Category: Civil Rights

Women’s History #3

Ever hear about Mary Edwards Walker?

Of course you have not for teaching about a tireless worker for women’s rights might turn your daughters gay.

It is a Friday so let us learn something.

Back in the days when women had very few rights Walker was an up and coming leader….

Let’s go to the year 1873….

January 1873, hundreds of women convened at the National Hotel in Washington, D.C. It was the fifth convention of the National Woman Suffrage Association and a 44-year-old Susan B. Anthony had taken the floor. She spoke of unity, forming a national women’s newspaper, and the vote. But few people were paying attention to Anthony. Even suffragist leader Elizabeth Cady Stanton was distracted, verging on annoyed. Because there, just to the side of the podium, an imposing woman stood in pants and a slimming man’s coat, waiting. Her name was Mary Edwards Walker. The first female surgeon in the U.S. Army and a prisoner of war during the Civil War, Walker, who flouted the day’s rigid gender norms, was something of a celebrity. As more and more of the crowd noticed her, they began to murmur and whisper, “she’s here!” But still Walker stood, patiently waiting for Anthony to yield the floor. When Anthony finally did so, Walker launched into a scathing critique of the NWSA, and Stanton and Anthony with it. They had abandoned the cause of dress reform, she said, giving up the fight for women to renounce health-damaging corsets. Anthony and Stanton lacked courage, she said. At a later suffrage convention, Anthony and Stanton called the cops on Walker. After narrowly avoiding arrest, Walker shouted at the pair, “you are not working for the cause, but for yourselves!”

Following the January 1873 convention, Stanton forbid any mention of Walker in the event’s official summary. Stanton and other critics derided Walker as a “she-man” and a “ghoul.” Years later, when Stanton and Anthony wrote the History of Woman Suffrage, they erased Walker and her involvement almost entirely. “They deliberately sought to conceal the queerness of the suffrage movement,” writes historian Wendy Rouse of San José State University. Rouse, who has written a new book on the topic, Public Faces, Secret Lives: A Queer History of the Women’s Suffrage Movement, uncovered many stories like Walker’s. From queer relationships known as Boston marriages to publishing radical newspapers about free love, the women’s suffrage movement was full of individuals “queering the norm,” as Rouse puts it—individuals history consciously deleted. Atlas Obscura spoke with Rouse about these queer suffragists, the female cavalries they led, and why so many of their stories have gone untold.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/trans-queer-womens-suffrage

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Civil Rights In The Middle

It is black history month and the perfect time for a little history lesson on the now famous Civil Rights Act….

There was more going on with this act than we are taught in our primary schools.

On August 7, 1957, Senate Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson voted yea on the first civil rights bill passed by Congress in 82 years. He was joined by 71 of his Senate colleagues, including 43 Republicans and 28 Democrats, 4 of them liberals from the South like Johnson himself. One month later, on September 9, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957 into law.

As majority leader, Johnson arguably did more than anyone else to ensure the passage of a civil rights act in 1957. He cajoled skittish progressives, most of them Northerners, into compromising with the Democratic Party’s powerful Southern voting bloc. Then, over bourbon and cigars, he convinced the Old Guard Democratic Southerners that they ought to give a bit on civil rights while one of their own was in charge, as legislative action on race relations could not be postponed indefinitely.

Limited in its scope and effectiveness, particularly when compared with legislation passed in the 1960s, the 1957 bill walked a treacherous tightrope that “was going to disappoint both the opponents of civil rights and the proponents of civil rights,” says Bruce Schulman, a historian at Boston University. The future president’s efforts were “totally based in the calculation of what was achievable” rather than ideal.

When defending his choice to support the bill on the Senate floor, Johnson admitted that it did “not pretend to solve all the problems of human relations.” Still, he said, “I cannot follow the logic of those who say that because we cannot solve all the problems, we should not try to solve any of them.” Instead, the majority leader stalwartly held the middle, resolute in his conviction that a symbolic victory, however weak, was superior to a total ideological defeat.

This political pragmatism defined Johnson’s lengthy career. As a sectional politician with national ambitions, he was a virtuoso of the art of the possible. Johnson considered the preservation of his political future the best opportunity to help the greatest number of people. By doing only what was feasible and, above all else, looking out for himself, he would make a better future for his “fellow Americans.”

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/to-fight-for-civil-rights-lyndon-b-johnson-settled-for-the-middle-ground-180981482/

I am not so sure that the middle was the best place to fight for real civil rights.

Why?

I believe that it made it too easy to lessen the impact over time….and so it has.

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Legislation Without Representation

Is our beloved ‘democracy’ just a big lie?

I ask that question because of the idea that DC needs representation in our Congress.

The Republican-led House of Representatives on Thursday approved two measures that would overturn a pair of bills passed by the D.C. Council, one that allows non-citizens to vote in local elections starting in 2024 and another that revises and modernizes the city’s century-old criminal code.

The votes on the disapproval resolutions — the first time since 2015 the House has advanced such measures, and only the second time in three decades — came largely along party lines, though dozens of Democrats broke ranks and voted in favor. On the resolution targeting the non-citizen voting bill, the vote was 260-162, with more than 40 Democrats joining Republicans. On the resolution aimed at the revised criminal code, the vote was 250-173, with 31 Democrats joining the Republican majority.

No one representing D.C.’s 700,000 residents voted on either resolution, as the city only has a single non-voting delegate to Congress.

The disapproval resolutions, which would have to be approved by the Senate and signed by President Joe Biden to take effect, mark an early start to what many D.C. officials and advocates worry will be aggressive efforts by House Republicans to interfere in local affairs. And they stand in stark contrast to how D.C. was treated during Democratic control of the chamber, when on two occasions lawmakers passed bills granting the city statehood.

During debate that started Wednesday night and stretched into Thursday morning, Republicans argued that they were merely acting to tamp down on “radical” actions by the “out-of-control” D.C. Council.

Republican-Led House, In Which D.C. Has No Vote, Passes Measures Repealing Two D.C. Bills

Personally I think it is a slap in the face of democracy to allow these people without representation….

Back to the question….is democracy a big lie?

Just a few thoughts on that question….

Is Democracy The Big Lie?

It is a lie at least for the residents of DC.

How can any American citizen be without proper representation in our Congress?

Would you stand by and let your voice go unheard?

Anyone else have a thought or two on the democracy thing?

What say you?

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More On The Second Amendment

The US House has done a bold move (or is it?)…..

The House passed legislation Friday to revive a ban on certain semi-automatic guns, the first vote of its kind in years and a direct response to the firearms often used in the crush of mass shootings ripping through communities nationwide. Once banned in the US, the high-powered firearms are now widely blamed as the weapon of choice among young men responsible for many of the most devastating mass shootings. But Congress allowed the restrictions first put in place in 1994 on the manufacture and sales of the weapons to expire a decade later, unable to muster the political support to counter the powerful gun lobby and reinstate the weapons ban. Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed the vote toward passage in the Democratic-run House, saying the earlier ban “saved lives.”

President Biden hailed the House vote, saying, “The majority of the American people agree with this common sense action.” He urged the Senate to “move quickly to get this bill to my desk.” However, it is likely to stall in the 50-50 Senate, the AP reports. The House legislation is shunned by Republicans, who dismissed it as an election-year strategy by Democrats. Almost all Republicans voted against the House bill, which passed 217-213. The bill comes at a time of intensifying concerns about gun violence and shootings—the supermarket shooting in Buffalo, NY; massacre of school children in Uvalde, Texas; and the July Fourth shootings of revelers in Highland Park, Ill.

The bill would make it unlawful to import, sell, or manufacture a long list of semi-automatic weapons. Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-NY, said it includes an exemption that allows for the possession of existing semi-automatic guns. Reps. Chris Jacobs of New York and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania were the only Republicans to vote for the measure. The Democratic lawmakers voting no were Reps. Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Ron Kind of Wisconsin, and Vicente Gonzalez of Texas. Among the semi-automatic weapons banned would be some 200-plus types of semi-automatic rifles, including AR-15s, and pistols. The restrictions would not apply to many other models.

Was this just a move to garner support for the upcoming election…..we all know that it will not fly in the Senate…..so what was this passing all about.

Then there will be the debate on the 2nd amendment……

I know–I know—-haven’t we had enough debate on the guns thing?

I say no because it is an issue that needs resolving one way or the other……

There have been more mass shootings in the last five years than in any other five-year span since 1996.

According to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as an incident where four or more people are injured or killed, there have been 2,403 mass shootings from 2017 to 2021, with 2,495 dead and 10,225 injured. The group’s data reveals a steep rise in recent years: 692 mass shootings in 2021, up 66% from 2019’s total of 417.

As of July 6, the group has recorded 320 mass shootings, putting 2022 on track to finish as one of the deadliest years in US history.

According to the CDC, 124 people die every day in the US in acts of gun violence.

Time for a re-think?

Years ago I made my thoughts known to my readers on the 2nd amendment……

Why The 2nd?

But that is just my opinion on the creation of this amendment….but let’s look deeper shall we?

Amid today’s heated debates about gun laws and the Second Amendment, what many people may not realize is that the phrase “the right to keep and to bear arms” is older than the Bill of Rights. It was penned years before the United States won its independence from England. 

In 1779, Founding Father and future president John Adams wrote this phrase at his law office in Quincy, Mass., as he drafted the Massachusetts Constitution — the oldest in the world. He did so a decade before the phrase appeared in the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

James Madison argued on behalf of an armed citizenry as a bulwark to federal overreach in Federalist No. 46, published in 1788 as debate took place over shape of the new American government.

A national army of 25,000 to 30,000 men “would be opposed by a militia amounting to near half a million citizens with arms in their hands,” wrote the statesman often dubbed “Father of the Constitution.”

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/gun-laws-story-right-keep-bear-arms

That was from the FOX point of view…..now let’s look elsewhere…..

The 2nd Amendment, ratified in 1791, reads: “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.” Responsible readings of this sentence note that it locates gun rights within the framework of militia service, not as an individual entitlement. By contrast, the 5th Amendment, ratified the same year, says that “No person” shall be denied due process.

Militias aside, there is also the “keep and bear” part of the 2nd Amendment to consider. In the founders’ era, to “keep” meant to own and possess something inside one’s home, while “bear arms” referred specifically to shouldering a musket or rifle in an army or militia.

Nowhere does the amendment declare or suggest a right to “go armed,” the term used in that era for carrying a weapon such as a pistol or dagger, either openly or in secret. Going armed was not legal. It was a form of misdemeanor known as an affray, from the French effrayer, to make afraid. Indeed, many of the new states responded to a disturbing rise in violence in the early republic with more restrictions on those carrying firearms and other weapons.

In part, that uptick in violence can be attributed to dueling, an aristocratic custom that the haughty officers of the Continental Army learned from their British and French peers. While duelists at least had the decency to count 10 paces and take aim before firing, the so-called “blades” of the southwestern frontiers simply swaggered around with pistols and cane swords, demanding that everyone treat them like royalty on pain of a beating or shooting.

Contrary to romantic mythologies about the frontier, neither duelists nor blades were very popular. Then as now, most people just wanted to go about their lives without getting shot, stabbed or bullied. And they were willing to stand up for their right to do so.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2022-06-22/gun-rights-control-second-amendment-supreme-court

Just a few more looks into the 2nd amendment….will this end the conversation (if it can be called that)?  Probably not but all aspects of this amendment should be studied.

There has got be common ground and soon…..for daily mass shootings keep happening and we are basically shrugging them off and moving on to something else.

Hopefully you will give the articles a read….and hopefully engage your brain for deeper thought that the shallowness we have today around guns.

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Closing Thought–25Jul22

Another right winger goes into the ‘Can’t Fix Stupid’ File……

This tine it is that idiot from Florida (go figure), Gaetz, on the abortion issue…..

Appearing before a Florida convention of young people, Rep. Matt Gaetz said Saturday that women demonstrating for access to legal abortions are too unattractive to become pregnant. “Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions?” Gaetz told the group. “Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.” The Republican lawmaker was speaking to about 5,000 young people at the Turning Point USA Student Action Summit in Tampa, USA Today reports.

“Calling women unattractive is kind of Gaetz’s go-to schtick,” Laura Bassett writes for Jezebel. He made a complementary point in a tweet when the US Supreme Court threw out Roe v. Wade, posting, “How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?” Bassett calls Saturday’s remarks by Gaetz, who is under federal investigation on suspicion of sex trafficking, “cartoonishly misogynist.”

The crowd did not boo the comments, which Gaetz included in his Twitter feed. Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey called Gaetz’s speech “brain-dead misogyny” in a tweet, warning that after the midterm elections this fall, the next Congress will include more lawmakers who think that way. Former President Donald Trump also addressed the student audience and referred to Gaetz. “What a wonderful guy,” Trump said.

This from a guy that is under investigation for his sexual proclivities….

I am speechless at the unfeeling bullsh*t these types of ‘people’ can come up with on any given day.

Another GOPer opens mouth and proves ‘You Can’t Fix Stupid’…..

It seems these morons try to out stupid each other daily…..

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“Free The Nipple”

Before I am accused of being a dirty old man, that this movement is more about equality than just flashing one’s breasts…I would be a liar if I said that it is not enjoyable for me…there is so much more to this than you would think……

There have been many women’s movements….like
“Ban The Bra”…..the push for acceptance of public breast feeding…..of course the Puritan wing of the GOP have always been afraid of women’s breast in one form or the other….

Before I go on and make it look like I am that dirty old man your mother warned you about……

“Free the nipple” has made headlines yet again, this time over Instagram’s public apology to director Pedro Almodovar for censoring the poster for his latest movie Madres Paralelas. The image, designed by artist Javier Jaen, features a lactating nipple cropped to appear as a crying eye, and it was widely removed on the platform for violating Instagram’s guidelines. The apology issued by Instagram resulted in Almodovar proclaiming victory over the algorithm, and an abundance of media attention including the New York Times’s article.

The body-equality slogan “Free the nipple” is so ubiquitous that it sounds as though it belongs in the annals of history alongside “Make love not war” and “Votes for women,” but actually this international rallying cry is barely a decade old. Born into the Instagram-age and made infamous through it, “Free the nipple” has regularly popped up on social media accounts, despite the fact that #FreeTheNipple itself is invisible on the platform: Type in “#FreeTheNipple” in the Instagram search bar and it will direct to a stark notice: “This Hashtag Is Hidden.” Alternatively, add a year to the slogan such as #freethenipple2021 and it works, effectively rendering the movement a yearly trend rather than the full-voiced campaign for change that it is.

Free the Nipple: A History of a Hidden Movement

Personally I do not understand the fixation of women’s breast…..I would be lying as a man if I said it did not matter….but let’s be real….I am a man and I am not dead yet….the concern should be for the 300+ mass shootings this year so far and less about what breasts are doing.

This is the story I read that got me to thinking about the movement…..and of course the trolls on social media that attack the young woman….

Who would have thought that a sheer hot pink dress worn by an award-winning actress on the red carpet of a fashion show could have the power to send the internet into such a tizzy?

But it was never really about the dress, was it? It was about what’s under the dress and, more specifically, what exists just under the surface of society. The sheer fabric of a Valentino dress not only revealed Florence Pugh’s breasts, but shone a spotlight on the thinly veiled misogyny that remains rampant 2022.

This past Friday, Midsommar star Florence Pugh walked the red carpet at Valentino’s haute couture show in Rome wearing a fuschia tulle gown designed by the brand’s artistic director, Pierpaolo Piccioli. A nod to the emerging Barbie-core trend, the ensemble was all pink and featured a gauzy halter bodice that exposed the actress’ breasts and oh-so controversial nipples.

“Technically they’re covered?” Pugh wrote on Instagram, a platform known for its censorship of the female form. Posting these beautiful images to her following of 7.6million, it wasn’t long until the trolls crawled out of the woodwork.

https://www.rte.ie/lifestyle/living/2022/0714/1310146-a-sheer-double-standard-why-are-womans-nipples-still-taboo/

It is the 21st century in real time but still Victorian in some eyes…..I do not understand the taboo-ness of nudity these….I mean one click on the PC and anyone can see all they want and much more graphic than some woman’s nipples.

I am old but I would to think that I have matured with time….I try to keep my thinking moving forward….I refuse to let it go in reverse.

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Is SCOTUS The Final Word?

It is a common thought that all is lost when SCOTUS makes its decisions for they have the final word.

Is that necessarily true?

When the Supreme Court was holding oral arguments last December in the case that brought about the end of Roe v. Wade, Justice Sonia Sotomayor addressed the familiar argument that the Constitution doesn’t mention a right to privacy. That fact was a central argument in the court’s majority opinion issued last month, per NPR. But there’s a lot that’s not mentioned in the Constitution, the justice said. In fact, “there is not anything in the Constitution that says that the Court, the Supreme Court, is the last word on what the Constitution means,” Sotomayor pointed out. “And yet, she added, “what the Court did was reason from the structure of the Constitution that that’s what was intended.”

The justice might have been mostly intending to say that rights, including the one to privacy, can exist without being clearly stated in the Constitution, but Joshua Zeitz writes in an opinion piece in Politico that the power of judicial review is in the same boat. “Both exist by strong implication,” he says. Mostly, the court claimed that right for itself. Some framers did expect the Supreme Court, as well as lower federal courts, to exercise a veto on constitutional grounds over congressional and state acts, Zeitz writes. “But they did not intend this power to be unchecked or unlimited,” he says.

The Constitution is all about checks and balances, and the other branches could move to limit the judiciary just as the courts limit the activities of the others. The Constitution didn’t even design the court system, it left it to the other branches. So they can take steps to restrict the court on certain issues, Zeitz points out. Congress could pass a law denying the court authority over a new voting rights act, for example. “Ultimately, it is the responsibility and prerogative of the executive and legislative branches to encourage greater restraint and humility on the part of the judiciary,” Zeitz writes.

You can read the full piece here.

I have my doubts about this pronouncement…..why?

The US Congress is a toothless tiger.  It is so wrapped up in the mundane crap trying to find a consensus (at least one party is)….nothing will be done for SCOTUS is about political agenda and not what is best for this nation.

And of course there are opinions on how to ‘fix’ the Supreme Court….here are a few (my thoughts later)…..

The Supreme Court’s just-concluded term was a bacchanalia of reactionary indulgence. Roe v. Wade is dead. Gun laws throughout the nation are now in peril. The Court is pummeling the wall separating church and state — and it isn’t afraid to tell easily disprovable falsehoods to achieve this goal. The Court’s GOP-appointed majority curtailed the EPA’s power to fight climate change, and gave themselves an open-ended veto power over any federal regulation.

It’s likely that the worst is yet to come. Three “shadow docket” decisions this past term suggest that the Court is about to slash safeguards against racial gerrymandering. Another case looming in the next term, involving North Carolina’s gerrymandered congressional maps, is likely to give Republican state legislatures the power to defy their state constitution when writing election laws. And that’s after the Court has spent the last decade dismantling the Voting Rights Act and stripping the federal courts of any authority to fight partisan gerrymanders.

The Court’s Republican majority isn’t simply handing down bold conservative policy decrees, it is undermining democracy itself.

…

But just because court reform isn’t currently politically viable doesn’t mean it’s not worth considering, especially if Democrats somehow manage to pick up larger majorities in a future Congress. There are several options to deal with an increasingly partisan Supreme Court. Here are 10 of them.

https://www.vox.com/23186373/supreme-court-packing-roe-wade-voting-rights-jurisdiction-stripping

My thoughts on these ‘solutions’…..

Court packing is not viable….not in this political climate.

The Supreme Court lottery….now I can get behind this ‘solution’….

The most talked about ‘solution’ is term limits….another one that I agree with….as long as the Congress limits are included.

Omnibus legislation to overrule the court decisions…..again a good idea but the political climate these days will prevent anything like this idea to see the light of day.

SCOTUS needs reforming and some ideas are good……but as long as the court is run by political hacks all we can do is wish and hope and witness the death of the republic.

Any ideas you would like to share?

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SCOTUS–Only The Beginning

The recent rulings by our political hacks on the Supreme Court have ripped into the very foundation of our beloved nation….and sadly this session is only the beginning of the dismantling.

Disastrous rulings are crippling the process we call democracy….

No single day has better captured the current state of the Supreme Court than Thursday. At 10 a.m., the court issued a devastating assault on the Biden administration’s ability to regulate greenhouse gases in a 6–3 ruling joined by all of the court’s reactionary block. Ten minutes later, it issued a 5–4 opinion that just barely confirmed that the president, rather than a rogue judge in Texas, has authority over border policy, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh lending the lone votes preventing an absolutely insane outcome. Shortly thereafter, the court issued a bombshell orders list that tees up, for next term, one of the most important and dangerous democracy cases in American history, which asks whether state legislatures have near-unlimited authority over election laws.

The court’s most immediately lethal decision remains Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade. But do not let Dobbs distract from the onslaught that followed it. If anyone still doubted that the Supreme Court served as the nation’s chief policymaking institution after Dobbs, Thursday should put that to rest. The court is ruthlessly efficient, putting our gridlocked Congress to shame with its speedy and definitive resolution of the most pressing issues facing the country today. It does not require hourslong hearings or endless negotiations to operate. The six-justice conservative majority chooses which conflicts to prioritize, takes up cases that present them, then picks a winner, nearly always for the benefit of the conservative movement and the Republican Party.

Consider the issues that SCOTUS has resolved this term—the first full term with a 6–3 conservative supermajority. The constitutional right to abortion: gone. States’ ability to limit guns in public: gone. Tribal sovereignty against state intrusion: gone. Effective constraints around separation of church and state: gone. The bar on prayer in public schools: gone. Effective enforcement of Miranda warnings: gone. The ability to sue violent border agents: gone. The Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases at power plants: gone. Vast areas of the law, established over the course of decades, washed away by a court over a few months.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/06/climate-change-epa-supreme-court-revolution.html

A friend of my granddaughter asked the other day just how it came to this…..40 years of dark money is the best answer.

Over the past several decades, corporate lawyers, right-wing activists, Republican officials, and dark money groups with deep pockets have been laying the groundwork for a far-reaching legal assault on the federal government’s ability to regulate U.S. industry—including the oil and gas sector threatening the planet.

On Thursday, their investments bore major fruit.

In a 6-3 decision along ideological lines, a Supreme Court packed with right-wing judges handpicked and boosted by some of the same forces leading the yearslong crusade against the power of regulatory agencies—which conservatives often dub the “administrative state”—dramatically restricted the Environmental Protection Agency’s authority to rein in greenhouse gas pollution from power plants.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/07/01/payoff-40-years-dark-money-supreme-court-delivers-corporate-america

All this abuses are standard fare these days….history is being crapped on by the very people that are suppose to guard our rights……

The Supreme Court under Chief Justice John Roberts is the most reactionary ever in American history.  Its Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision taking away abortion rights from American women is the first time the Court has ever overturned a constitutional precedent to take away rights.  But let us not forget that this Court has also killed the Voting Rights Act by declaring most of it unconstitutional in  Shelby County v. Holder and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee.  It has also killed union rights and unleashed corporate political money in Citizens United.  And it has consistently chipped away at the separation of Church and State as evidenced in the recent Carson v. Makin.  For a Chief Justice so worried about his legacy and the reputation of the Court, history will not be kind to him.

Ironically, history is central to the Roberts Court assault on rights.   Better yet it is the abuse of history in its method of legal analysis and reasoning.

Starting back with Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General Ed Meese conservative jurists, including Justice Antonin Scalia and the members of the Federalist Society, argued that the Constitution should be interpreted in light of the intent of the framers.  Such an approach, asking us what a bunch of slaveholders, bankers, and land speculators who were White and Christian thought about the rights of average people such as women, the poor, and people of color most certainly would doom their rights.  That is why Justices such as  Earl Warren, William Brennan, and others argued that rights need to be looked at in terms of the evolving standards of decency that mark the maturing of society.  We need to read our Constitution with an evolving political morality that reflects political sensibilities reflective of today, not fixed in stone in 1787.

The Supreme Court and the Abuse of History: Rights Will Always Lose

Thanx to radical right wingers like the Federalist Society have worked for decades to undermine the Constitution….basically it is a power grab by the Neo-fascists of this country….and they are succeeding….

https://www.salon.com/2022/07/01/radical-power-grab-new-case-could-allow-right-wingers-to-ignore-voting-right-laws_partner/

As the republic is dying and the people that pretend to love this country are by-standers….unless that changes all is lost.

There are ways to fight back…..impeachment (the magical word)……

There is a movement afoot to impeach Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Per Newsweek, the petition on MoveOn.org was created earlier this year after revelations that Thomas’ wife, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, pressured lawmakers and White House aides to overturn the 2020 election results. Meanwhile, Justice Thomas was the lone dissenting vote early this year when the Supreme Court rejected former President Trump’s attempt to withhold presidential records from Jan. 6 Capitol riot investigators. “Thomas’ failure to recuse himself warrants immediate investigation and heightened alarm,” the petition states, “and it’s only the latest in a long history of conflicts of interest … and mixing his powerful role with his conservative political activism.”

The petition was appended and gained considerable attention after the Supreme Court’s recent decision overturning Roe v. Wade. In denouncing Thomas and the majority for overturning 50 years of precedent, the petition adds that—in the same ruling—the justice suggested reconsidering decisions that established the right to contraception and same-sex marriage, according to the Hill, which notes that Democratic Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortes also called for impeaching other justices for misleading testimony during their Senate confirmation hearings. “If we allow Supreme Court nominees to lie under oath … and then issue—without basis, if you read these opinions—rulings that deeply undermine the human civil rights of the majority of Americans, we must see [impeachment] through,” Ocasio-Cortes said on Meet the Press.

According to Salon, Ocasio-Cortes also raised Justice Thomas’ past failure to disclose nearly $700,000 in income his wife took from the conservative Heritage Foundation. “I believe that violating federal law in not disclosing income from political organizations, as Clarence Thomas did years ago, is … potentially an impeachable offense,” Ocasio-Cortes said. Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar backed up her colleague in a tweet, saying, “We need an impeachment investigation into Clarence Thomas’s role in the January 6th coup, as well as into Gorsuch, Alito, Barrett, and Kavanaugh’s testimony on Roe during their confirmation hearings.”

This will probably go nowhere….but at least it is a start.

Enough Said!

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Freedom Of The Press

A little history for this Sunday…..a tidbit from out forgotten past…..

My continuing civics series….’where it all began’….

These days with all the hate speech and the defense of such speech citing the first amendment of our Constitution……it might be a good thing to learn about the this important amendment…..

Ever hear of John Peter Zenger?

I bet your history class did not cover this important event….let’s step back into American history to the year 1735…..

No democracy has existed in the modern world without the existence of a free press. Newspapers and pamphlets allow for the exchange of ideas and for the voicing of dissent. When a corrupt government holds power, the press becomes a critical weapon. It organizes opposition and can help revolutionary ideas spread. The trial of John Peter Zenger, a New York printer, was an important step toward this most precious freedom for American colonists.

John Peter Zenger was a German immigrant who printed a publication called The New York Weekly Journal. This publication harshly pointed out the actions of the corrupt royal governor, William S. Cosby. It accused the government of rigging elections and allowing the French enemy to explore New York harbor. It accused the governor of an assortment of crimes and basically labeled him an idiot. Although Zenger merely printed the articles, he was hauled into jail. The authors were anonymous, and Zenger would not name them.

In 1733, Zenger was accused of libel, a legal term whose meaning is quite different for us today than it was for him. In his day it was libel when you published information that was opposed to the government. Truth or falsity were irrelevant. He never denied printing the pieces. The judge therefore felt that the verdict was never in question. Something very surprising happened, however.

The first jury was packed with individuals on Cosby’s payroll. Throughout this process, Zenger’s wife Anna kept the presses rolling. Her reports resulted in replacing Cosby’s jury with a true jury of Zenger’s peers.

When the trial began and Zenger’s new attorney began his defense, a stir fluttered through the courtroom. The most famous lawyer in the colonies, Andrew Hamilton of Philadelphia, stepped up to defend Zenger. Hamilton admitted that Zenger printed the charges and demanded the prosecution to prove them false. In a stirring appeal to the jury, Hamilton pleaded for his new client’s release. “It is not the cause of one poor printer,” he claimed, “but the cause of liberty.” The judge ordered the jury to convict Zenger if they believed he printed the stories. But the jury returned in less than ten minutes with a verdict of not guilty.

Cheers filled the courtroom and soon spread throughout the countryside. Zenger and Hamilton were hailed as heroes. Another building block of liberty was in place. Although true freedom of the press was not known until the passage of the First Amendment, newspaper publishers felt freer to print their honest views. As the American Revolution approached, this freedom would become ever more vital.

(ushistory.org)

This is where the much revered first amendment got its roots….

So when you are preaching the freedom of the press we Americans can thank Zenger for the importance that this issue was given when the Constitution was being drafted.

Happy May Day one and all….

Enjoy your Sunday…..

Class Dismissed!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Guns–I Remember When

With the horrific shooting that just keeps taking the lives of children and innocent by-standers….I got thinking about history (go figure) and the GOP.

I remember because I am an old fart when the GOP and the NRA embraced the concept of gun control (for lack of a better word)……the time was the late 1960s……

OMG!  Blacks with guns!

In the wake of two high-profile mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, the gun control debate in America continues. Mass shootings in the U.S. occur at an alarming rate. In the first 22 weeks of 2022, there were around 246 mass shootings in America. Even with outrageous numbers like that, gun control is still a divisive point of discussion in American society. But this discordance around guns is nothing new — gun restriction debates have always been part of America’s history. 

The Second Amendment in the U.S. Constitution gives Americans the right to bear arms, stating: “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.” And while the amendment is arguably ambiguous, one organization has explicitly honed in on the “right of the people to keep and bear Arms” clause. Within the last few decades, the National Rifle Association has been an adamant force for gun rights — insistent that the right to bear arms trumps any attempts at regulation. 

Days following the tragic killings at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre vowed that the NRA would continue to fight to expand gun rights — “and not just in the face of tragic, horrible events when politicians and demagogues try to scapegoat us … but every day — for weeks, for months, for decades.”  

No matter the circumstances, one might assume that the NRA has always been a stark gun rights advocate that is positioned against gun control. But you may be surprised to learn that there was actually a time in American history when the NRA was in support of strict gun control regulations. 

In the late 1960s, the Black revolutionary organization the Black Panther Party was beginning to spread its message of Black empowerment across the U.S. Among various causes it supported, the BPP was determined to combat the rising number of police attacks against Black people by arming themselves with rifles. Using their Second Amendment rights, members of the BPP would often openly carry their rifles in the streets. But in a social and political system that was heavily based on racism and fearmongering, this made many white Americans uneasy, including the NRA. In an attempt to disarm Black Americans, the NRA took a racially motivated approach to gun control. 

https://blavity.com/did-you-know-the-nra-supported-gun-control-when-the-black-panther-party-was-armed

There be your history lesson.

Funny how things change….now ain’t it?

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”