SCOTUS and whatnot

[buddha]

2 hours ago, oblong said:

some group is urging people to protest catholic churches on Mother's Day.

Completely stupid idea and you'll lose a lot of goodwill.  Typical of the extreme left.  Probably the same ones who came up with the Defund Police slogan.

 

or the people who sent out the addresses for the supreme court justices' homes and told people to go protest in front of them.

[mtutiger]

15 minutes ago, buddha said:

if alito's opinion ends up being the actual opinion (which, again, is far from 100%), then i suspect you'll see an initial rush in many conservative led states to pass onerus and punitive bans on abortions and those who provide them, followed by a backlash and then a general walking back to more tolerable bans (things like what you see in most western countries).  

Not used to this sort of optimism from you lol

[buddha]

Just now, gehringer_2 said:

This I will not argue. It is not an easy circle to square. 

i think they wanted to codify what most people actually think the law should be: abortion is ok in the first trimester and then only ok after that in very rare circumstances where the mothers life is in danger or other moral concerns like incest or rape.  that's how the opinion reads to me.  that's why i think they wanted to "do the right thing."  

i think most americans would take that as the law today.  "viability" has shifted somewhat from roe's time as medicine has gotten better, but if its 22 weeks or 24 weeks instead of 28 weeks, that's ok,i think.

the problem is that they are judges and not legislators and what they did has dubious constitutional foundations.

[buddha]

3 minutes ago, mtutiger said:

Not used to this sort of optimism from you lol

yeah, that's why i'm probably wrong.  lol.

[gehringer_2]

9 minutes ago, buddha said:

i think they wanted to codify what most people actually think the law should be: abortion is ok in the first trimester and then only ok after that in very rare circumstances where the mothers life is in danger or other moral concerns like incest or rape.  that's how the opinion reads to me.  that's why i think they wanted to "do the right thing."  

so in essence the current court exposes the bad faith of the whole American conservative jurisprudence effort of the last 40 yrs by doing all they can to reverse a court that tried to do the right thing.

Edited May 6, 2022 by gehringer_2

[buddha]

the democrats are giving lip service to legal language that talks about protecting abortion rights through the end of pregnancy.  that's a political loser and lets the republicans off the hook.

the problem with trying to write a law on abortion is there are so many medical contingencies that its almost impossible to do.  the democrats have the right idea: that you need to leave open the possibility of an "abortion" for any period of time in the pregnancy because things can go wrong that could kill the mother or leave the baby in a horrible physical state.  but when you include such language allowing an abortion at any time for "mental health" reasons for the mother, you leave open a potential parade of horribles that republicans can use as a reason to not vote for it.  

i'm not sympathetic to having an abortion at 8 months because of the mental health issues of the mother, but i think that never happens.  i am sympathetic to democrats trying to craft a law that is politically acceptable, while also needing to include language that does not foreclose the possibility of a later term abortion if necessary and decriminalizes it.  and i am not sympathetic to republicans that refuse to compromise for any reason and make the process that much harder.

[pfife]

1 hour ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

The left is already viewed as the Godless party by the right. Protests like these will only solidifiy those beliefs and make the line harder between them.

Right but the NYTimes said I have the right to say what I want without consequences

Oh wait I'm not a conservative, my bad nevermind 🙂

 

[buddha]

8 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

so in essence the current court exposes the bad faith of the whole American conservative jurisprudence effort of the last 40 yrs by doing all they can to reverse a court that tried to do the right thing.

i think it was the right thing for the legislature to do, but they refused or were incapable of doing it.  so the court tried to do it for them.  i dont think that's the proper role of the court here.

getting back to my usual debbie downer persona, its a problem with politicians' inability to compromise and do their jobs.  

[gehringer_2]

2 minutes ago, buddha said:

the democrats are giving lip service to legal language that talks about protecting abortion rights through the end of pregnancy.  that's a political loser and lets the republicans off the hook.

the problem with trying to write a law on abortion is there are so many medical contingencies that its almost impossible to do.  the democrats have the right idea: that you need to leave open the possibility of an "abortion" for any period of time in the pregnancy because things can go wrong that could kill the mother or leave the baby in a horrible physical state.  but when you include such language allowing an abortion at any time for "mental health" reasons for the mother, you leave open a potential parade of horribles that republicans can use as a reason to not vote for it.  

i'm not sympathetic to having an abortion at 8 months because of the mental health issues of the mother, but i think that never happens.  i am sympathetic to democrats trying to craft a law that is politically acceptable, while also needing to include language that does not foreclose the possibility of a later term abortion if necessary and decriminalizes it.  and i am not sympathetic to republicans that refuse to compromise for any reason and make the process that much harder.

Yup. We see that it's absolutism that gets both side in trouble. Sure the left thinks that it solidifies that privacy arg to claim it as an absolute right, but you are correct, taken to the extreme it undercuts the practical appeal of the argument. And again - it goes back the truth that nobody knows and anyone who claims they do is a liar or arguing from faith rather that fact. Faith can be a wonderful thing in life, not so much in law or politics.

[pfife]

1 hour ago, 1776 said:

In my honest opinion, I believe Trump was elected because Hillary was the other option. I voted Libertarian in 2016 even though Gary Johnson imploded on Aleppo. I couldn’t vote for either Trump or Hillary. 

I think she was probably quite repellent to moderate republicans who were otherwise ok with jumping ship in light of Trump being the nominee.   Policy wise I feel like she's actually on the more moderate side.   Scandal follows her & them everywhere so that woulda been painful but I don't think she would be this stark raving crazy lib if she were president.  But that's just my opinion of a fake world.

[gehringer_2]

2 minutes ago, buddha said:

i think it was the right thing for the legislature to do, but they refused or were incapable of doing it.  so the court tried to do it for them.  i dont think that's the proper role of the court here.

I think the problem was worse than that. Politicians had done their job at the state levels and it left what was increasingly regarded as an intolerable inconsistency across the country. The national legislature can't resolve the question to the overall public will because it is no longer a sufficiently democratic institution to codify the public will on any issue with a moderately narrow consensus. Maybe it's unfair to blame Congress for being what it was designed to be but it is what it is at this point. 

The court was/is sort of in the 'nature abhors a vacuum' situation.

[Motown Bombers]

Republicans have the ability to write laws that consider a fertilized egg a baby and swallowing a morning after pill as homicide but it's up to the Democrats to be reasonable. 

[buddha]

21 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

Republicans have the ability to write laws that consider a fertilized egg a baby and swallowing a morning after pill as homicide but it's up to the Democrats to be reasonable. 

its up to both sides to be reasonable.  i regard the democrats' position as more reasonable than the republicans' position.  

neither side can control their extremes any more.  the republican extreme being worse than the democrat extreme, as usual.

[buddha]

46 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Yup. We see that it's absolutism that gets both side in trouble. Sure the left thinks that it solidifies that privacy arg to claim it as an absolute right, but you are correct, taken to the extreme it undercuts the practical appeal of the argument. And again - it goes back the truth that nobody knows and anyone who claims they do is a liar or arguing from faith rather that fact. Faith can be a wonderful thing in life, not so much in law or politics.

i think shumer really feels the threat of aoc running against him, so he needs to placate the left more.  he used to be much more centrist.

the bottom line is that i think more democrats would be fine with a compromise abortion bill than republicans.  i think there's probably 25% or so of republicans who will not be satisfied until there is an abortion ban, while only 10% of democrats are really holding out for abortion at any time for any reason.  but the pro abortion wing of the democrats is reticent to give up anything because they know that outlier events can occur that still need protection.  that makes it hard for the democrats to compromise.

[Motown Bombers]

Neither side can control their extreme. This is great. What extremes have the left passed? Also, what is so extreme about things like universal health care and free college tuition that is standard in most developed countries?

[Tiger337]

1 hour ago, Motown Bombers said:

I was raised in a Catholic household and went to Catholic school from K-12. You wouldn't know my parents were Catholics. The problem is, these white Evangelicals are trying to take over. It's been going on since the 90's. You have Mike Pence, a Vice President, who said he swears to the bible first and then the constitution. Imagine if Obama said the same thing but replace Bible with Quran? 

Fortunately, it's the Catholics who dominate Massachusetts over the Evangelicals.  I often forget that Catholicism is frowned upon in some states.  While there are some overbearing Catholics, I think Evangelicals tend to be more overbearing than Catholics.  

[Tiger337]

2 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

Neither side can control their extreme. This is great. What extremes have the left passed? Also, what is so extreme about things like universal health care and free college tuition that is standard in most developed countries?

"Defund the police" is pretty extreme and there are actually some extremists who take the term literally.  

[Motown Bombers]

2 minutes ago, Tiger337 said:

"Defund the police" is pretty extreme and there are actually some extremists who take the term literally.  

Defund the police was a slogan by a small minority and not supported by any level of the Democratic party. Defund the police wasn't actually about defunding them but allocating funds to better prevent crime. I'll give you the left is pretty awful at creating slogans. 

[Motown Bombers]

Defund the police hasn't come close to entering mainstream Democratic policies so the left has proven it can control its extremes. 

[pfife]

It's only on one side though where the out of control folks are violently attacking the capitol.

[Motown Bombers]

I wonder when the progressives are going to attack the Supreme Court Building to stop the overturning of Roe? Will they have the gallows out for Roberts since they wrongfully say he has the power to overturn the court's decision?

[gehringer_2]

1 hour ago, buddha said:

its up to both sides to be reasonable.

to play Devil's advocate for a minute, I'm going to create a straw man here just for the sake of thinking about an argument. Let's go back to the question over slavery. In an ironic way it is in a large measure the people of the Old Confederacy who are arguing that abortion is too great a moral imperative to leave to a compromise consensus, which of course is pretty close to the exact position that abolitionist forces argued against the Old South in demanding slavery end everywhere. Funny how history turns the wheel. 

That said, while there is a parallel kind of motivation to taking both abortion and slavery abolition as moral imperatives that are justified in being imposed on others, the underlying argument for that moral imperative is much different in the two cases. First of course, slavery was a continuing frontal assault on the most fundamental charter statement of nationhood in the DOI, the contradiction of which was obvious to all even at the time of the writing of the Constitution. "All men are created equal" carries none of the arguable ambiguity of when life begins. Further, the understanding of the immorality of slavery requires no particular religious background, it quickly came to be shared nearly universally across the globe by the religious, secular, and humanist alike, even if that view did not, as a matter of fact have 'deep historical' roots. In the end there were no 'moral' arguments to stand up in favor of slavery, only property interests.

In contrast, complete abolition of abortion depends nearly solely on arguments stemming from a single religious view, which is not even a consensus within US Christianity, let alone the entire now largely secular nation. In case of abortion there are also clear competing moral issues around the rights of the mother. 

Thus I don't think it's unfair to conclude that imposing emancipation on the South was justified but imposing abortion abolition on the US is not.

Edited May 6, 2022 by gehringer_2

[CMRivdogs]

One issue that I've seen raised from the fallout of whatever the ruling happens to be is that it opens a Pandora's box on the right to privacy.

Especially in regards to laws restricting travel across state lines (to use an extreme case), but you could also begin to see local law enforcement seeking court orders seeking information on people looking for emergency contraception or ever those seen near a suspected abortion facility.

What would stop authorities do the same in regards to guns somewhere down the line? While not completely restricting gun use, but gathering information on those visiting gun shops, gun shows, researching gun information on line?  

[Motown Bombers]

But what about the extreme on the left. 

[pfife]

make lemons out of lemonade