mifepristone is Nature and Nature’s God’s back up plan, right Justice Ginsberg?

    

Harvard Press

In Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance, John M. Riddle showed, through extraordinary scholarly sleuthing, that women from ancient Egyptian times to the fifteenth century had relied on an extensive pharmacopoeia of herbal abortifacients and contraceptives to regulate fertility. In Eve’s Herbs, Riddle explores a new question: If women once had access to effective means of birth control, why was this knowledge lost to them in modern times?
Beginning with the testimony of a young woman brought before the Inquisition in France in 1320, Riddle asks what women knew about regulating fertility with herbs and shows how the new intellectual, religious, and legal climate of the early modern period tended to cast suspicion on women who employed “secret knowledge” to terminate or prevent pregnancy. Knowledge of the menstrual-regulating qualities of rue, pennyroyal, and other herbs was widespread through succeeding centuries among herbalists, apothecaries, doctors, and laywomen themselves, even as theologians and legal scholars began advancing the idea that the fetus was fully human from the moment of conception.
Drawing on previously unavailable material, Riddle reaches a startling conclusion: while it did not persist in a form that was available to most women, ancient knowledge about herbs was not lost in modern times but survived in coded form. Persecuted as “witchcraft” in centuries past and prosecuted as a crime in our own time, the control of fertility by “Eve’s herbs” has been practiced by Western women since ancient times.

    

    Yesterday, an amiga-in-law initiated this text discussion about yesterday’s unanimous US Supreme Court abortion pill mifepristone decision.

Her

Please tell me how SCOTUS can unanimously rule the abortion pill can stay on the market and yet overturn Roe?

Me

Read online just now that SCOTUS ruled the plaintive antiabortionist doctors didn’t have legal standing to being the lawsuit, and I agree. 

When the SCOTUS split decision overturned Roe, the majority said each state decides its own abortion policy, so a state can ban the abortion pill within its own borders?

Her

Why was Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg not thrilled with the original Roe decision back when?

Me 

Just now read online RBG said Roe should have been decided on gender equality, not on right to privacy. 

    This In my Apple newsfeed this morning sums up the SCOTUS decision and what might happen next:

19th

In the ruling, the high court’s justices said that the collection of anti-abortion physicians challenging the drug’s availability had not shown they had been directly harmed by the federal Food and Drug Administration’s 2016 and 2021 decisions to expand the use of mifepristone. As a result, the court’s majority said, they did not have the right to file suit. 
“The federal courts are the wrong forum for addressing the plaintiffs’ concerns about FDA’s actions,” said the opinion, authored by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. “The plaintiffs may present their concerns and objections to the President and FDA in the regulatory process, or to Congress and the President in the legislative process. And they may also express their views about abortion and mifepristone to fellow citizens, including in the political and electoral process.”
Mifepristone is used in combination with another drug, misoprostol, to induce medication abortions. The regimen, which data shows is very safe and effective in terminating a pregnancy, has surged in popularity in the past few years, and now accounts for more than 60 percent of all abortions. 
It has also become a key tool for people seeking to circumvent state abortion bans. Because these medications can be prescribed through telehealth appointments, health care providers in a handful of states where abortion is legal have begun to mail the pills to patients in states with bans. 
As a result, the anti-abortion movement has prioritized limiting access to mifepristone, which was approved by the FDA in 2000. The case at hand, filed in Texas, originally sought to reverse the drug’s approval altogether. The high court, citing how much time had passed, heard only a narrower set of questions: whether to reverse a 2021 decision that allowed the drug to be prescribed through telemedicine, and a 2016 one that approved its use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of seven and allowed it to be prescribed by health care providers other than physicians.
A ruling in the doctors’ group’s favor would have banned mifepristone’s use in telemedicine, and made it only available through in-person appointments. Patients would have had to make three visits to a provider — a requirement that could be prohibitive, especially for those who must travel long distances, or who are unable to secure time off or child care for three separate days. It also would have limited prescriptions to doctors, rather than nurses or physicians assistants.
Thursday’s decision means that the pill will remain accessible in states where abortion is legal. Still, the decision is hardly the end of the fight over medication abortion, either on a state or federal level.
Abortion is mostly or entirely outlawed in 14 states. Others have enacted restrictions on the procedure, including six-week bans in three states, or outlawing abortion through telemedicine.
In advance of the Supreme Court’s ruling, some states sought to criminalize the drugs used in medication abortion, including Louisiana, which in May issued a law declaring both “controlled dangerous substances.”
In oral arguments this March, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas both singled out an 1873 anti-obscenity law called the Comstock Act, which has not been enforced in decades but was never repealed, and which some hope to use as the basis for a national abortion ban. The law forbids the mailing of material “intended for producing abortion, or for any indecent or immoral use. Alito referred to the Comstock Act as a “prominent provision” in the criminal code, though it has only recently become a commonly-discussed vehicle for an abortion ban.   
But neither the court’s main ruling nor its sole concurrence — written by Thomas and also focused on the question of legal standing — mentioned the 19th century law.
Still, abortion opponents, including former advisers of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, have suggested that if elected, Trump could leverage the law to ban abortion.
In a statement, President Joe Biden — who has made abortion rights a central plank of his re-election bid — also emphasized the ongoing political fight over mifepristone.
“Women can continue to access this medication — approved by the FDA as safe and effective more than 20 years ago,” Biden said. But, he also said, “Today’s decision does not change the fact that the fight for reproductive freedom continues. It does not change the fact that the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade two years ago, and women lost a fundamental freedom.”

Other cases challenging the FDA’s decision to allow mifepristone to be prescribed online could also make their way back to the high court. Attorneys general in Idaho, Kansas and Missouri have raised similar challenges, and during oral arguments, Alito indicated that he at least would be open to hearing their arguments. On Thursday, Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach and Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey — who both oppose abortion — said they intend to move forward with those challenges, the Kansas City Star reported.

    What all along flummoxed this old lawyer, who clerked for a US District Judge, is Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg and the liberal SCOTUS Justices in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, June 24, 2022 , which overturned, Roe v. Wade, did not get into a time machine and bring back to the future herbal abortion practices in Colonial America, which were described in Benjamin Franklin’s book, The American Instructor.

    The Dobbs majority opinion was written by right wing Christian SCOTUS Justice Samuel Alito, who said in his opinion that there is no history of Colonial America women having a right to abortion. 

    Perhaps Justice Alito learned his American history from FOX News?

    Consider this from National Public Radio:

For Ben Franklin, abortion was basic arithmetic

MAY 16, 20224:37 PM ET
HEARD ON  ALL THINGS CONSIDERED
By 
Emily Feng

NPR's Emily Feng speaks with Molly Farrell from The Ohio State University on why Ben Franklin included instructions for at-home abortions in his reference book, The American Instructor.

EMILY FENG, HOST: 

Bear with me as we go back in time, way back to Philadelphia in 1748. Benjamin Franklin put quill to paper that year, so to speak, adapting a popular British math textbook for the American colonies. He told readers his goal was to update the book with matters, quote, "more immediately useful to Americans." Among those matters, the founding father added a clear and easy-to-follow guide for an at-home abortion drawn from a medical pamphlet written by a doctor in Virginia. So how does that square with a leaked Supreme Court opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade, specifically the contention that, quote, "a right to abortion is not deeply rooted in the nation's histories and traditions"?

Molly Farrell studies early American literature as an associate professor at the Ohio State University, which means she knows a lot about the nation's histories and traditions. She wrote about Franklin's abortion how-to for Slate and joins us now. Welcome, Molly.

MOLLY FARRELL: Thanks, Emily. It's great to be here.

FENG: Start by telling us a little bit about the original version of this textbook, which was called "The Instructor." What was in this book, and what was its purpose?

FARRELL: So "The Instructor" was by George Fisher, who is a pseudonym. We don't know who wrote it. It was a really popular catch-all manual published in London. I believe it went through eight or nine editions in London. And you could learn to read on it. It had the alphabet in it. It had basic arithmetic, recipes. And it had a how-to book on farriery, which is the care for horses' hooves.

So books were expensive at the time. And if you just had money to buy one or two books in your home, the Bible and maybe something else, this would be a great reference manual.

FENG: And Franklin saw this as useful for an American audience, but he wanted to make it more relevant for the colonies. What changes did he make to this textbook?

FARRELL: Yes. So he called it "The American Instructor." In the arithmetic section and the word problems, he changed the place names - made them Boston and Jamaica instead of London and Flanders. He added a little section on colonial history. And then the biggest change you can see from the title page is that he swapped out the big section on farriery and a medical textbook that was from London, and he inserted it with a Virginia medical handbook from 1734 called "Every Man His Own Doctor: The Poor Planter's Physician."

FENG: And what was in that section of the book?

FARRELL: So that's what I was most interested in. So I don't know if you grew up with these. You'd have a book around that just had, like, home remedies. You don't need to call your doctor for this. You can take care of it yourself. So I was looking at all the different entries in there, and there was one that was pretty long and pretty obvious. And it was called "For The Suppression Of The Courses." And I was reading this, and it comes right after entries for fever or dropsy. So those are - the entries were listed as problems that need to be solved. So fever, here's how to solve it. Gleet or gout, here's how to solve it. Suppression of the courses, here's how to solve it. And the word courses, from about the 15th to the 19th century - I looked in the dictionary - it means menses. So it means your period. So that's a missed period.

So I thought, OK, how do you solve the problem of a missed period? And it says this is a common complaint among unmarried women that they miss their period. And then it starts to prescribe basically all of the best-known herbal abortifacients and contraceptives that were circulating at the time. It's just sort of a greatest hits of what 18th-century herbalists would have given a woman who wanted to end a pregnancy early in her pregnancy. And that's what, by the way, this abortifacient recipe would really be for was really early. It talks about, like, make sure you start to take it a week before you expect to be out of order. So take it before you've even missed that period, and it will be most effective. So it's very explicit, very detailed, also very accurate for the time in terms of what was known at the time for how to end a pregnancy pretty early on.

And then at the end, it just really comes out swinging and lets you know this is definitely related to sex 'cause it says, you know, also women - you know, in order to prevent this complaint at the end - so prevention for next time - don't long for pretty fellows or any other trash whatsoever.

FENG: You write in your article for Slate that Ben Franklin's instructions for an at-home abortion were actually taken from a medical pamphlet that was written by someone else. That seems to suggest that this knowledge was quite common. How much other documentation out there do we have from this time about abortion?

FARRELL: That's a good question. I mean, so, you know, if you kind of were in the market in Philadelphia and some women were chatting, what were they talking about? And particularly when you think about herbal remedies and herbal remedies for, as it says, female infirmities in the book, that's going to be something that's even less likely to enter into print because we have - midwives are taking care of that. Women's literacy rates were lower. They're not writing medical textbooks, but they have all this knowledge.

So what John Tennant did, this Virginia handbook - he tried to make it a really American herbal. And one way that typically that was done was stealing herbal knowledge from indigenous people in Virginia and from enslaved Africans. A lot of early American scientists, that's where they got their knowledge, and then they put it into print and called it their own.

What's interesting about what Franklin did is that he made sure to find a very American and actually very detailed, very accurate, according to the time, and very explicit herbal remedy and then promote it. You know, he was platforming it, basically. He circulated it loudly. He appended it into a volume that he was saying, this is basically all the knowledge that every American should know. And you should know your reading. And you should know your writing. And you should know home remedies that include how to have an abortion if you need to.

FENG: If this knowledge about the, quote, "suppression of the courses" back then was just as commonplace then as learning how to add or to spell, then how was abortion conceptualized? Was it considered taboo?

FARRELL: Clearly for Benjamin Franklin, one of the architects of our nation, and for the people that bought his book, which went through reprintings all the way throughout the 18th century, "The American Instructor" was hugely popular. It was absolutely not taboo. This was not banned. We don't even have any records of people objecting to this. It didn't really bother anybody that a typical instructional manual could include material like this, could include - address explicitly to a female audience, making sure they had all the herbals available to them that their local midwife might have as well and just putting that right into print. It just wasn't something to be remarked upon. It was just a part of everyday life.

FENG: These days, people who oppose abortion will talk about the rights of the fetus. Was that part of the public conversation at the time Ben Franklin was adapting this textbook?

FARRELL: I really haven't seen much of that at all. I mean, there's certainly concerns about women's sexual behavior. There's certainly concerns about morality and immorality and also whether or not that women would try to conceal what happens.

It's really about regulation of women. And that, I think, we can trace all the way right up to today and really see this attack on abortion rights as completely contiguous with that. It goes under the guise of supposedly protecting embryos and fetuses. But what happens is that it really damages and threatens women's health and constrains the lives of anyone who could become pregnant.

FENG: Molly Farrell is an associate professor of English at the Ohio State University. Thank you.

FARRELL: Thank you so much, Emily.

(SOUNDBITE OF SIMPLY THREE'S "RAIN")

Copyright © 2022 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

    Consider this from the United States of America’s first legal document, the Declaration of Independence:

Action of Second Continental Congress,
July 4, 1776. 
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

WHEN in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and equal Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Separation.

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.

    Ass-u-me-ing Nature’s God and the Creator of the men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew all women also had certain unalienable rights, even if those men did not know of such unalienable rights :-), one of Colonial women’s unalienable rights was to use the herbs Nature and Nature's God created to regulate their menses and terminate their unwanted pregnancies :-).

    Now if Justice Alito, FOX News, and the American Christian right have a problem with that, perhaps they should file a class action lawsuit against Nature and Nature’s God in a United States District Court? But if they do, would they have legal standing? For, how are they injured by a woman they do not know using herbs created by Nature and Nature’s God to regulate her menses and terminate her unwanted pregnancy?

    I assure Justice Alito that he has no standing in God’s Court to file such a lawsuit, because God created everything, according to Justice Alito’s Bible :-), and Justice Alito has no jurisdiction over God- and Justice Alito is not a woman, right, Justice Bader? :-

    Another way to look at all of this is mifepristone is Nature and Nature’s God's back up plan, right Justice Ginsberg? :)

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Hey Sharia law MAGAs who say stone LBGTQs, let any among you without sin cast the first stone

Divination

Sharia is a body of religious law that forms a part of the Islamic tradition based on scriptures of Islam, particularly the Quran and hadith. In Arabic, the. term sharīʿah refers to God's immutable divine law and this is contrasted with fiqh, which refers to its interpretations by Islamic scholars.

    Something showed up in my Apple newsfeed from LGBTQ Nation yesterday, which reminded me of women being stoned for adultery.

Donald Trump shares stage with rightwing activist who’s discussing stoning gay people to death
Trump has repeatedly attended and spoken at Charlie Kirk's rallies despite his extreme anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
Wednesday, June 12, 2024

A rightwing activist whose rally Donald Trump spoke at last week in Arizona is now telling his podcast audience that the Bible calls on Christians to stone gay people to death and saying that being gay is “an error” and compared homosexuality to drug addiction and alcoholism.

Turning Point USA founder and executive director Charlie Kirk was discussing children’s YouTuber Ms. Rachel, who was targeted by rightwingers earlier this month because she acknowledged that June is Pride Month on social media.

RELATED:
Charlie Kirk claims China will invade Taiwan because an American high school hosted a drag show
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2021/10/charlie-kirk-claims-china-will-invade-taiwan-american-high-school-hosted-drag-show/

The far-right “youth” leader is one of Trump’s biggest cheerleaders.

“I’m so glad you’re here, I’m so glad you’re who you are,” she said in the fairly anodyne message.

She later posted a video responding to the rightwing backlash – many on the right, including Chaya Raichik of Libs of TikTok and “Christian fascist” Matt Walsh, accused her of supporting “child mutilation” and “gender ideology” – where she pointed out that she is Christian and her Christianity inspires her to want to help build an accepting world for everyone.

“In Matthew 22, a religious teacher asks Jesus, ‘What’s the most important commandment?'” Ms. Rachel says in the video. “And Jesus says to love God and to love your neighbor as yourself.”

“There’s no greater commandments than these, I believe it’s mentioned eight times, love your neighbor.”

That made Kirk mad.

“I mean, Satan has quoted scripture plenty,” Kirk retorted. “You love somebody by telling the truth, not by confirming or affirming their sin.”

“And it says, by the way Ms. Rachel, you might wanna crack open that Bible of yours, in a lesser referenced part of the same part of scripture is in Leviticus 18 is that thou shall… Lay with another man and be stoned to death,” Kirk continued.

“Just sayin’,” he said, smiling as his co-hosts laughed. “So, Ms. Rachel, you quote Leviticus 19, love your neighbor as yourself, the chapter before affirms God’s perfect law when it comes to sexual matters.”

He was referring to Leviticus 18:22, which says, “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination,” and Leviticus 20:13, which says, “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.”

Trump attended the Turning Point USA rally in Dream City Church in Phoenix last Thursday, where both Trump and Kirk spread the message that they were going to make the 2024 election “too big to rig,” a reference to the conservative lie that there was massive, widespread voter fraud in 2020.

“We are going to make November too big to rig and we are going to overwhelm the ballot boxes,” Kirk said at the event. “There is no path to the White House without Arizona.”

President Joe Biden won Arizona in 2020. Trump is an unindicted coconspirator in Arizona’s case against false electors who allegedly tried to circumvent the electoral process in an effort to install Trump as president for a second term.

In that same podcast episode, Kirk said that being gay is an “error” and compared homosexuality to alcoholism and drug addiction.

“It’s very simple,” Kirk said. “So how do you love somebody? You love them so much to correct their error. So let’s just take the Pride conversation out because people think it’s an identification… It’s not, it’s sexual behavior.”

“But if you meet an alcoholic or you meet a drug addict, do you affirm their struggle?” he continued. “No! You say, you’re better than this, let’s get you free from that, let’s get you free from that activity.”

    I wondered why I had not read in the news that Donald Trump reamed out self-proclaimed St. Charlie Kirk for saying LBGTQs should be stoned?

    Here’s what Kirk’s alleged savior Jesus had to say in the Gospels about women being stoned for adultery.

John 8
New International Version
But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. 7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.”

    Here’s what Jesus said in the Gospels about homosexuality:

zero, nada, zilch

    Here’s what I heard many Christians say:

God is perfect

God makes no mistakes

    I have known many queer people. Everyone of them felt they were born queer. There was nothing they could do about it. So either God screwed up, or God made them queer. 

    My younger brother was bisexual in the closet. Someone  threatened to out him and there was nothing he could do about it and he killed himself and tried to make it look like murder.

    I lived many years in Key West, where maybe 25 percent of the people living there belong to the LBGQT side of God’s creation.

    Because of that, the Key West City Commission passed a resolution that adopted “We are all members of One Human Family” as the city's official philosophy.

    For years, members of Key West's LBGQT and straight communities joined in a parade on Duval Street that stretched the rainbow flag across the island.

    Fantasy Fest, held on Duval Street in late October, Key West’s biggest money maker, was started by the LBGTQ community.

    Key West’s lesbian mayor Teri Johnston was a city commissioner for two 4-year terms, when she took a break because, I felt, she was disgusted with how the commission was running the city government. Every time Teri ran for commission, she won overwhelmingly. Later, she ran for mayor and was elected twice, overwhelmingly. I think she is the best elected official Key West ever had. Now in her second term, Teri has announced she will not run for reelection,

    I think the 2nd best Key West elected official is my straight Jewish lawyer and friend Sam Kaufman, who has served two  terms as a city commissioner. Sam told me in his law office that it did not bother him that I talked about my dreams, because Jewish people think dreams come from God.

    When I was homeless in 2016 and 2017, I slept nights on a metal bench in the front lobby of the Key West police station, because the city’s homeless shelter banned me for life over what I wrote about the shelter, its employees and homeless people at my blog, goodmorningkeywest.com, which died and went to heaven, and its successor, afoolsworkneverends.blogspot.com, which sometimes still is alive and kicking,

    A gay man in Key West, who was a political activist and well liked and respected, allowed me to leave my backpack and dirty clothes laundry bag on his front porch, so I didn’t have to carry them everywhere I went. He bought me a sleeping bag, so I would not be cold during winter nights. He bought me a hammock and an annual pass to Fort Zachary Taylor State Park, so I could hang out there during the daytime and nap in the hammock and not be harassed by Key West City police, who did not allow homeless people so sit on towels or blankets on the ground, or lie down on the ground, because that violated the city’s no camping ordinance, which was never enforced against anyone but homeless people.

    In 2018, I made my 6th run for mayor and Teri Johnston was elected but was not yet in office. A big anti-LBGQT hoopla was started by local right wing Christians. My final public act before I moved back to Alabama late that year was to attend a Key West City Commission meeting, which I had done maybe 300 times and had spoken for the allowed 3 minutes maybe 1,000 times about items on the city commission’s printed agenda.

    There was nothing on the city commission printed agenda about the anti-LBGQT hoopla, but at the end of a city commission meeting citizens were allowed to speak 3 minutes on any topic they wished. I got out out of my chair and walked to the citizen speaker podium and told the outgoing mayor and the 6 city commissioners, including Sam Kaufman, something like this:

I heard many Christians quote St. Paul far more than they quoted Jesus. In one of his letters, Paul said he had a thorn in the flesh, which he had asked God to remove, and God had told him the thorn would not be removed because it would help him grow. In one of his letters, Paul condemned homosexuality as an abomination. In his letters, Paul spoke poorly of women. He said only through her husband can a woman know Christ. He said sex caused trouble and he wished all of his followers were like him, celibate. 

As described in Acts of the Apostles, before he was Paul, Paul was a Jewish Pharisee named Saul of Taurus, who made it his life work to find Christians and turn them in to the Roman government, which was crucifying Christians that did not renounce Jesus. Saul stopped doing that after he was confronted by Jesus in vision on the Road to Damascus, and Jesus asked him, “Why do you persecute me, Saul?” Whereupon, Saul was struck by lightning and blinded and knocked off his horse. After a dark night of the soul, Saul emerged as the Christian Paul, who became an apostle, who never met Jesus in the flesh. 

All Jewish men, and especially Pharisees, had a solemn duty to marry and propagate God’s chosen people. There is nothing in Paul’s letters that he married or sired children. Every woman around Paul knew his thorn in the flesh was that he was gay. As for Jesus, if Mary Magdalene publicly washed the homeless man Jesus's feet with water and her own hair and tears and anointed his feet with sacred ointment she scarce could afford, what did she wash and anoint him with when they were in private?

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

America: the fish rots from the head down

    Yesterday, a federal court jury convicted President Joe Biden’s son Hunter for lying on a federal form that he was not an addict when he purchased a .38 Colt revolver shortly after doing 11 days in a drug rehab facility.

    From what all I read in online news media and saw on TV news media, Hunter’s defense was (a) he wasn’t using drugs when he bought the gun and wrote on the federal form that he was not and addict, and (b) Amendment 2 of the U.S. Constitution allows a drug addict to buy a gun and overrides the federal disclosure form Hunter signed. The US District Court trial judge ruled against Hunter on the Amendment 2 argument, and the jury ruled against Hunter on the he was not an addict when he wrote on the federal from that he was not an addict. 

    This old lawyer, who clerked for a United States District Judge that presided over ever federal criminal prosecution in north Alabama, sez only the blind, death and dumb can't see that the federal prosecution of Hunter Biden is a tempest in a teapot, which never would have gone to trial if it was anyone but the son of the president of the United States of America. If it was anyone else, it would have been settled with a plea deal years ago, with the defendant being put on probation- or nothing would have happened, because the defendant didn’t do anything with the gun after he bought it, and a US Attorney would have had far more important matters to address.

    I’ll back up and start over.

    The federal prosecution of Hunter by a US Attorney appointed by President Donald Trump, presided over by a United States District Judge appointed by President Donald Trump, ABSOLUTELY GUTS the argument made over and over by convicted felon Donald Trump and his legions of MAGA and Republican lemmings that the United States Department of Justice is PARTISAN in favor of the Democrats.

    President Biden saying he will not pardon Hunter and President Biden never attacking the trial judge, prosecutors, prosecution witnesses, jury, etc., and saying he respects the rule of law and the federal criminal justice system and jury’s verdict, puts him in an entirely different universe from the convicted felon Donald Trump, who clearly believes he is immune to the law. 

    Donald Trump is an unnatural disaster.

    As is President Biden, for his continued financial and arms aid to Israel in its war in Gaza.

    Hunter Biden proved that he, too, is an unnatural disaster.

    Here’s how.

    Hunter knew darn well that a drug addict should not buy a gun, and he didn’t need his former vice president father to tell him that.

    When Hunter left the rehab facility and bought a gun, he proved to the whole wide world that he was nuts, dangerous and depraved. If you don’t believe me, ask any old timer in Narcotics Anonymous. 

    When Hunter left the drug rehab facility and bought the gun, he didn’t give a shit about anyone but himself. If you don’t believe me, ask any old timer in Narcotic Anonymous.

    When Hunter was caught and prosecuted by the Feds and he didn’t admit his guilt and throw himself on the mercy of the federal judicial justice system and spare his loved ones and his very prominent American family what they would publicly endure, he proved he cares only about himself. If you don’t believe me, ask any old timers in Narcotics anonymous.

    If President Biden has not figured out that Hunter cares only about himself and got from the jury what he deserved, then President Biden is not fit to be President of the United States of America, because his eyes, ears, mind and heart are broken beyond repair.

    But we already knew that from how President Biden dealt with Israel after he saw what Israel was doing in Gaza. That is not to give Hamas a free pass, but is to not give President Biden a free pass, which he gave himself, and that’s another reason he is not fit to be president of the United States of America.

    We also know, because there is no other possible explanation, that Hunter got very rich via business dealings in Ukraine and Red China because of his vice-president and president father, and that’s another reason his father is not fit to be president of the United States of America. 

    Any Republican or MAGA, who has not yet figured out that Donald Trump is no different from Hunter Biden, but on a much larger scale, is just as insane and incorrigible as Donald Trump,  Hunter Biden and his father.

    If you don’t believe me, go into your prayer closet and stay there until you hear God’s VERDICT, which was in my Apple newsfeed this morning:

The Hill

Paul Ryan says he won’t vote for Trump: ‘I’m gonna write in a Republican’

BY TARA SUTER - 05/08/24 9:35 AM ET

Former House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Tuesday that he does not plan to vote for former President Trump in November, suggesting he would write in another candidate instead.

“Character is too important to me,” Ryan, who left Congress in 2019, told Yahoo Finance at the Milken Global Institute Conference. “And it’s a job that requires the kind of character that he just doesn’t have.”

“Having said that, I really disagree with [President Biden] on policy,” he added. “I wrote in a Republican the last time, I’m gonna write in a Republican this time.” 

Ryan, the head of the Republican House majority during Trump’s first two years in the White House, has became a vocal critic of the former president. He has argued that Trump is not a “conservative” but rather an “authoritarian narcissist,” and backed former Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) for standing up to the former president. 

“Historically speaking, all of his tendencies are basically where narcissism takes him, which is whatever makes him popular, makes him feel good in any given moment,” Ryan said in an interview late last year.  

“He doesn’t think in classical liberal conservative terms,” he continued at the time. “He thinks in an authoritarian way, and he’s been able to get a big chunk of the Republican base to follow him because he’s the culture warrior.” 

The former Speaker has also stated it is “really clear” that Biden won the 2020 election, despite the former president and his allies’ common claims to the contrary. 

“It was not rigged. It was not stolen,” Ryan said in an interview in 2021. “Donald Trump lost the election. Joe Biden won the election. It’s really clear.”

Ryan left Congress after serving 20 years representing Wisconsin’s 1st District. He was also Sen. Mitt Romney’s (R-Utah) running mate in the 2012 presidential election. 

Romney, who announced in September that he will retire from the Senate at the end of his term, has also recently emerged as a strong critic of the former president.

The Hill has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

    Meanwhile, if you are wondering what’s really going on in Hamas, read this VERY TARDY CNN finally got some of the shit out of its eyes and ears wake up call in my Apple newsfeed this morning::

CNN

Hamas gambled on the suffering of civilians in Gaza. Netanyahu played right into it
7:01 PM EDT June 11, 2024

Yahya Sinwar has so far survived eight months of Israeli’s brutal military campaign to kill him. His longevity is a personal victory for the Hamas leader – and increasingly appears to be grim vindication of his decision to seize the initiative in the generational Palestinian struggle with Israel by launching a bloody attack on October 7 that would plunge Gaza’s two million residents into a predictable hell.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and his military responded as expected to Sinwar’s onslaught of terror that killed more than 1,200 people and saw over 220 taken hostage, declaring war and vowing to destroy Hamas.

Predictably too, according to many regional diplomats, Israel’s military campaign is failing to deliver on the dismantling of Hamas, even as the number of Palestinians killed soars past 36,000. While Hamas is people and structures, they argue, it is also an ideology.

Now Sinwar – who speaks fluent Hebrew and has a nuanced knowledge of Israeli politics – believes he still has the war’s initiative, amid high-stakes bargaining with Israel for a ceasefire and hostage deal.

“We have the Israelis right where we want them,” he is said to have told other Hamas leaders, in leaked messages reported by The Wall Street Journal. He appeared to justify the deaths of Palestinian civilians as a “necessary sacrifice” according to the messages.

If this were a conventional war, it would be easy to write Sinwar off as deluded; Israel has the upper hand by far in conventional weapons. But the weapons’ devastating effectiveness is becoming a liability in this asymmetric conflict, and against the backdrop of a tortured history that Sinwar is adroitly weaponizing against Israel.

Because of the enormous civilian casualties and suffering inflicted by Israel in its pursuit of Hamas, Netanyahu now faces a possible arrest warrant for war crimes from the ICC, the world’s top court – just like Sinwar. And the consequences for Netanyahu are far more serious than for Hamas’ leader, because Sinwar is already a renowned terrorist hiding in a tunnel with limited prospects and Netanyahu is a global leader whose world will dramatically shrink if the ICC issues warrants.

Netanyahu dismisses the ICC as anti-Semitic, but that hasn’t neutralized the damage in the court of international opinion. Meanwhile, Sinwar can sit back and cash in on the international anger over Palestinian suffering.

Wind in Sinwar’s sails

Earlier this year, university campuses across the United States and Europe combusted in spontaneous protest over the toll of Israel’s war on civilians in Gaza, where humanitarians warn of a growing hunger crisis.

For the first time, a generation of Palestinian were able to witness what they’d always hoped for, a potent political force able to rival what they’ve always perceived as an over loud, over pervasive and over powerful lobby for Israeli interests.

In any other year this may have been irrelevant, but Biden’s back is to the wall in the upcoming US presidential election. He has pledged unwavering support to Israel and continues to send weapons to Israel’s military, but if he stays the course, Biden risks losing vital votes in swing states from a new generation of left-leaning Democrats. He can’t ignore the protesters’ anger about Gaza’s plight.

T his puts wind in Sinwar’s political sails. His negotiating team has gotten tougher: first appearing to be on the verge of compromise, then holding out for a permanent ceasefire and complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. He also appears to have brought the reality of a Palestinian state closer too – a political coup following decades of stultifying inertia.

US regional allies, notably Saudi Arabia, have set an “irreversible” path to a two-state solution as part of their price for buy-in to help Gaza rebuild. And while Netanyahu’s far-right ministers predictably say no to Palestinian statehood, some Western partners are showing they’re fed up with Israeli intransigence.

In recent weeks, Ireland, Spain, Norway and Portugal, all frustrated Netanyahu won’t agree a peace deal, have formally recognized Palestinian statehood. The statements mark a remarkable departure from their previously cautious approach to Netanyahu’s belligerence.

Israel has lashed out against the four European nations, but this doesn’t sting Sinwar. He is able to hunker down deep below Gaza and relish the hell he has unleashed above and the repercussions he gambled on.

Hamas’s ideology thrives under the current Israeli attacks, precisely because it was born of, and nurtured on, that very narrative. The war Sinwar started has taken Palestinian suffering to the next level – and Netanyahu has played right into it.

None of this means Sinwar will be winning a popular vote in Gaza during his lifetime, however long or short that may be. But the enormous bloodshed he precipitated has allowed him to tap into global moral outrage. He is now playing the Democratic world against itself, and his tools are the very values that developed nations hold sacrosanct: sanctity of life and fair play.

From a position of apparent weakness, he tries to turn every apparent disadvantage to advantage. On the cusp of Israel’s imminent Rafah operation, he tried to stall it by claiming to accept an Egyptian peace deal that he said Israel had accepted – with his officials briefing details of the mechanics and timings of how hostage releases would work.

As expected, the tactic spun up already febrile Israeli street protest against Netanyahu to a new level. Demonstrators demanded Netanyahu forestall the Rafah operation in favor of a seemingly tantalizingly close hostage release deal.

Who’s calling the shots in Gaza

According to regional diplomats, many of Sinwar’s power plays were entirely predictable. Decades of Israeli failure to address Palestinians’ security and economic concerns outside of Israel’s perceived interests set the table for Sinwar’s challenge, and what he could expect to achieve.

Sinwar’s power amid the war seems to be becoming part of the perceived wisdom about Gaza and the war. In Israel on Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “I don’t think anyone other than the Hamas leadership in Gaza actually are the ones who can make decisions.”

E ven if Sinwar were inclined to solicit input from Hamas’s well-heeled leadership cadre sitting in the comfort of Doha, and meeting leaders in Iran and Turkey, the likelihood they can bridge the gaps in their thinking through detailed discussion is almost nil. Unfettered communication away from Israel’s prying ears and eyes is impossible.

In the final days before Northern Ireland’s momentous 1998 Good Friday Peace Agreement between the IRA’s political wing Sinn Fein and the British government, I watched the group’s top leaders emerge from the talks locked in intense, semi-silent conspiratorial whispers, slowly pacing adjacent gardens.

But such conversations are likely a luxury Sinwar neither has, nor dares risk taking, from wherever he is hiding in Gaza. And like any leader convinced he is proving his point, he is unlikely to back down now unless his key demands are locked in.

His recent warning that Israel will have to fight for Rafah strongly suggest he is still in the process of bargaining.

Blinken didn’t mention Sinwar by name in his remarks Tuesday, but there was no need. Everyone in the room understood who he meant when he added, “That is what we are waiting on.”

And if messages of pressure to make a deal are reaching Sinwar he will also understand them for another part of what they are – an attempt to turn Gazans desperate for an end to the conflict against him.

As much as Sinwar has put the psychological screws on Israel’s leadership, he can be made vulnerable too. And if past experience is any measure, he will likely gamble that he can play mind games better than Netanyahu. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

Hey Supreme Court Justice Alito, the Declaration of Independence and Amendment 1 prove America was not founded as a Christian nation

 

    Last night, a friend emailed me this Alternet article:

'Unethical' and 'corrupt': Secret Alito audio revealing 'Christian nationalist' stuns experts

Opinion by David Badash

Secret audio recording of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito casually and unreservedly telling a woman posing as a right-wing Catholic conservative that there are “fundamental” differences between the left and the right that “can’t be compromised,”and agreeing the nation needs to return to “godliness,” has sparked strong criticism by legal and political experts.

Justice Alito agreed with the woman, documentary filmmaker Lauren Windsor, who told him, “I don’t know that we can negotiate with the left in the way that needs to happen for the polarization to end.”

“I think that it’s a matter of, like, winning,” she added before Alito replied, “I think you’re probably right.”

Alito continued, saying, “there can be a way of working — a way of living together peacefully, but it’s difficult, you know, because there are differences on fundamental things that really can’t be compromised. They really can’t be compromised. So it’s not like you are going to split the difference.”

Many expect judges, and especially Supreme Court justices, to maintain an impartiality, including when weighing in on issues of faith and morality. The U.S. Constitution itself states justices serve for life if they remain on “good behavior.”

“The key part of the Alito tape is his concession that compromise on fundamental issues is probably impossible. A horrific quality for a judge or human being,” declared constitutional law scholar and professor of law Eric Segall.

“Sam Alito is a Christian Nationalist,” said attorney and author Andrew L. Seidel, a vice president at Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “Anyone familiar with his opinions on religious freedom and church-state separation (or who has read American Crusade) has known this for some time. Then there’s his admission with the flags. Now this confession.”

Professor of law, MSNBC legal analyst, and former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance shared several concerns.

“If Justice Alito is making comments like this to a random person at a get-together, what is he saying to his close confidants? How is this impartial justice, especially when his votes/rationale on cases are considered?” she asked.

“This is a Justice who believes the correct way to determine the law is via a strict appeal to ‘history & tradition’ even though both of those things assume a legal system where Black people & women have no rights,” Vance added.

Vance also remarked, “A statistic that stuck with me about Alito’s jurisprudence is that ‘An empirical analysis of the Court’s ‘standing’ decisions…found that Alito rules in favor of conservative litigants 100% of the time & against liberal litigants in every single case.’ ”

The Atlantic’s Norman Ornstein, a political scientist and emeritus scholar responded to remarks Justice Alito made, writing: “Utterly unethical, corrupt, a serial liar, and a radical lacking every element of judicial temperament. This monster does not belong in civil society, much less on any court, much much less on the Supreme Court.”

Some, including attorney George Conway, pointed out the difference between Justice Alito’s response to Windsor and Chief Justice John Roberts, who was asked similar questions.

“Pressed on whether the court has an obligation to put the country on a more ‘moral path,'” Rolling Stone reported, “Roberts turns the tables on his questioner: ‘Would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path?’ He argues instead: ‘That’s for people we elect. That’s not for lawyers.’ Presented with the claim that America is a ‘Christian nation’ and that the Supreme Court should be ‘guiding us in that path,’ Roberts again disagrees, citing the perspectives of ‘Jewish and Muslim friends,’ before asserting: ‘It’s not our job to do that. It’s our job to decide the cases the best we can.’ ”

“The contrast between Alito’s responses and Roberts’s speaks volumes,” Conway said. “Oh my.

    When this old lawyer, who clerked for a United States District Judge, hears someone say America was founded as a Christian nation, or was founded on Christian principles, I want give Justice Alito and the other 5 Christian right judges on the U.S. Supreme Court the text of the American Declaration of Independence to read, because there is nothing in it about Christianity. 

    Many signers of the Declaration, including its principal author Thomas Jefferson, were Free Masons and Deists, and their sacred symbols, the pyramid with the single eye at the top, are on America’s paper money today. 

    The Declaration of Independence makes four non-Christian lingo references to Deity from which it draws its authority.

  I put the 4 references to Deity in bold.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

    Then follows a long list of grievances against England's king, in which there is no reference to Deity.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

    After defeating King Georges’s army, a good bit of which consisted of German mercenaries, the Colonists created the new nations' second legal document, the United States Constitution, which divided the national government into three branches, Congress, Executive, and Supreme Court, and provided how those branches would operate.

    The Constitution begins:

WE THE PEOPLE of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to our- selves and our Posterity, do ordain and estab- lish this Constitution for the United States of America.

    There is nothing in the Constitution about Christianity.

    After enacting the Constitution, Congress enacted Ten Amendments, which became known as “The Bill of Rights”, in which there is nothing about Christianity. 

    However, there is mention of religion in Amendment I:

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

      The Founding Fathers were acutely aware of the religious oppression in England and the rest of the British Isles and in Western Europe. They did not want to see that happen in America, thus the bar against a religion of the State and the prohibition against restricting free exercise of religion.

    After America became a nation, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, “Give me liberty, or give me death” Patrick Henry, the Governor of the State of Virginia, introduced a bill into the Virginia Legislature that effectively would have made Christianity the state religion of Virginia.

    Thomas Jefferson, and another signer of the Declaration, James Madison, lived in Virginia, and they led the charge to defeat Governor Henry’s bill being passed by the Virginia Legislature. 

    I was not taught any of the above in American history courses in elementary school, high school and college. I was not taught any of the above at the University of Alabama School of Law. I never read, saw or heard any of the above discussed  publicly or privately, even though Jesus in the Gospels said to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and unto God that which is God’s.

   When I was in elementary school, “I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which is stands, one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," was changed to “one nation, under God, indivisible", to elevate America above godless communist Soviet Union and China. 

    In 2016, I watched the Democrats nominate Hillary Clinton. I watched Trump promise the American Christian right that he would put their people on the United States Supreme Court. I watched Trump get elected and put three right wing Christians on the United States Supreme Court, for all of which the Democrats can stand up take a bow, because Vice President Joe Biden would have beaten Donald Trump in 2016, but Hillary had dirt on the Bidens, so the Democrats nominated Hillary, without vetting her, and, oh, my, her dirt got Donald Trump elected.

    The Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et. all, and Amendment 1 are rolling over in their graves.

  

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com