I came of age, being gay seemed to mean leading life in a Mephistophelean subculture that was obsessed with sex and alienated from love. In that world, gay people could have casual sex with multiple strangers, but publicly holding hands and exchanging vows were unthinkable. Gay culture internalized the legal and social repression of committed relationships in ways that twisted our psyches, distorted our communities, and ultimately fed the tragedy of AIDS.

Today’s national debate about a culture of promiscuity and dangerous sexual behavior revolves around drunken straight frat parties, not gay bathhouses. This is partly because of AIDS, which shut down the baths. But it is also largely because of something I was right about: by tying sex, love, and commitment together into a coherent whole, marriage could heal a broken gay culture. The sexual underworld was not an inherent feature of homosexuality, as our critics charged; it was an artifact of life without marriage, and therefore without a destination for love.

Though casual sex and dangerous promiscuity aren’t dead (and never will be, among gays or straights), they no longer define gay culture—and never will again. Gay marriage represents our time’s greatest triumph of social conservatism, as today everyone except social conservatives can see.

5) “Marriage will heal gay kids like Jon.”

My biggest interest in marriage, though, was very personal. I understood as a young boy, long before I had any inkling about homosexuality or sex, that marriage was not for me. And this knowledge was devastating. Every step I took toward sexual love was a step away from marriage and all the social approval and personal stability that went with it. I had seen my own parents’ marriage fail painfully and harmfully (not least to me), and I yearned for the kind of stability and contentment that I saw marriage bring to my friends’ parents. Desperate to keep that option open, I spent 25 years twisting myself into neurotic knots in an effort not to be gay. (You can read about it here.)

When the idea of same-sex marriage came on the scene, I immediately saw it as a form of vaccine against homosexual self-hatred. I imagined how much different, and better, my life would have been had I assumed as a young child that the path to marriage was open to me: that I could love, and be loved, within adult life’s most sustaining and engulfing institution.

Today, young gay children know from the first whispers of sexual awakening that they can progress from their first crush to dating, committed relationships, and a destination in marriage. And for the most part that’s what they are doing. Marriage has been a miracle cure for gay self-hate. Of course being young and gay will always be difficult and confusing for many people. But now it can also be something it never could be before: normal.

6) “Gays will actually get married.”

Actually, I didn’t quite have the nerve to predict this. In fact, I worried about it. In 1996, when I published a big article on gay marriage in The New Republic, I ended it this way: “The biggest worry about gay marriage, I think, is that homosexuals might get it but then mostly not use it. … It is not enough, I think, for gay people to say we want the right to marry. If we do not use it, shame on us.” Twenty years ago, after all, many in the gay-rights movement saw themselves as sexual liberators, rejecting “heteronormative” straitjackets like marriage.

I’m going to put this in the win column, because in my heart I always believed that gay America would embrace marriage. Before long, I saw I was right. A turning point came on that day in San Francisco in 2004, when same-sex marriage was briefly legalized and the world saw gay couples lining up outside the courthouse and around the block. (There are some marvelous photos here.) Massachusetts, legalizing gay marriage a few months later, saw a similar rush to the altar—a rush that has never stopped.

Irving Kristol, the late conservative editor and commentator, used to joke about gays and marriage: “Let them have it, they won’t like it.” Boy, was he wrong. Gay couples have reminded the straight world how much marriage really matters.

And, finally: what was I wrong about? Here are the biggest three surprises:

7) “Gay marriage will take decades, if it ever happens at all.”

When I published my first words advocating same-sex marriage (for a memorable Economist cover and editorial in January of 1996), I thought I was writing for some future generation. Almost nobody supported the idea or even took it seriously. Getting a gay-marriage bill introduced in even a single house of a single state legislature was unthinkable. The courts were rudely dismissive, except in Hawaii, where their openness to the idea sparked a state and national backlash—led by Democrats, notably President Bill Clinton. This was not an uphill battle. It was no battle at all. It was a flea annoying an elephant.

I was astonished when Massachusetts’ supreme court legalized gay marriage there in 2004, only eight years after the notorious Defense of Marriage Act swept through Congress: and I’ve been astonished ever since. I was not only wrong about the pace of change, I was wrong by an order of magnitude. I forever nagged gay-rights advocates to be patient and go slow. They retorted that I was underestimating the country’s movability. It took a few more years, but starting in 2012, when the tide turned, they proved right. I have never been so happy to be wrong.

In my defense, there is no precedent in American history for so rapid a fundamental social change. The folks at Bloomberg put together this nice graphic illustrating the point. Everything I knew about social change foretold a long, slow battle. Why change came so quickly and dramatically will be debated for generations. It could only happen, I think, because a lot of vectors converged. I’ve tried to explain some of them in this 2013 article. Whatever the reasons eventually prove to be, I stand by what I concluded in that piece:

At the end of the day, however, to me an element of mystery remains. America’s change of heart toward its gay citizens is the greatest awakening of mass conscience in the United States since the civil rights movement of the 1960s, but it was achieved with far less bloodshed and bitterness. It is born of persuasion and love, not violence and hate. Witnessing this awakening has been the most exhilarating and humbling experience of my life. Explaining it completely is, perhaps, impossible. Or perhaps I just want completely explaining it to be impossible. It feels, after all, like a miracle.

8) “Marriage will retire the gay civil-rights agenda.”

Marriage, it always seemed to me, was the big kahuna for gay equality: so powerful in its symbolism and social reach as to come about only when there was little or nothing else left to be done. I assumed that traditional civil rights protections forbidding anti-gay discrimination by employers, landlords, and commercial businesses would be much less controversial than marriage and would be settled much earlier.

Oddly, I was wrong. Marriage was indeed much more controversial; today most Americans believe, incorrectly, that discrimination based on sexual orientation is already generally illegal. Yet marriage is now legal nationwide, but a majority of states and the federal government still lack antidiscrimination laws!

Indeed, antidiscrimination laws appear to be growing more controversial, because religious organizations see them as coercing participation in gay marriage. Conservative states are lining up to pass laws that shelter religious organizations, people, and businesses from antidiscrimination provisions. Like it or not, marriage or no, the battle over gay civil rights rages on.

9) “Writing about gay marriage will wreck my career.”

This was my father’s prediction, not my own. In 1995, he begged me to reconsider my leap into advocacy for same-sex marriage because, he said, the whole idea was so nutty that by favoring it I would give up my standing as a serious journalist. Twenty years ago, his qualms seemed perfectly reasonable.

I leapt anyway. And opprobrium never came. Instead I found astonishing receptivity. Never, to my knowledge, have I been punished or marginalized for saying my piece about marriage; time and again, my case has been welcomed in America’s most prominent journals—including some leading conservative ones, such as National Review and the Wall Street Journal, whose editorial positions were very different from my own.

In the wake of Obergefell, I received tweets and emails lauding my heroism. The truth is more like the opposite: after taking some risk initially, I never suffered or sacrificed at all. The real heroism was displayed by the culture and country, which opened its ears and ultimately its mind. For all the talk (some of it justified) of political correctness on the left and epistemic closure on the right and shrillness and polarization everywhere, I have learned that America, today as much as ever, or maybe more than ever, is a place where people can be brought to listen, consciences can be pricked, ideas can matter, and small, marginal voices can make themselves heard. That, to me, is a greater miracle even than gay marriage.

This is really sweet

So for my AP United States History class we have to write a research paper; my topic is the gay rights movement in America. Today I began reading one of the books that I chose as a source

And I opened it up to the dedication page and found this

And if you don’t think that’s one of the sweetest and most romantic things ever then get out of my face

[crimechannels]

By • Olalekan Fagbade 200 Lawyers volunteer to assist Governor win Guber case at Supreme Court No fewer 200 private legal practitioners from the 19 Northern States have volunteered to assist Gov. Kabir Yusuf of Kano State to win his Gubernatorial election appeal case at the Supreme Court of Nigeria They spoke under the banner of ‘Abba Kabir Yusuf Volunteer Lawyers Forum For The 19 – Northern States And Abuja. Addressing a press briefing at Arewa House, on Sunday in Kaduna , spokesman of the lawyers, Mr Yusuf Ibrahim urged President Bola Tinubu and the Supreme Court not to allow Nigeria become a one-party state, saying that it is an unhealthy democratic practice They expressed concern over independence of judiciary in the country The lawyers insisted that the rule of law must be obeyed to ensure the vote of every Nigerian counts during elections. They further expressed solidarity with Yusuf while opinng that the Appeal Court judgment in favour of APC was clear miscarriage of justice. “We volunteer as private legal practitioners to participate in the litigation in solidarity for Gov. Yusuf at the Supreme Court of Nigeria. “We want to represent the truth in the fight to reclaim his mandate and that of the people of Kano State,”.Ibrahim added. The group also demanded a reworking of the Electoral Act. “It is pertinent to state here that the Electoral Act needs a holistic reworking in order to address these anomalies of our judicial system and democracy, if we must save it,” he said. According to the group,pre-election matters must be seen to be addressed as no longer litigable issues after the winner of an election has been declared. They said, “The attempts by Court to conclude upon their findings to declare politicians as winners must also be divested of such powers. At best, order a re-run in the affected areas. “The dangers are that, if this trends should proceed without being checkmated, then there would no longer be need for open balloting and casting of votes by the general electorate. “This is so as their mandate would be taken over by those who know the rules of the game and of course, it will no longer be a matter of who wins the election at the general voting posts.” The lawyers called on the Supreme Court to resist any form of external interference to protect the image of the judiciary and uphold the rule of law. They said, “We are hopeful that the apex Court would do the right thing devoid of any sentiments and paying able and competent attention to happenings of the just delivered judgments.” Responding to questions from journalists, another member, Mr Usman Ashafa, said that the judgment of the Appeal Court left much to be desired.(NAN)

[tomorrowusa]

Nowadays, if a group has "freedom" or "patriot" in its name, it's more likely than not that it has links to the far right. The "Alliance Defending Freedom" certainly qualifies.

Since it was formed in 1994, Alliance Defending Freedom has been at the center of a nationwide effort to limit the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people, all in the name of Christianity. The Southern Poverty Law Center has termed it an “anti-LGBTQ hate group” that has extended its tentacles into nearly every area of the culture wars. In the process, it has won the ear of some of the most influential people in the US, and become “a danger to every American who values their freedoms”, according to Glaad, the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization. Through “model legislation” and lawsuits filed across the country, ADF aims to overturn same-sex marriage, enact a total ban on abortion, and strip away the already minimal rights that trans people are afforded in the US.

The ADF is a bigtime lobbying and political action group which is a major force in the homophobia-patriarchy industrial complex.

Under the Trump administration, the group found its way into the highest echelons of power, advising Jeff Sessions, the then attorney general, before he announced sweeping guidance to protect “religious liberty” which chipped away at LGBTQ+ protections. The organization counts among its sometime associates Amy Coney Barrett, the supreme court justice who the Washington Post reported spoke five times at an ADF training program established to push a “distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law”. ADF is engaged in “a very strong campaign to put a certain type of religious view at the center of American life”, said Rabia Muqaddam, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “[The ADF campaign] extends to abortion, it extends to LGBTQ folks, to immigration, to what kind of religion we think is America, what kind of people we think are American,” Muqaddam said. “It’s as dramatic as that. I think we are in a fight to preserve democracy and preserve America as a place where we do tolerate and encourage and empower everyone.”

Their connection to the odious "Focus on the Family" is not unexpected.

ADF was founded in 1994 by a group of “leaders in the Christian community”, according to its website. Among those leaders was James Dobson, the founder of the anti-LGBTQ+ Focus on the Family organization who has said the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting, in which 20 children and six adults were killed, was a “judgment” from God because of declining church numbers. [ ... ] Over the past two decades, ADF has been a main driver in dozens of pieces of rightwing legislation and lawsuits.

ADF has gobs of money to spend on promoting anti-LGBTQ legislation – especially in state legislatures. And they have been successful because people on the moderate to progressive part of the political spectrum have been badly neglecting state legislatures for decades.

Emerson Hodges, a research analyst at the SPLC, said what ADF is really doing is attempting to “undo LGBTQ social and legislative progress”. “They go under the guise of religious liberty, and religious freedom. What that means, though, is this religious liberty to discriminate and the religious freedom to invalidate LGBTQ individuals,” Hodges said. Worryingly, there are signs that ADF, and other groups like it, are growing in influence. As Republican politicians and rightwing media fan the flames of an extremist culture war, NBC reported that donations to ADF, which is a registered non-profit, more than doubled from 2011 to 2021. As it has grown in influence, ADF’s “model legislation” has found its way into state legislatures across the country, as the group attempts to strip away LGBTQ+ rights, and the rights of trans people in particular.

[ ... ] “They’ve also worked to ban the right to choose, and are in cahoots with other extremist groups to oppress marginalized people. ADF is a danger to every American who values their freedoms – to be ourselves, live freely, and be welcome to contribute and to succeed in every area of society.”

The only way to curb groups like the ADF on a state level is by making sure there are are fewer Republicans in state legislatures who will do the ADF's bidding.

Find out who represents you in your legislature if you don't already know.

Find Your Legislators Look your legislators up by address or use your current location.

If you have moved since the last election, even just down the block, then register at your new address. Voter registration is done by address.

Be A Voter - Vote Save America

Once registered, never miss an election. There's no such thing as an unimportant election.

[frankterranella]

Ignoring character in our leaders is dangerous

                       Abraham Lincoln governed according to a moral code

Character used to matter in our elected officials. It mattered that Nixon was dishonest about his role in the Watergate coverup. It mattered that Gary Hart and John Edwards had extramarital affairs. But then suddenly in 1995, when the person having the extramarital affair was President Clinton, it didn’t matter, at least to Democrats. And so we continued down the slippery slope to 2023, where politicians lie to their constituents, admit that they are liars, and still remain in office. We have gone from a world where allegations that a candidate cheated on a high school exam would lose him votes, to a world where a candidate can openly admit “embellishing” his resume and still keep his seat in Congress. The bar of integrity for public officials gets lower and lower all the time. I am here to say that character still matters. It matters because so much of governing takes place outside the public’s gaze. When politicians make those important decisions behind closed doors I want to be able to count on their character. I want to be able to count on their character not only to influence their decision making, but to guide their candor to the electorate. I want them to be guided by a moral code above the urge to score a win for their party. I want to be able to trust the people I elect to “do the right thing.” In the 2008 campaign, Senator John McCain showed character when he corrected a supporter who said that his opponent was a Muslim. He showed character when he cast the deciding vote to save the Affordable Care Act from his own party’s attempt to overturn it. How did we get to a world where self-professed evangelical Christians back a candidate who they openly admit does not measure up to their moral and ethical principles? I think it started back in the Clinton Administration, at the dawn of the extreme divide that has come to dominate our politics, when Democrats chose “their guy” over their principles. They chose sticking with a flawed President in 1996 over a man of character. And once you lower the bar on character, and choose your candidate by his team jersey rather than the person wearing it, you have made a deal with the devil. Oh sure you may win some things in the short run, but eventually you will lose your soul. And in the second Clinton Administration, we saw a man who was a Democrat in name only. He made immoral cuts to the safety net for our poorest citizens, and then he signed a repeal of the Depression-era legislation that restricted what banks could do. And that eventually led to a financial crisis in 2008. So too during the Trump Administration, Republicans got some things they like such as tax cuts and conservative judges. But while they were getting those things, they were losing their moral compass on foreign policy, deficit spending and the national debt. As Republicans used the label “socialist” to scare voters away from Democratic Party candidates, their President was getting chummy with Communist leader Vladimir Putin, and choosing to believe Putin over the CIA about Russia’s efforts to influence American elections.  And worse still, they were silent while Trump exercised more and more autocratic power like Putin without any checks from a Republican Senate. We have reached a point where character matters so little that a core principle such as the power of a President to make Supreme Court nominations throughout his term depends on who the President is and how close we are to an election. There is no morality here; it’s purely about power and winning. If our public officials had character and a sense of justice, the Republicans would have allowed Garland’s nomination to proceed and the Democrats would have allowed Barrett’s to proceed as well. They would do this not because it gains them political advantage, but because it’s the right thing to do. But it takes character to choose morality over party loyalty. That is what being a patriot is all about. Abraham Lincoln was a great president not just because he freed the slaves and fought to save the Union, but because every action he took as president was out of a sense of morality. He did things like instituting a draft and suspending habeas corpus that made him extremely unpopular. He did them because he thought they were the right thing to do for the country, regardless of the political ramifications for him. He fully expected to be a one-term president. In the words of biographer Jon Meachem, “Lincoln’s motives were moral as well as political—a reminder that our finest presidents are those committed to bringing a flawed nation closer to the light, a mission that requires an understanding that politics divorced from conscience is fatal to the American experiment in liberty under law.” [emphasis added] In a representative democracy such as the United States, we do not get to vote on what the laws will be and how the government will operate. All we get to do is elect lawmakers who we think will act as we would — people who share our values. Character is more determinative of a candidate’s values than their platform or stump speech.  We need to be able to trust them to act according to a predictable moral code. Otherwise, we are just rolling the dice and hoping for the best.

[connoratwood8]

Wear and spread #GREEN4ABORTION!

RiseUp4AbortionRights.org

STOP the Supreme Court from Taking Away Abortion Rights!

The highest court in the world’s most powerful country stands poised to rip from women their fundamental right to control their bodies, their reproduction, and their destinies.

We refuse to be bystanders as the state shatters women’s lives. Extinguishes their dreams. Hijacks their bodies. Forces girls to bear their rapists’ babies. Invades the lives of Black, Brown, young and poor women with special viciousness. Accelerates a fascist assault on contraception, LGBTQ people, voting rights, Black history and Black people, and more. Not just in the “red” states, but nationwide – strengthening the tides of anti-woman fundamentalisms and fascism around the world.

Monday, June 13, 2022:

Come to the Supreme Court in DC and Stay.

Imagine: Every day, more and more people pouring into the capital. Amassing at the Supreme Court. All night vigils. Protests. Hunger strikes. People by the thousands and tens of thousands returning day after day. The Green Bandana of abortion rights worn and waved everywhere. On Mondays, when the Supreme Court typically releases decisions, the Capitol and Court become so surrounded by masses of women, men, people of all genders and nationalities and backgrounds that it becomes clear to all in power that we will sooner bring the gears of society to a grinding halt through mass nonviolent resistance than allow the right to abortion to be taken away.

Those behind this assault are counting on our silence.

We must not give it to them.

Even fascist women-haters worry about losing the perceived legitimacy of their institutions and their system when they are faced with truly massive, un-ignorable and unrelenting nonviolent resistance. And, if even in the face of our determined opposition, the Court still revokes abortion rights, we will be in a far stronger position to continue the struggle for women’s freedom for having dared to RISE UP.

The whole world is watching.

Let them see our courage.

This will not be easy. But the courts and politicians have failed to stop this attack. And a world where women are subordinate to the state, where wombs are regulated by the government and treated as potential “crime scenes,” must not be tolerated.

Let our visible courage call forth the courage of others. Let our righteous fury awaken the suppressed fury of millions of women and girls and all who love justice. Let our willingness to put it on the line not only defeat this crime against women while there is still a chance to do so, but also forge us into a more daring, deeply connected and justice-seeking people while building a future where women and all people are free.

If not now, then when?

If not all of us together, then who?

The future depends on what we do – or fail to do – during these momentous days.

Let us act with boldness, daring and courage.

Rise Up 4 Abortion Rights!

Forced Motherhood = Female Enslavement!

Abortion On Demand & Without Apology!

[camp-counselor-life]

There’s been a lot of upsetting Supreme Court decisions the past two weeks. I know that for many of us in the US, our hearts are heavy, and perhaps outside the US too. I’ve buried myself in work (good news, there’s was plenty of it for that). But now it’s time for action.

We’ve seen many things these past few weeks, between Roe v Wade being overturned, the EPA being restricted, tribal sovereignty being broken down to give states rights they shouldn’t have, and more. Why is this relevant to us as camp staff and youth workers? Camp does not exist in a vacuum. These decisions are effecting our campers, staff, and families right now. And we as the caring adults of the world have the responsibility to make this world better for our campers and other kids. Camp is also an inclusive space, and how can we be inclusive if our laws and court decisions do not grant equal protection and care.

Here are some actions that you can take:

Get your information from trusted sources. You don’t have to count me as a trusted source, but doing research to find trustworthy sources on all of the issues will help you understand what’s going on.

Support your local abortion fund. There’s also an option to donate once and have your donation split between all or some of the abortion funds (x).

Take personal steps towards sustainability, such as recycling, not idling in your car and minimizing driving, and eating a more plant-rich diet.

Push local politicians to enact climate justice measures, such as addressing excess pollution in your city. Environmental issues often disproportionately effect poor and minority communities.

In preparation for the upcoming Supreme Court case, sign this petition from Lakota Law asking the court to uphold the Indian Child Welfare Act.

Write and call your congresspeople and ask them to support the end of the filibuster and putting all of these things the supreme court broke down into law instead of leaving it to the court.

When protesting, do so in a way that you use common sense measures to protect yourself. Many organizations have online guides.

Vote in November for politicians who support human rights, civil liberties, and taking action. At all levels.

Campaign for local and state politicians who support human rights, civil liberties, and taking action.

Voting won’t solve it all. Writing emails and calling won’t solve it all. Taking personal measures and signing petitions won’t solve it all.

[96thdayofrage]

The Supreme Court agreed to review two aspects of the actor’s case.

The seven judges reviewed Montgomery County Judge Steven T. O’Neill’s decision to let prosecutors call five other accusers to testify about long-ago encounters that never resulted in charges or police reports.

And they reviewed the questionable judge’s decision to allow the jury to hear unsubstantiated testimony from two-decade old depositions taken out of context at trial.

Judge Steven O’Neill has never explained why he allowed five women to testify in the second Cosby trial after allowing only one to do so at his first trial in 2017.

On Dec. 1–when it came to the Commonwealth’s rebuttal of the defense’s points of appeal attorney—Adrianne Jappe did not get through her opening comments before the judges began interrupting and interrogating her on the relevance of the five prior bad acts witnesses.

Justice Dougherty pointed out that one of the women – Lise-Lotte Lublin – had ‘no actual recollection of sexual contact’ but merely of losing consciousness.

Bill Cosby to be Released from Prison After Pennsylvania Supreme Court Deems Trial Tainted

Cosby DA reaches level of desperation as Supreme Court decision nears, fines comic for unkept grass

Cosby DA accused of prosecutorial misconduct for charging YC reporter amid heated email battle

Cosby DA won’t release emails that may reveal ‘locker-room banter’ about Pa. Supreme Court

DA Under Fire for Admitting Bill Cosby Gave ‘Exculpatory Account’ to Cops, Tricked by Phony Immunity Deal

Jappe angered members of the court after instructing them not ‘to consider’ statistics in their decision making, according to an aide of one of the honorable justices.

Your Content exclusively revealed on Oct. 22 that Police in Arizona are stunned after a Pennsylvania prosecutor accommodated a fugitive prostitute to testify against the comedian in 2018.

Cosby, 83, has spent the past two years in a prison outside of Philadelphia after a jury convicted him in 2018 of three aggravated indecent assault counts—and the court deemed the elderly inmate a ‘sexually violent predator’ for posing an ‘imminent safety risk to women.’

From the moment the first witness took the stand, Your Content readers were spot-on in their questioning of trial tactics and backhanded deals cut amid the retrial—going as far as filing a motion to intervene in the trial after politicians tried to silence our publication and banish Your Content reporters from the proceedings.

But we conducted more than just research, providing game-changing scoops that impacted the trial to its core:

» Jun. 1, 17′: Bill Cosby to face a jury 13-years after allegations of sexual assault were made and ultimately debunked by investigating detectives.

» Jun. 5, 17′: Cosby arrives for his first day in court. Attorneys called the proceeding ‘an attack on human dignity.’

» Jun. 6, 17′: Jurors were drowned in reasonable doubt ‘on day two’ of the trial when attorneys revealed the motivation behind the ‘witness cult’s’ testimony: a $100 million payday.

» ‘One lie begets another lie begets another lie’: The judge finally cracked down on overzealous prosecutors after they tried tricking him by rephrasing the same question six times.

» Jun. 9, 17′: The trial’s briefest yet most powerful cross examination that derailed the questionable proceeding in just fifteen minutes.

» Jun. 12, 17′: Moments before the jury left to deliberate, Cosby’s lawyers moved for a mistrial on the grounds that the chief accuser had changed her story nearly two-dozen times.

» The ‘defining moment’ of the trial erupted as lawyers outed a hand-picked George Soros district attorney who prosecuted the funnyman solely to ‘bang on his throne.’

» Jun. 13, 17′: The chief Cosby accuser unleashed a tsunami of reasonable doubt upon jurors, who continually asked the court reread her testimony to weed out the conflicting statements.

» Jun. 15, 17′: Blockbuster revelations by Your Content funneled to our tipline by a juror claimed they would not be reaching a unanimous verdict.

» Despite a deadlocked jury, the hard-nosed court ordered they return after the weekend to continue deliberating until reaching a unanimous verdict.

» Jun. 17, 17′: After the jury informed the court once more of their deadlock, the judge declared a mistrial.

» Oct. 20, 17′: The former district attorney files a lawsuit against chief Cosby accuser Andrea Constand for working hand-in-glove with his competitor, Soros-funded Kevin Steele, in effort to secure an election and conviction.

» Nov. 9, 17′: An explosive report by Your Content reveals new information about Constand’s potential motivation behind the trial.

» Nov. 22, 17′: Your Content discovered Soros’ hand-picked district attorney worked closely with Constand to coordinate television commercials amid the heated election.

» How prosecutors initially claimed the former district attorney was ‘suing Contand more or less because he blames her for cooperating with police.’

» Jan. 11, 18′: Your Content attends a dinner with the funnyman for an exclusive tell-all before the retrial: ‘We’re Ready.’

» Jan. 28, 18′: Soros’ hand-picked district attorney is accused of destroying evidence and allowing perjury to secure a conviction. The FBI ‘cannot confirm nor deny’ an investigation into the accusations.

» Mar. 28, 18′: An exclusive Your Content investigation revealed that the presiding judge carried out an extramarital affair with a staffer of a key witness.

» Apr. 7, 18′: A juror is overheard by a Your Content reporter calling the comic ‘guilty’ immediately after being selected to serve on the panel.

» Apr. 10, 18′: Your Content exclusively reports that the prosecution intends to fly a wanted fugitive to testify, and they wined and housed the prostitute-turned-witness.

» Apr. 12, 18′: A key witness makes a bombshell revelation and confirms she previously sold Quaaludes to friends and never obtained the pill from Cosby.

» The moment Janice Dickinson revealed Robert De Niro partied at a nightclub that was full of ‘sex, drugs, cocaine and tea.’

» As their stories collided, accusers turned blame to magazine editors at New York Magazine of ‘condensing and editing’ their statements to publish on the cover.

» Your Content was first to report that the chief Cosby accuser claimed the comic tricked her into the situation by bribing her with ‘baked goods.’

» The powerful opening statement that painted the chief Cosby accuser as an ‘inconsistent money-hungry con artist.’

» How Gloria Allred’s representation of too many victims nearly derailed the case on day one.

» Apr. 15, 18′: Chief Cosby accuser Andrea Constand officially provides the sixth conflicting story as cross examination continued.

» Apr. 16, 18′: Constand is asked to reread all of her inconsistent statements back to the jury.

» When Hollywood’s heaviest-hitting private detective Scott Ross served Constand with a second subpoena as she left the courtroom.

» Apr. 16, 18′: At one point, testimony from the chief accuser became too confusing for the court and jurors, and Judge Steven O’Neill ordered she go home and do ‘homework’ over the weekend before returning to court Monday.

» Apr. 17, 18′: Your Content captured exclusive photographs of a staffer employed by the hand-picked Soros district attorney documenting each move Cosby made outside of the courtroom.

» Apr. 18, 18′: A key witness lost credibility when it’s discovered Cosby hadn’t been dubbed ‘America’s Dad’ until 1984, not 1982, as she claimed.

» It is discovered that Cosby never called Temple University to speak with chief accuser Constand, university staff reveal.

» Apr. 25, 18′: Closing arguments for the second trial begin. The defense drops a powerful remark: ‘A case that was rejected. A case that was revived. I’ll show you the sequence.’

» Jurors asked the court to re-play the testimony of Margo Jackson, who said the chief accuser confided in her and claimed she could accuse Cosby and ‘get money to go to school and open a business.’

» Unsatisfied jurors question the court: ‘We understand we could see things again?’ The judge allowed it and replayed the chilling testimony that accused Cosby’s accuser of falsifying her claims in pursuit of money.

» Prosecutors pulled an unprecedented stunt and compared Cosby to Casey Anthony in effort to hide the jurors from the media and public.

» Your Content flies the Canadian ex-boyfriend of chief Cosby accuser Andrea Constand to Philadelphia for an exclusive sit-down interview. He reveals the accuser’s family ‘despises black people’ and ‘used Cosby for revenge on all black people.’

» Soros’ hand-picked district attorney went through great lengths to keep his Florida father in the loop at all times—even divulging information about what jurors munched on during breaks.

» Oct. 10, 19′: Your Content obtains thousands of exclusive e-mails from the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office. Among the exclusive e-mail revelations:

» ‘First Order of Business, Lock Up That Creep Bill Cosby.’

» ‘Old Man’ Cosby’ Would Die If Jailed, Prosecutors Joked

» DA Mocked #MeToo Before, During & After Trial

» In 2015, DA Steele Claimed There Was An ‘Air-Tight’ Case Against Bill Cosby, Turns Out There Wasn’t

» Jun. 23, 20′: Bill Cosby is granted the opportunity to go before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court in a first-ever virtual hearing.

» Aug. 26, 20′: Your Content makes a groundbreaking discovery that indicates the presiding judge assigned himself to the Cosby trial.

But we are not done. If the court has proven to be just, it has also reinforced how few voices in American media can be trusted to listen to you.

This exceptional moment serves as a call to action for Your Content. We refuse to fall in line with the out-of-touch media establishment—and we will not accept the ‘official’ version of events as told by news agencies that side with power and ignore the untold stories.

Your Content will continue to deliver the truth, and not the spin of politicians or those who failed you.

As the world of professional story-tellers spend the next several months trying to explain their embarrassment, while the lamestream media is held to the fire, we proudly declare: Your Content is the people’s paper, and the only publication that power fears.

Cosby, 83, has spent the past two years in a prison outside of Philadelphia after a jury convicted him in 2018 of three aggravated indecent assault counts—and the court deemed the elderly inmate a ‘sexually violent predator’ for posing an ‘imminent safety risk to women.’

As Your Content readers know, Judge Steven O’Neill assigned himself the privilege of presiding over the Cosby trial.

[allfathertoday]

I copied and pasted this. From a friend. It's what I struggle with the most. How is any of this ok?

By Darryl May

WE HAVE JUST WITNESSED A BLOODLESS COUP. Did anyone notice the overthrow of the United States free election system, the end of our constitutional republic, and the merge of capitalism into the slide toward socialism?

For those who do not get it! Now you understand why there was never any action against the Clintons or Obama, how they destroyed emails and evidence and phones and servers, how they spied and wiretapped, how they lied to FISA, had conversations on the tarmac, sent emails to cover their asses after key meetings, how Comey and Brennan and Clapper never were brought to any justice. How the FBI and CIA lied, how the Steele Dossier was passed along, how phones got factory reset, how leak after leak to an accomplice media went unchecked, why George Soros is always in the shadows, why they screamed Russia and pushed a sham impeachment, why no one ever goes to jail, why no one is ever charged, why nothing ever happens. Why there was no wrongdoing in the FISA warrants, why the Durham report was delayed. Why Hunter will walk scot-free. Why the FBI sat on the laptop. Why the Bidens’ connection to China was hidden. Why the media is 24/7 propaganda and lies. Why social media silences the First Amendment and speaks over the President of the United States.

This has been the plan by the Deep State all along. They didn’t expect Trump to win in 2016. He messed up their plans. Delayed it a little.

They weren’t about to let it happen again. Covid was weaponized, Governors helped shut down their states, the media helped shame and kill the economy, and the super lucky unverifiable mail-in ballots were just the trick to make sure the career politician allegedly with hands in Chinese payrolls that couldn’t finish a sentence or collect a crowd, miraculously became the most popular vote recipient of all time.

WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT? Expect the borders to open with the likelihood that terrorists will come in. Increased immigration. Expect agencies like CBP and INS and Homeland Security to be muzzled or even deleted. Law enforcement will see continued defunding. The electoral college will be gone. History erased. Two Supreme Court Justices might be removed. The Supreme Court will be packed. Your 2nd Amendment will be attacked. If you have a manufacturing job or oil industry job, get ready. If you run a business, brace for impact. Your taxes are gonna go up, Biden’s already announced it and businesses will pay more. There is no real recovery from this.

The elections from here on will be decided by New York City, Chicago, and California. The candidate who offers the most from the Treasury will get the most votes. But the votes voted won’t matter, just the ones received and counted. That precedent has been set.

“Benjamin Franklin was walking out of Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention in 1787 when someone shouted out, ‘Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?’” Franklin responded, “A republic if you can keep it.”

Ladies and gentlemen, you will now lose your Republic. You turned from God. You turned from family. You turned from the country. You embraced degeneracy culture. You celebrated and looked to fools. You worshipped yourselves selfishly as you took for granted what men died to give you. You disregarded history and all it teaches. On your watch, America just died a little. It is likely she’ll never be the same again. Some of you have no idea what you have done. Sadly, some of us do.

[thelastyetfabolousmidwestmadman]

Dark Side Of The Rising Sun Part 1

Yo what’s up!

After the success of my previous post, I’ve decided to bring a follow up where I talk about the many dysfunctions and issues facing Japan that I’ve learned in my research. Detective Conan often shows the criminal justice system of Japan in a positive light while in reality it has many issues due to the culture.

Now let me make this clear: Japan has many great things about itself that should never be ignored. However, these are real flaws that have or need to be addressed with many Japanese also recognizing them as problems.

Now I had to split this into parts as this is rather ungainly to put it all at once. If you have any questions please ask and I’ll do my best to answer them.

 Suicide

Japan has one of the highest suicide rates in the world with about 15.2 deaths per 100,000 people.

This is due to many factors such as Suicide not being considered a sin as well as historical connotations of it being a honorable way to go.

It is also considered a act of revenge, apology, and protest.

It is mostly caused today by factors such as unemployment, alienation and intense social pressure.

Japanese society is overall tolerant of Suicide but this is changing in recent times.

Another factor is the need for acceptance over individuality.

People with mental illness are often discriminated against, stopping potential help.

Internet Suicide Clubs where anonymous people make/plan suicide pacts and commit group suicide are a major issue.

If you kill yourself via Shinkansen, your family will be fined heavily. It is also the cause of half of the train delays and referred to as a human incident.

Tall buildings have mandatory suicide fences to prevent people from jumping off. When they succeed, they take off their shoes before hand.

It is common for suicidal people to take insurance policies and wait a year or two to go through with it so their families would be okay.

Ikka Shinju or family suicides are when the entire family kills themselves together due to Asian views of the family. When the parents kill their children before themselves, this is called Muri-Shinju or murder suicides.

Oyaku Shinju or parent-child suicide are where a single parent kill their children along with themselves.

Drownings, overdoses, hangings, and jumping off places are the most common form of suicide.

Judiciary

Traditionally, the judge is hated more then the lawyer is in the west as the Judge is often viewed as a symbol of the Japanese nobility judging the common man.

If you are sent to trial, you are certain to be convicted regardless of innocence due to the countries 99% conviction rate. (Really makes Eri’s work more awesome and badass doesn’t it?)

The Japanese supreme court is one of the most conservative in the world, rarely ruling against issues that are blatantly unconstitutional and anti human rights. As a result, one of the more positive proposals for amendments of the Constitution is the creation of a separate Constitutional Court.

If you are sent to death row, you will never be told in advance when you are going to die.

Culturally, once arrested the person is automatically considered guilty.

Police are often reluctant to overturn convictions as they insist that only guilty are arrested and convicted.

The law when a child is considered criminally responsible is 14.

Judges are often pressured into making convictions as their careers are negatively affected by a not guilty verdict.

Prosecutors are given the choice not to pursue a case regardless of sufficient evidence.

Prisoners in Japan, while somewhat treated better then much of the world due to it’s focus on rehabilitation instead of punishment, have to follow strict military style regulations from minor things such as being forced to fold the bed, or to wash your face to more draconian measures such being beaten if you don’t march or sit the wrong way.

In turn, many have inadequate access to medical care as they don’t have many options for their healthcare.

It can take months or years before you are tried, meaning that a right to a speedy trial is completely nonexistent.

“Periods of reflection” where inmates are forced to be handcuffed, gagged and placed in solitary, are often not recorded by the warden.

Foreigners are forced to speak and write in Japanese.

Drug Use

It is considered vastly socially unacceptable to do narcotics in Japan.

Most drug addicts are even considered to be not human.

If a celebrity is caught doing drugs, his career is automatically fucked and he is blacklisted from the industry, as well as erased from current projects.

The most commonly sold drug is methamphetamine. This started after World War II due to Meth being legal for soldiers to consume in order to stay up late on petrol as well as from occupying Americans. After the was, it became a huge epidemic for 12 years.

Marijuana use has risen among youth. Despite it having little danger as well as medicinal uses, it is widely considered evil, with the law having no tolerance.

Overall, Japan has little drug use compared to the rest of the world due to the cultural taboo and strict laws. However, there are signs that it is being vastly under counted,

Most illicit drugs are imported from Taiwan and South Korea due to it being near impossible to grow it natively but it is becoming increasingly hard to do so.

Drugs overdoses are criminally under diagnosed.

Epidemics often occur due to low periods of economic growth and recessions. (Examples include the postwar period, the 70′s, and the Lost Decade after the Bubble Economy burst in 1989)

It is common for your family or doctor to call the police once you admit there is a problem. Then you are forced to take a urine sample and if it tests positive you are immediately arrested.

A lot of doctors open pharmacies to add to their income. As a result, many oversubscribe prescription drugs.

Hypocritically, Alcoholism is completely tolerated and not treated as a addiction due to alcohol being considering purifying in Shinto, a cure, and Japan having a intense drinking culture.

Child Abuse

For the most part, physical child abuse is considered a private issue and often ignored. While things are slowly getting better, Japan still has a long way to go. (Imagine if Kogoro did what he did to Conan in the west. Child services would be on him like a fly swatter.)

Child services often return the children to their parents even if they say their abusing them as the counseling centers need the parents to admit to their abuse.

It is a complete myth that Japan’s age of consent is 13. That is only the lowest one could set it. Most prefectures are set at 16 or higher. In turn, child molestation of those under 12 is heavily punished. However while vaginal rape of children is illegal, basically just about everything else as long as it’s statutory is basically alright.

Enjo Kosai or compensated dating is the practice of Teenage Girls to go on dates with older men in exchange for money and gifts. While not necessarily always leading to prostitution is treated as such and the girls are often blamed if they are hurt in the process.

Child sex trafficking of migrants is a serious issue and they are often treated as criminals and sent home without counseling.

Adoption of children is rare and frowned upon so many of them have to gro up in centers.

Children of unmarried couples are discriminated against due to the violation of the traditional Ie system and do not have the same protections or privileges of married couples because of its Koseki system.

Men are not obligated to pay child support and it’s near impossible to get them to legally as they can simply hide their finances by not telling them. Plus only one person can be named on the custody sheet.

Child Pornography was effectively decriminalized until 2014. No seriously.

Sexual Harassment/Assault

Domestic violence victims are disabused from coming forward due to the idea of bringing shame to their family.

Stalking cases are rarely taken seriously by the police

OH THERE”S WAY MORE BUT THIS LIST IS DARK ENOUGH SO LET”S SAVE THIS FOR A LATER DATE.

Working Conditions

Idols are heavily exploited and forced to follow strict rules such as having no social life, banned from having a boyfriend, etc. This is because they are supposed to sell a image of innocence and be there exclusively for their fans.

Anime creators are often forced to work long hours with little pay. This has resulted in a slump in the industry with very few new hires so they are forced to rely on the older animators whose health may fail sooner rather then later.

Funds are rarely given to films with artistic intent or that are political in nature, resulting the film industry suffering compared to the more internationally regarded South Korea.

Police Corruption

Until recently, Japanese police would work with organized crime to lower crime. The only reason they stopped was not out of concern for the everyday citizen but because they were embarrassed by the Yakuza when they began to show up more publically.

The media is often laughably compliant to the police, with they rarely offering a critical lens.

Police have undue influence on the Pachiko industry, with many retired officers being hired as muscle and for advice.

It is quite common for officers to embezzle from their slush funds.

In a effort to cover up crime, police often refuse to investigate mysterious or suspicious deaths, preferring to label them as accidents or suicide.

Police are often anti migrant and sexist to a fault.

It is neigh impossible to get a wiretap going due to rigid privacy laws.

Even the police can’t fire weapons as you need approval to even loose your gun so many officers have never fired a bullet.

Government Incompetence/Corruption

Voter Apathy is super high, with many elections having hilariously low turnout.

Many politicians have Yakuza connections, with the gang members serving as bodyguards and canvassing for votes.

Votes in the countryside are worth two compared to urban ones.

A lot of politicians are completely out of touch and constantly have to resign for gaffes (racism, sexism, historical revisionism, etc.)

Political acts are based on group consensus so it can take a long time to get meaningful reform done.

Criticism and debate is ironically frowned upon, with open criticism within a party being effectively banned.

Cronyism is common. While for the most part Japanese politics is based on expertise, many politicians are awarded ministries based on their support for the leader.

The NHK (Japanese version of the BBC) is largely neutral and free but the current Japanese government can dictate what it is to focus on temporarily.

Press Clubs are often given exclusive access to interviews and information from the government, so they get biased preferential treatment.

Okay I guess the point of this list is to bring attention to these issues and expand the opportunities of where to go when it comes to dark DC fanfiction. Don’t worry, here’s a cute Conan to make you smile!

[somethingusefulfromflorida]

So, the Supreme Court just said that the president is above the law today, and nobody is really talking about it.

While not technically a law, it is a very rigid precedent that a sitting president cannot be indicted while in office. This is supposedly in place to ensure that the president isn't distracted by lawsuits while running the country, ensuring that the only legal way to punish a president is via impeachment. Well, today the Supreme Court decided that a president can't be indicted even AFTER leaving office either.

The Gonad Lump violated the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which says that politicians cannot receive gifts (bribes) from foreign powers without congressional approval. He's a businessman with his fingers in a lot of pies overseas, so he made a shit ton of money from this way, but couldn't be indicted for it because he had the nominal immunity of the office of the presidency. Now that he's out of office, the lawsuits against him could move forward, right? WRONG! The conservative majority court decided that because he's no longer the sitting president, the cases are all moot. You can't punish a president for breaking the law of he's no longer president, but you can't punish him for breaking the law if he still is the president either. Therefore, the president is above the law and cannot be punished under any circumstance.

Now I'm sure they'll reverse themselves if Biden of anyone from his administration broke the same law because conservatives love the double standard (it's okay when WE do it, but now when YOU do it), but Biden is a career parliamentarian who wouldn't break that specific law anyway. The Gonad Lump was pretty much the only scumbag with the audacity to openly break that law and brag about it, and the Court sided with him because they're counting on him running again in 2024 and nominating even more justices. They won't be satisfied until the 6-3 conservative majority becomes a 9-0 conservative unanimity.

This man is dangerous and needs to be stopped. He will almost certainly be acquitted in his second impeachment trial, meaning there will be even fewer consequences for breaking the law (this time for inciting literal insurrection against the government because he didn't like the outcome of a free and fair democratic election). He'll be emboldened, rewarded for his behavior, reconditioned to continue this behavior in the future like an evil political Skinner Box.

I wouldn't doubt it if the Supreme Court just throws out the trial before it happens. They'll give the same moot argument, "oh, he's no longer the sitting president, there's no point in punishing him for his crimes now that he's out of office, he's learned his lesson, no need to kick him when he's down."

Yeah, he's learned a lesson. He's learned that he's legally untouchable so long as he has an iron grip on his party so that they'll never hold him accountable for anything. Impeachment is so toxically partisan that it is functionally useless, meaning the only legal avenue for punishing a president is itself moot.

Justice is a fucking joke in this country.

The law is a farce.