General Politics Three: But what is left/right?

[Core Imposter]

This is some of what I was talking about:

US Warns China Against Predatory Dumping To Save Economy​

MSN

 

[Sommerswerd]

Looks like the closest ones are in North Carolina, but I could be wrong

They just built a brand new Raising Canes one highway exit away from me (Enfield, Connecticut) so the restaurant has officially arrived up north. I haven't eaten there yet but my son has.

Incidentally, its right across the street from a McDonalds.

 

[Lexicus]

They just built a brand new Raising Canes one highway exit away from me (Enfield, Connecticut) so the restaurant has officially arrived up north. I haven't eaten there yet but my son has.

Incidentally, its right across the street from a McDonalds.

That was referring to Clover's, in case it was unclear.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Sorry to disappoint you but so far, I am an outlier. Last night I went to the grocery and a tomato, two pears and a bag of lentils set me back over 6 dollars. Who can afford that?

Outliers at the high end can rarely speak to the needs of those at the low end. The two ends think differently, eat differently, and shop at different stores. You give $100 steaks to your dog because you are a picky eater.

 

[Arwon]

The ACT’s fixed-site pill testing facility has reported a “marked increase” in the purity of cocaine and MDMA.

That's pretty funny to me, they've essentially put out a warning to be careful because the cocaine is actually cocaine now.

But also it does illustrate the good these kinds of harm minimisation services do. The testing service has been around for a couple years and as well as allowing people to check if what they've got is actually what it's supposed to be, it's identified some novel substances including a new type of ketamine. And it has been able to earn warn the public about specific potentially lethal substances it's identified.

It's a pity more places don't take such simple harm minimisation approaches, even in the rest of this country, the idea of testing services is opposed by the same party that allowed it here.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Indicted ex-FBI informant told investigators he got Hunter Biden dirt from Russian intelligence officials​

The former FBI informant charged with lying about the Bidens’ dealings in Ukraine told investigators after his arrest that Russian intelligence officials were involved in passing information to him about Hunter Biden, prosecutors said Tuesday in a new court filing, noting that the information was false.

Prosecutors also said Alexander Smirnov has been “actively peddling new lies that could impact US elections” after meeting with Russian spies late last year and that the fallout from his previous false bribery accusations about the Bidens “continue to be felt to this day.”

Smirnov claims to have “extensive and extremely recent” contacts with foreign intelligence officials, prosecutors said in the filing. They said he previously told the FBI that he has longstanding and extensive contacts with Russian spies, including individuals he said were high-level intelligence officers or command Russian assassins abroad.

Prosecutors with special counsel David Weiss’ team said Tuesday that Smirnov has maintained those ties and noted that, in a post-arrest interview last week, “Smirnov admitted that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story about Businessperson 1,” referring to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.

The revelations about Smirnov’s alleged foreign contacts were disclosed as part of Weiss’ arguments to keep him in jail while he awaits trial. A federal judge, however, ruled later Tuesday that Smirnov be released while he awaits trial. The release was granted with several conditions, including that Smirnov be subject to GPS monitoring and surrender both his American and Israeli passports.

Prosecutors alleged that Smirnov “claims to have contacts with multiple foreign intelligence agencies,” including in Russia, and that he could use those contacts to flee the United States. The explosive revelation comes amid backlash over how Smirnov’s now-debunked allegations played into House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president. Smirnov has been charged with lying to the FBI and creating false records. He has not yet entered a formal plea, and his lawyers told CNN in a statement, “Mr. Smirnov is presumed innocent.”

According to the new court filing, Smirnov told investigators he was in contact with “four different Russian officials,” all of whom are “top officials” and two of whom “are the heads of the entities they represent.” Prosecutors did not independently verify in the filing whether Smirnov’s reported contacts are legitimate, nor whether the Russians provided him with disinformation about the Bidens.

The false information that Smirnov reported “was not trivial,” prosecutors wrote. “It targeted the presumptive nominee of one of the two major political parties in the United States. The effects of Smirnov’s false statements and fabricated information continue to be felt to this day,” prosecutors said, making an apparent reference to the turmoil in Congress over the discredited bribery allegations – which were a key element of the GOP impeachment probe. Smirnov told investigators Russian intelligence officers would use the hotel to intercept cell phone calls made by “prominent US persons,” prosecutors said, which the Russian government could use as “‘kompromat’ in the 2024 election, depending on who the candidates will be.” Kompromat is a Russian term that refers to compromising information used for blackmail.

The story, prosecutors noted, matches the story Smirnov told his handler about Hunter Biden being recorded in a foreign hotel. “Thus, Smirnov’s efforts to spread misinformation about a candidate of one of the two major parties in the United States continues,” prosecutors wrote. And, prosecutors wrote, Smirnov claims to have met with Russian intelligence officials as recently as November and December 2023.

“What this shows is that the misinformation he is spreading is not confined to 2020,” they wrote. “He is actively peddling new lies that could impact U.S. elections after meeting with Russian intelligence officials in November. In light of that fact there is a serious risk he will flee in order to avoid accountability for his actions.”

This story has been updated with additional details.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/20/politics/biden-former-fbi-informant-russian-intelligence/index.html

 

[Sommerswerd]

That was referring to Clover's, in case it was unclear.

My mistake... To be clearer... Do you mean Culver's? There are a bunch in Illinois but none around where I live AFAICT. There is actually a restaurant named "Culvers" nearby, but it does not appear to be part of the Culver's burger chain.

We do have a relatively new place called "Wayback Burgers" in East Windsor, CT, that seems similar and is pretty damn awesome, I'd say I prefer them even over Five Guys Burgers & Fries, even without the peanuts.

 

[EgonSpengler]

I'm skimming the Alabama Supreme Court's decision in Le Page, et al v Center for Reproductive Medicine, the decision that declares frozen human embryos to be children, and the march towards making the United States a Christian theocracy has turned into a full-blown, no-holds-barred charge. Justice Mitchell, writing for the majority, begins by setting originalism and textualism as our de facto Constitutional philosophies:

The goal of constitutional interpretation is to discern the original public meaning, which is " 'the meaning the people understood a provision to have at the time they enacted it.' "

Constitutional interpretation must start with the text, but it also must include the context of the time in which it was adopted.

He cites sources, but for him this is axiomatic, the starting point from which he begins his interpretation of the case.

12 pages later, he wraps up Section I with this:

In summary, the theologically based view of the sanctity of life adopted by the People of Alabama encompasses the following: (1) God made every person in His image; (2) each person therefore has a value that far exceeds the ability of human beings to calculate; and (3) human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God, who views the destruction of His image as an affront to Himself. Section 36.06 recognizes that this is true of unborn human life no less than it is of all other human life -- that even before birth, all human beings bear the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.

The Handmaid's Tale; "American Taliban"; use whatever allusion or metaphor you like, that's the direction we're heading. The fact that they're not even trying to conceal it anymore says something about how confident they are, it seems to me. I wrote "it seems to me", but no, Justice Mitchell doesn't need me to interpret his position. He comes right out and declares it himself:

Recent advocates of the sanctity of life have attempted to articulate the principle on purely secular philosophical grounds. See, e.g., John Keown, The Law and Ethics of Medicine 3 (2012); Neil M. Gorsuch, The Future
of Assisted Suicide and Euthanasia 157-58 (2009) (arguing that "human life is fundamentally and inherently valuable" based on the "secular moral theory" that human life is a "basic good" that "ultimately comes not from abstract logical constructs (or religious beliefs)"). Such advocates have preferred to use the term "inviolability" rather than "sanctity" to avoid what one scholar calls "distracting theological connotations." But even though "inviolability" is certainly a synonym of "sanctity" in that the meaning of the two words largely overlap, the two words cannot simply be substituted for each other because each word carries its own set of implications. When the People of Alabama adopted § 36.06, they did not use the term "inviolability," with its secular connotations, but rather they chose the term "sanctity," with all of its connotations.

At first, I edited out the citation in the middle of this paragraph, but then I decided I wanted everyone to see that one of the sops Justice Mitchell is dismissing as trying too hard to appease the people who believe in the separation of church and state is Justice Neil Gorsuch, of the US Supreme Court, a noted conservative who was appointed to the Court by Donald Trump.

US citizens better start learning the Bible. You're gonna need it.

 

[Lexicus]

My mistake... To be clearer... Do you mean Culver's? There are a bunch in Illinois but none around where I live AFAICT. There is actually a restaurant named "Culvers" nearby, but it does not appear to be part of the Culver's burger chain.

We do have a relatively new place called "Wayback Burgers" in East Windsor, CT, that seems similar and is pretty damn awesome, I'd say I prefer them even over Five Guys Burgers & Fries, even without the peanuts.

Yes I meant Culver's lmao i am very smort

 

[Lexicus]

SCOTUS appears set to ditch Chevron deference and thus return us to the Lochner era.

 

[danjuno]

Loved Culver's when I was out in AZ. Drives me up a wall that they'll expand all the way out there and down to Florida, but god forbid they give the Mid-Atlantic a shake.

 

[Core Imposter]

Christ loves everybody.

 

[Cutlass]

Christ loves everybody.

Too bad Christians don't.

 

[Crezth]

Christ loves everybody.

So does fire, and so do neck cutters.

 

[Farm Boy]

Spoiler :

Edit: I went looking for love-in-politics and found a way (I think) it gets phrased a lot. So bias, maybe, but lol! Seems like love is still a work of dirty hands and not of excising judgement:

Spoiler :

Wonder how it plays out when it doesn't break the piggy bank? Differently, as it comes to love?

 

[EgonSpengler]

I'm skimming the Alabama Supreme Court's decision in Le Page, et al v Center for Reproductive Medicine, the decision that declares frozen human embryos to be children, and the march towards making the United States a Christian theocracy has turned into a full-blown, no-holds-barred charge. Justice Mitchell, writing for the majority, begins by setting originalism and textualism as our de facto Constitutional philosophies:



He cites sources, but for him this is axiomatic, the starting point from which he begins his interpretation of the case.

12 pages later, he wraps up Section I with this:

The Handmaid's Tale; "American Taliban"; use whatever allusion or metaphor you like, that's the direction we're heading. The fact that they're not even trying to conceal it anymore says something about how confident they are, it seems to me. I wrote "it seems to me", but no, Justice Mitchell doesn't need me to interpret his position. He comes right out and declares it himself:


At first, I edited out the citation in the middle of this paragraph, but then I decided I wanted everyone to see that one of the sops Justice Mitchell is dismissing as trying too hard to appease the people who believe in the separation of church and state is Justice Neil Gorsuch, of the US Supreme Court, a noted conservative who was appointed to the Court by Donald Trump.

US citizens better start learning the Bible. You're gonna need it.

More on this story:

The Alabama Chief Justice Who Invoked God in Deciding the Embryo Case (Published 2024)

Chief Justice Tom Parker has long been revered by conservative groups as an architect for the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

www.nytimes.com

In an Alabama Supreme Court decision that has rattled the world of reproductive medicine, a majority of the justices said the law was clear that frozen embryos should be considered children: “Unborn children are ‘children.’”
But the court’s chief justice, Tom Parker, drew on more than the Constitution and legal precedent to explain his determination.

“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote in a concurring opinion that invoked the Book of Genesis and the prophet Jeremiah and quoted at length from the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians.

“Even before birth,” he added, “all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”

I haven't read the Chief Justice's concurring opinion myself.

Something I find interesting in this NY Times story is how one of the people pushing religion into public policy explains a little about how it's been a years-long, concerted effort, with their successes building on one another over the course of years. In some ways, I think the Dobbs decision took people by surprise, and felt sudden, but it wasn't.

In 2022, Matt Clark, the president of the Alabama Center for Law and Liberty, a conservative legal advocacy group, praised Justice Parker for his “courage and relentlessness.” He cited Justice Parker’s writing in past cases as scaffolding for the arguments that successfully challenged Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion and blocks states from banning the procedure before fetal viability, which most experts estimate at about 23 or 24 weeks.

”He picked apart Roe’s logic when it came to viability,” Mr. Clark wrote in an essay published by 1819 News, a conservative digital outlet in Alabama, referring to a concurring opinion in a case related to a wrongful-death lawsuit involving a fetus that was lost before it had reached the point of viability outside the womb.

“Fast-forward nine years later,” Mr. Clark, who later joined Justice Parker’s staff, wrote. “When Mississippi asked the Supreme Court to take Dobbs, one of its major points was how Roe’s viability standard didn’t make any sense. And whose writing did Mississippi draw on multiple times to make that point?”

Justice Parker’s.

So while some may feel like this has been sudden, it wasn't. The religious Right has had a vision for this country and have been putting in the work, for years and decades. And now they have the US Supreme Court, and federal courts, and the Speaker of the House, for as long as he lasts in the position, and years of legal precedent they can lean on. As I said above, they're not even trying to disguise it anymore.


p.s. Just as I push 'save', the woman on the radio notes that two hospitals in Alabama are suspending IVF treatments.

 

[Lexicus]

More on this story:

The Alabama Chief Justice Who Invoked God in Deciding the Embryo Case (Published 2024)

Chief Justice Tom Parker has long been revered by conservative groups as an architect for the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

www.nytimes.com

I haven't read the Chief Justice's concurring opinion myself.

Something I find interesting in this NY Times story is how one of the people pushing religion into public policy explains a little about how it's been a years-long, concerted effort, with their successes building on one another over the course of years. In some ways, I think the Dobbs decision took people by surprise, and felt sudden, but it wasn't.


So while some may feel like this has been sudden, it wasn't. The religious Right has had a vision for this country and have been putting in the work, for years and decades. And now they have the US Supreme Court, and federal courts, and the Speaker of the House, for as long as he lasts in the position, and years of legal precedent they can lean on. As I said above, they're not even trying to disguise it anymore.


p.s. Just as I push 'save', the woman on the radio notes that two hospitals in Alabama are suspending IVF treatments.

Incidentally, if you want to know actually how seriously the State of Alabama takes the Sanctity of Life, look up Alabama nitrogen gas executions on the google machine.

 

[Gori the Grey]

So while some may feel like this has been sudden, it wasn't.

It's been ongoing since Roe itself. The Heritage Foundation trained up a generation of lawyers in a(n absurd) judicial philosophy--originalism--designed to work precisely as your first post about Parker's referencing "sanctity" shows that it has in fact worked here. By limiting the possible meanings of a law to only what it could have meant to the people who passed it, you build into legal judgments a radically conservative drag.

The right is nothing if not dogged.

There was nothing surprising about Dobbs to anyone who has watched the gradual rise of originalism over his lifetime.

 

[Lexicus]

Originalism on its face is just absolute nonsense, right-wing jurists generally don't care about the "original meaning" of Constitutional or legal text if the original meaning conflicts with the outcome they want.

(Aside from which, in the case of the Constitution, any college freshman who took a survey course on that period can tell you the meaning of the text of the Constitution was contested even while it was being written)

 

[Klaus Hergersheimer]

I'm skimming the Alabama Supreme Court's decision in Le Page, et al v Center for Reproductive Medicine, the decision that declares frozen human embryos to be children, and the march towards making the United States a Christian theocracy has turned into a full-blown, no-holds-barred charge. Justice Mitchell, writing for the majority, begins by setting originalism and textualism as our de facto Constitutional philosophies:



He cites sources, but for him this is axiomatic, the starting point from which he begins his interpretation of the case.

12 pages later, he wraps up Section I with this:

The Handmaid's Tale; "American Taliban"; use whatever allusion or metaphor you like, that's the direction we're heading. The fact that they're not even trying to conceal it anymore says something about how confident they are, it seems to me. I wrote "it seems to me", but no, Justice Mitchell doesn't need me to interpret his position. He comes right out and declares it himself:


At first, I edited out the citation in the middle of this paragraph, but then I decided I wanted everyone to see that one of the sops Justice Mitchell is dismissing as trying too hard to appease the people who believe in the separation of church and state is Justice Neil Gorsuch, of the US Supreme Court, a noted conservative who was appointed to the Court by Donald Trump.

US citizens better start learning the Bible. You're gonna need it.

from the ruling:
The plaintiffs allege that the Center was obligated to keep the cryogenic nursery secured and monitored at all times. But, in December 2020, a patient at the Hospital managed to wander into the Center's fertility clinic through an unsecured doorway. The patient then entered SC-2022-0515; SC-2022-05795the cryogenic nursery and removed several embryos. The subzero temperatures at which the embryos had been stored freeze-burned the patient's hand, causing the patient to drop the embryos on the floor, killing them. The plaintiffs brought two lawsuits against the Center

I'm a little confused just reading this alone. So some unauthorized person "wanders" in (or breaks in, more accurately; I'm not sure what really happened here) and either purposefully or intentionally destroys the embryos and the Center is to blame (?). That does not make sense.