Yikes! NY state court judge Authur Engoron accused of ex parte communication during Donald Trump’s civil fraud prosecution

    Yikes! Some summer Solstice, the bringing of the dark.

FOX News

Trump motions to have judge in New York civil fraud case recused

Brianna Herlihy, Brandon Gillespie

Thu, June 20, 2024 at 1:31 PM CDT

Lawyers for former President Trump have filed a new motion in his New York civil fraud case alleging that the judge engaged in "prohibited communications" and should recuse himself.

In a motion filed with the New York State Supreme Court, Trump's lawyers accuse Judge Arthur Engoron of engaging in actions "fundamentally incompatible with the responsibilities attendant to donning the black robe and sitting in judgment."

That action refers to a conversation Engoron allegedly had with New York City real estate attorney Adam Leitman Bailey "regarding the merits of this case, the permissible scope of the New York State Attorney General’s and this Court’s own authority under Executive Law… and the consequences of this Court’s decision on business in the State."

"The New York Code of Judicial Conduct exists to ensure that litigants are afforded a fair and impartial trial. Justice Engoron's communications with Attorney Adam Leitman Bailey regarding the merits of this case, however, directly violate that code and demonstrate that Judge Engoron cannot serve as a fair arbiter. It is clear that Judge Engoron should recuse himself immediately," Alina Habba, spokesperson for Trump, said in a statement.

According to the filing, Bailey told ABC in an interview that he had tried to advise Engoron weeks before the judge's decision.

"Although Mr. Bailey claims that President Trump was not mentioned by name in the conversation, when asked whether ‘it was obvious that [his] input was related to this case,’ Mr. Bailey stated ‘well[,] obviously we weren’t talking about the Mets,’" the filing says.

Engoron in February found Trump liable for more than $350 million in damages in the civil fraud case brought against him by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

James' case also targeted Trump's family and the Trump Organization. Engoron ruled that Trump and defendants were liable for "persistent and repeated fraud," "falsifying business records," "issuing false financial statements," "conspiracy to falsify false financial statements," "insurance fraud" and "conspiracy to commit insurance fraud."

The judge criticized Trump's behavior during the trial, saying that he "rarely responded to the questions asked, and he frequently interjected long, irrelevant speeches on issues far beyond the scope of the trial."

According to the ABC report cited in the filing, a spokesperson for the court said:

"[N]o ex parte conversation concerning this matter occurred between Justice Engoron and Mr. Bailey or any other person. The decision Justice Engoron issued February 16 was his alone, was deeply considered, and was wholly uninfluenced by this individual."

The filing notes that since those allegations have come to light, "it is reported that the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct has launched an investigation into this Court’s conduct" and that "at least a dozen news outlets have reported on both the alleged ex parte communication and the pending investigation."

"The law is clear that any communication outside of the presence of the parties or their lawyers must be strictly scrutinized," lawyers for Trump argue in the filing. "The Court is obligated to avoid attempted ex parte communications, and if an ex parte communication does occur, the Court should, at minimum, promptly notify all parties of the communication."

"The appropriate remedy for the ex parte communication is notification to the parties and recusal," it states.

"Here, it is beyond dispute that neither Defendants nor the Attorney General were present during the purported communication with Mr. Bailey. Nor did this Court ever notify either party that the purported communication took place, which would have at least permitted an opportunity for comment on the substance of the conversation, as conveyed by this Court," the filing states. 

"Worse yet, Mr. Bailey’s account indicates that this Court not only permitted but welcomed such prohibited communication. According to Mr. Bailey, this Court was an active participant in a conversation concerning the merits of the case, wherein this Court asked Mr. Bailey a ‘lot of questions.'"

Former President Trump arrives at Trump Tower in New York on May 30 after being found guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree.

Bailey did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. 

 

Notably, Bailey years ago successfully sued then-real estate mogul Trump over a condo dispute.

"For the foregoing reasons, Defendants respectfully request that this Court recuse itself, or, in the alternative, set the matter down for an evidentiary hearing, and grant any such other and further relief it may think proper," the filing concludes.

    

    Regardless of how Judge Engoron and the New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct resolve this, if Judge Engoron  had such a conversation with Bailey during the trial, Judge Engoron promptly should have disclosed that to Trump's lawyers and the New York prosecutor. 

    For the life of this old lawyer who clerked for a US District Judge, I can't imagine how any judge in his right mind would do what Judge Engeron is accused of doing. 

    But then, I cannot imagine US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas taking fancy trips and accepting large, or any, gifts from wealthy white Republicans and not promptly disclosing it and resigning from that Court. 

    Nor can I imagine US Supreme Court Justice Alito remaining on that Court after what has come out about him and his equally right wing Christian fanatic wife. 

    Nor for that matter, can I imagine what seized Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis to have a romantic relationship with her chief Georgia RICO law prosecutor against Donald Trump, and when Willis was found out, she did not admit the affair, she did resign from the case, but instead claimed she was persecuted because she was black, and only later did she vaguely admit she was not perfect.

God gave those cases to Engoron and Willis to steward. 

Ditto, all of the US Supreme Court Justices, and every federal and state court judge and prosecutor in America. 

God is watching you.

God is watching everyone.

Including me.

Yikes!

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

How Bear Bryant, George Floyd, Black Lives Matter and Nick Saban exposed America’s Third Reich

    Today is Juneteenth, a national holiday rooted in the day news reached the Confederate state of Texas that the South had lost the Civil War and slavery was over. 

    A few days ago, I dreamed of Texas A & M and someone say a really important promise had been broken, and I woke up wondering that that was about?

    I recalled that Juneteenth was approaching.

   I recalled that Paul “Bear” Bryant coached at Texas A & M before he was hired by Alabama to resurrect its football program from the dead.

    Some of Coach Bryant's teams' wins were so last minute spectacular that someone did drawing of him walking on water, and in some circles he became known as “The Bear Jesus”. 

    What Coach Bryant is not remembered nearly as well for in Alabama, and hardly at all in the rest of America…

    After years of wanting to recruit black high school players, but the political climate in Alabama was so Alabama Governor George Wallace “segregation now, segregation forever”, Coach Bryant finally got an opening in 1970, as described in this 2020 FORBES Magazine article, to which I added a little bid of additional clarification and incitement to action in bold:

Bear Bryant’s Genius Decision 50 Years Ago Shaped College Football Today
Don Yaeger
Senior Contributor

Sep 7, 2020,10:07am EDT
Updated Sep 7, 2020, 10:31am EDT

TUSCALOOSA, AL - CIRCA 1972: Sam "Bam" Cunningham, #39 full back of the University of Southern
If you’re a college football enthusiast, like I am, then this is the most beautiful time of the year (fingers firmly crossed!). It’s when the clash of helmets and shoulder pads gives you a jolt better than doubling up on morning coffee. It’s when rooting for your favorite school becomes an opportunity to witness, in unison, a significant moment that will be remembered forever. This decade is easily linked to the University of Alabama and head coach Nick Saban. The Tide has won four National Championships in the past 10 seasons—five in the past 11. 

And I don’t believe it would have happened if the Tide hadn’t first made a groundbreaking decision a half-century ago. It was 50 years ago this week that two legendary college football programs played a game in Birmingham that many argue completely altered the course of college football. 

The year was 1970 and while the radio played hit songs like “Let It Be,” by The Beatles, the college football world would soon see the state of Alabama sing a new tune. Coach John McKay and the University of Southern California were invited by iconic Alabama coach Paul “Bear” Bryant to see which team was better. Despite the fact that Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier in baseball 23 years earlier, there wasn’t a single Black player on the varsity roster at Alabama in 1970. Then that one game took place, and the reaction turned the Tide for good.

I had the opportunity to write a book about the USC vs. Alabama matchup —researching and tracking down notable figures to truly celebrate the significance of that big night. Both teams entered that season loaded with young talent, but Southern Cal had long before made the decision to embrace integration and allow Black players to contribute to the on-field success of the team. Bryant wanted to do the same, but politics and pressure had prevented such a move. The genius of Bear Bryant was in deciding to play USC—which at the time had 18 Black players on the team, including the team’s starting quarterback, a rarity in the sport. That meant the Alabama faithful would be given a first-hand view of how integration could look on the football field.

To say the Tide was overmatched would be an understatement. USC beat Bama 42-21 and all 6 touchdowns by the Trojans were scored by Black players. The breakout star of the game was a backup fullback named Sam “Bam” Cunningham who made his college football debut by rushing 12 times for 135 yards and 2 touchdowns. USC’s victory—paired with Cunningham’s dominant performance, was the feather in the cap that Coach Bryant needed to convince the fan base and higher-ups that the University should actively recruit and play Black players on the football team. 

Sports is often a vehicle for change, and this game revved the engines and added fresh tires for the advancement of college football at Alabama. By 1979, the team had gone from zero Black players to 18 Black players on the roster. They’d also won three national championships, posting a win-loss record of 107-13 in that 10-year window. 

In 1971, junior college transfer defensive lineman Johnny Mitchell became Alabama’s first Black player to see playing time. That same year, another Black player, running back Wilbur Jackson would join him on the field. In fact, Jackson was in the stands watching the game as a freshman. Then by 1973, Mitchell would be invited back by Bryant to become Alabama’s first Black assistant coach. Mitchell is currently an assistant coach to Mike Tomlin and the Pittsburgh Steelers. 

The backstory of the game makes this even more compelling. Bryant had put it on the schedule only a few months prior after a quick meeting with McKay in the Los Angeles airport. He recognized the opportunity to make a statement about the need to integrate his team. He knew his decision would not be a popular one for many in Alabama, but enlightening them to what could be achieved in a fully integrated world could only come from someone with his clout and stature. Bryant’s genius was in recognizing the significance of the moment and taking advantage of it. 

 

The rest of the backstory is, after Southern Cal ran all over Alabama in Tuscaloosa in 1970, Coach Bryant whined to Coach McKay that his little, slow white boys couldn’t compete against racially integrated teams like Southern Cal, and Coach McKay told Coach Bryant about a black football player named John Mitchell, who was playing at an Arizona junior college and was being recruited by Southern Cal and other colleges, and that’s how Coach Bryant found future two-time All SEC defensive end “Big John” Mitchell, whose Alabama team beat Southern Cal in 1991, in Los Angeles. At the end of the 1991 season, Alabama got manhandled by a very tough racially integrated Nebraska 35-6, in the Orange Bowl, and Coach Bryant recruited black players even harder. Wilbur Jackson went on to be a consensus All-American running back.

In celebrating the 50-year anniversary of the game that turned the Tide, I decided to dedicate a podcast episode to asking three players who were there the night of USC’s win what they thought of the game’s significance. The Corporate Competitor podcast will air on Friday and then my colleagues at ESPN intend to celebrate the story as well during their College GameDay broadcast on Saturday.

Why do sports matter? Why is it not just a game? That’s why! Because sports figures like Bear Bryant knew they could make a difference. It’s why today’s athletes are able to exercise their voice to address social issues and concerns. You could argue that Coach Bryant just wanted to win more football games, but no matter his reasoning, his decision reshaped history.

Indeed, after Coach Bryant recruited John Mitchell and Wilbur Jackson, Alabama’s white high schools, junior high schools and elementary schools, and white private schools, started recruiting black football players and other black athletes, and the same happened in the other Southeastern Conference states, including Texas.

So as we enter into unprecedented times in college football with a season of limited fans in the stadiums and entire conferences opting out until 2021, I’m reminded that college football has been through unprecedented times in the past, and emerged better because of it.

Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work here. 

Mr. Yeager, I think you need to do a follow up. Feel free to quote me. 

In 2020, Covid-19 shut down America. The black man George Floyd was murdered by black and white policeman, which ignited the Black Lives Matter movement in America. Alabama head football coach Nick Saban was approached by his black athletes about him leading a Black Lives Matter march on the Tuscaloosa campus, which Coach Saban did. The march was mixed race. It ended where “segregation now, segregation forever” Governor George Wallace had stood blocking black Alabama student enrollees from attending class, and President John F. Kennedy's federalized Alabama National Guard escorted the black student enrollees past Governor Wallace to their classes. 

I’ve been an Alabama Crimson Tide fan since Coach Bryant promoted Golden Flake Potato Chips and Coca Cola, “Great pair, says the Bear” on his Sunday after the Saturday game TV show in Birmingham- my father owned Golden Flake.

In my opinion, Coach Saban’s 2020 team, which went 10-0 in against 10 SEC opponents and then beat 7-0 in the Big Ten Ohio State for the national championship, was the best Crimson Tide team ever. 

During that season, I drove down to an automobile junk yard in Shelby County below Birmingham to buy a used full-size rim for my van, so that I would not have to rely on a donut if I had another flat tire. In the office of the junk yard was a good bit of Alabama Crimson Tide paraphernalia, which nudged me to say to the white owner of the auto junk yard, “What about this year’s Crimson Tide?" He frowned, said, “Some things happened that some people didn’t like.” I said no more, paid him, and left with the spare rim and headed to the local Hispanic tire shop I had passed by on the way to the junk yard and had then mount a tire on the spare rim I had just bought from a white supremacist, aka, MAGA.

Now, Mr. Yaeger at FORBES Magazine, which once featured my father on its front page for being worth $100,000,000 thanks to Golden Flake Potato Chips, I do truly hope you and your bosses at FORBES noticed  President Donald Trump was very slow in 2016 to say, well maybe he didn’t want the support of former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon and Imperial Wizard David Duke, and after he was elected and in the White House, President Trump said  there were good people in this Confederate Monument removal protest in Charlottesville, Virginia,

And, I hope you and your bosses at FORBES noticed the oceans of white people at Trump MAGA rallies, such as this one. 

And, I hope you and your bosses at FORBES noticed the ocean of white people at this attempt to overthrow the 2020 presidential election.

And, I hope you and your bosses at FORBES are astute enough to know that when Trump kept saying before and after the 2020 election, that it was stolen, he meant, and  MAGAS understood he meant, stolen by blacks. 

And, I hope you and your bosses at Forbes see the close parallel between Donald Trump and his MAGAs and Adolph Hitler and his Nazis; and I hope you and your bosses at FORBES know Ivan Trump told VANITY FAIR, that when she was married to Donald Trump, he kept the book below of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet on his side of their bed and sometimes he pulled it out and read it at night. 

And, I hope you and your bosses at FORBES will point all of that out to FORBES readers. 

You and bosses at FORBEs can use what I wrote here, including the photos, to paint that picture worth all the money in America.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

as for the commies Jesus and Peter...

    After I published the mifepristone is Nature and Nature’s God’s back up plan, right Justice Ginsberg? post, a fellow took issue with just about everything I wrote, and I replied, and he replied, and it was two ships passing in the the night, and we kept at it through yesterday’s  If the American right insists on strict construction of American and Jesus history…, and he told me off and to take a hike, and I took a different tact.

The Fossil/The Shade Tree

I'm done discussing politics with you. Religion or anything else for that matter. You reminded me of old friends that were liberals that I was able to have discussions with, sometimes minds were changed, sometimes not. But their arguments at least had integrity. I suspect yours did at one time, but in an effort to remain relevant and stay in lock step with the modern radical leftist you have adopted their tactics. You don't trash both sides, you are fixated on Trump and can't fathom that anyone unwilling to go along with the Uniparty, of which the democraps are in charge and the republicants their junior partners, could really mean that. To quote maybe the greatest Alabaman who ever lived, the hillbilly Shakespeare Hank Williams Senior, we live in two different worlds. You're old enough to remember a better time in this nation but want to tear it all down because, who knows? Wrong side at the Edmund Pettis Bridge and felt guilty ever since? You had an infant child die so you believe in abortion without restrictions, because if your infant couldn't live then maybe you can support the killing of enough of them to make it easier to deal with? You seem to believe you know better than the Bible, the Constitution and what the founding fathers put in it by virtue of your cherry picked arguments, by your logic you should be in a position of tremendous leadership instead of slumming it on the interwebs with us lemmings. One of the things that galls me about your views on gun ownership is not just the constitutional and natural rights aspects of it but you are old enough to remember being able to go into a store, pay the proprietor and leave without seeking government permission and we didn't have the problems then that we have today. As with so many other things you have been around long enough to witness the deterioration but refuse to acknowledge the causes. Maybe because you supported the deterioration because of daddy issues or something. I'm just making generalizations based on your writing, or is that only your purview? But probably the one thing that just, I can't even describe my thoughts on it. It kinda started to manifest when you began attacking me here because I didn't call you when you said to. That I didn't jump when you said jump. You said you had been through cancer before but it never crossed your mind that maybe I had a lot going on and a phone call with a stranger wasn't something I was ready for. After all if I had time to post on Substackistan then I had time for whatever you had to say. Surely being on here wasn't a coping mechanism, I was just being a coward. More than your allegations that my cancer is caused by my political beliefs or just the fact that you think I'm a rotten man and a total bastard, the thing that really pisses me off is your constant wailing about waking up alive every day so far. That you hold the gift of life in such low regard, that you continually reject and denigrate the precious gift you have been given. I'm sure there's lots of people you've known who died young, too soon, and would've cherished more time. I wake up every day and make an effort to maintain a positive attitude, to not give up, to have hope. To not be negative. To not be a black hole of negativity who cares so little for life or his family, his home, for the human experience. You have mentioned that you grew out of being a spoiled rich brat, that doesn't track. Maybe that's why you're fixated with TDS, you see another rich spoiled brat that is doing better than you and you just can't deal with it. I don't know and don't care.

Sloan Bashinsky
Jesus in the Gospels was in America today, doing and saying what is reported in the Gospels, he would be viewed as a flaming commie by the American right, and the same thing would happen to him at the hands of the American right. What else could Jesus be but a commie? It's more blessed to give than to receive. Be a generous giver, good measure pressed down. If a man asks for your shirt, offer him also your coat. You cannot worship God and mammon. Take no thought for tomorrow, for each day has enough troubles of its own. Put your trust in God, and what you need to eat and wear will be provided.

In Acts is a story of the communist commune which followed Peter. The members of that community donated their valuables into a common pot, and each member of the community received back what he or she needed. A married couple said they had donated all that they had to the common pot. Peter asked the man if that was true? The man said, no, they had only donated part of their valuables. Peter said he was sorry, and the man dropped dead. The man's wife came to Peter, who told her what had happened, and she dropped dead. Had they been honest about their donation in the beginning, it would have turned out differently for them. 

Jesus and Archangel Michael have been hard on my case since early 1987. They stood me before many mirrors, looking at me, and they still provide me with refresher courses. They changed my perspective of EVERyTHING. What they did to me is vaguely described by the anonymous author of the Letter to the Hebrews in the New Testament, which is the fire and spirit training of suffered by people dragooned by the Melchizedek Order, which is in service to humanity on this planet and in which Order Jesus is high priest. 

That outfit has nothing to do with religion, but is recognized in some religious sects. That outfit is not of this world. When that outfit has had a hold of you for a while, you know what Jesus in the Gospels meant by being in but not of this world. You know God is your master, and you belong to nothing of this world, but you are in it, and you have to get up each morning and deal with it.  

I accept your criticism of my not caring to be on this world any longer. I wish you did not have cancer, but you do have it, and if I were in your skin, I would be asking God unceasing to show me what the root of the cancer is, because I would not want to carry that unknowing with me into the afterlife and have to deal with it there, or in a later life on this planet, or in a life somewhere else.  

Because of how I was raised, I see Donald Trump through a lens someone not raised that way can have. Trump is a rich, white, spoiled brat. He also has been infiltrated by a demonic entity, which infiltrates anyone who takes Trump's side. The same thing happened in Nazi Germany. You can read about that in Trevor Ravencroft’s book, The Spear of Destiny. Another, or a similar demon, has infiltrated Joe Biden and the people who side with him. Try to imagine how Democrats respond when I tell them that.  

I think what America needs right now is Donald Trump, Joe Biden and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. are abducted by aliens, or by the Angel of Death, or they become physically incapacitated by a medical event caused by something not of this world. That's what I think. I have no clue what God thinks, and neither does anyone else until it is made LOUD AND CLEAR. However, I know from my dreams and other ways I have come to recognize that I am addressing in what I write what the Melchizedek Order wants me to address. Some days I do better at it than other days. 

I asked you to call me because I had something I wanted to discuss privately with you. You danced around that, because you did not like what I was writing. So, I asked you if you had enough money to pay for necessities? When you finally called me, I told you to start drinking a lot of water with fresh lemon juice in it, which would alter your alkaline-acid chemistry and perhaps help with the cancer. I told you about a homeopathic doctor I once knew pretty well and I would pay for him to treat you if he was still in business, but when you called his office, you learned he had retired. I’m still concerned about your ability to pay for necessities, and I will help you with that, if you need that help.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

If the American right insists on strict construction of American and Jesus history...

    A while back I met a fellow on Substack, who is in his fifties and late stage cancer his doctors can’t fix. He said he voted for Donald Trump in 2016, but didn’t like how it went later. He seems kinda like me in some ways, poking just about everything, but he still looks to me that he’s basically a MAGA, and while I wish he wasn’t having such a hard go at his young age, he keeps coming around.

    Here is his reaction to the mifepristone is Nature and Nature’s God’s back up plan, right Justice Ginsberg? post, and where it went from there.

The Fossil/The ShadeTree
You often say when making a counter argument that you assail both sides of the great American shit show known as politics, but it doesn't read that way. You attach labels to Alito such as right wing, nationalist and Christian, which to me are preferable to their 180 degree opposite. You include Fox News, the alleged mouthpiece of the right, yet there's never any similar appellations for Ginsburg, MSDNC, or NPR. At one point NPR attempted to maintain neutrality, sadly they abandoned that path some time ago. 
And while we're tallking labels let's drop the euphemism abortion and call it what it is: infanticide. Murder. While I concede it may be an option in some extreme instances that's not what has the armpit hair of the blue haired lunatics and their enablers in a lather. Partial birth or even crushing the skull of the infant at birth is what these demons demand. When you can see fingers, a face, detect a heartbeat, you're dealing with a human life, not a clump of cells as Ginsburg once put it. One of the greatest advancements in a return to the American way was the day she ceased to draw breath and began her journey to worm food and a return to a clump of cells. 
Franklin came from a time when people were expected to take responsibility for themselves and even though he provided this knowledge it's ludicrous to think he would have advocated for the barbarism of the people who practice infanticide today. The people who can't define what a woman is probably aren't the last word in reproductive health.
And why is it solely the decision of the woman? When a man is rightfully required to take care of his offspring he's told repeatedly how responsible he is, yet the female can end that life regardless of his objections. 
As someone who has had more medical decisions to make at my age than I would have thought possible it's both nauseating and infuriating that my hands are tied, my options limited, and obstacles put in the my path regarding life saving medical care, but a woman can end a life at her sole discretion, as many times as she wants, and the legislative, medical, media and the professionally aggrieved will defend her decision rabidly.
As a lawyer I have a question for you? How is it when a pregnant woman is killed the killer is charged with taking two lives, not just one?

Sloan Bashinsky
Your argument is with God, not me. 

The Fossil
The ShadeTree
You didn't just quote God and the rebuttal addresses more than just the issue of infanticide through the use of herbs. Sounds like typical DNC double standard to me, just as when I brought the Almighty into the 2A issue and pointed out the amendment doesn't grant the right but restrains government from infringing upon it, your rebuttal was God didn't write the 2A. There's no right to infanticide codified in the constitution either.

Sloan Bashinsky
God created the herbs knowing how women would use them, your argument is with God. Maybe if you’d had a living infant son die of crib death, today called sudden infant death syndrome, and if your wife had two miscarriages before that, you would have a much different view of what is a child and what is not a child. 
I have long been convinced that pro-lifers see their own child-abused murdered young selves in aborted fetuses, and that’s why they emotionally react so strongly against abortion; and I have long been convinced that pro-choicers were so dominated by their parents when they were young that they have violent emotional reactions to anything that denies free choice. But then, that happened to the pro-lifers, too. Flip sides of the same awful horribly child-abused coin. 
Maybe therein lies the root of your cancer? 

God had zero to do with Amendment 2. How many weapons did Jesus carry, besides his words?

The Fossil

Luke 22:36 at the Last Supper Jesus instructed the disciples Let the one who has no sword sell his cloak and buy one. Doesn't say check with the government to make sure they approve of it either. I have no argument with God, my point being that the left wants to have it both ways. Only women have the right to have an opinion on infanticide but they can't define what a woman is. The government can restrict your right to own weapons when it clearly says no such thing, otherwise it would have been included. I've given you the definition of well regulated, if you choose not to believe it to support a partisan position that's on you. It doesn't make sense that they would have intended government oversight and not provided for it. Yet the right to infanticide is added in at a later time and we're all just supposed to accept it, and accept it as absolute. Alito allegedly lets his bias get in the way because of his personal views but Ginsburg, Sotomayor and Kagan side with the left consistently and are supposed to be the paragons of jurisprudence. The list is endless. 

You know nothing about what my wife and I have been through, whether we've ever experienced a miscarriage or anything like that, and not sure how going through that awful experience would sway a person to decide that a woman has the right to infanticide whenever she chooses. You never even attempted to address the other issues regarding this, so I guess you're conceding those points. Also, you have made several references to the source of my cancer that sounds like you're saying it's the result of my political beliefs, that maybe God has decided to smite me with it because I'm a reprehensible person, that He is teaching me a lesson through this? I'm not really sure what you're saying but would like you to clarify that for me. Help me understand what you're saying, because it's unclear. Either here or privately, I've nothing to hide. Hope you are having a good day down there in Alabama and mean that sincerely. Going back and forth with you means that my mind will be the last thing to quit 😆

Sloan Bashinsky

I keep asking you where is the well regulated militia upon which Amendment 2 depends? 

 

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

 

Ginsberg really screwed up by not arguing herbal abortion was part of Colonial America and Ben Franklin advised women how to go about it. 

 

You forgot what happened after the Lord's Supper?

 

Matthew 26:47–56

47 While he was still speaking, Judas came, one of the twelve, and with him a great crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people. 48 Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; seize him.” 49 And he came up to Jesus at once and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” And he kissed him. 50 Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you came to do.” Then they came up and laid hands on Jesus and seized him. 51 And behold, one of those who were with Jesus stretched out his hand and drew his sword and struck the servant of the high priest and cut off his ear. 52 Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. 53 Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? 54 But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” 55 At that hour Jesus said to the crowds, “Have you come out as against a robber, with swords and clubs to capture me? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not seize me. 56 But all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled.” Then all the disciples left him and fled.

Where after that in the New Testament does any disciple, apostle or follower of Jesus take up a sword or any weapon to defend self?

Judas asked the only disciple Jesus trusted to do the betrayal, which they both knew was a skit, and Christendom has yet to figure that out, even though it is in plain view. Judas was so distraught afterwards that he killed himself. Had he not done that, God would have used Judas mightily, and we might never have heard of Paul, whom, in my experience, Christians quote far more than they quote Jesus, whose baptism had nothing to do with water, but was in fire and in spirit, according to the Gospels.

It is possible that your political and religious sentiments are at the root of your cancer, or the cancer could be rooted in childhood trauma, physical, emotional, or both. Or, it could be rooted in something else. I figured my prostate cancer was rooted in something horrible in my distant past, which seriously injured me spiritually, whether someone else did it, or I did it. Modern medicine does not accept that view. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com 

If the Democrats nominate Michelle Obama, I might vote for her

    This Substack newsletter showed up on my email this morning, and I took the bait:

     Very Serious

Of Course Biden Should Attack Trump for Being a Convicted Felon…

JOSH BARRO

People are overthinking this one.

Dear readers,

If we’re going to debate whether — or how —Joe Biden should use to his advantage his opponent’s conviction on 34 felony counts, I think it’s worth starting from a greater level of abstraction: In general, in a political campaign, how should one react to one’s opponent being convicted of crimes? The answer to this question is obvious. “My opponent is a convicted criminal, a literal felon” is a great talking point and a clean, factual hit; you should push that message as hard as you can.

So I’ve been surprised by the hand-wringing among Democrats about how Biden should handle the issue of Trump’s conviction in a New York court. It’s possible that these specific circumstances call for a different approach, but I start from the obvious point: a criminal conviction is both fair game and a powerful political argument. I would need to be convinced of why this situation is different, and I don’t think the arguments are convincing.

Trump supporters and anti-Trump protesters gathered in front of Trump Tower in Manhattan as the former president held a news conference on the hush money verdict in Manhattan on May 31. Anti-Trump protesters chanted slogans such as 'Trump is guilty' and Trump supporters chanted slogans such as 'Not guilty.’ (Photo by Selcuk Acar/Anadolu via Getty Images)

I’ll lay out the arguments I’ve seen for why Biden should pull his punches, and why I don’t buy them.

A focus on Trump’s convictions will backfire because it will create a sympathy vote for Trump among voters who think the convictions are unfair.

Who are these voters who were supposedly waiting for Trump to actually be convicted before they decided they would vote for him? As I noted in a conversation with The New York Times last week, after the verdict, the Republican polling firm Echelon Insights contacted voters they’d already previously surveyed about the election, and 6% said the conviction would change their votes. But among those who claimed the conviction was causing them to switch to vote forTrump, 100% had already told Echelon, before the trial, that they were voting for Trump.1 In the Republican primary, it may have been true that a focus on Trump’s legal travails was consolidating voters in Trump’s favor. But in the general election, the people who are motivated by Trump’s “persecution” are his core base voters. The thing about his base is it’s already voting for him no matter what — that’s what makes the base the base — and Biden does not need to fear they will vote for Trump even harder if he talks about the conviction too much. As for persuadable voters — well, they tend to be younger, less politically engaged, and less ideologically extreme than base voters. They do not have a strong emotional investment in the idea that Trump is being persecuted — if they did, they wouldn’t be disengaged and persuadable. And there is some evidence that information about Trump’s conviction is somewhat persuasive to them not to vote for him. This cuts in favor of talking about the conviction, not against it.

Talking about the conviction is improper because it promotes the idea that this was a politicized prosecution.

Biden shouldn’t comment on ongoing DOJ prosecutions, and I think it’s probably for the best that he not talk about ongoing state prosecutions, lest he appear to be creating pressure around them. But this is a completed trial in a state court, resulting from a prosecution he had no role in bringing and over which he had no control. I don’t see what institutional concern is served by him not talking about it.

Biden shouldn’t talk about the conviction because the prosecution was kind of BS, brought using a novel legal theory that would have been unlikely to be used against a less notable defendant.

Sorry for being formalistic here, but I think whether the DA’s legal theory was valid is a question for New York’s appellate courts, and also a fair question for voters to consider if they want, but it is not Joe Biden’s problem or responsibility. Trump has been duly tried and convicted, in a process over which Biden did not have control or influence.2 A campaign is not a court of law, and voters can judge for themselves the actions that led to Trump’s conviction: First, he cheated on his wife (who gave birth to his son Barron just four months prior) with a porn star. He sent a goon to threaten that porn star against talking about their sexual encounter. He paid her hush money so voters wouldn’t learn about the affair before the 2016 election. And he created false business records to conceal the hush payment’s purpose — an act that was clearly a New York misdemeanor, even though appellate courts will scrutinize the aggressive theory that turned it into a felony. While it’s probably true Trump wouldn’t have been charged if he weren’t Trump, he also wouldn’t have been charged if he hadn’t done that specific set of gross things. Voters are even free to decide that Trump is generally a crook and therefore it’s fair for him to be convicted of a crime, like OJ Simpson and his theft of memorabilia — it’s not the way courts work (and for good reason), but it’s a perfectly good way for ordinary citizens to decide who we should feel sorry for. And, it’s perfectly fair for his opponent in the general election to point out that he keeps getting in legal trouble because he commits crimes — the technicalities can be left to the courts.

Biden shouldn’t talk about the conviction because nobody cares about this stuff — this election is about things directly affecting people’s everyday lives, like immigration, inflation and abortion.

People obviously do care about (gestures broadly) this stuff — leaders all over the world are unpopular due to inflation, Biden’s approval rating is terrible, and yet this election is close anyway due to Trump’s unpopularity. A key root of that unpopularity is his reputation for immoral and criminous behavior. A better question than do people care about this stuff is can they be made to care any more — do Trump’s conviction and messaging about the conviction actually move votes? I have an open mind about how much mileage can be gotten out of messaging about the conviction — and certainly, I don’t think the Biden campaign should talk about Trump’s conviction instead of attacking his plans to restrict abortion rights, cut taxes on rich people and corporations, and raise the cost of living by imposing tariffs that make all the goods we buy more expensive. But a recent New York Timessurvey (which, like the Echelon Insights survey, contacted voters previously surveyed by the Times) found that the margin of support among the recontacted voters had shifted to Biden by 2 percentage points after the guilty verdict, with the shift especially concentrated among “young, non-white and disengaged Democratic-leaning voters” — that is, exactly the sort of demographics we often talk about as uninterested in Trump’s trials and falling away from Biden over the cost of living.

More broadly, I think some Democrats have over-learned a lesson from Hillary Clinton overdoing it on the character attacks in 2016. Her campaign focused too much on how Trump was different from other Republicans and not enough on the usual reasons voters might reject Republicans; partly as a result, voters perceived Trump as more moderate than Clinton by Election Day, and he won.

But there are now signs of a bit of amnesia about Trump’s personal defects among less-engaged voters. The youngest voters in this upcoming election were 10 years old when the “Access Hollywood” tape came out, and 5 years old when Trump rocketed himself to relevance in conservative politics with his promotion of the theory that America’s first black president was secretly foreign-born. As the Times poll suggests, some reminders about exactly what’s so bad about Donald Trump The Person really could help convince some of those voters that Trump is unacceptable and bring them (back) into the Biden fold. Biden shouldn’t pass up any opportunity to send those reminders.

Very seriously,

Josh

Sloan’s Newsletter

This here old white fossil clerked for a US District Judge who presided over every federal criminal prosecution in north Alabama. I closely follow and shoot off my mouth in the great American legal, political and religious shit show that not even the most demented lawyer in Alabama could have imagined when I practiced law in Birmingham during and after the George Wallace era.
I suppose by now every American who has access to a TV or a smartphone knows Donald Trump is a convicted felon, and they don’t need President Biden’s help knowing Trump is a convicted felon. Maybe President Biden should tell Americans what he did for America that helped Americans and their country since he got elected in 2020. While at that, he tells Americans that he accepts his son Hunter’s felony conviction, and he announced he will not pardon Hunter or commute his sentence if he is given prison time, and in that way slyly remind Americans of how Trump behaved like a whiny spoiled rich white brat after he got caught red-handed and convicted by a jury of his peers in his hometown. 
As for the impact of Trump being convicted, his lemmings threw a lot more money at him after he was convicted, and it seems his poll ratings improved, and maybe an appeals court will reverse his conviction. If not, and  he wins in November, he can still be president, even if he is in a New York state prison. 
Based on my frequent dealings with MAGAs in Alabama, a jail bird Trump won’t matter to them, because they are convinced every federal and state criminal and civil prosecution of Trump is fake commie democrat witch hunt, and whatever Trump says is the God’s gospel, and there is no convincing them otherwise. 

Please understand, Josh, that I think Joe Biden is a lousy candidate, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is a lousy candidate, and Nikki Haley is a lousy candidate, and the Devil is yanking their strings, too, and I don’t even attend church :-). 

Meanwhile, in my Apple newsfeed this morning is a kinda interesting Huff Post article, here’s the lead: 

 

Almost 9 In 10 House Republicans Voted To Put A Confederate Memorial Back At Arlington

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries asked which tradition those lawmakers wanted to uphold: “Slavery? Rape? Kidnap?” 

 

If I were President Biden, what I would do plenty as we approach Juneteenth, is say, in every photo and film clip I saw of the Charlottesville Confederate monument removal protest, and of every MAGA rally, and of the January 6 2020 coup attempt inside the national Capitol, I saw oceans of white people, and when Trump says the 2020 election was stolen, his adoring white lemmings understand he means, “stolen by blacks”.
I know for a fact that Alabama MAGAs were furious with Alabama Crimson Tide football coach leading his team and a mixed races Black Lives Matter march across the university campus to where George Wallace once stood blocking black students from going to classes, until he was removed by the Alabama National Guard, which President John F. Kennedy had federalized.

If I were president Biden, I would be reminding Americans that, when Donald was married to Ivana, as she told Vanity Fair, he kept a book of Hitler’s speeches in a cabinet on his side of their bed and sometimes he read it at night. And, when asked about that, Trump said, if he ever had such a book, he did not read it. The English title of the book is, My New Order. It don’t take much smarts to see how much Trump and his MAGAs resemble Hitler and his lemmings leading up to World War II.

If the Dems nominate Michelle Obama, I might vote for her. 

 

Huff Post

Almost 9 In 10 House Republicans Voted To Put A Confederate Memorial Back At Arlington National Cemetery
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries asked which tradition those lawmakers wanted to uphold: “Slavery? Rape? Kidnap?”
The overwhelming majority of House Republicans voted to have a memorial to Confederate soldiers reinstalled at Arlington National Cemetery, drawing a sharp rebuke from Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), Congress’ highest-ranking Black lawmaker.
The vote Thursday was on an amendment to the annual defense policy bill that’s seen as a must-pass piece of legislation. It would have required the secretary of the Army to reinstall the memorial in its original location in the nation’s most celebrated military veteran graveyard and not designate it as anything other than a “reconciliation” memorial or monument.
The amendment, though, failed to get a majority, as Democrats voted unanimously against it and were joined by 24 GOP House members. But 192 Republicans, or about 87% of the party in the House, voted in favor, drawing fire Friday morning from Jeffries.
“What is the rationale?” he asked, dismissing arguments proponents had made about the historical role of the monument.
“What Confederate tradition are you upholding? Is it slavery? Rape? Kidnap? Jim Crow? Lynching? Racial oppression? Or all of the above? What exactly is the Confederate tradition that extreme [Make America Great Again] Republicans in 2024 are upholding?”
A defense policy bill that passed over then-President Donald Trump’s veto in the waning days of his administration required the monument’s removal.
The art piece was unveiled in 1914 and sculpted by a Confederate veteran, Moses Jacob Ezekiel. Made of bronze and resting on a 32-foot granite pedestal, it featured a woman symbolizing the South holding a laurel wreath, a plow handle and a pruning hook, a reference to the biblical promise of a time when swords would be turned into plowshares.
Below her was a frieze of 32 figures, which “depict mythical gods alongside Southern soldiers and civilians,” according to the cemetery’s website. Among those figures are a Confederate soldier handing off his infant to an enslaved African American woman for caretaking and an enslaved man in uniform following his owner into battle.
In December 2023, the bronze elements making up most of the memorial were removed while the now-empty granite pedestal was left intact to avoid disturbing graves nearby.
Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.), the amendment’s sponsor, said on the House floor that the memorial had been intended to help bring Americans together and had historical significance.
“Let us unite against the destruction of our history. Let us fight for the principles of healing and unity, which is exactly what this memorial was created to accomplish,” he said.
Asked about Jeffries’ criticism Friday, Clyde said calling the sculpture a Confederate memorial was unfair.
“If you go back and you look at the speeches when that monument was dedicated, you will see it was all about unity, healing,” he said. “That’s what it was about. And to say anything else is disingenuous. And honestly, a flat-out lie.”
Arlington National Cemetery, however, begs to differ, calling the monument simply a “Confederate Memorial” on its website and noting its “highly sanitized depictions of slavery.”
In the debate on the amendment, Rep. Jennifer McClellan (D-Va.) said the memorial’s dedication in 1914, well after the Civil War and Reconstruction, and its subject matter show it was not meant to be unifying.
“When this monument was placed, the gentleman said it was for reconciliation, but for who? Not for the Black Americans who saw that monument then, and even today, and see the images of a mammy and a loyal slave following his master into battle. They know what that means,” she said.
“It conjures up the stereotypes that were used to help build the lie of white supremacy, and the stereotypes that were used to help convince Black people to stay in their place,” McClellan said.
Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.) agreed.

“It is very difficult to see how the humiliating portrayal of a slave woman and a slave man represents reconciliation,” he said. 

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com

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