Paul Rosenzweig writing in the Atlantic, and Jim Waldo in the Boston Globe discuss how there are many, many problems with the Secret Services claim that January 6 2021 text messages were “deleted.” As Rosenzweig says, “At best, it’s a tale of shocking incompetence. At worst, it’s much, much worse.”
• Congress really does need to get its act together and pass something that will improve latest-generation 5nm domestic semiconductor manufacturing. I didn’t realize this bill was still stuck in reconciliation (H.R. 6359 and S. 3331), as David Leonhardt reports in his NYT The Morning newsletter. This is an extremely important measure for domestic security, as we currently have zero domestic latest-gen chip manufacturing facilities. Haven’t we just learned the perils of the over-extended supply chain?
Eugene Robinson, writing in the Washington Post, quotes the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in describing how Georgia US Senate candidate Herschel Walker (supported, natch, by DJT) explained his views on the mechanics of climate change to a group of Republican activists:
“We don’t control the air. Our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air. So when China gets our good air, their bad air has got to move. So it moves over to our good air space. Then, now, we’ve got we to clean that back up.”
Enough said.
The NYT lists The 147 Republicans Who Voted to Overturn Election Results in January 2021; the eight senators and 139 representatives who voted to sustain one or both objections to certifying the presidential election. Remember them.
Well, with the release of the latest West Virginia v. EPA decision (details here), it seems to me that once the rulings have begun to demonstrate clearly appalling consequences for the safety of US citizens and for the planet, as well as send an overt signal that may prevent federal agencies from properly regulating their charged duties, it’s time to consider reining in this court to prevent future erroneous actions. See Ezra Klein’s excellent podcast interview with Columbia Law professor Jamal Greene for a wonderful discussion on the subject of improving the court – and not just changing it for reasons of partisanship.
From the Dobbs v. Jackson majority opinion overturning Roe v Wade:
“Held: The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives.”
From the Ninth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
Seems contradictory, no? Consider that the mortality rate for a term pregnancy of a black woman in Mississippi is more than 100 times the mortality rate for a first term abortion. Shouldn’t the right to life be retained by the people who are living? How ironic.
The NEJM editors have published a relevant editorial dated June 26, 2022: Lawmakers v. The Scientific Realities of Human Reproduction
John Gruber at the always excellent Daring Fireball pulls some sadly relevant language from the dissent of the all-too-erroneous Dobbs v. Jackson Supreme Court Decision. John’s last quote from that dissent (it starts on page 148 of the decision), written by justices, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan follows:
“One of us once said that “[i]t is not often in the law that so few have so quickly changed so much.” For all of us, in our time on this Court, that has never been more true than today. In overruling Roe and Casey, this Court betrays its guiding principles.
With sorrow — for this Court, but more, for the many millions of American women who have today lost a fundamental constitutional protection — we dissent.”
• Once again, Linda Greenhouse says it all, and says it well in her NYT piece Requiem for the Supreme Court. A pertinent excerpt:
“With the stroke of a pen, Justice Samuel Alito and four other justices, all chosen by Republican presidents running on successive party platforms committed to overturning Roe v. Wade, erased the constitutional right to reproductive autonomy that the Supreme Court recognized more than 49 years ago. As the dissenting opinion — written by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — observed, never before had the court rescinded an individual right and left it up to the states whether to respect what had once been anchored in the Constitution.
The practical consequences of the decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, are enormous and severe.”
Definitely worth reading.
From the You Should Have Known Better Department; Emily Baker-White, writing in BuzzFeed, notes that TikTok “US User Data Has Been Repeatedly Accessed From China.” No surprise at all there, kinda like the crypto crashes. An excerpt:
“I feel like with these tools, there’s some backdoor to access user data in almost all of them,” said an external auditor hired to help TikTok close off Chinese access to sensitive information, like Americans’ birthdays and phone numbers.
Many of these access attempts have supposedly been from a team assigned to check security, but there is not yet any such absolute block to Chinese data access. Be careful out there…
It’s most unsettling to me how many Americans seem that they would be happier living in Margaret Atwood’s Republic of Gilead, and are intent on driving the bus in that direction. See the latest Texas Republican Party’s platform and resolutions, here. For a selection of some of the more egregious examples, [popup_anything id=”2255″]